Category: Covid-19

Good morning,

Throughout the coronavirus crisis, many Republicans have remained skeptical about the threat of Covid-19. But as the disease moves from urban Democratic strongholds such as New York into some of the rural and exurban areas that voted for Donald Trump, research suggests those partisan attitudes to the pandemic may be shifting.

Coronavirus cases are climbing in Arizona, Florida, South Carolina and Arkansas. In Texas, hospitalisations for Covid-19 are up 42% since Memorial Day. In Oklahoma, health officials have expressed concern that a Trump campaign rally in Tulsa this weekend could contribute to the spread of the disease in a city that has experienced a recent rise in cases.

The president, however, sees mass rallies as his best chance of changing the narrative and putting him back on track for re-election, reports David Smith:

A Trump rally with a cheering crowd eschewing face masks, and a packed convention crowning him as the Republican nominee, could be used to draw a striking contrast in optics with the mask-wearing, basement-bound Biden, selling the incumbent as a happy warrior.

China has won the battle over world opinion in a survey that found just three out of 53 countries believed the US has handled the coronavirus better than its superpower rival.

But Beijing is back on lockdown after dozens of new cases were linked to two seafood markets in the Chinese capital.

After weeks of protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, a fresh tragedy in Atlanta on Friday has further fuelled the Black Lives Matter movement. Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old black man, was shot in the back by a police officer, after what began as a friendly encounter. His death has now been ruled a homicide by the Fulton county medical examiners office.

Leading Democrats said on Sunday that Brookss killing underlines the need for significant change in US law enforcement. This did not call for lethal force, said the House majority whip, James Clyburn. And I dont know whats in the culture that would make this guy do that. It has got to be the culture. Its got to be the system.

The shooting puts a spotlight on two VP contenders, Atlanta mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, both touted as potential running mates for Joe Biden. Bottoms said the footage of Brookss death broke her heart.

Beyonc has called for justice for Breonna Taylor. in an open letter to the attorney general of Kentucky, Knowles complained no arrests had been made in the case of the 26-year-old African American EMT shot dead in her home by police.

Trump interrupted his own 74th birthday, spent in seclusion at his New Jersey golf club on Sunday, to tweet that Seattle has been taken over by the radical left. The president appeared to be referring to the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone established by demonstrators in the citys Capitol Hill neighborhood, where police vacated a precinct amid the protests.

Meanwhile, there was outrage over distressing footage of police macing a seven-year-old boy during a peaceful protest in Seattle on 30 May. Evan Hreha, the 34-year-old who captured the incident on camera, has since been arrested and spent two days in jail, for what some consider police retribution over the video going viral.

US prosecutors say Julian Assange risked American lives by releasing hundreds of thousands of US intelligence documents. But their indictment against the Wikileaks founder does not include perhaps his most shocking revelation: the video entitled Collateral Murder, which depicted an Apache helicopter gunning down a group of Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in July 2007. Its omission has raised accusations that the US is trying to avoid having its war crimes exposed in public.

Angela Davis on George Floyd: Theyre now finally getting it

The veteran civil rights campaigner Angela Davis has witnessed and participated in decades of protest and campaigning for racial justice. This time, things might be different, she tells Lanre Bakare but while the immensity of this response is new, the struggles are not new.

The trans kids helped by a pioneering project

While the debate goes on over whether trans children ought to be allowed to transition, or even to express their gender, their families often need guidance on how to parent them. New Yorks Gender and Family Project is the largest independent program for transgender youth and families in the US. Katelyn Burns reports.

How coronavirus shook a neglected neighborhood

New Yorks coincidentally-named Corona neighbourhood has been hard hit by Covid-19, with economic and health consequences that will likely shake the community for years to come. Amanda Holpuch explains how race, poverty and inequality left this corner of Queens vulnerable.

The GOP is feigning a fainting fit over calls to defund the police. And yet, argues David Sirota, they gladly slash budgets for those charged with policing the worlds most dangerous and powerful criminals.

Apparently, were expected to be horrified by proposals to reduce funding for the militarized police forces that are violently attacking peaceful protesters but were supposed to obediently accept the defunding of the police forces responsible for protecting the population from the wealthy and powerful.

A December 2019 report revealed young New Zealanders use the internet as their primary source of sex education, while a third of the countrys most popular porn clips depict non-consensual sexual activity. The governments answer? This web safety ad.

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First Thing: Covid-19 skeptics may convert as virus hits Trump country - The Guardian

Since first being recorded late last year in China, the Covid-19 coronavirus has spread around the world, and been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. However, differences in testing mean that the number of cases may be understated for some countries.

The number of deaths is a more dependable indicator. The disease has hit certain countries, including Brazil, the UK and the US, with particular cruelty.

