05 May 20
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ALSO SEE: FBI Seizes Four Pipe Bombs From Home of Colorado
Anti-Lockdown Protester, Feds Say
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Cole writes: "Security guard Calvin Munerlyn, father of six with three step-children, was shot to death Monday in an altercation over Munerlyn's demand that a 20-year-old woman wear a mask to shop in a Dollar Store in Flint, Michigan."
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Democratic presidential candidates former South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg, former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Tom Steyer speak after the Democratic presidential primary debate at the Charleston Gaillard Center on February 25, 2020, in Charleston, South Carolina. (photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)
The Democratic Party's Cynical, Anti-Democratic Maneuvers Against Bernie Sanders
Branko Marcetic, Jacobin
Marcetic writes: "New York Democrats have struck Bernie Sanders from the ballot, canceling the state's June primary. It's left a bitter taste in the mouths of his supporters, whose disillusionment with the Democratic Party will only deepen."
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French president Emmanuel Macron speaks at the Élysée Palace in Paris after Monday's virtual vaccine summit. (photo: Gonzalo Fuentes/AP)
The World Came Together for a Virtual Vaccine Summit. The US Was Conspicuously Absent.
William Booth, Carolyn Y. Johnson and Carol Morello, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "World leaders came together in a virtual summit Monday to pledge billions of dollars to quickly develop vaccines and drugs to fight the coronavirus."
EXCERPT:
Scientists are working around-the-clock to find a cure or treatment for the coronavirus. The World Health Organization says eight vaccines have entered human trials and another 94 are in development.
But finding an effective vaccine is only part of the challenge. When it’s discovered, infectious disease experts are predicting a scramble for limited doses, because there won’t be enough to vaccinate everyone on Day One. And deploying it could be difficult, particularly in countries that lack robust medical infrastructure.
Those that have begun human trials include a research project at Oxford University in England, which hopes to have its vaccine ready in the fall. The university started human trials on April 23. “In normal times,” British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said, “reaching this stage would take years.”
Other scientists are sprinting to create antiviral drugs or repurposing existing drugs such as remdesivir, which U.S. infectious diseases chief Anthony S. Fauci said he expected would be the new “standard of care.”
Other approaches now in trial include treatments such as convalescent plasma, which involves taking blood plasma from people who have recovered from covid-19 to patients who are fighting the virus, in the hope that the antibody-rich fluid will give the infected a helping hand.
Conference participants expressed hope that by working together, the world will find solutions more quickly — and they can then be dispersed to all countries, not only the wealthy, or those that developed vaccines first.
Many of the leaders stressed their support for the WHO. President Trump announced last month he was cutting off U.S. funding for the WHO because he said it had sided too closely with China, where the coronavirus arose. Trump says Chinese leaders underplayed the threat and hid crucial facts.
Public health analysts have shared some of those criticisms but have also criticized Trump for cutting off funding.
Peter Jay Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, said the United States has always been the primary funder of new products for global health. The country invested $1.8 billion in neglected diseases in 2018, according to Policy Cures Research, more than two-thirds of the worldwide total.
Hotez said the United States shoulders the burden of investing in global health technologies, while countries such as China do not step up.
President Donald J. Trump, joined by Vice President Mike Pence and members of the White House Coronavirus (COVID-19) Task Force, delivers remarks and answers questions from members of the press during the coronavirus update briefing Friday, April 10, 2020. (photo: Shealah Craighead)
US Citizen Kids of Undocumented Immigrants Sued the Trump Administration for Denying Them Coronavirus Stimulus Checks
Zoe Tillman, BuzzFeed
Tillman writes: "US citizen kids whose parents are undocumented immigrants filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Tuesday challenging their exclusion from a coronavirus relief program that Congress intended to benefit children."
EXCERPT:
Children in these homes are especially vulnerable because their parents aren’t eligible for unemployment benefits and are more likely to work in industries hit hard during the pandemic, such as food services, cleaning, retail, and child care, lawyers from the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center, which brought the case, argued in court papers. The lawsuit notes that undocumented immigrants can access other federal benefits programs for US citizen children, including the federal child tax credit, food stamps, welfare, and housing benefits.
The lawsuit alleges that the denial of relief money to children in these circumstances is unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment because the children are being discriminated against and treated differently from other US citizen children.
At least two other lawsuits have been filed so far against the administration for denying CARES Act relief funds to taxpaying couples where one person doesn’t have a Social Security number. Although some of the families named in those cases have children, they aren’t named as plaintiffs.
V-E Day marked the end of fighting in Europe in World War II. (photo: Getty Images)
Andrew Bacevich | V-E Day Plus 75: From a Moment of Victory to a Time of Pandemic
Andrew Bacevich, TomDispatch
Bacevich writes: "The 75th anniversary of Nazi Germany's surrender in May 1945 ought to prompt thoughtful reflection. For Americans, V-E Day, as it was then commonly called, marked the beginning of 'our times.' The Covid-19 pandemic may signal that our times are now coming to an end."
