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Day: November 19, 2020
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The post 1. Russia from Michael_Novakhov (114 sites): “Russia international behavior” – Google News: Coronavirus latest: AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine shows promise for elderly – Nikkei Asian Review first appeared on The News And Times Blogs Network – newsandtimes.net.
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https://thenewsandtimes.blogspot.com/2020/11/researchers-find-coronavirus-was.html
Researchers find coronavirus was circulating in Italy earlier than thought – Reuters Mon, 16 Nov 2020 14:54:39 +0000
Mike Nova 2 · The post-presidency of a con man – 9:59 AM 11/16/2020
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The Pro-Israel Progressive Movement Notches a Win – BloombergQuint
Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Announces Direct Flights To Israel With Ad Featuring Second Temple – Haaretz.com
U.S., another country ‘pressuring Pakistan to recognize Israel,’ says PM Imran Khan – Haaretz.com
Researchers find coronavirus was circulating in Italy earlier than thought – Reuters
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Russia Finds No Criminal Influence on Journalist’s Self-Immolation Death Kommersant – The Moscow Times
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Al Jazeera: How will Biden, who called Putin ‘soulless’, stand up to Russia? | KyivPost – Ukraine’s Global Voice – Kyiv Post
“Blessing in disguise: Putin says COVID border closures curbed drug smuggling into Russia – TASS
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Donald Trump | The Guardian: If this were happening in Turkey, wed call Trumps actions an attempted coup
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Mike Nova’s favorite articles on Inoreader![]() |
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“Trump Investigations” – Google News: Michelle Goldberg: The post-presidency of a con man – Salt Lake Tribune |
Mon, 16 Nov 2020 14:55:26 +0000 Michelle Goldberg: The post-presidency of a con man Salt Lake Tribune
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The Pro-Israel Progressive Movement Notches a Win – BloombergQuint |
Mon, 16 Nov 2020 14:55:17 +0000 The Pro-Israel Progressive Movement Notches a Win BloombergQuint |
Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Announces Direct Flights To Israel With Ad Featuring Second Temple – Haaretz.com |
Mon, 16 Nov 2020 14:55:03 +0000 Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Announces Direct Flights To Israel With Ad Featuring Second Temple Haaretz.com |
U.S., another country ‘pressuring Pakistan to recognize Israel,’ says PM Imran Khan – Haaretz.com |
Mon, 16 Nov 2020 14:54:58 +0000 U.S., another country ‘pressuring Pakistan to recognize Israel,’ says PM Imran Khan Haaretz.com |
Researchers find coronavirus was circulating in Italy earlier than thought – Reuters |
Mon, 16 Nov 2020 14:54:39 +0000
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Pent-up global wish list of hopes, demands awaits Biden – ABC News |
Mon, 16 Nov 2020 14:54:33 +0000 Pent-up global wish list of hopes, demands awaits Biden ABC News |
Moldova election: Pro-EU candidate Maia Sandu wins presidency |
Mon, 16 Nov 2020 14:54:19 +0000 Maia Sandu, 48, is a former World Bank economist who favours closer ties with the European Union. |
Russia Finds No Criminal Influence on Journalist’s Self-Immolation Death Kommersant – The Moscow Times |
Mon, 16 Nov 2020 14:53:24 +0000 Russia Finds No Criminal Influence on Journalist’s Self-Immolation Death Kommersant The Moscow Times |
Putin informs Macron on stabilization of situation in Karabakh – Trend News Agency |
Mon, 16 Nov 2020 14:53:07 +0000 Putin informs Macron on stabilization of situation in Karabakh Trend News Agency |
Al Jazeera: How will Biden, who called Putin ‘soulless’, stand up to Russia? | KyivPost – Ukraine’s Global Voice – Kyiv Post |
Mon, 16 Nov 2020 14:53:05 +0000 Al Jazeera: How will Biden, who called Putin ‘soulless’, stand up to Russia? | KyivPost – Ukraine’s Global Voice Kyiv Post |
“ Blessing in disguise: Putin says COVID border closures curbed drug smuggling into Russia – TASS |
Mon, 16 Nov 2020 14:52:58 +0000 Blessing in disguise: Putin says COVID border closures curbed drug smuggling into Russia TASS |
Arkady Rotenberg, Vladimir Putin’s Judo Sparring Partner, and His Complex, Multi-Million Dollar Divorce – The Daily Beast |