Meanwhile in Asia, where the disease began, the spread continues, although in China it seems for now to have passed its peak.

In Europe most countries have closed schools, and many are in lockdown.

Finally, a reminder that most people who contract the disease recover; many may never notice they had it at all.

Due to the unprecedented and ongoing nature of the coronavirus outbreak, this article is being regularly updated to ensure that it reflects the current situation at the date of publication. Any significant corrections made to this or previous versions of the article will continue to be footnoted in line with Guardian editorial policy.

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Coronavirus world map: which countries have the most Covid-19 cases and deaths? - The Guardian

The Texas Medical Center says hospitalizations give an objective view of how COVID-19 impacts the healthcare system.

HOUSTON Doctors are concerned about Houston and Harris County's rising rate of hospitalizations of people suffering from COVID-19 in the last three weeks.

Houston Health Authority Doctor David Persse said simply speaking can spread the virus, so wearing a mask is critical.

People who dont yet have symptoms, thats actually when they spread the virus the most. Right in the couple of days before they have symptoms is when theyre most dangerous to the people near them," Dr. Persse said.

He, and doctors at UT Health, say the re-opening of the economy is likely one cause of the increased spread.

They say the percentage of people testing positive for COVID-19 is higher now than it was a few months ago.

Doctors say if you go out in public, the combination of wearing a mask and keep physical distance is the best way to stay safe. While doctors agree that being outside mitigates the spread, it is not a substitute for physical distancing.

Its really human behavior thats driving this," said Dr. Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease expert for UT Health.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo released a new coronavirus "public threat level system," to help residents better understand the status of coronavirus in the area and what actions they need to take to help maintain the spread of the virus.

Dr. Troisi said limiting social circles to a select group of fewer than 10 friends people who you know have all been taking the same precautions is one of the safest ways to get together with friends, adding you are only as safe as the weakest link in your chain of friends.

Make that your household, your pod that you feel safe socializing with those people," Dr. Troisi said.

Dr. Persse said activities such as going out for brunch with people who live outside of your household can be risky.

Those are the exact types of behaviors the virus is going to take advantage of," Dr. Persse said. If youre out in public, you should be wearing a mask. Period.

Originally posted here:

Human behavior 'is driving this': Disturbing increase in number of hospitalizations due to COVID-19 in Houston area - KHOU.com

A scientist who was fired from overseeing Floridas Covid-19 database has created her own coronavirus dashboard which she says proves Florida is not ready to reopen.

Dr Rebekah Jones was fired by the Florida department of health in May. She said she was sidelined after she refused to manipulate data regarding the severity of Covid-19, which would have restricted the states plan to reopen its economy.

According to Joness own online database, Floridas Community Coronavirus Dashboard, only one of 67 counties meets state criteria for easing social restrictions.

Joness dashboard also shows a higher number of coronavirus cases than the Florida DoH site, with 83,720 positive cases and 3,022 deaths compared with 75,568 cases and 2,931 deaths.

Jones said the difference was due to a difference in counting technique.

DoH publishes total cases, not positive people, her website says.

Additionally, cases are not currently created for those who receive positive antibody test results, and so DoH excludes them from that total. We show the total number of people who have definitive lab results showing they have or have had Covid-19 regardless of the type of test.

Florida recorded record levels of new coronavirus cases over the weekend, ABC News reported. On Sunday, the state health department reported a second consecutive day of more than 2,000 new cases.

According to data from the Washington Post, in June Florida experienced its highest seven-day average of coronavirus cases since the beginning of the pandemic.

Joness database says Liberty county, in the north-west of the state, does meet criteria for reopening. Other counties do not.

She has said she was fired on 18 May for refusing to manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen.

When I went to show them what the report card would say for each county, among other things, they asked me to delete the report card because it showed that no counties, pretty much, were ready for reopening, Jones told NPR.

And they didnt want to draw attention to that.

A spokesperson for Floridas governor, Ron DeSantis, denied that Jones was fired for refusing to manipulate coronavirus data. The state health department said she had exhibited a repeated course of insubordination.

As of Monday morning researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland had recorded about 2.1m coronavirus cases in the US and 115,697 deaths. The actual death toll is believed to be far higher.

Cases are climbing in Florida and Arizona while in Texas hospitalizations from Covid-19 are up 42% since 25 May.

On Friday the federal governments leading public health expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, said the US might not see a second wave of Covid-19 if you approach it in the proper way.

Fauci said the correct approach involved people continuing to wear masks and maintaining social distancing.

Over the weekend, footage showed people in New York City, Washington and other places gathering without masks, and not practicing social distancing.

