• Amid Talk of Reopening, Fauci Warns U.S. Not There Yet with COVID-19

    In an interview yesterday with the Associated Press, Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said opening up the nation on May 1 is “a bit overly optimistic.” His comments come a day after President Donald Trump announced a new reopening task force, meant to help guide the country back to economic health after the national COVID-19 30 April physical distancing campaign ends. In a heated back-and-forth with reporters, yesterday Trump said that only the president has the ability to call the shots on when and how to reopen the country. But Fauci said yesterday, “We have to have something in place that is efficient and that we can rely on, and we’re not there yet.” Meanwhile, governors yesterday and yesterday continued to outline their plans for reopening.

  • 5 Burning Questions about Tech Efforts to Track COVID-19 Cases

    The pitch from technology companies goes something like this: We can tap phone data to track Covid-19 infections in U.S. communities and swiftly warn people about potential exposure, all without ever compromising anyone’s privacy. Casey Ross writes in STAT that Apple and Google turned heads a few days ago when they announced a joint effort to bolster this public health service — a task known as contact tracing — by building software into smartphones that relies on Bluetooth technology to track users’ proximity to one another. Facebook is participating in a similar effort led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While their brands give them instant credibility in the business world, infectious disease experts aren’t convinced the technology offers a tidy solution to such a complicated public health problem.

  • EU to Unveil Virus Exit Plan, Hoping to Avoid Chaos and Medical System Collapse

    The European Union moved Wednesday to head off a chaotic and potentially disastrous easing of restrictions that are limiting the spread of the coronavirus, warning its 27 nations to move very cautiously as they return to normal life and base their actions on scientific advice. Lorne Cook writes in The Times of Israel that with Austria, the Czech Republic and Denmark already lifting some lockdown measures, the EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, was rushing out its roadmap for members of the world’s biggest trade bloc to coordinate an exit from the lockdowns, which they expect should take several months. Some 80,000 people have now died in Europe from the disease — about two-thirds of the global toll.

  • Two Million Could Lose Jobs in U.K. in the Coronavirus Lockdown

    Britain should prepare for tough times ahead, the chancellor warned yesterday as the financial watchdog predicted that the lockdown could leave more than two million people unemployed and shrink the economy by 35 per cent. Oliver Wright, Philip Aldrick, and Gurpreet Narwan write in The Times that in a bleak forecast, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said that net public sector borrowing would reach £273 billion, the largest single-year deficit since the Second World War. However, economists suggested that the damage could be even worse. They said the OBR’s prediction that the economy would bounce back quickly as soon as restrictions were lifted, resulting in an annual reduction in GDP of up to 13 per cent, was too optimistic.

  • Jury Still Out on Swedish Coronavirus Strategy

    Over the past few weeks, a huge amount of energy has been spent trying to prove Sweden’s more lenient approach to the coronavirus a failure. Freddy Sayers writes in Unherd that liberal news outlets in the U.S. have commissioned opinion pieces from Right-wing Swedish commentators accusing the country of a pivot to national chauvinism; President Trump has talked about the Swedish “herd” approach and how “they are suffering very, very badly“; and Twitter is full of apocalyptic charts that are shared thousands of times and which seem to prove beyond doubt that the Swedes should have locked down better, and sooner. The truth is, the Swedish epidemic is far from the out of control disaster its critics would like to believe. A clearer way of looking at death numbers in Sweden and other countries, courtesy of the excellent Our World in Data, is the daily trend of deaths per million. Here you get a good sense of the trajectories. All of the countries listed, except Sweden, have full national lockdowns. And yet Sweden is roughly in the middle of the pack. This is quite remarkable in itself, when set against the dominant narrative that lockdowns are the only thing capable of ‘flattening’ these curves and preventing tragedies that are many times worse.

