Trump Won't Wear a Mask & Backpedals After Task Force Backlash | The Daily Social Distancing Show

China’s Coronavirus Vaccine Drive Empowers a Troubled Industry

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/business/coronavirus-china-vaccine.html

China wants to beat the world in the race to find a coronavirus vaccine — and, by some measures, it is doing just that.

Desperate to protect its people and to deflect growing international criticism of how it handled the outbreak, it has slashed red tape and offered resources to drug companies. Four Chinese companies have started testing their vaccine candidates on humans, more than the United States and Britain combined.

There's No Good Way to Make China 'Pay' for the Pandemic | Opinion

https://www.newsweek.com/theres-no-good-way-make-china-pay-pandemic-opinion-1501910

 President Donald Trump wants China to pay for the destruction COVID-19 has wrought. After initially praising China's approach to the now-pandemic illness, Trump has recently taken a far harsher line on Beijing. "We're doing very serious investigations," he said at a press conference last week, "and we are not happy with China."

The extent of Beijing's culpability is yet to be determined, but Trump is correct that its early mishandling of COVID-19 had dire consequences, both within China and around the world. It's also true that many of Beijing's failings here, like its suppression of inconvenient information and deliberate public deception, are characteristic of its unreformed authoritarianism.

But granting those realities leaves open the question of whether there's any meaningful, feasible and prudent way to exact reparations from China. Any policy of making China pay should go beyond political theater, be realistically achievable and not—to borrow a recent favorite phrase of Trump's—make the cure worse than the problem. Unfortunately, such an option for retribution probably doesn't exist. It's certainly not among the ideas presently on the table.

As U.S. investigations shed new light on Beijing's responsibility for COVID-19's spread, the Trump administration should consider how it can put that information to better use than retribution doomed to either futility or self-harm. The wisest course is to diplomatically leverage evidence of culpability for more transparency and information-sharing going forward. If the first COVID-19 vaccine is developed in China, as is entirely possible, we want access to it. Likewise, if another pandemic illness originates in China, we want to avoid a repetition of this one's lost time and opportunities. The proper goal of holding Beijing accountable, then, isn't payback but preventing another global catastrophe and mitigating this one.

China Criticizes Pompeo Over Coronavirus Wuhan Lab Allegation, Claims Leaked GOP Memo Discredits Trump Theory

https://www.newsweek.com/china-criticizes-pompeo-over-coronavirus-wuhan-lab-allegation-claims-leaked-gop-memo-discredits-1502426

 

Hua cited a recently leaked 57-page memo, written by a top GOP strategist and sent by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, advised the party's candidates to aggressively attack Beijing when publicly addressing the pandemic.

 

The April 17 memo, titled "Corona Big Book," details suggestions on how to link Democratic candidates to the Chinese Communist government, as well as ways to handle allegations of racism from critics. The document provides for three main talking points: Democrats do not adequately hold China to account, Beijing is responsible for the virus because they covered it up and Republicans will retaliate by pushing for sanctions.

No lockdown, but ministers ban bonfires, close off Meron ahead of Lag B’Omer

https://www.timesofisrael.com/no-lockdown-but-ministers-ban-bonfires-close-off-meron-ahead-of-lag-bomer/

 Ministers on Wednesday night reportedly gave the green light to a ban on lighting bonfires and to seal off the Meron pilgrimage site in northern Israel ahead of next week’s Lag B’Omer festival, to prevent gatherings amid fears of a fresh outbreak of the coronavirus.

Coronavirus Task Force Gets Its ‘Mission Accomplished’ Moment

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/opinion/coronavirus-trump-taskforce.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

 By Wednesday morning, Mr. Trump had changed the contours, though not the essence, of his plan. In a tweet thread, he said the coronavirus task force would, in fact, “continue on indefinitely” but shift its efforts — and most likely some of its members — to “focus on SAFETY & OPENING UP OUR COUNTRY AGAIN.” He closed with, “The Task Force will also be very focused on Vaccines & Therapeutics. Thank you!”

Whether dissolved or repurposed, the White House Task Force focused on coordinating the administration’s public-health response to the pandemic is soon to be no more. To which we can only say: No big loss.

