Beware of the Air | Not Great, Britain | A Tale of Two Tickets
August 13, 2020
We’ve got answers: Daily Pnut 8/3 Quiz Answers. Looks like you’re catching on! 18 readers notched a perfect score, while 123 of you were able to answer 9/10. We’ll announce the prize winner in tomorrow’s Pnut. See you then!
The Good News:
- On tap for today: Beer unsold during lockdown has been turned into renewable energy (CNN)
- Targeted treatments help reduce death rates for most common lung cancer, study finds (WaPo, $). Finally, a health headline with a happy ending.
“The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”
― Winston S. Churchill
Your Health is Up in the Air
In August, millions of students return for in-person classes, and Big-12 college football is scheduled to kick off on September 12. Meanwhile, a research team at the University of Florida has demonstrated that COVID-19 lives in the air, and at distances much farther than six feet.
The researchers were able to isolate live virus from aerosols collected at distances of seven to 16 feet away from hospitalized patients. An expert in airborne spread of viruses who was not part of the Florida study said: “This is what people have been clamoring for. It’s unambiguous evidence that there is infectious virus in aerosols.”
Aerosol particles are beyond tiny, and evaporation can make them even smaller. Attempts to capture these delicate droplets usually damage the virus they contain, underscoring the importance of the Florida scientists’ accomplishment. While the researchers found only 74 virus particles per liter of air, the team’s lead virologist said that might be explained by the efficiency of the filtration system. The collection room had six air changes per hour, and was fitted with highly productive filters, ultraviolet irradiation, and other safety measures to inactivate the virus before the air was reintroduced into the room.
Indoor spaces that lack proper ventilation — such as schools — could accumulate even more airborne virus. Another expert said the six-foot minimum for social distancing is “misleading, because people think they’re protected indoors and they’re really not.” It takes about five minutes for small aerosols to traverse the room even in still air, she added.
Other experts counseled that it was difficult to extrapolate an individual’s infection risk from the Florida team’s findings. “I’m just not sure that these numbers are high enough to cause an infection in somebody,” one virologist noted. What can’t be denied now is that live virus can be cultured from the air. And even if those football players are probably safe on the field outdoors, they’ll soon go back to a closed-in sweaty locker room.
Bolsonaro Comes Under Fire
(Avishek Das via Getty Images)
- Despite aerial photos, firefighters’ accounts, a smoke-filled horizon at day, a glowing red sky at night — and his own government data showing the existence of thousands of fires raging in the Amazon rainforest — Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro is denying anything of the sort exists. In a speech Tuesday to members of the Leticia Pact — an agreement between Amazon countries to protect the rainforest — Bolsonaro said air travelers flying above the rainforest for hundreds of miles “won’t find any spot of fire, nor a quarter of a hectare deforested.”
- The former army captain was straight-faced as he told the other South American leaders: “This story that the Amazon is going up in flames is a lie and we must combat it with true numbers.” Bolsonaro contended that because the Amazon is a wet forest, it preserves itself and does not catch fire. Anything to the contrary presented by the media and foreign governments, he said, is a “false narrative.” He argued that Brazil has shown itself capable of protecting the Amazon alone because the majority of the forest is still standing.
- However, according to the country’s national space research agency INPE, deforestation rose 34.5 percent in the last year, and more than 10,000 fires have been recorded in the rainforest in the first 10 days of August, a 17 percent increase from the same period a year ago when fires in the Amazon hit a nine year high. In 2019, Bolsonaro fired the head INPE who had defended his agency’s data that indicates a slow-burning tragedy. Global investors have threatened to pull their investments out of Brazil if the administration doesn’t take action on the destruction of the rainforest. (Reuters)
Not So Great, Britain
- Official numbers released Wednesday show Britain’s economy has plunged into a record-shattering recession, its first since the global downturn in 2009. Gross domestic product (GDP) shrank 20.4 percent in the second quarter —- April, May, and June — compared with the first quarter. It was the steepest decline of any nation in the G7.
- By comparison, the US economy shrank just 9.5 percent over that same period, and the eurozone, made up of European Union countries that have adopted the euro currency, contracted by 12.1 percent. The downturn in Britain’s economy reflected losses across all sectors, beginning after the country went into a tight lockdown in the third week of March.
