LONDON (Reuters) – Britain on Wednesday became the first country in the world to allow volunteers to be exposed to the COVID-19 virus to advance medical research into the pandemic. The trial, which will begin within a month, will see up to 90 healthy volunteers aged 18-30 exposed to COVID-19 in a safe and controlled environment to increase understanding of how the virus affects people, the government said. In order to make the trial as safe as possible, the version of the virus that has been circulating in England since March 2020 will be used rather than one of the new variants. The study will initially seek to establish the smallest amount of virus needed to cause infection, it said. Volunteers could then be given vaccine candidates before being exposed to the virus. The volunteers will be compensated for taking part. British Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said the study would help to find the best and most effective vaccines for use over the longer term. “These human challenge studies will take place here in the UK and will help accelerate scientists’ knowledge of how coronavirus affects people and could eventually further the rapid development of vaccines,” he said. .The government’s vaccines task force, Imperial College London, the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and clinical company hVIVO, which has pioneered viral human challenge models, are working on the study.
US government extends foreclosure moratorium
https://youtu.be/zoWlxbGhdiw
The Biden administration announced Tuesday that it would extend the foreclosure moratorium and mortgage forbearance through the end of June. The actions would block home foreclosures and offer delayed mortgage payments until July, as well as offer six months of additional mortgage forbearance for those who enroll on or before June 30. The actions are an extension of an order that was originally enacted under the Trump administration in March of last year. President Joe Biden — as one of 17 orders he signed on his first day in office — initially extended the eviction and foreclosure moratoriums through the end of March. The eviction moratorium remains in effect through March but was not included in the actions announced Tuesday. The departments of Housing and Urban Development, Veterans Affairs and Agriculture will work together to enact the actions, according to the announcement from the White House. Resources for homeowners will be consolidated on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s website. The White House announcement also pushed for quick passage of
Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package, arguing the bill would provide states with $10 billion to assist homeowners with mortgage and utility costs.
The Biden administration said Tuesday that 2.7 million homeowners are enrolled in the Covid-19 mortgage forbearance program, which remains available to an additional 11 million government-backed mortgages.
Crude oil rises more than 1% on stimulus optimism
https://youtu.be/wEQqbNNrFc4
THe Bros are showing the hunkies how to get stimulus checks…… Its welfare by another name and at the trailer park they are experts at staying high and sucking off the system. We are reducing Americans to a nation of beggars. And as far as the racial bit I hate every ethnic group especially old fat white babby boomers of which I am one. .I can not be called racially prejudiced since i hate all races especially my own. I have no problem with a police state as long as i own the police.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Oil prices rose about 1% on Monday as optimism around U.S. stimulus plans and some supply concerns boosted futures, but demand worries prompted by coronavirus lockdowns limited gains. Brent crude futures rose 47 cents, 0.9%, to settle at $55.88 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude ended 50 cents, or 1%, higher at $52.77 a barrel. Officials in U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration on a Sunday call with Republican and Democratic lawmakers tried to head off Republican concerns that his $1.9 trillion pandemic relief proposal was too expensive. “Newly inaugurated President Biden seems to be pushing for a quick approval of his proposed $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package, a development interpreted by the market as a clear indication that the new U.S. administration aims to kick-start an economic recovery, which will naturally benefit fuel consumption,” said Bjornar Tonhaugen, Rystad Energy’s head of oil markets. European nations have imposed tough restrictions to halt the spread of the virus, while China reported a rise in new COVID-19 cases, casting a pall over demand prospects in the world’s largest energy consumer.
