In the news, Friday, April 24, 2020

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APR 23      INDEX      APR 25

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from Hoover Institution
Nonprofit Organization in Stanford, California

On Plagues and Their Long-term Effects
One of the most impressive sections of Thucydides’s timeless account is that of the plague that devastated Athens in the second year of the Peloponnesian War that had begun in 431 BC. He provides us with a clinical description of the disease and its progress, which my medical friends have assured me no modern physician could improve on. Not surprisingly, “the doctors were quite incapable of treating the disease because of their ignorance of the right methods.” Sound like the problems our medical establishment is having in fully understanding the nature of this new virus that we are confronting?

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from HumanProgress.org  Education Website

Centers of Progress, Pt. 1: Jericho (Agriculture)
Neolithic Jericho was the site of two decisive events in the history of civilization: permanent settlement and the beginnings of agriculture.

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from Military Times
and Air Force Times, Army Times, Marine Corps Times, and Navy Times

The military diagnosed about 1,000 troops with coronavirus for the third week in a row
With the services reporting 3,919 cases of COVID-19 among troops, Defense Department data released Friday shows a third consecutive week where cases grew by roughly 1,000. The figure represents a bump of 5 percent in the previous 24 hours, or 194 new diagnoses, as well as a 31-percent bump over the week, or 933 new cases. There were 955 cases in the week ending April 17, as well as 1,053 in the week ending April 10. Currently, the infection rate among service members is 1,866-per-million, or 0.2 percent, versus 2,553-per-million in the general U.S. population, about 0.25 percent. The week of April 20 brought with it new plans to start testing asymptomatic service members for COVID-19, according to where their units fall on a tiered-system of essential national security functions.

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from Mises Institute
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, MIXED

This Bust Wasn't Caused by a Virus
On February 10 the stock markets were at all-time highs, with the Dow 30 at almost 30,000. The unemployment rate was at an all-time low and interest rates around most of the world were at all-time lows. With interest rates near zero for an entire decade, the value of stocks, bonds, real estate, land, and virtually any asset was artificially inflated. As a result, total household net worth doubled, increasing from $60 trillion to $120 trillion! People were saying that things were too good to be true. Everything from giggling about personal finances at the gym to people embarking on unlikely business projects, and business owners being shocked when told it would not last, and even record-breaking skyscrapers. Things were too good to be true. Now the popular refrain is that the coronavirus caused the economy to collapse. The government shut down the economy, putting people out of work. so there has been less consumption. Whole industries have been shuttered. The unemployment rate has skyrocketed, increasing by more than 10 percent in the last couple of weeks. It is easy to see how politicians, the media, and even real people see this coronavirus situation as causing the economic collapse. A caused B. This in turn created the supposed need for trillions of dollars in subsidies, bailouts, and unemployment benefits. Plus the Federal Reserve would have to inject many more trillions of dollars to bail out every aspect of the financial industry including junk bonds and student loans. All of this is false in the sense that A did not cause B. A, the coronavirus, did not cause B, the economic crisis; it merely triggered it, causing it to occur earlier than it would have. It may have also accelerated the collapse, and will likely deepen the trough of the crisis in business cycle terms. In other words, the economy was weak, not strong. The fundamentals were weak, not strong. Balance sheets were weak, not strong.

Why the Current Unemployment Is Worse Than the Great Depression
The latest report on new unemployment claims was abysmal, coming in at 4.4 million last week, some 100,000 more than surveyed economists had expected. The continuous claims came in at just under 16 million, an all-time record. Mainstream labor economists estimate that, all things considered, the actual unemployment rate now (which is only officially reported with a lag) is above 20 percent—a rate not seen since the darkest days of the Great Depression. Indeed, all of the job gains since the Great Recession have been wiped out in just a matter of weeks. What’s worse, even though the official unemployment rate is probably not quite as high as it was in 1933 (when it averaged 24.9 percent), there are reasons to believe that our labor market is currently in even worse shape economically than it was at the lowest depths of the Great Depression. Furthermore, once we take into account insights from Austrian capital theory, we can see why Keynesian hopes for a rapid recovery—and calls for longer lockdowns due to health concerns—are misguided.

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from Plough

What Forests Teach Us about Community
Seedlings depend on older trees, including those that have died, to survive. The patterns we see in seedlings have taught us that independence is a myth and that the community in which an organism finds itself has much to do with its ability to grow and thrive.

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from The Spokesman-Review

Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

Tests of workers at Central Washington orchard finds dozens of COVID-19 cases without symptoms
Stemilt Ag Services, which operates the orchard, and local health officials tested the farm workers in East Wenatchee after some fruit packaging warehouse workers tested positive. The company said it decided to expand testing to orchard workers as a precaution. Of the 71 agricultural workers who were tested, 36 were positive for COVID-19, though they weren’t experiencing symptoms, Stemilt reported this week.

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from UPI News Agency (United Press International)

Media/News Company

USS Kidd reports 18 COVID-19 cases in outbreak, military up to 3,919 cases
Eighteen sailors aboard the USS Kidd have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, the Navy said Friday, making the ship the latest of more than two dozen Navy vessels dealing with outbreaks on board. According to the Navy, one sailor tested positive for the virus Thursday, prompting a specialized medical team to conduct contact tracing and additional online testing, with 17 more sailors testing positive for the virus.

