Category: Corona Virus

A store displays a sign before closing down permanently following the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, on Aug. 4, 2020 in Arlington, Va. The Small Business Administration's inspector general office said billions of dollars in relief loans may have been handed out to fraudsters or ineligible applicants. Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A store displays a sign before closing down permanently following the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, on Aug. 4, 2020 in Arlington, Va. The Small Business Administration's inspector general office said billions of dollars in relief loans may have been handed out to fraudsters or ineligible applicants.

The Small Business Administration may have handed out billions of dollars in loans to businesses that falsely claimed to have been damaged by the coronavirus lockdowns, a report from the agency said on Wednesday.

Officials at the agency were so inundated with requests for disaster aid starting last March that they couldn't adequately vet the applicants, according to the report from the Office of SBA Inspector General Michael Ware.

In one case, the agency approved 10 loans for 10 different bathroom renovation companies in the same city as part of the SBA's Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program.

"However, we were not able to locate any bathroom renovation companies in that company's name in that city. Additionally, the email address indicates it is for a burrito restaurant, which we did locate in that city. SBA disbursed $1.4 million for these potentially fraudulent companies," the report said.

In another case, applicants using the same email address at a fish market applied for 85 loans "in various company names of jewelry stores, psychiatric services, construction, gas stations, and other non-seafood businesses." All but one of the loans were approved.

Overall, the report says the SBA approved $78 billion in program applications to potentially fraudulent or ineligible applicants, although not all of that was ultimately disbursed.

The inspector general's report said the level of fraud was partly due to the speed with which the agency had to operate after the economy seized up in March because of the pandemic.

In days, an unprecedented number of loan applications came in. On March 31, more than 680,000 applications came in, the highest number applications ever received in a single day. By April 10, more than 4.5 million loan applications had come in.

"[The] SBA has now approved and disbursed more loans for COVID-19 relief than for all other disasters combined in the agency's history," the report said.

As a result, loan officers were given just 15 minutes to process each application, which "resulted in cursory reviews rather than the deeper reviews required to ensure loans were given to eligible businesses," the report noted.

The fact that some amount of fraud took place is not a surprise.

The Justice Department has charged several dozen people with fraudulently applying for loans under the main coronavirus assistance programs, and law enforcement officials say investigations are continuing.

The suspected fraud took place as scammers and others took advantage of the programs set up by Congress to provide assistance to small businesses and others in the midst of the pandemic.

SBA officials quickly took issue with the report, saying it had mischaracterized many of the applications.

SBA Administrator Jovita Carranza said many of the "potentially fraudulent" loans were legitimate transactions that had been mischaracterized.

Many of the examples of shared IP and e-mail addresses involved loan applications by people who relied on certified public accountants, law firms, loan packagers, or religious and cultural centers to submit their loan applications, she said.

The report "does not fully and accurately portray SBA's highly successful delivery of an unprecedented volume of disaster assistance. Rather, the [report] grossly overstates the risk of fraud, waste, and abuse in the ... program," she said.

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Billions In COVID-19 Relief Loans May Have Been Handed Out To Scammers, Report Says - NPR

WASHINGTON The resurgence of coronavirus cases engulfing the United States and Europe is imperiling economic recoveries on both sides of the Atlantic as millions of individuals and businesses face the prospect of having to hunker down once again.

Growing fear of an economic reversal coincided with a report Thursday that the U.S. economy grew at a record 33.1% annual rate in the July-September quarter. Even with that surge, the worlds largest economy has yet to fully rebound from its plunge in spring when the virus first erupted. And now the economy is slowing just as new confirmed viral cases accelerate and rescue aid from Washington has dried up.

If many consumers and companies choose or are forced to retrench again in response to the virus as they did in the spring, the pullback in spending and hiring could derail economic growth. Already, in the United and Europe, some governments are re-imposing restrictions to help stem the spread of the virus.

In Chicago, where Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois has banned indoor dining and drinking, Grant DePorter, who runs Harry Carays Restaurant Group, worries that the blow to restaurants and their employees could be severe.

When indoor dining was first shut down in the spring, he noted, employees could get by thanks to a $600-a-week federal unemployment benefit. That benefit has expired.

Everyone is incredibly disappointed by the states decision, DePorter said.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron has declared a nationwide lockdown starting Friday. And in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a four-week shutdown of bars, restaurants and theaters. Merkel warned of a difficult winter as Germanys daily reported coronavirus cases hit a new high Thursday.

In Rheinberg, Germany, Michael Boehm had set up plastic igloos outside his restaurant to welcome guests during the winter. But Germanys new restrictions, Boehm said, will threaten businesses like his by forcing them to provide only take-away meals through November.

People prefer to sit outside, he said ruefully. We do everything possible, my colleagues do everything possible, too, to ensure that our guests come home healthy.

A major uncertainty is whether most people will abide by government directives or whether the resistance to lockdowns and other restrictions that have emerged in parts of the United States and Europe will slow progress in controlling the pandemic. President Donald Trump, facing an election in five days, has loudly denounced states and cities that have imposed restrictions on businesses to help control the pandemic. And many of his supporters have registered their agreement.