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Scientist produces own Florida Covid-19 count after being fired by state - The Guardian

No measure of COVID-19 has come under more skepticism than the accuracy of the death toll a pandemic statistic key in shaping public opinion and policymaking that been widely scrutinized and even the subject of conspiracy theories.

The scrutiny centers around when should people who have COVID-19 but who also have other life-threatening underlying health issues, such as cancer or kidney disease, be counted in the COVID-19 death tally.

In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Sunday touched on the matter when he announced his state's lowest daily death toll 23 on Saturday since the early days of the pandemic.

"When the number gets this low, it's basically a question of how people are reporting the cause of death across the nation," Cuomo said. "You have situations where a person dies from multiple causes. You could put down COVID, you could put down cancer, you could put down heart disease. So, at one point, it becomes fairly random, and we're basically at that point."

So far, more than 116,000 COVID-19 deaths have been recorded in the U.S, according to an NBC News counter that tracks state data, and experts are quick to point to the increased likelihood that the total is an undercount.

Meanwhile, the CDC's collection of death data from individual states is hampered by differing state policies while additionally, a hodgepodge of local health officials, including medical examiners, coroners, healthcare providers, funeral homes and health departments are tasked with filling out death certificates and often must make judgment calls in doing so.

The federal government relies on two parallel systems to keep track of COVID-19 deaths. One, run through the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System, utilizes reports of cases from the states and is able to be more quickly updated. The second, managed via the National Vital Statistics System, relies on death certificate reporting and what is cited by health officials on that document.

The first count is subject to differing state policies on reporting, such as whether a state includes probable deaths in its count, whereas the latter count is part of the decades-long standardized death certificate reporting system throughout the U.S. In that count, there is no distinction between a probable or confirmed case for the purposes of tallying the death total.

The CDC and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, a group that works with the CDC to offer guidelines on tracking diseases, recommend that states report probable COVID-19 deaths which include deaths where the virus may not have been tested for as part of their total that is plugged into the surveillance system.

But that's not mandatory and, as a result, some states are not reporting probable deaths, as The Washington Post found last week.

"You have this issue with the probables and the confirmed cases," Robert Anderson, who oversees the death certificate reporting system as chief of mortality statistics at the National Center for Health Statistics, told NBC News.

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"We're asking a medical professional, physician, medical examiner, coroner to provide the cause of death information and using the term probable is acceptable," he continued. "If the certifying physician feels that COVID-19 was the probable cause of death, we count it as the cause of death. We trust their medical judgment that they know sufficient about the case to say, 'Yes, in fact this was due to COVID-19.'"

CDC guidance for death certificate reporting says COVID-19 can be listed as the immediate cause of death, the underlying cause of death or a contributing factor, stating that "if COVID19 played a role in the death, this condition should be specified on the death certificate."

Whether COVID-19 played a role in a death can be a subjective determination and comes under the discretion of whoever signs a death certificate. Take Bill Harris, the coroner for Lee County, Alabama, for example. He told NBC News that he's of the belief that "if you have the virus, it is, in some sort or fashion, a contributing factor possibly to your death."

"I mean, my opinion is if they're positive for the virus, it should be on the death certificate," he added.

The presence of the virus itself raises the risk of death from other underlying conditions, and experts said any death involving someone who tested positive for the disease should be included in the COVID-19 death total.

"You have an acute infection (with COVID-19) and you have other co-morbidities and what changed? It's your acute infection that changed," said Janet Hamilton, executive director of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, adding that for many, COVID-19 is "the tipping point" in a death.

Nate Wardle, press secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of Health, said "there would be very few, if any, cases in the state where COVID-19 would be the cause of death," but rather an underlying cause of death.

Yet it is those determinations that have seen some push back. As The New York Times reported last month, President Donald Trump was questioning whether the death toll had been inflated amid his push to reopen the country, with the publication pointing to conversations about just which deaths were being included.

And in Colorado last month, Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, told "Fox News Sunday" that "the CDC criteria include anybody who has died with COVID-19, but what the people of Colorado and the people of the country want to know is how many people died of COVID-19."

Polis' state recalibrated its death count reporting in May, splitting its total into deaths where the virus is a contributing factor and a slightly longer list of total deaths of those who've had the virus.

Kirk Bol, manager of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment's vital statistics program, told NBC News it will be some time before experts know the true number of any over or under counts of COVID-19 deaths. But with time, the numbers are going to continue to be better perfected.

"I do have faith that these numbers are accurate and useful in their form, in terms of driving policy and decision making and people's thoughts and concerns of COVID-19," he said, pointing to the federal vital record system. "There's a lot of rigor and a lot of highly trained and skilled individuals participating in that system."

State health departments across the country noted the difficulty of providing numbers to the public on the fly but said they have confidence in their reporting structures and that the public should have faith in what they're seeing.

