TEHRAN, Iran – An earthquake struck early Friday near Iran’s highest peak and jolted Tehran, killing at least five people and injuring more than 20 as people ran for their lives. The shallow 4.6 magnitude quake hit at 00:48 am (2018 GMT) near the city of Damavand, about 55 kilometers (34 miles) east of Tehran, the US Geological Survey said. It saw scores of residents of Tehran flee buildings for the safety of the capital’s streets and parks, AFP journalists reported. Many spent the rest of the night sleeping in their cars on the side of the road, apparently too fearful to return to their homes.
Some wore face masks, a sign of the times in a country already struggling to contain the Middle East’s deadliest outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. The temblor struck as Iranians were either sleeping or resting after iftar, the meal breaking the daytime fast observed by Muslims during the holy month of Ramadan. “We were sitting down when the earthquake struck,” said 45-year-old Tehran resident Ahmad. “We felt it completely shaking (the building), and then we all went out of the house together to be outside and not to be in danger if an aftershock struck,” His wife Maryam, who like him was wrapped in a blanket, said they escaped the apartment using the stairwell. “We quickly took the children by their hands and got out,” said the 37-year-old housewife. –NDTV
As the confirmed U.S. death toll from the new coronavirus grew to more than 79,696 new data showed the pandemic’s devastating impact on nursing homes. New York state has recorded at least 4,813 confirmed and presumed deaths related to the coronavirus at nursing homes and adult-care facilities, including 71 confirmed fatalities at one facility, according to state data released Monday night. The number has grown quickly. An April 22 tally showed 3,505 deaths in the facilities statewide. The figures included confirmed cases and probable cases from some nursing homes.
Globally, the number of deaths rose past 254,000, with 3.6 million confirmed coronavirus cases, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Experts caution that reported infection and death tolls world-wide underestimate the extent of the pandemic. In the U.S., 2,100 people were reported dead between 8 p.m. Monday and the same time Tuesday, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Johns Hopkins data, bringing the nation’s official death toll to 71,022. It was the largest number of daily deaths reported in nearly a week. In New York, the state had previously given data on nursing-home deaths it acknowledged were inconsistent. Some nursing homes reported deaths of people presumed to have the virus as well as confirmed cases; others didn’t. The new numbers reflect the state’s effort to have more comprehensive reporting that includes both confirmed and presumed cases.
Nursing homes have faced scrutiny for problems containing the spread of the virus. Those who run the facilities say health authorities have put a higher priority on helping hospitals get staff and with personal-protective equipment. State officials say they have sent hundreds of thousands of pieces of protective equipment to nursing homes. Advocates for nursing-home residents, however, have said many facilities were ill-prepared for the pandemic, and many are chronically understaffed. Experts say elderly residents of facilities are particularly vulnerable due to their age and the congregate nature of the living arrangements. In New Jersey, there have been 4,151 fatalities at long-term care facilities. Health officials are ramping up testing inside nursing homes to help curb the spread of the Covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus. Officials tested nearly 4,000 residents and health workers at 16 long-term care facilities in the southern part of the state. Nearly one in four residents and 10% of staff tested positive, Judith Persichilli, commissioner of New Jersey’s Department of Health, said at a press conference Tuesday. –WSJ
In the night sky, far south of the equator, there’s a curious collection of faint constellations embedded in the tapestry of stars. They do not bear the names of myths and legends, because the ancient Greeks couldn’t see them from the Northern Hemisphere. These constellations were charted later, in the mid-18th century, by a French astronomer who sailed south, and he named them in honor of some rather mundane objects of his own time: a telescope, a microscope, a pendulum clock, an easel, various other tools and chisels. “It looked like somebody’s attic!” an American astronomer later remarked. And just like a cluttered attic, this corner of sky has been hiding something truly remarkable.
Astronomers have discovered a black hole in one of the constellations, the suitably named Telescopium. At just 1,000 light-years away, the black hole is closer to our solar system than any other that astronomers have found to date. A thousand light-years might sound distant to us, but in cosmic proportions, it’s very close. “On the scale of the Milky Way, it’s in our backyard,” Thomas Rivinius, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile who led the new research, told me. “Almost on our doorstep.” For comparison, consider some of the best-known black holes in astronomy, the ones usually intriguing enough to make headlines. The black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy is more than 25,000 light-years away, and the black hole that astronomers captured in unprecedented detail last year lies 55 million light-years away, in another galaxy altogether.
