#Dr. Birx acknowledge concerns

[sheilamurrey]

Dr. Deborah Birx Discusses RFK Jr.’s Nomination for HHS Secretary: Calls for Transparency and Open Debate

The nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has sparked widespread debate, drawing …Dr. Deborah Birx Discusses RFK Jr.’s Nomination for HHS Secretary: Calls for Transparency and Open Debate

[plusorminuscongress]

New story in Politics from Time: White House Steps Up Efforts to Downplay Ongoing Coronavirus Concerns

NEW YORK — President Donald Trump has long been fond of crafting his own version of the facts. But when he said “if we stop testing right now we’d have very few cases” of coronavirus, he may have written a new line of attack for critics who question his commitment to following the science.

His statement overlooks other important measures of the ongoing coronavirus threat, including hospitalizations and deaths.

Trump’s comment Monday was part of a broader administration effort to play down the pandemic, a push that public health experts and Democratic officials worry is sending a dangerous message to the American public as some parts of the country have seen a surge in cases in recent weeks.

“An ostrich puts his head in the sand because he doesn’t want to see what’s around him,” said Lawrence Gostin, a public health expert at Georgetown University. “It’s the same thing with Trump.”

Last week, the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation published new projections that show COVID-19-related deaths in the U.S. could surpass 200,000 by Oct. 1. The institute said rising rates of infections, hospitalizations and death “are now occurring in the wake of eased or ended distancing policies.”

Trump offered more rosy talk Tuesday, predicting that a vaccine would be available by year’s end and adding that “even without it, it goes away.” He offered that optimistic outlook just one day after he attributed surging positive cases to testing in the United States that is “so much bigger and more advanced than any other country.”

Vice President Mike Pence, for his part, pushed back in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the potential for a second wave of the virus was “overblown.’

“Less than 2 percent of the counties in the entire country are seeing any significant increase in cases,” Pence said in a separate Fox News interview. “That’s a tribute to the American people.”

But public health experts say Trump and Pence’s ebullience papers over concerning data that suggests that the virus remains a serious threat to Americans’ health and the economy and that the slowing of social distancing and mitigation efforts risks a second wave of the coronavirus in the fall.

Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic minority leader, criticized the vice president for ridiculing concerns about a second wave.

“Dr. Pence would not be someone I’d go to for a medical checkup, or for medical advice,” he said.

The Trump administration’s push to diminish concerns about the virus comes as the president looks to resume his reelection campaign in earnest. Trump has seen his support erode over his handling of the pandemic and nationwide protests following the killing of George Floyd, the African American Minneapolis man who died after a white policeman pressed his knee onto Floyd’s neck.

In recent weeks, leading public health experts on the White House coronavirus task force have made less frequent public appearances as the White House has sought to focus on the economic recovery from the pandemic. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top epidemiologist, said in an interview on NPR’s “1A” that he last spoke to Trump about two weeks ago. The coronavirus task force coordinator, Deborah Birx, hasn’t given a major media interview since late May.

Trump is set to hold his first campaign rally since early March on Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Ticketholders were required to acknowledge the risk of exposure to coronavirus and absolve the campaign of liability if they fall ill. Trump also has moved his August nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention to Jacksonville, Florida, after North Carolina’s Democratic governor said he couldn’t assure that the convention could go on as planned in Charlotte without some social distancing measures.

“He continues to put politics over public health,” Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez said of Trump.

Pence pointed to data showing more than half of states are actually seeing cases decline or remain stable. In the six states that have been recording 1,000 new cases a day, increased testing has allowed public health officials to determine that most of the outbreaks are occurring in particular settings — prisons, nursing homes and meatpacking facilities.

But experts say testing is identifying just a small fraction of the actual number of infections in this country.

In the last several weeks, new cases have decreased in the Northeast and much of the Midwest, while increasing in several states in the South and West.

In the past week, hospitalization rates have increased in 11 states in the South and West, according to The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer organization that collects coronavirus data in the United States. The states are Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Utah.

Several of those states have also seen recent increases in the seven-day rolling average on the percent of tests coming back positive, another worrying sign.

The reason for the increases can vary. In Arkansas, health officials say it’s specific to a few counties and seems to be largely driven by localized outbreaks related to poultry processing plants.

But in Arizona and some other states, the increases are more widespread and suggest community spread that seems to have erupted after the states lifted stay-at-home orders, school and business closures, and other restrictions that were put in place during the spring to stop outbreaks from ever taking off.

Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said Arizona residents are hearing “mixed messages” from Trump and Pence as well as Arizona’s Republican governor, Doug Ducey, about how careful they need to be.

Arizona was among the first to lift its stay-at-home order last month, quickly allowing restaurants, barbershops and even nightclubs to reopen. Ducey has declined to require residents wear masks in public spaces where social distancing is difficult. The state reported 2,392 new coronavirus cases Tuesday, a new daily high, and 25 additional deaths.

“We are still very much climbing towards our peak,” Gallego said. “The problem is getting worse in Arizona.”

___

Madhani reported from Chicago. Associated Press writers Zeke Miller and Alexandra Jaffe in Washington contributed reporting.

By AAMER MADHANI and MIKE STOBBE / AP on June 16, 2020 at 07:38PM

[stephenmccull]

As Schools Spend Millions on Air Purifiers, Experts Warn of Overblown Claims and Harm to Children

Last summer, Global Plasma Solutions wanted to test whether the company’s air-purifying devices could kill covid-19 virus particles but could find only a lab using a chamber the size of a shoebox for its trials. In the company-funded study, the virus was blasted with 27,000 ions per cubic centimeter.

This story also ran on CNN. It can be republished for free.

In September, the company’s founder incidentally mentioned that the devices being offered for sale actually deliver a lot less ion power — 13 times less — into a full-sized room.

The company nonetheless used the shoebox results — over 99% viral reduction — in marketing its device heavily to schools as something that could combat covid in classrooms far, far larger than a shoebox.

School officials desperate to calm worried parents bought these devices and others with a flood of federal funds, installing them in more than 2,000 schools across 44 states, a KHN investigation found. They use the same technology — ionization, plasma and dry hydrogen peroxide — that the Lancet COVID-19 Commission recently deemed “often unproven” and potential sources of pollution themselves.

In the frenzy, schools are buying technology that academic air-quality experts warn can lull them into a false sense of security or even potentially harm kids. And schools often overlook the fact that their trusted contractors — typically engineering, HVAC or consulting firms — stand to earn big money from the deals, KHN found.

Academic experts are encouraging schools to pump in more fresh air and use tried-and-true filters, like HEPA, to capture the virus. Yet every ion- or hydroxyl-blasting air purifier sale strengthens a firm’s next pitch: The device is doing a great job in the neighboring town.

“It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more people buy these technologies, the more they get legitimacy,” said Jeffrey Siegel, a civil engineering professor at the University of Toronto. “It’s really the complete wild west out there.”

Marwa Zaatari, a member of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers’ (ASHRAE) Epidemic Task Force, first compiled a list of schools and districts using such devices.

Schools have been “bombarded with persistent salespersons peddling the latest air and cleaning technologies, including those with minimal evidence to-date supporting safety and efficacy” according to a report released Thursday by the Center for Green Schools and ASHRAE.

Zaatari said she was particularly concerned that officials in New Jersey are buying thousands of devices made by another company that says they emit ozone, which can exacerbate asthma and harm developing lungs, according to decades of research.

“We’re going to live in a world where the air quality in schools is worse after the pandemic, after all of this money,” Zaatari said. “It’s really sickening.”

The sales race is fueled by roughly $193 billion in federal funds allocated to schools for teacher pay and safety upgrades — a giant fund that can be used to buy air cleaners. And Democrats are pushing for $100 billion more that could also be spent on air cleaners.

In April, Global Plasma Solutions said further tests show its devices inactivate covid in the air and on surfaces in larger chambers. The company studies still use about twice the level of ions than its leaders have publicly said the devices can deliver, KHN found.

There is virtually no federal oversight or enforcement of safe air-cleaning technology. Only California bans air cleaners that emit a certain amount of ozone.

U.S. Rep. Robert “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.), chair of the education and labor committee, said the federal government typically is not involved in local decisions of what products to buy, although he hopes for more federal guidance.

In the meantime, “these school systems are dealing with contractors providing all kinds of services,” he said, “so you just have to trust them to get the best expert advice on what to do.”

These go-between contractors — and the air cleaner companies themselves — have a stake in the sales. While their names might appear in school board records, their role in selling the device or commission from the deal is seldom made public, KHN found.

A LinkedIn job ad with the logo for one air purifier company, ActivePure Technology, which employs former Trump adviser Dr. Deborah Birx as its chief medical and science adviser, recruited salespeople this way: “Make Tons of Money with this COVID-killing Technology!!” The commission, the post said, is up to $900 per device.

“We have reps [who] made over 6-figures in 1 month selling to 1 school district,” the ad says. “This could be the biggest opportunity you have seen!”

‘A Tiny Bit of Ozone’

Schools in New Jersey have a particularly easy time buying air cleaners called Odorox: A state education agency lists them on their group-purchasing commodity list, with a large unit selling for more than $5,100. Originally used in home restoration and mold remediation, the devices have become popular in New Jersey schools as the company says its products can inactivate covid.

In Newark, administrators welcomed students back to class last month with more than 3,200 Odorox units, purchased with $7.5 million in federal funds, said Steven Morlino, executive director of Facilities Management for Newark Public Schools.

“I think parents feel pretty comfortable that their children are going to a safe environment,” he said. “And so did the staff.”

Environmental health and air-quality experts, though, are alarmed by the district’s plan.

The Pyure company’s Odorox devices are on California air-quality regulators’ list of “potentially hazardous ozone generators sold as air purifiers” and cannot be sold in the state.

The company’s own research shows that its Boss XL3 device pumps out as much as 77 parts per billion of ozone, a level that exceeds limits set by California lawmakers for the sale of indoor air cleaners and the EPA standard for ground-level ozone — a limit set to protect children from the well-documented harm of ozone to developing lungs.

That level exceeds the industry’s self-imposed limit by more than 10 times and is “unacceptable,” according to William Bahnfleth, an architectural engineering professor at Penn State who studies indoor air quality and leads the ASHRAE Epidemic Task Force.

