HONOLULU, Hawaii – Volcanologists are keeping a close eye on their instruments after a rare earthquake swarm off the Big Island the past two days. Twenty miles off the southeast coast of the Big Island, Hawaii’s newest volcano rises 10,000 feet from the ocean floor with its summit about 3,000 feet under the surface. When Loihi starts shaking, scientists pay attention. “Think of it as a younger version of Kilauea or Mauna Loa volcanoes,” said David Phillips, deputy scientist in charge at Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.
Phillips said there’s no significant hazard at the moment, but at one point HVO recorded 14 earthquakes per hour on the Loihi Seamount. “The peak did take place yesterday afternoon, whether it continues to subside or come back is hard to say,” Phillips said. On a seismogram, more than a hundred temblors struck in the 2- to 3-magnitude range, suggesting magma is on the move. Phillips said if the shaking continues, it could signal an eruption — and that could cause a summit collapse. That’s happened before, last in 1996. A significant eruption could even cause a small tsunami.
“There would be very little time to respond,” Phillips said. “It would be certainly less than an hour, could be minutes.” But there is no sign of trouble right now. “From everything we’ve seen, there’s nothing like that coming,” Phillips said. The seamount appears to have settled down. Besides the occasional rumble, the most exciting things on Loihi are the creatures that thrive in the hot water nearly a mile deep. –Hawaii News
Atlas Shrugged: How the richest country in the free world helplessly feel victim to the maniacal ego of its own president
Eight weeks into this nation’s greatest crisis since World War II, we seem no closer to a national strategy to reopen the nation, rebuild the economy and defeat the coronavirus. Why it matters: America’s ongoing cultural wars over everything have weakened our ability to respond to this pandemic. We may be our worst enemy. The response is being hobbled by the same trends that have impacted so much of our lives: growing income inequality, the rise of misinformation, lack of trust in institutions, the rural/urban divide and hyper-partisanship.
We’re not even seeing the same threat from the virus. Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to be worried about getting seriously ill, while Republicans — including the president — are more likely to think the death counts are too high.
Without even a basic agreement on the danger of the pandemic and its toll, here’s how we see the national response unfold: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the crown jewel of the globe’s public health infrastructure, has been sidelined, its recommendations dismissed by the White House.
President Trump declares the U.S. has “prevailed on testing” at a time when health experts say we “still need far more daily tests before the country can reopen safely. Distribution of the promising coronavirus drug Remdesivir was initially botched because of miscommunication between government agencies. More than two thirds of Americans say it’s unlikely they would use a cell phone-based contact tracing program established by the federal government, a key component of a testing regime to control the virus.
The second phase of a program to aid small businesses isn’t fully allocated because firms are either concerned about its changing rules, confused about how to access it, or find the structure won’t help them stay in business. With the unemployment rate at a post-Depression record last month, and expected to go higher, there is no meaningful discussion between the parties in Congress on aid to the out-of-work. States and local governments are facing billions in losses without a strategy for assistance.
The virus is literally inside the White House. Aides have tested positive for coronavirus, leading to quarantines for some of the nation’s top public health officials and a new daily testing regime for White House staff and reporters who enter the West Wing.
The No. 1 book on Amazon for a time was a book by an anti-vaxxer whose conspiracy-minded video about the pandemic spread widely across social media, leading to take-downs by platforms like YouTube and Facebook.
The other side: There’s better news at the state level. “Governors collectively have been winning widespread praise from the public for their handling of the coronavirus outbreak,” the Washington Post reports.
Individual states are making progress, according to the most recent Axios analysis of coronavirus cases — though it’s early and a second wave of infections is still possible.
Between the lines: Nationwide, 71% of Americans approve of the job their governor is doing, according to the Post. For Trump, the figure is 43%.
And former presidents we often expect to help rally the nation in trying times are scarce.
George W. Bush released a video, in which his face barely appeared, calling for unity in the fight against the virus. Barack Obama was recorded in leaked remarks to former staffers calling Trump’s coronavirus response “an absolute chaotic disaster.” Trump attacked both of them on Twitter.
The bottom line: An existential threat — like war or natural disaster — usually brings people together to set a course of action in response. Somehow, we’ve let this one drive us apart. –Axios
Dr. Rick Bright, the HHS whistle-blower, told lawmakers the exact moment that he knew the U.S.’s response to the coronavirus pandemic was doomed. During his testimony Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Health, Bright recalled a conversation he had with Mike Bowen, a Texas-based surgical mask maker.
