23 March 20
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23 March 20
EXCERPTS:
.S. intelligence agencies did not mince words. Throughout January and February they repeatedly warned President Donald Trump and other top administration officials about the growing danger of the coronavirus and how it could quickly spread around the world,
reports the Washington Post. Starting in January, Trump began receiving reports warning that Chinese authorities appeared to be downplaying the severity of the virus amid information of how covid-19 appeared to be spreading rapidly.
The reports never predicted when the virus might hit the United States nor did they recommend things the administration should do to prepare but when looked at as a whole, they made it clear that the virus was possibly heading to become a global pandemic. Despite these warnings though, Trump continually played down the severity of the virus and officials struggled to get him to focus on the issue. “Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were—they just couldn’t get him to do anything about it,” an official said. “The system was blinking red.” Case in point, when Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was finally able to get Trump to speak to him about the virus, the president interrupted him to ask about vaping.
Hillary Clinton
tweeted out a link to the article, accusing the Trump administration of failing to act “for fear of spooking the markets,” which led to “losing weeks of time to prepare that we won’t get back.”
Trump went on the offensive against the Post when he was asked about the story during a news conference Saturday. “I think the Washington Post covers us very inaccurately, covers me very inaccurately,” Trump told reporters. “I saw the story. I think it’s a disgrace but it’s the Washington Post and I guess we have to live with it. It’s a very inaccurate…” When a journalist tried to interject, Trump said: “Quiet, quiet.” Trump went on to condemn China for expelling journalists for U.S. media outlets but he added that “I also think it’s terrible when people write inaccurately about you and they write inaccurately about me every single day, every single hour.”
Doctor giving a vaccine to a patient. (photo: INGIMAGE)
Though regulatory processes and bureaucratic barriers are likely to be expedited, including the acceleration of clinical trials in humans, the world will need to be patient.
Some of those leading the way have relied on knowledge from previous coronavirus outbreaks, while others have used vaccine platform technologies used to combat other epidemics, including Ebola.
Though regulatory processes and bureaucratic barriers are likely to be expedited, including the acceleration of clinical trials in humans, the world will need to be patient for the arrival of the vaccine.
Dr. Mike Ryan, director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program, told BBC television on Sunday that it would take at "least a year" for a vaccine to become available, emphasizing the need for rigorous safety standards.
So, who are the developers leading the race for the highly sought-after vaccine?
Moderna
The first dose of the mRNA-1273 coronavirus vaccine, developed by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Moderna’s infectious disease research team, was given to the first participant in their Phase 1 study on March 16. The trial of the vaccine, built on previous studies of SARS and MERS, is intended to provide data on the safety and immunogenicity of the vaccine, and is expected to enroll 45 healthy adult volunteers over six weeks.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based drug discovery company emphasized that it is "still early in the story," with no approved drugs to date emerging from its vaccine program and no previous human trials. The current trials are being carried out at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, described the study as "an important first step toward" finding a safe and effective vaccine.
CanSino Biologics
Authorities in China granted approval last week for Phase 1 clinical trials of a coronavirus vaccine developed by researchers at Tianjin-based CanSino Biologics and the Academy of Military Medical Sciences.
Tests of Ad5-nCoV in animals, researchers said, showed that the vaccine candidate can induce strong immune response and demonstrated a good safety profile. Prescreening for the first human study has already begun, and is expected to enroll 108 healthy participants at Wuhan's Tongji Hospital.
“Having committed to provide unconditional support to fight against the global epidemic, CanSinoBIO is determined to launch our vaccine product candidate as soon as possible with no compromise on quality and safety," said CanSino chairman and CEO Xuefeng Yu.
MIGAL
Located in Kiryat Shmona, the MIGAL – Galilee Research Institute is working to adapt a vaccine initially developed to prevent the Infectious Bronchitis Virus (IBV) in poultry.
Funded by the government, the institute hailed a “scientific breakthrough that will lead to the rapid creation of a vaccine against coronavirus" in late February, based on the genetic similarity between the avian coronavirus and the novel coronavirus. Human testing of the oral vaccine, the institute said, is expected to begin within eight to 10 weeks, and safety approval is expected within 90 days.
"We are currently in intensive discussions with potential partners that can help accelerate the in-human trials phase and expedite the completion of final product development and regulatory activities," said MIGAL CEO David Zigdon.