Jean-Francois “JF” Huc, CEO of the Pyure company, pointed out that the company’s study was done in a space smaller than they would recommend for such a powerful Odorox device. He cautioned that it was done that way to prove that home-restoration workers could be in the room with the device without violating work-safety rules.

“We provide very stringent operating guidelines around the size of room that our different devices should be put in,” he said. But school staffers are often not warned about the problems they could face if a too-powerful device is used in a too-small room, he acknowledged.

You can’t see or smell ozone, but lungs treat it like a “foreign invader,” said Michael Jerrett, who has studied its health effects as director of the UCLA Center for Occupational and Environmental Health.

Lung cells mount an immune-like response, which can trigger asthma complications and divert energy from normal lung function, he said. Chronic exposure has been linked to more emergency room visits and can even cause premature death. Once harmed, Jerrett said, children’s lungs may not regain full function.

“Ozone is a very serious public health problem,” Jerrett said.

Newark has some of the highest childhood asthma rates in the state, affecting 1 in 4 kids. Scholars have linked outdoor ozone levels in Newark to elevated childhood ER visits and asthma is the leading cause of school absenteeism there.

Adding ozone into the classroom is “just nightmarish,” Siegel, of the University of Toronto, said.

Morlino said the district plans to monitor ozone levels in each classroom, based on the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration level for working adults, which is 100 parts per billion.

“In our research of the product,” he said, “we’ve determined it’s within the guidelines the federal government produces.”

While legal for healthy working adults, the work-safety standard should not apply to developing children, said Michael Kleinman, an air-quality researcher at the UC Irvine School of Medicine. “It’s not a good device to be using in the presence of children,” he said.

But the devices are going into schools throughout the state that will not be monitoring ozone levels, acknowledged Dave Matisoff, owner of Bio-Shine, a New Jersey-based distributor of Odorox. He said the main safeguard is informing schools about the appropriate-size room each device should be deployed to, a factor in ozone concentration.

Huc, the CEO, said his team has measured levels of ozone that are higher outdoors in Newark than inside — with his company’s units running.

“There is a tiny bit of ozone that is introduced, but it’s very, very low,” he said. “And you get the benefit of the antimicrobial effect, you get the benefit of reduction of pathogens, which we’ve demonstrated in a number of studies, and you get the reduction of VOC [volatile organic compounds].”

Meanwhile, despite expert concerns, the devices continue to pop up in classrooms and school nurses’ offices across the state, said Allen Barkkume, an industrial hygienist for the New Jersey teachers union.

He doesn’t blame schools for buying them, as they’re a lot less expensive than overhauling ventilation systems. Teachers often push for the devices in their classrooms, he said, as they see them in the nurses’ offices and think it’ll keep them safe. And superintendents are not well-versed in air quality’s complex scientific concepts.

“Nothing sounds better than something that’s cheap, quiet, small and easy to find, and we can stick them in every classroom,” Barkkume said.

Tested in Shoebox, Sold for Classrooms

While New York officials are “not permitting” the installation of ionization devices due to “potential negative health effects,” schools across the state of New Jersey are installing ionizing devices.

Ten miles away from Newark in Montclair, New Jersey, parents have been raising hell over the new Global Plasma Solutions’ ionizing devices in their children’s classrooms. The company website promises a product that emits ions like those “created with energy from rushing water, crashing waves and even sunlight.”

The devices emit positive and negative ions that are meant to help particles clump together, making them easier to filter out. The company says the ions can also reduce the viral particles that cause covid-19.

But Justin Klabin, a building developer with a background in indoor air quality and two sons in the district, was not convinced.

He spent hours compiling scientific evidence. He created painstaking YouTube videos picking apart the ionizers’ viability and helped organize a petition signed by dozens of parents warning the school board against the installation.

Even so, the district spent $635,900 on installing ionizers, which would go in classrooms serving more than 6,000 kids. The devices are often installed in ducts, an important consideration, the company founder Charles Waddell said, because the ions that are emitted lose their power after 60 seconds.

But the company’s shoebox study and inflated ion blast numbers that helped sell the product last year leave a potential customer with little sense of how the device would perform in a classroom, Zaatari said.

“It’s a high cost for nothing,” Zaatari said. The company has sued her and another air-quality consultant for criticizing their devices. Of the pending case, Zaatari said it is a David-versus-Goliath situation, but she will not be deterred from speaking on behalf of children.

“Size of the [test] chamber has proved not to play a role in efficacy results but rather ion density,” GPS spokesperson Kevin Boyle said in an email. The company notes by its covid-inactivating test results that they “may include … higher-than-average ion concentrations.”

He also said the company is proud to meet the ASHRAE “zero ozone” certification.

Glenn Morrison, a professor of environmental science and engineering at the University of North Carolina, reviewed a March GPS study on a device combating the covid virus in the air. The device appears to reduce virus concentrations, he said in an email, but noted it would not be very effective under normal building conditions, outside a test chamber. “A cheap portable HEPA filter would work many times better and have fewer side effects (possibly ozone or other unwanted chemistry),” he wrote.

Other parents joined Klabin’s campaign, including Melanie Robbins, the mom of a kindergartner and a child in pre-K. Armed with her background in nonprofit advocacy, she reached out to experts. She and other parents spoke at local government meetings about their concerns.

In April, the superintendent told parents the school would turn off the devices, but parents say they haven’t turned them all off.

“As far as I understand, the district has relied only on information from GPS, the manufacturer,” Robbins said during a Montclair Board of Education meeting via Zoom on April 19. “This is like only listening to advice from Philip Morris as to whether smoking is safe or not.”

Dan Daniello, of D&B Building Solutions, an HVAC contracting company, defended GPS products during the meeting. He said they are even in the White House, a selling point the company has made repeatedly.

The catch: A GPS contractor installed its ionization technology in the East Wing of the White House after it was purchased in 2018 — before covid emerged, according to GPS’ Boyle. But the company was still using the White House logo as a marketing image on its website when KHN asked the White House about the advertising in April. It was taken down shortly thereafter.

Boyle said GPS was “recently informed that the White House logo may not be used for marketing purposes, and promptly complied.”

The Montclair school district did not respond to requests for comment.

“I want to bang my head against the wall, it’s so black-and-white,” Robbins said. “Admit this is a poor purchase, the district got played.”

Selling ‘the Big Kahuna’

Academic air-quality experts agree on what’s best for schools: More outside air pumped into classes, MERV 13 filters in heating systems and portable HEPA filters. The solution is time-tested and effective, they say. Yet as common commodities, like a pair of khaki pants, these items are not widely flogged by a sales force chasing big commissions.

After covid hit, Tony Barron said the companies pitched air purifying technology nonstop to the Kansas district where he worked as a facility manager last fall.

Pressure came from inside the school as well. Teachers sent links for air cleaners they saw on the news. His superintendent had him meet with a friend who sold ionization products. He got constant calls, mail and email from mechanical engineering companies.

The hundreds of phone calls from air cleaner pitches were overwhelming, said Chris Crockett, director of facilities for Turner USD 202 in Kansas City, Kansas. While he wanted to trust the contractors he had worked with, he tested four products before deciding to spend several hundred thousands of dollars.

“Custodial supply companies see the writing on the wall, that there’s a lot of money out there,” he said. “And then a lot of money is going to be spent on HVAC systems.”

ActivePure says on its website that its air purifiers are in hundreds of schools. In a press release, the company said they were “sold through a nationwide network of several hundred franchises, 5,000 general contractors/HVAC specialists and thousands of individual distributors.”

Enviro Technology Pros, founded in January, is one company pitching ActivePure to HVAC contractors. In a YouTube video, the founders said contractors can make $950 for each air-cleaning device sold, and some dealers can make up to $30,000 a month. Citing the bounty of the billions in federal relief, another video touted ready-made campaigns to target school principals directly.

After KHN asked ActivePure for comment, the Enviro Technology Pros YouTube videos about ActivePure were no longer accessible publicly.

ActivePure did not respond to requests for comment but has said its devices are effective and one is validated by the Food and Drug Administration.

An Enviro Technology Pros founder, Rod Norman, told KHN the company was asked to take the posts down by Vollara, a company related to ActivePure. He called sales to schools “the big kahuna.”

Shortly after he spoke with KHN, the website for his own company was taken down.

In an Instagram post that also disappeared, the company had asked: “4000 classrooms protected why not your kids?”

Shoshana Dubnow contributed to this report.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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This story can be republished for free (details).

As Schools Spend Millions on Air Purifiers, Experts Warn of Overblown Claims and Harm to Children published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

[gordonwilliamsweb]

As Schools Spend Millions on Air Purifiers, Experts Warn of Overblown Claims and Harm to Children

Last summer, Global Plasma Solutions wanted to test whether the company’s air-purifying devices could kill covid-19 virus particles but could find only a lab using a chamber the size of a shoebox for its trials. In the company-funded study, the virus was blasted with 27,000 ions per cubic centimeter.

This story also ran on CNN. It can be republished for free.

In September, the company’s founder incidentally mentioned that the devices being offered for sale actually deliver a lot less ion power — 13 times less — into a full-sized room.

The company nonetheless used the shoebox results — over 99% viral reduction — in marketing its device heavily to schools as something that could combat covid in classrooms far, far larger than a shoebox.

School officials desperate to calm worried parents bought these devices and others with a flood of federal funds, installing them in more than 2,000 schools across 44 states, a KHN investigation found. They use the same technology — ionization, plasma and dry hydrogen peroxide — that the Lancet COVID-19 Commission recently deemed “often unproven” and potential sources of pollution themselves.

In the frenzy, schools are buying technology that academic air-quality experts warn can lull them into a false sense of security or even potentially harm kids. And schools often overlook the fact that their trusted contractors — typically engineering, HVAC or consulting firms — stand to earn big money from the deals, KHN found.

Academic experts are encouraging schools to pump in more fresh air and use tried-and-true filters, like HEPA, to capture the virus. Yet every ion- or hydroxyl-blasting air purifier sale strengthens a firm’s next pitch: The device is doing a great job in the neighboring town.

“It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more people buy these technologies, the more they get legitimacy,” said Jeffrey Siegel, a civil engineering professor at the University of Toronto. “It’s really the complete wild west out there.”

