Big Time News Blog: 04/15/20

Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Trump says U.S. investigating whether virus came from Wuhan lab

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday his government is trying to determine whether the coronavirus emanated from a lab in Wuhan, China, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Beijing "needs to come clean" on what they know.

from Reuters: World News https://ift.tt/2xp3eIl

Mexico registers 448 new cases of coronavirus and new 43 deaths: health ministry

Mexican health officials reported on Wednesday 448 new cases of the novel coronavirus and 43 new deaths, bringing the country's total to 5,847 cases and 449 deaths.

from Reuters: World News https://ift.tt/2xq1lLs

The Way We Ration Ventilators Is Biased

By BY HARALD SCHMIDT from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/3erDbk8

A True Soviet War Hero

By Unknown Author from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/3cj35ov

Trump Threatens to Adjourn Congress to Install Nominees. McConnell Demurs.

By BY NICHOLAS FANDOS from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2Vc9egr

‘Trolls World Tour,’ a Kids’ Music Movie, Has Big Problems With Pop

By BY JON CARAMANICA from NYT Arts https://ift.tt/3aezKdc

Testing Falls Woefully Short as Trump Seeks an End to Stay-at-Home Orders

By BY ABBY GOODNOUGH, KATIE THOMAS AND SHEILA KAPLAN from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/3bdsccb

Essence Festival Canceled Amid Coronavirus Outbreak in New Orleans

By BY SANDRA E. GARCIA from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2VvZSv0

After Anonymous Tip, 17 Bodies Found at Nursing Home Hit by Virus

By BY TRACEY TULLY from NYT New York https://ift.tt/3enKHfX

NY Times Editor Says Biden Sexual-Assault Article Was Edited after His Campaign Complained

New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet said on Monday that the paper made a controversial change to its report on the sexual-assault allegation against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden after his campaign complained about the wording.In an interview with Times media columnist Ben Smith, Baquet said the Biden campaign took issue with some of the phrasing in the paper's report on former Senate staffer Tara Reade's allegation that Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993."No other allegation about sexual assault surfaced in the course of reporting, nor did any former Biden staff members corroborate any details of Ms. Reade's allegation," the report read. "The Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden, beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable."The Times subsequently deleted the second half of that sentence, eliminating the description of Biden's conduct to which women have previously objected."I want to ask about some edits that were made after publication, the deletion of the second half of the sentence," Smith asked Baquet. "Why did you do that?""Even though a lot of us, including me, had looked at it before the story went into the paper, I think that the campaign thought that the phrasing was awkward and made it look like there were other instances in which he had been accused of sexual misconduct, and that's not what the sentence was intended to say," Baquet answered."Why not explain that?" Smith pressed."We didn't think it was a factual mistake," Baquet said. "I thought it was an awkward phrasing issue that could be read different ways and that it wasn't something factual we were correcting. So, I didn't think that was necessary."The Times did not add a correction or an editor's note to the report after it was changed. The paper also deleted a tweet relating to the report and explained, "We've deleted a tweet in this thread that had some imprecise language that has been changed in the story."Reade went public with graphic details about her claim on March 25, and the Times report was published over two weeks later on Easter Sunday."I thought that what The New York Times could offer and should try to offer was the reporting to help people understand what to make of a fairly serious allegation against a guy who had been a vice president of the United States and was knocking on the door of being his party's nominee," Baquet said, explaining why the Times waited to report on the accusation. "Look, I get the argument. Just do a short, straightforward news story. But, I'm not sure that doing this sort of straightforward news story would have helped the reader understand. Have all the information he or she needs to think about what to make of this thing."The executive editor also defended the paper's more proactive approach to reporting on the sexual-assault allegations against then–Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, saying the standard for such reporting is "very subjective.""It was a live, ongoing story that had become the biggest political story in the country. It was just a different news judgment moment," Baquet said of the news cycle during Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings.The Biden campaign has denied Reade's allegation.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/3actLWy

Germany Mulls Easing Curbs as Europe’s Virus Struggle Progresses

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2XALGmZ

Pelosi: Trump coronavirus missteps 'caused unnecessary death and economic disaster'

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi released a letter in which she charged President Trump with missteps in handling the coronavirus pandemic that “caused unnecessary death and economic disaster” in the U.S.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2XDL3ZU