"It is difficult trying to report deaths in real time," said Melaney Arnold, public information officer for the Illinois Department of Public Health, adding, "Normally, public health officials investigate and gather additional information before reporting a death. With COVID-19, as IDPH learns more information, the total number of deaths are adjusted."

As Anderson said, the numbers are "not perfect by any stretch, but I think (Americans) should understand there's a good faith effort to produce good numbers."

"Those of us who are part of that federal statistical system, those who do disease surveillance, we don't have a dog in the race with regard to politics," he added.

While the death counts have drifted downward in recent weeks as northeastern states see a reduction of the virus, cases, hospitalizations and positive test rates are on the rise in several states, including Alabama.

When discussing the death count, it's important to remember the human aspect, said Karen Landers, assistant state health officer for the Alabama Department of Public Health, told NBC News.

In Landers' state earlier this month, legendary former Auburn University football coach Pat Dye, 80, was one of those who died with multiple complications in the mix liver and kidney failure weeks after testing positive for COVID-19, according to Harris, who performed Dye's autopsy.

Dye was recently set to rest under a special tree he helped grow 15 feet over the course of six years. The Hall of Fame coach who brought the Auburn program to national prominence had requested a simple burial.

"Every one of these deaths is a person, it's a family, it's a loss to society," Landers said. "So we have to remember when we're looking at numbers, we're also looking at people."

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How many died? Different ways of counting make the COVID-19 tally elusive - NBC News

Covid-19 can leave the lungs of people who died from the disease completely unrecognisable, a professor of cardiovascular science has told parliament.

It created such massive damage in those who spent more than a month in hospital that it resulted in complete disruption of the lung architecture, said Prof Mauro Giacca of Kings College London.

In findings that he said showed the potential for real problems after survival, he told the Lords science and technology committee that he had studied the autopsies of patients who died in Italy after 30 to 40 days in intensive care and discovered large amounts of the virus persisting in lungs as well as highly unusual fused cells.

What you find in the lungs of people who have stayed with the disease for more than a month before dying is something completely different from normal pneumonia, influenza or the Sars virus, he said. You see massive thrombosis. There is a complete disruption of the lung architecture in some lights you cant even distinguish that it used to be a lung.

There are large numbers of very big fused cells which are virus positive with as many as 10, 15 nuclei, he said. I am convinced this explains the unique pathology of Covid-19. This is not a disease caused by a virus which kills cells, which had profound implications for therapy.

His evidence came as the Lords committee heard from medical scientists and doctors grappling with the nature of Covid-19 six months after its emergence in Europe, its behaviour, treatments, vaccines and the possibility of immunity.

Sir John Bell, a professor of medicine at Oxford University who is a member of the governments coronavirus vaccine taskforce, said attempts to understand whether people who have had the disease gather any immunity would need to be tested during a second wave of infections in the UK, which he said was now likely.

Given the lockdown has now been largely released, we are now back in action and we still have a pretty reasonable level of infections in the community, I would be very surprised if we avoided a second wave, he said. I think the real question is are we going to have a number of outbursts and then a second wave or are we just going to get a second wave.

Epidemics of infectious diseases behave in different ways but the1918 influenza pandemicthat killed more than 50 million people is regarded as a key example of a pandemic that occurred in multiple waves, with the latter more severe than the first. It has been replicated albeit more mildly in subsequent flu pandemics.

How and why multiple-wave outbreaks occur, and how subsequent waves of infection can be prevented, has become a staple of epidemiological modelling studies and pandemic preparation, which have looked at everything from social behaviour and health policy to vaccination and the buildup of community immunity, also known as herd immunity.

Is there evidence of coronavirus coming back in a second wave?

This is being watched very carefully. Without a vaccine, and with no widespread immunity to the new disease, one alarm is being sounded by the experience of Singapore, which has seen a suddenresurgence in infectionsdespite being lauded for its early handling of the outbreak.

Although Singapore instituted a strong contact tracing system for its general population, the disease re-emerged incramped dormitory accommodationused by thousands of foreign workers with inadequate hygiene facilities and shared canteens.

Singapores experience, although very specific, has demonstrated the ability of the disease to come back strongly in places where people are in close proximity and its ability to exploit any weakness in public health regimes set up to counter it.

What are experts worried about?

Conventional wisdom among scientists suggests second waves of resistant infections occur after the capacity for treatment and isolation becomes exhausted. In this case the concern is that the social and political consensus supporting lockdowns is being overtaken by public frustration and the urgent need to reopen economies.

The threat declines when susceptibility of the population to the disease falls below a certain threshold or when widespread vaccination becomes available.

