Thursday, May 7, 2020
At “reopen the economy” event, Trump confirms plans to shut down coronavirus task force
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/06/trum-m06.html
By Barry Grey
6 May 2020
At an appearance in Phoenix, Arizona on Tuesday to promote the government’s back-to-work campaign, President Donald Trump confirmed reports that he is planning to dismantle the White House coronavirus task force. Trump traveled to Phoenix to tour a Honeywell aerospace plant that has partially converted to the production of N95 masks.
His first major event outside of Washington DC in a month, it was meant to signal that the period of quarantining is over and it is time to shift to reopening business. The White House indicated that more such appearances would soon follow, including one in Ohio later this week.
Trump combined his tour of the plant with a so-called “round table” with Navajo Indian officials, at which he displayed an executive order allocating $600 million for the Navajo Nation to combat the coronavirus. This is a drop in the bucket compared to the massive social needs of an impoverished and oppressed population that lacks the basic health infrastructure needed to deal with the pandemic. It is a tiny fraction of the more than $6 trillion that has been allocated on a bipartisan basis by Congress and the Federal Reserve to bail out Wall Street.
In a brief exchange with reporters following the round table, Trump was asked to respond to a report in the New York Times that he was planning to “wind down” the White House task force on the virus. He confirmed the report, saying the country had entered “phase two” of the pandemic, which he called “safety and opening.” He added, “We will have a different group probably set up for that.”
Trump’s appearance featured the combination of self-congratulation, stupidity and brazen lying to which millions around the world have become accustomed. Significantly, he made a point of calling the American people “warriors,” implying that they had to be prepared to die. And to die, moreover, for Wall Street.
His announcement on the task force underscored that the drive to force workers back into factories and workplaces, without any serious safety precautions or equipment, and while the pandemic continues to rage unchecked, puts an end to any pretense of a coordinated effort to contain the disease.
It makes clear that the drive to resume corporate-profit making, in defiance of warnings from public health experts as well as polls showing lopsided majorities opposed to the operation, is a conscious decision to let the deadly virus spread more widely and take untold thousands more lives.
In practical terms, the existence of the task force, which includes scientists and medical experts such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, exerted little influence on the response of the Trump administration and the political establishment as a whole to the pandemic. From the onset, the response of the government has been determined by the interests and demands of the corporate-financial oligarchy that runs the country.
But the winding down of the body has considerable symbolic significance. It is a statement that neither the facts, nor science, nor popular opinion, nor the horrific toll in death and disease will deter the ruling class from propping up the stock market and expanding the wealth of the super-rich, no matter the human cost.
Trump is using the technique of the “big lie” to justify his back-to-work campaign. He claims that the pandemic is all but over, even as deaths surge past the 70,000 mark and infections continue to increase. It is, moreover, well known that the official figures vastly underestimate the real levels of contagion and death.
Earlier on Tuesday, as he left the White House to fly to Phoenix, Trump dismissed as irrelevant a report to the Centers for Disease Control by Johns Hopkins University predicting that the infection rate in the US would explode to 200,000 a day and the death rate would nearly double to 3,000 by the end of May.
He said the report assumed the absence of mitigation measures, while the moves to “reopen” already underway or announced by at least 42 states included “lots of mitigation.” This is a lie.
Few if any of the states meet the guidelines for reopening that Trump himself announced last month, including 14 straight days of declining infections. Many are openly flaunting minimal social distancing precautions, opening barber shops, beauty salons, gyms, beaches, shopping malls, restaurants and even movie theaters.
Even the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), which has consistently produced the lowest estimates of COVID-19 deaths of any scientific body, and which the White House has cited in the past, on Monday raised its projection for US deaths by August 1 from the already surpassed 60,000 to 135,000, based on what it called a “premature” lifting of social distancing measures.
In shutting down the task force, Trump is seeking to suppress any objective factual and scientific reporting. Despite efforts to accommodate himself to Trump, Fauci frequently felt obliged to contradict claims by the president of miracle cures and early vaccines, and he warned of the dangers of a premature reopening of the economy. As he seeks to intimidate and repress working class resistance to being forced to work under unsafe conditions, Trump will no doubt step up efforts to suppress statistical data on the actual impact of the disease.
Like everything else Trump does, the Phoenix event is closely linked to his electoral prospects in November. Arizona is considered a battleground state. He carried the state in 2016, but recent polls show a close race with the presumptive Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
Like a majority of states across the country, including states with Democratic governors, Arizona is loosening social distancing measures and beginning to allow non-essential businesses to reopen. The day before Trump’s visit, Republican Governor Doug Ducey announced he was accelerating his plan to reopen the state’s economy.
Also on Monday, Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of the California, the most populous state in the country, announced that he would begin to reopen this Friday. Echoing Trump, he said, “We are entering into the next phase this week, end of the week.” The “next phase” will include the reopening of beaches and “adjustments this week in the retail sector.”
