March 28, 2024

The Power Hour

Knowledge is Power

Today's News: July 22, 2020

U.S. News, Politics & Government

Chicago Shooting Injures 14 as Trump Threatens to Intervene Over Mayor’s Objections

Newsweek – A bloody weekend of shootouts in Chicago was followed by an incident Tuesday where at least 14 people were shot at a funeral home. Chicago Fire Department officials said their conditions range from serious to critical. No information is available on them at this time.
The gun violence continues as President Donald Trump has threatened to deploy federal troops to cities across the country that have increasing violence, including Chicago, much to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s discontent.
The gunshots and subsequent scene Tuesday night jarred local residents, including Arnita Geder, who had been inside her home watching TV, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Donald Trump’s first coronavirus briefing in months involved a stark warning for America

ABC – In his first formal coronavirus briefing since April, US President Donald Trump stuck to a prepared script, urged Americans to wear masks and warned that things would “get worse before they get better”.
“As one family, we mourn every precious life that’s been lost. I pledge in their honour that we will develop a vaccine, and we will defeat the virus.
“My administration will stop at nothing to save lives and shield the vulnerable.”
He likened COVID-19 to a flu throughout much of January and February.
Then he agreed with the scientists that a lockdown was necessary in March.
In early April, he said governors should be responsible for the US response, and by the month’s end, he was calling for an abrupt end to nationwide lockdowns and threatening to use his power to make it so.

US orders closure of China’s consulate in Houston

Al Jazeera – The United States has ordered the closure of China’s consulate in the city of Houston, a move Beijing called “an unprecedented escalation” that will sabotage relations between the two countries.
In a statement on Wednesday, Morgan Ortagus, spokeswoman for the US Department of State, said Washington directed the consulate’s closure “in order to protect American intellectual property and Americans’ private information”.
She did not elaborate further. 
In Beijing, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry said the US gave the Chinese side a deadline of three days to close the mission in the Texas city.
“The unilateral closure of China’s consulate general in Houston within a short period of time is an unprecedented escalation of its recent actions against China,” Wang Wenbin told a regular news briefing.
“We urge the US to immediately revoke this erroneous decision. Should it insist on going down this wrong path, China will react with firm countermeasures,” he said.
Trump orders voting districts to exclude people in U.S. illegally
Reuters – President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Tuesday that would prevent migrants who are in the United States illegally from being counted when U.S. congressional voting districts are next redrawn, triggering swift rebukes from Democrats and threats of litigatio
U.S. census experts and lawyers say the action is legally dubious, and not easily executed in practice. Democratic-led states, including New York, and civil rights groups have already vowed to mount a legal challenge or said they are considering it.
If enacted, the plan could benefit Trump’s Republican Party by eliminating the largely non-white population of migrants in the United States illegally, creating voting districts that skew more Caucasian.
It could also cause populous states with large immigrant contingents to lose seats in the 435-member U.S. House of Representatives, including big left-leaning states like California – currently with 53 seats – and New York, with 27.

Miami police officers to form enforcement unit

The Week – If you don’t wear a mask in Miami, it’ll cost you — $50 for the first offense, $100 for the second, and $500 every time after that.
Miami-Dade County has the state’s most COVID-19 infections reported per 100,000 people and the highest death toll, The Miami Herald reports. To try to slow the spread of the coronavirus, people in Miami must wear face masks while in outdoor and indoor public settings, with few exceptions.
To ensure people take the ordinance seriously, Mayor Francis Suarez announced on Tuesday that 39 police officers will form a mask enforcement unit, working “seven days a week.” Anyone who violates the ordinance more than three times will not only get a $500 fine, but will also be arrested. 