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In the news, Thursday, April 23, 2020

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APR 22      INDEX      APR 24

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from ABC News (& affiliates)

TV Network in New York, New York

Revealing S. Korean studies show antibodies could thwart COVID-19 reinfection, spread
Results from two new South Korean studies shed light on whether antibodies will be a reliable form of protection against COVID-19 for those who have recovered from the disease. In one ongoing study, the Korean Center for Disease Control found that 100% of 25 randomly selected patients who were hospitalized with symptoms and who fully recovered, developed defensive antibodies against COVID-19. Researchers were initially concerned that antibodies might not kill the virus, because roughly half of patients had both antibodies and a current COVID-19 infection. Further investigation, however, suggested that the virus scientists detected might have been dead or so weak that it couldn't infect others. In a second study of more than 10,700 COVID-19 patients, researchers examined 207 individuals who were re-diagnosed with COVID-19 after recovering from their infections. In 39 of those 207 re-diagnosed individuals, researchers did not find any virus replication in patient samples they analyzed. In other words, the new research suggests that if a patient is re-diagnosed with COVID-19 after recovering, it's unlikely he or she will be able to infect others. Still, the KCDC cautioned, it's unclear how long those antibodies last. Until we have that key piece of data, the jury is still out on whether mass immunity is possible.

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from Bloomberg

Media/News Company

Confidence in Fed Chair Hits Highest Point Since Greenspan Era
Americans’ confidence in the Federal Reserve’s leadership reached a 15-year high as the central bank moved aggressively to counter the crippling economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. A combined 58% of respondents said they had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell would do or recommend the right thing for the economy, according to an April 1-14 survey by Gallup.

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from The Federalist

RIGHT BIAS, HIGH, online magazine

How Cowardice And Class Privilege Shift Support For Coronavirus Lockdowns

There is a moral core to the argument against draconian use of stay-at-home orders that has yet to be well articulated in the public sphere. Reactionary governmental responses to the spread of coronavirus have been catastrophic. We have inflicted job loss upon tens of millions of American workers. We have put a quarter of small businesses at risk of permanently shutting down. And we have inflicted untold mental distress upon hundreds of millions. All this in the last few weeks. Yet extreme response measures still hold an aura of moral superiority for many. There is a touch of the surreal in the oblivious manner with which many talking heads have savagely put down any resistance to intrusive measures with a simplistic, “This will save lives,” or, “Our goal must be to minimize deaths.” ... All worthwhile activities always involve risk of death—to oneself and others. That is no excuse for assuming a fetal position and failing to live one’s life.

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from Hoover Institution

Nonprofit Organization in Stanford, California

The Coronacrisis Will Simply Exacerbate The Geo-Strategic Competition Between Beijing And Washington
Even before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China late last year, the Sino-U.S. relationship had been in a period of flux. Since coming to office in 2017, President Trump made rebalancing ties with China the centerpiece of his foreign policy. Claiming that it would no longer be business as usual with Beijing, Trump began to respond more forcefully to what he had long claimed were unfair Chinese trade practices, cyberespionage, military intimidation, and global propaganda campaigns. Yet the COVID-19 pandemic raised even more fundamental questions about the state of U.S.-China relations and how the two appear to be locked into a more antagonistic dynamic for the foreseeable future.

China Is Flailing in a Post-Coronavirus World
Beijing’s propagandists believe the coronavirus pandemic will bring about the end of U.S. hegemony, “the American Century” as they call it. They are right in one narrow sense. The disease, which has reached almost every country and crippled societies across continents, has the feel of an epoch-ending event. What is likely to end, however, is not U.S. leadership. It’s Beijing’s audacious grab for global dominance.

China Lies, China Kills, China Wins
As a plague compounds our political divisions, it’s essential to recall that the cause of the global carnage is not across the congressional aisle or parliamentary divide. This pandemic came courtesy of the breathtaking (literally, in this case) ruthlessness of the Chinese dictatorship, whose policies nurtured, hid, and fostered the spread of the COVID-19 virus currently killing our citizens by the tens of thousands and crippling economies worldwide.

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from KXLY 4 News (ABC Spokane)

Thousands of Washington families filing for food benefits during COVID-19 pandemic
Thousands of people all across the state are applying for food benefits, also known as SNAP benefits, right now. The numbers are alarming. Washington has been climbing in the amount of people submitting applications each week. According to the Washington Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS), we might see things start leveling out soon. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic stretch far and wide in Washington. Businesses are closed down and thousands of people are without jobs. Now, the need for food in our community is at an all-time high. In February 2020, before Governor Jay Inslee’s stay-at-home order, DSHS confirmed more than 475,000 households were getting food benefits. That is about 800,000 people. There was a massive spike in applications in early March. Then another spike happened in late March, around the time the stay-at-home order was put in place.

