They are amazing nerds, Ms. Roman, 38, said of her parents.
Sheryl Roberts, 65, understood the perils of the pandemic she had diabetes, asthma and heart disease, which could put her at higher risk. Her husband had chronic lung disease and a stent to open a blocked coronary artery.
We have been so careful, so very careful, and stayed away from people, Ms. Roberts said. Her husband began working from home in the spring when Washington State, New York and then other areas around the country were hit hard. Mr. Roberts occasionally made a supermarket run during senior hour; the couples only big, hot date in recent months, Ms. Roberts said, was to view wildflowers from their car.
Their younger daughter was diligent as well. But then she came back from work sneezing one day in mid-June and thought it was allergies. Soon she had a cough, fever, headaches and diarrhea, and lost her senses of taste and smell, telltale symptoms of the coronavirus.
She told me, I dont know whats going on, Mom, but I wore a mask, I wore gloves, I washed my hands, Ms. Roberts said. You do the right things, and still you get it.
Elaine Roberts, who tested positive for the coronavirus, did not become seriously ill. But for her parents, it would be much worse.
Mr. Roberts and his wife started sneezing, then coughing, just like their daughter, and developed fevers and severe body aches. Then he got awfully sick, awfully quickly, Sheryl Roberts recalled. He became confused on June 22. Alarmed, she tested his oxygen level. It was low, and she called her older daughter to take him to an emergency care center, the second visit in two days.
Before he left, his wife asked him to make a promise.
Before the pandemic, I was a parenting expert. It was a cushy gig. In 2019, I boarded 34 flights. I checked into nice hotels, put on makeup and fitted jewel-toned dresses, strode onto stages large and dinky, and tried to project authoritative calm. I told worried parents about the nine signs of tech overuse, like ditching sleep for screens. I advised them to write a family media contract and trust, but verify, their tweens doings online.
While I was on the road, my two daughters were enjoying modest, cute little doses of Peppa Pig and Roblox, in between happily attending school, preschool, after-school activities and play dates, safe in the care of their father, grandmother and our full-time nanny.
Now, like Socrates, I know better. I know that I know nothing.
Parenting expert? Please. I took only 12-week maternity leaves, and for the second baby, I had both the nannys help and the big girl in pre-K five days a week. I finished my parenting book about screen time on that maternity leave, which was kind of like writing up lab results before the experiment was finished.
My point being: I have never, ever, spent this much time with my children, or anyones children, as I have over the past four months during shelter-in-place orders. Nor have I contemplated working full time, while my husband also works full time, without sufficient child care, let alone while dealing with multiple weekly deadlines and 5 a.m. live radio hits, in an insanely stressful 24-hour news cycle where its actually, kind of, my job to doomscroll through Twitter (well, at least its job-adjacent). By the way, zombie fires are eating the Arctic and they are as terrifying as they sound.
Nuveen chief equity strategist Bob Doll on market reaction to the coronavirus, the next stimulus bill, inflation and the presidential election.
U.S. equity markets ralliedMonday, closing near the highs of the session, as President Trump discussed progress on a coronavirus vaccine and Republicans readied their $1 trillion stimulus bill.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 114points, or 0.43percent, while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite were higher by 0.74percent and 1.67percent, respectively.
Trump, speaking during the final hour of trading at theBioprocess Innovation Center at Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies, noted the swift progress being made inthe race for a coronavirus vaccine.
Earlier in the session, Moderna announced the beginning of a Phase 3 trial for its experimental COVID-19 vaccine. Novavax also rose in tandem.
Along with the progress on a vaccine,Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is set to unveil his $1 trillioncoronavirus relief proposal, which reduces the recently expired unemployment benefits, sends a $1,200 check to Americans making less than $75,000 a year and provides billions of dollars of aid to schools and universities. Congress has just one week before a planned recess to bridge the gap between the Republican plan and the $3 trillion package passed by House Democrats in May.
MAGA STOCKS' CORONAVIRUS SURGE SPURS DOTCOM BUBBLE FLASHBACKS
Investors shrugged off developments overnight which sawthe U.S. consulate in Chengdu, China, shuttered as Beijing retaliated for last weeks closing of its Houston consulate.
Escalating tensions between the U.S. and China and the U.S. dollar sliding to its lowest level since September 2018 helped propel gold prices to record highs.
Gold futures for July delivery climbed 1.78 percent to close at a record-high $1,931 per ouncewhile silver gained 7.3 percentto $24.476, a level last seen in August 2013.
Miners, including Barrick Gold Corp., Newmont Corp. and Pan American Silver Corp., benefited from surging gold and silver prices.