EXCERPT:
In Washington, policymakers have shown little inclination to consider the possibility that the United States itself might be guilty of doing evil. In effect, the virtuous intentions implicit in “Never Again” inoculated the United States against the virus to which ordinary nations were susceptible. V-E Day seemingly affirmed that America was anything but ordinary.
Here, then, we arrive at one explanation for the predicament in which the United States now finds itself. In a recent article in the New York Times, journalist Katrin Bennhold wondered how it could be that, when it came to dealing with Covid-19, “the country that defeated fascism in Europe 75 years ago” now finds itself “doing a worse job protecting its citizens than many autocracies and democracies” globally.
Yet it might just be that events that occurred 75 years ago in Europe no longer have much bearing on the present. The country that defeated Hitler’s version of fascism (albeit with considerable help from others) has since allowed its preoccupation with fascists, quasi-fascists, and other ne’er-do-wells to serve as an excuse for letting other things slip, particularly here in the homeland.
The United States is fully capable of protecting its citizens. Yet what the present pandemic drives home is this: doing so, while also creating an environment in which all citizens can flourish, is going to require a radical revision of what we still, however inaccurately, call “national security” priorities. This does not mean turning a blind eye to mass murder. Yet the militarization of U.S. policy that occurred in the wake of V-E Day has for too long distracted attention from more pressing matters, not least among them creating a way of life that is equitable and sustainable. This perversion of priorities must now cease.
So, yes, let’s mark this V-E Day anniversary with all due solemnity. Yet 75 years after the collapse of the Third Reich, the challenge facing the United States is not “Never Again.” It’s “What Now?”
For the moment at least, Tom and I are still around. Yet “our times” -- the period that began when World War II ended -- have run their course. The “new times” upon which the nation has now embarked will pose their own distinctive challenges, as the Covid-19 pandemic makes unmistakably clear. Addressing those challenges will require leaders able to free themselves from a past that has become increasingly irrelevant.
Nurses receive training on using ventilators, recently provided by the World Health Organization at the intensive care ward of a hospital allocated for novel coronavirus patients in preparation for any possible spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Sanaa, Yemen, April 8, 2020. (photo: Khaled Abdullah/Reuters)
After US Funding Cuts, WHO Likely to End Most Yemen Health Services
Bryant Harris, Al-Monitor
Harris writes: "As Yemen stares down the prospect of a devastating COVID-19 crisis, the World Health Organization is likely going to suspend about 80% of the health care services in the war-torn country by the end of the week, UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen Lise Grande said today."
EXCERPT:
Why it matters: Grande noted that the WHO is going to have to “reduce” or “more likely” shutter operations in 189 Yemeni hospitals and 200 primary health centers. Additionally, the United Nations Children’s Fund will have to scale back or stop services in 18 major hospitals and 2,500 primary health centers, affecting some 250,000 malnourished children. The UN funding cuts will also force service reductions and eliminations at 142 camps for displaced Yemenis, mine removal operations, protection programs, reproductive health initiatives and the emergency distribution of hygiene products to help suppress the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite the drastic funding cuts, Grande noted that the WHO is “training and funding” 33 rapid response teams to test Yemenis with coronavirus symptoms in the hopes of tripling that number “within just the next few weeks.” The WHO has also converted 32 hospitals throughout the country to fight COVID-19 and facilitated the importation of masks, other protective gear, ventilators and ICU beds amid stiff global competition.
“Let’s be frank, no one else could do that,” said Grande.
On Friday, the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthi rebels announced it was extending a cease-fire for another month to allow for UN-brokered negotiations and to help in the fight against the outbreak.
What’s next: UN efforts to establish a coronavirus cease-fire in the war-torn country were complicated on Sunday when Yemen’s southern separatists declared self-rule in Aden and other provinces. Grande noted that the United Nations is in talks with the Southern Transitional Council over aid implementation.
“The more proliferation of administrative authority, the more complicated governance becomes,” she said. “The harder it is to respond to COVID at the scale and with the intensity that’s required.”
Know more: Yemen has only one officially recorded coronavirus case so far, but Nadia Al-Sakkaf reports that the Houthis are keeping a lid on others so as not to discourage potential fighters from joining the war. And check out Al-Monitor's latest Week in Review for what's next after Saudi Arabia and coalition partners extend the Yemen cease-fire.
A store burns as the Camp fire tears through Paradise, California. (photo: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images)
'It Sounded Evil': Inside the Eerie Moment California's Deadliest Wildfire Began
Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "Four miles east of Paradise, California as the crow flies, fire chief Matt McKenzie awoke in confusion at 5am on Thursday, 8 November 2018. It sounded like rain hitting the metal roof of the fire station, but there was none in the forecast."
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