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from Mises Institute
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, MIXED

The Destructive Effects of the Coronavirus Relief Package
Governments and their central banks have put together mega–bailout packages. In the US, President Donald J. Trump has signed off on a $2 trillion “virus relief package” amounting to around 10 percent of the US gross domestic product. It is meant to provide massive financial support—in the form of loans, tax breaks, and direct payments—to large and small businesses as well as individuals whose revenue and income have been destroyed by the politically dictated “lockdown.” What is more, the US Federal Reserve (the Fed) has provided a colossal “backstop” to financial markets. It injects ever higher amounts of central bank money into the financial system by buying up all sorts of credit instruments—not only government bonds, but also mortgage debt, corporate bonds, commercial papers, etc. The Fed thereby props up financial asset prices, keeping the cost of credit artificially low and, most importantly, avoids payment defaults on a grand scale. In fact, the Fed is at the heart of all these rescue measures, for the US administration does not have the money to finance all its promises. The US Treasury will issue new bonds that will be bought by the Fed, which thereby creates new US dollar deposits in the hands of the US government. These are then transferred to the bank accounts of entrepreneurs, consumers, and most of all to government beneficiaries (its employees, service providers, and contractors). As a result, the newly created money shows up in people’s bank accounts, increasing the stock of money in the economy.

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from Patheos

LEAST BIASED. MIXED, non-denominational, non-partisan online media company

Iceland Bans Sociopaths From Government
The government of Iceland passed a measure today banning sociopaths from holding jobs in the government. The new statute dubbed The Anti-Trump Decree takes effect immediately and covers both elected and non-elected positions. Prime Minister Andrew Canard remarked on this step forward. “We keep looking at how the wheels have fallen off the car in America. Our citizens are determined to protect our way of life from power-hungry politicians who have no empathy.”

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from Reuters

International news agency headquartered in London, UK

Special Report: As virus advances, doctors rethink rush to ventilate
As governments in the United States and elsewhere are scrambling to raise output of ventilators, some doctors worry the fast-built machines may not be up to snuff. Doctors in Spain wrote to their local government to complain that ventilators it had bought were designed for use in ambulances, not intensive care units, and some were of poor quality. In the UK, the government has cancelled an order for thousands of units of a simple model because more sophisticated devices are needed. More important, many doctors say, is that the additional machines will need highly trained and experienced operators. “It’s not just about running out of ventilators, it’s running out of expertise,” said David Hill, a pulmonology and critical care physician in Waterbury, Connecticut, who attends at Waterbury Hospital. Long-term ventilation management is complex, but Hill said some U.S. hospitals were trying to bring non-critical care physicians up to speed fast with webinars or even tip sheets. “That is a recipe for bad outcomes.” “We intensivists don’t ventilate by protocol,” said Hill. “We may choose initial settings,” he said, “but we adjust those settings. It’s complicated.”

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from The Spokesman-Review

Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

Sue Lani Madsen: Inslee misses the point – and the opportunity
It was a swing and a missed opportunity to bring Washingtonians into the same ballpark. Billed as not just another press briefing, Gov. Jay Inslee spoke directly to Washingtonians on Tuesday night with what was supposed to be “a plan for Washington state recovery.” But it didn’t sound like a plan. He described the beginning of a planning process that should have started months ago, with a promise to let us know more in the next couple of weeks.

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In the news, Wednesday, April 22, 2020

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APR 21      INDEX      APR 23

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from CBS News (& affiliates)

UN food agency chief: World could see famines of "biblical proportions" within months
David Beasley, director of the United Nations World Food Program, warned Tuesday that the world is on "the brink of a hunger pandemic" as it grapples with the global coronavirus crisis. He said that without action, the world could face "multiple famines of biblical proportions within a short few months." We are already facing "a perfect storm" due to wars like those in Syria and Yemen and more frequent natural disasters, among other factors, he said. "It is critical we come together as one united global community to defeat this disease, and protect the most vulnerable nations and communities from its potentially devastating effects," Beasley told the U.N. Security Council.

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from CNBC

TV Network in Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Sweden resisted a lockdown, and its capital Stockholm is expected to reach ‘herd immunity’ in weeks
Unlike its neighbors, Sweden did not impose a lockdown amid the coronavirus outbreak. The strategy — aimed at building a broad-base of immunity while protecting at-risk groups like the elderly — has proved controversial. But Sweden’s chief epidemiologist has said “herd immunity” could be reached in Stockholm within weeks.

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from The Hill

LEAST BIASED, MOSTLY FACTUAL, News & Media Website in Washington, D.C.

Washington state to implement 'rapid-response' contact tracing workforce in May
Washington state will implement a rapid-response contact tracing workforce next month as part of the state’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, Gov. Jay Inslee (D) said Tuesday. "We expect roughly 1,500 workers focused solely on contact tracing by the second week of May," Inslee said in a televised speech Tuesday, according to NPR. "This workforce will be rapid-response, something like a fire brigade." There are about 700 contact tracers available now who are state and local health employees, but more will be hired and the state will draw 500 additional tracers from the National Guard, NPR reports.