DraftKings was pressured lower after two MLB games were postponed after at least 13 members of theMiami Marlins organization were diagnosed with COVID-19.
Southwest Airlines Co. CEO Gary Kelly sent a letter to employees indicating the company has no plans to lay off or furlough workers, cut pay or reduce benefits through at least the end of 2020.
Elsewhere, Software giant SAP SE plans to spin-off Qualtrics less than two years after purchasing the software-survey provider for $8 billion.
Looking at earnings, Hasbro Inc. lost $33.9 million in the three months through June as supply-chain disruptions and store closing made it difficult for the toy maker to meet consumer demand.
Albertsons Companies Inc. reported quarterly revenue spiked 21 percent from a year ago to $22.75 billion, just shy of the $22.79 billion that was expected. Meanwhile, adjusted earnings of $1.35 a share topped the $1.32 consensus. The report was the grocers first since going public in June.
Looking at oil, West Texas Intermediate crude gained 31cents to $41.60a barrel.
On the data front, durable goods orders rose 7.3 percent month-over-month, outpacing the 7 percent increase that was expected. However, durable goods excluding transportation was up 3.3 percent MoM, missing the 3.6 percent gain that analysts were anticipating.
U.S. Treasurys were little changed with the yield on the 10-year note holding near 0.609 percent.
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In Europe, Germanys DAX was little changed while Britains FTSE and Frances CAC were off 0.31percent and 0.34 percent, respectively.
Asian markets finished mixed with Chinas Shanghai Composite adding 0.27 percent while Hong Kongs Hang Seng fell 0.41 percent and Japans Nikkei lost 0.16 percent.
Mistakes were made: the area around Bergamo was not declared a no-go area; family doctors were left on their own; patients were brought into hospitals where doctors and nurses were infected; tests for the general population were unavailable for too long.
But Italy coped.
Northern Italians showed resilience; Central and Southern Italians stayed at home, even though the epidemic was less visible there. Here and there, young crowds gathered dangerously, with the cover of night life, beach life, politics, football, even an air show in Turin. But on the whole, Italy stuck to the rules.
From early March to early May, the country found itself with its back to the wall; and thats a position where we Italians give our best. We can be disciplined, but somehow we dont like to admit it, as if it might damage our reputation.
Of course some things didnt work. We were the first in Europe to shut down the schools, and well be the last to reopen them (on Sept. 14, hopefully). For millions of Italians with young children and small apartments, working from home turned out to be a nightmare. And political squabbles, after a lull, restarted. The political parties sniff an early election, and are jockeying for position.
This slows down all decisions. Despite endless consultations, Mr. Conte has not made up his mind about the European Stability Mechanism, whose funds are earmarked for health expenditure. And, more important, he hasnt decided how to allocate Italys share of the E.U. Recovery Fund. This has complicated negotiations at the recent European Council in Brussels, and has given suspicious northern countries led by the Netherlands an excuse to stall. But in the end, predictably, an agreement was found.
Last Tuesday, after 90 hours of negotiation led by the European Commission, the 27 leaders of the European Union agreed to look forward. The 2021-2027 budget will be 1.8 trillion euros: of these, 750 billion will go to the post-Covid recovery fund, called Next Generation E.U. (390 billion will be in aid, 360 billion in loans). Italy one of two countries in Europe hardest hit by the pandemic, alongside Spain will be the main beneficiary. Each Italian citizen, on average, will receive 500 euros; each German and each Dutchman will shell out 840 and 930 euros respectively.
Europe may be hyper-regulated; but in an emergency, rules and regulations help to keep the situation under control. Slowly and painfully, the European Union is getting out of it. Some countries suffered more than others; but none was refused help, nor did any refuse it. As of July 20, 135,000 deaths had been reported among the 445,000,00 people living in the Union. The day before, for the first time since February, Lombardy where I live, and where it all started for Italy registered no coronavirus deaths. We are still worried, but we can finally breathe.
Beppe Severgnini, an editorial writer and editor at Corriere della Sera, writes regularly about Italian and European politics, society and culture.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.
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Pooled Testing Could Expand Testing Capacity Across States
Potential change in testing capacity
Potential change in testing capacity
Potential change in testing capacity
Americans are waiting longer to get their coronavirus test results, with major labs reporting turnaround times as long as two weeks. Testing capacity has failed to keep pace with increased demand, but public health researchers think they have a way to quickly and sharply increase capacity in many states.
Instead of running a test for each person, laboratories could pool together tests from small groups of people and analyze them all at once. Because 98.9 percent of people now taking tests in New York State dont have coronavirus, most of those pooled tests would come back negative. For the ones that come back positive, tests could be rerun one at a time with unused portions of the original samples, achieving the same results using fewer resources.
