Category: Corona Virus

TheWest Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) reports as of 5:00 p.m., on July 28,2020, there have been 269,704 totalconfirmatory laboratory results received for COVID-19, with 6,173 totalcases and 111 deaths.

DHHR has confirmed the deaths of a 77-yearold female from Mercer County, an 87-year old female from Mercer County, and a 60-yearold female from Preston County. We are deeplysaddened by this news, a loss to both the families and our state, said Bill J.Crouch, DHHR Cabinet Secretary.

In alignment with updated definitions fromthe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the dashboard includes probablecases which are individuals that have symptoms and either serologic (antibody)or epidemiologic (e.g., a link to a confirmed case) evidence of disease, but noconfirmatory test.

CASESPER COUNTY (Case confirmed by lab test/Probable case):Barbour (29/0), Berkeley (605/22), Boone (68/0), Braxton (8/0), Brooke(51/1), Cabell (281/9), Calhoun (6/0), Clay (17/0), Doddridge (2/0), Fayette(122/0), Gilmer (14/0), Grant (46/1), Greenbrier (83/0), Hampshire (67/0),Hancock (87/5), Hardy (50/1), Harrison (168/1), Jackson (155/0), Jefferson(280/5), Kanawha (699/13), Lewis (24/1), Lincoln (52/2), Logan (98/0), Marion(155/4), Marshall (111/2), Mason (41/0), McDowell (18/1), Mercer (111/0),Mineral (99/2), Mingo (106/2), Monongalia (829/16), Monroe (18/1), Morgan(24/1), Nicholas (26/1), Ohio (241/0), Pendleton (30/1), Pleasants (6/1),Pocahontas (40/1), Preston (97/22), Putnam (152/1), Raleigh (138/4), Randolph(203/3), Ritchie (3/0), Roane (14/0), Summers (5/0), Taylor (39/1), Tucker(8/0), Tyler (11/0), Upshur (36/2), Wayne (176/2), Webster (3/0), Wetzel(40/0), Wirt (6/0), Wood (218/11), Wyoming (17/0).

As case surveillance continues at thelocal health department level, it may reveal that those tested in a certaincounty may not be a resident of that county, or even the state as an individualin question may have crossed the state border to be tested.Such is the case of Preston County in this report.

Pleasenote that delays may be experienced with the reporting of information from thelocal health department to DHHR.

Please visit thedashboard at http://www.coronavirus.wv.gov for more detailed information.

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COVID-19 Daily Update - 7-28-2020 - 5 PM - West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources

SEOUL, South Korea Three years ago, out of work and hungry, Kim Geum-hyok climbed Mount White Horse near his North Korean hometown, Kaesong, brooding on the meaninglessness of life.

Not far to the south, across a river, the 21-year-old could see high-rise buildings in South Korea, dazzlingly lit up. The sight beckoned him.

After two nights on the mountain, Mr. Kim crossed the worlds most heavily armed border to get to it. He climbed down, crawled under and over layers of barbed-wire fences and made his way through minefields. At the rivers edge, he hid among reeds, improvising a life jacket from washed-up plastic trash. When night fell, he began to swim.

I kept swimming toward the light, Mr. Kim said of his seven and a half hours in the water, in an interview that a fellow North Korean defector posted on YouTube. When I finally landed on the South Korean side and walked through reeds and saw South Korean soldiers approaching, I was so exhausted I collapsed.

This month, after three years of life in the South, Mr. Kim went back swimming across the same river hed crossed in 2017, South Korean officials said. On Sunday, North Korea said he may have brought the coronavirus into the country for the first time, and it put Kaesong, Mr. Kims hometown, under lockdown.

On Monday, a police department in South Korea said that before Mr. Kim left, a warrant had been issued for his arrest on a rape accusation.

North Korea did not identify Mr. Kim in its statement. But South Korea said he was the only defector in the South who had gone back to the North this month. The South did not disclose his full name, but it released enough information for reporters to establish his identity.

And other defectors who knew him including the YouTube interviewer, Kim Jin-ah, a woman from Kaesong confirmed that it was him, uploading photos of Mr. Kim to social media.

Weeks before his departure, Mr. Kim, now 24, gave several interviews for Kim Jin-ahs YouTube channel, Lady From Kaesong, talking about his lives in the two Koreas. He used an alias and wore sunglasses, and in some clips his face had been digitally altered. Much of what he said could not be independently verified.

I once visited his apartment in late June and I was surprised that it was so bare of furniture, Ms. Kim said in a video posted after Mr. Kims return to the North. Looking back, I think he was already preparing to leave South Korea.

Even before Mr. Kim went back, his story was an unusual one. Most of the 33,000 North Korean defectors now living in South Korea got there by way of China and Southeast Asia. But some, like Mr. Kim, made the dangerous decision to cross the inter-Korean border.

For a defector to return, however to a desolate economy and a dictatorship that calls defectors human scum is rare. Eleven have done so in the last five years, according to the Souths Unification Ministry. Like many defectors, those who go back have often had trouble adjusting to the Souths freewheeling capitalist society.

In one of the YouTube interviews, Mr. Kim said he had lost most of his hearing at an early age. Because of that, I had difficulty communicating with people, he said. I was beaten because I was told to bring one thing and brought something else.

When he was still a child, Kaesong, a city of 300,000, was chosen as the site of an industrial park run jointly by the two Koreas. It opened in 2004, and Kaesong became a boomtown, awash with cash. Mr. Kims cousins worked at the park, he said, and he himself sold eggs and vegetables.

