There is a variety of presence-detection solutions, including occupancy-density indication and absolute social-distancing measurement for social distancing in retail spaces that range in complexity and cost.
NEW RESOURCES
PR Newswire: First Street Foundation releases new data disclosing the flood risk of every home in the contiguous U.S. (PRESS RELEASE). “The nonprofit research and technology group First Street Foundation has publicly released flood risk data for more than 142 million homes and properties across the country. The data, based on decades of peer-reviewed research, assigns every property in the contiguous United States a “Flood Factor
,” or score from 1 to 10, based on its cumulative risk of flooding over a thirty-year mortgage. People can look up a property’s Flood Factor and learn more about its past, present, and future flood risk at FloodFactor.com, the Foundation’s new online visualization tool, launching today.” When I was playing with this, I found that it would work for a couple of lookups and then start giving me 404 errors as I was putting in a new address. If I reopened the link in an incognito window it worked fine again for a couple of lookups.
Ahram Online: Virtual Cannes Market: Arab Cinema Centre and Telescope Film launch database of Arab films. “Within the Virtual Cannes Market’s events, and aiming to expand the scope of the Arab cinema’s exposure internationally, Telescope Film announced the launch of Arab Cinema Centre’s microsite. Arab Films and Where to Find Them! is the opening motto for the new microsite, as it serves as a comprehensive English-language guide to Arab cinema.”
TWEAKS AND UPDATES
Google Blog: Now sending: Business Messages via Google Maps and Search. “Today we’re expanding Business Messages in Maps and Search to support all kinds of businesses, and giving them the ability to integrate Business Messages directly with their customer service platforms. Business Messages provides brands a comprehensive messaging solution across Android devices, and through Maps on iOS.”
Neowin: Google Meet to add 49-user tiled layout, background blur, and more for education users. “Google is announcing a few new features for Meet that will roll out later this year, which are mainly geared towards G Suite education customers. The new features include added capabilities for admins and moderators, the ability to replace or blur backgrounds, larger tiled view to accommodate more participants in a video call, and more.”
AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD
BBC: How Facebook scammers target people at risk of suicide. “A BBC investigation has uncovered dozens of Facebook pages claiming to sell a deadly poison to people who are contemplating suicide. It’s the work of scammers – but how do they operate?”
WSET: Virginia Humanities announces $235,800 to support museums, historical societies. “Virginia Humanities announced $235,800 in recent grants to nonprofit organizations in support of public humanities programs for audiences throughout the state. Virginia Humanities has awarded grants to museums, historical societies, and other cultural non-profits across the state since 1974.”
SECURITY & LEGAL
BuzzFeed News: Almost 17,000 Protesters Had No Idea A Tech Company Was Tracing Their Location. “On the weekend of May 29, thousands of people marched, sang, grieved, and chanted, demanding an end to police brutality and the defunding of police departments in the aftermath of the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. They marched en masse in cities like Minneapolis, New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta, empowered by their number and the assumed anonymity of the crowd. And they did so completely unaware that a tech company was using location data harvested from their cellphones to predict their race, age, and gender and where they lived.”
Technical .ly: Volunteer data scrapers helped Philadelphia Lawyers for Social Equity preserve client court records. “As the first state to implement the Clean Slate Law in 2018, Pennsylvania committed to sealing millions of criminal records. The law was enacted to remove educational and vocational disadvantages for people with eligible records, including those associated with certain misdemeanors and people found not guilty in court. While the law cleared barriers to housing, education and employment for individuals across the state, it indirectly created new technological barriers for Philadelphia Lawyers for Social Equity (PLSE).”
RESEARCH & OPINION
CNET: Why tech made racial injustice worse, and how to fix it. “As part of CNET’s Now What series, we explore the impact of tech on race relations with Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American studies at Princeton University and author of the book Race After Technology. Benjamin is a sociologist focused on technology and she brings a unique perspective on the impact of technology on race relations.”