In Spain, some regions have closed bars and restaurants. But the government hasnt provided subsidies to aid the proprietors, triggering protests in Barcelona this week by business owners who banged pots, waved cocktail shakers and chanted, We want to work!

The U.S. governments estimate Thursday of third-quarter growth showed that the economy has regained only about two-thirds of the output that was lost early this year when the eruption of the virus closed businesses, threw tens of millions out of work and caused the deepest recession since the Great Depression.

The economy is now weakening again and facing renewed threats. Confirmed viral cases are surging. Hiring has sagged. Federal stimulus has run out. With no further federal aid in sight this year, Goldman Sachs has slashed its growth forecast for the current fourth quarter to a 3% annual rate from 6%.

Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, noted that the record-high third quarter growth in the nations gross domestic product tells us little, if anything, about momentum heading into the current quarter.

The strong GDP performance gives a false impression of the economys true health, Daco wrote in a research note. We anticipate a much slower second phase of the recovery.

Likewise in Germany, Europes largest economy, Oxford Economics has raised the possibility that its already pessimistic forecast of 1.2% growth for the fourth quarter will have to be downgraded. Oxfords forecast is based on an index that reflects credit card payments, online restaurant reservations, health statistics and mobility data.

Another setback for the U.S. economy would again most likely imperil front-line service companies from restaurants and bars to hotels, airlines and entertainment venues. Boeing, for example, said this week that it will cut 7,000 more jobs because the pandemic has smothered demand for new planes.

Perhaps no economic sector is under a darker cloud than the bar and restaurant industry, which is both vulnerable to the spread of the virus and deeply affected by government restrictions.

Dr. Emily Landon, a medical director at the University of Chicagos medical school, said two factors facilitate the viruss spread in winter, especially at restaurants: Colder air is drier, and the droplets that transmit the virus become even smaller.

Add to that, she said, what people do in a bar or restaurant.

There are only a couple activities where you have to take your masks off around other people, and that is dining in a restaurant and going to a bar, Landon noted. There is just no way to escape the risks (of COVID-19) when you go into a restaurant.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moodys Analytics, warned that the job market might not fully recover until perhaps 2023 because many of the jobs in retailing, leisure and airlines have been permanently lost, and those folks will have to find different work, and that will take time.

In contrast to the hospitality sector, some industries are actually faring well, pointing up the unevenness of the pandemic economy. From Amazon and Walmart to delivery services like UPS, Grubhub and DoorDash, some companies have benefited from evolving consumer demands. So have companies involved in streaming or cloud computing services, like Netflix, Microsoft and Comcast.

But for the U.S. economy as a whole, the prospect that the virus could roar back is a growing fear. Add to that the failure of Congress to pass another rescue aid plan now that the package it enacted back in spring has expired. That $2 trillion package managed to ease the pain of the recession by boosting incomes and spending and supporting small businesses. Without additional aid, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has warned, those dynamics could re-emerge.

The $600-a-week federal unemployment benefit and $1,200 stimulus checks that went to most individuals under last springs federal aid package enabled many of the jobless to rebuild savings, allowing them to keep spending even after the $600 supplement expired in July. Both are now long gone.

Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial Services, envisions a slowdown to GDP growth to 4.8% annual rate in the current quarter and a 3.7% rate in the first three months of 2021. But he said he might have to reduce his forecasts if either pandemic worsens or Congress fails to provide more economic stimulus early next year.

If many states felt compelled to impose shutdowns in response to an acceleration of the virus," Faucher said, the economy could even fall back into recession.

I am concerned, Faucher said, that the longer it takes to get a stimulus bill, the more structural damage we will see to the economy with more businesses closing.

___

AP Writers David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany; Daniel Niemann in Rheinberg, Germany; Don Babwin, Kathleen Foody and Sophia Tareen in Chicago; John OConnor in Springfield, Illinois; and Christopher Rugaber, Darlene Superville and Deb Riechmann in Washington contributed to this report.

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Coronavirus resurgence is threatening economic recovery in U.S., Europe - OregonLive

MINOCQUA, Wis. When coronavirus cases began to spike in Wisconsin this fall, Rob Swearingen kept his restaurant open and let customers and employees decide whether they wanted to wear masks.

Mr. Swearingen, a Republican seeking his fifth term in the Wisconsin State Assembly, didnt require other employees at his restaurant in Rhinelander to be tested after a waitress and a bartender contracted the virus because, he said, nobody from the local health department suggested it was necessary.

Kirk Bangstad, Mr. Swearingens Democratic opponent, took the opposite approach at the brewpub he owns in Minocqua, 30 miles away. He has served customers only outdoors, and when a teenage waiter became infected after attending a party, Mr. Bangstad shut down for a long weekend and required all employees to get tested.

Mr. Bangstad has since turned his entire campaign into a referendum on how Republicans have handled the coronavirus. On Facebook, he has served as a town shamer, posting lists of restaurants and stores in Wisconsins Northwoods that have disregarded state limits on seating capacity and dont require masks.