The data is in — stop the panic and end the total isolation
BY DR. SCOTT W. ATLAS, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — The tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be entering the containment phase. Tens of thousands of Americans have died, and Americans are now desperate for sensible policymakers who have the courage to ignore the panic and rely on facts. Leaders must examine accumulated data to see what has actually happened, rather than keep emphasizing hypothetical projections; combine that empirical evidence with fundamental principles of biology established for decades; and then thoughtfully restore the country to function. Five key facts are being ignored by those calling for continuing the near-total lockdown.

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from HumanProgress.org  Education Website

The Simon Abundance Index 2020
The Earth was 570.9 percent more abundant in 2019 than it was in 1980.

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from KOMO News (ABC Seattle)

'Inslee has no plan': Snohomish Co. Sheriff joins foray questioning stay at home order
Snohomish County Sheriff Adam Fortney has become the latest sheriff in Washington to voice his displeasure at the state's current "Stay at Home" orders amid the COVID-19 outbreak and reiterated his vow not to arrest those who defy it. Fortney took to Facebook late Tuesday night in a several-paragraph statement questioning Gov. Jay Inslee's plans amid what Fortney called were "drastic measures as the suspension of constitutional rights."

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from National Review  RIGHT BIAS

AG Barr on Coronavirus Restrictions, China, Durham Investigation, and More
Attorney General Bill Barr caused something of a stir yesterday by quipping that some of the state shelter-in-place restrictions to stem the coronavirus epidemic have been akin to “house arrest.” In essence, though, he was simply conveying the same civil-rights theory that we tracked here less than a week ago, when the Justice Department intervened in a lawsuit brought by Christians whose Mississippi town was capriciously denying them the right to communal worship. As the Civil Rights Division’s submission to the Mississippi federal court framed the matter: “There is no pandemic exception . . . to the fundamental liberties the Constitution safeguards.” ... [M]any of the state restrictions on commercial activity have focused on the question of whether, in the judgment of the governors or municipal authorities, businesses are “essential” or “non-essential.” This has led to some blatantly politicized regulating — abortion clinics are essential, elective surgery is not; union activity is essential, gun shops are not; sales of Lotto tickets are essential, sales of planting seeds are not; and so on. Barr appears intent on putting a stop to this arbitrary and ideologically driven line-drawing, not by substituting his policy preferences but by pointing out that states are asking the wrong question. It is not whether a particular business is “essential” or “non-essential”; it is whether the business can be operated safely. If it can be, the states are obliged to permit it to operate, particularly given that it is in the interests of businesses and their customers to observe safety precautions.

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from New York Times  Newspaper in New York

Covid-19 Arrived in Seattle. Where It Went From There Stunned the Scientists.
Scientists traced the virus brought to the Seattle area in January. They were astonished to learn that the same branch of the virus traveled on through at least a dozen states and to other parts of the world. Using advanced technology that allows them to rapidly identify the tiny mutations that the virus makes in its virulent path through human hosts, the scientists working in Washington and several other states made two disconcerting discoveries. The first was that the virus brought in by the man from Wuhan — or perhaps, as new data has suggested, by someone else who arrived carrying a nearly identical strain — had managed to settle into the population undetected. Then they began to realize how far it had spread. A small outbreak that had established itself somewhere north of Seattle, they realized as they added new cases to their database, was now responsible for all known cases of community transmission they examined in Washington State in the month of February. And it had jumped. A genetically similar version of the virus — directly linked to that first case in Washington — was identified across 14 other states, as far away as Connecticut and Maryland. It settled in other parts of the world, in Australia, Mexico, Iceland, Canada, the United Kingdom and Uruguay. It landed in the Pacific, on the Grand Princess cruise ship. The unique signature of the virus that reached America’s shores in Seattle now accounts for a quarter of all U.S. cases made public by genomic sequencers in the United States.

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from The Saturday Evening Post

How a Dying River Came Roaring Back to Life

Since the removal of two dams on the Elwha River in the Pacific Northwest, salmon are spawning once again, animals large and small are returning to the river banks, and hundreds of acres of barren former lakebed are greening.

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from The Spokesman-Review

Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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In the news, Tuesday, April 21, 2020

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APR 20      INDEX      APR 22

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________

from CNN

Senate approves $480 billion package to help small businesses and hospitals, expand testing
The Senate passed a roughly $480 billion relief package Tuesday that includes hundreds of billions of dollars in new funding for small businesses hurt by the coronavirus outbreak along with other priorities like money for hospitals and expanded Covid-19 testing. The Senate passed the package by a voice vote, meaning most senators would not need to return to Washington, DC, during the pandemic. The bill goes to the House, which is expected to vote on the package Thursday. The total price tag of the bill is approximately $484 billion, which amounts to the latest unprecedented effort by Washington to prop up the economy on the heels of the $2 trillion rescue package, the $192 billion relief measure and another $8.3 billion plan Congress approved last month. Democratic leaders are already planning for another massive rescue bill.