Mon, 16 Nov 2020 14:52:48 +0000 Arkady Rotenberg, Vladimir Putin’s Judo Sparring Partner, and His Complex, Multi-Million Dollar Divorce The Daily Beast |
Israeli Police: ‘Masks making it harder to identify suspects’ |
Mon, 16 Nov 2020 14:52:39 +0000 Micky Rosenfeld, Spokesperson for the Israel Police, says tactics are changing amidst the coronavirus outbreak. Get t |
disinformation-election |
Mon, 16 Nov 2020 14:52:32 +0000 Monday: Our colleagues in the technology bureau help us understand the proliferation of misinformation about the election playing out. |
The seven-hour itch: What the press is saying on November 16 |
Mon, 16 Nov 2020 14:52:20 +0000![]() A long meeting on the virus lockdown exit with no results has everybody fuming and sniping at each other, and that only scratches the surface of the frustration in the air |
Worldview: Asia-Pacific trading bloc, Peru unrest, and more global headlines |
Mon, 16 Nov 2020 14:52:06 +0000 15 Asia-Pacific countries have joined the world’s largest trade bloc, excluding the U.S. Peru’s interim president steps down, leaving the office vacant. The leaders of Mexico, Russia and Brazil have not yet acknowledged Joe Biden’s election victory. CBS News foreign correspondent Ian Lee joins CBSN from London with a selection of international headlines. |
One million new COVID-19 cases confirmed in U.S. in past week |
Mon, 16 Nov 2020 14:52:00 +0000 COVID-19 is surging across the country, with the U.S. recording another one million new confirmed cases in just the past week. As the virus shows no signs of slowing down and the economic toll deepens, President Trump spent Sunday playing golf for the second straight weekend. CBS News White House correspondent Weijia Jiang joined CBSN AM with the latest. |
President-elect Biden preparing for first days in office despite Trump denials |
Mon, 16 Nov 2020 14:51:57 +0000 White House officials refuse to meet with President-elect Joe Biden or assist his transition team, as President Trump continues to push unfounded claims of voter fraud. But Biden is still moving forward with plans to deal with the pandemic, economy, immigration and climate change. CBS News’ Michael George reports on the latest, and then CBS News correspondent Nikole Killion joins CBSN’s Lana Zak to discuss where things stand. |
NATO, acting US Pentagon chief discuss Afghanistan |
Mon, 16 Nov 2020 14:51:50 +0000![]() NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has spoken to the new acting U.S. defense secretary about the alliances commitment to stay in Afghanistan as long as necessary, his spokeswoman said Monday |
1. Trump from Michael_Novakhov (197 sites): Donald Trump | The Guardian: If this were happening in Turkey, wed call Trumps actions an attempted coup | Ece Temelkuran |
Mon, 16 Nov 2020 14:51:28 +0000 Coming from an illiberal democracy, I recognise what the US president is doing by prolonging political instability President Trumps refusal to concede to his successful challenger is giving great comfort to authoritarian regimes around the world, said Joe Bidens biographer on CNN. This is a source of delight [for them] Turkey, my country, falls into that category of authoritarian regimes. But I can tell you that what is happening in the US is a source of horror, not delight, for those on the ground. We know the signs of when a political crisis becomes a de facto coup so heres a word of warning. Never mind the bitter jokes on social media (America is faster at choosing other countries presidents), the celebrations of Trumps defeat across the world are filled with the expectation of a domino effect. The cheer doesnt come from some belief that the US is the guiding light of democracy. What people want to believe is that when Trump goes, the mafioso network of 21st-century strongmen will be hit hard, and the world will be able to reverse the course of recent history. But things dont appear to be that simple. Related: Donald Trump has lost the election yet Trumpland is here to stay | Aditya Chakrabortty
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Researchers find coronavirus was circulating in Italy earlier than thought – 10:46 AM 11/16/2020
Researchers find coronavirus was circulating in Italy earlier than thought – 10:46 AM 11/16/2020
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ROME (Reuters) – The new coronavirus was circulating in Italy in September 2019, a study by the National Cancer Institute (INT) of the Italian city of Milan shows, signaling that it might have spread beyond China earlier than thought.
