Friday, April 24, 2026

California: rise in Covid-19 cases raises fears over reopening and protests

PressNewsAgency
-
0
California: rise in Covid-19 cases raises fears over reopening and protests

The number of coronavirus cases in California is on the rise after weeks of optimism that infections had slowed, raising fears that plans to reopen counties, along with mass protests against police brutality, could accelerate transmission of the virus. 

According to numbers from Johns Hopkins University, which has been tracking coronavirus cases and deaths, California is one of 20 states that have seen an uptick in cases in the past five days. 

Just this week, daily cases of Covid-19 hit a new high across the state, topping 3,000 new daily confirmed cases for the second time in a week and contributing to the 115,000 cases and more than 4,300 deaths the state has reported since the pandemic began. 

California has been held up as a model for its response to the coronavirus, locking down earlier, and being slower to lift shelter-in-place orders compared to other states.

But recent weeks have seen counties push back on the orders, in some cases reopening sections of the economy in defiance of orders from Gavin Newsom, California’s governor.

David Eisenman, the director of the Center for Public Health and Disasters at UCLA, said some of the rise was to be expected as counties accelerate plans to reopen and warm weather draws Californians to beaches and parks. An increase in testing, too, could play a role.

“It’s not terribly surprising, given the timing. It’s to be expected as more people are moving and interacting in the community,” said Eisenman.



Demonstrators hold signs in front of the district attorney’s office protesting the death of George Floyd, in Los Angeles. Photograph: Frederic J Brown/AFP/Getty Images

But he said it’s impossible to pinpoint which factors are most directly responsible for the rise – especially in the weeks ahead, when cases of people who have attended mass protests could show up.

The state’s overall increase masks local flare-ups, including an outbreak in southern California’s Imperial county that’s seen nearly 900 new cases and 11 new deaths in the past two weeks. 

“The Imperial Valley has a horrendous outbreak going on right now,” Dr George Rutherford, UC San Francisco epidemiologist and infectious diseases expert told the Los Angeles Times. 

In southern California, home to most of the state’s cases, Los Angeles county tallied almost 10,000 cases just last week, including a single day record of 2,050 cases, according to data from the state’s public health department.

Despite concerns over the spike in cases, efforts to monitor the outbreak could be blunted by the testing facilities that have closed or modified their hours amid widespread protests over the death of George Floyd, who was killed in the custody of police in Minneapolis. 

At least 20 of the 30 testing sites overseen by the city and county of Los Angeles have been impacted.

Meantime, northern California’s San Francisco bay-area counted 263 new cases on Monday, raising the total to 13,655. The region’s weekly average of new cases was 237 last week – down from the first week of April, when the seven-day average peaked at 249.

Mark Essick, the sheriff of Sonoma county, generated headlines last week when he said he would refuse to enforce the county’s stay-at-home order. But just yesterday he reversed course, telling the Press Democrat that he and his deputies would enforce the current health order until 8 June to the limited degree that enforcement has been needed. 

Cases are up, too, in Alameda county – the region’s second most populous – with particularly high case rates in historically disadvantaged East Oakland.

California counties are in different phases of reopening economies, complicating a coordinated response to the new outbreaks. 

For instance as cases spike in Los Angeles, where a stay-at-home order remains in effect, some bars and dine-in restaurants have already reopened in San Diego, just two hours south.

That has public health officials worried about a second wave of cases before the first wave has completely passed, which could slow efforts to reopen California.

“It’s very possible this means we don’t reopen as fast as we wanted”, said Eisenman.

At the top of Eisenman’s concerns, however, are tactics that law enforcement has been using to disperse crowds as thousands march in protests, including teargas and pepper spray.

Alongside a list of public health experts, Eisenman sent a letter calling on law enforcement to curb the use of chemical agents on crowds altogether.

“Civil unrest over George Floyd’s murder during this Sars-CoV-2 pandemic will increase community transmission of this highly contagious virus and contribute to increased incidence of morbidity and mortality associated with Covid-19,” reads the letter.

“The issue of teargas is central to Covid,” Eisenman told the Guardian. “Too much has been made about physical distance protesters should abide by, and not enough has been said about the tactics law enforcement is using”.

Mario Koran
(@MarioKoran)

Which not to mention caused a crowd of people to cough and spray over each other in the middle of a pandemic


May 30, 2020

“The use of teargas and pepper spray is going to fuel any spreading that was going to occur anyway,” he said. “It causes people to cough and sneeze – on each other, and on the police if they get rounded up and confined. Cops are putting people side by side, removing their masks, and cuffing them so they can’t cover their mouths”.

Eisenman is said it’s crucial for those who have or will be attending protests, including journalists, to follow precautions when they return home, including self-isolation and testing within three days of attending a demonstration.

Still, Eisenman sees the protests as a necessary step in affecting change, and is calling for safe practices as they continue.

“Racism is as bad for health as Covid-19” Eisenman said. “Probably even worse.”



Source link

How to make STEM a safe place for trans and non-binary people

PressNewsAgency
-
0
How to make STEM a safe place for trans and non-binary people

Welcome to TNW Pride 2020! All throughout June we’ll highlight articles that focus on representation for LGBTQPIA+ people in the STEM communities.

Credit: Nicole Gray

It feels weird to talk about trans and non-binary people right now. It feels odd to celebrate Pride while the US government attacks its own citizens. But it also feels necessary because these are not separate struggles.