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from Hoover Institution
Nonprofit Organization in Stanford, California

How To Explain The Western Way Of War
At the start of the sixteenth century, Europe appeared the least impressive of the global civilizations, certainly the least likely to achieve a dominant position in the world. Europe was little more than a conglomeration of small, nasty states and cities, sharing a common religion and a common, ferocious desire to fight each other. Moreover, that common religion was about to be shattered by the Reformation. Despite their own penchant to slaughter each other, the Europeans were under constant pressure from the powerful Ottoman Empire, not only in the Balkans, but in the Mediterranean as well. Yet, within a period of less than three centuries, these quarreling European states would be well on the way to acquiring domination over the globe. By 1750, the Inca and Aztec civilizations in the Americas had collapsed; the Ottomans were in retreat; and throughout Asia, the Europeans seemed unbeatable. How to explain this sudden “rise of the West?”

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from iFIBER One News

Broadcasting & Media Production Company in Ephrata, WA

Dozens of Stemilt fruit workers test positive for coronavirus
Thirty-six fruit workers tested positive for COVID-19 at an isolated East Wenatchee site over the weekend. The testing was done in coordination with Confluence Health. COVID-19 tests were done on a total of 71 team members, half of whom tested positive for the disease. This was the first wide-scale test done in Chelan and Douglas County. Health officials say all 71 subjects were asymptomatic.

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from Lewiston Tribune

Publisher in Lewiston, Idaho

Nez Perce County was hot spot for polio
Disease that maimed and killed came through region in waves from 1910 until vaccine widely circulated in the 1950s
The ravages of the Spanish influenza left Idahoans shocked. Fifty percent of cases in the small town of Paris, Idaho, died. The mortality among the state’s Native Americans was 11.5 percent, fourth highest in the nation. The final statewide statistics are unknown to this day, as Idaho did not require reporting until after the influenza had already taken a tight grip on the public’s health. In 1922, residents could finally applaud something. The St. Joseph Hospital nursing school graduated its first class. The White Hospital followed in 1923. However, the pandemic left residents with selective amnesia. That is what pandemics do, overwhelming the consciousness and obscuring other mortal threats. One of those was infantile paralysis, also known as polio. Influenza survivors showed no visible damage.

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from The Spokesman-Review

Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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In the news, Monday, April 20, 2020

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APR 19      INDEX      APR 21

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________

from The Jerusalem Post

Germany’s largest paper to China's president: You're endangering the world
The editor-in-chief of Germany’s largest paper Bild on Thursday launched a full frontal attack on China’s communist President Xi Jinping for his regime’s failure to come clean about the coronavirus outbreak and the massive human rights violations carried out by the Communist Party. Julian Reichelt, the prominent editor-in-chief of the Bild, wrote to Jinping that  “Your embassy in Berlin has addressed me in an open letter because we asked in our newspaper Bild whether China should pay for the massive economic damage the coronavirus is inflicting worldwide.” He wrote that, "You [Jinping], your government and your scientists had to know long ago that coronavirus is highly infectious, but you left the world in the dark about it. Your top experts didn't respond when Western researchers asked to know what was going on in Wuhan. You were too proud and too nationalistic to tell the truth, which you felt was a national disgrace.” Reichelt said that, “You rule by surveillance. You wouldn't be president without surveillance. You monitor everything, every citizen, but you refuse to monitor the diseased wet markets in your country. You shut down every newspaper and website that is critical of your rule, but not the stalls where bat soup is sold. You are not only monitoring your people, you are endangering them – and with them, the rest of the world.”

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from Lewiston Tribune

Publisher in Lewiston, Idaho

History of pandemics
‘A wildfire of misery’
Spanish flu swept across the nation and world in 1918 as soldiers returned from war
Edith Webb Vannoy will be 105 years old this September and is likely the last person in the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley with any memory of the influenza pandemic of 1918. In a recent phone interview with Lewiston historian Steven Branting, Vannoy remembers the entire town of Reubens, except her family, seemed to have the influenza. Her mother, Lula, made poultices of garlic and mustard. The family wore them on their chests. Edith remembers the house smelled horrible. Her father, Ernest, took the poultices to other families in Reubens.

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from National Review  RIGHT BIAS

Non-COVID Patients Need Care, Too
As the United States begins its first tentative steps out of a widespread and unprecedented lockdown, allow me to recommend that the one of the first changes we make is lifting the restrictions on “elective” medical procedures. Alaska, Oklahoma, and Texas have already done so. “Elective” procedures sound like they’re optional; when some people hear that phrase, they may envision plastic or cosmetic surgery. What they mean, in most states, is non-emergency, a procedure that is not a matter of life and death. But there are a lot of procedures that are important, even if they’re not life-and-death.

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from The Spokesman-Review

Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

COVID-19 puts rural hospitals in Eastern Washington on brink of financial collapse
It sounds like an oxymoron: hospital loses money in the midst of a pandemic. But that is happening across Eastern Washington: Rural hospital systems have bolstered COVID-19 responses and protections while losing major revenue streams from other kinds of care. The moves have left many in a financially precarious position.

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from Yke News
News from Finland in English

Historian draws parallels in Finnish response to plague and coronavirus
Think social distancing is new? Finland was already practising an extreme version of it in the 1600s.

