Thursday, April 30, 2020

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

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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