But four years ago, the South shut down the complex in a dispute over the Norths nuclear weapons program. The economy crashed, and Mr. Kim, like many others, was soon out of work. (Last month, with inter-Korean relations at another low, the North blew up an office in Kaesong that it had jointly operated with the South.)

By the time he climbed Mount White Horse in June of 2017, Mr. Kim told Ms. Kim, he saw no hope for the future, no meaning in life, wondering whether I should continue to live or die. Seeing the South Korean buildings at night compelled him to go there and check it out even if that meant my death, he said.

Mr. Kim said he could not take his eyes off South Korean television during his debriefing by officials, which all defectors undergo after arriving in the South. In the North, all TV sets are preset to government propaganda channels.

Updated July 27, 2020

Mr. Kim settled in Gimpo, a city across the Han River from Kaesong. A doctor corrected the hearing problem that he had lived with since childhood. He gave Ms. Kim no details about his condition or the treatment, but he told her that he cried that day.

He also told her that he missed his parents deeply. He had enrolled in a vocational school, as part of the resettlement program that the South offers to defectors. But he said he quit and found work, hoping to send money to his family, as defectors often do through middlemen in China.

Off camera, according to Ms. Kim, Mr. Kim confided something else.

He told her that he was being investigated by the police because another defector had accused him of raping her. He told Ms. Kim that he had been so drunk on the night in question that he couldnt remember anything.

With Mr. Kim now in the North, it is impossible to contact him for comment. But the police in Gimpo confirmed that a warrant had been issued for his arrest.

On July 17, officials say, Mr. Kim arrived on Ganghwa Island, which may have been where he first set foot on South Korean soil. At 2:20 a.m. on the 18th, he got out of a taxi on the islands northern shore. Around that time, he sent his last text message to Ms. Kim.

I really didnt want to lose you because you were like a big sister to me, he wrote, according to Ms. Kim, who read the message on YouTube. I will repay my debt to you no matter where I live, as long as I live.

Ms. Kim, who was working at a 24-hour convenience store when the message arrived, rushed to Mr. Kims apartment as soon as her shift ended, she told her viewers.

She learned that he had given up the apartment days earlier, reclaiming his deposit. She said he had also sold a used car he had borrowed from her, apparently to raise as much money as he could before going home.

South Korean officials concluded that Mr. Kim had crossed by crawling through a drain, three feet in diameter, that runs underneath barbed-wire fences on Ganghwas north shore. That led him to the Han River, which they believe he swam back across.

In a bag near the drain, officials found bank receipts indicating that Mr. Kim had withdrawn 5 million South Korean won from his account, then converted most of that to $4,000.

What happened to Mr. Kim after he crossed is unknown. North Korea said Sunday that he was in quarantine, accusing him of creating the dangerous situation in Kaesong City that may lead to a deadly and destructive disaster.

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North Korea Thinks He Brought Covid-19. South Korea Wants to Arrest Him. - The New York Times

The findings raise fresh questions about the success of U.S vaccination efforts if an effective vaccine emerges which could translate into how quickly the country could return to some level of normalcy. It is not clear how much public attitudes about a vaccine could change if a shot becomes available.

Vaccines from the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Moderna began the final stage of clinical trials in the U.S. this week. Results that reveal whether those vaccines work are expected before the end of the year, the companies said. Two Chinese-made vaccines are also in end-stage trials overseas.

Poll respondents said they would be less likely to take a coronavirus vaccine that was made in China than one made in the U.S. Twenty-three percent said they would not take a China-made vaccine, compared to 17 percent who would turn down an American shot.

The largest group declining a China-made vaccine were those who viewed Trump very favorably, with 40 percent saying they would not take a vaccine made in China.

The poll did not find any major differences across ethnicities in respondents' willingness to take a coronavirus vaccine, regardless of its origin.

Seventeen percent of white respondents, 16 percent of Hispanic respondents and 20 percent of Black respondents said they would not take a U.S. vaccine. Twenty-two percent of whites respondents, 17 percent of Hispanic respondents, and 27 percent of Black respondents said they would be unwilling to take a China-made shot.

The POLITICO/Morning Consult poll was conducted online from July 24 to 26 among a national sample of 1,997 registered voters. Results from the full survey have a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

Morning Consult is a global data intelligence company, delivering insights on what people think in real time by surveying tens of thousands across the globe every single day.

More details on the poll and its methodology can be found in these two documents: Toplines | Crosstabs

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Most voters say they'd rather wait for an effective coronavirus vaccine - POLITICO

As coronavirus cases and deaths continue to surge in Florida, its easy to get lost in the numbers spit out every 24 hours by state government officials.

Coronavirus infections are rising in Florida, and so is the death toll. But understanding the metrics behind these daily reports can be complicated.

The positivity rate, or the percentage of positive tests among the tests processed, has been lifted up by national health experts as a metric key to determining when the spread of the virus is under control. The World Health Organization recommends a state or region maintain a 5 percent positivity rate for at least two weeks before lifting shelter-at-home and social distancing protocols. If an areas positivity rate is too high, that could mean testing isnt widespread enough to capture the true spread of the virus.

But doubts over this methodology were raised when dozens of small labs had reported only positive tests and no negatives, inflating their numbers to suggest a 100 percent positivity rate.

Though positivity is helpful for public health experts to track, its vital to look at all the data in context, said Dr. Nishant Anand, the chief medical officer at BayCare Health Systems, which operates 15 hospitals around the Tampa Bay area.

Instead of drilling down on specific data coming from a handful of labs, he said the more accurate picture comes from looking across an entire county or the whole state, which offers a much larger data sample.

