The coronavirus pandemic isn’t ending — it’s surging

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/06/11/coronavirus-pandemic-isnt-ending-its-surging/?fbclid=IwAR32qLZ4pR2z6D5hVoTwi58eshXJNugSBCKNCz7n7L4Tb4O4g3yQe5cPF4A&utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

As restrictions are lifted around the world, the sense of urgency surrounding the novel coronavirus pandemic has weakened. Hundreds of millions of students have returned to school; restaurants, bars and other businesses are slowly reopening in many countries. In parts of Europe, vaccine researchers worry that they will not have enough sick people for testing.

But this historic pandemic is not ending. It is surging. There were 136,000 new infections reported on Sunday, the highest single-day increase since the start of the pandemic. There are more than 7 million confirmed cases so far. The number of deaths is nearing half a million, with little sign of tapering off, and global health experts are continuing to sound the alarm.

“By no means is this over,” Mike Ryan, the World Health Organization’s executive director, said Wednesday. “If we look at the numbers over the last number of weeks, this pandemic is still evolving. It is still growing in many parts of the world.”

Latin America has emerged as a hot spot, currently accounting for almost half of global deaths by the Financial Times’ tally. The problem is particularly acute in Brazil, where the central government has maintained a hands-off attitude to the outbreak even as cases surged to almost 750,000, second only to the United States, but it has also hit countries, such as Peru, that took early steps against the virus.

Cases have surged in South Asia. WHO officials urged Pakistan to lock down after officials declared a record number of new cases in the past 24 hours. India is facing a new wave of infection; a top official in Delhi on Wednesday said that cases were expected to soar above 500,000 by the end of next month. Indonesia had its biggest daily increase in coronavirus cases for a second consecutive day on Wednesday, with 1,241 new infections.

Across sub-Saharan Africa, there are now more than 200,000 cases: There is widespread speculation that Pierre Nkurunziza, Burundi’s president, who died on Tuesday, was the first world leader to die of covid-19, though Burundian officials have said the cause of death was cardiac arrest.

The scale of the coronavirus has made it hard to take in. “In the period of four months, it has devastated the world,” Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN on Tuesday. “And it isn’t over yet.”

Some nations that were devastated early in the pandemic look to be losing ground in their recovery. In Iran and the United States, two countries divided by geopolitical enmity, experts are united by fresh fears of a second wave; new cases in Iran have surged to record highs weeks after the country eased its lockdown.

Some Iranian officials have blamed increased testing, which in itself raises questions about the first outbreak’s extent. “We don’t know if it will be a second wave, a second peak or a continuing first wave in some countries,” WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan told CNBC.

U.S. states are seeing an increasing number of patients since Memorial Day weekend, when many people socialized in groups in parts of the country, while there are new concerns that the anti-racism protests sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis could add to a nationwide surge.

In the United States and elsewhere, the protests about injustice are partly fueled by the racial disparities seen in the outbreak. Protesters have attempted to maintain social distance and use masks and hand sanitizer — but that has not always proved possible.

Public health experts have expressed understanding about the protests. “It doesn’t help to say police violence doesn’t matter,” Gregg Gonsalves, a professor of epidemiology at Yale, told New York Magazine. “The health disparities that have killed tens of thousands of people over a half a century don’t matter. We are saying we understand it matters; they’re public-health issues too.”

But almost all experts acknowledge that mass protests are a risk — just as the reopening of the economy seen in many nations around the world, including the United States, carries risks. “The facts suggest that the U.S. is not going to beat the coronavirus,” the Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal and Robinson Meyer write. “Collectively, we slowly seem to be giving up.”

That demoralized attitude is reflected at the top of American politics: It has been more than a month since the Trump administration held a daily coronavirus task force briefing.

What will it look like to finally beat the virus? We can see some glimpses of it, if we look hard enough: New Zealand declared itself coronavirus-free this week; Taiwan is close to that milestone too. Some smaller nations, like the Pacific island of Samoa, have avoided getting a single confirmed case.

But until the pandemic is pushed back globally, these victories are fragile. We’ve seen this year how easily the virus can travel to a country and, once inside, spread furiously. Even for countries without the virus, the economic pain is still there.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development on Wednesday predicted that there would probably be a drop of 6 percent in global economic productivity this year, among the worst declines in a century. If there is a second wave, the drop would be worse — 7.6 percent — the organization said, with unemployment at 10 percent in developed countries in 2020 and little improvement next year.

Even in newly reopened New Zealand, that impact is evident. Officials in Auckland said this week that foot traffic and spending in the central business district were only 40 percent of what they had been before the virus. “When you’ve normally got an inner-city workforce in excess of 138,000 people, coupled with international tourists, that’s a major change in customers,” one told the New Zealand Herald.

There are some reasons to be hopeful. A study by Britain’s Cambridge and Greenwich universities released Wednesday suggested that widespread mask wearing could help prevent a second wave as damaging as the first. Vaccine trials are beginning and many hope that the ambitious, accelerated development timetables will produce results as soon as the end of the year.