Black trans women are among the most at-risk communities in the world. In 2018 one agency tracked the murders of 26 trans people in the US and all but five were black women. Around the world, more than 300 trans or non-gender-conforming people were murdered in 2019.

And it was the corrupt and brutal policing of the queer and drag communities that incited the riots that Pride spawned from. It’s fitting that the flag we fly for Pride is a rainbow. When black, brown, and white people fought the police side-by-side for six days in 1969, they showed the world that queers and queens could not be divided by color.

Unfortunately we’ve got a long way to go. It feels like so little progress has been made. Blacks are still murdered in the streets and US employers can legally fire a queer person for not being heterosexual.

Black trans women exist in a Venn Diagram of hate where employment, freedom, and survival are never sure things from one day to the next.

That’s why it’s important, today, to ensure the world of science, technology, engineering and math does more for trans and non-binary people. As of right now, STEM is not a safe space for them.

TNW talked to Charlie Knight, a non-binary editor, business owner, and activist, to find out how we can all be better allies and why it’s important. Knight’s pronouns are “they/them” and, to be honest, I was nervous about the interview.

I just knew I was going to say “she” or “he” or something really stupid. It’s not that I don’t have exposure to trans or non-binary people. And it’s not that I’m not an ally – I came out last week. It’s just… well it’s hard and it’s scary because it isn’t normal.

I’ve interviewed hundreds of people. But interviewing Knight was different. It shouldn’t have been, but it was. And that’s the problem.

I asked why pronouns mattered to trans and non-binary people, Knight said:

We’re not safe.

Their words lingered for a moment before I pressed the issue. I asked why it matters at all. Lots of people get “misgendered” (a term for when you accidentally or intentionally call someone by the wrong pronoun or gender-descriptive noun).

I’m thinking about my long, beautiful (that’s right) red hair. I wouldn’t be offended if someone mistook me for a woman and said “hey ma’am.” But then I’m thinking about my big, red, wizard beard. When I turn around, the person who misgenders me will feel foolish. They’ll probably apologize and get it right next time.

Knight’s experience has been different. They tell me that by sheer virtue of being an out queer person, they’re defacto representatives for the community. I asked how much time they dedicate to educating people and calling out transphobia:

Dozens of hours a week. Every week. There’s a gap … in how serious people think this is because it’s not something they’ve fought for.

You and I might think most people are well-meaning, and our experiences – maybe you’re a cisgender woman with short hair who’s been called “sir” a couple times, or a dude that looks like a lady from certain angles like me – are the norm. But they aren’t. There’s no such thing as an accidental transphobe.

Knight laughs when I suggest that people think trans and non-binary people bully people who identify as cisgender on the internet. The reality, according to Knight and the other trans and non-binary people I’ve spoken with, is that transphobes aren’t interested in getting it right. To transphobes, they’re being asked to stop doing something they think is “normal” by people they think are “mentally ill.” It doesn’t matter to them that science and history aren’t on their side. 

Knight says:

I think it’s still very much popular to be in the status quo… for us there’s no space. [Because of] social media we have a voice. Even if we’re not getting represented in the media, you can’t deny we’re here. You know we exist.

The problem with the status quo is that, per the norm, everyone is either a “he” or a “she” unless they tell you otherwise. Bigots not withstanding, this is a system that doesn’t work for any of us.

I wrote about how much it sucked to know that most people in tech see a straight man when they see me, some even think I’m a “tech bro” type. But, I also benefit from a lot of privilege. When someone looks at me, they assume I’m “a man” and, lucky for both of us, that just happens to be how I identify.

The reason this is a problem is because, unlike Knight and those black trans women I mentioned earlier, the world is a relatively safe place for me. When Knight gets misgendered in public they have a legitimate fear that the person calling them a woman or man will turn violent when their assumptions are challenged. 

When Knight says “there’s no space for us,” they’re telling us that the world – even the queer community – isn’t giving them any room. Trans and non-binary people have been around since the dawn of time. People haven’t changed, language has.

Trans and non-binary people don’t feel safe because society’s been far too slow on the uptake when it comes to doing the bare minimum to support them. I asked Knight about the STEM community in specific. Aren’t scientists, developers, and such an international community of mostly liberal-leaning people who eat this woke stuff up? Not so much. As they put it:

Just because you’re marginalized in some ways doesn’t mean you’re not problematic in others.

Knight says the best way for STEM companies and universities to clear space for trans and non-binary people is to hire people that can ensure you’re always sending the right message:

In a perfect world, you’d have a sensitivity reader or entire staff. Someone from a marginalized community who can determine whether your message is accurate, sensitive, and representative.

And that last part, representation, is where the STEM world currently fails trans and non-binary people. It’s not enough to just have diversity training and make sure every employee signs the check-in sheet before they go on break.

Decades ago nearly every textbook, research paper, and technical manual were written from a mostly male perspective. You’d regularly see passages that say “every employee should do his best” instead of “all employees should do their best.” He and him, like “mankind” and “manned flight,” were the status quo. Many people in STEM were reluctant to change, the thinking was that women don’t need a book to tell them they aren’t men so they can just do the translation in their heads and everybody’s happy.

But without representation there can be no progress. Women are still an underpaid, under-employed minority group in the STEM fields. However, there’s been incremental change over the decades. Trans and non-binary people are waiting patiently to be included too.

The first thing we can all do is get pronouns right. Until we normalize the use of “they/them” and asking people for their pronouns, trans and non-binary people are not safe. So let’s start there.

