More COVID research reveals long term surprises

Two years later, coronavirus evolution still surprises experts. Here’s why. Echo report published in National Geographic, by Bypriyanka Punwal.

Scientists and physicians continue to be amazed by how quickly the virus evolves, what it does to the human body, and how it moves through species.

Raul Andino knows his pathogens. For more than 30 years, the University of California, San Francisco researcher has studied RNA viruses, a group that includes the virus that causes COVID-19. And yet he never imagined he’d witness a pandemic of this scale in his lifetime.

“The magnitude of it and the implications of it are still hard to comprehend,” Andino says.

Although experts in his field suspected a pandemic would occur, “it’s hard to know when,” he says. “It’s similar to an earthquake—you know the earthquake will happen, but normally you don’t think about it.”

On March 11, 2020—exactly two years ago—the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic. The disease has since infected nearly 500 million people in almost 200 countries and killed more than six million people worldwide, and it’s not over yet.

Along the way, this coronavirus has presented scientists with a bevy of surprises: Many experts are still amazed by how quickly the virus evolves, what it does to the human body, and how it moves in and out of other species.

The original SARS-CoV-2 virus rapidly evolved into a string of variants that have hindered a return to pre-pandemic normalcy. Even with the virus’s genetic blueprint in hand and the ability to decode the genomes of new variants within hours, virologists and healthcare professionals struggle to predict how its mutations will alter the virus’s transmissibility and severity.

Millions of people are grappling with symptoms that linger for weeks to several months after they’d been diagnosed with an infection. Scientists are racing to understand the biology of this new and perplexing syndrome called long COVID.

Two years in, there’s still a lot we don’t know about SARS-CoV-2, says David Wohl, an infectious disease specialist at the University of North Carolina. Here’s what scientists have uncovered so far—and the mysteries that continue to tantalize and frustrate coronavirus experts.

Worst-case scenario: Experts had been warning of some kind of looming pandemic for decades. As humans expand settlements into wild areas, they raise the odds of a new pathogen jumping from an animal to a person, giving rise to a deadly zoonotic disease. A study published in Nature showed that emerging infectious diseases originating in wildlife had increased significantly between 1940, and 2004.

But most experts were worried about influenza viruses and would not necessarily have expected a coronavirus to cause such havoc.

That changed with the 2002-04, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak, which infected more than 8,000 people in 29 countries and left 774 dead. Then the 2012 Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak infected more than 2,000 people in 37 countries; that virus has so far killed nearly 900.

Still, people weren’t paying as much attention to coronaviruses compared to the “really bad guys” like influenza, HIV, dengue viruses, Andino says.

Then SARS-CoV-2 arrived with a bang. It was spreading faster than previous coronaviruses, and one reason, scientists suspect, is its ability to move efficiently from one cell to the next. 

Moreover, SARS-CoV-2 is also harder to contain because it causes so many asymptomatic cases, people who can then unknowingly spread the virus. “In a way, SARS-CoV-2 has found a way in which it can [rapidly] spread and also cause disease,” Andino says. “It’s the worst-case scenario playing out.”

March of the variants

Adding to the oddities, the SARS-CoV-2 virus acquired genetic mutations much more rapidly than expected.

Coronaviruses usually mutate at lower rates than other RNA viruses, like influenza and HIV. Both SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 accumulate approximately two mutations each month; half to one sixth the rate seen in influenza viruses. That’s because coronaviruses have proofreading proteins that correct errors introduced into the virus’ genetic material as it replicates.

“That’s why we thought [SARS-CoV-2] would not evolve very fast,” says Ravindra Gupta, a clinical microbiologist at the University of Cambridge.

But the virus quickly proved Gupta and his colleagues wrong. The emergence of Alpha—the first variant of concern identified in the United Kingdom in November 2020—stunned scientists. It had 23 mutations that set it apart from the original SARS-CoV-2 strain, eight of which were in the spike protein, which is essential for anchoring to human cells and infecting them.

“It became clear that the virus could make these [surprising] evolutionary leaps,” says Stephen Goldstein, an evolutionary virologist at the University of Utah. With this set of mutations, Alpha was 50 percent more transmissible than the original virus.

The next version, Beta, was first identified in South Africa and was reported as a variant of concern just a month later. It carried eight mutations on the viral spike, some of which helped the virus escape the body’s immune defenses. And when the Gamma variant emerged in January 2021, it had 21 mutations, 10 of which were in the spike protein. Some of these mutations made Gamma highly transmissible and enabled it to reinfect patients who previously had COVID-19.

“It’s surprising to see these variants make pretty significant leaps in transmissibility,” Goldstein says. “I just don’t think we’ve observed a virus do that before, but of course, we have not actually observed any pandemics previously with the amount of genetic sequencing capacity we have now.”

Then came Delta, one of the most dangerous and contagious variants. It was first identified in India and designated a variant of concern in May 2021. By late 2021 this variant dominated in almost every country. Its unique constellation of mutations—13 overall and seven in the spike—made Delta twice as infectious as the original SARS-CoV-2 strain, led to longer lasting infections, and produced 1,000 times more virus in the bodies of infected people.

"It [SARS-CoV-2]’s ability to come up with new solutions and ways to adapt and spread with such ease—it’s incredibly surprising,” Andino says.

However, Omicron, which is two to four times more contagious than Delta, rapidly replaced that variant in many parts of the world. First identified in November 2021, it carries an unusually high number of mutations—more than 50 overall and at least 30 in the spike—some of which help it evade antibodies better than all the earlier virus versions.

“These huge jumps [in mutations] make the pandemic far less predictable,” says Francois Balloux, a computational biologist at the University College London Genetics Institute in the United Kingdom.

Chronic infections:  One of the most compelling explanations for the huge leaps in the number of mutations is that that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was able to evolve for long periods of time in the bodies of immunocompromised people.

During the past year, scientists have identified cancer patients and people with advanced HIV disease who were unable to get rid of their COVID-19 infection for months to nearly a year. Their suppressed immune systems enabled the virus to persist, replicate, and mutate for months.

Gupta identified one such mutation (also seen in the Alpha variant) in a sample from a cancer patient who remained infected for 101 days. In an advanced HIV patient in South Africa who was infected for six months, scientists recorded a multitude of mutations that helped the virus escape the body’s immune defenses.