‘Congressman I’ll never forget the emails I received from Mike Bowen indicating that our mask supplier, N95 respirator supplier, was completely decimated and he said “we’re in deep s***, the world is, and we need to act,’” Bright recalled. ‘And I pushed that forward to the highest levels I could in HHS and got no response.’ ‘From that moment I knew that we were going to have a crisis for our healthcare workers because we were not taking action,’ Bright continued. ‘We were already behind the ball, that was our last opportunity to turn on that production to save the lives of our healthcare workers and we didn’t act.’ Bright arrived on Capitol Hill Thursday morning, wearing gloves and a mask, to testify on Capitol Hill, on the heels of President Donald Trump calling him a ‘disgruntled employee.’ Bright, Trump said, ‘should no longer be working for our government!’ –Daily Mail
Fueled by an increasingly acrimonious election year, chronic lock-downs, and rising COVID-19 deaths and unemployment numbers; the U.S. may soon find itself at the type of precarious breaking point that could spur social unrest and civil uprisings. The Federal money and human patience with COVID-19 have to run out eventually. States are desperate for commerce, cash, and tax revenue. As they push workers back into the work force at their own peril, the threat of another spike in coronavirus cases is the proverbial white elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about or publicly admit. After all, as the Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) called for the reopening of his state and the country in early May, he alluded we can’t be paralyzed worrying about the cost in human lives because there are “more important things than living.”
Texas, which began to open its businesses at the beginning of May, has already reported more than 1,000 new cases of COVID-19 for five consecutive days, as the state struggles to curb the coronavirus pandemic. –The Hill
While lock-downs in the U.S. have slowed the progression of the disease to a crawl in many parts of the country, they have also become a rallying cry for fringe elements of the far right. Protesters and armed militias alike are both calling for an end to the lock-downs citing them as being unconstitutional. In some cases, healthcare workers and politicians have been harassed and threatened by protesters and dissenters.
Right-wing militia groups in Michigan plan to rally at the state capitol building on May 14 to protest Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home orders that she put in place to slow the deadly spread of the coronavirus pandemic. The latest demonstration will be the latest in a series of protests that started as a demonstration against the lock-down policy but are now generating fears of an eruption of political violence. The state is currently investigating what the Michigan attorney general, Dana Nessel, characterized on Monday as “credible threats” against state Democratic politicians. Her comments followed a report of threats of violence on right-wing social media pages.
Residents posting in the Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine Facebook page called for Whitmer’s assassination. “Wonder how long till she’s hit with a shotgun blast,” one wrote. Another said they hope Thursday’s protesters are “armed to the teeth” because “voting is too late.” Dramatic images from a 30 April protest showed militia members carrying assault rifles while glaring and shouting from the galleries of the state legislature as an emotional debate over extending a stay-at-home order took place. In response, a black lawmaker last week came to Michigan’s capitol with an escort of armed black citizens. –Yahoo News
Other ominous warnings about America’s grim future in this pandemic have been sounded by some of the nation’s leading scientists and epidemiologists. These professionals attest the Trump Administration fell asleep at the wheel, down-played the coronavirus threat from the onset, and responded too little and too late to avert a national health crisis that is now approaching 90,000 deaths. America faces the “darkest winter in modern history” unless leaders act decisively to prevent a rebound of the coronavirus, says a government whistle-blower who alleges he was ousted from his job after warning the Trump administration to prepare for the pandemic.
Immunologist Dr. Rick Bright makes his sobering prediction in testimony prepared for his appearance Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Aspects of his complaint about early administration handling of the crisis are expected to be backed up by testimony from an executive of a company that manufactures, respirator masks. “Our window of opportunity is closing,” Bright says in his prepared testimony posted on the House committee website. “If we fail to develop a national coordinated response, based in science, I fear the pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged, causing unprecedented illness and fatalities.” –AP News
If federal deficits rising to near unsustainable levels, declining state tax revenue, rising unemployment, a shortage of COVID-19 test and PPE equipment at U.S. hospitals, the back-lash against face masks and lock-downs, increasing racial tension, rising drug use and record gun sales, the threat of a deadlier second peak, dwindling food-supply chains, and the highest coronavirus death toll in the world is not enough to sink a nation into anarchy and civil war; I don’t know what is. Unless we put aside our differences and come together as a country to fight COVID-19, we will defeat ourselves long before the virus ever has a chance to.
