“Covid-19 testing in the US improved dramatically over the first half of 2020, but things now appear to be breaking down once more as coronavirus cases rise and outstrip capacity — to the point that the mayor of a major American city can’t get testing quickly enough to potentially avoid spreading the virus.”
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““Basically, two things are happening,” Ashish Jha, faculty director of the Harvard Global Health Institute (HGHI), told me. “One is the outbreaks are getting much bigger, so the amount of testing we need to get our arms around the outbreak is going up. And second, what we did [before] was some tweaking on capacity issues to get ourselves up to 500,000 to 600,000 tests a day, but didn’t fundamentally address the supply chain problems.”
He added, “This was supposed to be the job of the White House. … But they just never have prioritized really building up a robust testing infrastructure for the country.””
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“The benchmark of 500,000 tests per day was particularly important, as it was the minimum experts had long called for in order to get the pandemic in the US under control.
But as the country neared that benchmark, attention to testing seemed to plummet. The Trump administration, which had already delegated testing down to lower levels of government and private actors, especially appeared to lose interest: The country’s “testing czar,” Brett Giroir, stood down and went back to his regular job at the Department of Health and Human Services. Trump falsely claimed in May that “America leads the world in testing”; at his Tulsa rally in June, he said he told his people to “slow the testing down” because the rising case count made him look bad. (He later asserted that his statement at the rally was not a joke, despite White House officials insisting it was.)
As all this happened, many of the underlying problems with testing capacity remained.
For one, there’s still a lot of variation between states. While most states, as of July 8, had 150 new tests per 100,000 people per day — the equivalent to 500,000 daily tests nationwide — 18 states still didn’t.”
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“Earlier on, the hurdles with testing were linked to supply chain problems: not enough swabs to collect samples, vials to store them, or reagents and kits to run the tests. Over time, those problems were fixed or worked around.
The issue, experts say, is that these kinds of problems were always bound to come back as testing demand increased. Fixing a bottleneck for kits may let the country get to 500,000 tests a day, but that bottleneck can easily come back if, for instance, the nation needs 1 million per day and there are only enough kits for 700,000.”
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“labs aren’t sure that making the massive investment for way more tests is financially sustainable, he explained, especially as Covid-19 outbreaks ebb and flow — and, as a result, occasionally deplete demand for those tests, as well as the number of people who need them.
Ideally, the federal government would be in charge of handling these problems. It’s the one entity that can go to labs across the country, see what the holdups are, then work along the global supply chain to see what can be done to address the issues. It has the funding ability to ensure labs and suppliers remain whole. And it can prioritize limited resources to specific cities, counties, or states that need them most, instead of leaving these supplies to a free-for-all.
This is, in fact, what the federal government does with other issues — such as when it ensures that a manufacturer has all the parts needed for an order of guns, tanks, or jets.”
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“The Trump administration, however, has described the federal government as a “supplier of last resort.” That’s very different from the kind of proactive approach the feds take on other issues to get ahead of supply constraints.
So the problem is left to private actors as well as local and state governments, which often face legal, financial, and practical constraints that hinder their ability to move quickly. And the problem persists, even as Covid-19 cases continue to rise.”
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“Lockdowns, however, were also supposed to buy the nation time to build up its testing system. As Natalie Dean, a biostatistics professor at the University of Florida, previously told me, “The whole point of this social distancing is to buy us time to build up capacity to do the types of public health interventions we know work. If we’re not using this time to scale up testing to the level that we need it to be … we don’t have an exit strategy. And then when we lift things, we’re no better equipped than we were before.”
It’s now clear that the US didn’t take full advantage of the time it bought with lockdowns. While testing did dramatically improve compared to the early days of the pandemic, it’s still not at a point where America can handle the higher demand brought on by another surge in coronavirus cases.
“It’s pathetic. This is not how a first-world country functions,” Jha said. “That people should not expect to access a test to an infectious disease many, many months into a pandemic — I find myself amazed that this is where we are as a country.””
“The holding of McGirt is that this land, which has 1.8 million residents, most of whom are not Native American, is reserved land. Oklahoma must honor a treaty from nearly two centuries ago setting aside this land for Native peoples.”
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“The primary impact of McGirt is that Oklahoma loses much of its power to enforce certain laws against members of Native American tribes within the borders of tribal lands. But the decision will have far less impact on non-Native Americans.”
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“The fact that McGirt is a member of a tribe, and that his crime took place on a reservation, matter because of the federal Major Crimes Act (MCA). That law provides that “any Indian who commits” certain offenses “against the person or property of another Indian or any other person” is subject to “the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States” if that crime was committed “within the Indian country.”
Thus, Oklahoma lacks authority to try McGirt for raping someone on a Native American reservation. Only the federal courts may try such a crime.
On the surface, in other words, McGirt seems to involve a fairly minor issue. No one questions that McGirt may be convicted of rape. And no one questions that he can face a stiff penalty for such a conviction. The question is which court may try the case against him.”
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“Congress may wipe away its treaties with Indigenous peoples at any time, and it may dissolve a Native American reservation on a whim.
But despite its many incursions on the Creek people’s tribal sovereignty, McGirt concludes that Congress has never taken the ultimate step of dissolving its original treaty with the Creek people. That means that Creek lands remain a reservation — including the place where McGirt committed his crime.
And that means that McGirt must be tried in federal court.”
“Stone, a longtime Republican operative, was convicted in November 2019 for obstructing a congressional investigation, lying to Congress, and witness tampering in a trial that stemmed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. On February 20, Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison.
Trump’s commutation landed just days before Stone was expected to report to prison on July 14.