WHO team doesn’t rule out virus escaping Wuhan lab – official
A World Health Organization (WHO) official investigating the cause of the pandemic has said he “can’t rule out” the possibility that COVID originated from a Wuhan laboratory. Dr David Nabarro, who is conducting the probe into how the virus developed, said the WHO is currently working with Chinese authorities. He told He told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge On Sunday that “everything will be looked at” by the investigators. Asked if he could rule out the theory that the virus escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, he said: “The thing about theories is you have to have them as a way to set up the reason why things might be occurring in a particular way. “I can’t rule anything out and I know the team on the spot, as well as those they’re talking to in China, they’re not ruling anything out either. “All options are on the table and everything will be looked at.” As part of the investigation, the WHO is scheduled to visit the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Chinese researchers at the institute say they have handled coronaviruses but have previously strongly rejected claims that COVID-19 came from their lab. Former US president Donald Trump said in April last year that he had seen evidence it had come from a laboratory in China. But health experts and intelligence communities have previously said it is more likely that COVID-19 was naturally occuring rather than man-made. Dr Nabarro added the investigation was getting “exemplary co-operation” from Chinese authorities. He continued: “All the sites that WHO people wanted to visit are being visited, there is an openness for all kinds of communication to take place. “But it’s early days, this is detective work. We’re anticipating this will take quite a lot longer.” Elsewhere in the interview, Dr Nabarro added that “the world should be accessing vaccines in an equal way” as he praised the UK for its rollout. “We have some excellent vaccines that can stop people from dying,” he said. “The only way to deal with a global pandemic is to get fair shares across the world now, that’s the right thing to do. “I’m really hopeful that world leaders in the coming weeks will realise that to have a few countries vaccinating a lot of people and poorer countries have very limited vaccines is not really the way to go ahead economically, socially, environmentally and indeed morally.” Nabarro said the UK having 400 million doses of vaccine on order was “totally understandable” but that once all over-50s in the UK have been inoculated it should consider sharing vaccines with poorer countries through the WHO’s Covax scheme. “At the moment politicians believe that their primary duty is to make sure they get vaccines to perhaps everybody in their countries,” he said. “We think citizens can perhaps talk to their politicians and say ‘wait a minute, we’re actually part of the world, we think the first priority is to make sure everybody in the world gets what they need’.” He said 100 countries have signed up to the WHO’s vaccine-sharing Covax scheme, adding they are “ready to receive vaccines” and there is money available to buy doses. He added: “Do we want to be remembered as a world where those who had the cash could afford to vaccinate their whole populations and countries that didn’t have the cash had to cope with a possibly quite dramatically increasing death rate among their health workers? I don’t think so.”
Economic devastation from coronavirus could eventually kill more than virus, report says
The United Nations has predicted that the economic fallout from the worldwide coronavirus outbreak may end up killing more people than the actual disease itself. The virus’ outbreak has decimated the world economy and threatens the lives of millions around the globe who had been emerging from poverty. Economists forecast a global recession that will result in up to 420 million people plunging into extreme poverty, or making less than $2 a day. The U.S. has seen its unemployment levels reach levels not seen since the Great Depression while vulnerable poorer countries consider the virus’ impact on those already impoverished. “I feel like we’re watching a slow-motion train wreck as it moves through the world’s most fragile countries,” Nancy Lindborg, the president of the nonprofit U.S. Institute of Peace, said, according to the paper. The head of the International Labour Organization (ILO) said with lost working hours higher than originally forecast, and equivalent to 495 million full-time jobs globally in the second quarter of the year. The bleak news from ILO Director-General Guy Ryder coincided with an updated mid-year forecast from the UN body. Lower and middle-income countries have suffered most, with an estimated 23.3 per cent drop in working hours – equivalent to 240 million jobs – in the second quarter. Previously, the ILO had suggested a 14 per cent average drop in global working time, equivalent to the loss of 400 million jobs, relative to the fourth quarter of 2019. Workers in developing nations had also seen their income drop more than 15 per cent, ILO Director-General Guy Ryder told journalists in Geneva. “On top of this, these are the places where there are the weakest social protection systems, so there are very few resources or protections for working people to fall back upon”, he said. “If you look at it regionally, the Americas were worst-affected, with losses of 12.1 per cent.” Mr. Ryder highlighted that while the Governments of richer countries had shored up their economies with hundreds of billions of dollars, poorer nations had been unable to do the same. Without such fiscal stimulus, working hours losses would have been 28 per cent between April and June, instead of 17.3 per cent, he insisted. State financial support has led to the emergence of an extremely worrying “fiscal stimulus gap” between wealthy economies and the developing world, amounting to $982 billion, Mr. Ryder warned. “It runs a risk of leading us to post-COVID world with greater inequalities between regions, countries, sectors and social groups,” he said. “It’s a polar opposite to the better world that we want to build back, and it reminds us all, that unless we are all able to overcome and get out of this pandemic, none of us will.” Although the $982 billion global stimulus package was a staggering sum, the ILO Director-General noted that low-income countries needed a fraction of this figure – $45 billion – to support workers in the same way as wealthier nations had done, while lower-middle-income countries required the remaining $937 billion. To protect workers and economies everywhere, Mr. Ryder warned against any premature loosening of support for health measures aimed at combating the pandemic, in view of increasing infection rates in many countries.