“That the virus is changing its biology this quickly in its evolutionary history is a huge find,” Gupta says. Other viruses like influenza and norovirus also undergo mutation in immunocompromised individuals, but “it is very rare,” Gupta says, and they “infect a narrow range of cells.”

By contrast, SARS-CoV-2 has proven capable of infecting many different areas of the body—creating yet more baffling effects for scientists to untangle.

Not just a respiratory virus:  Early in the pandemic medical professionals noticed that the virus wasn’t just causing pneumonia-like illness. Some hospitalized patients also presented heart damage, blood clots, neurologic complications, and kidney and liver defects. Mounting studies within the first few months suggested one reason why.

SARS-CoV-2 uses proteins called ACE2 receptors on the surface of human cells to infect them. But because ACE2 is present in many organs and tissues, the virus was infecting more parts of the body than just the respiratory tract. There were also a few reports of the virus, or parts of it, in blood vessel cells, kidney cells, and small quantities in brain cells.

“I’ve studied a lot of pandemics, and in almost all of them, you look at the brain, you’ll find the virus there,” says Avindra Nath, a neuroimmunologist at the National Institutes of Health. For instance, brain autopsy tissues from 41 hospitalized and dead COVID-19 patients revealed low levels of the virus. But there were also clear signs of damage, including dead neurons and mangled blood vessels.

“That’s the biggest surprise,” Nath says.

It’s likely that the virus triggers the body’s immune system to go into a hyperactive mode called a cytokine storm, which causes inflammation and injury to different organs and tissues. An abnormal immune response can persist even after infection, resulting in lingering symptoms including chronic fatigue, heart palpitations, and brain fog.

“But there are virus reservoirs that can cause chronic inflammation,” says Sonia Villapol, a neuroscientist at the Houston Methodist Research Institute. A recent study that’s not yet been peer-reviewed showed that SARS-CoV-2 genetic material could persist for up to 230 days in the body and brains of COVID-19 patients, even in those who harbored only mild or asymptomatic infections.

Susan Levine is an infectious-disease doctor in New York who specializes in the treatment and diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome, which has parallels with long COVID. She now sees 200 patients every week, compared to 60 in pre-pandemic times. Unlike CFS, long COVID “hits you like a ton of bricks,” Levine says. “It’s like a tornado inside your body where you’re going from working 60 hours a week down to being in the bed all day within a week of getting the infection. The action is so compressed.”

Animal reservoirs of SARS-CoV-2:  Scientists are now concerned about the persistence of SARS-CoV-2 outside human populations and its potential to spread to other animals and jump back into humans, possibly extending the pandemic.

In April 2020 tigers and lions at New York’s Bronx Zoo tested positive for COVID-19, sparking interest in finding other animals that might be susceptible. Soon after a study identified mammals including certain primates, deer, whales, and dolphins to be among the most vulnerable to COVID-19, given the similarity between their ACE2 receptors and the counterpart in human cells.

Another study used a machine learning approach to assess the abilities of 5,400 mammal species to transmit SARS-CoV-2; it found that several animals most at risk of spreading COVID-19 were those living alongside people, such as livestock and even pets.

So far SARS-CoV-2 has infected pet cats, dogs, and ferrets, ravaged mink farms, and spread to tigers, hyenas, and other animals in zoos. What’s more, SARS-COV-2 has successfully jumped from humans to captive minks and back into mink farmers. And a person in Canada was potentially infected with COVID-19 when the virus jumped from a white-tailed deer.

“The concern is if it continues to evolve in deer to a point where deer become more and more immune to it, their preexisting antibodies from their reinfection could also further drive viral evolution,” says Samira Mubareka at Canada’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. Also, “the virus may be circulating in other animals out there.”

Still, the spread of SARS-CoV-2 among humans continues to be a bigger concern for scientists, as they learn more about the virus and its presence and impact in both humans and animals.

“We still don’t know what the future holds,” Wohl says. “We’ll be two years plus of history and track record, and even then with that knowledge, it’s still hard to predict what will happen.”

Fight the COVID pandemic vaccines and masks: Follow expert medical advice!

Echo opinion: Our View- Get your shots and mask up:

Published in The Frederick Maryland News-Post editorial:

Some businesses around our community have signs up requiring patrons to wear a mask to enter. Some encourage wearing a mask, or even “strongly” encourage a mask. But a few only suggest a mask for unvaccinated people.

That is no longer enough, not in this evolving COVID-19 pandemic. Not with the omicron variant of the coronavirus spreading like wildfire across the country.

New infections are primarily hitting the unvaccinated, but increasingly we are seeing breakthrough infections among those fully vaccinated.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who has been fully vaccinated and received a booster, announced that he has tested positive for the virus, but that he was feeling well. Scientists note that most of those who have been vaccinated are not coming down with serious illness. But the danger is that they are still able to spread the virus to others.

This is the time to renew our efforts against the virus. And wearing a mask while in a public, indoor settings is second only to the vaccine for preventing an infection.

Looking at the surging numbers of hospitalizations in Frederick County is enough to scare anyone. Last week, they prompted County Executive Jan Gardner to advise everyone — regardless of vaccination status — to wear a mask while in stores and other indoor spaces.

That is absolutely the correct guidance.

Gardner’s office also urged churches and businesses to “strongly consider” requiring their visitors to mask up during the holiday season.

“Everyone needs to do their part to protect our loved ones and vulnerable people in our community,” Gardner said in a news release. “The winter surge is preventable if everyone would get vaccinated, tested, and follow health advisories.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci — the nation’s leading infectious disease expert — told CNN on Sunday that omicron is very likely to overtake the delta variant, the COVID mutation that is causing most infections in the country right now.

Scientists estimate that cases of the new variant double about every two to four days nationwide. Last week, the percentage of people in New York City testing positive for COVID-19 doubled in three days.

A cyberattack kicked the Maryland Health Department’s website offline two weekends ago but it was back running and on Tuesday reported 6,218 new cases in the previous 24 hours. The state has said hospitalization numbers paint a grim picture, with 1,392 people being treated.

More people are hospitalized now due to the virus in Frederick County than have been since the last huge surge last winter. 

Moreover, the number of patients being treated in the intensive care unit has also skyrocketed.