But there is still much we don’t know and little reason to feel triumphant right now. “This microscopic virus has humbled all of us,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday.

wv wrote:

“Christopher Columbus statue pulled down Minnesota State Capitol”

People dance around the statue. pic.twitter.com/6gIPTe9nBs

— Max Nesterak (@maxnesterak) June 10, 2020

A journalist in Minn shot with a rubber bullet lost an eye

An elderly man in Buffalo pushed to the ground has brain damage

A woman in NYC, assaulted, had a seizure

And the #UglyPresident said

“It’s not supposed to be a beautiful scene but to me it was”https://t.co/51gD1BZDWf https://t.co/Ess5bNRno4

— Adam Cohen Lawyers for Good Government #DemCast (@axidentaliberal) June 12, 2020

Said he was reaching for a gun yet we could see both hands in this whole video. What a disgrace

— Daniel J. Clementi (@ChefDJClementi) June 11, 2020

pic.twitter.com/VAXSVFS7nE

— Reinvent Your Work 🌻 (@ReinventUrWork) June 12, 2020

These polls and the articles written around them, however, are not as certain or firm about what changes will happen legally and institutionally. That is, will institutions be forced to change for the better? That’s not as clear.

from https://www.vox.com/2020/6/7/21283239/poll-americans-more-concerned-police-violence-than-violence-at-protests

A survey of over 6,000 people from Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape found that the favorability figures for the police plunged 10 percent in one week — 66 percent to 56 percent — just days after Floyd’s death.

“This is a unique moment in American history,” Robert Griffin, research director for the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group, told the New York Daily News. “To see shifts like this really speaks to what a monumental event these protests have been.”

I got home before the curfew but I passed this truck near 14th street and if this is you, please contact me. pic.twitter.com/r1zKD9990v

— Jane Coaston (@cjane87) June 2, 2020

==

from https://www.vox.com/2020/6/11/21283836/protests-libertarian-dc-interview-truck

This week, 26-year-old Nathan, the owner of the truck, gave me the answers.

Nathan is a Korean-American self-described “libertarian-leaning Republican” who has never been a fan of the two-party system. But President Donald Trump was something of a breaking point for him.

He’s a Texas-born 2016 Virginia Military Institute graduate whose job search in Washington has been stymied by the coronavirus pandemic. He had never attended a street protest before last week, but he told me that being in Lafayette Park when Park Police used tear gas and rubber bullets against protesters “radicalized” him. “I just had to fucking show up after that,” he told me.

Now he’s attending anti-police brutality protests outside the White House every day. Wearing a hard hat emblazoned with quotes from Mahatma Gandhi and Mr. Rogers, he carries a broom and dustpan and tidies the streets as he walks, because he wanted his form of protest to be a “peaceful contribution.”

Rams’ Jared Goff, Robert Woods strive to advance social justice conversation

Lindsey Thiry

https://www.espn.com/blog/los-angeles-rams/post/_/id/41722/rams-jared-goff-robert-woods-strive-to-advance-social-justice-conversation

George Floyd’s death reverberated throughout the world, the NFL and, closer to home, the Los Angeles Rams’ virtual meeting room.

On Wednesday, 10 days after Rams coach Sean McVay held a video conference that urged players and coaches to speak about Floyd and personal experiences regarding racial issues, Rams quarterback Jared Goff and receiver Robert Woods said social justice awareness has been raised, and that it’s time for the conversation to advance.

“Now is a call for action,” Woods said during a video conference with reporters Wednesday. “Find ways to actually move in the community, move in our police reforms, sit down with our political leaders, different things other than — I think take a knee, lock arms right now — I think everyone’s aware, now it’s time to get involved, whatever skin color, job, profession, I think it’s that time to take action.”

Goff echoed San Francisco 49ers cornerback Richard Sherman, who told Sports Illustrated last week that he was “impressed with the white QBs speaking up because those are voices that carry different weight than the black voices for some people … which means the people who refuse to listen to a black athlete’s perspective will hear the same thing said from a white athlete, but receive the message much differently.”

“He’s right,” Goff said about Sherman. “The people of color have been fighting for this for so long and wanting change, and as a white person, as a white athlete, again you have an idea it’s happening, but it truly doesn’t hit you the way it does until something like this happens. I think for us to be able to speak out and make a stand, it can change things and it’s important … I want to be a part of that change.”

Before Sherman’s remarks, Goff released a statement on Instagram that read, in part, “I’ll never pretend to understand the struggles that the Black community goes through daily in our country and never will know this struggle. It is my responsibility to educate myself and actively participate in advocating for the change our country desperately needs, in words and action.”

When speaking to reporters, Woods touched on his experience involving police encounters. He said that as a kid growing up in L.A. he was questioned by police about attending a movie theater in other parts of town, that police would watch until his parents picked him up, or the police would kick him off the premises. Woods also said that he has been pulled over by police at gunpoint.

“Things like that, just — you get numb to it,” Woods said. “I feel like you almost just know how to react and know how to act in those situations.”

Goff said it was powerful to hear the experiences of coaches and teammates.

“You do know this stuff exists, but hearing it from people that you love and teammates that you go to work with every single day, getting to hear it from their point of view, it changes things,” Goff said.

Last season, Woods voiced a Los Angeles Police Department recruitment commercial that aired on L.A. sports radio. He said Wednesday that he still supports the cause.

“I still agree with people — proper people need to join the forces,” Woods said. “I think we need people of color, people who are respectable people, honest people, and to this day I still think we need to have correct police officers, but I do think we need to change some of the reforms.”

Woods said he was uncertain whether the Rams, who have stated that they will discuss any form of on-field action as a team, will kneel during the national anthem.

“I personally feel like the kneeling was an awareness thing. I don’t know what we will do,” Woods said. “I think the biggest thing right now is to try to have action, whether it’s going down and voting, encouraging others to vote.”

Woods said he has signed a letter that would be sent to politicians about police reform.

#LARams fan favorite Johnny Hekker had quite the boot last season, ranking 3rd in YPA (47.3) among all Punters with at least 25 attempts! pic.twitter.com/zzSikWlSwU

— PFF LA Rams (@PFF_Rams) June 11, 2020