DigitalNC: Moving Forward With Equitable Metadata: Changing Exclusive Terminology. “To continue the steps taken to promote equal representation throughout DigitalNC’s collections, as initially brought up in the recent blog post We Can Do Better: Making Our Metadata More Equitable, the NCDHC staff is becoming more committed to inclusivity through changing exclusive terminology. For this update, we’re specifically looking at the gendered and presumptive terms used in the title and description metadata categories of our visual collections. These changes, while perhaps small in effort, are a big step towards reimaging how we can be better stewards of history, especially to those individuals who are brought into our collections without an identity.” Good afternoon, Internet…
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Infineon has released a 12-channel sensing and balancing IC for battery management systems (BMS) in hybrid and electric vehicles.
TI’s BQ25790 and BQ25792 highly integrated buck-boost battery chargers offer 50% greater power density and three times faster charging for USB Type-C, USB PC, and wireless dual input charging.
NEW RESOURCES
The Bump: There’s Now a Britannica Website for All Your Parenting Questions. “Britannica for Parents is a new website offering information, resources and advice from trusted experts in the field of child development and early education. The site aims to help parents make good decisions about how to raise curious young learners and provide guidance in helping their children navigate the digital landscape.”
CBS 19: Teachers create new website to share anti-racist resources. “Three teachers from Cale Elementary School in Albemarle County worked together to create a new website with anti-racist resources to share with other teachers and people in the community. Chiaka Chuks, Jasmine Azimi, and Rachel Caldwell collaborated on the project in the wake of George Floyd’s death.” Not endless amounts of content yet, but a solid start.
Brown University: New Online Exhibit: Transient Matter. “Transient Matter brings the realities, perils, and the humanity of migrations and border-crossings to the Haffenreffer Museum through an exhibition of things discarded by migrants who crossed the Aegean to reach Greece, artwork created by migrants in camps and detention centers once there, and photographs and videos produced by the curators.”
TWEAKS AND UPDATES
Google Blog: A redesigned Google Photos, built for your life’s memories. “Google Photos has become more than just an app to manage your photos, it’s become the home for your life’s memories. And that’s why today, we’re launching a redesigned Google Photos, focused on your memories, to help you find and relive your most treasured moments.”
CNET: Google’s new AR update adds depth without needing lidar like Apple’s iPad. “This week’s AR news has been focused on Apple’s augmented reality updates to iOS 14, many of which lean on the depth-scanning hardware only on the recent iPad Pro. Google announced its own AR news this week, too, and you won’t need specialized hardware to use its depth-sensing tools.”
AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD
Evening Express: Aberdeen University shows off its assets with online #BestMuseumBum battle. “Staff Aberdeen University have polished their bums for an online museum battle. Started by Yorkshire Museum, today’s curator is calling on museums to showcase the best bums and bottoms from their collection. Starting the campaign was an image of a Roman marble statuette depicting ‘an athlete at the peak of fitness’.”
CNBC: The Facebook ad boycotts have entered the big leagues. Now what? . “In the last week, a steady stream of companies came out in support of the ”#StopHateForProfit” campaign, promising to pause advertising spend on Facebook to encourage the company to amp up efforts against hate speech and disinformation. With major advertisers like Verizon joining the campaign Thursday and Unilever, Coca-Cola and Honda saying they would pull advertising on Friday, Facebook is now facing a snowball effect of advertisers abandoning the site.”
Wired: How Thousands of Misplaced Emails Took Over This Engineer’s Inbox. “TWO WEEKS AGO, longtime software engineer Kenton Varda got an email that wasn’t meant for him. It was from AT&T Mexico to a customer named Jorge, whose most recent phone bill was attached. You’ve probably gotten an email intended for someone else at least once. But then Varda got another AT&T Mexico bill for Gloria. And then a third for Humberto, who is overdue on paying more than 6,200 pesos, about $275. To Varda, the incident wasn’t a surprise.”
SECURITY & LEGAL
Vice: Discord Just Shut Down the Biggest ‘Boogaloo’ Server for Inciting Violence. “Discord, a platform popular with gamers, has shut down one of the largest servers used by followers of the anti-government ‘boogaloo’ movement after it was exposed in a VICE News article.”
Ubergizmo: Hackers Are Now Hiding Credit Card Skimmers In Image Metadata On The Web. “Physical credit card skimmers aren’t new and while they can be disguised, it is relatively easy to spot it if you know what you’re looking for. Unfortunately, it seems that credit card skimmers have gone virtual where according to a report from Malwarebytes, it appears that hackers are now hiding these virtual skimmers inside the metadata of images on compromised online storefronts.”