Knight has four simple tips for everyone, and they mean everyone. Because none of this works unless we all join in. When trans and non-binary people stand up for themselves, they’re drawing even more attention to how different they are. But they aren’t different. We all have pronouns.

  1. Just ask. You can say “may I ask your pronouns?” and you can also just start with yours. “Hi I’m Tristan, I use he/him, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
  2. Use they/them unless you’ve been explicitly informed otherwise. Even around cisgender people! You already do it anyway: “A bank robber you say? Which way did they go?”
  3. Practice. Seriously, try it out on your friends. Get used to introducing yourself and your pronouns.
  4. Relax. You’ve been using pronouns for a long time, it’s not that hard. Now just update your knowledge and show grace when you or someone else screws up unintentionally.

Beyond that, we need to extend non-gendered thinking into every space so that trans and non-binary people can feel included by default. 

We should all put our pronouns in our bios and social media profiles. And we should use ambiguous language when we talk about groups of people. We aren’t, for example, the “men and women who work for this company,” we’re the people you employ.

More importantly, it’s time for STEM to invest in the trans and non-binary community. If your company or university doesn’t have trans or non-binary representation then there’s a good chance you’re unintentionally promoting a heteronormative, cisgender-oriented community. Because there’s a lot more trans and non-binary people out there than you think. If you’re not leaving the light on you shouldn’t be surprised when you can’t find them. 

There’s a silver lining though. Workplaces and research labs that do decide to create safe spaces for trans and non-binary people stand a pretty good chance of finding out they’ve actually been there all along. 

For more information, check out the following resources:

Stick with us all month for more Pride 2020 coverage. If you’d like to share your story, we’ve opened our contributor’s platform up for Pride-related submissions from authors working in the STEM field. 

Corona coverage

Read our daily coverage on how the tech industry is responding to the coronavirus and subscribe to our weekly newsletter Coronavirus in Context.

For tips and tricks on working remotely, check out our Growth Quarters articles here or follow us on Twitter.



Source link

George Floyd’s death a painful reminder of Chicago’s history of police brutality

PressNewsAgency
-
0
George Floyd’s death a painful reminder of Chicago’s history of police brutality

CHICAGO — For many activists and community organizers, George Floyd’s death under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer was a blunt reminder of Chicago’s racial divide and history of police brutality against African Americans.

Many of those interactions also ended in death.

“Chicago has dealt with this over and over again,” said Carlil Pittman, founder of the youth-led anti-violence organization Good Kids Mad City. “This was literally the last straw not just in our city but for the whole black community in America. It’s a repeated trauma to continuously watch police officers kill our black and brown brothers and sisters with no remedy for it taking place.”

Pittman said many of the young African American members of Good Kids Mad City see themselves in Floyd’s place and have joined protests throughout the city. Two members were arrested and held overnight over the weekend, he said.

People hold signs as they march during a protest over the death of George Floyd in Chicago, on May 30, 2020.Nam Y. Huh / AP

“As a young black man from the South Side of Chicago, I’ve had my fair share of being stopped by police and not knowing if it will turn violent,” he said. “To see this to continue to happen over and over is heartbreaking and emotional.”

In 2014, Chicago drew national attention when a police dashcam video showed the killing of LaQuan McDonald, an unarmed African American teenager who was shot 16 times by former Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke.

Van Dyke was convicted of second-degree murder in the teen’s death in 2018.

The release of the McDonald video sparked city-wide protests and outrage and put into motion several regime shifts. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot centered much of her 2019 campaign on bringing more accountability to the Chicago Police Department.

But not long after McDonald’s death came the fatal police shootings of Quintonio LeGrier, Bettie Jones, and Harith Augustus, along with the acquittal of a police officer who shot bystander Rekia Boyd in 2012.

According to data analyzed by watchdog organization Better Government Association, two-thirds of the 70 people killed by Chicago police from 2010 to 2014 were African American.

“We’re the epicenter of police crimes and torture,” said Frank Chapman, executive director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and a longtime Chicago activist. “We have one of the largest police forces in the nation and their record in terms of the African American community is despicable.”

A 2017 Justice Department report investigating the Chicago Police Department found officers used force almost 10 times more often with black suspects than with white suspects.

The report also also cited concerns regarding inappropriate conduct of some officers, including “racially discriminatory conduct,” adding that much of the practice of “unreasonable force fell heaviest on predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods.”

While the report led to a consent decree aimed at overhauling practices, implementation has lagged, and the city has met few deadlines, the Chicago Tribune reported.

“It’s a cumulative effect, and this [George Floyd] case comes as a boiling point,” said Chapman, who also spoke on behalf of Black Lives Matter Chicago. “So many of these cases go on and on and we’re sick and tired of this happening.”

Protesters confront police officers during a protest over the death of George Floyd in Chicago, on May 30, 2020.Nam Y. Huh / AP

Chicago has had a long history of police brutality, said Arthur Lurigio, a criminologist and professor at Loyola University in Chicago: “It extends as far back as we’ve had police officers, and the targets of police brutality have mainly been African Americans.”

The city has paid out over $662 million in settlements for police misconduct cases since 2004, according to The Associated Press. It includes payouts to victims of Jon Burge, a police commander who, along with a group of subordinate detectives, tortured dozens of African American suspects from 1972 to 1991. Many times, the tactics, including near-suffocation by plastic bags, shocks by cattle prods and beatings by flashlights, were used to elicit false confessions.