With just days until the election, the contest for Mr. Swearingens Assembly seat in this lightly populated area in the Northwoods of Wisconsin serves as a microcosm for the way coronavirus politics are playing out across America. Mr. Bangstad is unlikely to prevail in a Republican-heavy district that covers parts of four counties stretching south from Michigans Upper Peninsula, but his effort to make the campaign a referendum on the virus echoes that of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has sought to make President Trumps handling of the pandemic the central issue in the presidential contest.

Mr. Bangstad, a 43-year-old Harvard-educated former professional opera singer, moved back to Wisconsin six years ago from Manhattan, where he was a technology consultant and served as the policy director for Anthony Weiners 2013 mayoral campaign. Like Mr. Biden, he has eschewed traditional campaigning. He has moved his entire effort online, including in email and on the Facebook page of his brewpub, the Minocqua Brewing Company.

But unlike the former vice president, Mr. Bangstad has made little effort to win over voters who arent already appalled by Republicans handling of the coronavirus. Many of them, he said, are being duped by false or misleading statements by the president and the conservative news media.

A lot of them, I feel, havent been equipped with the tools of media literacy or critical thinking skills to be able to discern if theyre being told something that doesnt quite jell or is not true, he said during an interview this week at his shuttered restaurant overlooking Lake Minocqua.

Oneida County, which includes Minocqua and Rhinelander, where Mr. Swearingen operates the Al-Gen Dinner Club and has lived his entire life, has a virus rate nearly twice the state average over the past two weeks.

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Scott Haskins, whose wife, Pamela, is a waitress at the Al-Gen, is among the countys recent fatalities. Ms. Haskins contracted the virus after working a restaurant shift in mid-September and was hospitalized in early October. Mr. Haskins, 63, checked into the hospital with the virus four days after his wife, according to his daughter, Kelly Schulz.

Two days later, Mr. Haskins suffered a stroke and died.

The day after my dad passed, Governor Evers put in the 25 percent capacity limit, and they werent abiding by it, Ms. Schulz said of the Al-Gen. People were posting pictures of themselves there on Facebook and it was pretty busy for a Friday night.

Republicans who control the state legislature this month successfully sued Mr. Evers to overturn the capacity limits on bars and restaurants he ordered. In Oneida County, local sheriffs and town police departments werent enforcing them anyway.

Before winning election to the Assembly, Mr. Swearingen, 57, was the president of the Tavern League of Wisconsin, the powerful lobbying group for the states bars. He fought the states efforts to ban smoking indoors at businesses, lift the drinking age to 21 from 18 and lower the legal blood alcohol limit to drive.

He said his restaurant is not responsible for employees who caught the coronavirus. No one from the local health department ever called with questions, he said, and no contact tracers contacted the restaurant. Mr. Swearingen said he has not had a test himself.

Theres been no connection to the restaurant to all these cases, he said during an interview in the dining room of the Al-Gen, which is bedecked with taxidermied heads of deer and black bears. These people are part-time, coming from different jobs and different things.

Of all the places where Democrats barely bothered to compete in 2016, Wisconsins Northwoods may have been the most neglected. Not only did Hillary Clinton skip Wisconsin altogether, county Democrats in this region didnt even have yard signs to distribute, not that there was much demand for them.

Mrs. Clinton was a polarizing candidate, said Matt Michalsen, a high school social studies teacher who ran against Mr. Swearingen in 2016. Personally, did I support her? No.

Four years later, Mr. Bangstad has few expectations that he will win. He sees his campaign largely as an effort to increase Democratic turnout for Mr. Biden and cut into Mr. Trumps margins by focusing attention on the impact of the coronavirus on northern Wisconsin.

Oct. 29, 2020, 7:49 p.m. ET

Mr. Bangstad wrapped the side of his restaurant in a giant Biden-Harris sign that attracted the ire of the Oneida County Board, which sent a letter informing him that it exceeded the allowable size of 32 square feet. After Mr. Bangstad used the fracas to raise money and get more attention for himself in the local press, the board backed down.

At the same time, the Biden campaign and local Democrats have put far more resources into northern Wisconsin than they did four years ago. There are twice as many organizers focused on the area than in 2016. And though the Clinton campaign swore off yard signs as an unnecessary annoyance, the state party has made efforts to get them in every yard that would take one.

We distributed approximately 50 Hillary yard signs four years ago, and were at more than 1,200 so far for Joe, said Jane Nicholson, the party chairwoman in Vilas County, just north of Oneida County.

Theres some evidence that Mr. Biden is making up ground. A poll taken for Mr. Bangstads campaign this month found Mr. Trump leading Mr. Biden in the district by five percentage points a far cry from his 25-point margin of victory in 2016. The same survey found Mr. Swearingen ahead by 12 points, less than half his 26-point margin over Mr. Michalsen four years ago.

Mr. Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 by less than 23,000 votes statewide. His gap in Mr. Swearingens district alone was 14,000 votes.

If were in the low 40s there, that means that we have blocked Trumps path to pulling in the votes that hed need to cancel out other areas of the state, said Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.