- Wednesday’s sobering figures came on top of huge job losses announced the day before. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is now in the unenviable position of presiding over the worst economy and the highest number of excess deaths from COVID-19 in Europe. Britain’s finance minister warned that more jobs will be lost even without a second wave of coronavirus infections.
- A government program paying up to 80 percent of a furloughed worker’s salary is set to expire in October. Continued high-level government job support isn’t sustainable, the minister said. One political expert said Wednesday’s numbers weren’t that surprising considering the country was in strict lockdown mode during the second quarter. The numbers he will be watching will be those from the third quarter, which will show “how effective the government’s measures are to get the economy back post lockdown.” (WaPo)
Additional World News
- Exporting execution: How American Guns Are Fueling UK Crime (NYT, $)
- Major US diplomatic push to counter Russia may be in jeopardy amid Belarus unrest (CNN)
- For Belarus Leader, a Fading Aura of Invincibility (NYT, $). “Europe’s last dictator” living up to his name.
- U.S. threatens to veto UN peacekeeping in Lebanon over Hezbollah concerns (Axios)
- In defiance of law, protesters in Thailand demand curbs on king’s powers (Yahoo)
- The South China Sea heats up: China increases military drills as tensions with US heat up (CNN)
- New Cold War With China Demands Radical Industrial Rethink for United States (Foreign Policy)
- Mexico’s Former President Accused in Bribery Scandal (NYT, $)
- It’s now or never: The World Has Reached Decision Time on the Climate Crisis (New Yorker, $)
- ‘One of our own.’ Indians cheer Biden’s pick of Kamala Harris as White House running mate (Reuters)
COVID-19
- Tough Pnut for our friends across the pond: Why Britain Failed Its Coronavirus Test (Atlantic, $)
- Russia coronavirus vaccine has been researched for six years (CNBC)
- Health Experts Warn About Perils of New Virus Data Collection System (NYT, $)
- 2020 election voters want Covid-19 vaccine and treatments to be free (Vox). An inflection point for how we vote on healthcare.
- Hundreds Quarantined in Schools That Followed Trump’s Advice (Bloomberg)
- Your state’s Covid-19 epidemic, explained in 5 maps (Vox)
- How The Coronavirus Has Upended College Admissions (NPR)
- Up in smoke: Vaping linked to COVID-19 risk in teens and young adults (Stanford)
This Atlas Holds Up Lies
(Brendan Smialowski via Getty Images)
- Apparently tired of hearing the vast majority of the scientific community disagree with him on science, President Trump has added someone to the team who supports his unscientific claims. Dr. Scott Atlas, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and Fox News frequenter, now adds the coveted title of “adviser to the President.”
- Most importantly, Atlas has adopted a public stance on the virus much closer to Trump’s, including decrying the idea that schools cannot reopen this fall as “hysteria,” and pushing for the resumption of college sports. Trump first noticed Atlas on Fox, where he asserted it doesn’t matter “how many cases” exist in the US, wrongly claimed those under 18 years old have “essentially no risk of dying,” implied teachers who are at high risk for contracting COVID-19 should “know how to protect themselves,” baselessly claimed “children almost never transmit the disease,” and blamed a rise in cases in southern states on protests and border crossings.
- With COVID-19 spreading largely unchecked across the US, Trump has urged hesitant governors to reopen their states and school administrators to put children back in the classroom. School districts that have opened, like those in Georgia, have seen a cluster of new cases. Atlas has been an extensive critic of severe lockdowns, advising the president in private and publicly agreeing with him on just about everything.
- In the briefing room on Monday Trump pointed to Atlas and said: “He’s working with us and will be working with us on the coronavirus. And he has many great ideas. And he thinks what we’ve done is really good, and now we’ll take it to a new level.” (CNN)
A Tale of Two Tickets
- Two congressional candidates who won their respective primaries, one chosen by Democratic voters in Minnesota and one by Republican voters in Georgia, could not better ideological divide in America. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a construction executive who supports the baseless conspiracy theory QAnon and believes that Muslims don’t belong in government, won 57 percent of Tuesday’s vote in Georgia’s heavily-Republican 14th Congressional District.
- And Representative Ilhan Omar, who made history in 2018 as the first Somali American and the first of two Muslim women elected to Congress, won her bid for a second term in Minnesota’s deep-blue 5th Congressional District.
