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New CDC Guidelines Say Masks Protect the Wearer, Too – The New York Times

  1. New CDC Guidelines Say Masks Protect the Wearer, Too  The New York Times
  2. Masks don’t just protect you from spreading Covid. They protect you from getting it, too, CDC says  Yahoo News
  3. ‘Two-way street’: CDC report says masks protect wearers and everyone else  NBC News
  4. CDC now says face masks protect the wearer — and the economy  MarketWatch
  5. CDC report says masks now protect wearer as well as the public | TheHill  The Hill
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News



Source: Google News, New CDC Guidelines Say Masks Protect the Wearer, Too – The New York Times

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1st Black winner in Mississippi history wins Miss USA crown – GMA

  1. 1st Black winner in Mississippi history wins Miss USA crown  GMA
  2. Miss USA 2020 is the first Black woman to represent Mississippi  CNN
  3. New Miss USA wins the hearts of Americans with statement on gun control  Yahoo Entertainment
  4. New Miss USA crowned during pandemic  FOX 4 Now
  5. 5 Things to Know About the New Miss USA Asya Branch  E! Online
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News



Source: Google News, 1st Black winner in Mississippi history wins Miss USA crown – GMA

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Steve Cohen wows Mets rival while looking like anti-Wilpon: Sherman – New York Post

  1. Steve Cohen wows Mets rival while looking like anti-Wilpon: Sherman  New York Post
  2. Steve Cohen Finally Owns the Mets. Will Fans Now Get What They Want?  The Ringer
  3. Steve Cohen and Mets make it clear they dare to be ‘iconic’  The Athletic
  4. Sandy Alderson: ‘Very likely’ Luis Rojas manages Mets in 2021  New York Post
  5. Luis Rojas “Very Likely” To Coach Mets In 2021  metsmerizedonline.com
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News



Source: Google News, Steve Cohen wows Mets rival while looking like anti-Wilpon: Sherman – New York Post

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Media 'calling' the election too early a mistake

 

President Donald J. Trump talks with reporters outside the South Portico entrance of the White House Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2020, prior to boarding Marine One en route to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, to begin his trip to North Carolina. (Official White House photo by Tia Dufour)

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Politics.]

By Andy Puzder
Real Clear Politics

Joe Biden has made it clear that he will do his best to “unify” the country following an election in which more than 71 million Americans – nearly half the electorate – voted for Donald Trump. It is an admirable goal. But any chance of that happening depends on the American people having confidence that the election outcome resulted from a fair and honest process. Though never perfect, our electoral system has generally instilled confidence for the past 231 years, which is why it has worked so well.

Under the contentious circumstances of this election, the traditional media’s decision to declare a victor before the official process had run its course has diminished the confidence of Trump voters in the announced result. Even if the declaration of a Biden victory is found to be accurate, the call was premature, and it will make the effort to unify our nation far more difficult.

Like millions of voters from both sides of the political aisle, I’m sensitive to the need for a definitive election outcome, untainted by irregularities or allegations of fraud. Even with razor-thin margins separating the two candidates in key states, we should be able to arrive at a final result that both sides can accept.

President Trump is contesting the reported results in those states where the race is close, and the conduct of election officials and the processes used appear suspicious. He is clearly within his rights to contest the results; his supporters generally want him to do so. Allowing the legal process to run its course is the only way to foster the unity Biden seeks.

Unity is much less likely, however, when the media simply declares a winner before the matter is resolved. In 2012, many Republicans felt disappointed when Mitt Romney lost to President Obama. Very few felt cheated. That will not be the case in 2020 if the current president’s supporters believe that the media preempted the official process so as to disparage or prevent a full investigation of the president’s claims.

The New York Times exacerbated this problem when it announced in an odd Election Day tweet, later withdrawn, that “the role of declaring the winner of a presidential election in the U.S. falls to the news media.” Of course, it does not. That responsibility falls on Congress. But that tweet told the president’s supporters all they needed to know about the media’s intent.

Voters who supported Trump have good reason to distrust the media. For months, traditional news outlets have been telling us that he would lose his bid for reelection in a landslide and that a “blue wave” would sweep the nation, turning control of Capitol Hill completely over to the Democrats.

Reporters – not just pundits, but ostensibly fair-minded “straight news” professionals – treated Biden’s decisive victory as a foregone conclusion, actively discouraging their readers and viewers from even considering the possibility of a second Trump term. The pollsters had “fixed” the flaws that plagued their results in 2016, we were told.

The election returns proved otherwise. Yet, these same outlets are now asking us to trust them as they declare that their favored candidate won the election.