Frederick Health, the county’s largest health care system, was caring for 67 COVID-19 inpatients Monday, with 11 in the intensive care unit. Of the total inpatients, only 11 were vaccinated, according to the health system’s COVID-19 data dashboard.

To Frederick Health CEO and President Tom Kleinhanzl, the latest surge in hospitalizations was “entirely preventable.”

In a joint statement issued by Frederick (Maryland) Health and the county health department last week, officials warned that the real danger is that the hospital would be overwhelmed with patients.

Cheryl Cioffi, chief operating officer at the health system, said the best way for the community to assist hospital staff is to get vaccinated, get their booster shot, continue masking up indoors and exercise good judgment during the holiday season.

County Health Officer Dr. Barbara Brookmyer said: “We want our friends and family who need medical care to get the level of care they require without delay.”

The best way you can show appreciations to our health care workers for their tireless efforts to take care of this community is not to bring baked goods or candy to the hospital. Instead, get your shots and wear your mask, and keep yourself, your family and your friends out of the hospital.

Nursing 101: Hospitals cannot open beds when there is a nursing shortage

Nurses are leaving the profession, and replacing them won’t be easy- Echo essay published in The Conversation.

Nurse workforce retention!

"Despite more awareness of the challenges nurses currently face, nurse staffing and its impact on patient safety have been studied for more than 20 years. My role as a nurse researcher and assistant professor at the University of South Florida is to evaluate the needs of the nursing workforce and design and implement programs to address them," Rayna M. Letourneau.

The fourth wave of COVID-19 is exacerbating the ongoing crisis for the nursing workforce and has led to burnout for many nurses. 

As a result, many are quitting their jobs in substantial numbers all across the country, with 62% of hospitals reporting a nurse vacancy rate higher than 7.5%, according to a 2021 NSI Nursing Solutions report.

But the global pandemic has only worsened problems that have long existed within the nursing profession – in particular, widespread stress and burnout, health and safety issues, depression and work-related post-traumatic stress disorder, and even increased risk of suicide.

In addition, nurses need to contend with growing workloads and inadequate staffing, or not having the right number of nurses on the right units to ensure that patients receive safe quality care. Mandatory overtime is another challenge and occurs when nurses must work extra hours beyond their shift because of staffing shortages. 

All of these issues can lead to low job satisfaction among nurses and are likely to contribute to nurses’ leaving the profession, a trend that began well before the current pandemic struck.

Despite more awareness of the challenges nurses currently face, nurse staffing and its impact on patient safety have been studied for more than 20 years. My role as a nurse researcher and assistant professor at the University of South Florida is to evaluate the needs of the nursing workforce and design and implement programs to address them.

Here’s why the pandemic has made the nursing shortage even worse, and why I think health care leaders need to make bold changes to address the well-being of nurses – for the sake of nurses and patient care in our country.

Disruptions in health care delivery

Nurses, like many health care workers, are physically and emotionally exhausted after working in what has been described as a “war zone” for the better part of the past year and a half. One nurse on the front lines reported irreversible damage from the trauma of caring for extremely sick patients. Others are experiencing shortages of oxygen, equipment and other needed supplies to keep themselves safe and to keep their patients alive.


As more nurses leave the workforce, patient care will no doubt suffer. Research has shown a relationship between nurse staffing ratios and patient safety. Increased workload and stress can put nurses in situations that are more likely to lead to medical errors. Lower nurse staffing and higher patient loads per nurse are associated with an increased risk for patients of dying in the hospital.

Sarah Flannagan, R.N. on Twitter: "The damage is irreversible, many of us who leave will vow to never go back to the bedside. We are already scarred & the scars just continue to grow. You can’t say we didn’t warn you. You can’t say you didn’t know. Profits were prioritized over people."

Because hospitals cannot open beds if there are no nurses to staff them, some hospitals are being forced to shut down emergency rooms and turn away patients in need of medical care. 

That is a problem for not only hospitals in large cities; rural hospitals are also struggling. Alarmingly, some hospitals are considering the need to potentially ration medical care.

Some hospitals are addressing the shortage

Hospitals are desperate to fill nursing vacancies. One hospital system in South Dakota is offering incentives as large as US$40,000 sign-on bonuses to recruit nurses to work in the clinical areas that are in most need. This may be a great attempt to draw nurses to an institution, but sign-on bonuses and incentives might not be enough to persuade some nurses to work at the bedside and continue contending with the current workload of the pandemic.

Another strategy to fill vacancies is the use (Maine Writer, many say "over use") of travel nurses. Travel nurses work for agencies that assign them to hospitals that cannot fill vacancies with their own staff. Although this can be a successful short-term solution, the use of travel nurses is not sustainable over time and it does not help retain experienced staff nurses in an organization. 

Travel nurses make significantly more money than staff nurses, which may lure nurses away from permanent positions and in turn increase the staffing deficit for hospitals. The average salary for a travel nurse in the U.S. is $2,003 per week, with $13,750 in overtime per year. Some nurses even accept “crisis assignments,” which can pay as much as $10,000 per week. That is significantly higher than the average of $1,450 per week ($36.22 per hour) for a staff nurse.

Focus on nurses’ well-being

For the past 18 years, nursing has been identified as the most trusted profession. Nurses are caregivers, role models, educators, mentors and advocates and have a direct impact on the health and well-being of patients. The health of the nation’s nursing workforce is fundamental to our health care industry. As identified by a 2021 National Academy of Medicine report, nurse well-being and resilience are needed to ensure the delivery of high-quality care and to improve the health of the nation.

Research demonstrates that people with higher levels of well-being have lower levels of burnout and perform better at work. 

Therefore, some hospitals and unions are offering resources and programs to nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic that seek to reduce stress, promote resiliency and increase well-being. 

We have yet to see the long-term effectiveness of these programs on the health and wellness of nurses.

While nurses are responsible for prioritizing self-care, health care organizations are responsible for creating a workplace environment in which nurses can flourish. Nurses report fewer medical errors when their well-being is supported by their organizations and they are in better physical and mental health.

A long-term solution to the nursing shortage calls for systematic changes that value nurses and offer them a safe place to work.

Examples include implementing appropriate salaries and flexible schedules, ensuring adequate nurse staffing, and creating jobs that allow aging nurses to continue working in direct patient care roles so they can remain in the workforce longer instead of retiring. The pandemic has made more people aware of the distressing conditions many nurses work in. 

