US sets coronavirus infection record; deaths near 224,000
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The U.S. coronavirus caseload has reached record heights with more than 83,000 infections reported in a single day, the latest ominous sign of the disease’s grip on the nation, as states from Connecticut to the Rocky Mountain West reel under the surge. The U.S. death toll, meanwhile, has grown to 223,995, according to the COVID-19 Dashboard published by Johns Hopkins University. The total U.S. caseload reported on the site Friday was 83,757, topping the 77,362 cases reported on July 16. The impact is being felt in every section of the country — a lockdown starting Friday at the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s reservation in South Dakota, a plea by a Florida health official for a halt to children’s birthday parties, dire warnings from Utah’s governor, and an increasingly desperate situation at a hospital in northern Idaho, which is running out of space for patients and considering airlifts to Seattle or Portland, Oregon.
What Do We Know About Children and Coronavirus Transmission?
Key Points: With just a few weeks remaining before schools in the U.S. are scheduled to reopen, and the federal government encouraging in-person schooling, there remain many questions about the risk COVID-19 poses to children and their role in transmission of the disease. Indeed, other countries have not reopened schools with the levels of community transmission found in the U.S., coupled with its insufficient testing and limited contact tracing.Our review of the latest available data indicates that, while children who are infected with COVID-19 are more likely to be asymptomatic and less likely to experience severe disease (though a small subset become quite sick), they are capable of transmitting to both children and adults.What remains unclear and where evidence is still needed is: whether children are less likely to be infected than adults and, when infected, the frequency and extent of their transmission to others.
40 Times People Noticed These Instagrammers That Are Beyond Fake And Decided To Expose Them Online (New Pics)
"The second is one that many people don’t like to address—the insecurities of those who feel the need to edit their photos. They’ve been editing their photos for so long it could mean losing the validation from their followers, losing followers, and maybe losing sponsors if they came clean. So, they would rather enjoy the false fame, than risk losing it over integrity." We also wanted to find out what steps could be taken to reduce the amount of photo-editing that people do online. "This is a very complicated question, but one step that we should fight for is to get rid of all filters that alter the shape, size, or proportions of anything to do with someone’s body," Cluelessnumber7 told us.
Update: ‘A bit chaotic.’ Christening of new coronavirus and its disease name create confusion
*Update, 13 February, 12:15 p.m.: The story below, published on 12 February, has been updated with information from a WHO spokesperson. “COVID-19. I’ll spell it: C-O-V-I-D hyphen one nine. COVID-19.” That’s how Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization (WHO), introduced the agency’s official name for the new disease that’s paralyzing China and threatening the rest of the world.
Grief Films For Children
There’s no way to sugarcoat it: The pandemic has plunged the world into a crisis of grief. It has caused the deaths of more than 290,000 people in the United States, many of them grandparents and parents. In New York State alone, 4,200 children lost a parent or caregiver to Covid-19 between March and July, according to a study from the United Hospital Fund. (These were the most recent figures available on parental death from Covid.)
Study Shows 5.4 Million Have Lost Insurance Amid Pandemic – BillMoyers.com
Study Shows 5.4 Million Have Lost Insurance Amid Pandemic Medicare for all rally in Los Angeles in February 2017. (Photo by Molly Adams/ flickr CC 2.0) This post originally appeared on Common Dreams.
'This is a war': Republicans ramp up bid to control election maps for next decade
A little-known Republican group is ramping up millions of dollars in funding from major US corporations such as CitiGroup and Chevron to protect the conservative stronghold on the country. The Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) – which held the key to the GOP’s political takeover a decade ago – launched the Right Lines 2020 campaign last September, taglined: “Socialism starts in the states. Let’s stop it there, too.” It’s hoping to meet a $125m investment goal in an effort to retain 42 state legislature seats that the group says are key to holding power in the House of Representatives in battleground states including Wisconsin, Texas, Florida and New York.
Responding to Covid-19 — A Once-in-a-Century Pandemic?
In any crisis, leaders have two equally important responsibilities: solve the immediate problem and keep it from happening again. The Covid-19 pandemic is a case in point. We need to save lives now while also improving the way we respond to outbreaks in general. The first point is more pressing, but the second has crucial long-term consequences. The long-term challenge — improving our ability to respond to outbreaks — isn’t new.
Data reveal deadliness of COVID-19, even in young adults
Even though all-cause mortality due to COVID-19 may not be known for a while, two new studies highlight that 173,300 (79.5%) of excess deaths from March through August were COVID related, with 4,535 deaths occurring from March through July in younger adults ages 25 to 44, or 38% of all excess deaths in that group. Data from the latter study helped inspire a New York Times editorial yesterday by the likely next director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and her colleagues, who tried to dispel the myth that the disease is not deadly in younger adults. The first study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that almost 220,000 excess deaths occurred between March and August, even after adjusting for a growing and aging US population.
How Covid-19 Signals the End of the American Era
Wade Davis holds the Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia. His award-winning books include “Into the Silence” and “The Wayfinders.” His new book, “Magdalena: River of Dreams,” is published by Knopf. Never in our lives have we experienced such a global phenomenon.
Bully, coward, victim? Inside the sinister world of Trump mentor Roy Cohn
Back in 2004, with the documentary Heir to an Execution, Ivy Meeropol began the decades-spanning project of exorcising the demon haunting her family. The Academy-shortlisted film sheds some light on the dark heritage of the Meeropol kids, descended as they are from Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the couple executed by the United States government in 1953 having been convicted of sharing military secrets with the Soviet Union. When not teaching as an economics professor, Ivy’s father Michael spent most of his adult life on a crusade to restore and advocate for the reputation of his late parents, after years of defamation from the sinister prosecutor in the case Roy Cohn. Ivy’s film-making brought some elusive semblance of closure to this process – until, that is, early November 2016.
Artificial intelligence model detects asymptomatic Covid-19 infections through cellphone-recorded coughs
Asymptomatic people who are infected with Covid-19 exhibit, by definition, no discernible physical symptoms of the disease. They are thus less likely to seek out testing for the virus, and could unknowingly spread the infection to others. But it seems those who are asymptomatic may not be entirely free of changes wrought by the virus. MIT researchers have now found that people who are asymptomatic may differ from healthy individuals in the way that they cough.
The U.S. COVID-19 Death Toll’s True Extent
Read: What young, healthy people have to fear from COVID-19 Elledge’s analysis covers COVID-19 deaths through early October; by then, Americans had collectively lost about 2.5 million years of life. Three months later, he estimates, the total is probably about 4.5 million. Patrick Heuveline, a demographer at UCLA, estimates that by the end of 2020 there were enough deaths in the U.S. to lower life expectancy at birth to 77.7 years.