The media bias against Republicans in general and Trump in particular is certainly not of recent vintage. The multi-year Russian collusion debacle exposed the lengths to which some media outlets were willing to go to tarnish his reputation – and the stunning failure on the part of reporters, pundits, “expert” commentators, elected officials, and media executives to acknowledge their bias and their errors – let alone apologize for their roles in spreading roundly debunked disinformation — casts the motivations of those outlets in a harsh light. How can the president’s supporters trust people who misled them for years and then refused to acknowledge fault when the truth was exposed?

With nearly half the electorate now wondering if voting even matters, the media’s rush to judgment has done a grave disservice to the goal of unifying our nation. If America is to have any hope of healing the wounds inflicted by years of intense and divisive partisanship, then the media would be well advised to leave it to the proper authorities to declare the outcome of this election – and stop attempting to foist a premature judgment on unwilling voters.

Andy Puzder was chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants following a career as an attorney. He was nominated by President Trump to serve as U.S. labor secretary. He is the author of “The Capitalist Comeback: The Trump Boom and the Left’s Plot to Stop It.”

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Politics.]

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The post Media ‘calling’ the election too early a mistake appeared first on WND.



Source: WND Politics, Media ‘calling’ the election too early a mistake

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More tech executives than tech critics on Biden’s transition team

November 10, 2020

By Nandita Bose and David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Far more executives from technology companies than outspoken tech critics were named to U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team on Tuesday, offering clues on who will decide on filling key roles and ultimately influence his administration’s thinking in coming years.

Tech companies have been trying to strengthen their relationship with a future Biden administration to ensure they have a voice in an onslaught of federal and state investigations of their business practices.

The Biden transition team released a list of agency review teams on Tuesday.

Amazon.com Inc’s Tom Sullivan, an executive on the public policy team, will be part of Biden’s group reviewing appointments to the Department of State. Similarly, Mark Schwartz from Amazon’s cloud computing arm, who is also a former Obama administration official, will be making decisions for the Office of Management and Budget.

Microsoft-owned LinkedIn’s senior director for North America policy, Nicole Isaac, is part of the team deciding appointments at the Department of Treasury.

Nicole Wong, a former deputy chief technology officer under the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama and a vice president and general counsel for Alphabet-owned Google found a spot in the review team for the National Security Council.

By contrast, tech critics such as Gene Kimmelman, senior adviser with Washington-based Public Knowledge, which focuses on areas such as antitrust policy, will be on the review team for the Department of Justice and Sarah Miller from the American Economic Liberties Project was chosen for the group weighing in on decisions about appointments at the Department of Treasury.

Both Kimmelman and Miller have pushed for higher antitrust scrutiny of Big Tech’s business practices.

Kimmelman declined comment. Miller did not respond to requests for comment.

Executives from relatively smaller tech companies such as AirBnB, Uber, Lyft, and Stripe were also appointed into these agency review groups.

Amazon declined comment. The other companies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

There will also be a team reviewing appointments to consumer watchdog the Federal Trade Commission, which includes Bill Baer, a former director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition and ex-head of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, who has recently called for tougher antitrust law.

Baer’s DOJ sued to stop two insurance company mergers on the same day in 2016.

The FTC team also includes Laura Moy, who teaches at Georgetown Law and is an expert on consumer privacy, data security and net neutrality. The lead in the team is Heather Hippsley, a three-decade veteran of the agency.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose, David Shepardson and Diane Bartz in Washington and Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Editing by Dan Grebler and Rosalba O’Brien)

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Mayo Clinic Warns It May Soon Be Limited In Caring For COVID Patients Amid Surging Rates – CBS Minnesota

  1. Mayo Clinic Warns It May Soon Be Limited In Caring For COVID Patients Amid Surging Rates  CBS Minnesota
  2. Mayo Clinic Health System says area hospitals are 100% full  WQOW TV News 18
  3. Nov 10 Mayo Clinic concerned about staffing as Covid hospitalizations spike in Rochester  Med City Beat
  4. Have you gotten your flu vaccine?  Mayo Clinic
  5. Another COVID-19 surge | WORLD News Group  WORLD News Group
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News



Source: Google News, Mayo Clinic Warns It May Soon Be Limited In Caring For COVID Patients Amid Surging Rates – CBS Minnesota

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With Illinois COVID-19 Cases Soaring, Officially Reported Information Is Increasingly Useless

With Illinois COVID-19 Cases Soaring, Officially Reported Information Is Increasingly Useless

Tyler Durden

Tue, 11/10/2020 – 18:45

Authored by Mark Glennon, Ted Dabrowski, and John Klingner via Wirepoints.org,

This is a lesson in how deficient the data and analyses are that health officials have provided to the public on COVID-19.

