Top COVID-19 stories for Monday, June 15, 2020
Facts and science eventually catch up with the politics
There is much to catch up on since Friday. If you find these emails useful, please encourage your friends to sign up.
Two airline passengers - a retired surgeon from New York and a woman from Florida - traveled on long-haul flights to LAX in March and likely contributed significantly to the spread of COVID-19. “The virus spread quickly among those (the New York man) had come in contact with in the hours after leaving LAX, including at a Westside assisted living facility where a 32-year-old nurse and a dozen others later died,” reports the Los Angeles Times. The woman became Los Angeles County’s first COVID-19 death on March 9, and a man who drove her from the airport also died from the disease.
As California logged its 5,000 death from COVID-19 over the weekend, health experts increasingly say that face coverings are the most important thing people can do to reduce COVID-19 spread.
The actual death toll from COVID-19 in the USA may be more than 40,000 people higher than the currently published numbers, according to Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute.
While White House financial advisor Larry Kudlow continues to brush off concerns that a new, higher spike of COVID-19 cases is developing, Kudlow acknowledges the need for mitigation practices. “We have to observe best practices on masks, face coverings… whatever the local, state guidelines are, they should be observed,” he told reporters at the White House Monday.
Efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19 have contributed to an increase in diseases such as diphtheria, cholera and measles that can be prevented with existing vaccines, according to the New York Times. Dr. Peter Hotez of Baylor College of Medicine warns COVID-19 has boosted the anti-vaccine movement in the United States.
San Francisco allows shoppers inside stores for the first time since March. The city that was the first to impose a strict lockdown has OK’d stores to reopen provided that they limit the number of people inside to 50% or fewer of capacity, require masks and follow enhanced sanitation protocols.
Rising COVID-19 counts are pushing some communities to slow their reopening, including in Washington, DC. On Friday, the CDC published a guide to help people decide whether it’s safe to go out. Always have a face covering, hand sanitizer and clean tissues with you, says the guideline. Health experts attribute Arizona’s major spike in new cases entirely to premature relaxation of social distancing guidelines, including the absence of a face-covering recommendation.
The FDA officially withdrew its emergency authorization for use of hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment. “Study after study showed no benefit, and now the FDA has had enough,” says a report on the decision on Medpage Today.
On a completely different topic:
On Thursday, I’m excited to be interviewing award-winning food journalist Francis Lam, host of the public radio program, The Splendid Table, about the world of food media. Francis is also former Eat columnist at the New York Times Magazine, a regular judge on Bravo’s Top Chef Masters, and a published writer in Gourmet, Bon Appetít, Food & Wine, Lucky Peach, Saveur, Salon, Men’s Journal, and the Financial Times. This is part of the International Food Bloggers Conference “Virtual Summit.” Please join us.
Just for fun:
“I’m happy to say we’ve reached the final phases of completely deluding ourselves into thinking that this pandemic has somehow stopped spreading and that we’re safe.”
—Parody quote from a fictional mayor in The Onion’s take-down of COVID-19 politics.