In general terms the ratio of susceptible and immune individuals in a population at the end of one wave determines the potential magnitude of a subsequent wave. The worry right now is that witha vaccine still months away, and the real rate of infection only being guessed at, populations worldwide remain highly vulnerable to both resurgence and subsequent waves.

Peter Beaumont

A new peak would likely allow Public Health England to test immunity on about 100,000 healthcare workers who had tested positive and so might have antibodies, he said. Whether they get reinfected will help show how immunity works but without a new peak it will be hard to find out.

The committee also heard from Prof Adrian Hayday, the chair of the department of immunobiology at Kings College London, who supported arguments that socioeconomic factors were key to understanding why there had been high levels of infections among black and minority ethnic communities in the UK.

In studies of patients in London hospitals, black, African, Asian and minority groups show higher rates of admission to hospital, which shows they are more likely to have become infected under conditions where the virus dose is maybe high, he said.

But once they are in hospital they do just as well as anybody. The hypothesis is they are disproportionately suffering from socioeconomic factors that make them more likely to receive high-frequency, high doses of infection. That is not to say the hypothesis is correct, but it is perfectly valid until proven otherwise.

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Covid-19 can damage lungs of victims beyond recognition, expert says - The Guardian

On Tuesday, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis will do something pretty unusual in the age of COVID-19 travel overseas. Mitsotakis will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel to discuss the resumption of commercial flights between their countries, as well as regional energy politics two things which have been dramatically disrupted by the pandemic. Cypriot President Nicos Anastiades is also expected to visit Israel later this month.

The discovery of offshore hydrocarbons in the Eastern Mediterranean over a decade ago has sparked intense diplomatic activity. Hoping to maximize the seas riches, many of the regions governments have proposed ambitious projects that would transport the natural gas to Europe via undersea pipelines. Encouraged by U.S. administrations that saw energy development as a vehicle for strengthening ties between its allies, the rough edges of a new regional framework for cooperation slowly took form in January 2019, when the governments of Egypt, Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority established the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum, a multinational body tasked with developing a regional gas market and mechanism for resource development.

COVID-19 has scuttled this momentum. The pandemics impact on the global energy market has damaged the conditions for Eastern Mediterranean states to profitably export their gas, and has caused a massive rethink amongst policymakers about how to make the most out of the circumstances. Although regional actors may no longer be bound to building pipelines, energy still has the potential to propel greater regional cooperation in the coming decade. American diplomatic support and engagement would go a long way to turning this opportunity into a reality.

Israels Stake in the Eastern Mediterranean

This is a bitter pill for all of the regions actors to swallow, but perhaps none more so than Israel. Historically bereft of fossil fuels, the discovery of the Tamar and Leviathan fields (in 2009 and 2010, respectively) were seen as a potential game-changer for the Jewish State. The Netanyahu government committed to the concept of gas exports as a strategic boon to Israel, and aggressively pursued a regional policy that embraced partnerships with Greece and Cyprus, as well as export deals with Jordan and Egypt. Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz spent most of the last five years promoting the East Med pipeline a 1,900-kilometer undersea pipeline that would link Israel to Italy via Greece and Cyprus.

However, the East Med pipeline which upon completion would be the longest undersea pipeline in the world was always more of a political project than a serious commercial endeavor. Not only did the path of the proposed pipeline run through disputed waters between Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus, but also active geological fault lines and deep trenches. These geopolitical and technical challenges could theoretically be overcome, yet industry experts argue that the biggest obstacle to the East Med pipeline is its commercial feasibility. With an estimated $7 billion price tag, there are doubts that Israeli and Cypriot gas would remain competitive by the time it arrived in Europe. For several years the European Commission has been exploring the possibility of committing to the pipeline, but at this stage is unlikely to back it financially.

The collapse of global energy prices brought on by the combination of an oversupplied market, warmer-than-average winter, and the coronavirus pandemic, has buried the East Med pipeline and put Israel in a serious quandary. Committed to a contract with Tamar and Leviathans developers that no longer meshes with the current economic circumstances, Israel is paying three times the global average for its own gas. The price discrepancy is so sharp that the Israel Electric Corporation is buying imported liquid natural gas at half the price of domestic supply. It is no wonder, then, that Steinitz began his second term in office with declarations that Israel would accelerate its construction of solar energy infrastructure.

The Position of Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, and Turkey

Israel is not alone in this predicament. Almost the entire Eastern Mediterranean is wrestling with similar questions.