Unfortunately, without systematic changes, the drain of nurses out of the profession – and its negative impact on patient care – will only continue.

Rayna M. Letourneau, Ph.D., R.N., is assistant professor of nursing at University of South Florida.  Dr. Letourneau's research focuses on nursing workforce development, transition to practice, and quality and safety education for nurses.

South America COVID data improves with access to vaccines

Echo report published in The New York Times written by  Ernesto Londoño, Daniel Politi and Flávia Milhorance

Is this report a hopeful harbinger for those who have received their COVID vaccinations?  COVID Ravaged South America. Then Came a Sharp Drop in Infections.

South America was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic early this year. Experts are trying to find out why new infections and deaths are falling so fast. (In my opinion, one reason for a documented decline in the infections is visually reported in the  photograph taken of Peruvian health care workers going into remote villages, for the purpose of administering the COVID vaccine.)

Health workers walking to vaccinate elderly citizens in a remote area of southern Peru in July.Credit...Diego Ramos/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — Just a few weeks ago, Covid-19 was spreading with alarming ease across a cluster of nations in South America, overwhelming hospital systems and killing thousands of people daily.

Suddenly, the region that had been the epicenter of the pandemic is breathing a sigh of relief.

New infections have fallen sharply in nearly every nation in South America as vaccination rates have ramped up. The reprieve has been so sharp and fast, even as the Delta variant wreaks havoc elsewhere in the world, that experts can’t quite explain it.

Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Uruguay and Paraguay experienced dramatic surges of cases in the first months of the year, just as vaccines started to arrive in the region. Containment measures were uneven and largely lax because governments were desperate to jump-start languishing economies.

“Now the situation has cooled across South America,” said Carla Domingues, an epidemiologist who ran Brazil’s immunization program until 2019. “It’s a phenomenon we don’t know how to explain.”

There have been no new sweeping or large-scale containment measures in the region, although some countries have imposed strict border controls. A major factor in the recent drop in cases, experts say, is the speed with which the region ultimately managed to vaccinate people. Governments in South America have generally not faced the kind of apathy, politicization and conspiracy theories around vaccines that left much of the United States vulnerable to the highly contagious Delta variant.

In Brazil, which had a slow, chaotic vaccine rollout, nearly 64 percent of the population has received at least one dose of a vaccine, a rate that exceeds that of the United States. That led President Jair Bolsonaro, who had initially sowed doubts about vaccines, to brag last month.

“Brazil has one of the best performances on vaccination globally,” he said in a Twitter post.

A line of people waiting to receive Covid-19 vaccinations in Brasília, Brazil, last month. Credit...Eraldo Peres/Associated Press

In Chile and Uruguay, more than 70 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated.

As cases have dropped, schools in much of the region have resumed in-person classes. Airports are becoming busier as more people have started traveling for work and leisure.

The drop in caseloads led the United Nations this past week to provide a more optimistic projection about economic growth in the region. It now expects economies in Latin America and the Caribbean to grow by 5.9 percent this year, a slight increase from its 5.2 estimate in July.

“We’ve managed to delay major circulation of the Delta variant and move forward with the biggest vaccination campaign in our history,” Carla Vizzotti, Argentina’s health minister, said last week.

In Argentina, more than 61 percent of the population has received at least one dose of a vaccine.

Chrystina Barros, a health care expert at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, said she worries that falling caseloads will lead people to become complacent about wearing masks and avoiding crowds while the epidemic remains a threat.

“There is a serious risk of putting the very effectiveness of the vaccine at risk,” she said. “The cooling of the pandemic cannot inspire people to relax in relation to the crisis.”

Jairo Méndez Rico, a viral diseases expert advising the World Health Organization, said the Delta variant may have been slow to gain traction in South America because so many people in the region have natural immunity from having had the virus. But he said the variant could still lead to new surges.

“It’s not easy to explain,” he said. “It’s too early to say what is happening.”

Despite the uncertainty, governments in South America are moving to reopen borders in coming months. President Alberto Fernández of Argentina said in late July that the path to normalcy was in sight.

“We deserve another life, a life in which we enjoy music, painting, sculptures, movies, theater,” he said. “A life in which we can laugh without a face mask, where we can hug those we love.”

Jennifer Mac Donnell, a cosmetologist in Buenos Aires, planned a mid-September wedding — a milestone that has felt uncertain for much of the year.

“We feared we were going to be forced to cancel it,” the 39-year-old said. “Now we’re much more calm, cases are down, most of our friends are vaccinated and everyone is just focused on having a good time.”

Daniel Politi reported from Buenos Aires, and Flávia Milhorance from Rio de Janeiro.

A Winstonian message transcends time - Merry Christmas from the Churchill Center

Maine Writer- Although the world was not experiencing the peak of a deadly coronavirus pandemic in 1941, the globe was darkened by a Second World War. Nevertheless, Winston Churchill rose to the moment by presenting a realistic evaluation of the occasion of Christmas.  We can just add COVID to the Pearl Harbor attack in this message, to deepen our respect for this timeless Winstonian message, sent to me by the Churchill Society.

Included in the message is a link to YouTube videos where the speeches given that day are available for viewing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZTRbNThHnk&mc_cid=364041dba6&mc_eid=d0ff7fe24b

Prime Minister Winston Churchill stands behind President Franklin D Roosevelt as he speaks from the South Portico of the White House during the National Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony, 24 December 1941. © FDR Library

Winston Churchill visited the United States to celebrate Christmas and the New Year holidays with President Franklin D. Roosevelt 79 years ago, at the White House. At the time, the United States was reeling from the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor and faced an uncertain future having entered into war with Japan. 

Churchill came to Washington to provide support to this fellow English-speaking nation and to begin coordinating the defeat of their shared enemies. 

On the night of December 24, 1941, Churchill gave a speech on the White House portico and delivered the following words that touched the hearts of a nation during a deep crisis:

“Here, in the midst of war, raging and roaring over all the lands and seas….we have tonight the peace of the spirit in each cottage home and in every generous heart….Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.”

Whatever religion you observe or traditions you partake in, we at the International Churchill Society wish you a healthy and restorative holiday season. We hope you will be able to feel the spirit of the holiday season and find peace in the midst of some of the most trying times in recent memory.