RESEARCH & OPINION
New York Times: In Vintage TV Ads, a Curious Fountain of Hope (and Cheese). “Search YouTube with the word ‘commercials’ and the decade of your choosing, and you will find hundreds of compilations, including transfers of old broadcasts with everything but the advertisements and the breaking news updates edited out. I put on these compilations as background noise when I’m doing chores or eating dinner. It allows me to make believe that I live in a world I never got to inhabit but is still familiar, a time that seems simpler by virtue of the fact that it isn’t actively making me miserable.”
CNN: The hard truth about the Facebook ad boycott: Nothing matters but Zuckerberg. “As each new company lends its weight to the boycott, the economic pressure is growing on Facebook to change — somehow. The campaign carries echoes of a similar advertiser rebellion against YouTube in 2017…. Despite some similarities, Facebook is less susceptible to outside pressure than most businesses, experts say. It’s led by a CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, who exercises complete voting control over the company and can’t be removed by shareholders. And that could vastly complicate the campaign to hit Facebook where it hurts.” Good morning, Internet…
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NEW RESOURCES
Standard-Examiner: Everyday Heroes: Bountiful resident wants to memorialize every soldier who died during WWII, looking for help. “[Don] Milne, 59, of Bountiful, recently launched a nonprofit called ‘Stories Behind the Stars,’ an ambitious project that aims to compile short histories of all of the 400,000 plus American soldiers who died during WWII. The histories would be searchable, by name, from an online database Milne is creating. He says he’s also developing a smartphone app that would link to the database and allow people to scan names from war memorials and headstones, then instantly be taken to a particular soldier’s biography. A self-described ‘history buff,’ particularly of WWII, Milne has been blogging and writing military bios for fallen soldiers of the war pretty much every day for that past three years. So far, he’s written about 1,200 profiles, piecing the stories together mainly through sources he’s found online.”
TWEAKS AND UPDATES
Reuters: Google to pay some publishers for content; others dubious. “Alphabet’s Google on Thursday took a step towards resolving its spat with publishers, saying it would pay some media groups in Australia, Brazil and Germany for high-quality content and expects to do more deals, but others were sceptical.” Shocked. Really.
NDTV: Google to Start Offering Loans to Merchants in India, Rolls Out ‘Nearby Stores’ Spot Nationwide. “Google is set to start offering loans to merchants in India through the Google Pay for Business app. The search giant said on Thursday that it is working with partner financial institutions to help small businesses in the country impacted due to the coronavirus outbreak. In addition to offering loans, Google announced a national rollout of ‘Nearby Stores’ Spot on Google Pay to help businesses get discovered by customers in their locality. The feature was launched earlier this year in cities including Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Pune.”
AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD
The Verge: Are TikTok activists actually shutting down Trump’s online merch stores? An investigation. “Some critics of President Donald Trump have spent the last few days trying to lock up Trump-branded merchandise by leaving thousands of products from his online stores in shopping carts. But while the attack has become a kind of resistance meme, reminiscent of recent pranks on the president’s Tulsa rally, it’s far less clear whether the hoax actually prevented Trump’s stores from selling merchandise.”
CNET: Before the cats came: The web of 1995 leaves me nostalgic for simpler times. “My web circa 1995 will always be three sites: Suck, Argon Zark and the T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S Project. Put up by two Rice University students to document their experiments to determine the properties of Twinkies, the T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S Project was text heavy, with cheesy graphics and tiny photos. Ugly, but full of smarts, character and innocent charm. And a quarter of a century later, the homespun site still makes me , even if the only way to see it is in the Internet Archive.”
SECURITY & LEGAL
Arab News: Egypt court jails belly dancer for ‘debauchery’ in social media crackdown. “A high-profile Egyptian belly-dancer, Sama el-Masry, was sentenced to three years in prison and fined 300,000 Egyptian pounds ($18,500) on Saturday for inciting debauchery and immorality as part of a crackdown on social media postings. El-Masry was arrested in April during an investigation into videos and photos on social media, including the popular video-sharing platform TikTok, that the public prosecution described as sexually suggestive.”
NBC News: Spyware hidden in Chinese tax software was probably planted by a nation-state, say experts. “Earlier this year, a multinational technology vendor doing business in China was instructed by its Chinese bank to install software to pay local taxes. The tax software was legitimate, but embedded inside it was a nasty surprise, according to a new report by a private security firm: A sophisticated piece of malware that gave attackers complete access to the company’s network.”
