Big Time News Blog: 04/12/20

Sunday, April 12, 2020

More than 370,000 people have recovered from COVID-19. Here's what we know about coronavirus survivors.

Recovered COVID-19 patients may have residual cough or fatigue for weeks after the major symptoms disappear, and some could have lasting lung damage.

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African ambassadors complain to China over 'discrimination' in Guangzhou

African ambassadors in China have written to the country's foreign minister over what they call discrimination against Africans as the country seeks to prevent a resurgence of the coronavirus.

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Trump reportedly said he would reject a bailout package if it included aid to keep the US Postal Service functioning

USPS has asked Congress for a $50 billion bailout and $25 billion in loans from the Treasury Department to make up for losses.

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El Salvador president threatens drivers violating coronavirus rules

President Nayib Bukele said anyone driving cars in El Salvador without having justification for being out of their homes would be stripped of their driving license, doubling down on attempts to enforce rules to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. Bukele and other Central American leaders have implemented swift and strict measures after the first cases of the novel coronavirus were registered but in recent weeks thousands of people in the region were detained for violating the rules. At his request, El Salvador's Congress on March 14 approved an emergency regime, which temporarily suspended the right to free movement and free association.

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Julian Assange secretly fathered two children inside Ecuadorian embassy, partner reveals in bid for his release from Belmarsh amid coronavirus fears

Julian Assange secretly fathered two children while living inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, his partner has revealed in a plea for him to be released from prison.The Wikileaks founder’s partner, Stella Morris, made the revelation to the courts supporting an application for bail from HMP Belmarsh in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

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At least 3 dead in Mississippi as Easter Sunday tornadoes hit the South; more storms forecast for Monday in the East

The National Weather Service reported tornadoes over northwest and north central Louisiana. The severe weather will move into the East on Monday.

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Coronavirus: US death toll overtakes Italy as world's highest

The United States now has more than 20,000 deaths and more than half a million cases.

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African community targeted in China virus crackdown

Africans in southern China's largest city say they have become targets of suspicion and subjected to forced evictions, arbitrary quarantines and mass coronavirus testing as Beijing steps up its fight against imported infections, drawing US accusations of xenophobia. China says it has largely curbed its COVID-19 outbreak but a recent cluster of cases linked to the Nigerian community in Guangzhou sparked the alleged discrimination by locals and virus prevention officials. Local authorities in the industrial centre of 15 million said at least eight people diagnosed with the illness had spent time in the city's Yuexiu district, known as "Little Africa".

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Fauci says US could see a 'rolling' reopen starting next month but warns of a 'rebound' in outbreaks later this year

There are some indications that the outbreak was "starting to turn the corner," but reopening normal life would be "gradual," Dr. Fauci said Sunday.

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Fears of 'Wild West' as COVID-19 blood tests hit the market

Blood tests for the coronavirus could play a key role in deciding whether millions of Americans can safely return to work and school. More than 70 companies have signed up to sell so-called antibody tests in recent weeks, according to U.S. regulators. Governments around the world hope that the rapid tests, which typically use a finger-prick of blood on a test strip, could soon ease public restrictions by identifying people who have previously had the virus and have developed some immunity to it.

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Erdogan Rejects Cabinet Member’s Bid to Quit Over Lockdown Chaos

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Coronavirus and the mystery of St. Mark's Easter story