Activist Jahmal Cole, who founded My Block, My Hood, My City, a nonprofit that helps underprivileged youth, said justice has long eluded African Americans, but with the death of George Floyd, no one can deny what has been happening.

“The division between black, white, and brown is very visible, and nobody knows how justice is being sustained. We’ve been saying that in Chicago for a long time,” he said. “We want justice. The only thing that’s going to close this wound is when they stop killing us and hold authority accountable.”

What happened in Minneapolis hits very close to home for a lot of Chicagoans living in similar circumstances, said David Stovall, a professor of African American studies and criminology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“It’s important to understand Chicago as reflective of the nation in terms of relationships between its black populations and police force,” he said. “The police force has been contracted as a paramilitary containment force that has historically enacted its power on black communities and at the command of leadership.”

Tanya Watkins, who has worked for years as a community organizer to fight oppression and police abuse in Chicago, said she feels this is a watershed moment for the nation and hopes the support will be followed by action.

“This is an important moment for many cities, including Chicago, but I hope people maintain this energy and momentum and be willing to do the work to impact the system,” said Watkins, director of Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation, a local grassroots organization.

“It’s amazing but it does not stop with marching,” she said, adding that it should not have taken so many lives to get to this point.

“As a black woman, it is very painful that black people have to die to drive it home.” she said. “We cannot pin this movement on black death and cannot continue to sacrifice black bodies in order for people to get it.”

Source link

‘Glee’ Star Amber Riley Powerfully Sings ‘Freedom’ At Black Lives Matter Protest

PressNewsAgency
-
0
‘Glee’ Star Amber Riley Powerfully Sings ‘Freedom’ At Black Lives Matter Protest

Amber Riley broke out into song to lift up other demonstrators at a rally protesting police violence against Black lives. 

The “Glee” star posted a video on Instagram Wednesday that captured her standing among other demonstrators singing “Freedom,” a song off Beyoncé’s album “Lemonade.”

“What an honor,” Riley captioned the post.

On the same day, the actor retweeted a post that noted she was at a protest in Los Angeles outside the home of Mayor Eric Garcetti. Among the crowd of protesters seen in the video were “Euphoria” actor Zendaya and “Insecure” actor and activist Kendrick Sampson. 

In an earlier Instagram post from the same protest, Riley shared a video of protesters dancing the electric slide amid calls to defund the police and criticisms directed toward Garcetti. 

Sampson can be heard telling the crowd after leading the dance, “Our joy is resistance.”

A number of protests have been held across the country following the police killing of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white police officer named Derek Chauvin was filmed pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck as he pleaded that he couldn’t breathe. 

On Twitter Wednesday, Riley encouraged her followers to use their voices to inspire change.

“We all have voices. I don’t care how many followers you have. All of our voices and how we utilize our platforms is important,” she tweeted. “If it’s 10 followers, radicalize them, make them believers in themselves that they can change the world and themselves for the better!”



Source by [author_name]

‘There is something different here’: Obama says he’s encouraged by mass protests of George Floyd killing

PressNewsAgency
-
0
‘There is something different here’: Obama says he’s encouraged by mass protests of George Floyd killing

“In a lot of ways, what has happened over the last several weeks is, challenges and structural problems here in the United States have been thrown into high relief,” Obama contended. But the former president repeatedly hailed the activism he’d seen by young people, lauding them for creating “a sense of urgency that is as powerful and as transformative as anything that I’ve seen in recent years.”

Obama at times echoed his former vice president, Joe Biden, who this week said he felt that the disparate effects of the pandemic had helped remove the “blinders” from the eyes of a large swath of Americans who previously remained silent on issues of racial inequities.

“In some ways, as tragic and as difficult as these two weeks have been,” Obama said on Wednesday, “they’ve also been an incredible opportunity for people to be awakened to some of these underlying trends. And they offer an opportunity for us to all work together to tackle them, to America and make it live up to its highest ideals.”

Obama’s comments came hours after Minnesota’s attorney general announced upgraded murder charges against Derek Chauvin, the fired Minneapolis police officer who pinned Floyd to the ground by a knee to the neck for nearly nine minutes, as well as new charges against three other former officers involved in Floyd’s death.

While he made no mention of the latest developments in that case, they underscored Obama’s assertion that progress had been made, though he warned that much work remained to be done. But he also reiterated his pleas made earlier this week that in order to sustain the momentum gained by the events of the past week, activists needed to make their voices heard at the ballot box in addition to the streets.

“I’ve been hearing a little bit of chatter in the internet about voting versus protests,” he said, arguing that “most reforms” shown to reduce police violence take place at the local level. “This is not an either/or. This is a both/and. To bring about real change, we both have to highlight a problem and make people in power uncomfortable, but we have to translate that into practical solutions to laws that can be implemented and we can monitor and make sure we’re following up on them.”

Obama repeatedly pointed to a 2015 report produced by his administration’s task force on “21st century policing” to be drawn upon for such “practical solutions,” though he was quick to point out that other groups had since built upon that document.

He implored every mayor across the country to immediately conduct a review of their police departments’ use of force policies “and commit to report on planned reforms.” In the ensuing discussion, participants including former Attorney General Eric Holder and other leaders in the police reform movement, laid out eight specific reforms that “can’t wait” and don’t require a law from Congress or an executive order from the White House.

