Dear Rabbis, STOP SAYING THIS IS GOD'S PUNISHMENT

Triggered Trump Rages Over Ad Blasting His Coronavirus Response | The 11th Hour | MSNBC

Is there any evidence for lab release theory?

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52318539

 What kinds of security failures were the cables describing?

The short answer is we don't know from the information provided in the Washington Post. But, generally speaking, there are multiple ways that safety measures can be breached at labs dealing with biological agents.

According to Dr Lentzos, these include: "Who has access to the lab, the training and refresher-training of scientists and technicians, procedures for record-keeping, signage, inventory lists of pathogens, accident notification practices, emergency procedures."

Dr Lentzos said the issue of the virus' origin was a "very difficult question", and added that "there have been quiet, behind-the-scene discussions... in the biosecurity expert community, questioning the seafood market origin that has come out very strongly from China".

Amid this war of words between the countries, the painstaking - and largely unseen - scientific work to trace the origin of the virus will continue.

Mike Pompeo Defends U.S. Funding For Wuhan Virology Lab

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/coronavirus/mike-pompeo-defends-us-funding-wuhan-virology-lab-149436

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended U.S. funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a program “to protect American people from labs that aren’t up to standard” in a Fox and Friends interview on Wednesday.

Pompeo then addressed a Tuesday report in the New York Post pointing the finger at NIH infectious disease chief Dr. Anthony Fauci for $7.4 million in U.S. government grants to the now-controversial coronavirus research.

“I don’t know the details of the NIH grants,” Pompeo told Fox News. “Look, the United States, for a long time and continuing today, tries to help countries around the world who are conducting research on highly contagious pathogens.”

The research involved both collecting bat coronaviruses from the wild and running “gain-of-function” experiments aimed at determining whether the viruses could jump between species.

The NIH has defended its research as necessary for public health.

“Most emerging human viruses come from wildlife, and these represent a significant threat to public health and biosecurity in the US and globally, as demonstrated by the SARS epidemic of 2002-03, and the current COVID-19 pandemic,” the organization told Newsweek.

Potential Risks and Benefits of Gain-of-Function Research: Summary of a Workshop.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK285579/

The field of virology, and to some extent the broader field of microbiology, widely relies on studies that involve gain or loss of function. In order to understand the role of such studies in virology, Dr. Kanta Subbarao from the Laboratory of Infectious Disease at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) gave an overview of the current scientific and technical approaches to the research on pandemic strains of influenza and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronaviruses (CoV). As discussed in greater detail later in this chapter, many participants argued that the word choice of “gain-of-function” to describe the limited type of experiments covered by the U.S. deliberative process, particularly when coupled with a pause on even a smaller number of research projects, had generated concern that the policy would affect much broader areas of virology research

ALTERNATIVES TO GOF RESEARCH

The essence of the debate around the risks and benefits of GoF research and the concerns it raises have naturally encouraged virologists on both sides of the debate to consider alternative methodological approaches. During his talk, Kawaoka discussed alternatives to GoF research mostly applicable to influenza research, such as loss-of-function research, use of low pathogenicity viruses, and phenotypic analyses. He further cited a review paper in which Lipsitch and Galvani (2014) stated that “alternative scientific approaches are not only less risky, but also more likely to generate results that can be readily translated into public health benefits.” However, Kawaoka argued through specific examples that alternatives do not always provide the full answer to key questions. For instance, he cited work by Tumpey et al. (2007) and Imai et al. (2012) on mutations responsible for the loss of transmission capabilities of the 1918 influenza strain between ferrets and noted that this work required GoF research because a loss-of-function approach did not provide the complete picture. In addition, although working with low pathogenic avian influenza viruses provides a safer approach, Kawaoka explained that “highly pathogenic avian influenza differ from low pathogenic viruses in their kinetics of virus replication and tropism” and therefore the data can be misleading. Other alternatives discussed by Kawaoka and Dr. Robert Lamb, Northwestern University, in Session 8 of the symposium were cited from the recent review paper by Lipsitch and Galvani (Box 3.3). Kawaoka concluded that even if these approaches offer safer alternatives to GoF research of concern, for some questions researchers cannot rely solely on them because the phenotype of and the molecular basis for these new traits have been identified by GoF research but not by alternative approaches.

