Gov. Cuomo pleads for debate on reopening America as model doubles deaths

NEW YORK — Reopen America and watch more people die.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo made an emotional plea for America to debate the rush to reopen states as the daily New York state coronavirus death toll stayed steady at 230.

Pointing to a shocking new model that projects a doubling of the death toll, Cuomo said the country needs to have an urgent conversation about the human costs of rushing to reopen during the still-raging pandemic.

“The faster we open, the higher the human cost,” he said.

“That’s the hard truth we are all dealing with. Let’s be honest and be open about it,” Cuomo said. “The question comes back to: How much is a human life worth?”

Cuomo bluntly said the country needs to be clear-eyed about the costs of reopening the economy even as he conceded there are also high costs to staying closed.

He cited the influential model created by scientists at the University of Washington that relaxing social-distancing rules — as most of the states are now carrying out — will lead directly to much higher infection and death rates.

“That’s a very nice way of saying, when you accelerate the reopening … the more people get infected, the more people die,” he said.

The grim new model, which Trump and his task force cited when it predicted a lower death toll, predicts an explosion of new cases by the end of May to about 200,000 a day from about 25,000 today. Death rates will go up to about 3,000 a day, pushing the toll past 100,000 before summer officially starts, the data says.

The governor insisted that New York’s intricate system for reopening regions of the state builds in statistical measures that will serve as circuit breakers if the death and infection rates rebound.

He called for a “modulated” gradual reopening, which will then be reversed if needed, even if it means re-shutting down the economy and causing more economic pain.

“It’s not ideal, but it’s better than seeing the numbers go through the roof,” he said.

— New York Daily News

Census Bureau to restart operations in rural areas of country

After suspending most of its operations in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Census Bureau announced Monday it plans to restart some of its fieldwork in rural areas around the country.

Those operations had been delayed through early June, but agency officials said employees would start to hand-deliver invitations to complete the census to homes later this week in parts of 13 states: Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont and West Virginia.

The Census Bureau does not mail invitations to areas that have post office boxes instead of street addresses. Many rural areas also do not have internet access that can be used to respond to the census.

In Monday’s announcement, the agency said that field staff would receive “safety training to observe social distancing protocols” and personal protective equipment.

The agency will open about two dozen offices around the country that fall under the “Update/Leave” category of hand delivery. The announcement does not cover Puerto Rico, where operations have also stalled amid the pandemic.

Al Fontenot, the director of the agency’s decennial programs, had previously said the agency may start to phase in operations throughout the country depending on local conditions.

The Census Bureau said it will spin up both mail delivery and hiring in those local offices, making decisions about each local office on an individual basis going forward.

Response rates in rural areas of the country have lagged behind the national rate, which currently stands at more than 56%, over the past two months.

Last month, the Census Bureau said it would pause most operations until at least the start of June. The agency also requested a 120-day deadline extension from Congress, which has not yet been acted on.

— CQ-Roll Call

Small gatherings partly to blame for Whatcom’s recent coronavirus surge

New COVID-19 cases more than doubled last week in Whatcom County, a bump that’s being attributed in part to people getting together instead of staying apart to slow the spread of the respiratory illness.

That increase in cases — 29 for the week ending May 2 compared to 11 for the previous week — prompted the head of the Whatcom County Health Department to urge residents to stay the course and stay home.

“We all want to go back to normal, and it’s all too easy to want to waver in our commitment to staying home and staying apart. But it’s worth it to remain committed to these actions. It’s worth it because we’re still seeing new cases in our community each day,” Erika Lautenbach, director for the Whatcom County Health Department, said in a media briefing on Monday morning, May 4.

Public health officials said gatherings are partly responsible for the increase in cases.

“We just want to remind folks not to visit friends and family because while you may be missing them, they could be carrying the virus and that’s a concern for us,” Lautenbach said.

Public health officials didn’t provide specific details about the gatherings.

But Lummi Nation’s leaders have reported 15 new cases in a three-day period, from April 30 and May 2.

On Friday, the tribe’s health department said that the first 13 new cases in that surge all involved people younger than 40, adding that members were not following the tribe’s shelter at home order and that part of the cluster involved families visiting other households.