A high-profile infectious disease researcher warns COVID-19 is in the early stages of attacking the world, which makes it difficult to relax stay-at-home orders without putting most Americans at risk. Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said the initial wave of outbreaks in cities such as New York City, where one in five people have been infected, represent a fraction of the illness and death yet to come. “This damn virus is going to keep going until it infects everybody it possibly can,” Osterholm said Monday during a meeting with the USA TODAY Editorial Board. “It surely won’t slow down until it hits 60 to 70%” of the population, the number that would create herd immunity and halt the spread of the virus.
Hollywood got it right. We got it wrong:Gandalf said in The Fellowship of the Ring, “For even the very wise cannot see all ends.” In this interview from 2011, Director of the Emory Global Health Institute Jeffrey Koplan, MD, MPH, thought a global pandemic, like the one in the movie Contagion, was more Hollywood fiction than reality.
Even if new cases begin to fade this summer, it might be an indicator that the new coronavirus is following a seasonal pattern similar to the flu. During the 1918 flu pandemic that sickened one-third of the world’s population, New York City and Chicago were hit hard in the first wave of illness that largely bypassed other cities such as Boston, Detroit, Minneapolis and Philadelphia. The second wave of illness was much more severe nationwide. If COVID-19 retreats only to return in the fall, the number of cases could peak and overwhelm hospitals that must deal with cases of flu and respiratory viruses. Furthermore, Asian nations such as South Korea and Singapore, lauded for strict controls and rapid testing to avoid damage during the first wave, might be vulnerable to a second wave of infections, he said.
“It’s the big peak that’s really going to do us in,” he said. “As much pain, suffering, death and economic disruption we’ve had, there’s been 5 to 20% of the people infected, … That’s a long ways to get to 60 to 70%.” Still, there are key differences between COVID-19 and the flu. The average incubation period for the new virus is five days, compared with just two days for the flu, according to a Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy report comparing the pandemics. The longer incubation period and a higher transmission rate suggest the COVID-19 virus spreads more easily than the flu. There were nearly 80,000 deaths and more than 1.3 million confirmed novel coronavirus cases in the U.S. at noon Monday, according to the Johns Hopkins University data tracker. New York state has been hit the hardest with more than 26,000 deaths, and preliminary antibody testing suggests about 20% of New York City-area residents have been infected. Worldwide, more than 283,000 people have died and 4.1 million have been infected.
Osterholm said only an effective vaccine can slow the virus before a large enough segment of the population becomes infected and develops some level of immunity. Even if a vaccine works, Osterholm said, it’s unknown whether it would be durable enough to confer long-lasting protection from SARS CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. “We all have to confront the fact there’s not a magic bullet, short of a vaccine, that’s going to make this go away,” he said. “We’re going to be living with it. And we’re not having that discussion at all.” –USA Today
A Florida man who initially believed the coronavirus was a “fake crisis” that was “blown out of proportion” is now hospitalized along with his wife — and is sounding a cautionary note about the deadly bug. “I thought it was maybe the government trying something, and it was kind of like they threw it out there to kinda distract us,” Brian Hitchens told WPTV from his hospital bed. Hitchens said he continued downplaying the pandemic until he began feeling sick and stopped working. A couple of days later, his wife also began feeling unwell, so she went to a hospital and was told to go under quarantine. But when the couple’s conditions worsened, Hitchens wrote, they went to Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center.
“They admitted us right away and we both went to ICU. I started feeling better within a few days but my wife got worse to the point where they sedated her and put her on the ventilator,” he said. “I was never put ventilator and started feeling better feeling stronger never had terrible aches and pains just weak and exhausted,” Hitchens said, adding that his wife remains sedated. “After 3 weeks I have come to accept that my wife may pass away… – NY Post
Untrue but uncanny:Other Cases: A woman who attended a party in California and joked she had the coronavirus, found out she was not joking when she caused an outbreak in Pasadena. Health officials said the party was attended by multiple members of an extended family as well as their friends, and that guests weren’t wearing masks or adhering to social distancing guidelines.