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In the news, Sunday, April 19, 2020

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APR 18      INDEX      APR 20

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________

from Bloomberg

Media/News Company

‘We Needed to Go’: Rich Americans Activate Pandemic Escape Plans
For years, New Zealand has featured prominently in the doomsday survival plans of wealthy Americans worried that, say, a killer germ might paralyze the world. Isolated at the edge of the earth, more than 1,000 miles off the southern coast of Australia, New Zealand is home to about 4.9 million people, about a fifth as many as the New York metro area. The clean, green, island nation is known for its natural beauty, laid-back politicians and premier health facilities.

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from Forbes

Bill Gates Is Now A Target Of COVID-19 Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories
What do you get after trying to prepare people for an infectious disease pandemic? How about being accused of causing a pandemic when it actually occurs? Over the past decade, Bill Gates has been warning about the lack of preparation and systems in place to deal with infectious disease threats that could lead to a pandemic. Two years ago, I covered for Forbes some of these warnings. Now that the world is actually in the midst of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, take a wild guess as to whom some conspiracy theorists are now blaming for the pandemic?

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from The Spokesman-Review

Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

Editorial: Washington must restart its economy soon
During the first weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak, America focused on saving lives and preventing the disease from spreading at all costs. Now that noble sentiment must give way to the cold calculus of balancing one harm against another. How many sick and dead Washingtonians will people accept to end a catastrophic economic shutdown? The answer isn’t 1 million, but it also shouldn’t be zero or nearly so. With the pressure off saving lives, we now need real focus on saving livelihoods.

Washington wolf management draws comments from across the nation
Washington wildlife managers received 7,798 comments about the future of wolves, with the majority of those comments coming from out of state. Of the comments, 47% came from Washington and 3% from Idaho, Montana and Oregon. The remainder came from across the nation. A number of national nonprofits encouraged their members to comment on the plan. “There are a lot of people interested in what goes into the plan,” statewide wolf coordinator Julia Smith said. “I think it shows our work is cut out for us. As to be expected, there are a lot of differences of opinion on how wolves should be managed and conserved into the future.”

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from Sputnik

RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, MIXED, Broadcasting & Media Production Company out of Moscow, Russia

Russian Health Minister Says Necessary to Support WHO’s Efforts to Combat COVID-19
The international community must continue to support the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) efforts to combat the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak and commit to supporting attempts to improve pandemic response mechanisms, Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said during a video conference of G20 health ministers on Sunday.

US National Debt Skyrockets to Levels Unseen Since WWII Amid COVID-19 Shutdown
The United States government and the Federal Reserve have taken unprecedented fiscal measures to keep the economy afloat and prevent a new Depression in recent weeks, introducing round after round of new spending and loan guarantees to the tune of trillions of dollars. The US’s national debt and American corporate debt have hit record levels thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, with fears growing that liabilities soon may reach a “tipping point” that the country may find impossible to dig out of, the Washington Post has reported, citing multiple economists and bank analysts. Congress and the Federal Reserve have moved to inject over $6 trillion in stimulus spending into the economy in recent weeks to deal with the economic dislocation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, with much of the money going to corporations and big banks, while ordinary Americans get one-time $1,200 checks and promises of free hospital visits if they have the coronavirus. Amid the crisis, federal spending is expected to hit almost $4 trillion more in 2020 than the government collects in revenues, with the deficit’s size calculated to be twice as large relative to the size of the US economy in any year since 1945, when America was involved in a World War. The Federal Reserve has played its part, turning on the printing presses, dropping interest rates to zero and facilitating over $2 trillion in loans.

Mystery of Hotter Than Should be Solar Winds Hitting Earth Finally Revealed
Earth is constantly bombarded by winds coming from the centre of our Solar System, yet the problem that has been puzzling scientists is why the solar winds that reach our planet are hotter than they should be, in defiance of the laws of physics. New research seems to have solved the question of why particles making up the plasma of the Sun's heliosphere - in other words, solar winds - take such a long time to cool as they reach our planet.

Putin Says Coronavirus Situation in Russia is Fully Under Control
Russian President Vladimir Putin has praised the country's efforts at combating the coronavirus pandemic saying the nation has managed to handle the threat proactively. People at all levels of power are working in a dynamic, organised and responsible way to combat the coronavirus pandemic; the situation is fully under control, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, offering Orthodox Russians his Easter holiday greetings, in a statement published on the Kremlin’s website.

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In the news, Saturday, April 18, 2020

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APR 17      INDEX      APR 19

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from DW News (Deutsche Welle)

Broadcasting & Media Production Company in Bonn, Germany

Did coronavirus really originate in a Chinese laboratory?

Did the novel coronavirus escape from a Chinese lab that researches bats? Though the early origins of the virus remain unclear, some Chinese scientists' work is helping develop a vaccine. DW examines the facts. Researchers and journalists have been speculating for months about how the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, emerged in the city of Wuhan, China. Initial indications pointed to a so-called wet market where fish was sold along with wild animals. Now, however, Western media outlets are reporting that the virus possibly originated in the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology. Similar theories began making the rounds on social media sites as early as January, mostly in connection to conspiracy theories referencing secret Chinese military labs developing bioweapons. At the time, The Washington Post newspaper brushed off theories that the virus was manmade, citing experts who assessed that its characteristics pointed to a naturally occurring virus and not a manmade mutation. ...  But despite all these indications to the contrary, it can't be said for certain that the pandemic didn't accidentally enter the world via the Wuhan lab. As early as the end of January, the magazine Science published an article questioning the official theory that the virus had been transmitted from an animal to a human at the wet market. And another study published in the medical journal The Lancet concluded that 13 of the first 41 people diagnosed with COVID-19 had no contact whatsoever to the Wuhan market. Moreover, it is likely that "patient zero" — the first person to have the disease — was infected as early as November 2019. Thus, the earliest cases had no connection to the market, as Daniel Lucey, a professor for infectious diseases at Georgetown University Medical Center in the US, told Science Speaks in an interview in late January.