Obama also took a moment to applaud members of law enforcement who “share the goals of reimagining policing” and who are “just as outraged” over Floyd’s death as those protesting it are, even as he conceded that “changing culture” in police forces “is hard.”

Still, he urged listeners to “think of some of the people who have unequivocally spoken out about what happened in Minneapolis,” alluding to the near universal condemnation from those across the political spectrum, a critical mass that is not frequently reached for similar incidents.

Obama returned time after time to convey his encouragement by recent events. He dismissed the comparisons of the current moment to the upheaval during the heart of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, arguing that “although I was very young when you had riots and protests and assassinations and discord back in the ’60s, I know enough about that history to say there is something different here.”

For one, he noted, the demographic makeup of the current protests is drastically more representative of the country as a whole. “That didn’t exist back in the 1960s, that kind of broad coalition,” he said.

“There is a change in mindset that’s taking place — a greater recognition, that we can do better. And that is not as a consequence of speeches by politicians,” he continued. “That’s not the result of spotlights in news articles. That’s a direct result of the activities and organizing and mobilization and engagement of so many young people across the country.”

The next challenge, Obama told the group, is to translate the energy of protesters into workable policy.

“This is a moment — and we’ve had moments like this before — where people are paying attention,” he told the group. “The fact that people are paying attention provides an opportunity to educate, activate, mobilize and act. And I hope that we are able to seize this moment.”

Source link

Jada Pinkett Smith talks gun violence with Nipsey Hussle partner Lauren London: ‘Most of us grow up in war zones’

PressNewsAgency
-
0
Jada Pinkett Smith talks gun violence with Nipsey Hussle partner Lauren London: ‘Most of us grow up in war zones’

Jada Pinkett Smith says childhood gun violence was a “war zone” unfamiliar to her children, in a new episode of Red Table Talk with Lauren London, whose rapper partner Nipsey Hussle was shot and killed last year.

The Wednesday segment of the Facebook Watch show (partially filmed before social distancing rules) evoked George Floyd, an unarmed Minneapolis black man who died in police custody on May 25.

“As we are witnessing our black men being murdered in the streets, very rarely do we talk about the women who are left behind, grief-stricken and shattered,” said Smith, who co-hosts with her mother Adrienne Banfield Norris, 66, and daughter Willow Smith, 19. She also shares son Jaden Smith, 21, with actor Will Smith.

Noting the female family members of Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, who was fatally shot in February while jogging in Georgia, Smith introduced London, her “beautiful little sis” to explore the effects of gun violence.

London, 35, said she educates her two black sons about how to handle future police interactions and recalled the prevalence of gun violence in her childhood. “I think for me, it was kind of like, middle school, high school, it just became, unfortunately, like a norm,” replied Smith, adding that attending teen parties, was like “putting your life on the line.”

“You always walked in and you knew where the exit was…” said London. “Especially house parties,” said Smith.

When London remarked that it’s “traumatizing” to worry about gun violence as a teen, Smith said, “You just get used to figuring how how to keep yourself safe in these environments and I try to tell people all the time… most of us grow up in war zones and I did not even really realize that until my life changed when I started to look at how my kids were growing up versus me.”

“And then me trying to train them in a way,” she continued. “I was like, ‘But no — that’s not their reality.’ They don’t have to worry about that.”

Later, activist Erica Ford, the founder of Life Camp, a violence prevention organization, joined in along with shooting victims Rain Stippec and Dani Robinson.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

Source link

E.R. Visits Drop Sharply During Pandemic

PressNewsAgency
-
0
E.R. Visits Drop Sharply During Pandemic

“This is a national concern that patients are worried that the hospitals, health care systems, physician offices could be more dangerous than grocery stores, hardware stores and other essential businesses,” said Dr. Balcezak, although he emphasized there was no evidence that the risks were any higher in hospitals.

In some cases, patients may be opting for virtual visits or some other alternative, said Dr. Stephen Klasko, the chief executive of Jefferson Health, who has seen the declines in visits across all of the system’s hospitals. But in other cases, patients are forgoing needed care, he said. “The real key here is virtual triage,” Dr. Klasko said, where someone who feels dizzy or has chest pain can find out if a trip to the emergency room is warranted.

Hospitals are taking numerous steps to ensure patients remain safe from infection, said Dr. William Jaquis, an emergency room doctor who is the president of the American College of Emergency Physicians. Emergency rooms are not only less crowded, he said, but they have taken a number of steps to screen patients for potential infection and to make sure both patients and providers wear masks. Patients who may be infected are treated in separate areas.

Congress has responded to the hospitals’ loss of patients and resulting revenue by providing as much as $175 billion in funds to hospitals and other providers, but much of the money has gone to the largest, most profitable institutions, compared with medical centers in rural communities or those that serve low-income patients.

While emergency room visits for minor ailments like stomach pains, earaches and sprained ankles have been far fewer this year, agency officials pointed to a more disconcerting drop in the number of people who arrived with chest pain, including those experiencing heart attacks. There were also declines in children requiring emergency help for conditions like asthma.

  • Updated June 2, 2020

    • Will protests set off a second viral wave of coronavirus?

      Mass protests against police brutality that have brought thousands of people onto the streets in cities across America are raising the specter of new coronavirus outbreaks, prompting political leaders, physicians and public health experts to warn that the crowds could cause a surge in cases. While many political leaders affirmed the right of protesters to express themselves, they urged the demonstrators to wear face masks and maintain social distancing, both to protect themselves and to prevent further community spread of the virus. Some infectious disease experts were reassured by the fact that the protests were held outdoors, saying the open air settings could mitigate the risk of transmission.