The woman who has been identified as the “index case” – the first patient in the outbreak identified with the disease – had been coughing and didn’t wear a mask to the party. She apparently joked with other party goers that she had the coronavirus, which turned out to be accurate. Lisa Derderian, a spokeswoman for the city of Pasadena, told the Los Angeles Times that the woman’s disregard for the city’s stay-at-home order – which has been in effect since March 22, prior to the party – led to others becoming severely ill. “The aftermath affected several others who became seriously ill because of one person’s negligent and selfish behavior,” she said. –The Independent
Scientists hope a key to COVID-19 antibody research could currently be grazing peacefully in a Belgian field — in the shape of a four-year-old llama named Winter. The llama, which researchers vaccinated against the coronaviruses that cause MERS and SARS in 2016, “produced antibodies in response to vaccination, which were able to really potently neutralize both of those viruses,” explained Daniel Wrapp, a PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin. After the pandemic became world news earlier this year, the team tested those antibodies on cells infected with COVID-19 in a laboratory environment — and neutralized the virus, Wrapp explained.
The findings were published last week in the scientific journal Cell, in collaboration with researchers at Ghent University in Belgium. The work began four years ago, long before the COVID-19 pandemic, as research into MERS and SARS, he said. “We’re really excited about potentially exploring this antibody as a therapeutic to help fight off COVID-19,” Wrapp told The Current’s Matt Galloway. Llamas like Winter are well suited to this kind of research because they produce nanobodies — about half the size of the antibodies a human would make — that occur in sharks and camelids (such as llamas, alpacas and camels).
“That reduced size makes them potentially really interesting therapeutic candidates because they can wedge themselves into little crevices that our larger antibodies wouldn’t otherwise be able to access,” said Wrapp. All llamas are theoretically capable of producing the same nanobodies as Winter, he said, adding that her species make “surprisingly good laboratory animals. They take up a lot of space, but they’re apparently a lot of fun to work with.” –CBC
How would we administer this antibody treatment to a human patient?
It would be administered much like any other conventional antibody treatment, by injection. Really, the nice thing about an antibody treatment as opposed to a vaccine is that you could administer it to people who are already infected, and it would rapidly begin to reduce the disease burden and hopefully reduce the severity of the symptoms.
Can you explain the difference between an antibody treatment and a vaccine?
A vaccine has to be administered probably about two months before exposure to the infectious agent in order to be effective. That’s because you want to present the human immune system with something that looks like a pathogen so that it can raise its own antibodies and fight off infection if it’s ever presented with that pathogen infection scenario. Unfortunately, that’s sort of useless if you’ve already been infected. So, in that case, you have an antibody treatment for somebody who is already infected to help them get better more quickly.
Could the treatment also potentially be used as preventative measures in, for example, key workers?
Yes, I’m glad you brought up essential workers because people like health care workers could be administered this drug and then it would reduce or prevent their susceptibility to infection when treating patients. –Science Focus
Coronavirus patients declared recovered who later test positive for the disease are still expelling dead lung cells rather than getting a new infection, the World Health Organization (WHO) told AFP on Wednesday. South Korean health officials reported more than 100 such cases in April, raising concerns that patients who had recovered could become reinfected. “We are aware that some patients test positive after they clinically recover,” a WHO spokesperson told AFP, without making specific reference to the South Korean cases. “From what we currently know – and this is based on very recent data – it seems they these patients are expelling left over materials from their lungs, as part of the recovery phase.”
People infected with the new coronavirus build up antibodies starting a week or so after infection or the onset of symptoms, research has shown. But it is still not clear, experts say, whether the body systematically builds up enough immunity to ward off a new attack by the virus or, if it does, how long such immunity lasts. As for the recovered patients who tested negative and then, weeks later, positive, more research is needed, according to the WHO. “We need systematic collection of samples from recovered patients to better understand how long they shed live virus,” the spokesperson said.