China refused to provide WHO team with raw data on early COVID cases, team member says
By Brenda Goh
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China refused to give raw data on early COVID-19 cases to a World Health Organization-led team probing the origins of the pandemic, one of the team’s investigators said, potentially complicating efforts to understand how the outbreak began. The team had requested raw patient data on 174 cases that China had identified from the early phase of the outbreak in the city of Wuhan in December 2019, as well as other cases, but were only provided with a summary, said Dominic Dwyer, an Australian infectious diseases expert who is a member of the team. Such raw data is known as “line listings”, he said, and would typically be anonymised but contain details such as what questions were asked of individual patients, their responses and how their responses were analysed. “That’s standard practice for an outbreak investigation,” he told Reuters on Saturday via video call from Sydney, where hed is currently undergoing quarantine. He said that gaining access to the raw data was especially important since only half of the 174 cases had exposure to the Huanan market, the now-shuttered wholesale seafood centre in Wuhan where the virus was initially detected.
‘Ok to feel overwhelmed’: banks tackle burnout inflamed by virus
LONDON (Reuters) – From a burned-out bank boss to call centre workers isolated at home, the financial sector is suffering a surge in mental health issues exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite the industry’s cut-throat reputation, senior bankers have responded to the extra strain by rolling out additional help and opening up about their own vulnerabilities.
“It’s okay to feel overwhelmed by what life is throwing at me and mine,” wrote Susan Revell, deputy chair of the $41 trillion asset Bank of New York Mellon’s Europe, Middle East and Africa business.
In a handwritten note Revell, along with other BNY colleagues, shared personal experiences with the institution’s 48,500 staff. She juggles work with caring for elderly relatives and other family struck with ill health and redundancy.
“You can’t pour from an empty cup,” Revell told Reuters. “If I’m not in good shape then I can’t support either my family or my colleagues.”
Her note encouraged colleagues from Brazil to Hong Kong to share their own stories and advice. While banks have for several years been paying greater attention to wellbeing, new initiatives from free therapy to online yoga have proliferated during the pandemic – though they are not always reaching junior staff. In England, a major global banking centre, as many as 10 million people will need new or additional mental health support, The Centre for Mental Health charity says. Despite progress, charities and unions say employers must make extra effort to look out for staff. Picking up on signs is hard with homeworking, so banks including Goldman Sachs and Lloyds have staff on the lookout virtually. “We train our mental health first aiders to look out for body language cues,” said Goldman Sachs executive director Beth Robotham, who has spoken publicly about her own past anxiety attacks. “In a virtual environment, lots of the same rules apply, but it’s more difficult – for instance it’s much easier to lose eye contact. But you may notice the person opts out of being on screen and you’re not sure why, or they seem heavily distracted when they weren’t before, or are showing up late.” Recruiters say mental health is now more likely to come up in hiring discussions, but candidates are still rarely open about existing conditions. “Examples from leaders are hugely influential and helpful. However, people who are still en route to proving themselves in their career are hesitant to do the same,” said Sophie Scholes, a partner at headhunter Heidrick & Struggles. “This particularly applies to recruitment processes where candidates are nervous to self-identify and mostly would choose not to.” Among the raft of new initiatives, NatWest has seen 5,500 staff sign up for online therapy courses just six months since launch. Lloyds has signed up 13,000 people to meditation app Headspace, while Monzo offers online yoga and started classes on meditation and managing stress this year. BNY has increased leave for carers and introduced virtual “tea and talk” sessions. “Every business in the world has now got mental health on its boardroom agenda. I never thought it would happen this quickly,” said Poppy Jaman, chief executive of the City Mental Health Alliance. “As we face a global mental health crisis, 2021 must be the year that every business takes action.” The limitations of online support have, however, been exposed during the pandemic. “Banks like other sectors have done what they can to mitigate the impact of loneliness by setting up things like pub quizzes, yoga and meditation,” said Paul Barrett, head of wellbeing at the Bank Workers Charity (BWC). “But I’m not sure they work as well as they might because of ‘Zoom fatigue’. If you’re using a screen all day, do you then want to use it for a coffee morning?”
Wall Street higher in premarket on stimulus hopes
Major stock market indexes in the United States were higher in premarket trading on Thursday after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said that stimulus will be needed until the coronavirus pandemic ends. Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden talked to his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping for the first time since entering the White House. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.16% at 4:38 am ET, the Nasdaq 100 increased by 0.39% at the same time and the S&P 500 was up by 0.29% at 4:39 am ET.