You have to take all of these numbers in context together, Anand said. I know theres a lot of focus on the positivity rate, but I view that as one data point.

More than half of all of Floridas coronavirus tests are processed at just five commercial laboratories: Quest Diagnostics in Tampa, Laboratory Corporation of America based in North Carolina, Bio Reference Laboratories, Inc. based in New Jersey, Genetworx, and Realtox Labs LLC in Maryland.

These commercial facilities are able to process thousands of lab tests a day. Only 15 percent of the remaining 1,100 or so labs reporting to the Florida Department of Health have processed more than 1,000 tests.

Large labs say their numbers are accurate. And because such a big share of the states testing comes from just those few facilities, the numbers from smaller labs dont make a big dent in the end result.

Even when removing all the labs where no negatives were reported, Floridas percentage of positive tests remains the same - about 12 percent.

Most of the labs Ive heard about have been small labs, so the numbers theoretically would be small, Anand said. I think looking at the positivity rate across the region is more meaningful.

Anand used the analogy of students in school. He said he could look at how many children at one school got As, but looking at how many kids in a district got As would widen the data pool and make the sample size much stronger.

Floridas positivity rate is more than double than the World Health Organizations 5 percent recommendation. That means there is still disease spread in the community and likely not enough testing, Anand said.

The Florida Department of Health reports the positivity rate in two ways on its daily coronavirus report. One figure comes from the number of people who test positive for the first time divided by all the people tested that day, excluding people who have previously tested positive.

That means negative retests are counted while positive retests are not. That shifts more weight onto the negative results, dropping the overall positivity rate. The state also combines both standard coronavirus tests and antigen tests into one catch-all counter. This is troubling because antigen tests, which are used to detect viral proteins and are known for their rapid results, have been found to be inaccurate.

But its not possible to know how much the data would change if positive repeat tests were also calculated, experts say. According to the Covid Tracking Project, Florida doesnt release data related to how many people tested positive for the first time and how many tested positive consecutive times, making it impossible to independently verify.

Anand said like any data point, the positivity rate needs to be looked at in context. He said he likes to consider the actual number of new people tested compared with new positive tests.

Just like with any fraction, the numbers could be higher or lower depending on what you include in the numerator or denominator, he said.

In the states daily report, dozens of the same facilities have their testing results spread across multiple line items because of typos, varying names of the lab, or a missing period. The Florida Department of Health said it is working with hospitals and laboratories to standardize the names.

For example, there are five varying monikers for the Orlando VA Healthcare System. Its listed as Orlando VAMC, Orlando Veteran Affairs Medical Center, Orlando VA Medical Center, and VAMC Orlando, in health department reports.

Some facilities enter positive and negative results into the database at the same time, but positive results take priority. In some cases, lab samples are run every hour. The process is semi-automatic, with some manual entry.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said its not uncommon for negative results to lag and be reported later than positive tests because the latter is more urgent. In April and May he said some labs unloaded a huge dump of negative results after routinely submitting positive tests.

In a July 15 press conference, DeSantis said its the law that labs have to report a positive infection for any illness. He said an executive order mandates the labs report negative results as well for tracking purposes.

DeSantis has blamed the reporting issue on the labs repeatedly, saying its not the health departments fault.

There were a number of labs that were simply doing what the default is, he said. I dont think they were trying to be underhanded, I think thats sort of what they were doing before this started.

Positive test results are also reported to each county health department to start contact tracing process, said Lisa Razler, a spokeswoman with BayCare.

Mike Palmer, the CEO of Nona Scientific laboratory in Ocala, wrote in an email to the Tampa Bay Times that all of their data, including negative results, was reported to the Florida Department of Health. However, there were communication errors.

Nona Scientific is one of the smaller labs in the state that has reported a 100 percent positivity rate on the daily health department report.

Lori-Ann Martell, the practice administrator for Advance Medical of Naples, also wrote in an email to the Times that they had reported total tests for each day and positive results. Still, on the state report, the lab has a 100 percent positivity rate.

She said it seemed like the error was on the end of the state, but that in the meantime theyll post their data on their Facebook page for transparency.

I think everyone is doing their very best in a very busy and stressful time caring for and testing COVID-19 patients, she said. Transparency from the testing source is the only way to assure we all understand what is going on in our community/state/country.

Positivity is an important metric, because it shows how common the virus may be in the community and if theres enough testing to make sure asymptomatic cases are also under control. A high number means testing needs to be expanded.

But its not a perfect metric. It only looks at the people who get tested, which includes people who get tested because they think they have symptoms.

Still, health experts rely on it and believe its a helpful guidepost for understanding disease in a community - in conjunction with other important data, like looking at new cases, hospitalizations and death.

See the article here:

What is the positivity rate in coronavirus data and why is it important? - Tampa Bay Times

A group of public health and national security experts who sent some of the earliest and most dire warnings to officials across the Trump administration about the gathering coronavirus crisis is now offering a searing assessment of how the federal government blundered through the critical first months of a lethal outbreak.

Members of the group, whose lengthy string of emails now read like a chilling foreshadowing of the unfolding deadly pandemic, came to be known by the chains dark-humored subject line, Red Dawn Rising, a reference to the campy 1984 cold war movie about a gritty band of Americans who fend off foreign invaders. Now several have broken their silence about the early warnings in interviews with ABC News to describe their lingering distress about the missed chances to spare lives.

We did not step up and meet the challenge that we needed to meet, said Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, Seattle-King County Public Health Officer, and a contributor to the email chain. We didn't act quickly enough to do the things that we needed to do early enough. And we still are not doing the things we need to do to get this outbreak under control.