Federal presence in Portland raises alarm over takeover of states

The HIll – Developments over the past week in Portland, and threats that more of the same may be coming to other American cities, is chilling news for anyone who cares about the constitutional rights of individual citizens and of American states to self-governance. Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf said on Monday on Fox & Friends, “I don’t need invitations by state mayors [sic] or state governors to do our jobs” to send in agents from the Federal Protective Service, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), and other federal agencies in the wake of Portland’s sporadically violent protests over the past seven weeks. 
Wolf has done this in defiance of pleas from Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown. The New York Times reported on Saturday that the federal agents sent to Portland were not trained in riot control or mass demonstrations, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) professional staff had warned against their deployment in a domestic mission such as this. The state attorney general of Oregon has filed a lawsuit to challenge the tactics of federal agents who, wearing military fatigues and tactical gear, have been shown in photographs appearing to pull unarmed civilians into unmarked vehicles.
A New York Times story noted that the federal government does possess the authority to protect federal property in American cities and states. The danger is that DHS appears to have taken a very narrow authority to protect, say, a federal courthouse against violence, as a roving warrant, without perimeter constraints, to deploy its agents throughout American cities. 
But it may not stop there. DHS Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli said Monday that DHS would advance law enforcement agents into other American cities if he believes the intelligence warrants it; on Friday, the head of Chicago’s police union asked for federal intervention in that city, and a reported 350 federal agents will be deployed to Chicago. 
There are 9,000 federal sites in cities and states around the nation. Bootstrapping a narrow enforcement authority to protect federal property is alarmingly reminiscent of deploying a federal occupation force. It threatens the First Amendment right of peaceful protesters, and by  diverting local law enforcement from missions that their own government superiors prioritize, it appears to commandeer state resources. 
It is an invitation to due process violations. Agents of CBP at the southern border, for example, are not guided by Fourth Amendment search-and-seizure and probable cause rules that govern local police departments. Standards applied to searches and apprehensions at the border are, for better or worse, more flexible. Applying the same standards in American cities is one reason these forces are ill-suited to the current situation. 
It also is a massive incursion on Tenth Amendment norms, which reserve police powers to the states. That is not an absolute bar to federal boots on the ground: Federalized National Guard troops are deployed around the nation right now in the battle against COVID-19, and federal agencies are on the ground after natural disasters, too, when the emergency is determined to be “beyond the capacity” of state or local governments to address.

MLB players taking visible stance on social justice

AP – Major League Baseball hasn’t always been at the forefront of the social justice movement in recent years, with leagues like the NBA and NFL usually taking center stage.
But in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis — and because of the quirks of a coronavirus-altered sports schedule — baseball is in the position of having the American sports world largely to itself for the next week.
Even before Thursday’s opening day, players and coaches in the sport are taking a more active approach to supporting racial justice.
Among the examples: San Francisco manager Gabe Kapler and several players kneeling during the national anthem before an exhibition game and several Dodgers — including NL MVP Cody Bellinger and three-time Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw — speaking out about racial injustice in a video message.

Economy & Business

McConnell says economy needs ‘another shot of adrenaline,’ backs additional round of stimulus checks

Fox – Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday made clear he supports another round of stimulus checks to Americans. The economy needs “another shot of adrenaline” amid the coronavirus pandemic, he said.
McConnell, R-Ky., has been in negotiations with top congressional Democrats and the White House on what the next coronavirus bill would look like, as the Trump administration is pushing a package with a price tag of $1 trillion.
McConnell said he supports “another round of direct payments” to Americans – something President Trump and top members of his administration have said they, too, support.
“The economy needs another shot of adrenaline,” McConnell said Tuesday. “If we lose control of the virus…everything else will be window dressing.”
Sources told Fox News this week that an emphasis would be put on liability protections and “addressing unemployment insurance in a proper way.”

Central Banks Look to Replace Cash with Digital Currency: Life as We Know it May Soon be Over and Replaced by the New World Order