    • How do we start exercising again without hurting ourselves after months of lockdown?

      Exercise researchers and physicians have some blunt advice for those of us aiming to return to regular exercise now: Start slowly and then rev up your workouts, also slowly. American adults tended to be about 12 percent less active after the stay-at-home mandates began in March than they were in January. But there are steps you can take to ease your way back into regular exercise safely. First, “start at no more than 50 percent of the exercise you were doing before Covid,” says Dr. Monica Rho, the chief of musculoskeletal medicine at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago. Thread in some preparatory squats, too, she advises. “When you haven’t been exercising, you lose muscle mass.” Expect some muscle twinges after these preliminary, post-lockdown sessions, especially a day or two later. But sudden or increasing pain during exercise is a clarion call to stop and return home.

    • My state is reopening. Is it safe to go out?

      States are reopening bit by bit. This means that more public spaces are available for use and more and more businesses are being allowed to open again. The federal government is largely leaving the decision up to states, and some state leaders are leaving the decision up to local authorities. Even if you aren’t being told to stay at home, it’s still a good idea to limit trips outside and your interaction with other people.

    • What’s the risk of catching coronavirus from a surface?

      Touching contaminated objects and then infecting ourselves with the germs is not typically how the virus spreads. But it can happen. A number of studies of flu, rhinovirus, coronavirus and other microbes have shown that respiratory illnesses, including the new coronavirus, can spread by touching contaminated surfaces, particularly in places like day care centers, offices and hospitals. But a long chain of events has to happen for the disease to spread that way. The best way to protect yourself from coronavirus — whether it’s surface transmission or close human contact — is still social distancing, washing your hands, not touching your face and wearing masks.

    • What are the symptoms of coronavirus?

      Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.

    • How can I protect myself while flying?

      If air travel is unavoidable, there are some steps you can take to protect yourself. Most important: Wash your hands often, and stop touching your face. If possible, choose a window seat. A study from Emory University found that during flu season, the safest place to sit on a plane is by a window, as people sitting in window seats had less contact with potentially sick people. Disinfect hard surfaces. When you get to your seat and your hands are clean, use disinfecting wipes to clean the hard surfaces at your seat like the head and arm rest, the seatbelt buckle, the remote, screen, seat back pocket and the tray table. If the seat is hard and nonporous or leather or pleather, you can wipe that down, too. (Using wipes on upholstered seats could lead to a wet seat and spreading of germs rather than killing them.)

    • How many people have lost their jobs due to coronavirus in the U.S.?

      More than 40 million people — the equivalent of 1 in 4 U.S. workers — have filed for unemployment benefits since the pandemic took hold. One in five who were working in February reported losing a job or being furloughed in March or the beginning of April, data from a Federal Reserve survey released on May 14 showed, and that pain was highly concentrated among low earners. Fully 39 percent of former workers living in a household earning $40,000 or less lost work, compared with 13 percent in those making more than $100,000, a Fed official said.

    • Should I wear a mask?

      The C.D.C. has recommended that all Americans wear cloth masks if they go out in public. This is a shift in federal guidance reflecting new concerns that the coronavirus is being spread by infected people who have no symptoms. Until now, the C.D.C., like the W.H.O., has advised that ordinary people don’t need to wear masks unless they are sick and coughing. Part of the reason was to preserve medical-grade masks for health care workers who desperately need them at a time when they are in continuously short supply. Masks don’t replace hand washing and social distancing.

    • What should I do if I feel sick?

      If you’ve been exposed to the coronavirus or think you have, and have a fever or symptoms like a cough or difficulty breathing, call a doctor. They should give you advice on whether you should be tested, how to get tested, and how to seek medical treatment without potentially infecting or exposing others.

“Health messages that reinforce the importance of immediately seeking care for symptoms of serious conditions, such as myocardial infarction, are needed,” the C.D.C. officials said. They added that people should be encouraged to reduce their potential exposure to infection by using telemedicine and other methods of triage to determine whether they need to go to the hospital.

But the officials also said the drop in emergency room visits could affect people’s ability to get care when they have no other alternative sources. People who use the emergency room “as a safety net because they lack access to primary care and telemedicine,” they said, might be disproportionately affected if they avoid seeking care because of concerns about the infection risk.”

Source link

Coronavirus live news: Germany reveals major stimulus plan as global cases grow by 100,000 a day

PressNewsAgency
-
0
Coronavirus live news: Germany reveals major stimulus plan as global cases grow by 100,000 a day










Germany unveils €130bn stimulus to kickstart virus-hit economy

In case you missed this earlier: Germany will plough €130bn (US$146 billion) into a stimulus package to kick-start an economy severely hit by the coronavirus pandemic, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday.

Under the wide-ranging measures outlined in a 15-page document, value-added tax will be temporarily slashed, families will receive 300 euros for each child, while those who purchase electric cars will see a government rebate doubled to €6,000.

“The size of the package will reach €130bn for 2020 to 2021, €120bn of which will be borne by the federal government,” said Merkel.

“We have an economic stimulus package, a package for the future and in addition, we’re now dealing with our responsibility for Europe and the international dimension.”

The German government holds marathon negotiations over corona aid package. Photograph: Getty Images

Noting that millions of employees in Germany have been put on shorter working hours, Merkel said that “shows how fragile the whole thing is, and why we must succeed in giving the economy a push so that jobs can be secured.”