Thank you for your support of the International Churchill Society,

Justin Reash
Executive Director
jreash@winstonchurchill.org
+1-202-929-0309

Votes! Seventy-four million votes for President Elect Joe Biden

President Elect Joe Biden on 6 November, 2020, beside his running mate Kamala Harris in Wilmington, Delaware addressed the president’s attempts to block votes, the coronavirus, and “partisan warfare" that he urged to come to an end.

Here is a transcript of his President Elect Joe Biden's remarks:

We don’t have a final declaration of victory yet, but the numbers tell a clear and convincing story: We are going to win this race.Just look at what has happened since yesterday.

We’re winning Arizona. We’re winning Nevada. In fact, our lead just doubled in Nevada.

We’re on track for over 300 Electoral College votes.

We’ve gotten over 74 million votes. Let me repeat that: 74 million votes. That's more than any presidential ticket has ever gotten in the history of the United States of America. And out vote total is still growing.

We’re beating Donald Trump by over 4 million votes, and that margin is still growing as well.

One of the things I’m especially proud of is how well we’ve done across America.

We are going to be the first Democrat to win Arizona in 24 years.

We are going to be the first Democrat to win Georgia in 28 years.

And we re-built the blue wall in the middle of the country that crumbled just four years ago: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin – the heartland of this nation.

I know watching these vote tallies on TV move very slowly, and as slow as it goes it can be numbing.

But never forget: the tallies aren’t just numbers – they represent votes and voters, men and women who exercised their fundamental right to have their voice heard. And what is becoming clearer each hour is that a record number of Americans – from all races, faiths, religions – chose change over more of the same.

They have given us a mandate for action on Covid, the economy, climate change, systemic racism. They made it clear they want the country to come together – not continue to pull apart.

But while we’re waiting for the final results, I want people to know we are not waiting to get to work done and start the process.

Yesterday, Senator Harris and I held meetings with groups of experts on the public health and economic crises this country is facing.

The pandemic as you know is is getting more worrisome all across the country. Daily cases are skyrocketing, and it is now believed that we could see spikes as many as 200,000 cases in a single day.

The death toll is approaching 240,000 lives lost to this virus.
That’s 240,000 empty chairs at the kitchen tables and dining tables across America.

We’ll never be able to measure all the pain, the loss, and the suffering so many families have experienced. I know how it feels to lose someone, and I want them to know they’re not alone. Our hearts break with you.

And I want everyone to know on Day One, we are going to put our plan to control this virus into action.

We can’t save any of the lives that have been lost, but we can save a lot of lives in the months ahead.

Senator Harris and I also heard yesterday about how this recovery is slowing because of the failure to get the pandemic under control.

More than 20 million people are on unemployment. Millions are worried about making rent and putting food on the table.

Our economic plan will put a focus on a path to a strong recovery.

We both know tensions can be high after a tough election, the one like we’ve had. But we need to remember, we need to remain calm, patient, and let the process work out as we count all the votes.

You know, we’re proving again what we have proved for 244 years in this country: democracy works. Your vote will be counted. I don’t care how hard people try to stop it. I will not let it happen. People will be heard. Our journey toward a more perfect union, and it keeps moving on.

In America we hold strong views, we have strong disagreements, and that’s OK.

Strong disagreements are inevitable in a democracy, and strong disagreements are healthy.

They’re a sign of vigorous debate, of deeply held views.

But we have to remember: the purpose of our politics isn’t total, unrelenting, unending warfare.

No. The purpose of our politics, the work of the nation, isn’t to fan the flames of conflict, but to solve problems, to guarantee justice, to give everybody a fair shot, to improve the lives of our people.

We may be opponents – but we are not enemies. We are Americans.

No matter who you voted for, I’m certain of one thing: The vast majority of the 150 million Americans, they want to get the vitriol out of our politics. We’re certainly not going to agree on a lot of the issues, but we can at least agree to be civil to one another.

Let’s put the anger and the demonization behind us.

It’s time for us to come together as a nation and heal.

It’s not gonna be easy, but we have to try.

My responsibility as president will be to represent the whole nation. And I want you to know that I will work as hard for those who voted against me as for those who voted for me.

That’s the job. That’s the job. It’s called a duty of care, for all Americans.

We have serious problems to deal with — Covid, the economy, racial justice, climate change,

We don’t have any more time to waste on partisan warfare.

And more than that, we have such an incredible opportunity to build the future we want for our kids and grandkids.

I’ve said it many, many times: I’ve never been more optimistic about the future of our nation. There is no reason we can’t own the 21st century. We just need to remember who we are. This is the United States of America, and there has never been anything, anything we’ve been unable to do when we’ve done it together.

I hope to be talking to you tomorrow. I want to thank you all. May God bless you all, and may God protect our troops.

Donald Trump is a chronic liar, abuses his failed leadership- Vote! Elect Biden-Harris

The New Yorker Endorses a Biden Presidency

It would be a relief simply to have a President and a competent administration that will not abuse the office, as a colossal grift, enabling swindling. 

But a new President must also address the failures that have been festering in American life for decades.

By The Editors

On November 8, 2016, Donald John Trump, a shady real-estate pitchman and reality-TV host from New York, was elected the forty-fifth President of the United States (with less than the popular vote). The distinguishing features of his character––bigotry, deceit, narcissism––were as evident during the 2016 campaign as they are now. But, though many more voters supported his opponent, the Trump Presidency had to be endured. 

Contempt has been at the core of his time in office: contempt for the Constitution; contempt for truth and dissent; contempt for women and people of color; contempt for champions of civil rights as great as John Lewis and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 

Moreover, Trump’s contempt for science and the basic welfare of Americans is so profound that, through an enraging combination of incompetence, indifference, and stupidity, he has failed to meet the pitiless demands of a viral pandemic. The national death toll is more than two hundred thousand.

The pandemic has also laid bare the inequities, corruptions, and cruelties of our political life—features that the Administration did not originate but which it has magnified and exploited. The lack of universal health care; the shrivelling of critical government agencies, regulations, and protections; the persistence of sharp racial disparities in wealth and in health; the unwillingness to deal with the clear danger of climate change––these have all contributed to the dire redefinition of “American exceptionalism.”