INOVIO Pharmaceuticals
Pennsylvania-based INOVIO announced the receipt of a new $5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on March 12 to accelerate the testing of its novel DNA vaccine for COVID-19, known as INO-4800.
Currently in preclinical studies, INOVIO plans to advance into US Phase 1 clinical trials next month, backed by up to $9m. in funding from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. The company says it aims to deliver one million doses of INO-4900 and handheld intradermal delivery devices to administer them by the end of 2020.
"Our team of vaccine experts are working around the clock to advance INO-4800 and we look forward to attracting additional partnerships to expedite its development to meet this urgent global health need," said INOVIO president and CEO Dr. J. Joseph Kim.
CureVac
Reportedly the target of an acquisition attempt by US President Donald Trump, German biopharmaceutical company CureVac announced that it is leveraging its mRNA-based drug platform to produce a vaccine against the novel coronavirus.
The European Commission has offered up to €80 million of financial support to CureVac, which plans to launch clinical tests in June 2020. If proven, the commission said, millions of vaccine doses could be produced at low costs in the company's existing production facilities.
"The combination of mRNA science, disease understanding, formulation and production expertise make CureVac a unique player to fight against any infectious disease, no matter whether they are seasonal or pandemic," said CureVac CTO Mariola Fotin-Mleczek.
BioNTech
German immunotherapy company BioNTech and American pharma giant Pfizer signed a letter of intent last week to codevelop and distribute an mRNA-based vaccine against the novel coronavirus. The partnership, originally formed in 2018 to develop flu vaccines, will accelerate BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine program BNT162, which is expected to enter the clinic by the end of April.
Just one day earlier, the Mainz-based company announced a strategic development and commercialization collaboration with Fosun Pharma to advance its mRNA vaccine in China. Fosun Pharma will pay BioNTech up to $135m. in upfront and potential future investment and milestone payments.
"We feel a duty to exploit our full technology and immunotherapy expertise to help address the COVID-19 pandemic emergency," said BioNTech founder and CEO Prof. Ugur Sahin, adding that the company is also working on a novel therapeutics approach for patients who have already been infected. Details, he said, will be disclosed "in the coming weeks."
Rand Paul. (photo: Getty Images)
EXCERPT:
He was the only senator to vote against an $8.3 billion emergency package to deal with the health crisis last month.
“He is feeling fine and is in quarantine,” an announcement on his Twitter said. “He is asymptomatic and was tested out of an abundance of caution due to his extensive travel and events.”
It added, “He expects to be back in the Senate after his quarantine period ends and will continue to work for the people of Kentucky at this difficult time.”
“I think that the paid sick leave is an incentive for businesses to actually let go employees and will make unemployment worse,”
Paul, a physician who has a Kentucky-issued medical license, explained to
Newsweek.
CNN
reported that Paul closed his Capitol Hill offices over a week ago and urged employees to work from home due to concerns over the coronavirus outbreak. Two people who attended the annual Speed Art Museum ball in Kentucky with the senator on March 7 later tested positive for the virus,
according to the Courier-Journal.
But despite reportedly being tested roughly a week ago, Paul continued to interact with colleagues and even worked out at the Senate gym—and
was swimming in the pool—on Sunday morning, shortly before he received his positive test results,
Politico reported.
Paul is the first senator to test positive for the novel coronavirus.
Two other members of Congress, Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) and Ben McAdams (D-UT), have also gone public with positive test results.
According to the World Health Organization, COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, is particularly dangerous for people with lung problems. In August 2019, Paul
had part of his lung removed after an altercation with his neighbor Rene Boucher. The two had a long-running dispute over lawn care.
“While it is worldwide, I think there is room for optimism that this thing may plateau out in a few weeks and not be as bad it as it may have been portrayed,” he said to host Neil Cavuto. “We’ve seen pockets of this around the world and even in Italy and Iran where we have it, but none of it is approaching what started in China.”
When asked about institutions taking larger measures to limit the spread of the virus, Paul was resistant to the idea. “I think closing down the Smithsonians would be way too premature and I wouldn’t advise something like that.”
And when Cavuto asked Paul about making personal adjustments to avoid infection, the Senator was particularly defiant. “I mean, I fly all the time and I’m not cutting back on my flying... I was on a plane today,” he said. “I could be wrong and this could be really bad in two or three weeks or a month, but I’m hoping it’s not going to be. I’m not ready to buy all the toilet paper at Target.”