 

In theory, bringing together a collection of experts to oversee a coordinated federal response to a national emergency makes perfect sense. In practice, the first phase of Mr. Trump’s coronavirus task force was its own form of disaster.

For starters, the president made clear early on that he wasn’t interested in marshaling a coordinated response. Time and again, he ducked responsibility, pushing it off on the governors. On challenges ranging from acquiring critical medical supplies to coordinating and expanding testing (which remains a problem) to managing social-distancing restrictions, the task force has provided consistently uneven guidance and insufficient assistance.

 Mr. Trump often has undermined the recommendations it has made. Whether pushing dangerous treatments of unproven efficacy or urging his supporters to protest the basic social distancing guidelines put forward by the task force, the president has repeatedly scrambled the public-health message.

President Trump vetoes Iran war powers resolution

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/president-trump-vetoes-iran-war-powers-resolution-627170

 US President Donald Trump on Wednesday vetoed legislation that intends to limit his ability to wage war against Iran. The bill passed both chambers of Congress with the support of a few Republican members but lacked enough votes to get a veto-proof majority.

 The resolution, which passed the House of Representatives in March and the Senate in April, was the latest effort by Congress to wrest back from the White House its constitutionally guaranteed authority to declare war.

The Wuhan lab at the center of the US-China blame game: What we know and what we don't

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/06/asia/coronavirus-china-wuhan-lab-origins-explainer-intl-hnk/index.html

The laboratory at the heart of the Trump administration's allegations belongs to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, an affiliate of the central government-run Chinese Academy of Sciences. It is the only lab on the Chinese mainland equipped for the highest level of biocontainment, known as Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4). .

 

The Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory was designed and built with help from France. Construction wasn't finished until the end of 2014, and the lab went into full operation in January 2018 -- an event celebrated in the media as worthy of national pride

A third source, also from a Five Eyes nation, told CNN that there remains a possibility that the virus originated from a laboratory, but cautioned there is nothing to make that a legitimate theory yet. The source added that "clearly the market is where it exploded from," but how the virus got to the market remains unclear.

Late Night Storytime: The Perfect President

Mourning In America’ Ad Sets Off Trump Rage Tweeting | The Last Word | MSNBC

Trump lashes out at attack ad by George Conway’s Lincoln Project: ‘Disgrace to Honest Abe’

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-lashes-out-at-attack-ad-by-george-conways-lincoln-project-disgrace-to-honest-abe

President Trump lashed out overnight after a group led by Kellyanne Conway’s husband released an ad criticizing his administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The grim ad, titled “Mourning in America,” was a riff on former President Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America,” and accused the president of ignoring the crisis early on. It was released by The Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans.

“A group of RINO Republicans who failed badly 12 years ago, then again 8 years ago, and then got BADLY beaten by me, a political first timer, 4 years ago, have copied (no imagination) the concept of an ad from Ronald Reagan, 'Morning in America’, doing everything possible to get even for all of their many failures,” Trump tweeted early Tuesday morning.

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."

How did coronavirus break out? Theories abound as researchers race to solve genetic detective story

https://www.wdrb.com/news/coronavirus/how-did-coronavirus-break-out-theories-abound-as-researchers-race-to-solve-genetic-detective-story/article_79c2190c-787b-11ea-994a-e33e39161b57.html

Another potentially explosive theory -- first posed by two Chinese researchers in early February and amplified by Fox News host Tucker Carlson on March 31 -- holds that the origin traces back to an accident in one of two labs near the Wuhan market that work with bats.

Most of the experts interviewed for this story discounted the theory -- whose progenitors reportedly withdrew their paper -- saying it wasn't supported by evidence.

The theory has also been strenuously denied by the Chinese government and one of the labs.

But one expert, a chemical biology professor and bioweapons expert at Rutgers University, has suggested to several media outlets that the lab-accident theory has credence.

"The possibility that the virus entered humans through a laboratory accident cannot and should not be dismissed," Dr. Richard Ebright told CNN in an email Sunday.

 

Wait, Donald Trump's approval is up again?

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/05/politics/donald-trump-approval-rating-coronavirus/index.html

 The narrative seemed set: After a brief surge of public support for President Donald Trump in the early days of America's fight against the coronavirus, his approval numbers had settled back into the low 40s.