Marwa Zaatari, a member of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers’ (ASHRAE) Epidemic Task Force, first compiled a list of schools and districts using such devices.

Schools have been “bombarded with persistent salespersons peddling the latest air and cleaning technologies, including those with minimal evidence to-date supporting safety and efficacy” according to a report released Thursday by the Center for Green Schools and ASHRAE.

Zaatari said she was particularly concerned that officials in New Jersey are buying thousands of devices made by another company that says they emit ozone, which can exacerbate asthma and harm developing lungs, according to decades of research.

“We’re going to live in a world where the air quality in schools is worse after the pandemic, after all of this money,” Zaatari said. “It’s really sickening.”

The sales race is fueled by roughly $193 billion in federal funds allocated to schools for teacher pay and safety upgrades — a giant fund that can be used to buy air cleaners. And Democrats are pushing for $100 billion more that could also be spent on air cleaners.

In April, Global Plasma Solutions said further tests show its devices inactivate covid in the air and on surfaces in larger chambers. The company studies still use about twice the level of ions than its leaders have publicly said the devices can deliver, KHN found.

There is virtually no federal oversight or enforcement of safe air-cleaning technology. Only California bans air cleaners that emit a certain amount of ozone.

U.S. Rep. Robert “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.), chair of the education and labor committee, said the federal government typically is not involved in local decisions of what products to buy, although he hopes for more federal guidance.

In the meantime, “these school systems are dealing with contractors providing all kinds of services,” he said, “so you just have to trust them to get the best expert advice on what to do.”

These go-between contractors — and the air cleaner companies themselves — have a stake in the sales. While their names might appear in school board records, their role in selling the device or commission from the deal is seldom made public, KHN found.

A LinkedIn job ad with the logo for one air purifier company, ActivePure Technology, which employs former Trump adviser Dr. Deborah Birx as its chief medical and science adviser, recruited salespeople this way: “Make Tons of Money with this COVID-killing Technology!!” The commission, the post said, is up to $900 per device.

“We have reps [who] made over 6-figures in 1 month selling to 1 school district,” the ad says. “This could be the biggest opportunity you have seen!”

‘A Tiny Bit of Ozone’

Schools in New Jersey have a particularly easy time buying air cleaners called Odorox: A state education agency lists them on their group-purchasing commodity list, with a large unit selling for more than $5,100. Originally used in home restoration and mold remediation, the devices have become popular in New Jersey schools as the company says its products can inactivate covid.

In Newark, administrators welcomed students back to class last month with more than 3,200 Odorox units, purchased with $7.5 million in federal funds, said Steven Morlino, executive director of Facilities Management for Newark Public Schools.

“I think parents feel pretty comfortable that their children are going to a safe environment,” he said. “And so did the staff.”

Environmental health and air-quality experts, though, are alarmed by the district’s plan.

The Pyure company’s Odorox devices are on California air-quality regulators’ list of “potentially hazardous ozone generators sold as air purifiers” and cannot be sold in the state.

The company’s own research shows that its Boss XL3 device pumps out as much as 77 parts per billion of ozone, a level that exceeds limits set by California lawmakers for the sale of indoor air cleaners and the EPA standard for ground-level ozone — a limit set to protect children from the well-documented harm of ozone to developing lungs.

That level exceeds the industry’s self-imposed limit by more than 10 times and is “unacceptable,” according to William Bahnfleth, an architectural engineering professor at Penn State who studies indoor air quality and leads the ASHRAE Epidemic Task Force.

Jean-Francois “JF” Huc, CEO of the Pyure company, pointed out that the company’s study was done in a space smaller than they would recommend for such a powerful Odorox device. He cautioned that it was done that way to prove that home-restoration workers could be in the room with the device without violating work-safety rules.

“We provide very stringent operating guidelines around the size of room that our different devices should be put in,” he said. But school staffers are often not warned about the problems they could face if a too-powerful device is used in a too-small room, he acknowledged.

You can’t see or smell ozone, but lungs treat it like a “foreign invader,” said Michael Jerrett, who has studied its health effects as director of the UCLA Center for Occupational and Environmental Health.

Lung cells mount an immune-like response, which can trigger asthma complications and divert energy from normal lung function, he said. Chronic exposure has been linked to more emergency room visits and can even cause premature death. Once harmed, Jerrett said, children’s lungs may not regain full function.

“Ozone is a very serious public health problem,” Jerrett said.

Newark has some of the highest childhood asthma rates in the state, affecting 1 in 4 kids. Scholars have linked outdoor ozone levels in Newark to elevated childhood ER visits and asthma is the leading cause of school absenteeism there.

Adding ozone into the classroom is “just nightmarish,” Siegel, of the University of Toronto, said.

Morlino said the district plans to monitor ozone levels in each classroom, based on the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration level for working adults, which is 100 parts per billion.

“In our research of the product,” he said, “we’ve determined it’s within the guidelines the federal government produces.”

While legal for healthy working adults, the work-safety standard should not apply to developing children, said Michael Kleinman, an air-quality researcher at the UC Irvine School of Medicine. “It’s not a good device to be using in the presence of children,” he said.

But the devices are going into schools throughout the state that will not be monitoring ozone levels, acknowledged Dave Matisoff, owner of Bio-Shine, a New Jersey-based distributor of Odorox. He said the main safeguard is informing schools about the appropriate-size room each device should be deployed to, a factor in ozone concentration.

Huc, the CEO, said his team has measured levels of ozone that are higher outdoors in Newark than inside — with his company’s units running.

“There is a tiny bit of ozone that is introduced, but it’s very, very low,” he said. “And you get the benefit of the antimicrobial effect, you get the benefit of reduction of pathogens, which we’ve demonstrated in a number of studies, and you get the reduction of VOC [volatile organic compounds].”

Meanwhile, despite expert concerns, the devices continue to pop up in classrooms and school nurses’ offices across the state, said Allen Barkkume, an industrial hygienist for the New Jersey teachers union.

He doesn’t blame schools for buying them, as they’re a lot less expensive than overhauling ventilation systems. Teachers often push for the devices in their classrooms, he said, as they see them in the nurses’ offices and think it’ll keep them safe. And superintendents are not well-versed in air quality’s complex scientific concepts.

“Nothing sounds better than something that’s cheap, quiet, small and easy to find, and we can stick them in every classroom,” Barkkume said.

Tested in Shoebox, Sold for Classrooms

While New York officials are “not permitting” the installation of ionization devices due to “potential negative health effects,” schools across the state of New Jersey are installing ionizing devices.

Ten miles away from Newark in Montclair, New Jersey, parents have been raising hell over the new Global Plasma Solutions’ ionizing devices in their children’s classrooms. The company website promises a product that emits ions like those “created with energy from rushing water, crashing waves and even sunlight.”

The devices emit positive and negative ions that are meant to help particles clump together, making them easier to filter out. The company says the ions can also reduce the viral particles that cause covid-19.

But Justin Klabin, a building developer with a background in indoor air quality and two sons in the district, was not convinced.

He spent hours compiling scientific evidence. He created painstaking YouTube videos picking apart the ionizers’ viability and helped organize a petition signed by dozens of parents warning the school board against the installation.

Even so, the district spent $635,900 on installing ionizers, which would go in classrooms serving more than 6,000 kids. The devices are often installed in ducts, an important consideration, the company founder Charles Waddell said, because the ions that are emitted lose their power after 60 seconds.

But the company’s shoebox study and inflated ion blast numbers that helped sell the product last year leave a potential customer with little sense of how the device would perform in a classroom, Zaatari said.

“It’s a high cost for nothing,” Zaatari said. The company has sued her and another air-quality consultant for criticizing their devices. Of the pending case, Zaatari said it is a David-versus-Goliath situation, but she will not be deterred from speaking on behalf of children.

“Size of the [test] chamber has proved not to play a role in efficacy results but rather ion density,” GPS spokesperson Kevin Boyle said in an email. The company notes by its covid-inactivating test results that they “may include … higher-than-average ion concentrations.”

He also said the company is proud to meet the ASHRAE “zero ozone” certification.

Glenn Morrison, a professor of environmental science and engineering at the University of North Carolina, reviewed a March GPS study on a device combating the covid virus in the air. The device appears to reduce virus concentrations, he said in an email, but noted it would not be very effective under normal building conditions, outside a test chamber. “A cheap portable HEPA filter would work many times better and have fewer side effects (possibly ozone or other unwanted chemistry),” he wrote.

Other parents joined Klabin’s campaign, including Melanie Robbins, the mom of a kindergartner and a child in pre-K. Armed with her background in nonprofit advocacy, she reached out to experts. She and other parents spoke at local government meetings about their concerns.

In April, the superintendent told parents the school would turn off the devices, but parents say they haven’t turned them all off.

“As far as I understand, the district has relied only on information from GPS, the manufacturer,” Robbins said during a Montclair Board of Education meeting via Zoom on April 19. “This is like only listening to advice from Philip Morris as to whether smoking is safe or not.”

Dan Daniello, of D&B Building Solutions, an HVAC contracting company, defended GPS products during the meeting. He said they are even in the White House, a selling point the company has made repeatedly.

The catch: A GPS contractor installed its ionization technology in the East Wing of the White House after it was purchased in 2018 — before covid emerged, according to GPS’ Boyle. But the company was still using the White House logo as a marketing image on its website when KHN asked the White House about the advertising in April. It was taken down shortly thereafter.

Boyle said GPS was “recently informed that the White House logo may not be used for marketing purposes, and promptly complied.”

The Montclair school district did not respond to requests for comment.

“I want to bang my head against the wall, it’s so black-and-white,” Robbins said. “Admit this is a poor purchase, the district got played.”

Selling ‘the Big Kahuna’

Academic air-quality experts agree on what’s best for schools: More outside air pumped into classes, MERV 13 filters in heating systems and portable HEPA filters. The solution is time-tested and effective, they say. Yet as common commodities, like a pair of khaki pants, these items are not widely flogged by a sales force chasing big commissions.

After covid hit, Tony Barron said the companies pitched air purifying technology nonstop to the Kansas district where he worked as a facility manager last fall.

Pressure came from inside the school as well. Teachers sent links for air cleaners they saw on the news. His superintendent had him meet with a friend who sold ionization products. He got constant calls, mail and email from mechanical engineering companies.