Ubergizmo: US Senators Propose A Bill To End ‘Warrant-Proof’ Encryption. “In the past, companies would have to fight requests from law enforcement agencies whenever they are asked to hand over information about their customers. These days, it has gotten a lot easier in the sense that tech companies are handing the encryption keys over to their customers.”
RESEARCH & OPINION
Twitter Blog: Using data from the conversation on Twitter to help detect wildfires. “This wildfire season, Mayday.ai is set to combine data from the unfolding conversation on Twitter with its proprietary incident detection system, which is based on satellite sensors, an array of 35,000 traffic cameras, and IP911 to power a comprehensive detection and a highly targeted notification tracker. Mayday.ai has developed a comprehensive dispatch platform and a mobile app which will provide first responders and civilians unprecedented access to real-time incident information — and has so far had much success in detecting wildfires using its proprietary platform and is being used as a template for other disasters in Mayday’s roadmap.”
ReliefWeb: Innovation in post-disaster data collection: From the Caribbean to the world. “Responding and rebuilding first requires data on what has been damaged or destroyed, and where. In the past, data collection was a laborious paper-based process that took months or years. After Hurricanes Irma and Maria caused massive destruction in the region in 2017, UNDP and partners launched a new tool to do such assessments in a matter of days. (UNDP Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean Multi-County Office partnered with WFP, UNICEF, PAHO/WHO and UN Women.) The tool is a mobile app called HBDA, or Household and Building Damage Assessment. It works on a smartphone or tablet.” Good afternoon, Internet…
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Wash your hands and stay at home as much as you can. Please be careful. I love you.
NEW RESOURCES – MEDICAL/HEALTH
University of Colorado Boulder: COVID-19 Airborne Transmission Tool Available. “Many of us face a constant barrage of decisions during this global pandemic: How dangerous is it to ride the bus? To teach and/or attend class? What’s my risk in a public demonstration? University of Colorado Boulder atmospheric chemist Jose-Luis Jimenez has released a pilot tool that may help us answer some of these questions, or at least provide some informed guidance.”
Diagnostic Imaging: RSNA Launches Own Open COVID-19 Medical Images Database. “The Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) launched what could likely become the largest open international database of COVID-19 images. Known as RICORD (RSNA International COVID-19 Open Radiology Database), and created in concert with the RSNA COVID-19 Task Force, it already has received expressed interest to participate from more than 200 institutions globally. With accompanying clinical information and expert annotations, RSNA leaders say the intent is for radiologists to use the significant de-identified data compilation for research and educational efforts that will save lives.”
New Indian Express: CCMB’s web app gives peek into one thousand plus coronavirus genomes. “As India crossed the milestone of sequencing 1,000 genomes of SARS-CoV-2, Hyderabad-based Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) has come out with an interactive web app named Genome Evolution Analysis Resource for COVID-19 (GEAR-19). GEAR-2019 gives an interesting peek into the outcome of efforts put in by scientists and researchers from 33 contributing laboratories across the country, for sequencing 1,031 genomes of SARS-CoV-2.”
NEW RESOURCES – EDUCATION/ENTERTAINMENT
University of Toronto News: U of T librarian creates online resource to fight COVID-19 misinformation . “In the midst of the pandemic, experts are raising alarms about another public health threat: an ‘infodemic’ of online medical misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19. In an effort to fight the spread of faulty facts, Vincci Lui, a librarian at the University of Toronto’s Gerstein Science Information Centre, has put together a new online library resource for the U of T community: ‘How can I spot misinformation about the coronavirus and COVID-19?'”
UPDATES
NBC News: China declares new outbreak contained after massive testing effort. “Two weeks ago the Chinese capital went into ‘wartime emergency mode,’ renewing fears about a potential second coronavirus spike. Now, according to health officials, the outbreak is contained and the daily increase in cases has now mostly fallen to single digits.”
ABC News: US tops 2.5 million confirmed cases. “Over 9.8 million people across the globe have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new respiratory virus, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and suspicions that some governments are hiding the scope of their nations’ outbreaks. The United States has become the worst-affected country, with more than 2.5 million diagnosed cases and at least 125,039 deaths.”