The commutation stops short of a full pardon. The conviction will remain on Stone’s record — for now, at least. But the Trump ally won’t have to serve his approximately three-year prison term.”
https://www.vox.com/2020/7/12/21319929/supreme-court-term-liberals-win-conservative-john-roberts-neil-gorsuch-abortion-daca-guns
“much of California let its guard down. While the state, and the Bay Area in particular, was among the first in the US to embrace a shelter-at-home order, parts of California have since relaxed or outright halted those measures, letting the coronavirus creep in bit by bit. Meanwhile, precautions against Covid-19 have been inconsistently adopted by the public and businesses — especially as some of the recommended practices, such as wearing a mask, have become politicized.
At the same time, the state has seen major outbreaks in nursing homes, in prisons, and among migrant workers — many of whom are deemed “essential” and are therefore forced to work — that have driven up coronavirus cases further, simultaneously planting seeds for broader community outbreaks.”
““Wait. I can catch Covid twice?” my 50-year-old patient asked in disbelief. It was the beginning of July, and he had just tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, for a second time — three months after a previous infection.
While there’s still much we don’t understand about immunity to this new illness, a small but growing number of cases like his suggest the answer is yes.
Covid-19 may also be much worse the second time around. During his first infection, my patient experienced a mild cough and sore throat. His second infection, in contrast, was marked by a high fever, shortness of breath, and hypoxia, resulting in multiple trips to the hospital.
Recent reports and conversations with physician colleagues suggest my patient is not alone. Two patients in New Jersey, for instance, appear to have contracted Covid-19 a second time almost two months after fully recovering from their first infection. Daniel Griffin, a physician and researcher at Columbia University in New York, recently described a case of presumed reinfection on the This Week in Virology podcast.
It is possible, but unlikely, that my patient had a single infection that lasted three months. Some Covid-19 patients (now dubbed “long haulers”) do appear to suffer persistent infections and symptoms.
My patient, however, cleared his infection — he had two negative PCR tests after his first infection — and felt healthy for nearly six weeks.”
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“repeat infections in a short period are a feature of many viruses, including other coronaviruses. So if some Covid-19 patients are getting reinfected after a second exposure, it would not be particularly unusual.”
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“Herd immunity depends on the theory that our immune systems, once exposed to a pathogen, will collectively protect us as a community from reinfection and further spread.”
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“Experts generally consider natural herd immunity a worst-case-scenario backup plan. It requires mass infection (and, in the case of Covid-19, massive loss of life because of the disease’s fatality rate) before protection takes hold.”
“The controversy surrounding the PPP, which supports businesses with 500 employees or fewer, has a lot to do with a disconnect between the program’s design and how Americans think about business. The real goal of the PPP was to keep American workers on payroll, not to simply keep small businesses going. And so the majority of the money was disbursed to businesses with more employees, rather than to tiny ones with small staffs. That’s why a program widely perceived as being meant to boost the United States’ most vulnerable small businesses ended up prioritizing businesses that aren’t actually that small.”
“She said that as Hurricane Maria approached Puerto Rico and Duke argued for an emergency declaration before its landfall, Mick Mulvaney, then the president’s budget director, resisted.
“Quit being so emotional, Elaine, it’s not about the people; it’s about the money,” she said Mulvaney told her. Asked about the comment, Mulvaney said Friday: “I never made such a remark. My experience with the acting director was that she rarely got anything right at DHS. At least she’s consistent.””
https://www.vox.com/2020/6/17/21284527/systemic-racism-black-americans-9-charts-explained
“A heat wave begins with high atmospheric pressure building up over an area. A downward-moving air column compresses the air that’s closer to the ground, holding it still and heating it up. That high pressure also forces clouds away and around the column, creating an unobstructed line of light between the ground and the sun.
Over a period of days and weeks, the ground absorbs sunlight, and with stagnant air, heat accumulates and temperatures rise. “There’s nothing coming in and nothing going out,” explained Walt Meier, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. “It’s kind of like an oven basically.”
That’s the general formula for heat waves around the world. But there are also several unique ingredients contributing to the Arctic one.
In northern latitudes during the summer, there is near-continuous sunlight — even at night. That allows heat to accumulate faster than in areas that experience sunsets and can cool off in the evening.
Another factor this year was the lack of snow. With an unusually warm winter, less snow built up across parts of the Arctic, and with a warm spring, much of it melted away sooner than usual. “The snow is very reflective of the sunlight,” said Meier. “This year, the snow went away earlier, so then you have the bare ground that can absorb more solar energy.”
The warmer ground also dries out in the heat. With less moisture, there is less evaporation that can cool the surrounding air. “The drier ground and the air over the top of it makes it more susceptible to rapid warming when you have the right conditions like we’re seeing now,” Meier said.”
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“One of the overarching trends behind the heat wave and the wildfires is climate change. Earth as a whole is warming up due to human emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. But every place isn’t warming up at the same rate; the Arctic is warming at double the rate of the rest of the planet, which is why some of the earliest effects of climate change are felt in the region. The north pole also presents a window into the future for the rest of the world.
Those higher average temperatures mean extreme heat will become even more likely and more intense, exacerbating threats like forest fires as vegetation dries out. “The wildfires definitely come from the extreme heat and the dryness,” Meier said.
The loss of these ancient, slow-growing forests will release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that will take decades to reabsorb, further warming the planet. Warming in the Arctic is also thawing permafrost, which releases even more carbon into the atmosphere.
And while it’s summer in the Arctic right now, the region has also experienced heat waves in the winter. In fact, researchers have found that in general, winters are warming faster than summers. That’s part of the reason why the Arctic is now losing sea ice at its fastest rate in 1,500 years.”
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“Antarctica is also warming up. Earlier this year, the continent broke two high-temperature records within a week.”