Newsom offers time line for lifting of stay-at-home orders in Calif.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday provided a potential time line for when stay-at-home orders would be lifted in the state.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2Vtvhhz

Chris Cuomo: CNN show is not "worth my time" anymore

"I don't like what I do professionally, I've decided," he said.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2XxCqjD

A possible COVID-19 2nd wave could heighten flu vaccine 'challenges' this fall

The World Health Organization (WHO) is actively monitoring the potential impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic on three distinct influenza seasons, according to a WHO statement to AccuWeather. They include the current Southern Hemisphere season, including vaccination and distribution, the production capacity for the Northern Hemisphere 2020-21 season and even monitoring of flu viruses for the strain selection in September 2020 for the Southern Hemisphere 2021 season.The WHO has been working with the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Association (IFPMA), which conducted a survey to understand if there has been any impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic on influenza vaccine manufacturers, according to the WHO statement.The IFPMA survey results show "air traffic disruption is adding challenges to vaccine distribution and logistics" and an "increase in seasonal influenza vaccine demand" during the current Southern Hemisphere flu season, the WHO added.There are "also concerns about air traffic disruptions" affecting vaccine distribution for the Northern Hemisphere in the fall, the WHO told AccuWeather, as well as possible "border closures." "Delays with [vaccine] shipment have already been experienced due to the pandemic."A shortage of flu vaccine in the Northern Hemisphere in the fall could occur around the worst time. Infectious disease experts are concerned about a possible second wave of COVID-19 based on past influenza pandemics, Dr. Harvey Fineberg told AccuWeather. Dr. Fineberg was the chair of a National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine panel that sent a report to the White House last week concerning how weather and seasonality may affect the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Paramedic Chelsea Monge of Ready Responders removes personal protective equipment after making a house call for a possible coronavirus patient Friday, April 10, 2020, in Henderson, Nev. Ready Responders is a group that makes house calls for non emergencies and will connect the patient with a doctor via a telehealth service. Monge estimates that about half of calls to the group in the past month have been for flu-like symptoms. (AP Photo/John Locher) "If you look at the influenza pandemics - which is the largest source of recurring pandemics ... when they emerged, they all tended to go into a downcycle after about six months and then to come back," Fineberg told AccuWeather. "But it didn't matter about the season - it was when they started that led to the cycling."Whether that's very relevant or remotely interesting connected to coronavirus, time will tell," he added. "We don't know, but that has important implications for how we have to plan and deploy our resources."Dr. Deborah Levy, who worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for 20 years from 1996 to 2016 and was involved with crises involving SARS, MERS and the Zika virus among others, anticipates a greater demand for the flu vaccine this fall."I remember during the 2009 pandemic when the flu vaccine came out, they couldn't keep enough of it," Dr. Levy, now chair and professor of the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health, told AccuWeather."If it happened then - and the coronavirus is worse now - I would suspect that you're going to have a high demand for it," said Dr. Levy. "And depending on how high the demand is, they may need to figure out how to roll it out. Everybody wants it right away, but it doesn't work that way."A record 169.1 million doses of flu vaccines were administered in 2018-19, with this year's total not yet finalized but expected to be even higher. A record again figures to be set for the 2020-21 flu season.Influenza is the most frequent cause of death from a vaccine-preventable disease in the United States. The CDC estimates there have been at least 39 million flu illnesses, 410,000 hospitalizations and 24,000 deaths from the flu during the 2019-20 season.CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APPFlu season typically begins in October, peaks between December and February and lasts well into March although activity can last as late as May. Flu viruses are more stable in cold air and the low humidity allows the virus particles to remain in the air, according to Peter Palese, who was the lead author on a key flu study in 2007."We are planning to increase our total production of flu vaccine doses by 8 percent in 2020 compared to 2019 for both Southern and Northern Hemisphere campaigns," a spokesperson for Sanofi replied to AccuWeather in an email. Sanofi is one of the manufacturers of flu vaccines."This represents a significant increase of 29 percent over two years (2020 vs 2018)," the spokesperson added. "Nevertheless, we anticipate the demand in the Northern Hemisphere to grow at an even higher pace and we're working on an internal allocation process, in order to meet the demand in an optimal way."Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2RIGhGN

Was a Liberal Victory in a Wisconsin Supreme Court Race a ‘Stunning Upset’?