Coronavirus Whistleblower Complaint Suggests Trump Admin. Putting Politics Above Science | MSNBC

Dr. Anthony Fauci addresses China lab theory

Top General Says U.S. Doesn't Know If Coronavirus Emerged from Wuhan Lab

Trump explains why he plans to wind down the coronavirus task force

פסק דין תקדימי בעליון: 'הגביר המעגן' חויב לשלם כמיליון שקלים

https://www.bhol.co.il/news/1097385

 תקדים היסטורי: שופטי העליון פסקו פה אחד כי על 'הגביר המעגן' לשלם 5,000 שקלים עבור כל יום עיגון. הקנס מצטבר לכמיליון שקלים | השופט מינץ: "נדמה שפרשה זו מגלה שיאים חדשים של פגיעה כואבת בחייה של אישה אשר לא שפר עליה גורלה" | וגם, הביקורת על הפרקליט

Trump softens promise of coronavirus vaccine by end of year

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/05/trump-coronavirus-vaccine-239271

 

President Donald Trump on Tuesday softened his ambitious pledge from just days earlier that there could be a coronavirus vaccine by year’s end.

“You can never be convinced,” Trump, during a trip to Arizona, told ABC News’ David Muir in an interview when asked whether he was still firm in that declaration, contending that “we have a really good shot of having something very, very substantial.”

The backpedaling from the president came 48 hours after Trump said during a Fox News town hall that “we think we’ll have a vaccine by the end of this year and we’re pushing very hard,” a statement that contradicts his own health officials as well as companies developing and testing potential vaccines.

 Asked why, at the end of February, he asserted that the 15 known cases of coronavirus in the U.S. would quickly go down to zero, the president again fell back on his usual defenses of touting his decision to restrict travel from China a month earlier. He noted that those comments came while flights were still allowed into the country from Europe, another hot spot for the pandemic.

And Trump reiterated his wish to be a “cheerleader” for the country.

“I don’t want to be Mr. Gloom-and-Doom. It’s a very bad subject,” he said on ABC, though he acknowledged that his administration was still unsure of the severity of the outbreak. “I’m not looking to tell the American people when nobody really knows what’s happening yet, ‘Oh, this is going to be so tragic.’

Top US general: Unknown if coronavirus came from China lab

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/279750

The top US general said on Tuesday it was still unknown whether the coronavirus emerged from a wet market in China, a laboratory or some other location.

“Did it come out of the virology lab in Wuhan? Did it occur in a wet market there in Wuhan? Did it occur somewhere else? And the answer to that is: We don’t know,” Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a news conference, according to Reuters.

 

How Kushner’s Volunteer Force Led a Fumbling Hunt for Medical Supplies

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/us/jared-kushner-fema-coronavirus.html

The fumbling search for new supplies — heralded by Mr. Trump and Mr. Kushner as a way to pipe private-sector hustle and accountability into the hidebound federal bureaucracy — became a case study of Mr. Trump’s style of governing, in which personal relationships and loyalty are often prized over governmental expertise, and private interests are granted extraordinary access and deference.

 Federal officials who had spent years devising emergency plans were layered over by Kushner allies, working with and within the White House coronavirus task force, who believed their private-sector experience could solve the country’s looming supply shortage. The young volunteers — drawn from venture capital and private equity firms — were expected to apply their deal-making experience to quickly weed out good leads from the mountain of bad ones, administration officials said in an interview. FEMA and other agencies, despite years of emergency preparation, were not equipped for the unprecedented task of a pandemic that impacted all 50 states, they said.

 But the officials acknowledged it was difficult to identify specific contracts the volunteers had successfully sourced.

At least one tip the volunteers forwarded turned into an expensive debacle. In late March, according to emails obtained by The Times, two of the volunteers passed along procurement forms submitted by Yaron Oren-Pines, a Silicon Valley engineer who said he could provide more than 1,000 ventilators.

“There’s an old saying in emergency management — disaster is the wrong time to exchange business cards,” said Tim Manning, a former deputy administrator at FEMA. “And it’s absolutely the wrong time to make up new procedures.”

White House coronavirus task force to be wound down around Memorial Day

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/05/politics/white-house-coronavirus-task-force-winding-down/index.html

The White House coronavirus task force will start to wind down later this month, a senior White House official told CNN on Tuesday.

The official said the task force "will be phased down around Memorial Day. We will continue to have key medical experts advising (President Donald Trump) daily and accessible to press throughout the coming months ahead."