Health Impact News – A small news report by Bloomberg earlier this week and published on MSN Money went mostly unnoticed in the corporate media, and even in the alternative media, and yet it might have been the most significant news story so far this year.
Jill Ward from Bloomberg wrote:
The Bank of England is reviewing whether it should create a central bank-backed digital currency, according to governor Andrew Bailey.
“We are looking at the question of, should we create a Bank of England digital currency,” Bailey said Monday in a webinar event with students. “We’ll go on looking at it, as it does have huge implications on the nature of payments and society.”
“I think in a few years time, we will be heading toward some sort of digital currency,” he added.
The BOE is part of a group of major central banks teaming up to assess potentially developing their own digital currencies, acknowledging their role is being challenged by new technologies and private sector initiatives such as Facebook Inc.’s Libra.
It could be some time before the U.K. central bank is able to fully devote its attention to such a development, however.
“The digital currency issue will be a very big issue,” Bailey said. “I hope it is, because that means Covid will be behind us.” (Source.)
COVID, of course, will probably never be “behind us,” as we are seeing today that it is being used as an excuse to destroy jobs and small businesses and complete the transfer of wealth from the middle classes to the Globalists.
It is working so well for them, why would they stop now?
So we should be very skeptical of governor Andrew Bailey’s statement that a Bank of England digital currency is still “a few years” away.
Why is a Central Bank Digital Currency Such a Big Deal?
At this point I am sure that those still reading this article are accusing me of sensationalism and “click bait” by making the claim in the headline of this article that when cash is replaced by a digital currency, that life as we know it will be over and replaced by a New World Order.
After all, most of us already use digital payments for most of our transactions in life, and cash is seldom used these days anyway, so what’s the big deal?
The “big deal” is that all of the digital transactions that you use today to pay for goods and services, still draw upon financial resources represented by the currency you hold in your own bank account, and you have relative freedom to choose how, when, and where you are going to spend your money.
In other words, today you still have choices. You still have some freedoms.
If you don’t like the interest rates your credit card charges you, for example, you can choose to move to a different credit card company. If you don’t like the way your bank is treating you, you can choose to hold your accounts in a different bank that offers better rates, fewer fees, etc.
And if you don’t have good credit and do not qualify for a credit card, you can still participate in the marketplace with cash. You can also issue checks to someone to move your cash around should you so choose to do so without using digital payments.
And if you don’t like the fact that your local store now requires you to wear a mask to shop there? Not a huge problem, as most likely everything they sell you can order online in the comfort of your home and have it delivered to you anyway.
You still have choices.
But if the Central Bankers get their way and replace all cash and currencies with a single digital currency, you could lose ALL of these choices, and personal privacy will be almost completely gone!
Do you think that once a mandatory COVID vaccine comes out, that you can just decide not to participate?
It won’t be so easy if there is a single digital currency that replaces all other currencies. Your ability to participate in the marketplace, even from the “comfort” of your own prison cell home, will be 100% dependent on whether or not you meet the qualifications to participate in using the new digital currency, even if you have a positive ledger in “your” account.
So just think about the ramifications if your account in the Central Banks of the new digital currency system has not approved you for transactions because you do not have a COVID digital ID card showing you have been properly vaccinated with an approved COVID vaccine?
You can’t go to a store to purchase anything, and you cannot purchase anything online either.
What are you going to do now?
Those are the kinds of questions you and your friends and family members need to start asking NOW, while you still have some freedoms left.
Trial Run on Digital Currency Happening NOW in Africa
And if you think this is fear mongering and that something like this would probably not happen for many years anyway, it is actually happening right now in Africa as a trial run.
Raul Diego published an article this week in Mint Press News titled: Africa to Become Testing Ground for “Trust Stamp” Vaccine Record and Payment System.
A new biometric identity platform partnered with the Gates-funded GAVI vaccine alliance and Mastercard will launch in West Africa and combine COVID-19 vaccinations, cashless payments, and potential law enforcement applications.
A biometric digital identity platform that “evolves just as you evolve” is set to be introduced in “low-income, remote communities” in West Africa thanks to a public-private partnership between the Bill Gates-backed GAVI vaccine alliance, Mastercard and the AI-powered “identity authentication” company, Trust Stamp.
The program, which was first launched in late 2018, will see Trust Stamp’s digital identity platform integrated into the GAVI-Mastercard “Wellness Pass,” a digital vaccination record and identity system that is also linked to Mastercard’s click-to-play system that powered by its AI and machine learning technology called NuData.
Mastercard, in addition to professing its commitment to promoting “centralized record keeping of childhood immunization” also describes itself as a leader toward a “World Beyond Cash,” and its partnership with GAVI marks a novel approach towards linking a biometric digital identity system, vaccination records, and a payment system into a single cohesive platform. The effort, since its launch nearly two years ago, has been funded via $3.8 million in GAVI donor funds in addition to a matched donation of the same amount by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In early June, GAVI reported that Mastercard’s Wellness Pass program would be adapted in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Around a month later, Mastercard announced that Trust Stamp’s biometric identity platform would be integrated into Wellness Pass as Trust Stamp’s system is capable of providing biometric identity in areas of the world lacking internet access or cellular connectivity and also does not require knowledge of an individual’s legal name or identity to function.
The Wellness Program involving GAVI, Mastercard, and Trust Stamp will soon be launched in West Africa and will be coupled with a Covid-19 vaccination program once a vaccine becomes available. (Full article.)
This follows an announcement published a few weeks ago that Visa had filed a U.S. patent on digital currency.
Visa is one of the most successful and consequential payments companies in the world. Where the powerhouse enterprise places its efforts is thus no small matter.
That’s why a newly published patent application for a blockchain-powered “digital fiat currency” system by the payments giant is not only legitimizing for blockchain tech in general but also indicates what may be coming to the mainstream payments arena amid increasing hyperdigitalization.
On Thursday, May 14th, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published the patent application in question, which is simply titled “DIGITAL FIAT CURRENCY.”
The filing, which was first submitted to the USPTO in November 2018, outlines a stablecoin-like system in which blockchain-based digital currency issuances are linked to actual fiat currency reserves. (Full Article.)