Right? Right. 

Except that in Gallup's latest two-week tracking poll, Trump's job approval is back to 49% -- matching the highest it's ever been -- while his disapproval is at 47%.

 

Mitch McConnell Wants to Stop Blue State Bailouts, But Red States Need Help Too

https://www.newsweek.com/mitch-mcconnell-wants-stop-blue-state-bailouts-red-states-need-help-too-1501877

But whether or not states receive more aid from the federal government remains up in the air. McConnell, the Senate's top Republican, has positioned himself against passing another half-trillion-dollar relief package and even floated the idea of letting states go bankrupt.

"I think this whole business of additional assistance for state and local governments needs to be thoroughly evaluated," McConnell told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt last month. "There's not going to be any desire on the Republican side to bail out state pensions by borrowing money from future generations."

Heads of state from both sides of the aisle slammed McConnell's remarks. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called the suggestion "one of the really dumb ideas of all time." Maryland Governor Larry Hogan said that the Senate leader would "regret" making those comments and that bankruptcy was the "the last thing we need" during this global health crisis.

 

Donald Trump just broke the most basic rule of politics

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/05/politics/lincoln-project-ad-donald-trump/index.html

On Monday, the Lincoln Project released an ad entitled "Mourning in America" -- playing off the famed "Morning in America" ad by President Ronald Reagan in 1984.

"Under the leadership of Donald Trump our country is weaker and sicker and poorer," says the ad's narrator. "If we have another four years like this, will there even be an America?"

Its message is dark, foreboding and harsh. And it's very likely that almost no one would have even seen that message had it not been for Donald Trump.

Trump's inability to ignore renegade voices within his party is a violation of the most basic of campaign rules. The more he talks about the Lincoln Project -- no matter how negatively -- the better for the group's profile and ability to raise money to oppose his reelection.

meir kin calling for dismantling of rabbanut

Study: Nearly a third of Americans believe a conspiracy theory about the origins of the coronavirus

https://www.vox.com/covid-19-coronavirus-us-response-trump/2020/4/12/21217646/pew-study-coronavirus-origins-conspiracy-theory-media

 A new Pew study finds 30 percent of Americans believe scientists created Covid-19. That isn’t what happened.

 

COVID: Top 10 current conspiracy theories

https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2020/04/covid-top-10-current-conspiracy-theories/

 As the COVID-19 crisis worsens, the world also faces a global misinformation pandemic. Conspiracy theories that behave like viruses themselves are spreading just as rapidly online as SARS-CoV-2 does offline. Here are the top 10 conspiracy theories making the rounds.

 

Coronavirus: The seven types of people who start and spread viral misinformation

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-52474347

Conspiracy theories, misinformation and speculation about coronavirus have flooded social media. But who starts these rumours? And who spreads them?

We've investigated hundreds of misleading stories during the pandemic. It's given us an idea about who is behind misinformation - and what motivates them. Here are seven types of people who start and spread falsehoods:

 

Trump Responds to Project Lincoln Ad by Conservatives Who Want Him Out of Office: 'They're All LOSERS'

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-ad-coronavirus-project-lincoln-george-conway-1501942

President Donald Trump called a group of prominent conservatives who oppose him "losers" and defended his record from the right after they launched an advert attacking his response to the coronavirus crisis.

The new ad was paid for by The Lincoln Project, a campaign by former Republicans who split with the party because of Trump and which seeks to thwart the president's re-election, and is called "Mourning in America."

 

Mourning in America

Dr. Fauci Backed Controversial Wuhan Lab with Millions of U.S. Dollars for Risky Coronavirus Research

https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan-lab-millions-us-dollars-risky-coronavirus-research-1500741

 Dr. Fauci did not respond to Newsweek's requests for comment. NIH responded with a statement that said in part: "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.... scientific research indicates that there is no evidence that suggests the virus was created in a laboratory."

NIH gives detailed explanation for $3.7 million bat research at center of China mystery

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/nih-gives-detailed-explanation-37-million-bat-research-center-china

Officials at the National Institutes of Health and Fauci's own division there, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), say there is far less to the story than meets the eye.