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from HumanProgress.org  Education Website

In a Crisis, Pessimism Is Natural but Realism Is Crucial
It is important to recognize our pessimistic predispositions, so we may overcome them.
With the COVID-19 lockdown upon us, anxiety and depression are on the rise. It would be irresponsible to downplay the risks that coronavirus poses to America’s health and economy. But excessive pessimism is also in no one’s interest. Problems and their purported solutions must be evaluated coolly and dispassionately. Facts, logic, reason and science, not emotions, must guide us in this time of troubles. Unfortunately, some of our most basic impulses evolved at a time when the world was very different from our own. “Our modern skulls house a stone age mind,” note Leda Cosmides and John Tooby from the University of California, Santa Barbara. The mind can be decidedly harmful in helping us address today’s problems, including those of anxiety and depression.

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from KEPR Action News (CBS Pasco)

Hundreds protest Washington fishing ban in Richland
Hundreds of boaters hit the water in Richland to protest a ban on fishing in the state of Washington as part of the 'Stay Home' order issued by Governor Jay Inslee. At the end of March, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife issued a temporary order to close all recreational fishing and shellfishing in the entire state and fishermen are not happy about it. On Saturday, boats gathered at Columbia Point Marina to send a message that they are upset about the fishing ban. Boaters managed to keep their distance from each other during the protest. A large crowd also gathered on the shore of the park.

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from The Roman Anglican  (blog)

An Anglican review on art and history, based in Rome.

LOCKDOWN TO BE LIFTED IN ITALY: A REFLECTION.
It has been a week now, since Christians in most of the world have celebrated the eeariest and oddest Good Friday most of us can remember. It was on Good Friday when we first heard that things in Italy were improving, but equally, that such good news was only a glimpse of hope as things would have not been changing for a while. Last week, we were given a deadline for our quarantine, as of today, the date of the end of the lockdown hasn't changed. We are still waiting for that 3rd May, the Fourth Sunday after Easter. It is a cause of joy to me that we will be freed during this Easter season. As of this morning, Italians are waking up to even more positive news, as Central and Southern Italy have almost vanquished the dreaded plague, the government is looking into relaxing all the various restrictions at different stages before May 4th, with bookshops and children's clothing stores reopening on Monday, and with the fashion, design, and car industry restarting on 27th April, being those so important to Italian economy - with parks, restaurants, bars and perhaps museums reopening on that day. This will certainly be a cause of joy for a population which has effectively been put under home arrest since 9th March, in a country that has reinforced the tightest restrictions of their kind in the Western empisphere. It is incredibly heartening to be able to see an end to this after all these weeks, when we have all been feeling like we were Waiting for Godot.

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from The Seattle Times

LEFT-CENTER BIAS,  HIGH,  Newspaper in Seattle, WA

UW coronavirus model says Washington state could potentially start safely reopening the week of May 18
Modelers at the University of Washington are starting to tackle one of the questions on everyone’s mind as the arc of the novel coronavirus pandemic appears to be flattening in places like Washington state: When will it be safe to begin easing up on the restrictions keeping the virus in check? According to the UW’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), Washington could cross that threshold the week of May 18. Estimates for other states range from as early as May 4 to as late as the end of June, based on the local status of the epidemic.

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from The Spokesman-Review

Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

Sue Lani Madsen: Restlessness rises without clarity about when Washington will reopen
Restlessness may turn to revolt without a plan for reopening Washington for business. For Washington families who were living paycheck to paycheck, the economic pandemic is as real a threat as COVID-19.

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In the news, Friday, April 17, 2020

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APR 16      INDEX      APR 18

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from Church Times

Newspaper in London, United Kingdom

Art review: Raffaello 1520-1483 at the Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome

Nicholas Cranfield on Rome’s quincentenary tribute to Raphael

RAPHAEL was born in Urbino on Good Friday 1483; he died in the Vatican on his 37th birthday: 6 April, Good Friday (1520), causing the pope of the day to exclaim that no greater silence had fallen upon earth since the death of Jesus on the cross.