Missouri Banks ask consumers to deposit, use spare change because of coin circulation slowdown

Ozark Radio News – Time to empty out the piggy banks to help small businesses. Missouri banks are asking consumers to deposit their spare change at their local banks or use change when shopping as the pandemic-related shutdowns have created a slowdown in coin circulation.
When COVID-19 restrictions went into place, establishments like retail shops, bank branches and laundromats — the typical places where coins enter society — closed, it significantly slowed the normal rate of coin circulation. Consumers then migrated to shopping online or, if in person, using debit and credit cards to avoid physical contact associated with using cash. The coins they would have received in change were then not being circulated back into the system.
“In the beginning of 2020, more than 4 billion coins were deposited — or recirculated — each month,” said Max Cook, president and CEO of the Missouri Bankers Association. “Those numbers dropped to less than 2 billion beginning in April.”
As businesses are reopening, demand from merchants to stock their coins at higher levels is increasing, but many coins remain with consumers. This is creating a critical issue because recirculated coins represent more than 80% of the supply, with the remaining amount being new coins produced by the U.S. Mint.
“There is an adequate amount of coins in the economy, but the slowed pace of circulation means that a sufficient amount of coins is not readily available where needed,” Cook said. “If you have spare change, we encourage you to check with your local banks to see if they are accepting coins or use exact amounts when purchasing items.”
As of April 2020, the U.S. Treasury estimates that the total value of coins in circulation is $47.8 billion, up from $47.4 billion as of April 2019.
The Federal Reserve projects the gap between supply and demand between 2.3 to 3.5 billion coins each month through the end of 2020.

Gephardt: Worsening coin shortage could inflate the price of consumer products

SKL – Two weeks after a KSL TV investigation into the causes of the national coin shortage, the issue seems to be worsening.
You can add Utah state agencies to the list asking for exact change and some Kroger stores are telling customers the cents they’re owed will have to either go on their loyalty card for the next time they shop, or they can round up and donate to charity.
Worse, this lack of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters could soon have us all paying a few extra pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters every time we shop.
Every time you swipe your card, the merchant pays a fee to the credit card company. With it getting harder and harder to pay with cash, it has left more folks turning to plastic.
It’s a major shift. According to creditcards.com survey, this time last year cash accounted for about half of all purchases under $10.
A bankrate.com survey found credit card usage is way up — 70 percent higher at grocery stores since last December.
“Typically credit cards are going to charge two or three percent in interchange fees to the merchant,” said Ted Rossman, an industry analyst with Bankrate. “That’s one of the big ways they make money. Merchants hate these fees.”
Rossman said only time will tell how much all these added credit card fees will get passed on to consumers with increased prices on the stuff that we buy. What does seem clear is that it’s not likely to go back down after the pandemic with consumers now in the habit of using cards and other touchless payment options that are often tied to credit cards.
“The pandemic is accelerating some of these trends we’ve seen for a while,” he said.

Arms industry: Gun buys up 95%, ammo 139%; Sales to blacks jump 58%

Washington Examiner – The gun industry has never seen anything like 2020, and the explosion in sales driven by the concerns over rising crime, protests, the coronavirus crisis, and the presidential election are expected to continue.
“Bottom line is that there has never been a sustained surge in firearm sales quite like what we are in the midst of,” the National Shooting Sports Foundation, an industry trade group, said in a report shared with Secrets.
New sales and customer data collected from gun stores are even more shocking than the latest historic level of FBI background checks for purchases, security clearances, and concealed carry permits.

UNITED extends face covering requirement to include airports

Reuters – United Airlines said on Wednesday it is extending face mask requirements to all of its airport areas across the world starting on July 24 and tightening exemptions to only cover children under the age of two.
Chicago-based United previously exempted passengers with certain medical conditions from face coverings, but now passengers will have to contact the airline or speak to a representative at the airport if they believe they qualify for an exemption.
While there is no U.S. government rule on face coverings during air travel, major carriers have said they will deny boarding to anyone not wearing one and ban passengers from future flights if they refuse to wear one during flight.
“The most important thing any of us can do to slow the spread of the coronavirus is to simply wear a mask when we’re around other people,” United Chief Executive Officer Scott Kirby said in a statement.