Trump’s sociopathic gangsterism is not simply an individual question. He embodies the corporate-financial ruling elite in America. As in the rest of the world, this financial oligarchy is consciously exploiting the pandemic to implement policies of social plunder it had long been preparing to deal with a deepening economic crisis of the capitalist system. Despite tactical differences, the Democrats fully back this homicidal policy, which is directed above all against the working class.
Antibody blocks infection by the SARS-CoV-2 in cells, scientists discover
May 4, 2020
Utrecht University
Researchers report that they have identified a fully human monoclonal antibody that prevents the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) virus from infecting cultured cells. The discovery is an initial step towards developing a fully human antibody to treat or prevent the respiratory disease COVID-19 caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200504074722.htm
Researchers at Utrecht University, Erasmus Medical Center and Harbour BioMed (HBM) today reported that they have identified a fully human monoclonal antibody that prevents the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) virus from infecting cultured cells. The discovery, published online today in Nature Communications, is an initial step towards developing a fully human antibody to treat or prevent the respiratory disease COVID-19 caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.
The COVID-19 pandemic has spread rapidly across the globe infecting more than 3.3M people worldwide and killing more than 235,000 people so far.
"This research builds on the work our groups have done in the past on antibodies targeting the SARS-CoV that emerged in 2002/2003," said Berend-Jan Bosch, Associate Professor, Research leader at Utrecht University, and co-lead author of the Nature Communications study. "Using this collection of SARS-CoV antibodies, we identified an antibody that also neutralizes infection of SARS-CoV-2 in cultured cells. Such a neutralizing antibody has potential to alter the course of infection in the infected host, support virus clearance or protect an uninfected individual that is exposed to the virus."
Dr. Bosch noted that the antibody binds to a domain that is conserved in both SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, explaining its ability to neutralize both viruses. "This cross-neutralizing feature of the antibody is very interesting and suggests it may have potential in mitigation of diseases caused by future-emerging related coronaviruses."
"This discovery provides a strong foundation for additional research to characterize this antibody and begin development as a potential COVID-19 treatment," said Frank Grosveld, PhD. co-lead author on the study, Academy Professor of Cell Biology, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam and Founding Chief Scientific Officer at Harbour BioMed. "The antibody used in this work is 'fully human,' allowing development to proceed more rapidly and reducing the potential for immune-related side effects." Conventional therapeutic antibodies are first developed in other species and then must undergo additional work to 'humanize' them. The antibody was generated using Harbour BioMed's H2L2 transgenic mouse technology.
"This is groundbreaking research," said Dr. Jingsong Wang, Founder, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of HBM. "Much more work is needed to assess whether this antibody can protect or reduce the severity of disease in humans. We expect to advance development of the antibody with partners. We believe our technology can contribute to addressing this most urgent public health need and we are pursuing several other research avenues."
The paper is titled, "A human monoclonal antibody blocking SARS-VoV-2 Infection. In addition to Drs. Bosch and Grosveld, authors on the paper included: Chunyan Wang, Wentao Li and Frank van Kuppeveld of Utrecht University; Nisreen Okba and Bart Haagmans of Erasmus Medical Center (Rotterdam); Dubravka Drabek and Rien van Haperen of Erasmus Medical Center and Harbour Antibodies; and Albert Osterhaus of the University of Veterinary Medicine (Hannover, Germany).
Story Source:
Materials provided by Utrecht University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference:
Chunyan Wang, Wentao Li, Dubravka Drabek, Nisreen M. A. Okba, Rien van Haperen, Albert D. M. E. Osterhaus, Frank J. M. van Kuppeveld, Bart L. Haagmans, Frank Grosveld, Berend-Jan Bosch. A human monoclonal antibody blocking SARS-CoV-2 infection. Nature Communications, 2020; 11 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16256-y
What’s Driving Trump’s Political Attacks on China
M.K. Bhadrakumar May 5, 2020
https://citizentruth.org/whats-driving-trumps-political-attacks-on-china/
The U.S. President Donald Trump has tied himself and onlookers in knots by his alternating encomiums for and diatribes against China over COVID-19 in the recent weeks. Only he can cut the Gordian knot, and he will be in a position to do so only after November when the U.S. presidential election is over.
There could be different interpretations as to why Trump ratcheted up the rhetoric on China. Three explanations stand out. Prima facie, as China would have us believe, Trump possibly amplified his criticism of China to deflect from his administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
A New York Times report in April said that “An examination reveals the president was warned about the potential for a pandemic but that internal divisions, lack of planning and his faith in his own instincts led to a halting response.” The report continued:
“The National Security Council office responsible for tracking pandemics received intelligence reports in early January predicting the spread of the virus to the United States, and within weeks was raising options like keeping Americans home from work and shutting down cities the size of Chicago. Mr. Trump would avoid such steps until March.”
In effect, Trump squandered vital time while the number of infections started to surge through February and early March. Over the period “from Feb. 26 to March 16, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States grew from 15 to 4,226. … [In total, more than 1 million] Americans have tested positive for the virus and authorities say hundreds of thousands more are likely infected,” and close to 70,000 lives have been lost as of May 4.