Tune in to ABC on Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET for the "20/20" special report "American Catastrophe: How Did We Get Here?"

The chain, which was first published in April by the New York Times, has at various times looped in 25 different federal officials involved in the pandemic response, including top medical advisors in the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services. The emails gave them access to unvarnished analysis from an informal collection of scientific and medical experts, a number of whom had a first-hand role in developing a robust national pandemic response plan in the mid-2000s.

The Red Dawn emailers have tried to maintain a low profile, but six of them agreed to speak with ABC News, most for the first time publicly. The detailed accounts paint a picture of a frantic, race-against-the-clock effort to raise alarms in hopes of prodding a faster, stronger federal response to COVID-19.

Dr. David Marcozzi, who was the White House National Security Council director of medical preparedness policy in disasters during the Bush and Obama administrations, said the participants were driven by a single agenda.

We were generally concerned that this was going to be a threat to our nation, Marcozzi, now a senior official at the University of Marylands medical school, told ABC News.

Dr. David Marcozzi, a former Bush and Obama White House official, was among the "Red Dawn" emailers.

The emailers, along with other public health experts, describe how the federal government missed opportunities to mount a more muscular defense and failed to brace the nation for the tidal wave of illness that was coming.

The president began to say [in March] that nobody could imagine that something like this could actually occur, said Dr. Dan Hanfling, a biosecurity and disaster response expert from Virginia. The truth is that there was a group of us that had been trying to raise the alarm.

Hanfling said it was unclear how much of the information from the chain filtered up to top policymakers. Senior officials including Dr. Anthony Fauci, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, and Surgeon General Jerome Adams, were copied into the chain at least once. Fauci told ABC News he didn't pay that much attention to the emails.

As an informal group of experts looking at this information, how much of that was penetrating to upper echelons of government? Hanfling said. It's hard to say.

Admiral Brett Giroir, an assistant health secretary who has helped run the pandemic response and who was occasionally copied on the Red Dawn email chain, said he believes the Trump administration has tried its best to be transparent, honest, and give the public the best information they know.

Because I think that's the most important thing is to have public confidence that you may not always be right, but you're always transparent, Giroir told ABC News. You're going give the American people the best information."

Admiral Brett Giroir, M.D., Asst. Secretary of Health for Department of Health and Human Services, speaks at a press conference with Vice President Mike Pence and Seema Verma, Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services, in Tiger Stadium on the LSU campus, in Baton Rouge, La., July 14, 2020.

Red Dawn Rising

Email excerpt, Mar. 12:

From: Richard Hunt [Senior Medical Advisor, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services]

As my 24 y/o told me, "the nation needs to go to war against this virus.

One early correspondent on the Red Dawn chain was Dr. James Lawler, a Navy veteran who served in the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barrack Obama and is now the director of clinical and biodefense research at the federally-supported National Strategic Research Institute in Nebraska.

Lawler said he still remembers the first alert he received on New Years Eve describing a pattern of "unexplained pneumonias" in China, and his initial outreach to what he called the pandemic preparedness community.

We're a small, odd bunch and these are the things that we talk about, he said.

The pace of the emails picked up quickly, Lawler said. And the list grew.

Hanfling, the biosecurity and disaster response expert, said he was added to the group in February, as the emails began tracking potential coronavirus cases as they started to appear on American soil.

I've heard our group referred to as the Wolverines, Hanfling said -- a reference to the nickname of the freedom fighters who emerged heroic in Red Dawn.

Dr. Dan Hanfling is a biosecurity and disaster response expert from Virginia.

Others in the group eventually included former White House health and security advisers like Dr. Richard Hatchett, who also served under both Republican and Democratic administrations and who now heads an global partnership formed to respond to outbreaks called the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, and Dr. Herbert O. Wolfe, now a Penn State professor who also serves as executive director of the Office of the Chief Medical Officer at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

It was a serious group, Lawler said. Many folks who had thought for a long time about pandemics. And so, I think, a pretty good kitchen cabinet, if you want to call it that.

For those joining the Red Dawn chain, the initial hope was to offer a steady diet of thoughtful analysis for federal officials who wanted what Lawler called, unvarnished opinion.

There were no filters, he said. It was raw and straight.

Some government officials encouraged the input. In mid-February, Duane Caneva, who was appointed by Trump in 2018 to serve as the chief medical officer at the Department of Homeland Security, sent an email expanding the group of recipients.

Caneva wrote that the expanded "Red Dawn String" would give the participants the opportunity to provide thoughts, concerns, raise issues, share information across various colleagues responding to COVID-19."

A security guard stands outside the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market where the coronavirus was detected in Wuhan on January 24, 2020 - The death toll in China's viral outbreak has risen to 25, with the number of confirmed cases also leaping to 830, the national health commission said.

In some cases, government officials appeared to be learning about developments for first time from the Red Dawn emails. In one exchange, Eva Lee, the director of the Center for Operations Research in Medicine and Healthcare at Georgia Tech, flagged a study showing a 20-year-old woman left Wuhan with no symptoms and had infected five family members.

Dr. Robert Kadlec, the Trump administrations Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, appeared surprised. Eva is this true?! Kadlec replied. If so, we have a huge [hole] on our screening and quarantine effort.

Lawler said initially, that sort of reaction took him aback.

Too often, we were finding that our group [was] providing information to leaders who were hearing it for the first time from these informal channels, he said. And that was surprising and disappointing, to be honest.

Kadlec did not respond to a request for an interview through his office.

An early, queasy feeling in 2020

Email excerpt, Jan. 28:

From: Carter Mecher [Department of Veterans Affairs physician]

Anyway you cut it, this is going to be bad.