Science & Technology

Uber Announces Participating in Contact Tracing – They Will Turn You in to Health Authorities

Activist Post – As I reported yesterday, law-abiding citizens are now being arrested in their homes with ankle monitors to prevent them from leaving in some parts of the U.S., if one of the family members tests positive for COVID. 
Today, FiercePharma is reporting that Uber is now participating with health authorities to help with contact tracing. So if you thought that you could avoid being arrested in your own home by simply refusing to get a COVID test from among the more than 100 fast-tracked inaccurate COVID tests currently on the market, think again.
Uber is providing their contact tracing services for free, not to you their customers, but to local health authorities. That means every time you use the popular ride-share service, they can track you to see if you have been in contact with any COVID positive people, including, apparently, previous riders in their drivers’ cars which you would not even know about, and then turn your information into the health authorities.
From FiercePharma:
Ridesharing giant Uber has rolled out a service to give public health officials quick access to user data to track coronavirus cases, Reuters reported Monday.
The contact tracing service will be provided for free, and is reportedly being introduced to public health officials in all countries where Uber operates, according to Reuters. Company officials told Reuters information of either a driver or passenger can be accessed in a few hours.
The service provides health departments with data about who used Uber’s services and when and allows health agencies to urge affected drivers and users to quarantine, company officials told reporters.
Uber has a protocol in place that it can disclose user information to public health agencies in an emergency involving danger of death or serious physical injury.
Since COVID-19 can be transmitted through close proximity to affected individuals, public health officials have identified contact tracing as a valuable tool to help contain its spread. (Source.)
This apparently applies to food delivery apps as well.

TWITTER bans 7,000 QAnon accounts, limits 150,000 others as part of broad crackdown.

NBC – Twitter announced Tuesday that it has begun taking sweeping actions to limit the reach of QAnon content, banning many of the conspiracy theory’s followers because of problems with harassment and misinformation.
Twitter will stop recommending accounts and content related to QAnon, including material in email and follow recommendations, and it will take steps to limit circulation of content in features like trends and search. The action will affect about 150,000 accounts, said a spokesperson, who asked to remain unnamed because of concerns about the targeted harassment of social media employees.
The spokesperson said that as part of its new policy, the company had taken down more than 7,000 QAnon accounts in the last few weeks for breaking its rules on targeted harassment.
The sweeping enforcement action will ban QAnon-related terms from appearing in trending topics and the platform’s search feature, ban known QAnon-related URLs and prohibit “swarming” of people who are baselessly targeted by coordinated harassment campaigns pushed by QAnon followers.

New blood test can detect 5 types of cancer YEARS before current methods, researchers claim

RT – New blood test can detect 5 types of cancer YEARS before current methods, researchers claim
The research drew on a 10-year study of 120,000 people in China between 2007 and 2017, focusing on blood samples taken from 600 individuals at regular intervals. 
Of this sample group of participants, some 191 people were eventually diagnosed with cancer. The scientists used the new test to analyze samples from four years prior to their diagnosis, and detected cancers in 91 percent of participants who were asymptomatic at the time those samples were extracted.
“The ultimate goal would be performing blood tests like this routinely during annual health checkups,” said Kun Zhang, UCSD Bioengineering Department chair. 
“But the immediate focus is to test people at higher risk, based on family history, age or other known risk factors.”
The authors cautioned that more testing over a longer time frame is required before the new method can be considered for widespread clinical use. 
Early detection is hugely important to improving rates of survival as it allows intervention, like surgery, chemotherapy and hormonal therapy, to begin before tumors have a chance to spread elsewhere in a patient’s body. Cancer in all forms accounts for nearly 10 million deaths per year worldwide.