  • Top Israeli Prof Claims Simple Stats Show Virus Plays Itself Out after 70 Days

    A prominent Israeli mathematician, analyst, and former general claims simple statistical analysis demonstrates that the spread of COVID-19 peaks after about 40 days and declines to almost zero after 70 days — no matter where it strikes, and no matter what measures governments impose to try to thwart it. Prof. Isaac Ben-Israel, head of the Security Studies program in Tel Aviv University and the chairman of the National Council for Research and Development, told Israel’s Channel 12 that in Israel, about 140 people normally die every day. To have shuttered much of the economy because of a virus that is killing one or two a day is a radical error that is unnecessarily costing Israel 20 percent of its GDP, he charged. He said the policy of lockdowns and closures was a case of “mass hysteria.” Simple social distancing would be sufficient, he said.

  • China Telecom Poses “Unacceptable” Espionage, Sabotage Risk in Providing U.S.-International Links: U.S. Govt. Agencies

    The U.S. Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and several other government agencies have urged the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to revoke China Telecom’s license to provide links between the United States and foreign countries. A U.S. investigation of China Telecom’s operations found “substantial and unacceptable national security and law enforcement risks,” the U.S. Justice Department said last week. The agencies expressed particular concern about the nature of China Telecom’s U.S. operations, which, the agencies argue, could give China Telecom the ability to engage in economic espionage and sabotage, mainly through the re-routing of U.S. internet traffic through Chinese servers using something called BGP (border gateway protocol) hijacking.

  • Here’s How We Extricate Ourselves from This Lockdown

    No politician or public-health expert can say when the novel coronavirus pandemic, and attendant lockdowns and social distancing, will end. But there is a roadmap—actually, a competing array of them—for extricating the United States from social isolation. Olivia Messer writes for the Daily Beastthat public-health experts surveyed by the Daily Beast said there were three main things authorities need to be able to provide—effectively, affordably, and with quick results—to the American public before it’s safe to send at least some people back to work and into public life. 

  • Ministers Told to Plan Gentle Path to Recovery With Ban on Alarming Talk of Coronavirus “Exit Strategy”

    British government ministers have been told to abandon talk of a coronavirus “exit strategy” as they try to ease public fears about an eventual end to the lockdown by moving towards a gradual “unwinding” of social distancing rules. Gordon Rayner and Harry Yorke write in The Telegraph that the government has been so successful in convincing people of the need to stay at home that there are concerns it could prove difficult to persuade them it is safe to return to work once the decision is taken to ease the current restrictions. Dominic Raab, the acting Prime Minister, made clear on Monday that the lockdown will stay in place beyond a legally required review of it this Thursday, but said there were “positive signs” that Britain was “starting to win this struggle.” He is being urged by some members of the Cabinet to announce that the lockdown will be reviewed again next week – rather than next month – to signal that the lifting of some restrictions is under consideration.

  • The Coronavirus Crisis: A Catalyst for Entrepreneurship

    Throughout human history, crises have been pivotal in developing our societies. Pandemics have helped advance health-care systems, wars have fueled technological innovations and the global financial crisis helped advance tech companies like Uber and Airbnb. The present coronavirus pandemic will arguably not be an exception; entrepreneurs can be expected to rise to the challenge. Businesses play a key role both in helping society get through an economic crisis and in creating innovations that shape society after a crisis. So one key question is: how will the ongoing crisis influence future society? While it’s hard to predict the future, we can develop an understanding of what is ahead by analyzing current trends. It’s clear the post-pandemic future will be different. What’s happening during the crisis will have a lasting impact on society. Current signs of entrepreneurial initiative and goodwill give us some cause for optimism. In the words of Stanford economist Paul Romer: “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”

  • Lockdown Shock Could Trigger “Unexploded Debt Bomb”