Conservative Wisconsin supreme court justice Dan Kelly lost his race for a ten-year term to liberal challenger Jill Karofsky by eleven percentage points in the state’s spring election, according to official results released Monday night.New York Times reporter Reid Epstein calls the liberal win a “stunning upset,” but that seems to be an overstatement. There was certainly a great deal of uncertainty over how an election would play out in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. But for well over a year, the (sensible, obvious, and bipartisan) conventional wisdom was that the liberal candidate would be a strong favorite because there was a Democratic presidential primary at the top of the ticket, while Donald Trump would not face serious opposition in the Republican primary.In 2018, Republicans were so worried about the advantage the primary would give the liberal candidate down-ballot that they considered moving the supreme court and primary elections to different dates. As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported in April 2019, following the surprise loss of liberal supreme court candidate Lisa Neubauer, “Liberals had hoped to have Neubauer win this year so they could be on a path to taking control of the court next year, when conservative Justice Daniel Kelly’s term is up. The April 2020 election will coincide with Wisconsin’s presidential primary, when Democratic turnout is expected to be high.”The last-minute fight between the Democratic governor and the Republican legislature over postponing the election may have had some effect on the size of the liberal victory, but it probably wasn’t a big one. A record 1.1 million votes out of 1.5 million total votes in the April elections were cast absentee (either by mail or in-person early voting), but most of those votes were cast before the fight over postponing the election erupted. Democratic governor Tony Evers did not call for postponing the election until the afternoon of Friday, April 3, and the deadline to request absentee ballots was 5 p.m. that day. Absentee ballots had to be postmarked by April 7 to be counted.The Democratic primary at the top of the ticket and the absence of a competitive GOP presidential primary still seem to be the biggest factors determining the outcome of the down-ballot supreme court race.Total turnout for the April 7 elections ended up being roughly what could have been reasonably expected under normal circumstances when a Democratic presidential primary is combined with a state supreme court election.In 2019, when a supreme court race was the most important contest in Wisconsin’s statewide spring election, the conservative candidate won with 606,000 votes, defeating the liberal candidate by less than one percentage point. In 2020, losing conservative candidate Dan Kelly got 693,000 votes — 87,000 more votes than the victorious 2019 conservative candidate. But in 2020, nearly 900,000 votes were cast in the Democratic presidential primary (about 100,000 fewer than were cast in the 2016 Democratic primary), and the liberal supreme court candidate won 856,000 votes down-ballot.In Wisconsin’s spring 2016 elections, there were competitive Republican and Democratic presidential primaries, and the performance of supreme court candidates down-ballot corresponded almost perfectly with the turnout in the presidential primaries. That year, 97,219 more ballots were cast in Trump–Cruz–Kasich GOP race than in the Clinton–Sanders Democratic race, and the conservative supreme court candidate won by 95,515 votes.What does the liberal victory in Wisconsin mean going forward? It shrinks the conservative majority to 4–3, and it gives liberals a chance to win a majority in 2023. But it’s hard to find any relationship between Wisconsin supreme court elections and presidential elections. A narrow conservative victory in the spring of 2011 was followed by a decisive win for Barack Obama in 2012. A double-digit liberal supreme court victory in 2015 was followed by Donald Trump’s surprise upset in 2016. Another double-digit liberal victory in 2018 was followed by a one-point loss for former GOP governor Scott Walker that fall.Whether Republicans pay a price in November for the GOP legislature’s refusal to postpone the election remains to be seen. Democratic governor Tony Evers deserves his fair share of blame for waiting until April 3 to call for delaying the election and then issuing an executive order the day before the election to postpone it — a unilateral action Evers had until then described as illegal. Though four weeks passed between the coronavirus outbreak in the United States and Wisconsin’s April 7 elections, Evers, the GOP legislature, and local officials collectively failed to use that time to ensure in-person voting throughout the state would be as safe as going to a grocery store. But if there is a spike in COVID-19 cases and deaths in the coming weeks that can be attributed to in-person voting, Wisconsin voters may indeed punish Republicans in November.