COVID has been in Italy since Sept. 2019: study
The World Health Organization has said the new coronavirus and COVID-19, the respiratory disease it causes, were unknown before the outbreak was reported in Wuhan, central China, late last year. But it has said “the possibility that the virus may have silently circulated elsewhere cannot be ruled out.”
The WHO said on Monday it was reviewing the results from Italy and additional information published there at the weekend and was seeking clarification.
Italy’s first COVID-19 patient was detected on Feb. 21 in a small town near Milan, in the northern region of Lombardy.
The Italian researchers’ findings, published by the INT’s scientific magazine Tumori Journal, show 11.6% of 959 healthy volunteers enrolled in a lung cancer screening trial between September 2019 and March 2020 had developed coronavirus antibodies well before February.
A further SARS-CoV-2 antibodies test was carried out by the University of Siena for the same research titled “Unexpected detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the pre-pandemic period in Italy”.
It showed that four cases dating back to the first week of October were positive for antibodies, meaning they had got infected in September, Giovanni Apolone, a co-author of the study, told Reuters.
“This is the main finding: people with no symptoms not only were positive after the serological tests but also had antibodies able to kill the virus,” Apolone said.
“It means that the new coronavirus can circulate among the population for a long time and with a low rate of lethality, not because it is disappearing, only to surge again,” he said.
The WHO said it would contact the paper’s authors “to discuss and arrange for further analyses of available samples and verification of the neutralization results”.
Italian researchers told Reuters in March that they reported a higher than usual number of cases of severe pneumonia and flu in Lombardy in the last quarter of 2019 in a sign that the new coronavirus might have circulated earlier than thought.
Reporting by Giselda Vagnoni; additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Janet Lawrence
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Barbara Mintzes, Joel Lexchin, Kellia Chiu, Zhicheng Wang
Coronavirus, Australia
A private market puts wealth ahead of need and compromises the organiation and efficacy of the vaccine rollout for everyone.
As the world continues to battle COVID-19, the prospect of a vaccine gives us hope of returning to some kind of “normal” in the not too distant future.
The Australian government has signed supply agreements with manufacturers of four COVID vaccines currently in clinical trials. Assuming one or more meets the requirements for safety and effectiveness, everyone will be able to be vaccinated for free.
However, as vaccine supply will be limited at least initially, the government has specified certain groups that will take priority to receive vaccines first. These include people at higher risk of exposure to COVID-19 (such as health-care workers), and those who are more vulnerable to severe disease (such as older people).
At the same time, the head of the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), John Skerritt, has noted manufacturers will also be able to sell vaccines privately:
We live in a free market economy […] There’s nothing stopping companies as long as they have the TGA approval to put that vaccine on the market in Australia.
This arrangement reinforces the status quo of Australia’s health system: a public health system with a private market on the side. But COVID is not the status quo. It’s a global public health emergency that has already claimed more than 1.3 million lives.
Allowing people to jump the queue via the private market is a bad idea, for several reasons.
1. A private market puts wealth ahead of need
Those most likely to buy the vaccine privately are those who have not been deemed at high enough risk to receive the vaccine for free until later on, but have the means to do so (we don’t know yet how much it might cost).
Prices are often higher in the private sector because public drug schemes benefit from their size and bargaining power to keep prices low, which could lead vaccine manufacturers to prioritise private sales. If companies set aside a portion of their limited supply for private sales, people who need the vaccine the most, such as health workers and older people, may have to wait longer.
If there are exceptions where people who don’t fall into the priority categories need a vaccine, such as for essential travel to a country that mandates vaccination as a condition of entry, the answer is to build in flexibility through special access requests, not private sales.
2. People buying privately may not get the vaccine they need
Several vaccines may come onto the market, and we don’t yet know if all will be equally effective for everyone. For example, it’s possible a particular vaccine won’t work as well in older people.