In an established autocracy—like Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey, or Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia—it is nearly impossible to criticize or to investigate the autocrat. In the liminal condition in which we now live, with public institutions threatened but not yet defeated by an elected President, the would-be autocrat must still face the indignities of journalism, legal inquiry, and popular opposition. He must also face an open election. The polls suggest that Joe Biden currently leads the 2020 Presidential race. We suffer no delusions: Trump has on his side demagogic skill and ruthlessness, a willingness to break any norm or law in order to win. Nevertheless, we hope that Biden will displace him by a margin that prevents prolonged dispute or the kind of civil unrest that Trump appears to relish. Ideally, Biden will have an opportunity to govern with Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate, which would vastly increase his chances of passing legislation to confront the nation’s array of crises.

In March, 1933, as Franklin Roosevelt approached his first Inauguration, the country was submerged in the Great Depression. 

Tragically, the Great Depression was a dark era, a time of breadlines and Hoovervilles. The unemployment rate was around twenty-five per cent. At first, Roosevelt’s crucial contribution to national solidarity and the restoration of the economy was his clarity and his optimism. “This Nation is asking for action, and action now,” he declared in his Inaugural Address. In the next hundred days, he proceeded with bracing resolution, initiating the legislation that laid the foundation for the New Deal, economic recovery, and a more humane and activist government than the Republic had ever known.

There is no overestimating the craving for restorative calm. It would surely be a relief simply to have a President who is not a chronic liar, someone who doesn’t abuse the office as a colossal grift. It would be a relief to have a President who is reflexively devoted to democratic institutions and refuses to make common cause with white nationalists, QAnon, and other inhabitants of the lunatic fringe. It is true that Biden is not a transcendent speaker or a towering intellect. Yet he has the capacity to convey genuineness and fellow-feeling to a wide range of Americans. “We’re in this together,” the phrase heard so often during the pandemic, has routinely been traduced by an ethos of selfishness exemplified by the President himself. 

At his best, Biden has the potential to appeal to the country in an emotionally honest way that might help to engender a greater sense of social cohesion, compassion, and mutual respect.

Coronavirus infections continue: #TrumpVirus

 Reported in The Week:  the U.S. hits a grim pandemic milestone.  

In fact, the U.S. surpassed 200,000 coronavirus related deaths this week, the last week in September 2020, just days after Donald Trump publicly challenged the Centers for Disease Control's (CDC) scientific advice about wearing masks and its timeline for a Covid-19 vaccine. Moreover, Trump said the CDC director, Dr. Robert Redfield had been "confused",  when he told Congress (under oath) that that a vaccine likely will not be "fully available" until the summer or fall of 2021.  (Pinocchio!) 

Trump stupidity in his own words!

Nevertheless, Donald Trump insisted that a vaccine could be approved as soon as October, 2020, with 1000 million doses ready by the end of the year. Concern about the political pressure being exerted on the CDC grew after the agency published and then removed new guidelines warning that the virus can be transmitted via respiratory aerosols- tiny particles that can linger in the air- as well as by larger respiratory droplets that fall quickly to the ground.  Donald Trump gave his (botched!)response to the pandemic as being "A-plus" and, at a packed rally in Ohio, where few were waring masks, he falsely said the Covid-19 "affects virtually nobody" except the elderly people with heart problems.

Meanwhile, Minnesota, Montana, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Wyoming and Utah set record highs for morbidity, with a seven day average of new confirmed cases and 21 other states saw increases in infections.  In fact, Olivia Troye, a former coronavirus task force adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, spoke out emphatically against Trump's handling of the pandemic, saying he showed a "flat-out disregard for human life" and cared only about his re-election. Troye, whom the White House called a "disgruntled ex-staffer", claimed that Trump once said, "Maybe this Covid thing is a good thing," because, "I don't have to shake hands with these disgusting people", meaning his supporters.

What the editorials said: #TrumpVirus

Mourning the 200,000 (++) dead, said The Washington Post, "and be angry- very angry".  The tragedy has been worsened by Donald Trump, who minimized the threat, refused to mobilize a large-scale government response, dismissed the importance of mask wearing and prodded the GOP run states to reopen before the viral spread was under control.  "Nothing more could have been done", Trump has said about coronavirus casualties. But, there is work to do.  "Wear a mask. Social distance. Wash your hands. And vote", wrote The Post. 

What the columnists said:

Tragically, the Trump administration is letting, "politics distort science", said Claudia Wallis in ScientificAmerican.com. Leaked emails have revealed how political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services have tried to slow the release of data that contradict Trump, including a negative report on the fake cure hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug that Trump touted as a Covid-19 therapy, and information about children spreading the virus. With scientific findings being run, through a political "distortion field", will the public be able to "trust federal assessments about the coronavirus treatments and the vaccines?," she wrote.

Here is the reality check:

The U.S. is trapped in a pandemic "death spiral", said Ed Yong in TheAtlantic.com.  Influenza season 2020-21, is approaching, which will make it harder to identify Covid-19 symptoms, and winter is not far away, which will pack people indoors. Our failure to build testing capacity and hire enough contact tracers means that many parts of the U.S. could see a repeat of the horror that New York City suffered in the spring 2020. Tragedy-numbered Americans might, "stop treating the pandemic as the emergency that it is," and, instead, accept thousands of daily deaths as "the unthinkable normal." #TrumpVirusGenocide, IMO.

Coronavirus testing helps to prevent the community spread of the pandemic - more is better!

This echo essay was written by Ronald R. Fricker, Jr., and it was published in The Conversation. 

As the need for testing has grown, so have lines at testing facilities. Results can take more than a week to be returned. This is unacceptable. Regardless of how many people are tested, if the results are not provided in a reasonable time frame then the results are almost irrelevant. 

More tests do not correlate to more coroavirus.  Instead, more tests help to determine where the clusters of coronavirus are being transmitted so that contact tracing can help to isolate and protect the increasing community spread of the pandemic.  Tests do not cause the coronavirus. A virus causes the COVID-19.  Finding where the disease is clustered will help public health professionals to isolate the outbreak.

Although the Johns Hopkins tracking data reports that the U.S. has processed more coronavirus tests than any other country in the world, there is no expert consensus on a recommended target for the raw number of tests or even the rate of tests per capita . 

Yet, at the same time, the U.S. is notably underperforming in terms of suppressing COVID-19. 