Conceivably, a blame game was the last resort for the Trump administration to cover up its incompetence. Trump had taken a conciliatory approach through the middle of March, praising the job Chinese President Xi Jinping was doing in handling the spread of COVID-19, but the tone changed abruptly when he broadcast a new message about the “Chinese virus.”
However, on closer examination, Trump, who has a keen eye on the news cycle, has no real need for a blame game. His approval rating in a Gallup poll released on April 30 stands at an incredible 49 percent. Clearly, his overall approval is above water. In particular, 50 percent said they approve of his handling of the pandemic.
This is despite the fact that the mounting jobless claims and volatile financial markets have deprived him of the strongest argument for his reelection: a strong economy.
This lends credibility to the other two explanations for Trump’s mood swings relating to China. Trump has positioned himself to tap into the public mood in the U.S., which has turned increasingly negative toward China amid the coronavirus outbreak. A new Pew Research Center survey of Americans conducted in March reveals that “[r]oughly two-thirds now say they have an unfavorable view of China, the most negative rating for the country since the Center began asking the question in 2005, and up nearly 20 percentage points since the start of the Trump administration” in 2017.
Curiously, the Pew report continued, “more Americans now see the U.S. as the world’s leading economic power than at any time over the past 12 years” and “also overwhelmingly believe their country leads the world militarily and that the world is better off with U.S. leadership as opposed to that of China.” Furthermore, “Only about a quarter” of Americans surveyed by Pew reported “a favorable attitude” toward China.
Importantly, “[a]cross demographic groups, negative views of China abound. Roughly six-in-ten Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents… and seven-in-ten Republicans and Republican-leaning independents” “have unfavorable views of China,” according to Pew.
Without a doubt, Trump is not only in sync with the American people but is riding the wave of public opinion. Alongside this, there is a second factor: Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic nominee in the November election. Trump’s favorite epithets for Biden are “Sleepy Joe” and “Beijing Biden.” Trump would have us believe that Biden is a comrade of “Crazy Bernie,” whose coziness with China makes him unfit for the presidency.
Trump’s main case for re-election—a roaring economy—has evaporated, and he and his team are devising a new strategy: smearing his political rival’s reputation by linking him to an old geopolitical foe. “China wants Sleepy Joe sooo badly,” Trump tweeted on April 18, adding: “Joe is an easy mark, their DREAM CANDIDATE!” A campaign email earlier in April drilled the point home: “I am TOUGH ON CHINA and Sleepy Joe Biden is WEAK ON CHINA.”
By doing so, Trump is maneuvering to shift the focus from his administration’s erratic response to COVID-19. He is harnessing America’s growing hostility toward China to launch the personal assault on “Beijing Biden.”
American electoral politics is rambunctious, and it is common to negatively define a political opponent early in the campaign. George W. Bush resorted to such tactics against John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama against Mitt Romney in 2012. Evidently, Trump has calculated that this is just the time to really set the tone and the narrative against Biden, who is a well-known former vice president with a long-established reputation of being a folksy pragmatist.
Thus, a war of words has begun in competing campaign commercials over who is tougher on China. The Trump campaign released an ad in early April pillorying Biden over his past remarks on China and declaring that “for 40 years Joe Biden has been wrong about China.” A website, BeijingBiden.com, has appeared devoted to “Biden’s purported ‘cozy relationship with China,’” as Lauren Gambino of the Guardian reports.
For sure, the Gambino continued, the “Biden campaign responded with a blistering ad campaign of its own” blaming “Trump for not holding China to account earlier over its handling of the virus, saying the president ‘failed to act’ as the coronavirus spread,” while also “featuring footage of Trump praising Xi and saying that the president ‘gave China his trust.’”
However, Trump also takes care not to overreach. The point is, China holds many of the cards in the months leading to November. China has significant leverage over global health supplies. “China controls a vast supply of the masks and protective gear needed by American hospitals. And if China develops a vaccine first, it will turn into a really powerful card, one that will bolster its global standing and give it leverage over the health of hundreds of millions of Americans,” as a New York Times report put it.
Equally, Trump will gauge the effect of the rhetoric and related spike in tensions on the trade talks with China. It is far from an open-and-shut case that China will meet the commitment under the interim trade pact in January to purchase $200 billion in American goods over the next two years.
Meanwhile, China is all but certain to emerge from the recession caused by the pandemic faster than other nations. On the contrary, the U.S., which has a long road to recovery, whenever it begins, will have to rely on economic activity in Asia, where China is undoubtedly the principal driver of growth, to help prop up its own economy. This is where Beijing’s compliance with the January trade agreement becomes vital.
For this reason, a recent CNN report was titled “It’s an insane time for Trump to pick (another) fight with China.” The report cited economists warning that any strategy “to use tariffs or other sanctions to punish China for its role in the health crisis… could badly backfire, potentially turning what is now a deep recession into a full-blown depression.” And the economy could be the big loser. It comes as no surprise that Trump keeps vacillating on his public statements on China.
This article was produced in partnership by Indian Punchline and Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
Wednesday, May 6, 2020
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