The allure of private sales may lead companies to promote their vaccines, in turn affecting which one a patient gets. Drug companies have a long history of intensive marketing to doctors, often casting a wide net in terms of who they suggest might benefit. In the case of the opioid epidemic, these practices have been associated with serious harm to patients.
Companies cannot advertise prescription-only products, including vaccines, to the public in Australia. But they can run unbranded disease awareness campaigns that indirectly promote products to consumers, often through emotional images and appeals.
3. Follow-up may be poorer
COVID vaccine development is moving very quickly, with shorter pre-market testing than a vaccine would normally have. This makes it all the more important to keep careful track of who receives the vaccine, any health problems they experience, and longer-term effectiveness. Uncoordinated private provision creates extra logistical challenges for follow-up.
4. Private supply may be impractical
As an example, Pfizer’s mRNA-based vaccine must be stored at -80℃. Special cold chain management is not easy for any provider, but is likely better handled by larger-scale providers set up to deliver COVID vaccines.
Further, all COVID-19 vaccines are likely to require at least two doses. Especially if supply is limited, it may become challenging to make sure private patients get their second dose. And delays or missing the second dose will likely lead to lower effectiveness.
An issue of equity
Some 40 countries have joined the World Health Organisation’s Solidarity Call to Action to support equitable global access to COVID-19 health technologies. Similarly, the COVAX initiative, which Australia supports, provides direct funding for vaccine access in less advantaged countries.
Echoing the principles of these initiatives, Prime Minister Scott Morrison told the United Nations in September:
[…] it’s a moral responsibility for a vaccine to be shared far and wide. Some might see short-term advantage or even profit, but I assure you, to anyone who may think along those lines, humanity will have a very long memory, and be a very, very severe judge.
Given this moral responsibility, why allow wealthier Australians to jump the queue? The planned public rollout of free COVID-19 vaccines for all is laudable. The main rationale for a parallel private system is “short-term advantage or even profit”, to borrow the prime minister’s words. Let’s not go there.
Barbara Mintzes, Associate professor, School of Pharmacy and Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney; Joel Lexchin, Professor Emeritus of Health Policy and Management, York University, Emergency Physician at University Health Network, Associate Professor of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto; Kellia Chiu, PhD Candidate and Pharmacist, University of Sydney, and Zhicheng (Jeff) Wang, Adjunct Lecturer, School of Pharmacy, University of Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Image: Reuters
The National Interest
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Giancarlo Bosio retired last Monday, after working for 40 years at a hospital in Cremona — a city in the region of Lombardy, where Italy’s COVID-19 outbreak began in March.
As a pulmonologist, or lung specialist, the 66-year-old’s final months at work were particularly strenuous: during the first wave of the pandemic he didn’t take a single day off. But before having any time to think about reorganizing his life post-retirement, he got a call to return. The mayors of Cremona and the surrounding cities sent a letter to the director of his hospital, asking for him to be brought back to deal with the second wave. So in a few more days he will come out of retirement. “I couldn’t say no,” he says.
It wasn’t the only offer he received. “Other hospitals and private clinics have also contacted me with generous proposals … Pulmonologists in Italy are now just as valuable as strikers on Serie A soccer league,” he jokes.
Italy, one of the countries worst hit in the original surge of COVID-19, is now buckling under the second wave crashing across Europe. Unlike other countries in Europe, it has not introduced a second national lockdown but has instead assigned each region a different color—red, orange or yellow—with tiered restrictions reflecting the gravity of the situation. Yet the numbers are looking increasingly grim; On Nov. 17, there were 753 deaths attributed to the coronavirus nationwide, among the highest daily rates in the world.
Most of the hospitals in Italy that treat COVID-19 patients are under enormous strain due to lack of medical staff, with doctors and nurses who have already faced the first wave in many cases worn out and disheartened. “The adrenaline we felt from the first wave has been replaced by exhaustion and anger”, says Silvia Giorgis, 49, an anesthesiologist at the Maria Vittoria hospital in Turin. “Over the past months nothing was done to prevent this situation.”