This one, by contrast, is so close that, on a clear night in the Southern Hemisphere, far from light pollution, the pair of stars that orbit the black hole can be seen with the naked eye. From here, the stars appear as a single pinprick of light. So, if this black hole is, at least in astronomical terms, right there, how has it eluded astronomers for so long? Well, there’s the obvious: Black holes are invisible. The way to find the darkest points in the universe is to look for luminous clues around them. Most of the black holes that astronomers have found in our galaxy—a few dozen—were spotted because they were devouring nearby stars, pulling material into their maws and past a point of no return. That process is so luminous that not only can black holes be detected from Earth, but they’re actually quite difficult to avoid. “Sometimes they become the brightest objects in the sky,” says Erin Kara, an astrophysicist at MIT who studies black holes and was not involved in the latest discovery. In fact, some black holes emit so much radiation while they feed that telescopes can’t look at them without frying their electronics, Kara says.
Don’t worry: Despite its proximity to Earth, the black hole is no danger to us. It’s a blip compared to the one at the center of our own galaxy, which has a mass 4 million times that of our sun. And, as far as humanity is concerned, it’s not close enough to pose any kind of threat. “One has to be very close to it to be sucked in,” Rivinius said. There are many more like it. Black holes are the by-products of aging stars that exploded in spectacular fashion at the end of their lifetime. Such supernovas can, briefly, outshine entire galaxies, but nearby, companion stars can survive the cataclysm, which explains why HR 6819 still exists. Astronomers estimate there are hundreds of millions of black holes in our galaxy. The latest discovery gives them hope that there are others lurking around nearby stars, perhaps even some of the most familiar points of light in our sky. “It’s important to emphasize that it’s the closest we’ve found yet,” says Sera Markoff, an astrophysicist at the University of Amsterdam and a member of the team that produced last year’s historic black-hole photo. “There might be closer ones.” –The Atlantic
No one saw it coming until it was right on top of us – more like above us, actually. A previously unseen asteroid the size of a truck flew about 4,350 miles (7,000 kilometers) over the Pacific Ocean on Monday, making it one of the closest passes by our planet on record. Astronomers had no notice of asteroid 2020 JJ’s existence, as it was discovered using the Mt. Lemmon Survey in Arizona right around the time it reached its closest point to us. NASA keeps an online database of close approaches by asteroids and other “near-Earth objects” going back to 1900, and 2020 JJ comes in as the sixth closest approach ever recorded. It should be noted that the top 10 close approaches have all come since 2004. This isn’t because asteroids started attacking us in the 21st century.
Rather, it says something about how astronomers and their technology are becoming better at spotting ever-smaller and closer asteroids. Asteroid 2020 JJ is estimated to be between nine and 20 feet (2.7 to 6 meters) across, making it a pretty puny little hunk of space junk. Consider that asteroid 1998 OR2, which made headlines recently for its close pass (not nearly as close as 2020 JJ), is a mile across. Had 2020 JJ actually struck Earth, most of it probably would have burned up in the atmosphere.
In other words, this space rock wasn’t any sort of existential threat, but it did fly closer than many of the satellites orbiting our planet and could have potentially struck one, creating a big mess. Close asteroid passes like this aren’t really anything worth worrying about, but it’s always worth keeping an eye on what’s going on near our planet. You can catch some interesting sights by watching the sky this week, like the Eta Aquarid meteor shower and the last supermoon of the year. –CNET
Scientists have identified a new strain of the coronavirus that has become dominant worldwide and appears to be more contagious than the versions that spread in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The new strain appeared in February in Europe, migrated quickly to the East Coast of the United States and has been the dominant strain across the world since mid-March, the scientists wrote. In addition to spreading faster, it may make people vulnerable to a second infection after a first bout with the disease, the report warned.
The 33-page report was posted Thursday on BioRxiv, a website that researchers use to share their work before it is peer reviewed, an effort to speed up collaborations with scientists working on COVID-19 vaccines or treatments. That research has been largely based on the genetic sequence of earlier strains and might not be effective against the new one. The mutation identified in the new report affects the now infamous spikes on the exterior of the coronavirus, which allow it to enter human respiratory cells. The report’s authors said they felt an “urgent need for an early warning” so that vaccines and drugs under development around the world will be effective against the mutated strain.