The Assembly race has engendered hurt feelings and worsened political divisions in Minocqua, a town of about 4,000 full-time residents. Down the street from the Minocqua Brewing Company, Tracy Lin Grigus, a Trump supporter who owns the Shade Tree bookstore, shook her head at Mr. Bangstads attempts to shame local businesses.

On his Facebook, hes calling all of us up here idiots, like a mini Joe Biden, said Ms. Grigus, who doesnt wear a mask in her store and doesnt ask her customers to do so. Its insulting to people that share the space with him and other business owners. Hes like the only one in this town and surrounding towns that went this far.

Across Oneida Street, the main drag through Minocquas small downtown, Casie Oldenhoff, an assistant manager at the Monkey Business T-shirt shop, where signs instruct customers to wear a mask, said Mr. Trump was to blame for the current wave of the pandemic.

Hes just not taking care of us, Ms. Oldenhoff said. He doesnt care about whats going on with the pandemic.

Mr. Swearingen said he had little doubt that Mr. Trump would do just as well in the Northwoods on Tuesday as he did in 2016. Enthusiasm for the president is higher, he said, as evidenced by the regular boat and car parades adorned with Trump flags and carrying young men concerned foremost about a Biden administration taking away their guns.

But he said he had never been involved in a campaign as ugly as his own this year.

Weve been targeted by my opponent as a den of Covid and all sorts of rumors in Facebook, he said. Ive never quite had to fight against Facebook in an election. He went after a couple of other bars in the area, and one of the bar owners was livid that that bar was on the list. Its like, Well, who are these people? Its the mask police or something.

For Mr. Bangstad, shaming Mr. Swearingen and other Republicans who have fought against public health guidelines is exactly the point.

If youre a citizen in this state, and theres one branch of government thats trying to keep people healthy from Covid, and you have the legislative branch and the judicial branch trying to stymie him every single time he does it, its the saddest thing youve ever seen, he said. As a Wisconsinite, Im just completely ashamed.

Andy Mills and Luke Vander Ploeg contributed reporting.

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How Virus Politics Divided a Conservative Town in Wisconsins North - The New York Times

At least we know more now, I offer. This is not false reassurance. We know that masks and distancing, testing and contact tracing, can prevent spread. Though there is no magic bullet for this disease, we know that a simple inexpensive steroid seems to save lives. The data for remdesivir, the antiviral so many families sought so desperately early on, are less clear, but it is likely helpful for some patients particularly early on in their disease course.

Perhaps more important, we have learned what doesnt work. We no longer rush to intubate earlier than we would in other diseases. For those patients who do need intubation, we recognize that meticulous critical care itself the daily drudgery of managing volume status and checking labs and titrating ventilator settings is a lifesaving intervention. Indeed, recent studies have demonstrated a significant drop in mortality among hospitalized patients with the virus. This should give us reason to be hopeful.

But mortality is not the only outcome that matters. We have also learned that infection with the coronavirus can bring with it a host of prolonged, debilitating symptoms now termed long-haul Covid even for those with only mild disease. And the impact of this virus is not isolated to those who are infected. I think of the rest of the patients in the hospital, their long and lonely admissions. I think of the families who struggle with our visitor policies, the pain of having to tell them that their loved one is critically ill but because the patient is not actively dying, the family cant spend the night. To say nothing of the cost to the elderly and isolated. I cared for a man recently who lived alone and had barely left his home in about six months. Only after he died did I realize that our central lines and breathing tube and finally chest compressions might have been the only physical contact he had felt since the spring. The true cost of this pandemic will not be measured in a body count.

So we control what we can. Looking ahead to the possibility of another surge here in the Northeast, as the cold air drives us indoors, we refine our protocols and procedures. We arrange schedules. We make cautious plans to see the people we love. We laugh when we can, even if nothing is actually funny, because that is better than the alternative.

A few days after my overnight shift, I check in on the patient list in the unit. The elderly man has worsened despite our most current therapies, and he is now intubated in the intensive care unit. As I read through his notes, I feel it all rush through me, the anticipation and the dread and the frustration and sadness of avoidable suffering. I close my eyes and I find myself thinking again of those brown bags of personal protective equipment. I hope that we will not need to make room for more.

Daniela J. Lamas is a critical care doctor at Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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Doctors Are Dreading the Third Coronavirus Wave - The New York Times

China appears to have comprehensively lost the international battle for hearts and minds over its handling of coronavirus with most people believing it was responsible for the start of the outbreak and was not transparent about the problem at the outset.

The findings come from the YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project, a survey of 26,000 people in 25 countries, designed with the Guardian.

It is the widest survey of global public opinion on Chinas handling of the pandemic, and the overwhelmingly negative attitude will disappoint Chinese diplomats, who have expended huge energy to deflect blame and paint the country as altruistically helping others to recover.

Overall, the poll suggests there is a receptive global audience for the next US president, if he chooses, to construct an international alliance to challenge Chinas growing political dominance, and to question the moral values of its leadership. There is no sense in the findings, however, that the US would be able to exploit its handling of the crisis to take on that leadership role.

The survey shows that in every country surveyed, apart from China, the public overwhelmingly believe that coronavirus was first detected in China. Nigeria had the highest rate (98%), closely followed by Greece and South Africa (97%) and Spain (96%). The countries with the lowest rates, apart from China, were Saudi Arabia, where 83% thought China was responsible, and the US (84%).