A shortfall in frontline doctors
Italy was the first European country to see a serious COVID-19 outbreak. During that first wave medical workers from all over Italy as well as from other countries, like the United States and Cuba, flowed into the “red zone” in Lombardy. This is no longer possible, since the virus is now such a widespread phenomenon that doctors are needed everywhere. Seven regions in Italy are currently designated as red zones.
In the spring, entire hospitals had been converted to admit COVID-19 patients, with physicians from other specialties working to defeat the virus even if they had no experience with infectious or respiratory diseases. Now they can no longer afford to do so, for fear of denying treatment to people with chronic illnesses who for months have not received adequate care.
There is also a growing shortfall in specialists, as systemic cuts in the Italian health care system over the past twenty years have created a huge gap between the number who are retiring and those who are qualified to enter the workforce. “The gap that is being created is 20,000 jobs”, says Filippo Anelli, head of the National Federation of Italian Professional Orders of Doctors (FNOMCeO). “The result is that physicians are overwhelmed with work. We have estimated that taken all together they work overtime for over 15 million hours every year.” The pandemic has made the situation worse, he says. “Doctors were generous but now many are in burnout,” he explains.
The problem is not a lack of interested candidates, but of investment in training. This year 23,000 graduate students took the exam to get a scholarship for the school of specialization (the equivalent of a residency in the U.S.) but only 14,500 will be awarded one, Anneli says. “In past years the number of those admitted was even lower.”
In some regions the shortage of medical staff has been addressed by expanding programs to recruit young doctors with limited or no experience. In Piedmont, one of the most severely affected regions during this second wave, the medical school of the University of Turin has agreed to provide the local administration with senior and junior residents to help handle the pandemic. Yet Crisis Units and hospitals’ HR offices are also independently recruiting those who earned their degree just a few months ago, without even having begun their residency.
Paola Molino, the director of the ER department and coordinator of the COVID-19 floors in the Rivoli hospital, near Turin, says she is employing dozens of recent graduates in all her COVID-19 wards except the ICU. “During this second wave, specialists in other disciplines are much more reluctant to deal with this virus. Last spring they made themselves available, but now they are more tired, more afraid and they are also angry because they have seen that little has been done to reorganize the system,” she says.
‘We have gone from being heroes to being criminals.’
Among the young doctors Molino recruited, those who gained experience during the first wave are now training and helping others. “After all, we are dealing with only one pathology, with precise symptoms. You don’t need to be omniscient,” she says. She doesn’t leave those young colleagues alone, she adds. “They know they can call me whenever they need to.”
Andrea Prina, 27, is among those who earned his degree last July. “I feel very useful. I am certainly less experienced than my peers who worked during the first wave, but also less tired than many doctors who went through that,” he says. At the moment Prina has no set working hours. “I stay at work as long as I’m needed”, he says during a short break.
Molino has a positive feeling about this temporary solution. “It’s working very well, they are always keen to help,” she says. “For a disease like this – which puts us in such emotionally difficult situations – sometimes it’s easier to work with people with great enthusiasm rather than great experience.”
But the experience of being a doctor now is very different to how it was in the spring. Back then, doctors were receiving all sorts of treats in COVID-19 wards, from trays of pizza to cakes, and Italians regularly took to their balconies and doorsteps to applaud their hard work. Now, according to Giorgis, the Turin anesthesiologist, the attitude of the public is completely different. Too many people believe that doctors are purposely exaggerating the problem, she says, and are to blame for restrictions that are hurting the economy. Others deny the disease exists at all. “They say we invent the fact that they have Covid even if they need oxygen,” she says. “We have gone from being heroes, to being criminals.”
She is currently working from 8am to 8pm for more than 7 days in a row. After the first wave, she had “visions” of those intense times, she says — days she is now reliving, several months on. “I have continued to dream of noises, patients, alarms. Now even during the day I can no longer stand the sound of ambulances and sliding doors.”
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The post 1. World from Michael_Novakhov (27 sites): World – TIME: Italy’s Doctors Were Praised for Their COVID-19 Response in the Spring. Now They Are Burning Out first appeared on Global Security News- globalsecuritynews.org.
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