Wherever the new strain appeared, it quickly infected far more people than the earlier strains that came out of Wuhan, China, and within weeks it was the only strain that was prevalent in some nations, according to the report. The new strain’s dominance over its predecessors demonstrates that it is more infectious, according to the report, though exactly why is not yet known. The coronavirus, known to scientists as SARS-CoV-2, has infected more than 3.5 million people around the world and caused more than 250,000 COVID-19 deaths since its discovery late last year. The report was based on a computational analysis of more than 6,000 coronavirus sequences from around the world, collected by the Global Initiative for Sharing All Influenza Data, a public-private organization in Germany. Time and again, the analysis found the new version was transitioning to become dominant. –Yahoo
A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now killed more than a quarter of a million people worldwide. Over 3.6 million people across the globe have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new respiratory virus, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and suspicions that some governments are hiding the scope of their nations’ outbreaks. A coronavirus model now forecasts that nearly 135,000 people will die of COVID-19 in the United States by early August — almost double its previous projection.
Fifteen children, many of whom tested positive for or had previously been exposed to the novel coronavirus, have recently been admitted to New York City hospitals with a mysterious illness possibly linked to COVID-19, health officials said in an alert Monday night. The patients, aged 2 to 15, had been hospitalized in intensive care from April 17 to May 1 with various symptoms associated with toxic shock or Kawasaki disease, a rare inflammatory syndrome typically affecting children under the age of 5. None of the reported patients have died, though more than half required blood pressure support and five needed mechanical ventilation, according to the bulletin posted by the New York City Health Department.
“Clinical features vary, depending on the affected organ system, but have been noted to include features of Kawasaki disease or features of shock,” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, deputy city health commissioner for disease control, said in the alert Monday night. “However, the full spectrum of disease is not yet known.” All 15 patients had subjective or measured fever while more than half reported rash, abdominal pain, vomiting or diarrhea. Less than half of those patients reported respiratory symptoms, according to the city health department, which described the mystery ailment as a “multi-system inflammatory syndrome potentially associated with COVID-19.” Molecular diagnostic testing showed four of the patients were positive for the virus strain that causes COVID-19, while antibody testing revealed that six who had tested negative were likely previously infected with the virus. –ABC News
Paris (AFP) – As several nations begin relaxing their lock-downs following an initial peak in COVID-19 cases, attention is turning to how they can avoid a “second wave” of infections as social distancing is eased. Italy and Spain — two of the hardest hit countries — have already started allowing people outside to exercise for the first time in nearly two months, and several US states are allowing businesses to reopen. In France, where confinement measures are set to lift on May 11, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said there is a “fine line” between lifting restrictions on movement and avoiding a new surge in infections of a disease that has killed nearly a quarter of a million people globally.
“The risk of a second wave — which would hit our already fragile hospitals, which would need us to reimpose confinement and waste the efforts and sacrifices we’ve already made — is serious,” he said last week. Social distancing has proved effective in flattening the curve of new COVID-19 cases, buying health systems crucial time to recover and regroup. But it has also meant that a very small percentage of populations are likely to have been infected and thus developed immunity. France’s Pasteur Institute estimates that only around six percent of the country’s population will have been infected by May 11. Even in virus hot-spots in France, it is thought that no more than 25 percent of people caught COVID-19 during the pandemic’s first wave.
This means that without a viable vaccine, experts say it is impossible to imagine life returning to normal any time soon. “It will take several weeks or even several months to see the virus circulating again” at a high level, virologist Anne Goffard told France Inter radio. A second wave of infections was likely, she said, “at the earliest at the end of August.” But while experts are more or less united on the probability of a new spike in cases as lock-downs are eased, there is debate over how the second wave will compare with the first. –Yahoo News
The world will never be the same again: “I’m quite certain that this is going to go in waves,” Laurie Garrett, Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Coming Plague, added. “It won’t be a tsunami that comes across America all at once and then retreats all at once. It will be micro-waves that shoot up in Des Moines and then in New Orleans and then in Houston and so on, and it’s going to affect how people think about all kinds of things.”