Confirmed cases – as well as deaths – are surging in many parts of the USA. Some people have argued that the increase in cases is solely due to increased testing.

I am a statistician who studies how mathematics and statistics can be used to track diseases. The claim that the increase in cases is only caused by increases in testing is just not true. But how do public health officials know this?
Testing, confirmed cases and total cases

COVID-19 testing has two purposes. The first is to confirm a diagnosis so that medical treatment can be appropriately rendered. The second is to do surveillance for tracking and disease suppression – including finding those who may be asymptomatic or only have mild symptoms – so that individuals and public health officials can take actions to slow the spread of the virus.

At a White House briefing on July 13, the president said, “When you test, you create cases.”

The problem with this statement is that anyone who is infected with the coronavirus is, by definition, a case. Since taking a COVID-19 test does not cause a person to get coronavirus, just like taking a pregnancy test does not cause one to become pregnant, the president’s claim is false. Testing does not create cases.

However, because many COVID-19 cases are asymptomatic, many people are infected and don’t know it. What COVID-19 testing does do is identify unknown cases. And thus it does increase the number of cases that are known, or otherwise called the confirmed case count.

Finding unknown cases is good, not bad, because identifying those who are COVID-19-positive allows individuals and public health officials to take actions that slow the spread of the disease. When public health officials find cases, they can begin contract tracing. When a person finds out they are infected, they will know to quarantine.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the U.S. has performed more total tests and more tests per capita than any other country, though as of late July the U.K., Russia and Qatar were performing more tests per capita per day. But counting the total number of tests or the tests per capita is not the right way to judge success of a testing program.

As it says on the Johns Hopkins testing comparison page, a country’s “testing program should be scaled to the size of their epidemic, not the size of the population.” Sure, the U.S. might have a big testing program, but it has a massive epidemic. The U.S. needs an equally massive testing program if health officials want to have an accurate picture of what’s really going on.

The U.S. has performed more coronavirus tests than any other country in the world. Yet, at the same time, the U.S. is notably underperforming in terms of suppressing COVID-19. Confirmed cases – as well as deaths – are surging in many parts of the country. Some people have argued that the increase in cases is solely due to increased testing.

I am a statistician who studies how mathematics and statistics can be used to track diseases. The claim that the increase in cases is only caused by increases in testing is just not true. But how do public health officials know this?

Testing, confirmed cases and total cases

COVID-19 testing has two purposes. The first is to confirm a diagnosis so that medical treatment can be appropriately rendered. The second is to do surveillance for tracking and disease suppression – including finding those who may be asymptomatic or only have mild symptoms – so that individuals and public health officials can take actions to slow the spread of the virus.

At a White House briefing on July 13, Donald Trump said, “When you test, you create cases.” (Maine Writer- Pinocchio!)

The problem with this statement is that anyone who is infected with the coronavirus is, by definition, a case. Since taking a COVID-19 test does not cause a person to get coronavirus, just like taking a pregnancy test does not cause one to become pregnant, the president’s claim is false. Testing does not create cases.

However, because many COVID-19 cases are asymptomatic, many people are infected and don’t know it. What COVID-19 testing does do is identify unknown cases. And thus it does increase the number of cases that are known, or otherwise called the confirmed case count.

Finding unknown cases is good, not bad, because identifying those who are COVID-19-positive allows individuals and public health officials to take actions that slow the spread of the disease. When public health officials find cases, they can begin contract tracing. When a person finds out they are infected, they will know to quarantine.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the U.S. has performed more total tests and more tests per capita than any other country, though as of late July the U.K., Russia and Qatar were performing more tests per capita per day. But counting the total number of tests or the tests per capita is not the right way to judge success of a testing program.

As it says on the Johns Hopkins testing comparison page, a country’s “testing program should be scaled to the size of their epidemic, not the size of the population.” Sure, the U.S. might have a big testing program, but it has a massive epidemic. The U.S. needs an equally massive testing program if health officials want to have an accurate picture of what’s really going on.

Donald Trump is obviously "fact" challenged

Echo opinion published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch by Editorial Board

Last summer, Trump mistakenly warned that Hurricane Dorian threatened the Alabama coast. Days later, rather than admit error, he displayed a government weather map clumsily altered with a Sharpie marker, as if to confirm his erroneous claim. 

In a postscript, a federal watchdog last week chided the administration for threatening government scientists who had the audacity to contradict Trump with facts.

“Sharpiegate” today looks like an early harbinger of what would later go so wrong with America’s pandemic response: Now, as then, this Trump ignores science and puts his personal interests above the good of the nation. Worse, people around him — people who clearly know better — (ugh!) enable this dangerous behavior.

On Sept. 1, Trump tweeted a warning that Dorian would hit Alabama “harder than anticipated.” In fact, the storm wasn’t on track to hit Alabama at all (!); Trump’s warning was based on outdated information. Honest mistake. About 10 minutes later, the National Weather Service office in Birmingham, fielding panicked calls from the public, tweeted that “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian.”

That’s where it should have ended. But according to a new government watchdog report, top federal officials had to divert their attention from the approaching hurricane to focus instead on soothing a bruised presidential ego — to the point of threatening the weather officials.

It “appears as if the National Weather Service intentionally contradicted the president,” then-White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said in an email to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, the watchdog report states. “And we need to know why. [Trump] wants either a correction or an explanation or both.”

The obvious response should have been, Well, the president was mistaken. But Trump, bizarrely, cannot admit making even the smallest error, ever. So weather officials were warned that “there are jobs on the line,” according to the report.

Ultimately, the administration issued a statement that the weather office shouldn’t have said Alabama was safe. Even though it was.
The report, by Commerce Department Inspector General Peggy Gustafson, concluded the administration “unnecessarily rebuked NWS forecasters for issuing a public safety message about Hurricane Dorian in response to public inquiries — that is, for doing their jobs.” She warned it could undercut public confidence in weather experts during future storms, potentially endangering the public.

As Trump has demonstrated repeatedly during the pandemic, he couldn’t care less about endangering the public. Just as he’d rather undermine trust in weather experts than admit a small error, he’d rather let the coronavirus engulf America than admit his response to the crisis has failed and needs to change.