Once Science Fiction, Gene Editing Now Looming Reality

DNYUZ – Public debate has swirled around genetic engineering since the first experiments in gene splicing in the 1970s. But the debate has taken on new urgency in recent years as gene modification has been simplified with CRISPR (short for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) technology.
Scientists have compared the technology to word processing software: It acts like a cursor placed next to a typo, capable of editing a gene at a level so granular it can change a single letter in a long genetic sequence.
While still highly theoretical when it comes to eliminating disabilities, gene editing has drawn the attention of the disability community. The prospect of erasing some disabilities and perceived deficiencies hovers at the margins of what people consider ethically acceptable.
“People are understandably very scared of it, of the many different roads it could take us down as a society,” said Meghan Halley, a bioethics researcher at Stanford University and mother of three children, including a 5-year-old with a disability. “Broadly speaking, this is always going to be problematic because of the many things that disability means.”
Yet bioethicists point out that inheritable gene editing raises large societal questions, given the dire consequences of an error, as well as the ethical questions that arise at the prospect of erasing disability from human existence. There is also concern that gene editing for health reasons will be out of reach for many because of its cost.
“There absolutely must be broad public discussions about whether we’re ready to use something that has an unprecedented capability of making changes that have the potential to be passed on to subsequent generations,” said Dana Carroll, a biochemistry professor at the University of Utah who is interim director of the Public Impact Program at the Innovative Genomics Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.
The debate grew more heated in 2018, after a scientist in China announced the birth of the world’s first gene-edited babies — twin girls — using CRISPR to give them immunity to H.I.V. The announcement generated outrage around the world. In December 2019, a court in China sentenced the scientist to three years in prison for carrying out “illegal medical practices.”
Last year, a group of scientists from seven countries called for a global moratorium on changing inheritable DNA to make genetically modified children.

Energy & Environment

Powerful 7.8 quake rocks Alaska

AP – A powerful earthquake off Alaska’s southern coast jolted coastal communities late Tuesday, and some residents briefly scrambled for higher ground over fears of a tsunami.
There were no immediate reports of damage in the sparsely populated area of the state, and the tsunami warning was canceled after the magnitude 7.8 quake off the Alaska Peninsula produced a wave of a less than a foot.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the earthquake struck Tuesday at 10:12 p.m. local time and was centered in waters 65 miles (105 kilometers) south-southeast of the tiny community of Perryville, at a depth of 17 miles (28 km).
Because of the temblor’s location, nearby communities along the Alaska Peninsula did not experience shaking that would normally be associated with that magnitude of a quake, said Michael West, Alaska State Seismologist.
That doesn’t mean they slept through it, West said residents in small towns within a hundred miles (160 kilometers) of the quake reported very strong shaking. Some shaking was also felt more than 500 miles (805 kilometers) away in the Anchorage area, West said.
“No reports of any damage,” Kodiak Police Sgt. Mike Sorter said early Wednesday morning. “No injuries were reported. Everything is nominal.”

Health

Airborne virus probably infectious

AFP – Scientists have known for several months the new coronavirus can become suspended in microdroplets expelled by patients when they speak and breathe, but until now there was no proof that these tiny particles are infectious.
A new study by scientists at the University of Nebraska that was uploaded to a medical preprint site this week has shown for the first time that SARS-CoV-2 taken from microdroplets, defined as under five microns, can replicate in lab conditions.
This boosts the hypothesis that normal speaking and breathing, not just coughing and sneezing, are responsible for spreading COVID-19 — and that infectious doses of the virus can travel distances far greater than the six feet (two meters) urged by social distancing guidelines.
The results are still considered preliminary and have not yet appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, which would lend more credibility to the methods devised by the scientists.
The paper was posted to the medrxiv.org website, where most cutting-edge research during the pandemic has first been made public.
The same team wrote a paper in March showing that the virus remains airborne in the rooms of hospitalized COVID-19 patients, and this study will soon be published in a journal, according to the lead author.

U.S. agrees to pay Pfizer and BioNTech $2 billion for 100 million doses of coronavirus vaccine

CNBC – The U.S. will pay Pfizer and biotech firm BioNTech $1.95 billion to produce and deliver 100 million doses of their Covid-19 vaccine if it proves safe and effective, the companies announced Wednesday.
It was the largest such deal between the government and companies racing to develop a coronavirus vaccine. 
Under the agreement, the U.S. can acquire 500 million additional doses, the Department of Health and Human Services said. Germany-based BioNTech and Pfizer are jointly developing four potential vaccines.
If one of the vaccines proves safe and effective in a large phase three trial and receives regulatory approval, HHS said Pfizer will begin to deliver doses to locations across the U.S. at the government’s direction. The vaccine would then be made available to Americans “at no cost,” HHS said. It’s unclear who the first doses of the potential vaccine would go to and how that decision would be made.
The companies previously said they expect to begin a large trial with up to 30,000 participants later this month, if they receive regulatory approval.
Shares of Pfizer were 3.8% higher in early trading Wednesday and BioNTech stock was up 4%.

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