So, I asked, is “back to normal,” a phrase that so many people cling to, a fantasy? “This is history right in front of us,” Garrett said. “Did we go ‘back to normal’ after 9/11? No. We created a whole new normal. We securitized the United States. We turned into an anti-terror state. And it affected everything. We couldn’t go into a building without showing ID and walking through a metal detector, and couldn’t get on airplanes the same way ever again. That’s what’s going to happen with this.” –MSN
As countries lie frozen in lock-down and billions of people lose their livelihoods, public figures are teasing a breakthrough that would mark the end of the crippling coronavirus pandemic: a vaccine. But there is another, worst-case possibility: that no vaccine is ever developed. In this outcome, the public’s hopes are repeatedly raised and then dashed, as various proposed solutions fall before the final hurdle.
Grim new reality:If the COVID-19 pandemic persists and we never develop an effective vaccine, we could see so-called COVID clinics popping up all over the world – infectious disease control centers, whose only specialty will be in diagnosing and treating patients infected with the coronavirus.
Instead of wiping out COVID-19, societies may instead learn to live with it. Cities would slowly open and some freedoms will be returned, but on a short leash, if experts’ recommendations are followed. Testing and physical tracing will become part of our lives in the short term, but in many countries, an abrupt instruction to self-isolate could come at any time. Treatments may be developed — but outbreaks of the disease could still occur each year, and the global death toll would continue to tick upwards. It’s a path rarely publicly countenanced by politicians, who are speaking optimistically about human trials already underway to find a vaccine. But the possibility is taken very seriously by many experts — because it’s happened before. Several times.
“There are some viruses that we still do not have vaccines against,” says Dr. David Nabarro, a professor of global health at Imperial College London, who also serves as a special envoy to the World Health Organization on COVID-19. “We can’t make an absolute assumption that a vaccine will appear at all, or if it does appear, whether it will pass all the tests of efficacy and safety. “It’s absolutely essential that all societies everywhere get themselves into a position where they are able to defend against the coronavirus as a constant threat, and to be able to go about social life and economic activity with the virus in our midst,” Nabarro tells CNN.
Most experts remain confident that a COVID-19 vaccine will eventually be developed; in part because, unlike previous diseases like HIV and malaria, the coronavirus does not mutate rapidly. Many, including National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci, suggest it could happen in a year to 18 months. Other figures, like England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty, have veered towards the more distant end of the spectrum, suggesting that a year may be too soon. But even if a vaccine is developed, bringing it to fruition in any of those time frames would be a feat never achieved before.
“We’ve never accelerated a vaccine in a year to 18 months,” Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, tells CNN. “It doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but it will be quite a heroic achievement. “We need plan A, and a plan B,” he says. In 1984, the US Secretary of Health and Human Services Margaret Heckler announced at a press conference in Washington, DC, that scientists had successfully identified the virus that later became known as HIV — and predicted that a preventative vaccine would be ready for testing in two years. Nearly four decades and 32 million deaths later, the world is still waiting for an HIV vaccine. –CNN
The United States just had its deadliest day on record due to the coronavirus as states across the country begin to ease restrictions meant to curb the spread of the virus, according to data published by the World Health Organization. The U.S. saw 2,909 people die of Covid-19 in 24 hours, according to the data, which was collected as of 4 a.m. ET on Friday. That’s the highest daily Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. yet, based on a CNBC analysis of the WHO’s daily Covid-19 situation reports.
Former Republican Governor of Pennsylvania Tom Ridge, who also served as the Homeland Security secretary under President George W. Bush, says armed protesters demonstrating against COVID-19 lock-down orders are self-absorbed and not heroes.
Before May 1, the next highest U.S. daily death toll was 2,471 reported on April 23, according to the WHO. State officials have previously warned that data on Covid-19 deaths are difficult to analyze because they often represent patients who became ill and were hospitalized weeks ago. Representatives of the WHO did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. The country’s deadliest day comes as state officials weigh reopening parts of the economy and easing stay-at-home orders. Public health officials and epidemiologists have warned that as the public grows fatigued by restrictions and businesses reopen, the virus could spread rapidly throughout communities that have yet to experience a major epidemic.
Protesters in at least 10 states on Friday demanded that the government lift stay-at-home orders and other emergency measures put in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Among the states that saw protests are California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey. New York state, which has reported more than 27% of all confirmed cases in the U.S., according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, has borne the brunt of the U.S. outbreak so far. The state has reported at least 24,039 of the country’s 65,173 Covid-19 deaths, according to Hopkins. The toll of the deadliest day of Covid-19 in the U.S. rivals that of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, which claimed the lives of 2,973 people in one day, according to a government commission. –CNBC
The Extinction Protocol 