The senator’s father, Dr. Ron Paul, a physician and a former Republican congressman from Texas, published an essay called “The Coronavirus Hoax” last week for the New River Valley News, a local outlet based in Virginia.
“People should ask themselves whether this coronavirus ‘pandemic’ could be a big hoax, with the actual danger of the disease massively exaggerated by those who seek to profit—financially or politically—from the ensuing panic,” the elder Paul wrote.
As of Sunday afternoon, there are 30,000 COVID-19 cases in the U.S., and nearly 400 people have died.
A women stands with her child in a stroller during an anti-abortion rights rally outside the Planned Parenthood Reproductive Health Center on June 4, 2019 in St Louis, Missouri. (photo: Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images)
An Amazon delivery man in Paris, France, on March 19, 2020. (photo: Getty Images)
Amazon Prime Delivery Delays Are Now as Long as a Month
Jason Del Rey, Vox
Del Rey writes: "Amazon announced earlier this week that it would start prioritizing the most in-demand essential items in its warehouses, as the e-commerce giant struggles to keep up with customer demand during the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic."
READ MORE
'But do we want the federal government to determine our taste and create a uniform architectural environment? Isn't that what happened in Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union?' (photo: Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG/Getty Images)
While superficially bowing to the past, Trump’s draft proposal for regulating federal architecture would undo two centuries of precedent going back to Benjamin Latrobe.
In 1962
Daniel Moynihan, at the time an official in the Labor Department, wrote a report that has set the framework for government building ever since. Earlier there had been casual attention given to individual federal buildings, mainly the U.S. Capitol. But there had been little interest in establishing a federal policy. Moynihan’s “Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture,” more philosophy than directive, did so in 500 words. Under threat today, these guidelines established three basic points: architects, not the government, must determine designs for federal buildings; the development of an official style must be avoided; and architectural design must “embody the finest contemporary American Architecture.”
The new proposal, written by a private group which supports classical architecture, would require that all federal buildings costing more than $50 million be built in a uniform style. It reads “In the national capital region and for all Federal courthouses the classical architecture style shall be the preferred and default style.”
A President’s Committee for the Rebeautification of Federal Architecture would then draft new regulations establishing good design practices, and these requirements would as well affect renovations of federal buildings to make them conform to the mandated federal look. According to the Architectural Record, the draft order, while overturning the guidelines set up in the 1962 Moynihan report, nevertheless repeats as mantras the four pillars of its guidelines: federal buildings “must provide dignity, enterprise, vigor and stability.”
But who is to say when a building expresses dignity or stability, much less enterprise and vigor? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder; taste is an individual expression. Harry Truman despised the Eisenhower Executive Office Building; the draft refers to that building as “beautiful and beloved.” Clearly, the folks behind the draft have set their sights on modern buildings, taking aim at two specific styles—deconstructivism and the Brutalist style of the mid- 20th century.
But do we want the federal government to determine our taste and create a uniform architectural environment? Isn’t that what happened in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union? The designs of modern architects should not be ostracized; rather they represent the prized innovation and diversity of our nation.
What is jarring for one generation becomes acceptable, even admired, in the next. An observation of the public buildings on Capitol Hill proves as much. The variety of design is visually absorbing—from the authentic classical expression of the U.S. Capitol to the Library of Congress, with its display of three generations of buildings: the Beaux Arts Jefferson, the Art Deco Adams and the eclectic, classical touches of the Madison. To this diverse display, the U.S. Supreme Court, built in the 1930s in the neoclassical style, seems no more than an embarrassing cliché.
In the draft, the General Services Administration would organize public panels to provide commentary on design proposals—no experts permitted. Excluded are “artists, architects, engineers, art or architectural critics and members of the building industry.” Included, one suspects, would be Trumpian lackeys who would now have the power to dictate the civic space of our nation. And the whole enterprise would be promoted as the people against the elites. Beware a future of faux classical structures, glinty gold trim, and Louis X1V-type flourishes.
Expertise, innovation, and professionalism mattered in the past. Under the admired Design Excellence Program with its system of peer review, outstanding federal structures have been built, for example, the Boston and Miami courthouses.