Among the first Americans to get a bad feeling about the news out of China in early January was Helen Branswell, the infectious disease reporter for the Boston-based health news website Stat News.

Branswell, who was not among the Red Dawn emailers, said it was just hours into the new year that she started to feel a queasiness in her stomach. On Jan. 2, she tweeted: Not liking the look of this.

She described seeing images on social media of Chinese authorities in hazmat suits spraying down the wet market in Wuhan, the original epicenter of the outbreak, and hearing early reports of widespread shutdowns in the city.

It rapidly grabbed my attention and held it, Branswell told ABC News.

Medical staff members wearing protective clothing walk next to patients waiting for medical attention at the Wuhan Red Cross Hospital in Wuhan, China, Jan. 25, 2020.

Lawler said after he started seeing alerts about the mystery illness in China the Red Dawn members began to "look at these things [and] were giving each other the play by play on what we were hearing and what we were seeing, he recalled. And it was obvious very early on, in January, that this had the potential to be a serious global event.

At the time, the administration was still struggling to interpret the signs from China, said Tom Bossert, an ABC News contributor who was on the Red Dawn email chain and who served as a top Homeland Security Advisor to President Trump.

Bossert, who left the Trump administration in 2018, said government officials were so focused on containing the virus keeping it from crossing the ocean they were missing signs that people with no symptoms were capable of circulating it. Trump would announce a ban on most travel from China at the end of January.

To contain this in China or in Wuhan, that's a really noble objective, Bossert said. But that strategy, he said, didn't seem to recognize or understand the notion that you can have a lot of sick people, infectious people walking around in any community.

In those initial weeks, Lawler said the group was just starting their efforts to persuade leaders to look beyond efforts to block the virus from entering the U.S., and in the direction of bracing the public for potentially dramatic lifestyle changes that could slow down the spread.

These signs were out there pretty early -- good indications that asymptomatic infections were occurring and that those people were then able to transmit to others, Lawler said.

Hundreds of thousands could die. People were stunned."

Email excerpt, Jan. 28:

From: James Lawler [Former Bush and Obama White House official]

Great Understatements in History:

Napoleon' s retreat from Moscow - just a little stroll gone bad"

Pompeii - "a bit of a dust storm"

Hiroshima - "summer heat wave"

AND

Wuhan - "just a bad flu season"

By February, members of the Red Dawn chain were solidifying their view that what started as a mystery illness in China was poised to become an epidemic of historic proportions.

Lawler shared his early projections during a speaking engagement at a reception for the American Hospital Association. When he began to rattle off the numbers, he recalled, the room grew uncomfortably silent. Without a clear and aggressive response, he said he expected 96 million Americans to contract COVID-19, and as many as 480,000 would die.

People were stunned, he said.

Not only were the health care executives taken aback, he said. When he shared the figures with members of Congress and officials within the executive branch, he said he saw a similar reaction.

They had not heard these types of projections before, Lawler said. The fact that folks were hearing these numbers for the first time from me was concerning.

Dr. James Lawler, a former Bush and Obama White House official, was among the "Red Dawn" emailers.

Currently, approximately six months into the outbreak, more than 4 million positive cases of coronavirus have been reported in the U.S. and more than 140,000 Americans have died, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University, despite many parts of the country taking on drastic lockdown measures.

Around the time of Lawlers presentation, Fauci was appearing in Washington at an Aspen Institute panel discussing the outbreak.

Branswell, the Stat News reporter, was moderating. At one point, Fauci was asked to explain why the U.S. government was still so focused on keeping the virus from entering the population, instead of turning more attention to preparing for it to spread.

Thats the message that is very fine-line sensitive, Fauci responded. To let the American people know that, at present, given everything that is going on the risk is really relatively low.

Branswell told ABC News she remembered being puzzled. And it showed. Explain to me why the risk is low, somebody? she responded. I cant see why theres no force field around China.

Fauci said his caution stemmed from the fact that, by this point in mid-February, the U.S. had only 13 confirmed cases of coronavirus. But he acknowledged this view could be wrong.

Is there a risk that this is going to turn into a global pandemic. Absolutely yes, he said. There is. There is.

In an interview with ABC News, Fauci said that, even looking back now, he believes it was reasonable to make the assumption that the risk of spread was low, because, at that moment, so few cases had made it across the ocean.

As a scientist, the thing you must always do is to be humble enough to know that when you get additional information, even information that might conflict what was felt earlier on, you then change your viewpoint and you change your recommendations based on the data that you have at that time, he said.

Science is a learning process, he said. To think that we knew everything right at the first day that we knew that there was a new virus, I think is just unrealistic.

Dr. Anthony Fauci is the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Many of those interacting with federal officials through the Red Dawn chain said they understood that none of the decisions in the midst of a crisis are easy.

We recognized the incredible challenges and really fraught decisions, Hanfling said.

A slowness in revving up a response

Email excerpt, Feb. 29:

From: Eva Lee [Medical research expert, Georgia Tech]

We need actions, actions, actions and more actions. We are going to have pockets of epicenters across this country, West coast, East coast and the South. Our policy leaders must act now. Please make it happen!

Inside the Trump Administration, officials have had mixed views about the early steps taken to respond to those waving red flags about the burgeoning crisis.

Giroir, the four-star admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, said he believes the administration took early, aggressive action. Beginning January 9, he said, the health service began a deployment of officers to nursing homes, field hospitals and Native American reservations that would eventually number more than 5,000.

On February 3, I issued an order that everybody in the corps was on alert, Giroir said. For the first time in our history everybody needed to be ready to go.