FACT CHECKS
Poynter: How Faktograf worked across borders to stem COVID-19 misinformation in southeastern Europe. “Misinformation doesn’t care about borders, especially in southeastern Europe, where trust in the media tends to be low and news avoidance is sky-high. False news can spread quickly via popular messenger apps like Viber and WhatsApp. That has been the key takeaway from Faktograf’s COVID-19 experience. The Zagreb-based fact-checking organization knows that mis- and disinformation are as much of a problem in nearby Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia as they are in Croatia. Tackling the issue in one country isn’t enough.”
SOCIETAL IMPACT
AP: Nurses, doctors feel strain as virus races through Arizona. “They saw the ominous photos: Crowded hospitals, exhausted nurses, bodies piling up in morgues. It was far away, in New York, northern Italy and other distant places. Now, after three months of anxiously waiting and preparing, Arizona nurses and doctors are on the front lines as the coronavirus rips through the state, making it one of the world’s hot spots. The trickle of a few virus patients in March became a steady stream two weeks after Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey ended a stay-home order in mid-May and allowed most businesses to reopen, and is now a scourge with no end in sight.”
Fast Company: Masks, gloves, and other coronavirus waste are starting to fill up our oceans. “It’s not news that our trash eventually finds its way to the ocean. Because oceans are downstream, litter will eventually find a pathway into our bodies of water if it’s not discarded properly—and often even if it is. But as the COVID-19 crisis slowly generates a new kind of waste, made up of disposable masks and other PPE items, it’s posing new problems for the Earth’s oceans. The flood of PPE could cause immediate danger to wildlife and long-term plastic pollution that threatens to contaminate food supplies.”
Route Fifty: Don’t Bet on a Quick Recovery. “Mary Daly is the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. (She does not sit on the Fed panel that sets the country’s interest rates, but will next year.) As a labor economist and a policy maker, she has been vocal about using the tools of government to address financial inequality, and about the ‘diversity crisis’ in economics. We discussed this unusual recession, the limits of monetary policy, and representation at the Fed. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.”
New York Times: The Post-Coronavirus Cruise? Not Ready to Sail. “W. Bradford Gary spent 10 days trapped inside a cruise ship cabin off the coast of Brazil in March while health authorities in several countries scrambled to figure out what to do with a vessel full of older people who had potentially been exposed to the coronavirus. But when faced with the question of whether he’d ever cruise again, he doesn’t hesitate. ‘We are very anxious to get back on board,’ he said, and he believes he’s not alone: ‘There are people like us who want to do this.'”
The Guardian: UK theatres sweat on whether make-or-break panto season can go ahead. “The UK’s beleaguered theatres have warned that panto season could be cancelled, leading to catastrophic losses in revenue, unless the government is able to reassure people that live performances will continue in the winter.”
New York Times: Going Up? Not So Fast: Strict New Rules to Govern Elevator Culture. “Small, crowded, enclosed spaces are petri dishes for the coronavirus. But in urban office buildings, elevators are a necessity, so companies are wrestling with how to make them safer.”
Under the Ancient Oaks: Online Pagan Rituals: We’re Learning As We Go. “The last public ritual I attended was Denton CUUPS’ Anthesteria celebration on January 25. That’s five months and counting, with no end in sight. I haven’t gone this long between major group rituals since 2003. But the work of ritual goes on, pandemic or no pandemic. We still have Gods to honor and holy days to celebrate. Plus we’re 21st century Pagans – if we can’t be together, we can gather online. I’ve done video rituals for the Spring Equinox, Beltane, and the Summer Solstice. I’m learning the ins and outs of online rituals, and that’s what I want to discuss in this post.”
Washington Post: Almost one-third of black Americans know someone who died of covid-19, survey shows. “Nearly 1 in 3 black Americans know someone personally who has died of covid-19, far exceeding their white counterparts, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll that underscores the coronavirus pandemic’s profoundly disparate impact. The nationwide survey finds that 31 percent of black adults say they know someone firsthand who has been killed by the virus, compared with 17 percent of adults who are Hispanic and 9 percent who are white.”