By contrast, only 52% of respondents in China believe that coronavirus was first detected in the country and just over one in 10 (12%) of respondents in China said they did not know when asked in which country the virus was first detected. Just under a third of these respondents believe the virus was first detected in the US.

Majorities in most countries also do not believe the Chinese government was transparent about coronavirus when it was first detected in the country at the end of 2019.

In Great Britain, four in five respondents believe that the Chinese authorities tried to hide the truth. Japan (84%) followed by Spain (82%) has the highest rate of respondents who believe the Chinese authorities tried to hide the truth, but the numbers are similar through the EU.

The public is less certain whether China sought to punish the doctors that first detected the virus, but majorities in every European country surveyed, save Greece, think China either definitely or probably sought to do so.

China will likely be disturbed that majorities in South Africa and Nigeria thought the country went to the extreme of punishing doctors. China has often regarded Africa as one of its more stable sources of political support.

Large numbers in many countries, often a fifth, say they simply do not know if doctors were targeted, an issue that is likely to be explored by the World Health Organizations external inquiry into the virus outbreak.

Many also blame the Chinese government by saying it could have prevented the spread of the virus. In Great Britain, 67% of respondents believe that the international spread of the virus could have been prevented if the Chinese government had responded more quickly.

Opinion is divided about the country that has shown the most global leadership in the crisis, but the predominant finding is that no single country is singled out for this accolade.

Within China, nearly nine out of 10 respondents claim their government has shown the most global leadership. However, this view is hardly reflected globally with negligible numbers in Europe praising China.

The number of respondents praising China range from Sweden (1%), Great Britain (1%) Germany (2%), Australia (2%) and Japan (3%). In Thailand and Egypt more than a fifth cite China, but the most striking finding is how few people can point to any country as showing leadership.

A few countries praise Germany, but no country is seen as an inspirational leader. Only in Nigeria and the US did more than a fifth single out US leadership.

Originally posted here:

China loses trust internationally over coronavirus handling - The Guardian

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A surge in new cases of coronavirus in the midwest continues, as Donald Trump plans multiple rallies in the region and presidential rival Joe Biden heads out to campaign in Georgia.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University recorded 60,789 new cases in the US on Monday, not far off all-time highs reached at the weekend. Total cases have surpassed 8.6m, with more than 225,000 deaths.

Trump continues to bleed political support from the perception that he does not take the virus seriously. Despite that, on Monday night he held a ceremony at the White House for the supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett, which was reminiscent of an earlier event linked to an outbreak of Covid-19 that infected the president himself.

Trump, Barrett, her husband, Jesse Barrett, and the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas appeared outside the White House without masks for a ceremonial swearing-in.

On Tuesday, Trump traveled to a rally in Michigan and planned to go on to events in Wisconsin and Nebraska the same day, on a pre-election blitz across three states where cases are rising most steeply. New daily cases in Michigan have more than doubled in the last week, while Nebraska has one of the highest rates of test positivity in the nation at 21.5% over the last week, according to Johns Hopkins.

Wisconsin, one of the most important electoral prizes, where the Democratic governor has asked Trump previously not to hold rallies that could spread coronavirus, broke one-day state records on Tuesday in Covid-19 deaths and cases as state officials told residents to stay home, wear a mask, and implored them to cancel travel and social gatherings.

The state had 64 deaths due to the virus and 5,262 new cases over the last 24 hours, state officials said during an afternoon news conference.

Thousands of supporters attended a Trump rally last week in Waukesha, Wisconsin, for which a local rural activist group rented out a billboard reading Trump Covid Superspreader Event, with an arrow.

Local doctors urged the president not to hold a rally on Tuesday evening in western Wisconsin.

Returning to Wisconsin, repeating a reckless, risky event like a packed campaign rally is just asking for trouble, said Robert Freedland, an ophthalmologist in La Crosse and state representative for the Committee to Protect Medicare, according to a local media report.

In all likelihood, my colleagues in La Crosse will be putting on their N95 masks and dealing with the impacts of Trumps super-spreader event long after he leaves. It is dangerous and its unacceptable, Freedland said.

But the plea was likely to fall on unsympathetic ears in the Trump campaign, just as similar pleas did when the president held a rally in Janesville in the state earlier this month.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden delivered speeches with social distancing measures in place in Georgia, which has recorded fewer than 1,000 cases a day over the last seven days and where test positivity is at 7.2%.

While Covid-19 hotspots are proliferating across the US, the states undergoing the most serious increases are Illinois, Texas, Wisconsin, Tennessee and California, according to Johns Hopkins.

The vice-president, Mike Pence, who continues to campaign despite having been in close contact with confirmed Covid-19 cases including his chief of staff, planned to speak in North Carolina and South Carolina on Tuesday.

Bidens running mate, Kamala Harris, planned to speak in Nevada, where most voters vote early and Democrats are in a tough fight to keep the state blue.

Elections officials across the country have issued health safety guidelines for voters planning to visit polling sites in person.