By Feb. 15 he said the health corps had seven strike teams assembled to help monitor travelers arriving in several key U.S. airports. But until his team started seeing the virus blazing through the community, he said no one was sure what to expect.

This may be fine and may go away, or it may be the big deal that we've all been training for and planning for our whole careers," Giroir said.

Perhaps the biggest challenge confronting federal leaders during a pandemic, Lawler said, is knowing when to acknowledge that it is occurring.

In one of the Red Dawn email exchanges, Lawler chided the assertions by President Trump that the spreading virus would be no worse than a bad flu.

Dr. Matthew Hepburn, a U.S. Army infectious disease expert, replied with his advice: Team, am dealing with a very similar scenario, in terms of not trying to overreact and damage credibility. My argument is that we should treat this as the next pandemic for now, and we can always scale back if the outbreak dissipates, or is not as severe.

Redfield, the CDC director, described the phenomenon as he experienced it, acknowledging he may have been lulled into a false sense of confidence that the virus would be more easily contained.

The CDC responded quickly, he said, to the first person in the U.S. was identified with coronavirus on Jan. 21. That person, Redfield said, had made 50 to 60 contacts before being isolated, and his agency worked hard to evaluate all of them.

None of them were infected, he said.

Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Robert Redfield, speaks during a White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing at the Department of Education building Wednesday, July 8, 2020, in Washington.

After the CDC had identified 12 more cases involving people traveling into the U.S. from Wuhan, they traced some 850 more people who had been in contact with those travelers.

We only found two individuals that were infected, and both of them were intimate spouses, he said. So initially it didn't seem like this was infectious-infectious-infectious.

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As coronavirus threatened invasion, a new 'Red Dawn' team tried to save America - ABC News

A health officer in Istanbul, Turkey, wears protective clothing before collecting swab samples from ... [+] confined people who may be infected with the Covid-19 coronavirus and thus may be infected. (Photo by OZAN KOSE/AFP via Getty Images)

You may be able to lose a guy in 10 days, based on the 2003 rom-com movie How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. That also may be time that it takes for you to lose enough of the Covid-19 coronavirus so that you are no longer contagious, based on updated guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The CDC is now saying that if you have mild-to-moderate Covid-19, keep yourself isolated from other people for at least 10 days after you first noticed symptoms. You can discontinue this isolation after the 10-day mark if you havent had a fever for at least 24 hours and your other symptoms have improved. Note that not having a fever because you took a fever-reducing medication like Tylenol doesnt count. That would be cheating. The fever has to have naturally disappeared. Still having a fever after 10 days means that you may need not only more cowbell but also more isolation.

This is a bit different from what the CDC was saying back in April, which was about three missed haircuts ago. As I wrote for Forbes at the time, the threshold back then was seven days rather than 10 days for discontinuing isolation. Also, the previous threshold for being fever-free was 72 hours instead of 24 hours. So in the words of Guns N Roses, youll need to have a little more patience. Wait three days longer for a total of 10 days before exposing yourself to others. Actually, that came out wrong. Wait three days longer for a total of 10 days after symptom onset before being in the same room with others.

Isolation much more than social distancing. Social distancing should be maintained even after ending ... [+] isolation. (Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images)

Keep in mind that isolation is not the same as social distancing. You should still social distance after ending isolation. As Ive indicated previously, social distancing means staying at least one Ryan Gosling away from everyone else. As actor Gosling is approximately six feet tall, this would be keeping at least one lying Gosling apart. A Gosling lying on the floor, that is.

Isolation, instead, entails staying in a room or rooms by yourself away from others. That means no Ryan Goslings, no Ryan Reynolds, no Ryan Chappelles, no Dave Chappelles, no David Crosses, no Marcia Crosses, no Marcia Bradys. Nobody else should be there. No one should enter that room unless they are wearing a full set of personal protective equipment, known affectionately as PPE. It also involves not sharing with others any items that you may have contaminated, including that mountain of toilet paper that you have amassed around your bed.

Isolation is different from quarantine as well. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) website includes the following easy-to-remember phrases:

As you can see, its all about the might. Isolate yourself when you already know that you are infected. By contrast, quarantine yourself when you think that you may have been exposed to the virus. Another way to remember when to quarantine is the q. Quarantine when theres a question whether you are infected. Isolate when you say I am infected. Quarantine does not become isolation until you have either had a positive test for the RNA of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) or developed symptoms that suggest Covid-19.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Governor Andrew M. Cuomo has announced that individuals who have traveled ... [+] to New York from higher-risk states should quarantine for 14 days. (Photo by Jeenah Moon/Getty Images)

The recommended quarantine duration is still at least 14 days because thats how long the incubation period may potentially last. The incubation period is the time from when you are infected by the virus to when you first develop symptoms and may last anywhere from two to 14 days, based on studies so far. So if you think you got exposed to the Covid-19 coronavirus during that ill-advised Real Housewives of Beverly Hills in-person watch party, youll have to view the show for the next two weeks by yourself, far away from anyone else, except for perhaps that massive pile of toilet paper next to your bed.

If you have more severe Covid-19 or a weak immune system then you could remain contagious for longer than 10 days. More severe cases may shed more virus for longer periods of time. The CDC is now recommending that those with severe-to-critical illness or a very weak immune system stay isolated for at least 20 days after the onset of symptoms. Of course, if you have severe-to-critical Covid-19, you really should be in the hospital. So this guidance is more for health care workers taking care of patients with Covid-19.