BUSINESS / CORPORATIONS
MikeShouts: adidas Collaborates With Carbon To Produce 3D Printed Face Shields For U.S. Healthcare Workers. “The German sporting equipment maker has collaborated with 3D printing specialist, Carbon, Inc., to make face shields using the same material co-created for adidas’ 4D midsoles. The material is Elastomeric Polyurethane, a highly elastic, tear resistant material that can be sanitized and reused which should help eliminate waste.”
GOVERNMENT
CBS News: Federal officials allowed distribution of COVID-19 antibody tests after they knew many were flawed. “Federal officials failed to immediately stop the distribution of many COVID-19 antibody tests they knew were flawed, leading to inaccurate data about the spread of the virus. Congress is now investigating why the FDA did not review the tests it allowed to be distributed widely throughout the U.S.”
Salt Lake Tribune: Utah businesses can get a ‘seal of approval’ if they commit to these steps to fight COVID-19. “The Salt Lake Chamber has launched its latest strategy for making customers feel safer as they venture out to Utah businesses during the pandemic. Unveiled to the public Thursday in collaboration with the Utah Department of Health, the chamber’s Stay Safe to Stay Open campaign offers business owners a publicly visible ‘seal of approval’ if they pledge to stick with the latest health guidelines.”
AP: Governors face competing voices as reported virus cases rise. “With reported coronavirus cases rising rapidly in many states, governors are getting lots of advice on what they should do. Unions want to be sure workers are protected on the job. Many business owners say they can’t afford another forced shutdown. Public health officials urge them to make mask-wearing a statewide requirement. At the same, governors are facing blowback on the right over business restrictions and mask regulations.”
ProPublica: A Company Run by a White House “Volunteer” With No Experience in Medical Supplies Got $2.4 Million From the Feds for Medical Supplies . “A $2.4 million deal to supply the Bureau of Prisons with surgical gowns was the second multimillion dollar contract for coronavirus supplies that went to somebody who did work for the White House but had little relevant experience.”
CNBC: Washington state stops counties from moving to full reopening as coronavirus cases rise. “Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced on Saturday that the state would halt some of its counties from moving into the next phase of reopening as the coronavirus shows signs of accelerating.”
INDIVIDUALS / BANDS / GROUPS
The Hindu: Kerala Dialogue | Counterforces will emerge post COVID-19 pandemic: Noam Chomsky. “Academician and author Noam Chomsky said on Friday that power-wielding people who are benefiting from U.S. President Donald Trump’s malice are working hard to ensure that the world that comes emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic will be structurally like the one that caused it.”
CBS News: Texas governor says “If I could go back and redo anything, I would slow down the reopening of bars”. “As the number of people hospitalized in Texas from the coronavirus surpassed 5,000 on Friday, Governor Greg Abbott said he should not have rushed ahead with reopening bars. The news comes as Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator, said Friday that Texas is one of the two states with the largest increase in positive coronavirus cases as the country reported the highest single-day increase in new cases.”
EDUCATION
New York Times: Many Students Will Be in Classrooms Only Part of the Week This Fall. “Some American school districts are beginning to announce hybrid schedules that include a mix of online and in-school learning, presenting a difficult challenge for working parents.”
HEALTH
Poynter: We are likely a couple of weeks away from a surge in COVID-19 deaths. “For more than a month, health officials have warned us that if we do not stop spreading the virus, we will pay a price in July. COVID-19 illness cases are way up in the United States but deaths are down. But deaths lag behind new cases by a few weeks, so we can expect these record-breaking new cases will show up in deaths in July. The bill is coming due. We knew when the country loosened up around Memorial Day that cases would go up. Now, we are on the cusp of July 4, and we are also spreading the virus like crazy. If we don’t collectively act to protect each other, health experts are warning we could see a July that marks an exponential growth in cases. Not just a little rise — an explosive increase.”
Bloomberg: Trump’s Tulsa Rally Drew People From Dozens of Virus Hot Spots in U.S.. “Mobile-phone location data from people who attended President Donald Trump’s rally in Oklahoma show that most came from outside Tulsa, hailing from at least 44 counties spread across 12 states. Covid-19 is on the rise in 33 of them.”
Washington Post: Young people urged to take virus more seriously as pandemic worsens in U.S.. “While the virus is most dangerous to the elderly, it can be devastating to younger victims as well, health professionals said. Younger coronavirus patients are a widening percentage of total coronavirus hospitalizations, with those in the 18 to 49 age group growing from about 27 percent of hospitalizations the week ending March 7 to 35 percent this past week, CDC figures show.”