The city of Green Bay, Wisconsin, advised voters to wear a mask, wash hands and maintain 6ft distance. In Michigan, the secretary of state issued personal protective equipment to all poll workers. More than half the teams in the National Basketball Association have taken steps to convert their facilities into safe polling places.

In states such as Texas that do not have a mask mandate, officials advised voters to take extra precautions.

To prevent becoming infected from someone who has Covid and is not wearing a mask, be sure to wear a mask to the polling site that is of sufficient quality to protect not only others, but also yourself, Erin Carlson, the director of graduate public health programs at the University of Texas at Arlington, told Mirage News.

Also, remember to carry your own black pen, stylus and hand sanitizer. If you dont have a stylus, bring a wipe to wipe down the polling booth touchscreen before you use it.

Residents in the border city of El Paso have been urged to stay home for two weeks as coronavirus cases threaten to overwhelm some hospitals, potentially keeping some voters away from polls.

We are in a crisis stage, said El Paso county judge Ricardo Samaniego.

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US coronavirus cases surge in midwest as Trump heads there in campaign push - The Guardian

From the start of the pandemic, supercomputing research has been targeting one particular protein of the coronavirus: the notorious S or spike protein, which allows the virus to pry its way into human cells and thus enables its infection of the human body. As a result, finding ways to attack or neutralize the spike protein is the cornerstone of much of the research on COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics but that research is complicated by the extraordinarily computationally intensive tasks of simulating the spike proteins various forms and binding vast numbers of molecules to those forms. Now, a duo of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and Istanbul Technical University are using supercomputing at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) to elucidate the most minute movements of the spike protein.

Spike protein-adjacent simulations have been near-ubiquitous in supercomputer-powered coronavirus research and the researchers know where they fit into that crowded landscape. Many groups are attacking different stages of this process, said Mert Gur, vice dean of the mechanical engineering department at Istanbul Technical University, in an interview with TACCs Aaron Dubrow. Our initial goal is to use molecular dynamics simulations to identify the processes that happen when the virus binds to the host cell.

Essentially, this involves four steps: first, the spike protein opens; second, it binds to the ACE2 receptor on a human cell; and third, that binding transforms the spike protein, which is split in two; and finally, the split spike protein forces the host cell to admit viral RNA. While the broad strokes of this process have been known since early in the year, the finer details of the movements of the spike protein between its fixed states have remained shrouded in relative mystery.

Gur and his colleague Ahment Yildiz, an associate professor of physics and molecular cell biology at UC Berkeley used an allocation on TACCs Stampede2 supercomputer (obtained through the COVID-19 HPC Consortium) to study these intermediary forms. A Dell EMC system, Stampede2 is equipped with Intel Xeon Phi CPUs and rates at 10.7 Linpack petaflops, placing it 21st on the most recent Top500 list of the worlds most powerful supercomputers. Yildiz and Gur performed all-atom simulations of the spike protein on Stampede2 and the results were illuminating.

We showed that the S protein visits an intermediate state before it can dock to the receptor protein on the host cell membrane Gur said. This intermediate state can be useful for drug targeting to prevent the S protein to initiate viral infection.

But the research went beyond just finding these intermediary states. The researchers worked to identify the individual amino acids that stabilize each state, aiming to find a way to introduce roadblocks in the physical changes of the spike protein.

If we can determine the important linkages at the single amino acid level which interactions stabilize and are critical for these confirmations it may be possible to target those states with small molecules, Yildiz said. Its a computationally demanding process, but the predictive power of this approach is very powerful.

The initial findings of this research, which have already been published in the Journal of Chemical Physics, were validated using lab experiments.

To read the reporting by TACCs Aaron Dubrow, click here.

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Frame by Frame, Supercomputing Reveals the Forms of the Coronavirus - HPCwire

The Tampa International Airport has started coronavirus testing for passengers with a boarding pass or proof of a reservation for a flight in the near future. Danny Valentine/Hillsborough County Aviation Authority hide caption

The Tampa International Airport has started coronavirus testing for passengers with a boarding pass or proof of a reservation for a flight in the near future.

For people who are itching to travel, airlines are working hard to offer reassurance. They're requiring masks, disinfecting airplane cabins between flights and using hospital-grade HEPA air filtration systems. Airlines are also touting a recent study that shows that modern aircraft ventilation systems help prevent the spread of the coronavirus and suggests the probability of spreading and contracting the coronavirus on even a packed airline flight is low.

Now they're offering one more thing in hopes of putting travelers' minds at ease about flying: testing for the coronavirus at the airport, before you board your flight. The tests are allowing some travelers to reschedule and take vacations they had to cancel or postpone months ago.

Matt Battiata and his wife and four kids had to postpone a dream vacation to Hawaii's lush landscapes and sparkling beaches back in March, when the island state began requiring every traveler to self-quarantine for 14 days upon arrival. That essentially shut down tourism there. After all, who would want to fly all the way to Hawaii just to be trapped in their hotel room for two weeks?

But the Battiata family finally landed at Honolulu's airport last week.