We tried to answer the most basic questions about where the pandemic is heading in Illinois in light of the torrent of new COVID cases: With case numbers exploding, won’t Illinois very quickly be overwhelmed with infections and herd immunity? How many deaths will result? Can hospitals handle the surge?

We looked for a model or projection that might answer at least some of those questions but found none, so we used official numbers from the State of Illinois and the Center for Disease Control to try to answer for ourselves.

Here is what published, official numbers imply: Seventy percent of Illinoisans – nearly 8.9 million people – will be infected with COVID by early December. Herd immunity, whether we like it or not, will therefore be reality by then.

Those conclusions are faulty and at odds with policy and prevailing understanding, even though they are based on official numbers. But how far off are they? We can’t say. It’s an illustration of why health officials must give us better numbers and provide models and projections consistent with those numbers.

Official numbers indeed seem to say, on the surface, that 70% percent of Illinoisans are headed for infection by early December. Here is the short version of the math behind the projection, which we did in more detail than shown here:

  • New “cases” – reported, actual infections – are now growing at a remarkable rate, as you can see from this chart:

  • At the current growth rate, Illinois would reach 890,000 confirmed cases around December 13.

  • But – and this is key – every confirmed case means there are 10 actual cases, which is a widely published number from the CDC. In fact, the the CDC recently increased that number to 11, but we used 10 to be conservative.

  • So, the cumulative number of Illinoisans infected will reach 8.9 million around December 13.

  • That 8.9 million is about 70% of Illinois’ population, which is widely seen as the point at which herd immunity is achieved. Many experts, however, put that percentage lower, some as low as 40%, which would mean Illinois would be well past herd immunity by early December.

“Herd immunity” is the term given to the level of infections at which the virus begins to recede because so much of the population has been infected and is therefore immune. Put simply, it’s the point at which the virus has no place to go so it begins to disappear. It’s why most viruses ultimately disappear.

So, if official numbers were correct and adequate, our projection would mean that the pandemic would start resolving itself in less than two months, even without a vaccine.

But that’s not right, for a number of reasons. To get it right, we would need more information. We would also need experts doing a more complex model that we probably couldn’t do – experts who aren’t politicized. And to get that, we would need the media to be pushing for it and asking the right questions.

Here are just a few reasons why the projection above is faulty.

  • First, that ratio of unreported cases to reported cases, which the CDC now says is 11, is not fixed. It will decline as more people get infected. In other words, we will hit a curve as higher immunity levels kick in, so our straight-line projection isn’t realistic. But we can find no tool or formula that adjusts that number over time. Building it into a projection would be better left to an expert.

  • Second, scientists don’t fully agree about immunity for those who were previously infected. Most seem to agree that a high degree of immunity lasts for at least four months after recovery, but that’s not certain.

  • Third, the effects from a new vaccine should be reflected in any model or projection. Those effects should begin kicking in by January. Experts have long anticipated the new vaccine announcement and there should already be projections that reflect its effects, but where are they?

We used “official” numbers even though we are well aware of other underlying questions about those numbers. Those questions include whether false positive numbers are being reported as cases, and whether tests are overly sensitive thereby recording harmless virus remnants as infections. Those issues, too, could change the projection.

What about the other key questions? With no good way to project future infection numbers, and with no good projection from health authorities, those other questions are unanswerable as well.

Specifically, how many will die because of the new surge? That’s what makes herd immunity controversial – the number of deaths required to get there. We can’t answer without a good projection on infections, and nobody has provided one. The number of deaths, however, almost certainly will be lower than you would think based on past fatality rates. That’s because infections are increasingly concentrated in younger people, who face virtually no fatality risk, and because treatment has improved significantly.

And what about hospital overload? Again, we can’t speculate without a good projection of infections. Anecdotally, we are also hearing from hospital personnel that hospital stays for COVID-19 are now shorter than before. Perhaps that, too, should be reflected in a meaningful projection.

Why hasn’t the public been provided with a credible projection or model?

In the case of Illinois, maybe it would be embarrassed to try. The last time Illinois officials talked about new models they turned out to be wrong before they were even released. And the IHME model from the University of Washington, which was earlier the most cited in the nation and among those Illinois used used, turned out to be consistently and badly wrong.

The bottom line is that if you want understand where the virus is heading in light of the new surge you will be frustrated. Neither state or federal officials have told you much or given you the numbers to figure it out for yourself.

And the media aren’t asking.

Special thanks to a particularly smart Wirepoints reader who has been tracking in detail all the numbers relevant to the projection discussed above. He sent his calculations, which we confirmed. He shares our frustration about lack of the critical information and hopes that both public health officials and the scientific community will start providing more meaningful numbers and analyses.



Source: Zero Hedge, With Illinois COVID-19 Cases Soaring, Officially Reported Information Is Increasingly Useless