“We need to get out of this crisis with an oomph,” said Finance Minister Olaf Scholz.

The fresh stimulus comes on top of a massive €1.1tn rescue package already agreed in March, comprising loan guarantees, subsidies and a beefed-up shorter-hours programme to avoid job cuts.

To fund the unprecedented package, parliament had approved new borrowing, marking a sea change in German economic policy, upending a financial-crisis-era constitutional rule drastically limiting budget deficits.










Summary

Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan.

As always, please do get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan or email: helen.sullivan@theguardian.com.

A €130bn (£116bn) post-lockdown stimulus package has been agreed by the coalition partners running the country, the chancellor Angela Merkel announced. The agreement paved the way for a fiscal programme that is substantially bigger than similar packages by Germany’s Eurozone partners.

Meanwhile the World Health Organization says that for the past five days, cases have risen by 100,000 a day worldwide.

Here are the key developments from the last few hours:

  • Known coronavirus cases number around 6.4m, according to Johns Hopkins University, with the current number at 6,392,319. There have been 383,298 deaths reported so far.
  • Spain’s congress voted to approve a sixth and final two-week extension of the country’s state of emergency. It has been in effect since 14 March and Wednesday’s vote means that the exceptional measures that have underpinned one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns will now remain in force until 21 June.
  • The UK’s business secretary Alok Sharma went into self-isolation after beginning to feel unwell in the House of Commons chamber.He was delivering the second reading of the corporate governance and insolvency bill.
  • The World Health Organization said it has received reports of 100,000 new cases every day for the past five days, as the outbreak gathers pace in various regions around the world.
  • The WHO director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, also said it has resumed trials of hydroxychloroquine, an arthritis drug that had been used to treat Covid-19 patients, after reviewing studies that apparently showed it was dangerous.
  • Pakistan recorded its largest single day increase in infections, as a fourth politician died after testing positive for the virus. Mian Jamshed Kakakhel, who was a member of a provincial assembly in the north-west, died on Wednesday. Yesterday two other lawmakers died after testing positive.
  • The number of Covid-19 deaths per capita in Sweden surpassed that of France. With 450 deaths per 1 million people, Sweden now has the seventh-worst death rate in the world, according to tallies kept on the Worldometers website.
  • Entry checks at land borders to Austria introduced because of the pandemic will be scrapped from Thursday, except for those at the border with Italy, Austria’s foreign minister announced. The controls on the Italian border will be evaluated again next week, Alexander Schallenberg told a press conference.
  • The UK government was criticised for failing to release test and trace data. The former health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, told the programme’s chief, Dido Harding: “I hope you understand that our frustration is that it is very hard to scrutinise what the government is doing if we’re not given the data that allows us to do that.”
  • Germany will continue to warn against non-essential travel to the UK while it maintains its 14-day quarantine rules, despite removing curbs for travel to the rest of Europe. The foreign minister, Heiko Maas, said his government will scrap general travel warnings for 30 countries, including the UK, from 15 June.



Source link

Top US Religious Official Pledges Support For Dalai Lama’s Return to ‘More Autonomous’ Tibet

PressNewsAgency
-
0
Top US Religious Official Pledges Support For Dalai Lama’s Return to ‘More Autonomous’ Tibet

U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback on Wednesday pledged Washington’s assistance to Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, in returning from exile to a Tibet with greater autonomy, in his latest salvo against Beijing for its persecution of ethnic groups in China.

Speaking after taking part in an online forum for Tibetan American Youth, organized by Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), the top U.S. religious official told RFA’s Tibetan Service that advocacy for Tibet is now more “crucial” than ever.

“Tibet’s issue needs to be raised and highlighted where Tibet needs more autonomy, Tibetans should be able to practice their faith freely and the Dalai Lama must be able to return to Tibet if he chooses to,” said Brownback, a former U.S. senator and state governor.

“China denies all these, yet with bipartisan support in Congress, we will make these things possible and bring the Tibetan issue in the forefront.”

U.S. Representative Jim McGovern, who also spoke at ICT’s event, told RFA that the human rights situation in Tibet had continued to worsen amidst restrictions on teaching the Tibetan language, culture, natural resources, and religious freedom.

The chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission and Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) also slammed Beijing over its insistence that it select the reincarnation of Tibet’s religious leaders, including the Dalai Lama, as well as its policies he said are part of a bid to “eliminate the distinct Tibetan identity.”

“We are criticizing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and not the Chinese people, who are also suffering under China’s repression,” he said.

“We stand in solidarity with the Tibetan people and revere His Holiness the Dalai Lama. We all are in this together and we expect the President to sign the Tibet Policy and Support Act into law soon.”

Tibet acts

In January, a bill to strengthen U.S. policy in support of Tibet won strong approval by the House of Representatives. The Tibetan Policy and Support Act (TPSA) was passed by a vote of 392 to 22, and now requires a vote in the Senate, which is also reviewing a companion bill.

Co-sponsored by McGovern and Republican Senator Marco Rubio, the TPSA when signed into law will require China to allow the opening of a U.S. consulate in Tibet’s regional capital Lhasa before any new Chinese consulate can open in the United States.

It will also establish a U.S. policy that the selection of Tibetan religious leaders, including future successors to exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, is a decision to be made by Tibetans free from Chinese government interference.

“The Chinese government is not respecting the diplomatic principle of reciprocity,” McGovern said.

