Month: May 2020

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has mishandled his country’s coronavirus outbreak so badly that it’s possible over 1 million people in Brazil have contracted the disease. Despite this crisis, he’s continued to downplay Covid-19’s severity and his own powers to do anything about it.

Bolsonaro has referred to the novel coronavirus as the “little flu” and scoffed at social distancing measures intended to slow the spread of the virus, proclaiming in late March that “we’ll all die one day.” He’s called on citizens to go back to work, directly contradicting the orders of state governors and …

Three counties in California have announced they’re reopening segments of their economy in defiance of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s statewide restrictions on nonessential business, which were put in place to curb the spread of coronavirus.

The announcements, which came as anti-lockdown protests sprang up across the state this week, raise questions of how much Newsom can expect voluntary compliance with social distancing restrictions as unemployment skyrockets, cabin fever sets in for people stuck at home, and quarantine measures become increasingly politicized.

Modoc County was the first county to make the move. On Thursday it announced it would reopen many kinds …

Thirteen days after the deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a nationwide ban on military-style assault weapons Friday.

“These weapons were designed for one purpose, and one purpose only: To kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time,” Trudeau said at a press conference in Ottawa Friday. “There is no use and no place for such weapons in Canada.”

The new policy immediately bans the use, purchase, sale, transportation, and import of 1,500 models of assault weapons, like the AR-15, the military-style semiautomatic rifle that has been used in many mass …

How many people are likely to die in the United States of Covid-19? How many hospital beds is the country going to need? When will case numbers peak?

To answer those questions, many hospital planners, media outlets, and government bodies — including the White House — relied heavily on one particular model out of the many that have been published in the past two months: the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

The model first estimated in late March that there’d be fewer than 161,000 deaths total in the US; in early April, it revised …

Well, it looks like North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un isn’t dead after all.

In fact, he’s, uh, at a fertilizer factory.

For the last 21 days, the world has been wondering where Kim Jong Un is and if he’s even alive. Kim hadn’t been seen publicly since April 11. He missed a really important national holiday on April 15 honoring his grandfather, the country’s founder. State-run media didn’t publish any photos of a recent weapons test, which typically show the leader watching in approval. And official statements from the country have curiously lacked any direct comments from …

The US Food and Drug Administration on Friday authorized remdesivir, an experimental antiviral drug, for emergency use to treat Covid-19.

The authorization allows the intravenous drug to be distributed to doctors to administer to patients with severe disease, namely patients with low blood oxygen or those needing breathing assistance with a mechanical ventilator.

Many health experts have had high hopes for the drug, which was initially developed by Gilead Sciences to treat Ebola, and it has since been used in experiments to treat the coronaviruses SARS and MERS. That early testing gave remdesivir a head start in the race for …

Earlier this week, Newsweek and the Washington Post reported that the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a lab near the site of the first coronavirus cases in the world, had been studying bat coronaviruses.

The Newsweek report revealed an alarming tidbit: The Wuhan lab at the center of the controversy had for years been engaged in gain-of-function research. What exactly is it? It’s a line of research where scientists take viruses and study how they might be modified to become deadlier or more transmissible. Why would they do this? Scientists who engage in it say that it helps them figure out …

There’s a stark partisan difference in who has been affected by the coronavirus: Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to live in communities hit hard by Covid-19.

This has contributed to a partisan divide in attitudes about the pandemic, one in which Republican governors, lawmakers, and voters have remained broadly supportive of Trump — and have pushed for policies like the rapid reopening of businesses — while Democrats have not.

It is well known that the disease has disproportionately hit large cities and metropolitan areas. Given the geographic pattern of American political polarization, this also means that Democratic areas …

Sen. Elizabeth Warren may not be the likeliest vice-presidential pick for Joe Biden, but she’s emerging as the running mate Democratic voters would prefer most — and who they believe would be best for the job.

In a Data for Progress poll shared exclusively with Vox, the Massachusetts senator ranked first as the vice-presidential candidate likely Democratic voters think is most ready to be president and would be best at handling the coronavirus pandemic and implementing policies, including those that benefit working-class people.

Forty-two percent of poll respondents said they believe Warren is most ready to be president, followed …

Hundreds of demonstrators — some of them heavily armed — crowded into Michigan’s state capitol Thursday afternoon to protest against Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s shelter-at-home order.

The demonstration began outside the capitol early in the day in heavy rain, but later in the afternoon, police allowed several hundred protestors — many not wearing masks — inside the building itself.

Protestors stood in the gallery while others attempted to gain access to the House floor, cramming themselves into the entryway chanting “Let us in!” They were held at bay by the chamber’s Sergeant-at-Arms.