- Earlier this summer many high-ranking Republicans in the House distanced themselves from Greene after videos of her anti-Muslim rhetoric surfaced online. A spokesman for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called her views “appalling.” Nevertheless, Greene is almost certain to win November’s election for a House seat.
- Wednesday morning President Trump congratulated Greene, calling her a “future Republican Star” who is “strong on everything.” Shortly after taking office in 2019, Omar came under fire for making comments on Twitter that some interpreted as anti-Semitic. Her tweets sparked a backlash from Republican and Democratic leaders alike, prompting her to issue an apology. Omar is a member of the “squad,” a prominent quartet of progressive freshman congresswomen of color.
- The group also includes Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Ayanna Pressley (MA), and Rashida Tlaib (MI). President Trump has been loudly critical of the four women as a group, but he’s been particularly hostile toward Omar, referring to her as “an America-hating socialist” at a fall rally last year in Minneapolis. Despite policy disagreements within the party, Omar has the support of key establishment Democratic leaders, like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. (NPR)
Additional USA News
- Kamala Harris Reading Guide: The Best Reporting on the Vice Presidential Candidate (ProPublica)
- Kamala Harris’s criminal justice record, explained (Vox)
- Financial fandom: Wall Street Democrats Rejoice at Biden’s Pick of Kamala Harris (Bloomberg)
- Payroll Tax Delay May Mean Problems For Workers, Employers And Social Security (NPR)
- Fed Officials Blame U.S. Failures on Virus for Sapping Recovery (Bloomberg)
- Administration Reaches Out to Democrats on Stimulus Bill (NYT, $). It appears the stimulus stalemate is nearing a conclusion.
- U.S. reports highest number of covid-19 deaths in one day since mid-May (WaPo. $)
- Eating, out: National Study Shows 40% Unemployment in Hospitality Sector (Eater)
- More than 50 Confederate monuments have been removed since Floyd’s death (The Hill)
- George Floyd’s killing is changing how some white evangelicals talk about race (WaPo, $)
Freelancing the Freeway
- On Monday afternoon, a California Superior Court judge issued a groundbreaking preliminary injunction, ordering that Uber and Lyft classify their ride-hailing drivers as employees rather than independent contractors. The injunction is stayed for 10 days to give the companies time to appeal. And Uber is doing just that, stating they were preparing to file an immediate emergency appeal to block the ruling from going into effect.
- Uber and Lyft have been under increasing pressure to fundamentally alter their business models in California, the state where both companies were founded and ultimately prospered. The two ride-hailing giants say drivers prefer the flexibility of freelance work, while labor unions and elected officials argue this distinction deprives drivers of traditional benefits like health insurance and workers’ compensation.
- In May, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, alongside litigators in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego, sued Uber and Lyft on the grounds that their drivers were misclassified as independent contractors when they should be employees under the state’s AB5 law that went into effect on January 1st. As company employees, the ride-hailing drivers would be guaranteed minimum wage, overtime compensation, paid rest periods, and reimbursements for the cost of driving for the companies, including personal vehicle mileage. Drivers currently receive none of these benefits as independent contractors.
- On Wednesday Uber’s CEO said the company may shut down its operations in California, one of its largest markets in the US, if the appeal fails and it is forced to classify drivers as employees. In the event court rulings go against them, Uber and Lyft are relying on a backstop. On November’s election ballot is a measure that, if voters approve it, would override AB5 by classifying ride-hail drivers and other gig economy workers as independent contractors. (The Verge)
Additional Reads
- Let’s talk about it: Mindfulness of death: How to meditate on your mortality (Vox)
- We All Speak a Language That Will Go Extinct (NYT, $)
- Why Wikipedia Decided to Stop Calling Fox a ‘Reliable’ Source (Wired). Bold of Wikipedia to assume they can make such claims.
- Why is there a Dr Pepper shortage? (Fast Company)
- A Florida Sheriff Is Banning Masks for His 900-Person Department (Vice)
- Bucking the Buckeyes: Ohio State Football Is Canceled. Will Trump Take the Hit? (NYT, $)
- How to get promoted as a woman (Psyche)
- Android is becoming a worldwide earthquake detection network (Verge)