The vanishing prospects for the East Med pipeline are as disconcerting for Greece and Cyprus as they are for Israel. Both countries are essential partners in the project. In January 2020, leaders from the three states met in a public demonstration of their commitment to the pipeline (they reportedly signed an agreement but this document has not been made public). Cyprus hoped to link its modest offshore discoveries to the East Med pipeline, and Greece was eager to function as a conduit to Europe. The important difference is that Cyprus natural gas fields are not yet operational. In early May, Italys ENI, Frances Total, and ExxonMobil announced a year-long suspension of drilling activities in Cyprus waters. There are no guarantees that the developers will return with the same interest as they once did, and the remaining export options are costly.

Even operational energy partnerships are facing tough choices. For example, Jordans energy arrangement with Israel (45 billion cubic meters over 15 years at an estimated $10 billion) is deeply unpopular because it normalizes ties with a country seen by most Jordanians as a belligerent. With a global energy market that is driving liquid natural gas prices to historic lows, the monarchy is under mounting pressure to find cheaper alternatives. If Israel continues with its plans to partially annex the West Bank, Amman may sacrifice the deal as a symbolic gesture of disapproval even if the underlying causes are economic. Jordan might hope that it could fall back on the United States, as a guarantor in the deal, to cover its debts.

Egypt hoped that offshore discoveries would transform it into a regional energy hub, converting Israeli and Cypriot gas at its liquid natural gas facilities in Idku and Damietta and then shipping them off to Europe. Today, Egypt is struggling to find buyers, has frozen activity at one of its liquid natural gas sites, and cut production at Zohr field. While the Egyptian domestic market is diverse enough to absorb some Israeli imports, this isnt the long-term arrangement the two parties envisioned some 16 months ago.

No matter where you turn, the Eastern Mediterranean energy picture is bleak. Debt-ridden Lebanon was dismayed by news in late April that initial explorations failed to uncover a meaningful gas field. Politicians in Beirut dreamed that offshore discoveries would deliver an instant economic windfall. But with energy companies announcing a suspension of activities in Cypruss waters just a week later the same companies exploring Lebanese waters the Lebanese government will have to search elsewhere for a financial bailout.

Meanwhile, Turkey appears to be taking advantage of the regional turmoil by continuing to send exploratory and drilling vessels into Eastern Mediterranean waters. However, these vessels purpose is more political than commercial. Spurned by the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum and with no resolution to the Cyprus conflict in sight, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has positioned his military on land and at sea to protect Turkish claims to the continental shelf and break what is perceived as strategic containment of Turkey by the regions actors. Turkish intervention in the Libyan civil war is at least partially driven by Ankaras desire to break the will of its neighbors and force them into direct negotiations. Not only has this strategy put Turkey at loggerheads with longtime rivals Greece and Cyprus with whom Turkey shares a long history of maritime boundary disputes but other actors as well, including the United States.

In the long run, low liquid natural gas prices could become the norm. Some forecast that the present gas glut may continue for nearly a decade as other projects come onto the market. International projects that require costly infrastructure are going to find it difficult to compete with existing liquid natural gas providers and a growing renewable energy industry. Although COVID-19 appears to have undone significant progress in the Eastern Mediterranean, it ironically may have rescued Eastern Mediterranean states from shortsighted investments. Policymakers have benefited from a rare mulligan and can now reassess their regional prospects.

Post-Pandemic Energy Strategy

The first, and most obvious, post-coronavirus strategy, is to keep the gas local. Rather than prioritizing export markets in Europe, the challenge for Eastern Mediterranean states is to diversify their domestic infrastructure and economies to be more gas friendly. This is especially relevant for Egypt, whose domestic demand is only going to increase as its population grows. Emphasizing the regional market will require intense discussions between the main developers and governments to find the appropriate contractual language that suits the involved parties.

But would organizing a regional market assume that all actors can benefit? Over the last decade, offshore hydrocarbons were as much as cause for confrontation between Eastern Mediterranean states as they were an incentive for cooperation. Now that it is clear the gas bonanza wont arrive as quickly as anticipated, perhaps the regions actors will consider a recommitment to regional diplomacy and conflict resolution. From the ongoing Libyan civil war to the maritime disputes between Greece and Turkey, there is no shortage of opportunities for those willing to decouple their energy aspirations from their interest in creating a functional regional space.

This is where the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum comes into play. Whereas the forums original purpose was to deal with matters pertaining to natural gas, post-COVID it could serve as a platform for discussion on a host of issues, from tourism to environmental protection to pandemic support to alternative energy cooperation and security. If a global pandemic instructs states about anything, it is that neighbors remain neighbors regardless of the boundaries placed between them. In short, it behooves Eastern Mediterranean states to support one another.

Americas Role in the Region

The United States should play a central role in this process. Not only is Washington the preferred mediator for many of the regions conflicts, but American support for the development of offshore hydrocarbons and regional cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean has been a rare point of bipartisan consensus during both the Obama and Trump administrations, who saw the regions gas as way to strengthen the position of its Eastern Mediterranean allies while also reducing European dependency on Russian gas. Continued engagement with Eastern Mediterranean actors will allow the United States to guide its partners towards a more cooperative future, help develop deconfliction mechanisms, and discourage interference from outside actors like Russia, Iran, and China.