"We're just happy to be able to come and visit," Battiata said after presenting proof of the family's negative coronavirus tests to airport workers on the first day Hawaii reopened to those who test negative for the coronavirus.

"We got a rapid test, it took about 30 minutes, you know, a nasal swab test," Battiata said, adding that "everybody's clear, yeah, so we're very excited."

Airlines are excited, too, to get paying customers back on their planes, so they're helping facilitate coronavirus testing for travelers heading to certain destinations, like Hawaii. And some are even offering on-the-spot, rapid response testing at the airport before passengers go through security.

United Airlines was first to announce on-the-spot preflight testing, which it offers only at San Francisco's airport for Hawaii-bound travelers. For results in 15 minutes, it costs you $250, on top of the airfare. There are also less expensive drive-up or clinic testing options, which provide results usually in less than 48 hours.

United and other airlines have worked with Hawaii public health officials to make sure the tests meet the state's requirements for accuracy and reliability.

United Airlines was the first to announce on-the-spot preflight testing, which it offers only at San Francisco's airport for Hawaii-bound travelers. Courtesy of United Airlines hide caption

United Airlines was the first to announce on-the-spot preflight testing, which it offers only at San Francisco's airport for Hawaii-bound travelers.

Other airlines are now offering coronavirus testing, too, including American, JetBlue and Hawaiian. And some airports are getting into the coronavirus testing game, too.

"We do the test right here in the main terminal," says Joe Lopano, CEO of Tampa International Airport. "We only test travelers, so you have to have either a boarding pass or proof of a reservation for a flight in the near future."

And Lopano says the testing "is not just destination specific or airline specific. Any traveler going anywhere on any airline can get the test."

The Tampa airport is offering two kinds of tests.

"The rapid test, which will give you results in 15 minutes, costs $57," Lopano says. "And then the more accurate PCR test costs $125 and you get your results within 48 hours."

Lopano says some people will take the rapid test on the day they're flying to have some reassurance before visiting friends and family, while those going to specific destinations that require travelers to test negative less than three days before arrival will come to the airport a day or two ahead of time to take the more reliable PCR test.

"You know, this pandemic is a threat to our business, so we have to find a way to work through it," Lopano says. "[The coronavirus testing] helps. It's not the ultimate solution which a vaccine would be. We want to be proactive. We have to be part of the solution on this virus."

Other airports offering preflight coronavirus testing include Newark, New York's JFK, Hartford and Oakland, which is offering testing for Hawaii-bound travelers for free.

"What the airlines and airports are trying to do is remove every possible obstacle people have when they start to think about taking a trip," says Henry Harteveldt, president and travel industry analyst for the Atmosphere Research Group, a travel industry research firm. "They want to make it as easy for people to travel and to travel confidently."

But public health experts say not all rapid response tests are equal, and some are not all that accurate.

"Most of the rapid tests that are inexpensive and can be done frequently and easily have a lower sensitivity," says Mercedes Carnethon, an epidemiologist and professor of pulmonary and critical care at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. "And what that means is that the likelihood that they will actually identify a positive case in an asymptomatic individual is fairly low."

"You can get a negative test but in fact, a day or two later, your viral levels can surge and then you're really quite infectious," Carnethon says. She adds that she fears on-the-spot, rapid result testing may give travelers "a false sense of security," especially those coming from areas where the number of coronavirus cases are surging again, who may then believe that they are coronavirus-free, when they still may be carrying the virus.

"I don't see a reality in which you can test your way out of the behaviors that are directly related to preventing the spread of the disease," Carnethon says, pointing to high profile events, such as the White House Rose Garden ceremony where President Trump announced he was nominating Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. "Much was made over statements that everyone was tested and tested negative before they were able to come. And yet we see transmission."

Nonetheless, a growing number of airline, travel industry and business groups are calling for widespread pre-flight coronavirus testing to eliminate the need for travel bans and quarantines, in an effort to jump start an industry decimated by the pandemic. Industry figures show that domestic air travel is down more than 60% from pre-pandemic levels and international travel is down 78%.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the U.S. Travel Association, the International Air Transport Association, Airlines for America, airline employee unions and others are calling on the Trump Administration, state governors and several foreign countries "to pursue a risk-based and data-driven approach to coronavirus testing which would obviate the need for quarantines and travel bans so that the travel network can be safely reopened."

The group say 18 states currently have some kind of quarantine requirement in place for travelers from out of state. The U.S. still bans entry by nearly all non-U.S. citizens who recently were in China, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Brazil, Iran and parts of Europe. And nearly all of Europe still prohibits most U.S. travelers from entering.

The groups say "the continued restrictions on international travel and differing state and international quarantine policies are hampering the recovery of the U.S. economy."

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Itching To Travel? Preflight Coronavirus Tests Are Getting Passengers In The Air - NPR

An employee takes a pile of chairs inside a closing bar on the Place du Capitole in Toulouse, France on Saturday. Coronavirus cases in the country just topped a million, and there's a new government-imposed curfew. In large parts of the France you can't be out after 9 p.m. Fred Scheiber/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

An employee takes a pile of chairs inside a closing bar on the Place du Capitole in Toulouse, France on Saturday. Coronavirus cases in the country just topped a million, and there's a new government-imposed curfew. In large parts of the France you can't be out after 9 p.m.