The hundreds of phone calls from air cleaner pitches were overwhelming, said Chris Crockett, director of facilities for Turner USD 202 in Kansas City, Kansas. While he wanted to trust the contractors he had worked with, he tested four products before deciding to spend several hundred thousands of dollars.

“Custodial supply companies see the writing on the wall, that there’s a lot of money out there,” he said. “And then a lot of money is going to be spent on HVAC systems.”

ActivePure says on its website that its air purifiers are in hundreds of schools. In a press release, the company said they were “sold through a nationwide network of several hundred franchises, 5,000 general contractors/HVAC specialists and thousands of individual distributors.”

Enviro Technology Pros, founded in January, is one company pitching ActivePure to HVAC contractors. In a YouTube video, the founders said contractors can make $950 for each air-cleaning device sold, and some dealers can make up to $30,000 a month. Citing the bounty of the billions in federal relief, another video touted ready-made campaigns to target school principals directly.

After KHN asked ActivePure for comment, the Enviro Technology Pros YouTube videos about ActivePure were no longer accessible publicly.

ActivePure did not respond to requests for comment but has said its devices are effective and one is validated by the Food and Drug Administration.

An Enviro Technology Pros founder, Rod Norman, told KHN the company was asked to take the posts down by Vollara, a company related to ActivePure. He called sales to schools “the big kahuna.”

Shortly after he spoke with KHN, the website for his own company was taken down.

In an Instagram post that also disappeared, the company had asked: “4000 classrooms protected why not your kids?”

Shoshana Dubnow contributed to this report.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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This story can be republished for free (details).

As Schools Spend Millions on Air Purifiers, Experts Warn of Overblown Claims and Harm to Children published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/a-once-restrained-fauci-unleashes-on-white-house-coronavirusapproach-days-before-election-cnn/

A once restrained Fauci unleashes on White House coronavirus approach days before election - CNN

For months as Trump undercut his own medical experts, sidelined scientists and refused to take basic steps to control the virus while mocking former Vice President Joe Biden for wearing a mask, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist held his tongue and took the President’s attacks in stride as he continued to plead with the American people to socially distance and wear masks.

But Fauci’s restraint appeared to have evaporated in a Washington Post interview that was published Saturday night, in which he called out the White House for allowing its strategy for fighting the virus to be shaped in part by a neuroradiologist with no training in the field of infectious disease and said he appreciated chief of staff Mark Meadows’ honesty when he admitted to CNN’s Jake Tapper during a recent interview that the administration has given up controlling the spread of the virus.

At a time when Trump is downplaying the rising cases in the vast majority of states, dangerously holding huge rallies with few masks and no social distancing, and lodging the false and outlandish claim that doctors are exaggerating the number of Covid deaths for profit, Fauci told the Post that the nation is “in for a whole lot of hurt.”

“All the stars are aligned in the wrong place” as the country heads indoors in colder weather, Fauci told the newspaper in an interview late Friday — a day when the US set a global record for the most daily cases and the nation surpassed 229,000 deaths. “You could not possibly be positioned more poorly.”

View Trump and Biden head-to-head polling

Fauci, who is widely trusted by the public after a lengthy career serving under six presidents from both parties, said Meadows was being candid in the interview last weekend where he told Tapper it was not possible to control the virus. Fauci has adopted the polar opposite strategy by repeatedly telling Americans that they can change the trajectory of the virus and save lives if they adhere to mask use, social distancing protocols and other safety precautions.

“I tip my hat to him for admitting the strategy,” Fauci told the Post of Meadows’ admission to Tapper. “He is straightforward in telling you what’s on his mind. I commend him for that.”

Fauci did not mince words describing what he views as the untoward influence of Dr. Scott Atlas, a controversial figure who has become the President’s de facto Covid adviser. Atlas, a White House coronavirus task force member who took on more prominence as Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx receded from public view at the White House, has misrepresented the effectiveness of masks and discouraged testing of asymptomatic people, even though most medical experts believe it is a critical element of stopping the spread of the virus.

“I have real problems with that guy,” the Washington Post quoted Fauci as saying about Atlas. “He’s a smart guy who’s talking about things that I believe he doesn’t have any real insight or knowledge or experience in. He keeps talking about things that when you dissect it out and parse it out, it doesn’t make any sense.”

Fauci and Birx, the coronavirus response coordinator for the White House task force, were fixtures at the White House in the early days of the pandemic, often appearing alongside Trump at White House briefings to detail the administration’s efforts to fight the virus. But Trump grew increasingly frustrated with Fauci’s media appearances and what he viewed as the doctor’s negative tone about the trajectory of the virus. (Fauci told the Washington Post he was choosing his words carefully so as not to be prohibited from doing future interviews.)

During a call with campaign staff in October, Trump referred to Fauci and other health officials as “idiots” and said Americans were tired of hearing about the pandemic, according to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Kevin Liptak. Birx, who has also expressed concerns about Atlas to her confidantes, has taken her expertise and influence out on the road, meeting with state and local officials to try to help shape their strategies for fighting the virus.

Atlas responded to Fauci Saturday night in a tweet comprised of a series of hashtags that accused him of engaging in politics and mocked Fauci for the ceremonial first pitch that he threw at the opening game of the Washington Nationals.

“#Insecurity #EmbarrassingHimself #Exposed #CantThrowABall #NoTimeForPolitics,” Atlas tweeted.

In a statement, White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere sharply criticized Fauci, claiming he was inappropriately playing politics a few days before Election Day.

“It’s unacceptable and breaking with all norms for Dr. Fauci, a senior member of the President’s Coronavirus Taskforce and someone who has praised President Trump’s actions throughout this pandemic, to choose three days before an election to play politics,” Deere said in the statement. “As a member of the Task Force, Dr. Fauci has a duty to express concerns or push for a change in strategy, but he’s not done that, instead choosing to criticize the President in the media and make his political leanings known by praising the President’s opponent— exactly what the American people have come to expect from The Swamp.”

But it was Trump’s campaign that tried to play politics with Fauci when it featured him in a campaign ad without his consent and took his words out of context.

Deere appeared to be referring to the contrast that Fauci drew in the interview between the Trump and Biden campaign’s differing approaches to the pandemic. Biden’s campaign, he was quoted as saying, “is taking it seriously from a public health perspective,” while the Trump campaign is viewing the virus through the lens of “the economy and reopening the country.”

Campaigns clash over Covid-19

At the end of one of the worst weeks for the US in daily coronavirus case counts, the Trump and Biden campaigns continued to clash over the President’s handling of Covid-19 on the trail Saturday as Biden campaigned in Michigan and Trump held four rallies in Pennsylvania.

Trump once suggested that the virus had not been a serious problem for himself, first lady Melania Trump or his teenage son Barron, glossing over the fact that the first family receives the highest caliber of medical care in the country and had access to experimental treatments that are not available to most Americans.

Failing to acknowledge the grave risks of the virus to older Americans and those with pre-existing conditions, Trump falsely claimed Saturday that “because of our relentless efforts, the recovery rate right now on Covid, or China virus, or the China plague, is 99.7%,” using a racist term to describe the virus.

Not only is there not enough data yet to understand the long-term consequences on patients who have contracted the disease, but about 2.5% of people in the US who tested positive for Covid-19 have died from it, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Trump, who pledged to “terminate” the virus Saturday with “science, medicine and groundbreaking therapies,” was also critical of Biden’s relentless focus on Covid-19 in the closing days of the campaign.

“All he does is talk about Covid, Covid,” Trump said of Biden. “He has nothing else to talk about. … We agree it’s serious and we’ve done an incredible job. And at some point they are going to recognize that.”

Both Biden and former President Barack Obama, who campaigned with Biden in Michigan on Saturday, issued a sharp rebuke to Trump for his false claim Friday that US doctors are profiteering off of Covid patients. Obama seemed incredulous that the attack was part of the President’s closing argument and framed it as evidence of Trump’s lack of character.

“He’s jealous of Covid’s media coverage and now he’s accusing doctors of profiting off this pandemic — think about that,” Obama said. “He cannot fathom, he does not understand the notion that somebody would risk their life to save others without trying to make a buck.”

Obama argued that if Trump had been focused on halting the spread of Covid-19 from the beginning of this year, “cases wouldn’t be reaching new record highs” and noted that some of the areas where the President has held rallies have seen spikes in cases. He mocked Trump’s “obsession” with crowd size in the midst of a pandemic.

“You know when a country is going through a pandemic, that’s not what you’re supposed to be worrying about,” Obama said. “And that’s the difference between Joe Biden and Trump right there. Trump cares about feeding his ego. Joe cares about keeping you and your family safe. And he’s less interested in feeding his ego with having big crowds than he is making sure he’s not going around making more and more people sick. That’s what you should expect from a president.”

[jasmineholiday]

On April 10, President Donald Trump gave somber remarks on COVID-19, which by then had been spreading in the U.S. for months. He cited models that it would kill as many as 220,000 Americans ― although he predicted “substantially” below 100,000 ― and said “our people had to be extremely strong and brave to be able to put up with what they’ve put up with.”

Five months later, the nation is hurting even more. The U.S. surpassed 200,000 COVID-19 deaths on Tuesday ― losing enough people to fill nearly four gigantic football stadiums, or 131 times the number lost in the sinking of the Titanic. It’s indisputable that tens of thousands of further deaths lie ahead. A University of Washington model that almost exactly pinpointed when the country would cross the 200,000 mark now envisions nearly 400,000 deaths by Jan. 1.

Past predictions were wrong, not just because of the difficulty of modeling a novel virus’s spread but because they relied on an assumption that the U.S. and the administration would take the virus seriously.

As it turned out, that was too optimistic.

“It affects virtually nobody,” Trump said of the coronavirus on Monday, the day before the grim milestone of 200,000 American deaths from COVID-19.

The U.S. has already lost more people to the virus than any other country, including much larger nations like China and India. Various states have struggled at different periods as the coronavirus has spread from coast to coast; over the last week, Montana has reported more cases than in any other seven-day period since the pandemic began. Presently, about 800 Americans are lost to the disease daily, according to The New York Times and Reuters.

The mismanaged approach to the virus continues to hurt millions of people. Even those spared from infection are struggling because of its effect on the economy, the upheaval of the country’s health care and education systems and often painful individual efforts to keep themselves and their families safe.