This isn’t just a matter of outsized ego. As indicated by Sharpiegate — and as confirmed by Trump’s pandemic misinformation, his dangerous reopening demands and his maskless rallies — there is something psychologically wrong with this president. But what is the excuse of the Mulvaneys and Rosses of this administration?

Coronavirus is Donald Trump's "pre-existing condition"- a political plague

Echo essay published in The New Yorker by  David Remnick: Title "Pre-existing condition in the Oval Office".

From the beginning of his failed presidency, the Trump Administration has waged war on science and expertise, making a great nation peculiarly vulnerable to the foreseeable public-health calamity of the coronavirus.

Trump is Putin's American treason trophy!

It's impossible for me to see how Donald Trump will recover from the coronavirus. Any politician who continues to support his failed leadership is doing so out of selfish ambition because there is nothing in Trump's resume to qualify him for the job he took just because he could. He did not win the popular vote. Frankly, he should have

Ambulance sirens; funeral parlors overwhelmed. Refrigerator trailers are now morgues, and can be found parked outside hospitals all over New York City. We’re told that there are “glimmers of hope,” that hospital admissions are slowing, that the curve is flattening. Yet the misery is far from over. “The bad news isn’t just bad,” New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, said at one of his briefings last week. “The bad news is actually terrible.”

Across the country, the coronavirus continues to ravage the confined and the vulnerable, from inmates of the Cook County jail, in Chicago, to workers at the Tyson Foods poultry plant in Camilla, Georgia. Data from a variety of reliable sources show that African-Americans, who suffer disproportionately from poverty, inadequate housing, limited access to good health care, and chronic illnesses such as diabetes and hypertension, are dying from covid-19 at horrific rates.

The pandemic is an event in the natural history of our species, but it is also a political episode. Its trajectory is shaped by policy measures specific to particular governments. The fact that the United States is experiencing tremendous losses—that it has far more covid-19 cases than any other country in the world—relates to a number of collective risk factors and preëxisting conditions. The most notable one is to be found in the Oval Office.

“This is not the apocalypse,” President Barack Obama assured his shell-shocked staff members the morning after Donald Trump’s election. When, the next day, Obama received Trump at the White House and tried to relay information about a range of issues—the threat from North Korea, the Iran nuclear deal, immigration, health care—he got nowhere.


Rather, Trump wanted to talk about himself and the size of his campaign rallies. Obama spoke about the value of having at his side such people as his homeland-security adviser, Lisa Monaco, citing her insistence on bringing him unvarnished, unwelcome news about everything from terrorism to the Ebola crisis. In the White House, she was known as Dr. Doom. Trump replied that maybe he should hire a Dr. Doom; he was joking. From the beginning, he practiced social distancing from anyone who told him what he didn’t want to hear.

And here we are, playing a tragic game of catch-up against the virus that has killed thousands and left millions unemployed. 

At Trump’s State of the Union address on February 4th, he pledged, “My Administration will take all necessary steps to safeguard our citizens from this threat.” Three weeks later, Kayleigh McEnany (Maine Writer aka "Blonde-cubed"), a loud promoter of (fake!) birtherism and of Trump talking points during the 2016 campaign, cheerfully told the Fox Business audience, “We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here, we will not see terrorism come here, and isn’t that refreshing when contrasting it with the awful Presidency of President Obama?” Now McEnany (ugh!) is Trump's press secretary.

The coronavirus has inflicted a level of pain that is deep and global. And yet many nations, from South Korea to Germany, have done far better at responding to it than the United States has. The reasons for the American failing include a lack of preparation, delayed mobilization, insufficient testing, and a reluctance to halt travel. The Administration, from its start, has waged war on science and expertise and on what Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon called “the administrative state.” The results are all around us. Trump has made sure that a great nation is peculiarly vulnerable to a foreseeable public-health calamity.

If the death rate turns out to be less than the initial forecasts––and, please, let it be so––it will be thanks to the discipline of the public and the heroics of first responders, not the foresight or the leadership of the President. The knowledge that we are led so ineptly and with such brazen self-regard is humiliating to millions of American citizens, if not to their leader. Trump gives himself “a ten” for his performance and berates any reporter who dares to challenge that premise. “You should say, ‘Congratulations! Great job!’ ” he told one, “instead of being so horrid in the way you ask the question!”

A nation facing a common threat normally pulls together, but Trump’s reflex is always to divide; he has invoked a multiplying litany of enemies. He directs his fire at the Obama Administration, at the World Health Organization, and at governors from Albany to Sacramento, with their constant pleas for ventilators, test kits, and face masks. The Democrats are to blame for everything. Early in the year, as the pandemic grew, they “diverted” the attention of the federal government, because “every day was all about impeachment,” as Trump’s unfailing loyalist Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, put it.

At a time of medical peril and economic devastation, Trump heads to the White House briefing room and frames the terms of his reëlection campaign. It is a campaign of cynicism and authoritarian impulses. To begin with, he has made it clear that he does not approve of efforts to make voting easier in November. Why should he? He takes a dim view of early voting, voting by mail, and same-day registration. Such reforms, he complains, would produce “levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

Trump has not had the sort of bounce in the polls usually seen by Presidents during a crisis, but this hardly insures an end to his reign. Senator Bernie Sanders, who did so much to transform the debate over health care, the environment, and education policy, in both the 2016 and 2020 campaigns, has dropped out of the race, and the presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, has been either absent or woefully inarticulate in recent weeks. The former Vice-President cannot run on the idea of personal decency alone. He needs to provide a vivid, comprehensive plan of renewal equal to the moment. He needs to emphasize hard truths, one being that the laws of science, of the physical world, must be recognized. 

This coronavirus pandemic is, in a sense, a rehearsal for what awaits us if we continue to ignore the demands of climate change. Biden would signal a seriousness of intent and offer a convincing alternative if he were to name very soon not only a Vice-Presidential running mate but a set of advisers and Cabinet officers who have shown themselves capable of policy rigor, executive competence, and compassion for the very communities that are suffering most from neglect and mistreatment.

Meanwhile, at the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, a painful reckoning begins. New York has long prided itself on being a sort of cultural and political city-state, able to hold its own against any vagaries emanating from the White House. This is plainly not the case. We are in this together: that is the phrase, the balm, of the moment. But it is more than a cliché. It should be the spirit and the foundation of our national politics, starting with the election in November.