On Monday night, the Whatcom County Health Department provided additional information about the increase in cases, after The Bellingham Herald asked if there were private gatherings other than those reported by Lummi Nation.

“We continue to see small numbers of cases associated with various clusters, some but not all of which are associated with people gathering together in private groups,” Cindy Hollinsworth, communicable disease and epidemiology manager for the Whatcom County Health Department, told The Bellingham Herald.

“Some are related to people traveling to work or gatherings in other counties, and some are new cases who were close contacts of other confirmed cases — not necessarily a cluster from a gathering,” Hollinsworth said.

So far, the peak for new cases in Whatcom County occurred in the two weeks ending April 4, when there were a combined 206 cases.

As some start to chafe against the statewide “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” order, which Gov. Jay Inslee has extended through the end of May with a phased approach to re-opening the state’s economy, there’s additional concern because the weather in Whatcom County is expected to be sunny and in the 70s this week.

It’s OK to get outside, just stay 6 feet away from others and wear a mask, Lautenbach said.

— The Bellingham Herald

Trump officials ignored coronavirus warnings, ousted scientist says in complaint

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Top Trump administration health officials repeatedly ignored warnings in January and February about the need for masks and other protective equipment to prepare for a coronavirus outbreak, according to a detailed whistleblower complaint from a senior scientist ousted from his post last month.

Rick Bright was abruptly removed in April as head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a research agency within the Health and Human Services Department that, among other duties, was overseeing research on coronavirus vaccines.

Bright contends that ouster was in retaliation for his clashes with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Robert Kadlec, an Azar deputy with responsibility for overseeing public health preparedness. His claims are detailed in a complaint filed Tuesday with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which oversees protections of whistleblowers.

Kadlec, the assistant secretary for Planning and Readiness, oversaw Bright’s office, known as BARDA.

“HHS political leadership leveled baseless criticisms against (Bright) for his proactive efforts to invest early in vaccine development as well as in critical supplies such as masks, respirators and swabs, which were in short supply and would be necessary to combat COVID-19,” the complaint notes.

The 89-page complaint documents repeated efforts by Bright in the first weeks of 2020 to urge Azar, Kadlec and other administration officials to quickly mobilize to secure masks and other protective equipment for the U.S. medical system to prepare for an outbreak of the virus here.

But, Bright notes, his supervisors took little note, instead sidelining him and excluding him from key planning meetings, weeks before the first coronavirus cases were reported in the U.S.

Bright also notes that his skepticism about an anti-malaria drug touted by President Donald Trump as a COVID-19 treatment antagonized senior administration officials.

“In an apparent effort to score a short-term political victory for the Administration during the escalating health crisis,” Kadlec’s office “pressured BARDA to promote the malaria drug chloroquine as a therapeutic for COVID-19, despite a clear lack of scientific support,” the complaint says.

Bright said he was ordered on March 23 by Health and Human Services general counsel Bob Charrow, in a directive from the White House, “to drop everything and make the chloroquine donated by Bayer widely available to the American public.”

Bright was “extremely concerned about the prospect of chloroquine being made available to the public “without close patient monitoring by medical professionals,” the complaint alleges.

— Los Angeles Times

UK deaths pass Italy, with 32,000 suspected fatalities

LONDON — The United Kingdom’s coronavirus death toll soared passed that of Italy, making it the worst hit country in Europe, as a top British official expressed regret over the lack of testing in the early stages of the outbreak.

While international comparisons are difficult, data from U.K. authorities showed COVID-19 is now suspected of playing a role in the deaths of 32,290 people. That is higher than the number of confirmed fatalities in Italy and Spain, the other European countries hit hardest by the virus.

The grim milestone will add to the pressure on Boris Johnson’s government, which has faced scrutiny over what some politicians and scientists have warned was a slow response to the pandemic. Britain went into lockdown at a later stage than other countries, and most controversially of all abandoned efforts to test, track and trace cases of coronavirus.

Speaking on Tuesday, the government’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, acknowledged that this had made the fight against the virus harder.

“Probably in the early phases, and I’ve said this before, if we’d managed to ramp up testing capacity quicker it would have been beneficial,” he told a Parliamentary committee. “It’s clear you need lots of testing for this.”

— Bloomberg News