New York Times: How the World Missed Covid-19’s Silent Spread. “Symptomless transmission makes the coronavirus far harder to fight. But health officials dismissed the risk for months, pushing misleading and contradictory claims in the face of mounting evidence.”
ABC 7: CDC adds pregnant women to list of people at higher risk of severe coronavirus illness. “The nation’s top public health agency on Thursday revamped its list of which Americans are at higher risk for severe COVID-19 illness, adding pregnant women and removing age alone as a factor. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also changed the list of underlying conditions that make someone more susceptible to suffering and death. Sickle cell disease joined the list, for example. And the threshold for risky levels of obesity was lowered.”
OUTBREAKS
New York Post: NY student sparks COVID-19 cluster after returning from Florida. “Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Saturday called on state investigators to probe a COVID-19 cluster in Westchester, believed to be caused by a student who returned from coronavirus hotspot Florida — and then attended a graduation ceremony in posh Chappaqua.”
Washington Post: How Arizona ‘lost control of the epidemic’. “Arizona has emerged as an epicenter of the early summer coronavirus crisis as the outbreak has expanded, flaring across new parts of the country and, notably, infecting more young people. Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, is recording as many as 2,000 cases a day, ‘eclipsing the New York City boroughs even on their worst days,’ warned a Wednesday brief by disease trackers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which observed, ‘Arizona has lost control of the epidemic.'”
CNN: Patrons are asked to self-quarantine after about 85 people who visited a Michigan bar get Covid-19. “People who visited a bar in East Lansing, Michigan, are being asked to self-quarantine because roughly 85 people contracted Covid-19 after visiting the establishment this month, a health official says. That number is up from the 34 reported Wednesday and is expected to rise, Ingham County Health officer Linda S. Vail told CNN.”
TECHNOLOGY
NPR: Parts Of Myanmar Unaware Of COVID-19 Due To Internet Ban, Rights Advocates Say. “An Internet shutdown that began a year ago in parts of Myanmar is keeping some villages unaware of the coronavirus pandemic, humanitarian groups say. Restrictions on mobile Internet were put in place in eight townships in the state of Rakhine – and one in nearby Chin state — in June of last year amid fighting between the country’s military and an ethnic minority, the Rakhine, and their Arakan Army.”
ZDNet: Middle East: Web-chat services unblocked but big tech projects take a hit in COVID crisis. “Businesses and societies around the world have been hit hard by the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. But what has been the specific impact on tech use and adoption in a region as diverse as the Middle East?”
RESEARCH
Route Fifty: How Did Americans Spend Their Stimulus Payments? New Data Offers Clues.. “More than two-thirds of people living in households where someone has received or expects a cash payment under a federal coronavirus relief program have used the money mostly for expenses—particularly costs like housing, utilities and food, according to new survey data.”
ZDNet: Surveilling the virus: unprecedented amounts of genetic data and smart software are tracking how COVID-19 metamorphoses around the world. “The world has been obsessed with surveillance of a particular kind for six months: watching people to see who’s sick. There is another form of surveillance that is just as important but less well understood, and that is the attempt to track how the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself is metamorphosing as it spreads around the world.”
Reuters: Special Report: As world approaches 10 million coronavirus cases, doctors see hope in new treatments. “Doctors say they’ve learned enough about the highly contagious virus to solve some key problems for many patients. The changes could be translating into more saved lives, although there is little conclusive data. Nearly 30 doctors around the world, from New Orleans to London to Dubai, told Reuters they feel more prepared should cases surge again in the fall.”
STAT News: When Covid-19 hits the brain, it can cause strokes, psychosis and a dementia-like syndrome, new survey shows . “A new survey reveals a wide range of serious psychiatric and neurological complications tied to Covid-19 — including stroke, psychosis, and a dementia-like syndrome. The study underscores how aggressively the coronavirus can attack beyond the lungs, and the risk the disease can pose to younger adults.”
CRIME / SECURITY / LEGAL
New York Times: Russian Criminal Group Finds New Target: Americans Working at Home. “A Russian ransomware group whose leaders were indicted by the Justice Department in December is retaliating against the U.S. government, many of America’s largest companies and a major news organization, identifying employees working from home during the pandemic and attempting to get inside their networks with malware intended to cripple their operations.”