What CDC found about wearing 2 masks
A cloth mask worn over a surgical mask improves fit and could boost protection.
Fit matters when it comes to your mask protecting you against the virus that causes COVID-19, and layering a well-fitting cloth mask over a surgical mask is likely to prove beneficial, according to new findings released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings were not expected to lead to new mask recommendations by the CDC. The public health agency maintains that everyone age 2 and older should wear a face covering when outside their home. It also doesn’t change the recommendation that primarily medical workers in high-risk environments should rely on N95 masks, which act as a strong filter against any contaminants but is notably tougher to breathe in and withstand for long periods of time. Still, the experiment touches on some of the big questions Americans have on how best to protect themselves when mixing in public, such as grocery stores and airplanes. The research suggests that when a person “double masks” — wearing a polypropylene surgical mask with a cloth mask on top — and the people around them did the same, the risk of transmitting the virus falls more than 95%. Researchers, who used two mannequin-like forms to test exposure, found a similar benefit with tightening a single surgical mask around the ears to improve its fit. Using a hack known as a “knot and tuck,” the researchers ensured the surgical mask fits closely around the face without gaps. The benefit, though, fell to 80% if only one person wore the double mask and 60% if only one person knotted their surgical mask for a tighter fit.
Dr. John Brooks, chief medical officer for the CDC’s COVID-19 emergency response, said the research results suggest that combining the close fit of a cloth mask with the filtration of a surgical mask is a good option. It also makes the case that “community masking” — everyone wearing a mask and not just a few people — matters. “Universal masking is one of our most potent interventions to control the pandemic, we believe,” Brooks told ABC News in an interview. “When all of us mask, not only does it giving us some personal protection. But by each of us doing that, we’re protecting other people,” he added.
The CDC has struggled with its public message on masks. Early in the pandemic, health officials urged the public not to wear masks because of concerns about dire shortages for health care workers. They also believed the virus would behave like other respiratory viruses and mostly transmit when a person shows symptoms like a cough and fever. But after research showed the virus that causes COVID-19 was spreading at an alarming rate through some people who never had symptoms, the CDC in April 2020 abruptly shifted gears and began recommending the public wear cloth masks. By June 2020, the World Health Organization agreed that people should wear masks especially when social distancing is not possible.
In recent weeks, the CDC has been pressed on whether it should toughen its recommendation on masks because of new variants of the virus that make it more transmissible. One question was whether the CDC might embrace N95 masks for public use and try to boost production. There are still shortages of N95 masks.
But agency officials have declined to suggest specifically that Americans wear the tight-fitting N95s because — while highly effective — they are particularly difficult to wear for long periods of time because they are harder to breathe in. Also, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has said wearing an N95 mask probably isn’t necessary in public places. “I think if everybody is wearing a mask, if you’re wearing it and six feet apart … you have enough protective effectiveness in the barriers of those two masks and the space between you that you probably don’t need it,” Walensky said Jan. 27 during a CNN Town Hall. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, has said people shouldn’t read too much into the evolving discussion on masks. Scientific experiments are likely to shed new light on what’s most effective, but the recommendation on face coverings remain the same. “The discussion is changing, not the goalposts,” Fauci told Fox News on Jan. 27, responding to a question about how many masks a person should wear. He later added: “You know what would be a good start? If everybody wears at least one mask. I think that would be important.”
“We want to communicate to the public that if you want to get more out of that mask, there’s a number of low-tech ways you can improve its performance,” Brooks said. Nick Note: Being the inventor of the “UGLY MASK” and P3 nanoparticle filter ULPA 15 I can tell you we have know for a long time the dangerous of the N95 coffee/ toilet paper filters. So noow they admit their filters are not working so well especially on the mutated strains.