The U.S. looks poised to exceed its summer peak, when the country averaged as many as 65,000 cases a day for a 10-day stretch in late July. The seven-day average of cases is now more than 69,000, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

The situation is similar in Europe, which just logged more new cases than any week so far.

Cases are rising in North Dakota faster than any other state. Fargo Mayor Tim Mahoney recently imposed a mask mandate there.

NPR's Will Stone reports on the growing outbreak in the Midwest, where some hospitals may not be able to handle an influx of COVID-19 patients.

In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

This episode was produced by Brianna Scott Lee Hale, and Brent Baughman. It was edited by Sami Yenigun with help from Wynne Davis. Additional reporting from Eleanor Beardsley. Our executive producer is Cara Tallo.

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Coronavirus Cases Are Surging Past The Summer Peak And Not Just In The U.S. : Consider This from NPR - NPR

Some survivors of Covid-19 carry worrying signs that their immune system has turned on the body, reminiscent of potentially debilitating diseases like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, a new study has found.

At some point, the bodys defense system in these patients shifted into attacking itself, rather than the virus, the study suggests. The patients are producing molecules called autoantibodies that target genetic material from human cells, instead of from the virus.

This misguided immune response may exacerbate severe Covid-19. It may also explain why so-called long haulers have lingering problems months after their initial illness has resolved and the virus is gone from their bodies.

The findings carry important implications for treatment: Using existing tests that can detect autoantibodies, doctors could identify patients who might benefit from treatments used for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. There is no cure for these diseases, but some treatments decrease the frequency and severity of flare-ups.

Its possible that you could hit the appropriate patients harder with some of these more aggressive drugs and expect better outcomes, said Matthew Woodruff, an immunologist at Emory University in Atlanta and lead author of the work.

The results were reported Friday on the preprint server MedRxiv, and have not yet been published in a scientific journal. But other experts said the researchers who carried out the study are known for their careful, meticulous work, and that the findings are not unexpected because other viral illnesses also trigger autoantibodies.

Im not surprised, but its interesting to see that its really happening, said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University. Its possible that even moderate to mild disease may induce this kind of antibody response.

For months it has been clear that the coronavirus can cause the immune system to run amok in some people, ultimately wreaking more damage to the body than the virus itself. (Dexamethasone, the steroid President Trump took after his Covid diagnosis, has proved effective in some people with severe Covid to tamp down this over-exuberant immune response.)

Viral infections cause infected human cells to die. Sometimes the cells die a quiet death but sometimes, and especially in the throes of severe infection, they can blow up, strewing their innards. When that happens, DNA, normally cloistered in coiled bundles inside the nucleus, is suddenly scattered and visible.

In the typical response to a virus, cells known as B immune cells make antibodies that recognize pieces of viral RNA from the virus and lock onto them.

But in conditions like lupus, some B cells never learn to do this and instead produce autoantibodies that glom onto DNA debris from dead human cells, mistaking them for intruders. Something similar may be happening in patients with Covid-19, the research suggests.

Anytime you have that combination of inflammation and cell death, there is the potential for autoimmune disease and autoantibodies, more importantly, to emerge, said Marion Pepper, an immunologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Dr. Woodruff and his colleagues reported earlier this month that some people with severe Covid-19 also have such unrefined B immune cells. The finding prompted them to explore whether those B cells make autoantibodies.

In the new study, the researchers looked at 52 patients within the Emory health care system in Atlanta who were classified as having either severe or critical Covid-19, but who had no history of autoimmune disorders.

They found autoantibodies that recognize DNA in nearly half of the patients. They also found antibodies against a protein called rheumatoid factor and others that help with blood clotting. Among the top half of the most seriously ill patients, more than 70 percent had autoantibodies against one of the targets tested, Dr. Woodruff said.

Its not just that these patients have an autoimmune-like immune response, he said. Its that those immune responses are coupled with actual true testable clinical auto-reactivities.

Some of the autoantibodies the researchers identified are associated with blood flow problems, noted Ann Marshak-Rothstein, an immunologist and lupus expert at the University of Massachusetts, Worcester.

Its very possible that some of the coagulation issues that you see in Covid-19 patients are being driven by these kinds of immune complexes, she said.

If the autoantibodies do turn out to be long-lasting, she said, they may result in persistent, even lifelong, problems for Covid-19 survivors.

You never really cure lupus they have flares, and they get better and they have flares again, she said. And that may have something to do with autoantibody memory.

Dr. Marshak-Rothstein, Dr. Iwasaki and dozens of other teams are closely studying the immune response to the coronavirus. Given the ease of testing for autoantibodies, it may soon become clear whether the antibodies were identified only because the researchers went looking for them, or whether they represent a more permanent alteration of the immune system.

Its not clear to me what it all means at this point, Dr. Pepper said. Its going to take a little bit of time to understand if this is something thats going to lead to downstream pathology.

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Some Covid Survivors Have Antibodies That Attack the Body, not Virus - The New York Times