What if you tested positive for the SARS-CoV2 but never developed any symptoms? Well, the threshold is still 10 days. But for asymptomatic infections, staying isolated for 10 days after symptom onset would mean that you would stay isolated forever, which would be a really long time.

Instead, the guidance is to stay isolated for 10 days from the date of your first positive test for SARS-CoV-2 RNA. In this case, RNA stands for ribonucleicacid rather than rations not available or really not avocado. RNA is the viruss genetic material. A SARS-CoV-2 RNA test is when someone sticks that cotton swab way up your nose or to the back of your throat or both to get samples to test for the presence of the virus genetic material. This is probably an experience that you would remember. It is very different from the blood test that checks for antibodies to the SARS-CoV2.

Covid-19 coornavirus RNA testing typically involves sticking a cotton swab up your nose, although ... [+] alternatives such as spit testing are emerging. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Speaking of testing, heres another change in the CDC guidance. The CDC used to recommend that health care workers with Covid-19 stay isolated until they have a negative test for SARS-CoV2 RNA. However, studies have been showing that you can still have a positive test but no evidence of replication-competent virus in your upper respiratory tract. Replicate means reproduce, just in case you havent seen the word replicate used on someones dating profile. Therefore, a replication-competent virus means a virus that is able to reproduce and thus infect someone.

Finding virus RNA is not necessarily the same as finding whole live versions of the virus. In fact, virus RNA can still be found in specimens from your upper respiratory tract for as long as three months after you first noticed symptoms. This can be a bit like finding someones bling without finding that person himself or herself. Its still not clear what finding such RNA means without detecting replication competent virus, whether it represents fragments of the virus, weakened versions of the virus, inactivated virus, hide-and-go-seek virus, or something else.

These updated guidelines are based on studies showing that the chances of finding replication-competent virus in respiratory tract specimens steadily goes down with passing time after symptom onset. In other words, your infectiousness may go down each day that you have symptoms. In these studies, researchers were not able to find replication-competent virus in patients with mild-to-moderate Covid-19 after 10 days had elapsed since their symptoms first manifested.

In a study thats posted on MedRxiv and hasnt yet undergone peer-review, researchers were able to find replication-competent viruses between 10 and 20 days after symptom onset in patients with severe Covid-19. However, 10 and 15 days after symptom onset, already about 88% and 95% of the specimens, respectively, in this study no longer had replication-competent virus. Of course, take any study thats just on MedRxiv with a grain or even a toilet paper roll package of salt until its been published in a reputable peer-reviewed scientific journal.

So 10 and 20 are now the numbers to remember when it comes to contagiousness and isolation. These thresholds are based on studies to date, so they could change as more evidence emerges. The Covid-19 coronavirus is like that person that you just met on Tinder. It still is rather mysterious, may not be completely what it seems, and could make you very sick.

Also, consider these numbers to be rough estimates rather than exact deadlines. Dont set your timer so that you can start panting on other people right after the 10- or 20-day mark has passed. It cant hurt to stay cautious for a little extra time. After all, viruses, like some guys, could end up hanging around a little longer than expected.

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How Long Are You Contagious With Covid-19 Coronavirus? Heres A CDC Update - Forbes

They are amazing nerds, Ms. Roman, 38, said of her parents.

Sheryl Roberts, 65, understood the perils of the pandemic she had diabetes, asthma and heart disease, which could put her at higher risk. Her husband had chronic lung disease and a stent to open a blocked coronary artery.

We have been so careful, so very careful, and stayed away from people, Ms. Roberts said. Her husband began working from home in the spring when Washington State, New York and then other areas around the country were hit hard. Mr. Roberts occasionally made a supermarket run during senior hour; the couples only big, hot date in recent months, Ms. Roberts said, was to view wildflowers from their car.

Their younger daughter was diligent as well. But then she came back from work sneezing one day in mid-June and thought it was allergies. Soon she had a cough, fever, headaches and diarrhea, and lost her senses of taste and smell, telltale symptoms of the coronavirus.

She told me, I dont know whats going on, Mom, but I wore a mask, I wore gloves, I washed my hands, Ms. Roberts said. You do the right things, and still you get it.

Elaine Roberts, who tested positive for the coronavirus, did not become seriously ill. But for her parents, it would be much worse.

Mr. Roberts and his wife started sneezing, then coughing, just like their daughter, and developed fevers and severe body aches. Then he got awfully sick, awfully quickly, Sheryl Roberts recalled. He became confused on June 22. Alarmed, she tested his oxygen level. It was low, and she called her older daughter to take him to an emergency care center, the second visit in two days.

Before he left, his wife asked him to make a promise.

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Coronavirus in Texas: You Do the Right Things, and Still You Get It - The New York Times

The feline's infection was confirmed following tests at the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) laboratory in Weybridge, England, on July 22, according to a press release from the UK government.

The government said the cat was "the first confirmed case of an animal infection with the coronavirus strain in the UK." It said there was no evidence the cat had transmitted the virus to its owners.

"All available evidence suggests that the cat contracted the coronavirus from its owners who had previously tested positive for Covid-19," the press release added.

The cat was initially diagnosed by a private vet with feline herpes virus -- a common respiratory infection among cats -- but was also tested for SARS-CoV-2 as part of a research program. Follow-up testing at the APHA laboratory confirmed the cat had SARS-CoV-2, which manifests as Covid-19 in humans.

'Rare event'

Chief Veterinary Officer Christine Middlemiss called it a "very rare event" with "infected animals detected to date only showing mild clinical signs and recovering within in a few days."

Yvonne Doyle, the medical director for Public Health England, said it was "not a cause for alarm," adding that there was "no evidence that pets can transmit the disease to humans."