Vaccine vs variant: Promising data in Israel’s race to defeat pandemic
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel’s swift vaccination rollout has made it the largest real-world study of Pfizer Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine. Results are trickling in, and they are promising. More than half of eligible Israelis – about 3.5 million people – have now been fully or partially vaccinated. Older and at-risk groups, the first to be inoculated, are seeing a dramatic drop in illnesses. Among the first fully-vaccinated group there was a 53% reduction in new cases, a 39% decline in hospitalizations and a 31% drop in severe illnesses from mid-January until Feb. 6, said Eran Segal, data scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. In the same period, among people under age 60 who became eligible for shots later, new cases dropped 20% but hospitalizations and severe illness rose 15% and 29%, respectively. Reuters interviewed leading scientists in Israel and abroad, Israeli health officials, hospital heads and two of the country’s largest healthcare providers about what new data shows from the world’s most efficient vaccine rollout. The vaccine drive has provided a database offering insights into how effective the vaccines are outside of controlled clinical trials, and at what point countries might attain sought-after but elusive herd immunity. More will be known in two weeks, as teams analyse vaccine effectiveness in younger groups of Israelis, as well as targeted populations such as people with diabetes, cancer and pregnant women, among a patient base at least 10 times larger than those in clinical studies. “We need to have enough variety of people in that subgroup and enough follow-up time so you can make the right conclusions, and we are getting to that point,” said Ran Balicer, chief innovation officer of HMO Clalit, which covers more than half the Israeli population. Pfizer is monitoring the Israeli rollout on a weekly basis for insights that can be used around the world. As a small country with universal healthcare, advanced data capabilities and the promise of a swift rollout, Israel provided Pfizer with a unique opportunity to study the real-world impact of the vaccine developed with Germany’s BioNTech But the company said it remained “difficult to forecast the precise time when herd protection may start to manifest” because of many variables at play, including social distancing measures and the number of new infections generated by each case, known as the reproduction rate. Even Israel, in the vanguard of the global vaccine drive, has lowered expectations of emerging quickly from the pandemic because of soaring cases. A third national lockdown has struggled to contain transmission, attributed to the fast-spreading UK variant of the virus. On a positive note, the Pfizer/BioNTech shot appears to be effective against it. “We’ve so far identified the same 90% to 95% efficacy against the British strain,” said Hezi Levi, director-general of the Israeli Health Ministry. “It is still early though, because we have only now finished the first week after the second dose,” he said, adding: “It’s too early to say anything about the South African variant.” Israel began its vaccination programme Dec. 19 – the day after Hanukkah – after paying a premium for supplies of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Four days later, the more contagious UK variant was detected in four people. While the vaccine is preventing illness in older people, the variant now makes up about 80% of new cases. Finding themselves in a race between the vaccine and the new variant, Israel began giving shots to those over 60 and gradually opened the programme to the rest of the population. Every detail was digitally tracked, down to in which arm the patient was jabbed and what vial it came from. One week after receiving the second Pfizer dose – the point at which full protection is expected to kick in – 254 out of 416,900 people were infected, according to Maccabi, a leading Israeli healthcare provider. Comparing this against an unvaccinated group revealed a vaccine efficacy of 91%, Maccabi said. By 22 days after full vaccination, no infections were recorded. Israeli experts are confident the vaccines rather than lockdown measures brought the numbers down, based on studying different cities, age groups and pre-vaccine lockdowns. The comparisons were “convincing in telling us this is the effect of the vaccination,” said Weizmann Institute’s Segal. With 80% of senior citizens partially or fully vaccinated, a more complete picture will begin to emerge as soon as this week. “And we do expect further decline in the overall cases and in the cases of severe morbidity,” said Balicer, of HMO Clalit. There may be early signs that vaccinations are tamping down virus transmission in addition to illness At Israel’s biggest COVID-19 testing centre, run by MyHeritage, researchers have tracked a significant decrease in the amount of virus infected people carry, known as cT value, among the most-vaccinated age groups. This suggests that even if vaccinated people get infected, they are less likely to infect others, said MyHeritage Chief Science Officer Yaniv Erlich. “The data so far is probably most clear from Israel. I do believe that these vaccines will reduce onward transmission,” said Stefan Baral, from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Maryland. It is unclear whether Israel will be able to keep up its world-leading vaccination pace. “When you vaccinate fast and a lot, you eventually get to the hardcore – those who are less willing or harder to reach,” said Boaz Lev, head of the Health Ministry’s advisory panel. The vaccination pace is seen even more crucial with the British variant’s rapid transmission. “In the race between the UK variant spreading and the vaccinations, the end result is that we are seeing a kind of plateau in terms of the severely ill,” said Segal. The big question is whether vaccines can eradicate the pandemic. Michal Linial, a professor of molecular biology and bioinformatics at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, said data from past decades suggests viruses become endemic and seasonal. She predicted this coronavirus would become far less aggressive, perhaps requiring a booster shot within three years. “The virus is not going anywhere,” she concluded.