This should happen in a number of different ways. First, the United States should reengage Eastern Mediterranean states in the process of maritime boundary delimitation. This issue a priority for all of the regions actors, including European heavyweights France and Italy. In particular, Turkeys signing of a maritime boundary agreement with Libyas Government of National Accord in November 2019 sparked considerable protest throughout the region and entangled the ongoing civil war in the Eastern Mediterraneans energy politics. While the Libyan civil war isnt the source of all of the regions tensions, American mediation between the aggrieved parties notably NATO member states Turkey and Greece on the issue of maritime boundaries would start rolling back tensions and create a more constructive environment for future negotiations between Turkey and Cyprus. The signing of a maritime boundary agreement between Italy and Greece on June 9 was widely seen as a maneuver to check Turkeys advance. U.S. diplomats should also encourage Israel and Lebanon to resolve their outstanding maritime issues, which would allow foreign companies to feel more comfortable exploring in Lebanese waters whenever they decide to resume activities. A semi-enclosed maritime space like the Eastern Mediterranean requires delimitation agreements in order to avoid conflict. Ideally, the United States would bring all regions actors to the negotiating table simultaneously. However, the present conditions necessitate a flexible, hands-on approach to certain disputes.

Additionally, the United States can empower the nascent Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum by investing more diplomatic resources in the organization, and incentivizing collaboration between members states. One way of doing this is by expanding the language of the 2019 Eastern Mediterranean Security and Energy Partnership Act (also known as the Menendez-Rubio Bill) in a manner that offers potential avenues for participation by Eastern Mediterranean actors not mentioned in this legislative package, specifically Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Lebanon, and Turkey. The United States-Eastern Mediterranean Energy Center described in the Menendez-Rubio Bill could be a conduit for multinational research and development in the myriad topics that are directly and indirectly impacted by offshore hydrocarbon exploration. This could open channels of communication between American and Eastern Mediterranean industries, strengthening both economic, cultural, and strategic interests.

Going Forward

For the better part of the last decade, it was expected that energy would transform the Eastern Mediterranean. However, the pandemics aftershocks have disrupted the prospects for regional cooperation. A collective pivot with American support away from the uncertain promises of energy could be a blessing in disguise. It provides regional states the opportunity to embrace a shared future that emphasizes energy diversification, multinational cooperation, and conflict resolution.

Although the United States appears committed to reducing its presence on the global stage, it should preserve and expand energy-centric multilateral diplomacy in the Eastern Mediterranean that enjoys bipartisan support. The region is rich with American partners a lasting foreign policy legacy would be finding a formula that would allow them to settle their own disputes and find new ways to cooperate.

Gabriel Mitchell is a Policy Fellow at the Mitvim The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies and a doctoral candidate at Virginia Tech University.

Image: Turkish Navy

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COVID-19 Put the Eastern Mediterranean's Hydrocarbon Dreams on Hold - War on the Rocks

At long last, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued new Covid-19 pandemic guidance documents to help the public minimize risk while venturing out into public spaces.

The CDC released two new guidance documents Friday. One is for individuals thinking about leaving the house to engage in activities like going to restaurants, nail salons, gyms, and the bank; traveling; and hosting small gatherings like cookouts. The other lists considerations for event planners (with the disclaimer that these considerations are meant to supplementnot replaceany state, local, territorial, or tribal health and safety laws, rules, and regulations with which gatherings must comply).

These new documents come as some areas of the country notably, Arizona, Florida, and the Carolinas are starting to see indications of new Covid-19 spikes, likely due to relaxed social distancing policies that started weeks ago. Which is to say: Citizens probably could have used them a month ago.

But even now, the CDCs recommendations are still broadly helpful and useful (although they come with a few omissions). Here are the highlights.

The main way people are getting sick with SARS-CoV-2 is from respiratory droplets spreading between people in close quarters. Droplets fly from peoples mouths and noses when they breathe, talk, or sneeze. Other people can breathe them in. The dose matters: The more you breathe in, the more likely you are to get sick. Thats the main risk, and thats why face masks are an essential precaution (they help stop the droplets from spewing far from a persons mouth or nose).

The CDCs recommendations for individuals take this droplet spread into account, advocating for universal masking, enthusiastic hand-washing, keeping more than 6 feet away from other people, and limiting the amount of time you spend with others. Spending more time with people increases risks. (The CDC makes more specific recommendations for activities like dining out on its website.)