Tuesday’s marker is a striking one because it’s a reminder of the promises that things would not be this way. Trump and his staff began promoting the number of around 200,000 total deaths, based on modeling chiefly promoted by Trump health adviser Dr. Deborah Birx, when they were still encouraging social distancing and business closures. Once they publicized that figure, they felt they could be guided not by health concerns but by the president’s desire to lift restrictions and shift responsibility away from himself to state leaders.

When Trump aides were citing those predictions, beginning in late March, medical experts warned that they were based on the assumption that the U.S. would successfully enforce tactics like mask-wearing and distancing for months to come ― a big factor to take for granted.

Privately, even some within the president’s team, like health officials Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Robert Redfield, warned that too many variables were at play to make an accurate prediction, The Washington Post reported. And analysts cited by the White House told the Post its procedure in forming estimates was rushed and overly predictive.

The president’s team was less interested in feedback than presenting a rosy story. A New York Times deep dive reported that Birx’s repeated private references to the models helped drive Trump’s public proclamations that the U.S. had the virus under control.

After Trump presented a figure he could describe as the extent of the crisis, he turned to his political priorities and instincts, even though he was aware of COVID-19’s seriousness, Bob Woodward’s recently released book showed. Trump began encouraging states to “liberate” citizens by ending lockdown policies even though they had not met guidelines set by his own administration and his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, sought to limit public appearances by Fauci, whom Trump aides saw as overly pessimistic.

The direct result was the politicization of a nonpartisan concern: protecting people from a little-known and highly contagious new disease.

With Trump leading the charge, Republicans challenged policies requiring people to wear masks in public as assaults on Americans’ liberties and questioned the importance of testing people so they could be made to isolate. Top officials began noticing an uptick in infections in early June, the Times reported, but by that point the damage was done. The forecasters Birx had relied on were updating predictions upwards and debates over coronavirus mitigation policies had activated tribal instincts among both conservatives and liberals, making it near-impossible to restore the shared sense of urgency ― and openness to public health measures ― that existed in March before the talk of estimated death tolls. In some areas, people even began attacking health officials.

Still mired in crisis and political discord, the U.S. has proved unable to either stem the spread of the virus or even process its effects thus far. Activists who lost family members to the virus are planning events to ensure the latest increases in numbers affected have a greater effect than simply making people’s eyes glaze over. Yet acknowledgement involves taking responsibility ― a big ask in current times.

Asked on Tuesday about the 200,000 milestone, White House press secretary Kayeligh McEnany responded that at least it wasn’t 2 million.

[opedguy]

Last Week War-Dead, Now the Virus

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), Sept. 9, 2020.--One-time Watergate-fame 77-year-old journalist Bob Woodward exposed his relationship to the Democrat Party, releasing segments of his new hit-job book, “Rage,” out-of-context excerpts, innuendo, gossip and unquestionably biased account of how 74-year-old Donald Trump handled the coornavirus AKA SARS CoV-2 or Covid-19 crisis.  Woodward presented the Democrat talking point for the 2020 presidential campaign, blaming Trump for the coronavirus epidemic and economic collapse in the United States.  Woodward’s latest work displays a shell of the person who once exposed a real scandal involved in a burglary ordered by President Richard M. Nixon of the Democratic National Committee [DNC] headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. in 1968.  Woodward and his 76-year-old Washington Post colleague Carl Bernstein did the nation a real service back then.     

        Now Woodward has swallowed the Cool-Aid of today’s unethical journalism, citing unnamed or anonymous sourcing to advance political agendas.  Today’s journalism has seen an erosion of the wall between politics and news, facts and opinion, where journalists now advance political agendas, not work, as once required, to get out the facts to the public.  Trump told Woodward, for instance, “This is deadly stuff,” referring to the coronavirus global pandemic.  “You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed,” Trump told Woodward.  “This is deadly stuff,” Trump said Feb. 7, telling the public on Twitter that he thought the virus would go away when “the weather starts to warm.” Woodward said nothing about Trump banning flights from China Jan 31, eventually banning flights from Europe March 12.  If that’s not considered decisive early intervention, then what is?    

         Woodward’s splicing of quotes from his interview with Trump to tweets made by Trump’s attempt to show something nefarious, some type of public deception.  On March 7, according to Woodward, Trump said, “No, I’m not concerned at all,” when asked if he was concerned about the spread of the virus.  Woodward quotes Trump’s March 9 tweet:  “So last years 37,000 Americans died from the common flu.  It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year.  Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go.  At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus with 22 deaths.  Think about that.” Woodward’s trying to point out how Trump downplayed the virus, letting it get far worse in the United States than it had to.  That’s the Democrats No. 1 talking point why voters should deny Trump another term. Woodward’s account is a perfect example that “hindsight is 20/20” and an egregious political hit.        

     Woodward shared more excerpts from “Rage,” quoting Trump downplaying the virus. “”I wanted to always play it down,” Trump said.  “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”  Woodward views that as proof Trump lied to the public, when, he was giving the best evidence available at the time.  Woodward quotes Trump on March 9 but he says nothing about the World Health Organization [WHO] saying Jan. 14 that there was no evidence of “human-t-human” transmission in Wuhan, China, referring to the virus spreading.  Woodward mentions nothing about the guidance the U.S. received on Covid-19 from WHO.  When Woodward interviewed Trump on March 19, it was only eight days after WHO declared a global pandemic March 11.  Trump acknowledged March 19 that young people were also susceptible to the virus.  “Now it’s turning out, it’s not just old people.”      

       Woodward said Trump was told by National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien that the coronavirus would be the “biggest national security threat” of his presidency May 5.  Asked if he recalled O’Brien’s warning, Trump said, “No, I don’t.”  I’m sure if he said it—you know, I’m sure he said.  Nice guy,” Woodward quoted, suggesting that Trump listened to O’Brien on matters related to the virus.  Woodward knows that Trump had a Coronavirus Task Force headed by Vice President Mike Pence, National Institutes of Health Infectious disease chief Dr. Anthony Fauci and State Department epidemiologist Dr. Debra Birx.  Woodward knows that O’Brien wouldn’t be in the loop when it came to managing the coronavirus epidemic because he wasn’t on the Task Fore.  Yet if you listen to Woodward’s spin, it puts Trump in the worst possible light, showing, for all to see, his political bias.      

       Woodward does expose the loveable liberal grandpa Fauci as a partisan hack.  Woodward said Fauci told him that Trump was unfocused when it came to meetings on the Coronvirus Task Force.  “His attention span sis like a minus number,” Fauci told Woodward.  “His sole purpose is to get reelected,” exposing for all to see why Trump replaced Fauci with Dr. Scott Atlas.  Fauci let his politics get in the way of his job on the Coronavirus Task Force.  Fauci and Birx were the ones that pressed Trump to shut down the economy from April to May, causing lasting damage to the U.S. economy.  Fauci welcomed numerous interviews given to the anti-Trump press to embarrass the president on numerous occasions.  Fauci pretends he’s just doing his job, when, in fact, he’s doing everything possible to prevent Trump’s reelection.  Woodward, too, showed he’s nothing more than a partisan hack.

 About the Author

 John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.  Reply  Reply All  Forward 

[rauthschild]

COVID-19 Infected Mail-In Ballots Warned Could Turn American Election Into Civil War

By: Sorcha Faal, 

An extremely concerning new Security Council (SC) report circulating in the Kremlin today discussing the grave warning just issued by United States Attorney General Barr that “highly organized violent operators are operating behind the veil of protests”, says the substance of this being true is evidenced in the shocking fact that aides working for socialist Democrat Party leader Hillary Clinton engineered a violent mob attack on Republican Party leader US Senator Rand Paul—though even more troubling about these “violent operators” is that they include socialist-globalist leader George Soros and his comrades that are pumping billions-of-dollars into an effort to turn the 3 November election into a an all mail-in voting scheme—a mail-in voting scheme making no sense, as top White House coronavirus expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has already declared that “there is no reason Americans can't vote in person in November”—a declaration supported by top White House coronavirus expert Dr. Deborah Birx, who says “in-person voting is as safe as visiting Starbucks”—but does make sense when noticing the top socialist Democrat Party operative who anonymously confessed to the New York Post how he had been submitting thousands of fraudulent mail-in ballots over the last several decades—though the greatest danger posed by mail-in ballots due to COVID-19 is the Lancet scientific study showing that this virus remains alive on paper surfaces and money from 3-hours to 4-days—thus making it insane as to how anyone in an America where “violent operators” are in play would even risk the likelihood that mail-in paper ballots will be weaponized with COVID-19 in order to sow even more fear and chaos—a grim fact known to this anonymous top socialist Democrat Party operative, who chillingly states:“ This is a real thing…And there is going to be a fucking war coming November 3rd over this stuff”—as well as by President Donald Trump, who a few hours ago issued a warning about puppet Biden and the socialist Democrats stating: “They will have taken over your cities…It’s a revolution…You understand that…It’s a revolution and the people of this country will not stand for that”—that was joined by President Trump further grimly warning the American people that “Biden is being controlled by people in dark shadows”. 

According to this report, since the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) issued their 25 July assessment warning that the political police forces of the Chinese Communist Party are preparing to send 500,000 of them into the United States upon socialist Democrat Party candidate Joe Biden declaring that he’s won the 3 November presidential election, troubling new reports are now emerging that thousands of Communist Chinese troops have begun amassing in the socialist nation of Canada near their border with the United States—Communist Chinese troops Joe Biden and his socialist Democrats have begun preparing their nation’s citizens to accept by them outlandishly claiming that “We are not safe in Trump’s America” because of “Trump Riots”.

These outlandish claims, however, this report notes, stand in sharp contrast to the fact that all of the violence occurring in America is only happening in socialist Democrat Party iron grip controlled cities and States—violence ignored by Joe Biden, his socialist Democrats and the leftist mainstream propaganda media establishment—but whose acknowledgement of now is best exampled in the article “Biden Awakens to the Threat of Urban Riots” that points out the glaring truthful fact: “With polls tightening, Biden and his media allies give up on denial and look for a way to blame Trump”.