WRAL: Lt. Gov. Forest to sue Cooper over coronavirus shutdown orders. “Lt. Gov. Dan Forest said Thursday that he plans to sue Gov. Roy Cooper over alleged violations of the state Emergency Management Act during the coronavirus pandemic. ‘The governor has repeatedly ignored the law, enacting mandates that selectively target the businesses and citizens of North Carolina without concurrence from a majority of the Council of State,’ Forest said in a statement.”
OPINION
Washington Post: Making men feel manly in masks is, unfortunately, a public-health challenge of our time. “It’s weird, the things that will break you sometimes. The world is a giant toilet right now, but you’re still paddling as best you can, and then something random and minuscule causes you to throw up your hands and say, ‘I give up — flush us all!’ For me this week that thing was Dick Cheney launching the hashtag #RealMenWearMasks.”
POLITICS
AP: What to wear: Feds’ mixed messages on masks sow confusion. “First there was the don’t-do-it phase. Then the nice-but-not-for-me dissonance. Followed by the local-rules-don’t-apply exceptions. Topped off by Trump’s stated suspicion that some people wear masks just to troll him. It has all added up to a murky message about one of the critical tools in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. And the politicization of the to-wear-or-not-to-wear debate is clear in recent public polling.”
Washington Post: Workers removed thousands of social distancing stickers before Trump’s Tulsa rally, according to video and a person familiar with the set-up. “In the hours before his rally in Tulsa, President Trump’s campaign directed the removal of thousands of ‘Do Not Sit Here, Please!’ stickers from seats in the arena that were intended to establish social distance between rallygoers, according to video and photos obtained by The Washington Post and a person familiar with the event.”
Texas Monthly: The COVID-Related Death of a Local Republican Official Points to the Risks of an In-Person Texas GOP Convention. “On June 6, Bill Baker, a longtime GOP activist, attended the Kaufman County Republican Party convention, at a church in the town of Talty, thirty minutes outside Dallas. There, a handful of party faithful gathered in preparation for the statewide party convention in Houston next month. Figures like Baker make the Texas GOP run at its most fundamental level. He had been a party activist for twenty years, he wrote on his Facebook page in March, seven of which he had served as the chairman of the Kaufman County GOP. This year’s county convention was one of many local and state conventions he had been to over the years, but it would also be his last. On June 11, Baker was admitted to the hospital. He had contracted COVID-19. On June 25, while being intubated, he had a heart attack and died. He was 75.”
Washington Post: With Trump leading the way, America’s coronavirus failures exposed by record surge in new infections. “The White House has blocked Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, from some appearances that he has requested to do in recent weeks, according to two people familiar with the matter. White House aides have argued that television interviewers often try to goad Fauci into criticizing the president or the administration’s approach, and that Fauci is not always good about ‘staying on message,’ in the words of a senior administration official. Aides did allow Fauci to appear on CNN recently for a town hall, the official said.”
Washington Post: The data is in: Fox News may have kept millions from taking the coronavirus threat seriously. “Three serious research efforts have put numerical weight — yes, data-driven evidence — behind what many suspected all along: Americans who relied on Fox News, or similar right-wing sources, were duped as the coronavirus began its deadly spread. Dangerously duped.”
Politico: Trump’s dilemma: How to prevent super-spreading churches. “One month after President Donald Trump ordered the nation’s governors to immediately reopen churches, his administration is facing a difficult dilemma. Clusters of Covid-19 cases are surfacing in counties across the U.S. where in-person religious services have resumed, triggering questions about whether his administration should reassess its campaign to treat houses of worship the same as other essential businesses, or leave them alone and risk additional transmission of the deadly coronavirus — including in communities that are largely supportive of the president.”
AP: Virus whistleblower alleges retribution has only intensified. “A government whistleblower ousted from a leading role in battling COVID-19 alleged Thursday that the Trump administration has intensified its campaign to punish him for revealing shortcomings in the U.S. response. Dr. Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, said in an amended complaint filed with a federal watchdog agency that he has been relegated to a lesser role in his new assignment at the National Institutes of Health, unable to lend his full expertise to the battle against COVID-19.”
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