Two hundred and twenty years ago, Benjamin Latrobe, an émigré from England and the nation’s first professionally trained architect and engineer, installed those principles. Latrobe was not always successful, but he set the course of our built space with his neoclassical buildings and his fervent conviction of the importance of architecture to the future of the republic.
He also established the basic philosophy that the building of federal buildings must be sheltered from government dictation. He was in every sense a founder of the republic—not of political ideas but of the neoclassical buildings and substantial improvements that expressed those ideas.
Born in 1764 in Fulneck, England, Latrobe was educated in a Moravian community. Despite his family’s expectations that he follow them into the ministry, he rebelled against his Moravian heritage. He moved to London where he studied architecture and engineering before emigrating to the United States in 1796. There he found a nation with unlimited opportunities for both public and private building.
Six months after his arrival, this tall, self-confident Englishman was dining with George Washington. Privately Latrobe described the president’s home, Mount Vernon, as “good and neat but of no striking appearance.” It was no better, he wrote, than that of a plain English gentleman’s home. But that was the point in this developing democracy.
Latrobe quickly established himself as the nation’s premier architect. His first venture into civic architecture resulted in the massive Virginia State Penitentiary, a building with what Latrobe aspired to create—character. The design, from the exterior building material to the interior spaces, revealed its dual purposes of intimidation and rehabilitation.
By 1800 Latrobe was living in Philadelphia, a city displaced that year by Washington as the capital of the United States. Here he designed his famous Bank of Pennsylvania. The building became a landmark of the neoclassical style that Latrobe introduced into the United States. Its exterior was that of an antique temple, capped by a dome and cupola and two Greek Ionic porticos of six columns, front and back. For the exterior he used marble, a more permanent material than brick, the colonial favorite.
In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson appointed Latrobe surveyor of the public buildings. Now this English émigré was in charge of the two most important buildings in the United States, the Capitol and the President’s House. One wing of the multi-authored Capitol was already partially completed when Latrobe arrived to stamp the physical center of American democracy with classical features.
In 1814 when the British burned the federal buildings in Washington, Latrobe redesigned parts of the Capitol. Responding to changes in the United States, he relied on more practical, efficient designs of half circles for its assembly rooms. Ever an advocate for the use of American materials, he used an extraordinary local stone found along the shores of the Potomac River called breccia or calico rock. We still see Latrobe’s breccia columns on the evening news.
Latrobe proclaimed the Capitol a Temple of Liberty, connecting his architecture to Greece and Rome. Those who had made a successful revolution against a monarchy found their antecedents in these ancient republics. Latrobe’s classical design appealed to imitators who used variations on the courthouses and state capitols proliferating in the United States.
But Latrobe never insisted on a monolithic classical style. He often gave clients choices for different designs including some with Gothic features. Throughout his life he fought lonely battles against any interference by federal officials including presidents. When Jefferson argued for cheaper, wooden columns at the Capitol, Latrobe successfully made his case against federal meddling, even by an American president. When a Monroe appointee challenged his design, Latrobe resigned.
Throughout his career, he insisted that architecture be valued as a profession, with established procedures for payment. His scorn for amateurs, whether carpenters or dilettantes, was endless. Architecture, in his view, was for experts.
How ironic that his style of building would be held up today to establish uniformity. What made sense in a post-revolutionary society is an anachronism today. Karl Marx once said that he was no longer a Marxist. Benjamin Latrobe, confronted with today’s making federal buildings beautiful program, would surely protest its efforts to create 21st century knockoffs of his neoclassical buildings. He would oppose the interference by the federal government and untrained citizens over public buildings. He would no longer be a Latrobean.
The 110 Harbor Freeway toward central Los Angeles on Friday afternoon, a time when traffic would normally be bumper-to-bumper. (photo: Mark J. Terrill/AP)
Traffic and Pollution Plummet as US Cities Shut Down
Brad Plumer and Nadja Popovich, The New York Times
Excerpt: "In cities across the United States, traffic on roads and highways has fallen dramatically over the past week as the coronavirus outbreak forces people to stay at home and everyday life grinds to a halt."
EXCERPT:
A satellite that detects emissions in the atmosphere linked to cars and trucks shows huge declines in pollution over major metropolitan areas, including Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Chicago and Atlanta.
omewhere in the White House, a draft executive order entitled “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again” is circulating. Given a title replete with the bravado of this administration, the contents of the order would overturn over two centuries of precedent establishing 
