Virus spikes could emerge weeks after US economic reopenings

U.S. states are beginning to restart their economies after months of paralyzing coronavirus lockdowns, but it could take weeks until it becomes clear whether those reopenings will cause a spike in COVID-19 cases, experts said Wednesday.

The outbreak’s trajectory varies wildly across the country, with steep increases in cases in some places, decreases in others and infection rates that can shift dramatically from neighbourhood to neighbourhood.

“Part of the challenge is although we are focused on the top-line national numbers in terms of our attention, what we are seeing is 50 different curves and 50 different stories playing out,” said Thomas Tsai, assistant professor at the Harvard Global Health Institute. “And what we have seen about COVID-19 is that the story and the effect is often very local.”

A handful of states started easing their lockdowns about two weeks ago, allowing reopenings by establishments ranging from shopping malls in Texas to beach hotels in South Carolina to gyms in Wyoming. Sparsely populated Wyoming, which has some of the lowest infection numbers in the United States, plans to reopen bars and restaurants Friday. Georgia was one of the first states where some businesses were allowed to open their doors again, starting April 24 with barber shops, hair salons, gyms, bowling alleys and tattoo parlours.

But it may be five to six weeks from then before the effects are known, said Crystal Watson of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

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Emails: Trump nominee involved in shelving CDC virus guide

WASHINGTON (AP) — A former chemical industry executive nominated to be the nation’s top consumer safety watchdog was involved in sidelining detailed guidelines to help communities reopen during the coronavirus pandemic, internal government emails show.

Now the ranking Democrat on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee is questioning the role played by nominee Nancy Beck in the decision to shelve the guidelines. Beck is not a medical doctor and has no background in virology.

President Donald Trump has nominated Beck to be chairwoman and commissioner of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, a position that requires Senate confirmation. Beck is scheduled to appear before the Senate committee later this month.

Emails obtained by The Associated Press show that Beck was the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s main point of contact in the White House about the proposed recommendations. At issue was a 63-page guide created by the CDC that would give community leaders step-by-step instructions for reopening schools, day care centres, restaurants and other facilities.

Beck is currently on detail for the White House with the Office of Management and Budget, where she is co-ordinating review of pandemic-related stimulus measures, and of the CDC guidance. She has a doctorate in environmental health and has worked as a toxicologist, specializing in the study of the health risks from chemical substances to the human body.

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Wisconsin high court tosses out governor’s stay-home order

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down Gov. Tony Evers’ coronavirus stay-at-home order Wednesday, ruling that his administration overstepped its authority when it extended it for another month without consulting legislators.

The 4-3 ruling essentially reopens the state, lifting caps on the size of gatherings, allowing people to travel as they please and allowing shuttered businesses to reopen, including bars and restaurants. The Tavern League of Wisconsin swiftly posted the news on its website, telling members, “You can OPEN IMMEDIATELY!”

The decision let stand language that had closed schools, however, and local governments can still impose their own health restrictions. In Dane County, home to the capital of Madison, officials quickly imposed a mandate incorporating most of the statewide order. City health officials in Milwaukee said a stay-at-home order they enacted in late March remains in effect.

Evers reacted angrily in a conference call Wednesday night, saying the state has been doing well in the fight against the coronavirus. He predicted the court ruling will lead more counties to adopt their own restrictions, leading to a confusing patchwork of ordinances that will allow infection to spread.

“Today, Republican legislators convinced four members of the state Supreme Court to throw the state into chaos,” Evers said. “They have provided no plan. There’s no question among anybody that people are going to get sick. Republicans own that chaos.”

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Q&A: What does ‘unmasking’ someone in an intel report mean?

WASHINGTON (AP) — In 2016, Obama administration officials received intelligence reports that were concerning, but incomplete.

Surveillance of Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. revealed he had interacted with an unnamed American who may have been undercutting efforts to pressure Vladimir Putin’s government.

Using a common process known as “unmasking,” they asked intelligence agencies to reveal the American’s name. It was Michael Flynn, an adviser to President-elect Donald Trump.

The unmasking of Flynn has become Exhibit A in Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that he and his aides were the targets of a scandalous Obama administration “witch hunt.”

The top intelligence official, Richard Grenell, now has stepped into the unmasking issue, declassifying the names of the Obama administration officials who may have requested the unmasking. Those names, disclosed Wednesday by two Republican senators, included Trump’s Democratic presidential rival Joe Biden.

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Whistleblower: US could face virus rebound ‘darkest winter’

WASHINGTON (AP) — America faces the “darkest winter in modern history” unless leaders act decisively to prevent a rebound of the coronavirus, says a government whistleblower who alleges he was ousted from his job after warning the Trump administration to prepare for the pandemic.

Immunologist Dr. Rick Bright makes his sobering prediction in testimony prepared for his appearance Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Aspects of his complaint about early administration handling of the crisis are expected to be backed up by testimony from an executive of a company that manufactures, respirator masks.