    An “unexploded bomb” of debt is being destabilised by the coronavirus shock, the global banking body has warned, as it predicted an “unprecedented surge” in borrowing ahead. Tom Rees writes in The Telegraph that more than $20 trillion (£16 trillion) of global bonds and loans due before the end of the year pose a “refinancing risk” with vulnerable emerging markets heavily exposed to the latest crunch, according to the Institute of International Finance (IIF). The global economy is starting a new crisis with corporate, household and government debt at levels never seen before after a decade of ultra-low borrowing costs and risky investor behavior. Signs of strains have already emerged in corporate credit, particularly the junk bond and leveraged loan markets, while government borrowing is set to enter uncharted territory. Rees notes that the world economy is entering a recession with $87 trillion more debt than at the onset of the financial crisis. The global debt to GDP ratio has risen by 40 percentage points over that period to an eye-watering 322pc and will hit 342pc this year, the IIF said. Unprecedented government support for economies and interest rates being slashed to new record lows are expected to drive debt even higher in the coming years.

  • Aberdeen-Based NovaBiotics to Test Life-Saving Cystic Fibrosis Drug on COVID-19 Patients

    Aberdeen life sciences firm NovaBiotics plans to test one of its drugs on Covid-19 patients with secondary lung infections. Hamish Burns writes in Insider that Nylexa ‘supercharges’ antibiotics to help them tackle difficult to treat and drug-resistant bacteria. Many of the lung infections in Covid-19 patients do not respond to antibiotics and more than half of the patients who died in Hubei province, the epicenter of the pandemic in China, succumbed to a secondary bacterial infection or sepsis.
    NovaBiotics could begin making Nylexa for trials in May and in partnership with the NHS and subject to regulatory approvals, clinical studies could get under way soon after on patients hospitalized with Covid-19.
    The active ingredient of Nylexa has proven to be safe and effective in clinical studies carried out across the UK, Italy and the US for bacterial lung infections associated with cystic fibrosis (CF). Nylexa could be repositioned as a Covid-19 therapy and tested on patients in the second half of 2020, ahead of any vaccine being available.

  • Wary Spain Starts to Ease Restrictions

    Spain is taking its first steps towards ending its lockdown today with some businesses reopening despite the latest figures showing a rise in coronavirus deaths after three days of decline. Pablo Sharrock writes in The Times that Spain has suffered more deaths than any country except the United States and Italy and has the highest mortality rate at 35.5 deaths per 100,000 people, according to Johns Hopkins University
    Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish prime minister, insisted that the state of emergency and the lockdown were still in force. “We are not entering a phase of de-escalation,” he said yesterday. “The state of emergency is still in force and so is the lockdown. The only thing that has come to an end is the two-week extreme economic hibernation period.”

  • The Normal Economy Is Never Coming Back

    The latest U.S. data proves the world is in its steepest freefall ever—and the old economic and political playbooks don’t apply.
    Adam Tooze writes in Foreign Policy that this collapse is not the result of a financial crisis. It is not even the direct result of the pandemic. The collapse is the result of a deliberate policy choice, which is itself a radical novelty. It is easier, it turns out, to stop an economy than it is to stimulate it. But the efforts that are being made to cushion the effects are themselves historically unprecedented. In the United States, the congressional stimulus package agreed within days of the shutdown is by far the largest in U.S. peacetime history. Across the world, there has been a move to open the purse strings. Fiscally conservative Germany has declared an emergency and removed its limits on public debt. Altogether, we are witnessing the largest combined fiscal effort launched since World War II. Its effects will make themselves felt in weeks and months to come. It is already clear that the first round may not be enough.

  • Boris Is Worried Lockdown Has Gone Too Far, but Only He Can End It

    The British government had asked Britons to stay at home, but Fraser Nelson writes in The Telegraph that government modelers did not expect such obedience: they expected workers to carry on and at least a million pupils to be left in school by parents. The deaths caused by COVID-19 are shocking, he writes, but so, too, are the effects of the lockdown. “Work is being done to add it all up and produce a figure for ‘avoidable deaths’ that could, in the long-term, be caused by lockdown. I’m told the early attempts have produced a figure of 150,000, far greater than those expected to die of COVID.” The decision about when and how to reopen the economy is a tough call to make, but “it’s a decision that will be better made sooner rather than later,” Nelson writes.