In general, the CDC writes, the more closely you interact with others and the longer that interaction, the higher the risk of Covid-19 spread.

This all aligns with what experts have told Vox: People should think about Covid-19 risk in four dimensions distance to other people, environment, activity, and time spent together. More distance is better, outdoors is safer than indoors, activities that involve lots of exhaling (like singing or shouting) are more dangerous than quieter ones, and a longer time spent with others is more dangerous than a shorter time.

Perhaps a helpful way to think about the risk is this: Imagine everyone is smoking, as Ed Yong suggested in the Atlantic, and youd like to avoid inhaling as much smoke as possible. In a cramped indoor space, that smoke is going to get dense and heavy fast. If the windows are open, some of that smoke will blow away. If fewer people are in the space, less smoke will accumulate, and it might not waft over to you if youre standing far enough away. But spend a lot of time in an enclosed space with those people, and the smoke grows denser.

The denser the smoke, the more likely it is to affect you. Its the same with this virus: The more of it you inhale, the more likely you are to get sick.

As always, its important to stay home if you think you might have any symptoms of Covid-19. The CDC also recommends people think about their own risk for severe illness, and the risk of people they may be seeing. Older adults still have a greater risk of severe Covid-19 cases, as do people with underlying medical conditions. You may still want to limit time with these groups.

A lot of the same principles apply in the CDCs guidance for event planners. More people, more time, more crowds, and less mask-wearing result in a more dangerous situation. Plus, the CDC advises, the higher the level of community transmission in the area that the gathering is being held, the higher the risk of COVID-19 spreading during a gathering.

For event planners, the CDC also provides guidance for the cleaning of restrooms, the need for ventilation, and modifying event space layouts with physical barriers to ensure social distancing.

There is a big thing, though, experts have pointed out, that the CDC has left out of the document. Notably: The document does not stress that indoor events are a much higher risk than outdoor events.

Speaking on a press call Friday, Jay Butler, the CDC deputy director for infectious diseases, was asked if these guidelines also apply to political rallies (like the ones President Donald Trump plans to soon hold for his supporters). Butler said only that the guidelines were not intended to endorse any particular type of event.

You could read both of the CDCs new guideline documents and still have some questions. Theres nothing about precautions to take before going to church, no guidance about dating and sex and no explicit advice on a topic that some doctors say they get asked all the time: Is it OK to take the kids to visit grandparents? the AP reports. And this is because it is difficult for the agency to lay out recommendations for every scenario.

Life is complicated, and Covid-19 complicates it further. There are endless possibilities you can think of in a risk assessment. So overall, when weighing risks, its just good to remember the mechanisms of how Covid-19 spreads (through breath and close contact), and keep them in mind no matter what situation youre in. (Though if you want some guidelines for sexual interactions, New York City has you covered.)

Scientists recognize that no activity with other people during a pandemic is perfectly safe. Even an activity with distancing, in a scenario with universal masking, thats in an outdoor space, does not drop the risk to zero. Still, we need to find a middle ground, and reduce the harm that can result from our actions whenever possible. And these guidelines can help do that.

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The CDC has new guidelines for reducing Covid-19 risk at restaurants, events, and other daily life activities - Vox.com

WHO is following upwithChineseauthoritiesabouta clusterof COVID-19casesin Beijing, Peoples Republic ofChina.

Today, officials from the NationalHealth Commissionand BeijingHealth CommissionbriefedWHOs China country office, to share details of preliminary investigations ongoingin Beijing.

As of 13June,41 symptomatic laboratory confirmed cases and 46 laboratory confirmed caseswithout symptomsof COVID-19have been identifiedin Beijing.

The firstidentifiedcasehadsymptom onset on 9 June, and was confirmed on 11 June. Several of the initial cases were identified through six fever clinics in Beijing. Preliminary investigations revealed thatsomeof theinitialsymptomatic caseshad a linkto theXinfadiMarket in Beijing. Preliminary laboratory investigations of throat swabs from humansandenvironmental samplesfromXinfadiMarket identified 45 positive human samples (allwithout symptomsat the time of reporting) and 40 positive environmental samples. One additionalcasewithout symptomswas identified as a close contact of a confirmed case.

All cases are in isolationand under care as needed,and contact tracing is underway. Genetic sequencing of samples isalsounderwayand rapid sharing of these resultsisimportant to understand the origin of the clusterand links between cases.

WHO has offeredsupport andtechnicalassistance,as well as requestedfurther information about the cluster andthe investigations underway and planned.

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A cluster of COVID-19 in Beijing, People's Republic of China - World Health Organization

How many flu-related deaths have been reported since the COVID-19 outbreak in NC?  WLOS

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How many flu-related deaths have been reported since the COVID-19 outbreak in NC? - WLOS