“When we passed the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act, it was not just a statement. China basically doesn’t want the world to see what’s happening inside Tibet—how the Tibetans are repressed and have no religious freedom.”

In a move pushing for greater U.S. access to Tibet, now largely closed by China to American diplomats and journalists, President Donald Trump in December 2018 signed into law a bill denying visas to Chinese officials responsible for blocking entry to the Beijing-ruled Himalayan region.

The Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act of 2018 requires the U.S. Secretary of State to identify Chinese officials responsible for excluding U.S. citizens, including Americans of Tibetan ethnic origin, from China’s Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), and then ban them from entering the United States.

The law also requires the State Department to provide to the Congress each year a list of U.S. citizens blocked from entry to Tibet.

Earlier, during the ICT forum, both Brownback and McGovern had encouraged young Tibetan Americans to advocate for Tibet by applying for internships in U.S. government offices and become active in campaigns for their ancestral homeland.

Series of measures

The TPSA is the latest in a series of measures Congress has taken to hold China accountable for rights abuses in Tibet and in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), where authorities are believed to have held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a network of some 1,300 internment camps since April 2017.

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 413-1 via proxy to approve the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 following the bill’s passage in the Senate in mid-May, marking the first legislation by any government to target China for its persecution of Uyghurs in the XUAR.

The act would sanction Chinese government officials responsible for arbitrary incarceration, forced labor and other abuses in the region, condemn the CCP for the camp system, and require regular monitoring of the situation in the region by U.S. government bodies for the application of sanctions once signed into law by Trump.

Reported by RFA’s Tibetan Service. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.



Source link

Renovation grants: Morrison government to offer $25,000 in home builder stimulus

PressNewsAgency
-
0
Renovation grants: Morrison government to offer $25,000 in home builder stimulus

The Morrison government will fund grants worth $25,000 for eligible singles and couples planning to build or renovate homes between June and the end of December, with the uncapped program estimated to cost taxpayers $688m.

With the March quarter national accounts indicating that Australia has entered the first recession in nearly three decades, the new tranche of economic stimulus designed to create a pipeline of work for the construction sector will be unveiled by the Coalition on Thursday.

To be eligible for the grants, singles need to earn $125,000 a year or less based on a 2018/19 tax return or later, and couples need to earn under $200,000. Building contracts need to be executed between 4 June and 31 December 2020.

To qualify, people need to be intending to build a new home as a principal place of residence valued up to $750,000 including the land, or planning to renovate an existing property, with the upgrade valued at between $150,000 and $750,000.

Existing properties need to be worth less than $1.5m before the renovation, and construction must be contracted to commence within three months of the contract date.

The “homebuilder” grants can be used for kitchen and bathroom renovations carried out by licensed contractors, but cannot be for used for add-ons like swimming pools, tennis courts, outdoor spas and saunas, and detached sheds or garages. The grants cannot be claimed for investment properties, and owner-builders are also ineligible.

The new stimulus program comes as the government has delayed a planned mini-budget to July, and the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, has also signalled the jobkeeper wage subsidy might be reduced from the current flat payment of $1,500, or paid at differential rates depending on a worker’s income, after a review.

Wednesday’s March quarter national accounts showed dwelling investment in Australia fell 2.9% in the quarter and by more than 15% over the past 12 months. The contraction is expected to be worse in the June quarter and construction lobby groups predict new dwelling commencements will decline by 50% by the end of 2020.

While government grants programs have been shown to drive up housing prices and construction costs, the government contends this won’t happen with the “homebuilder” package, because the current slump in construction makes pricing competitive, and because the program is a short-term pump prime rather than a fixture, which makes it more difficult for developers to price the grant into their contracts.

The government has made it a rule that stimulus designed to counter the economic shock associated with the Covid-19 pandemic be delivered through existing mechanisms rather than new programs to minimise the risk of fraud or administrative disasters.

The housing grants scheme is clearly a new program, but the government claims the same criteria will apply because it will be implemented through “existing systems, being the states’ respective revenue offices”.

In a statement ahead of Thursday’s announcement, Scott Morrison said the new program was about job creation, and about supporting one million workers in the sector including builders, painters, plumbers and electricians.

Morrison said the jobkeeper wage subsidy had already helped Australia’s construction sector weather the opening months of the economic shock associated with Covid-19, and “now we’re helping fire it up again”.

“This is about targeted taxpayer support for a limited time using existing systems to ensure the money gets used how it should by families looking for that bit of extra help to make significant investments themselves,” the prime minister said.

Ahead of Thursday’s announcement Labor called for the government to include social housing in the construction stimulus. On Wednesday, the shadow treasurer, Jim Chalmers, said the government needed to address flaws in previous interventions to ensure the recession wasn’t a deep one.

“We need to see in that at least these three things,” Chalmers said. “We need them to fix up their blunders with jobkeeper so that fewer workers are unnecessarily excluded and we need to see social and public housing as a key part of any package of measures to support the building industry.”

Chalmers said the government needed to deliver “a comprehensive plan for jobs in this long and patchy recovery”.

Source link

1...65,24065,24165,242...65,527Page 65,241 of 65,527

FOLLOW US

© Copyright 2025 - PressNewsAgency LLC . . . All Rights Reserved . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Naeem T Ahmed { Editor / Publisher } . . . . Contact@PressNewsAgency.org . . . . . . . . . Phone: +1.8884110555 +1.5055960123