Along with absurdly blaming President Trump, this report details, socialist Democrat Party leader US Congressman Adam “Pencil Neck” Schiff is now even outrageously blaming Russia for these riots—blame without any proof whatsoever—and whose vile script for doing this to sway elections was put on full display before the 2018 Mid-Term Election when these socialist Democrat Party forces filed their joke indictment against the Russian company Concord Management for supposedly interfering in the 2016 Presidential Election—a joke indictment that allowed these socialist Democrats to win back control of the US House of Representatives—and afterwards saw these socialist Democrat forces having to dismiss the case against Concord Management because it was all based on lies—lies confirmed by INTERPOL, who dropped their investigation into Concord Management this week—but are lies still believed by many Americans, as shamefully best exampled in the article “The Russiagate Hoax Is Dead...But The Fake News Media Can't Admit It”.

This past week, this report concludes, the American leftist mainstream propaganda media establishment blared out stories saying such things like “the Russian navy conducted major war games near Alaska involving dozens of ships and aircraft, the biggest such drills in the area since Soviet times”—none of whom bothered to tell the truth that this military show of force ordered by President Putin wasn’t against the United States, rather it was a warning to Communist China that if they tried to interfere in the 3 November election on behalf of Joe Biden and his socialist Democrats, they’d be staring down the locked-and-loaded barrel of the largest nuclear armed power in the world—and during the fall of 1863, the darkest hour of the American Civil War, is also what Russia did when it sent powerful naval fleets to New York and San Francisco as a warning to Great Britain and France to stay out of this conflict—European powers who had amassed their military forces in Canada and Mexico to invade the United States---but instead of happening, saw this US-Russia alliance saving the Union—a true history extinguished from the minds of socialist brainwashed American school children—and explains why President Trump is now “demanding patriotic education in US schools”—because if these peoples knew true facts and reality, they’d send Joe Biden and his socialist Democrats back to the gates of Hell they came from.  

At the point of maximum war danger between Great Britain and the United States, the London satirical publication Punch published a vicious caricature of US President Abraham Lincoln and Russian Tsar Alexander II, demonizing the two friends as bloody oppressors.

From Punch, 24 October 1863.

[stephenmccull]

Birx Joins Air-Cleaning Industry Amid Land Grab for Billions in Federal Covid Relief

The former top White House coronavirus adviser under President Donald Trump, Dr. Deborah Birx, has joined an air-cleaning company that built its business, in part, on technology that is now banned in California due to health hazards.

The company is one of many in a footrace to capture some of the $193 billion in federal funding to schools.

Birx is now chief medical and science adviser of ActivePure Technology, a company that counts 50 million customers since its 1924 start as the Electrolux vacuum company and does nearly $500 million annually in sales. Its marketing includes photos of outer space, a nod to a 1990s breakthrough with technology to remove a gas from NASA spaceships. The company’s own studies show that, in its effort to create the “healthiest indoor environments in North America,” it leveraged something less impressive: the disinfecting power of ozone — a molecule considered hazardous and linked to the onset and worsening of asthma.

In an interview with KHN, CEO Joe Urso acknowledged that its air cleaners that emit ozone account for 5% of sales, even though its marketing repeatedly claims “no chemicals or ozone.”

Conflicts between the science and marketing claims of an air purification company are nothing new to academic air quality experts. They warn that the industry — which sells to dental offices, businesses and gyms — is laser-focused on school officials, who are desperate to convince parents and teachers their buildings are safe. Children can be particularly susceptible to the chemical exposure some of these devices potentially create, experts say.

“The concerns you have raised are legitimate” when it comes to other companies’ products, Birx said, noting that as a grandmother she shares concerns about health. But she added that she has full confidence in ActivePure after reviewing records for the Food and Drug Administration’s clearance of a company device.

Schools are getting an infusion of roughly $180 billion in federal money to spend on personal protective equipment, physical barriers, air-cleaning systems and other infrastructure improvements. Previously, they could have used $13 billion of CARES Act funding. Democrats are pushing for $100 billion more that could also be used for school improvements, including air cleaners.

Putting unregulated devices in classrooms is “a giant uncontrolled experiment,” said Jeffrey Siegel, a civil engineering professor at the University of Toronto and a member of its Building Engineering Research Group.

Researchers and the Environmental Protection Agency say the broader industry advertises products that alter molecules in the air to kill germs, without noting that the reactions can form other harmful substances, such as the carcinogen formaldehyde.

Marwa Zaatari, an indoor air quality consultant and a member of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers’ epidemic task force, said she has counted more than 125 schools or districts that have already bought air cleaner models the EPA has linked to “potentially harmful byproducts” such as ozone or formaldehyde. She estimated at least $60 million was spent.

Instead, air quality experts say, the best solutions come down to basics: adding more outdoor air, buying portable HEPA filters and installing MERV 13 filters within heating systems. But school boards are often lured by aggressive claims of 99.9% efficiency — based on a test of a filter inside a small cabinet and not a classroom. “Every dollar you use for this equipment is a dollar you remove from doing the right solution,” Zaatari said.

Urso, of ActivePure Technology, said “other companies that I think are making wrongful claims” have brought scrutiny to the industry. But he said his firm’s technology has steadily improved and now emits “gaseous hydrogen peroxide” and other molecules that seek out and destroy viruses, mold and bacteria. He described the technology as active — in contrast to the more passive technology of air filters. A company website says it makes the “safest, fastest and most powerful surface and air-purification technology available.”

Urso added, “I have a great technology that is truthful and it does what I say it does.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns specifically against technologies that release hydrogen peroxide that are “being heavily marketed.” The agency says the technology is “emerging” and “consumers are encouraged to exercise caution.”

During a Zoom interview, Birx deferred to ActivePure Medical’s president, Daniel Marsh, and Urso on the science. She focused instead on the need for products that will increase people’s confidence about going maskless indoors.

“Imagine decreasing the number of sick days of your workforce because your air is less contaminated,” Birx said. “There are uses of this technology that transcend the current pandemic.”

Birx was a controversial figure on Trump’s covid response team. She was criticized for standing by quietly as Trump suggested that people could ingest disinfectant to rid themselves of the virus. She has recently spoken out about her discomfort with such statements — while endorsing ActivePure Technology.

Birx said she was attracted to ActivePure because of its commitment to “hard science” in getting its Medical Guardian cleared by the FDA. The process required the company to prove the device was substantially equivalent to an existing device. Records the company submitted to the FDA describe the Medical Guardian as an “ion generator” and “photocatalytic oxidizer” that showed “a high efficacy against … a broad range of viable bioaerosol.”

Birx said she uses a hospital-grade HEPA filter in her home but noted that’s only because she wasn’t aware of the ActivePure technology when she bought it.

When ActivePure Technology, formerly known as Aerus, tells its story, it’s one of seamless progress. Yet its 2009 purchase of the air cleaner company EcoQuest saddled the company with two problematic technologies: one that intentionally generated ozone to clean the air and another that did so incidentally, studies from the subsidiary company show.

The ActivePure companies and subsidiaries made the best of it, though, marketing the technology’s purification powers on the basis of a Kansas State University study of how well the devices disinfected the surface of meat compared with chlorine, which is widely used by meatpackers to kill bacteria.

Meanwhile, California lawmakers were outlawing consumer use of air cleaners that emit more than 50 parts per billion of ozone. They got momentum to regulate the industry with a survey that showed that a small percentage of state residents who used such devices at home had children — considered particularly sensitive to ozone. According to the California legislation, ozone can “permanently damage lung tissue and reduce a person’s breathing ability.”

The CDC also reviewed the ActivePure technology in 2009. At the time, Birx, who served in the agency under three presidents, was directing its global AIDS response.

Agency scientists were evaluating the potential of air cleaners to help clear formaldehyde from Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers deployed after Hurricane Katrina. They knew the devices could potentially swap one hazard — ozone formed by some air cleaners — for the one they were trying to eliminate. So they tested and found that a device from ActiveTek — an Aerus subsidiary — with ActivePure technology emitted 116 parts per billion of ozone. The scientists deemed that level too high for cleaning the trailers.

Birx said the older ozone-emitting devices were first-generation devices. The newer ActivePure devices are third-generation and one is now validated by FDA clearance. That is not the same as FDA approval, which requires proof the device is safe and effective.

Urso said the company’s devices that emit ozone are mostly for commercial use. Although marketing for ActivePure says “no chemicals or ozone,” Urso acknowledged that it still sells a Pure & Clean Plus device that emits ozone and cannot be sold in California.

“It is very confusing,” Urso said, “and it’s confusing because we also match it with [the] ActivePure” logo. The company did not answer questions about five other devices listed for sale on its website, which says they can’t be sold in California.

While current ActivePure marketing also says the technology produces no byproducts, Urso said that reflects results from lab studies, not studies from the environment where they might be used. That includes hundreds of schools that have trusted their technology, the company’s website says. There, experts say, chemicals that could react with air cleaner technology include car exhaust, spray cleaners, paint and glue.

The company markets to preschools as well. Brent Stephens, an indoor air quality expert who leads the civil, architectural and environmental engineering department at the Illinois Institute of Technology, was asked by the director of his own children’s preschool about the Aerus Hydroxyl Blaster.

Aerus had sent the director a sample to test in her home. But Stephens advised against buying one for the preschool, saying that, while the claims of similar machines may sound good, the studies to back them up often were not.

“It’s wild out there,” he wrote in an email. “Consumers need to know how these things perform and if they are subject to unforeseen consequences like generating byproducts from use.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

Birx Joins Air-Cleaning Industry Amid Land Grab for Billions in Federal Covid Relief published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Birx Joins Air-Cleaning Industry Amid Land Grab for Billions in Federal Covid Relief

The former top White House coronavirus adviser under President Donald Trump, Dr. Deborah Birx, has joined an air-cleaning company that built its business, in part, on technology that is now banned in California due to health hazards.

This story also ran on NBC News. It can be republished for free.

The company is one of many in a footrace to capture some of the $193 billion in federal funding to schools.

Birx is now chief medical and science adviser of ActivePure Technology, a company that counts 50 million customers since its 1924 start as the Electrolux vacuum company and does nearly $500 million annually in sales. Its marketing includes photos of outer space, a nod to a 1990s breakthrough with technology to remove a gas from NASA spaceships. The company’s own studies show that, in its effort to create the “healthiest indoor environments in North America,” it leveraged something less impressive: the disinfecting power of ozone — a molecule considered hazardous and linked to the onset and worsening of asthma.