There are four Gospel accounts of the resurrection of Jesus, which Christians celebrate on Easter Sunday. Matthew's version is short but dramatic, with a thrill of conspiracy and the challenge of the Great Commission. The Gospel of Luke has the male disciples dismissing the women's report of the resurrection and getting the fright of their lives in return. The resurrection story in John's Gospel is where we find the tale of "Doubting Thomas" and the delightfully petty, human detail that John could run faster than his fellow disciple, Peter.And then there's Mark. The Gospel of Mark isn't a pastoral favorite for Easter under ordinary circumstances. Its ending is notoriously strange — disconcerting even — and the subject of considerable scholarly debate. But as we come to a strange and disconcerting Easter amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, Mark may be the perfect pick for the very reason we normally look elsewhere.The conclusion of Mark is odd because, though it has a report of the resurrection, Jesus himself doesn't appear. Where the other three accounts see Jesus talking, eating, traveling, and teaching after he is raised from the dead, Mark 16:8 ends with three women fleeing the empty tomb, "for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid."If that doesn't sound familiar, it may be because, like me, you grew up reading the King James Version of the Bible. The KJV has beautiful, often poetic language which linguists say shaped the English language more than any other work, but it's limited by the scholarship of its era. It includes uncritically a 12-verse ending of Mark which nearly all biblical scholars now agree isn't original to the text. (Most modern translations, if they include it, add a preface stating it isn't present in many of the best ancient manuscripts of Mark.)This longer ending appears to be a rewrite of bits of Matthew and Luke, and it awkwardly re-introduces a character, Mary Magdalene, who was already present in the chapter's narrative. There's also a shorter, one-verse ending which is even more obviously a foreign addition to Mark's original. It's stiffly formal, nothing like Mark's rapid, casual style, which in the Greek reads very much like how we tell our friends stories in the present tense: "So then she says X, and then he says Y, and then we go to Z, and..."We don't know for certain how Mark intended his account to end. Some scholars have suggested that when the book was first written — Mark is the oldest of the four Gospels, thought to have been penned as early as a decade after the events it describes — the story would have concluded with in-person testimony from an eyewitness of the resurrection. Like everything in the New Testament, Mark was written for public reading. It's plausible that the first copy was accompanied by someone mentioned in the narrative who could personally speak to what happened after that first Easter. Tradition links the book to Peter, but the three women named in the resurrection story would have been good candidates, too.But I think the more probable truth is Mark wrote a few more verses we have lost, likely to damage of one end of an early scroll. "Laborious attempts have been made in modern scholarship not just to suggest that Mark really did mean to stop [with the women silent and afraid], but, as it were, to wallow in the dark uncertainty of that result," notes Anglican theologian N.T. Wright in his commentary on Mark. But Mark isn't a wallower and he wants nothing of uncertainty."These suggestions have an air of sophistication and literary imagination," Wright adds, which Mark frankly lacks. The book is structured like a mystery story, asking and answering for its audience an all-consuming question: Who is this Jesus of Nazareth? Mark thus moves from secrecy to disclosure, riddle to revelation. He has no interest in leaving us guessing about the identity of Christ or the meaning of Easter. The whole story races toward the resurrection, which Jesus predicts to his unendingly dense and confused disciples again and again. Mark's project is to solve for us the mystery of Jesus, and it seems unfathomable to me that he would've neglected to write the resolution in full. No good mystery shortchanges the reveal.Still, whatever the truth of the original ending, the text we have ends with fear. The resurrection is announced but not witnessed. The disciples' world has ended, and they're not sure they can trust the hope they've been offered. This can make for a fascinating and important conversation about fear and doubt and biblical scholarship, but it also knocks Mark out of the running for most Easter services. On Easter we want the commission of Matthew, the joy of Luke, or the comfort of John — not the fear and ambiguity of the surviving text of Mark.Except, this year, perhaps we want exactly that. "Perhaps, in the strange providence of God, the way Mark's book now finishes encourages us to explore all the more not only the faith of the early church, that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead, but our own faith," Wright muses. "Do we take Easter for granted, or have we found ourselves awestruck at the strange new work of God?"This Sunday I, like most Christians in America in this time of pandemic, will celebrate Easter online with my church. We will be isolated in our homes in a frightening time — comparisons to the fear and isolation of the first Easter will be too easy. We will struggle to rightly combine joy and lament. We will not know what will happen next.So far removed from our ordinary habits of celebration, we may feel, much like the women in Mark 16, that we have received but a too-brief report that Christ is risen. And, like them, we will wonder: Where is he now? Where is he while terror and amazement have seized us?The decisive endings of Matthew, Luke, and John don't thus push us to ask these questions, to admit our uncertainty and acknowledge our fear. Mark's missing ending may make it the perfect Gospel for Easter 2020, a Gospel that ends with an invitation to seek the risen Lord though his victory over death is not yet fully seen.More stories from theweek.com 5 radically funny cartoons about the end of Bernie 2020 Sting, Jimmy Fallon, and the Roots perform 'Don't Stand So Close to Me' remotely, creatively Trump's obsession with hydroxychloroquine is an encapsulation of his presidency

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India to extend world's largest pandemic lockdown for two weeks

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to extend the world's biggest pandemic lockdown for two weeks, state ministers said after talks Saturday on the growing fallout in the country. The three week lockdown is due to end Tuesday. Two states -- Odisha and Punjab -- have already extended the lockdown by around two weeks, but critics say a nationwide lockdown is needed to stop people moving between states and potentially taking the virus with them.

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Coronavirus: Congressman wants Zoom meetings banned after being ‘Zoom-bombed’ multiple times

Ohio congressman Jim Jordan has called for an end to Zoom video conference meetings citing potential security concerns.The House Oversight and Reform Committee, of which Mr Jordan is the top Republican member, has been conducting business using the remote meeting software to comply with social distancing rules to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

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U.S. now leads world in deaths, day after Trump announces 'Opening our Country' task force

As the president mulls when restrictive coronavirus measures might start to be lifted, the U.S. passed a grim milestone of leading the world in deaths from the virus.

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'Got my blood boiling': Florida nursing homes ask governor for immunity from coronavirus lawsuits

The Florida Health Care Association sent a letter to Gov. Ron DeSantis seeking immunity under certain conditions for nursing homes, other facilities.

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Canada coronavirus toll rises, officials probe seniors' home deaths

The number of Canadian deaths from the new coronavirus rose by more than 12% to 674 in a day, official data showed on Sunday, and Quebec officials opened a probe into the deaths of 31 people in a seniors' residence. The public health agency said that by 11:00 eastern time (1500 GMT), the total number of positive COVID-19 diagnoses had risen to 23,719. Many of the victims died in seniors' residences, which health officials say are particularly vulnerable.

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20,000: US death toll overtakes Italy's as Midwest braces

The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus eclipsed Italy's for the highest in the world Saturday, surpassing 20,000, as Chicago and other cities across the Midwest braced for a potential surge in victims and moved to snuff out smoldering hot spots of contagion before they erupt. Chicago's Cook County has set up a temporary morgue that can take more than 2,000 bodies.

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