A federal watchdog agency has found “reasonable grounds” that Bright was removed from his post as head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority after sounding the alarm at the Department of Health and Human Services. Bright alleged he became a target of criticism when he urged early efforts to invest in vaccine development and stock up on supplies.

“Our window of opportunity is closing,” Bright says in his prepared testimony posted on the House committee website. “If we fail to develop a national co-ordinated response, based in science, I fear the pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged, causing unprecedented illness and fatalities.”

Bright’s testimony follows this week’s warning by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, that a rushed lifting of store-closing and stay-at-home restrictions could “turn back the clock,” seeding more suffering and death and complicating efforts to get the economy rolling again.

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911 call, text hint at confrontation days before Arbery shot

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Days before Ahmaud Arbery was pursued by two white men and fatally shot after being spotted inside a home under construction, neighbours — including one of the suspects — reported an earlier encounter with a person wandering through the open-framed structure.

Owner Larry English found nothing stolen from the site where he’s building a home in the Satilla Shores subdivision where 25-year-old Arbery was slain Feb. 23, English’s attorney said Wednesday. But she said there had been “four or five” instances in which unauthorized people entered the property before Arbery was shot.

“Nothing was ever taken from the English property,” attorney J. Elizabeth Graddy said in a statement Wednesday. She added that “Mr. English is deeply distressed by Mr. Arbery’s death.”

Graddy also shared security camera video from the home site taken Feb. 11, less than two weeks before the shooting, that briefly shows a man walking inside the structure. She said English has been unable to find security video from the prior instances.

Attorneys for Arbery’s family have said a man caught on security video from English’s home immediately before the shooting Feb. 23 was Arbery and the footage shows he committed no crime. It’s unknown whether it’s also Arbery in the newly released video taken 11 days earlier.

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Rookie who won seat vows to stop ‘socialist-style’ policies

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Mike Garcia grew up a single-minded kid from Southern California: He just wanted to fly fighter jets. His decision to enter national politics wouldn’t come until decades later, after he had seen one California election too many.

A career as a Navy aviator would lead to a decade in the defence industry. But it was the 2018 elections that prompted the Republican to enter public life, as his home state moved deeper into Democratic-dominated government that he faults for job-crushing regulation and climbing taxes.

“I don’t want my country to turn into what my state has become,” says Garcia, who claimed a vacant U.S. House seat Tuesday north of Los Angeles.

The political newcomer’s win over Democrat Christy Smith marked the first time in over two decades that a Republican captured a Democratic-held congressional district in California.

What was supposed to be a tossup election ended up with Garcia holding a comfortable 12-point edge in an incomplete tally Wednesday.

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Study ties ‘Obamacare’ to fewer cancer deaths in some states

Cancer deaths have dropped more in states that expanded Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act than in states that did not, new research reveals.

The report Wednesday is the first evidence tying cancer survival to the health care change, which began in 2014 after the law known as “Obamacare” took full effect, said one study leader, Dr. Anna Lee of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

“For a policy to have this amount of impact in a short amount of years” is remarkable, because cancer often takes a long time to develop and prove fatal, she said.

Lee discussed the results in an American Society of Clinical Oncology news conference as part of its annual meeting later this month.

The law let states expand Medicaid eligibility and offer subsidies to help people buy health insurance. Twenty-seven states and Washington, D.C., did that, and 20 million Americans gained coverage that way. The other 23 states did not expand benefits.

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Cats with no symptoms spread virus to other cats in lab test

Cats can spread the new coronavirus to other cats without any of them ever having symptoms, a lab experiment suggests.

Scientists who led the work, reported on Wednesday, say it shows the need for more research into whether the virus can spread from people to cats to people again.

Health experts have downplayed that possibility. The American Veterinary Medical Association said in a new statement that just because an animal can be deliberately infected in a lab “does not mean that it will easily be infected with that same virus under natural conditions.”

Anyone concerned about that risk should use “common sense hygiene,” said virus expert Peter Halfmann. Don’t kiss your pets and keep surfaces clean to cut the chances of picking up any virus an animal might shed, he said.

He and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine led the lab experiment and published results Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. Federal grants paid for the work.

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Beckett Cypher, 21-year-old son of Melissa Etheridge, dies

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Melissa Etheridge said Wednesday that her son Beckett Cypher has died.

Etheridge released a statement saying opioid addiction was behind Cypher’s death.

“Today I joined the hundreds of thousands of families who have lost loved ones to opioid addiction,” the statement said. “My son Beckett, who was just 21, struggled to overcome his addiction and finally succumbed to it today.”

No further details on the death were revealed.

Hours earlier, Etheridge’s Twitter account had announced the death of Cypher, one of two children the 58-year-old singer had with former partner Julie Cypher, conceived with sperm from Rock & Roll Hall of Famer David Crosby.