In an interview with KHN, CEO Joe Urso acknowledged that its air cleaners that emit ozone account for 5% of sales, even though its marketing repeatedly claims “no chemicals or ozone.”

Conflicts between the science and marketing claims of an air purification company are nothing new to academic air quality experts. They warn that the industry — which sells to dental offices, businesses and gyms — is laser-focused on school officials, who are desperate to convince parents and teachers their buildings are safe. Children can be particularly susceptible to the chemical exposure some of these devices potentially create, experts say.

“The concerns you have raised are legitimate” when it comes to other companies’ products, Birx said, noting that as a grandmother she shares concerns about health. But she added that she has full confidence in ActivePure after reviewing records for the Food and Drug Administration’s clearance of a company device.

Schools are getting an infusion of roughly $180 billion in federal money to spend on personal protective equipment, physical barriers, air-cleaning systems and other infrastructure improvements. Previously, they could have used $13 billion of CARES Act funding. Democrats are pushing for $100 billion more that could also be used for school improvements, including air cleaners.

Putting unregulated devices in classrooms is “a giant uncontrolled experiment,” said Jeffrey Siegel, a civil engineering professor at the University of Toronto and a member of its Building Engineering Research Group.

Researchers and the Environmental Protection Agency say the broader industry advertises products that alter molecules in the air to kill germs, without noting that the reactions can form other harmful substances, such as the carcinogen formaldehyde.

Marwa Zaatari, an indoor air quality consultant and a member of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers’ epidemic task force, said she has counted more than 125 schools or districts that have already bought air cleaner models the EPA has linked to “potentially harmful byproducts” such as ozone or formaldehyde. She estimated at least $60 million was spent.

Instead, air quality experts say, the best solutions come down to basics: adding more outdoor air, buying portable HEPA filters and installing MERV 13 filters within heating systems. But school boards are often lured by aggressive claims of 99.9% efficiency — based on a test of a filter inside a small cabinet and not a classroom. “Every dollar you use for this equipment is a dollar you remove from doing the right solution,” Zaatari said.

Urso, of ActivePure Technology, said “other companies that I think are making wrongful claims” have brought scrutiny to the industry. But he said his firm’s technology has steadily improved and now emits “gaseous hydrogen peroxide” and other molecules that seek out and destroy viruses, mold and bacteria. He described the technology as active — in contrast to the more passive technology of air filters. A company website says it makes the “safest, fastest and most powerful surface and air-purification technology available.”

Urso added, “I have a great technology that is truthful and it does what I say it does.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns specifically against technologies that release hydrogen peroxide that are “being heavily marketed.” The agency says the technology is “emerging” and “consumers are encouraged to exercise caution.”

During a Zoom interview, Birx deferred to ActivePure Medical’s president, Daniel Marsh, and Urso on the science. She focused instead on the need for products that will increase people’s confidence about going maskless indoors.

“Imagine decreasing the number of sick days of your workforce because your air is less contaminated,” Birx said. “There are uses of this technology that transcend the current pandemic.”

Birx was a controversial figure on Trump’s covid response team. She was criticized for standing by quietly as Trump suggested that people could ingest disinfectant to rid themselves of the virus. She has recently spoken out about her discomfort with such statements — while endorsing ActivePure Technology.

Birx said she was attracted to ActivePure because of its commitment to “hard science” in getting its Medical Guardian cleared by the FDA. The process required the company to prove the device was substantially equivalent to an existing device. Records the company submitted to the FDA describe the Medical Guardian as an “ion generator” and “photocatalytic oxidizer” that showed “a high efficacy against … a broad range of viable bioaerosol.”

Birx said she uses a hospital-grade HEPA filter in her home but noted that’s only because she wasn’t aware of the ActivePure technology when she bought it.

When ActivePure Technology, formerly known as Aerus, tells its story, it’s one of seamless progress. Yet its 2009 purchase of the air cleaner company EcoQuest saddled the company with two problematic technologies: one that intentionally generated ozone to clean the air and another that did so incidentally, studies from the subsidiary company show.

The ActivePure companies and subsidiaries made the best of it, though, marketing the technology’s purification powers on the basis of a Kansas State University study of how well the devices disinfected the surface of meat compared with chlorine, which is widely used by meatpackers to kill bacteria.

Meanwhile, California lawmakers were outlawing consumer use of air cleaners that emit more than 50 parts per billion of ozone. They got momentum to regulate the industry with a survey that showed that a small percentage of state residents who used such devices at home had children — considered particularly sensitive to ozone. According to the California legislation, ozone can “permanently damage lung tissue and reduce a person’s breathing ability.”

The CDC also reviewed the ActivePure technology in 2009. At the time, Birx, who served in the agency under three presidents, was directing its global AIDS response.

Agency scientists were evaluating the potential of air cleaners to help clear formaldehyde from Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers deployed after Hurricane Katrina. They knew the devices could potentially swap one hazard — ozone formed by some air cleaners — for the one they were trying to eliminate. So they tested and found that a device from ActiveTek — an Aerus subsidiary — with ActivePure technology emitted 116 parts per billion of ozone. The scientists deemed that level too high for cleaning the trailers.

Birx said the older ozone-emitting devices were first-generation devices. The newer ActivePure devices are third-generation and one is now validated by FDA clearance. That is not the same as FDA approval, which requires proof the device is safe and effective.

Urso said the company’s devices that emit ozone are mostly for commercial use. Although marketing for ActivePure says “no chemicals or ozone,” Urso acknowledged that it still sells a Pure & Clean Plus device that emits ozone and cannot be sold in California.

“It is very confusing,” Urso said, “and it’s confusing because we also match it with [the] ActivePure” logo. The company did not answer questions about five other devices listed for sale on its website, which says they can’t be sold in California.

While current ActivePure marketing also says the technology produces no byproducts, Urso said that reflects results from lab studies, not studies from the environment where they might be used. That includes hundreds of schools that have trusted their technology, the company’s website says. There, experts say, chemicals that could react with air cleaner technology include car exhaust, spray cleaners, paint and glue.

The company markets to preschools as well. Brent Stephens, an indoor air quality expert who leads the civil, architectural and environmental engineering department at the Illinois Institute of Technology, was asked by the director of his own children’s preschool about the Aerus Hydroxyl Blaster.

Aerus had sent the director a sample to test in her home. But Stephens advised against buying one for the preschool, saying that, while the claims of similar machines may sound good, the studies to back them up often were not.

“It’s wild out there,” he wrote in an email. “Consumers need to know how these things perform and if they are subject to unforeseen consequences like generating byproducts from use.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

Birx Joins Air-Cleaning Industry Amid Land Grab for Billions in Federal Covid Relief published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/latest-world-news-for-september-28/

Latest world news for September 28

President Trump is sometimes getting information that is out of context or downright wrong, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday.

CNN’s Brian Stelter asked Fauci if he’s worried that Dr. Scott Atlas is sharing misleading information with the President. “Well yeah, I’m concerned that sometimes things are said that are really taken either out of context or actually incorrect,” Fauci answered.

Fauci said he did not see it as a matter of conflict. 

“If I have an issue with someone, I’ll try and sit down with them and let them know why I differ with them and see if we can come to some sort of resolution,” Fauci said. “So, I mean my differences with Dr. Atlas, I’m always willing to sit down and talk with him and see if we could resolve those differences.”

Stelter asked if there could be legitimate disagreements about issues such as masks.

“When it comes to a mask…I can just tell you how I feel. And what I feel is not very much different from what has been expressed by Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC. Masks are critically important in preventing the transmission and acquisition of SARS coronavirus 2. The data are strong. There’s no doubt about that.”

More on this: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield is concerned that Atlas, a White House coronavirus task force member, is providing Trump with misleading information about Covid-19, a federal official told CNN.

NBC News reported Monday that Redfield was overheard during a phone call in public on a commercial airline to say, “Everything he says is false.” NBC News, which heard the comment, said Redfield acknowledged after the flight from Atlanta to Washington, D.C., that he was speaking about Dr. Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist who joined the White House coronavirus task force in August.

NBC said that Redfield, in a conversation with a colleague that took place on Friday, suggested Atlas is providing Trump with misleading data about the efficacy of masks, young people’s susceptibility to the coronavirus and herd immunity.

In a statement to CNN, a CDC spokesman did not deny the conversation took place.

In a statement sent Monday afternoon, the CDC acknowledged Redfield and Atlas have “different positions” on some issues: “The article quotes Dr. Redfield as saying “Everything he says is false” but it cannot supply the context for that statement since only one side of the private conversation being eavesdropped on was heard. Positions on three issues, the value of wearing a mask, youth COVID-19 infections, and where we are currently with herd immunity, are the positions that Dr. Redfield has different positions on than Dr. Atlas. The doctors agree on many other issues.”

A federal health official tells CNN, more broadly, “bottomline, the story is accurate.”

[paulbenedictblog]

%news%

New Post has been published on %http://paulbenedictsgeneralstore.com%

Cnn news What to know about coronavirus testing, including drive-thru clinics

Cnn news

As confirmed cases of coronavirus continue to climb in the U.S. and across the arena, questions concerning the virus abound, including how one can know whether or no longer you maintain COVID-19 or no longer and where and the scheme in which one can procure tested.

Not like rather about a ailments with definite indicators, fresh coronavirus, formally identified as COVID-19, has indicators that mimic a cool or flu, including fever and cough, nevertheless also encompass shortness of breath. Symptoms vary from gentle most incessantly to excessive, requiring hospitalization and serious care.

Some worldwide locations were extra aggressive than others to find out, esteem South Korea, which deployed tens of hundreds of exams early on in the outbreak, when when compared with the United States, which on the initiating simplest tested these with plod contacts.

The different of folks tested in the U.S. has grown since then, nevertheless experts declare the federal government might well well also simply aloof be finding out extra. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the Nationwide Institute of Allergy and Infectious Illness, known as the finding out diagram that was in put "a failing."

Here's what you would prefer to know about finding out:

Invent I desire a take a look at?

It depends upon.