“We also need to understand if this means they can pass the virus to other people – having live virus does not necessarily mean it can be passed to another person.” In a recent interview with BBC, infectious disease epidemiologist Maria Van Kerhove, part of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Program, explained the “dead cell” scenario. “As the lungs heal, there are parts of the lung that are dead cells that are coming up. These are fragments of the lungs that are actually testing positive,” she said. “It is not infectious virus, it’s not reactivation. It is actually part of the healing process.” “Does that mean they have immunity? Does that mean they have a strong protection against reinfection? We don’t know the answer to that yet.” For some viruses, such as the measles, those who contract it are immune for life. For other coronaviruses such as SARS, immunity lasted from a few months to a couple of years. The pandemic has now killed more than 257,000 people globally and officially infected nearly 3.7 million, although with only the most serious cases being tested the number is believed to be far higher. –Science Alert
Viral shedding after 30 days?Coronavirus has been found in human feces, more than a month after the patient tested negative for COVID-19. Scientists from the University of Stirling have warned that the findings indicate that coronavirus could spread via sewage. Professor Richard Quilliam, who led the study, said: “We know that COVID-19 is spread through droplets from coughs and sneezes, or via objects or materials that carry infection. “However, it has recently been confirmed that the virus can also be found in human feces – up to 33 days after the patient has tested negative for the respiratory symptoms of COVID-19. “It is not yet known whether the virus can be transmitted via the fecal-oral route, however, we know that viral shedding from the digestive system can last longer than shedding from the respiratory tract. –Mirror
Sexual transmissibility? Coronavirus was found in semen of recovering and acute male COVID-19 patients in a small study conducted in January and February in China, though it remains unknown, according to the CDC, whether the disease can be transmitted sexually. In the study, originally published on JAMA Network Open and conducted in Shangqiu, China, six patients—15.8%—of 38 COVID-19-positive males had the virus in their semen. “We are learning about this virus on a daily basis…People should be practicing abstinence or safe sex after being sick,” Dr. Anne Rimoin, a professor of epidemiology who focuses on infectious disease spread at UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine, advised in a CNN interview on the subject. –Forbes
The U.S. coronavirus death toll passed 80,000, far and away the most reported deaths of any country in the world, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. America marked that grim death toll Monday as almost every state, except for Connecticut and Massachusetts, have made plans to partially reopen some businesses. In New York, where there have been more than 26,000 deaths, coronavirus infection and hospitalization rates are down to where they were nearly two months ago, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. In the past day, 488 coronavirus patients were admitted to hospitals, similar to the state total from March 19, and 161 people died over the past day, near the same level of deaths as on March 26.
“In many ways, we’re on the other side of the mountain,” he said on Monday. As such, Cuomo said parts of upstate New York will be able to begin a phased reopening on Friday when the state’s shutdown order expires. He has said that regions can reopen in phases if they hit seven specific criteria, including 14-day declines in hospitalizations and deaths, hospital bed availability, testing capacity and contact tracing. New York City has hit just four of the seven metrics to reopen. New York has been the epicenter of America’s coronavirus outbreak and has had more confirmed coronavirus deaths than all but a few countries. At the peak of the state’s outbreak, more than 750 people died every day from April 7 to April 11, and the decline since then has been “painfully slow,” Cuomo said last week.
Cuomo emphasized that the reopening will be done “intelligently” and contrasted his reopening plan with that of other states that are reopening despite not hitting the CDC’s guidelines to do so. Indeed, a leading model increased its US coronavirus death toll projection again as governors continue lifting measures toward a reopening. The model from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington now forecasts more than 137,000 Americans will die by early August, up from its previous forecast of 134,000 deaths.
That rise is largely due to Americans moving around more, IHME Director Dr. Christopher Murray said in a news release, adding that in some places the upward trend in movement began before statewide measures were relaxed. Researchers tracked that movement through anonymous cell phone data, according to the release. Unless and until we see accelerated testing, contact tracing, isolating people who test positive, and widespread use of masks in public, there is a significant likelihood of new infections,” Murray said in the release. According to Johns Hopkins, more than 1.3 million people in the United States have contracted coronavirus since the first reported cases in January. –CNN
A Florida man who initially believed the coronavirus was a “fake crisis” that was “blown out of proportion” is now hospitalized along with his wife — and is sounding a cautionary note about the deadly bug. “I thought it was maybe the government trying something, and it was kind of like they threw it out there to kinda distract us,” Brian Hitchens told WPTV from his hospital bed. Hitchens said he continued downplaying the pandemic until he began feeling sick and stopped working. A couple of days later, his wife also began feeling unwell, so she went to a hospital and was told to go under quarantine. But when the couple’s conditions worsened, Hitchens wrote, they went to Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center.
The Extinction Protocol 