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from Conciliar Post

SUFFERING SUBVERTED: GOOD FRIDAY, EASTER, AND DIVINE IMPASSIBILITY

Opportunities for meditation on the nature of God’s being often present themselves in surprising places. For example, on Holy Wednesday, I was in a Zoom class at my progressive, mainline Protestant seminary, and were discussing accessibility for disabled people in the Church. In the course of this discussion a classmate of mine posited the idea that, because God is “super able,” our theology can easily tend to exclude people with disabilities. He then followed up with: “But Holy Week reminds us that we worship a God who is weak and who suffers. Those who are weak can see themselves in God.” While I understand and appreciate this pastoral impulse, these statements testify to just how far we have wandered from the Christian metaphysic that our fathers took for granted. While a suffering God may be more “inclusive,” such a god would never be someone who could save us. Only a God who cannot suffer could save us on the Cross. The classmate in question is intelligent and well-meaning; I bring the issue up not to disparage him, but to illustrate just how watered down our contemporary theological discourse about the divine attributes has become. My classmate is by no means the first person to make such a statement; at some point in the last five hundred years or so, many Christians have come to believe that God is merely a being that is “like us, but more.” As Barth famously and prophetically wrote, “One cannot speak of God simply by speaking of man in a loud voice.” But that is exactly what we have done. We assume that, because we suffer, God must also suffer if we are to “see ourselves” in God. 

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from Forbes

IRS Confirms That Vets Who Receive Benefits Will Automatically Get Stimulus Checks

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from The Guardian (UK)

LEFT-CENTER, HIGH, British daily newspaper published in London UK

The rightwing groups behind wave of protests against Covid-19 restrictions
Awave of planned anti-lockdown demonstrations that have broken out around the country to protest against the efforts of state governments to combat the coronavirus pandemic with business closures and stay-at-home orders have included far-right groups as well as more mainstream Republicans. While protesters in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and other states claim to speak for ordinary citizens, many are also supported by street-fighting rightwing groups like the Proud Boys, conservative armed militia groups, religious fundamentalists, anti-vaccination groups and other elements of the radical right.

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from Hoover Institution
Nonprofit Organization in Stanford, California

History: Our Own Past
When we think of history, we tend to think of the dim past before our memories. Thus, it is a knowledge acquired from history books, documents, archeology, inscriptions, and a myriad of other sources. There is, however, another history and that is our own past: the details and memories that we have picked up as we have aged over the years. Those that we have acquired from our earliest years are episodic and lack a clarity that incidents in our more recent days possess. Nevertheless, such early memories can be of use in understanding the present.

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from KIRO 7 Eyewitness News (CBS Seattle)

Breakthrough COVID-19 antibody test with nearly 100% accuracy can help reopen economy
The UW Medicine Virology Lab is one of the first in the country to get a new Abbott test that checks your blood for a special COVID-19 antibody. “This is an important, new type of testing that we haven’t had access to before,” said Keith Jerome, the director of the UW Medicine. The lab said since Abbott developed the new antibody test, UW researchers have been working 24/7 to verify the test’s effectiveness. Scientists said Friday they found the test can determine if someone had COVID with nearly 100% accuracy. ... “Within just a couple of weeks, we’ll be able to do 12,000 to 14,000 a day. And this starts to get the point where we can make a difference in the population of our area, get people back to work,” Jerome said.

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from KREM 2 News (CBS Spokane)

You could get a $2,000 per month stimulus check under proposed bill
Two House Democrats behind the proposal say the one-time, $1,200 check on its way to Americans isn't going to be enough as unemployment skyrockets amid the pandemic.
Two House Democrats have introduced legislation to give millions of Americans $2,000 per month during the coronavirus pandemic. The proposal comes as tens of millions await their one-time check from the CARES Act, which was passed last month. Many of those people have ended up in the unemployment line in the past three weeks. The new bill, named the Emergency Money for the People Act, is being introduced by Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif. Ryan said the plan provides a chance to examine programs like universal basic income.

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from POLITICO

LEAST BIASED, HIGH, news and opinion website in Arlington, Virginia

Dutch far-right leader Baudet had ties to Russia, report says
The Dutch far-right politician who led a campaign against a deal to strengthen ties between the EU and Ukraine sent WhatsApp messages that appear to show he was paid by a Russian with ties to Vladimir Putin, according to a TV investigation. Dutch investigative TV program Zembla said Thierry Baudet, leader of the anti-EU, anti-immigrant Forum for Democracy (FvD) party, sent messages to a colleague about Vladimir Kornilov — who, according to a New York Times article from 2017, has ties to the Kremlin — ahead of a 2016 referendum on a deal with Ukraine. In his messages, Baudet described Kornilov as "a Russian who works for Putin." Kornilov denies having ties to the Kremlin.

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from Smithsonian Magazine

Media/News Company in Washington, D.C.

Ten Apple Varieties Once Thought Extinct Rediscovered in Pacific Northwest

The “lost” apples will help restore genetic, culinary diversity to a crop North America once produced in astonishing variety. A dizzying 17,000 named apple varieties once decorated orchards in North America. Most of those strains are now extinct, and today, just 15 varieties account for 90 percent of the United States’ apple production. In the Pacific Northwest, however, a team of retirees has rediscovered ten apple varieties once thought to be lost forever. The ten types of apples represent the most Washington state nonprofit the Lost Apple Project has ever found in a single season, reports Gillian Flaccus for the Associated Press. The newly revived varieties were collected last fall and identified by botanists at Oregon-based nonprofit the Temperate Orchard Conservancy (TOC).

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from The Spokesman-Review

Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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