No topic President Trump asserting final week that "any individual who wants a take a look at can procure a take a look at," officers declare that getting every person tested is a prolonged-term aim. Currently, finding out is puny and can simply aloof be for folk who in actuality need it, public health officers told ABC News.

As of March 13, the Centers for Illness Protect a watch on and Prevention (CDC) labs maintain tested some 3,900 specimens of the virus, while U.S. public health labs maintain tested over 12,000 specimens. Bigger than 81 public health labs are online in all 50 states and are conducting finding out, in step with the CDC, with finding out outcomes aloof pending.

Assuredly, the CDC says the resolution might well well also simply aloof be left up to your doctor.

"Clinicians might well well also simply aloof exercise their judgment to resolve if a affected person has indicators and indicators like minded with COVID-19 and whether or no longer the affected person might well well also simply aloof be tested," in step with the CDC.

Folks that must receive priority finding out encompass: hospitalized patients with indicators like minded with COVID-19; folks over 65 who picture indicators; these with underlying health prerequisites; and health personnel who had contact with a suspected or confirmed COVID-19 affected person, the CDC talked about in a March 8 liberate.

The CDC talked about clinical doctors might well well also simply aloof help their patients "to discontinuance residence and make contact with their healthcare provider by phone for steering about clinical administration."

"Patients who maintain excessive indicators, such as topic respiration, might well well also simply aloof look care straight. Older patients and folks who maintain underlying clinical prerequisites or are immunocompromised might well well also simply aloof contact their physician early in the route of even gentle illness," the CDC talked about.

Public health officers told ABC News that the frenzy for finding out has change into a distraction and likened it to frenzy-procuring of clinical masks, tying up treasured sources.

Why take a look at?

Many COVID-19 indicators are similar to the conventional cool and influenza, nevertheless simplest finding out can verify an an infection. That is comparatively about a, shall we declare, from China, which for a timeframe incorporated clinical diagnoses in its depend as well to lab-confirmed exams. Scientists told ABC News that changing that methodology might well well also complicate tracking the illness.

Public health officers told ABC News that finding out is needed basically to video display the unfold of illness and be definite appropriate treatment and isolation for these contaminated, namely since COVID-19 is an influenza-esteem illness.

How does it work?

On Friday, the White Dwelling announced a brand new finding out protocol where prospective patients are directed to a screening net put of living. In the occasion that they've indicators, they'd be directed to a force-by scheme of finding out put of living, esteem these in Denver and in other places. Those exams might be despatched to labs for prognosis, talked about Dr. Debbie Birx, the White Dwelling coronavirus response coordinator.

Nevertheless public health officers told ABC News that it's no longer esteem taking a being pregnant take a look at or rather about a standard clinical exams. As a replacement, it's a long way extra esteem the take a look at for Ebola, they talked about, providing a situation of recordsdata as in opposition to a sure or no acknowledge.

Beneath basically the most unique protocol, in step with officers, take a look at administered by hospitals or clinics on the overall maintain:

-Two sets of Deepest Protective Equipment (PPE)

-20 to 25 minutes to positioned on and design shut off PPE.

-Transporting the sample to the lab -- a route of known as exact-time PCR (Polymerase Chain Response)

-A licensed epidemiologist confirms every obvious take a look at.

-Outcomes are entered into the diagram.

Any take a look at conducted on someone below quarantine requires worthy extra sources and protection, the officers told ABC News.

Beneath the brand new protocol, utilizing the force-by scheme of net sites, "the aim is for folk so that you just can force up and be swabbed without a ought to head away your vehicle," President Trump talked about on March 13. The take a look at uses a nasal swab, Birx talked about.

How prolonged will the outcomes design shut?

It depends upon. Outcomes had been taking about a days, nevertheless the brand new finding out route of would design shut 24 hours from originate to attain, Birx talked about.

Can I take a look at detrimental and later take a look at obvious?

In step with the CDC, sure.

Beneath the CDC-developed take a look at, a detrimental end result manner the virus was no longer detected in the affected person's sample, which is doubtless in the early stages of an infection.

"For COVID-19, a detrimental take a look at end result for a sample collected while a particular person has indicators doubtless manner that the COVID-19 virus will not be any longer causing their most unique illness," the CDC talked about.

What if I take a look at obvious?

As ABC News' chief clinical correspondent Dr. Jen Ashton and rather about a clinical examiners maintain identified, there is no treatment for this virus.

All clinical professionals can invent for patients diagnosed with COVID-19 is abet their physique wholesome to enable it to combat off the virus. Ventilators are worn to help in inhaling some cases and antibiotics are worn to combat off secondary infections a affected person might well well also simply earn.

Experts also declare this would well well also simply design shut a yr to 18 months to earn a vaccine on memoir of finding out it in exact-world environments and making sure it in actuality works is time-drinking.

What are the brand new exams coming?

Three labs, Everlywell, MicroGenDX and Nurx -- maintain made it doubtless to take a look at for COVID-19 upright from your lounge.

Dwelling kits enable patients to swab at residence, ship samples to a central lab and maintain outcomes internal days. Nonetheless, swabs are briefly provide, so many of these companies predict provide chain concerns and are actively making an are attempting for workarounds.

The complete at-residence finding out kits maintain to procure shipped to a lab for outcomes. The Everlywell and Nurx exams procure outcomes between 48 hours or "internal days" while MicroGenDX's COVID-19 Rapid PCR Take a look at has a 24-hour turnaround from time of receipt.

MicroGenDX will maintain the skill to route of over 8,000 samples per day origin April 1 or sooner.

Unique finding out labs such as Hologic, LabCorp and Abbott -- are working to scuttle up their existing finding out skill.

Hologic has FDA approval to produce outcomes for coronavirus exams in lower than three hours and to route of up to 1,150 exams in a 24-hour length.

LabCorp expects to carry out 10,000 exams daily and by the destroy of the month habits 20,000 per day.

Abbott is scaling up production at its U.S. manufacturing train to reach up to at least 1,000,000 exams per week by destroy of March. Their m2000 RealTime finding out diagram is for the time being available in hospitals and molecular laboratories and ships 150,000 laboratory exams straight.

What to know about Coronavirus:

How it started and the scheme in which one can protect your self: Coronavirus explained

What to invent in case you maintain indicators: Coronavirus indicators

Tracking the unfold in the US and Worldwide: Coronavirus design

Extra reporting from ABC News' Erin Schumaker and Christina Carrega

[plusorminuscongress]

New story in Politics from Time: Government Working on Guidelines to Assess Local Coronavirus Risk, Trump Says as He Vows to End Restrictions Quickly

(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said Thursday that federal officials are developing guidelines to rate counties by risk of virus spread, as he aims to begin to ease nationwide guidelines meant to stem the coronavirus outbreak.

In a letter to the nation’s governors, Trump said the new guidelines are meant to enable state and local leaders to make “decisions about maintaining, increasing, or relaxing social distancing and other measures they have put in place.” States and municipalities would still retain authority to set whatever restrictions deem necessary.

He has been trying for days to determine how to contain the economic fallout of the guidelines issued by his administration as well as local leaders to slow the tide of infections.

“Every day that we stay out it gets harder to bring it back very quickly,” Trump said during a Thursday press conference.

Last week Trump unveiled a 15-day program advising against large gatherings and calling for many Americans to remain at home. The guidelines, issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are voluntary, but many state and local leaders have issued mandatory restrictions in line with, or even tighter than, those issued by the CDC.

The White House was still developing the new guidelines and gathering the data to back them up, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coordinator for coronavirus response, told reporters Thurday.

“What we are trying to do is utilize a very laser-focused approach rather than an generic horizontal approach,” she said.

Birx acknowledged concerns that people could simply move between areas with different infection risks — and potentially different restrictions on movement and gathering amid the outbreak.

“Part of this will be the need to have highly responsible behavior between counties,” she said, saying the administration would provide additional guidance to states next week, once the new plan is finalized.

Two administration officials said it would not involve any restrictions on travel between hotspots and those with lower rates of infection.

Trump announced Thursday that he would visit Norfolk, Virginia, on Saturday to see off the USNS Comfort, the 1,000-bed hospital ship heading to assist New York in responding to the virus.

On a conference call with governors Thursday, Trump stressed the need to reopen businesses and to recognize regional differences in the virus’ impact.

“We all have to get smart,” Trump said on the call, audio of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “We have to open up our country, I’m sorry.”

Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, who has not ordered business closures or limits on social behavior, thanked Trump for recognizing that the virus has affected states differently and “one size does not fit all.”

“I appreciate you realizing that,” Reeves said.

The announcement of the forthcoming new guidelines comes days after Trump said he hoped to “reopen” the country by Easter.

“I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter,” he said Tuesday during a Fox News virtual town hall. Easter is just over two weeks away — Apr. 12.

“Wouldn’t it be great to have all of the churches full?” Trump said in a subsequent interview. “You’ll have packed churches all over our country.”

Health experts have made clear that unless Americans continue to dramatically limit social interaction — staying home from work and isolating themselves — the number of infections will overwhelm the health care system, as it has in parts of Italy, leading to many more deaths.

And scientists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, have cautioned against artificial timetables.

“And you’ve got to understand that you don’t make the timeline, the virus makes the timeline,” Fauci told CNN Wednesday. “So you’ve got to respond, in what you see happen.”

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Trump developed the Easter date as a goal to give people “hope.”

“I think, Easter, the president was giving people a lot of hope and basically telling us it won’t last forever, and we’ll see what happens over time,” she told reporters Thursday.

While the worst outbreaks are concentrated in certain parts of the country, most significantly in New York, experts warn that the highly infectious disease is certain to spread.

Trump said the rollout of additional testing will enable more nuanced recommendations that would allow some lesser-impacted parts of the country to regain a sense of normalcy sooner.

“Our expanded testing capabilities will quickly enable us to publish criteria, developed in close coordination with the Nation’s public health officials and scientists, to help classify counties with respect to continued risks posed by the virus,” Trump said.

Trump, appearing to allude to the forthcoming guidelines, promised that there would be new favorable “statistics” and “facts” coming from the federal government in the next two days.

“Some good statistics are coming out which will make your lives easier,” Trump said.

—

Suderman reported from Richmond, Va.

By Zeke Miller and Alan Suderman / AP on March 26, 2020 at 10:21PM