That's a view shared by other animal health experts.

"It has been clear for a while that cats are susceptible to infection, but there is no evidence that they can go on to infect humans," said James Wood, head of the department of veterinary medicine at the University of Cambridge, adding that only a handful of pets "have been found to be infected around the world."

"The data overall continue to suggest that cats may become infected by their owners if their owners have Covid-19, but there is no suggestion that they may transmit it to owners. This reflects the advice that if possible, when infected, owners should keep their cats inside," he said.

There have been reports of pet cats and dogs testing positive for coronavirus in New York, Hong Kong and the Netherlands.

More here:

Cat becomes first animal in UK to test positive for Covid-19 - CNN

Before the pandemic, I was a parenting expert. It was a cushy gig. In 2019, I boarded 34 flights. I checked into nice hotels, put on makeup and fitted jewel-toned dresses, strode onto stages large and dinky, and tried to project authoritative calm. I told worried parents about the nine signs of tech overuse, like ditching sleep for screens. I advised them to write a family media contract and trust, but verify, their tweens doings online.

While I was on the road, my two daughters were enjoying modest, cute little doses of Peppa Pig and Roblox, in between happily attending school, preschool, after-school activities and play dates, safe in the care of their father, grandmother and our full-time nanny.

Now, like Socrates, I know better. I know that I know nothing.

Parenting expert? Please. I took only 12-week maternity leaves, and for the second baby, I had both the nannys help and the big girl in pre-K five days a week. I finished my parenting book about screen time on that maternity leave, which was kind of like writing up lab results before the experiment was finished.

My point being: I have never, ever, spent this much time with my children, or anyones children, as I have over the past four months during shelter-in-place orders. Nor have I contemplated working full time, while my husband also works full time, without sufficient child care, let alone while dealing with multiple weekly deadlines and 5 a.m. live radio hits, in an insanely stressful 24-hour news cycle where its actually, kind of, my job to doomscroll through Twitter (well, at least its job-adjacent). By the way, zombie fires are eating the Arctic and they are as terrifying as they sound.

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I Was a Screen Time Expert. Then the Coronavirus Happened. - The New York Times

Nuveen chief equity strategist Bob Doll on market reaction to the coronavirus, the next stimulus bill, inflation and the presidential election.

U.S. equity markets ralliedMonday, closing near the highs of the session, as President Trump discussed progress on a coronavirus vaccine and Republicans readied their $1 trillion stimulus bill.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 114points, or 0.43percent, while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite were higher by 0.74percent and 1.67percent, respectively.

Trump, speaking during the final hour of trading at theBioprocess Innovation Center at Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies, noted the swift progress being made inthe race for a coronavirus vaccine.

Earlier in the session, Moderna announced the beginning of a Phase 3 trial for its experimental COVID-19 vaccine. Novavax also rose in tandem.

Along with the progress on a vaccine,Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is set to unveil his $1 trillioncoronavirus relief proposal, which reduces the recently expired unemployment benefits, sends a $1,200 check to Americans making less than $75,000 a year and provides billions of dollars of aid to schools and universities. Congress has just one week before a planned recess to bridge the gap between the Republican plan and the $3 trillion package passed by House Democrats in May.

MAGA STOCKS' CORONAVIRUS SURGE SPURS DOTCOM BUBBLE FLASHBACKS

Investors shrugged off developments overnight which sawthe U.S. consulate in Chengdu, China, shuttered as Beijing retaliated for last weeks closing of its Houston consulate.

Escalating tensions between the U.S. and China and the U.S. dollar sliding to its lowest level since September 2018 helped propel gold prices to record highs.

Gold futures for July delivery climbed 1.78 percent to close at a record-high $1,931 per ouncewhile silver gained 7.3 percentto $24.476, a level last seen in August 2013.

Miners, including Barrick Gold Corp., Newmont Corp. and Pan American Silver Corp., benefited from surging gold and silver prices.

DraftKings was pressured lower after two MLB games were postponed after at least 13 members of theMiami Marlins organization were diagnosed with COVID-19.

Southwest Airlines Co. CEO Gary Kelly sent a letter to employees indicating the company has no plans to lay off or furlough workers, cut pay or reduce benefits through at least the end of 2020.

Elsewhere, Software giant SAP SE plans to spin-off Qualtrics less than two years after purchasing the software-survey provider for $8 billion.

Looking at earnings, Hasbro Inc. lost $33.9 million in the three months through June as supply-chain disruptions and store closing made it difficult for the toy maker to meet consumer demand.

Albertsons Companies Inc. reported quarterly revenue spiked 21 percent from a year ago to $22.75 billion, just shy of the $22.79 billion that was expected. Meanwhile, adjusted earnings of $1.35 a share topped the $1.32 consensus. The report was the grocers first since going public in June.

Looking at oil, West Texas Intermediate crude gained 31cents to $41.60a barrel.

On the data front, durable goods orders rose 7.3 percent month-over-month, outpacing the 7 percent increase that was expected. However, durable goods excluding transportation was up 3.3 percent MoM, missing the 3.6 percent gain that analysts were anticipating.

U.S. Treasurys were little changed with the yield on the 10-year note holding near 0.609 percent.

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In Europe, Germanys DAX was little changed while Britains FTSE and Frances CAC were off 0.31percent and 0.34 percent, respectively.

Asian markets finished mixed with Chinas Shanghai Composite adding 0.27 percent while Hong Kongs Hang Seng fell 0.41 percent and Japans Nikkei lost 0.16 percent.

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Stocks jump on coronavirus vaccine progress, $1T stimulus package in the works - Fox Business