This can work, and it does work, said Chris Bilder, a statistician at the University of Nebraska who has written extensively on pooled testing. It has been used in many different ways and, as long as disease prevalence is low, you will receive some good benefits.
Mr. Bilder and his colleagues estimate that three states Connecticut, Maine and Vermont could quadruple their testing capacity with pooling. A fourth, New York, could get nearly to that level, adding 294 percent capacity. An additional seven states, mostly in the Northeast but also Hawaii and Michigan, could more than triple their capacity.
Government statisticians came up with this idea in the 1940s, when they needed a more efficient way to screen World War II draftees for syphilis. It has suddenly become especially relevant.
In a 1943 paper titled The Detection of Defective Members of Large Populations, the economist Robert Dorfman wrote that it could yield significant savings in effort and expense when a complete elimination of defective units is required.
Until now, pooled testing was typically reserved for public health laboratories that needed a cheap way to screen thousands of samples for sexually transmitted diseases, tests that require expensive chemicals to run. In recent weeks the Food and Drug Administration has allowed a major medical laboratory to pool coronavirus tests. Overseas, the technique is more popular. Because labs usually collect more sample than they need, they have enough material to do a second analysis if necessary without requiring the person to come back in.
Were really working to increase pooling, Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, told Fox News last week. She is one of several top health officials who are encouraging the approach. We know that can dramatically increase our throughput.
Quest Diagnostics has never pooled tests for any other diseases, but began doing so this month for coronavirus at its laboratories in Marlborough, Mass., and Chantilly, Va. The medical laboratory processes 130,000 tests each day, about one-sixth of all those taken in the United States. Its average wait times have risen from a few days in early June to a week by late July.
The lab now tests four results at once for specimens that come in from the Northeast, where coronavirus prevalence is low and where there is the greatest potential to increase capacity. If you put four specimens in one well, and they are all negative, youve just gotten four times the capacity, said James Davis, executive vice president at Quest Diagnostics.
Mr. Davis expects to free up more testing for harder-hit areas in the South and speed up the reporting of results in both regions.
Demand in the Southeast Florida, Georgia, South Carolina is very high and we cannot handle it locally, he said.
Poolings Benefit Depends on the States Positive Test Rate
Potential Increase
in Testing Capacity
States with low positive test rates have the ability to greatly expand their testing capacity. The increase is much smaller among states with higher test rates.
Poolings Benefit Depends on the States Positive Test Rate
Potential Increase
in Testing Capacity
States with low positive test rates have the ability to greatly expand their testing capacity. The increase is much smaller among states with higher test rates.
Potential Increase
in Testing Capacity
Poolings Benefit Depends on the States Positive Test Rate
States with low positive test rates have the ability to greatly expand their testing capacity. The increase is much smaller among states with higher test rates.
Quest has not explored pooling larger groups, which could create even larger capacity gains. Researchers worry that, as the size of a pool grows, the test may lose sensitivity and miss certain cases where patients have very low viral loads, typically very early or late in their infections. Researchers in Germany have pooled as many as 30 samples but note that borderline positive single samples might escape detection in large pools.
In the United States, the first approval for a pooled coronavirus test came in Nebraska. Researchers at the state public health lab were able to show the F.D.A. that it could run five tests at once without any diminution in accuracy. Nebraska used that pooled test for public health surveillance when cases were low there, but it had to switch back to individual testing when the virus became more widespread in groups it was testing, like meatpacking workers.
Dr. Steven Hinrichs, the chair of the department of pathology and microbiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, said his team started missing some weak positive results when it went higher than a five-test pool using a test developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We didnt want to miss anybody, Dr. Hinrichs said. By setting it at five, we didnt miss anybody. His team is now investigating whether pooled versions of other testing protocols could get larger and stay accurate.
A quarter of Arizonas coronavirus tests have recently come back positive. It would get only about a 10 percent increase in capacity with pooling, probably not enough to justify setting up a new system. Vermont has the lowest coronavirus positivity rate in the nation, and could increase its testing capacity by 326 percent using pooling, according to Mr. Bilders estimates.
In practice, those gains could help speed up testing in other places: Around a third of coronavirus tests are currently performed by two national lab companies, which often ship samples around the country to speed up processing time.
Pooled testing may be particularly useful for testing groups at lower risk of disease. Employers, college campuses or professional sports teams eager to identify infected individuals before an outbreak starts could use pooled testing to screen large numbers of people regularly, without using up testing supplies needed for people with symptoms or known exposure to the virus. Colby College in Maine, for example, has announced plans to test students on campus twice a week this fall.
The University of Nebraska Medical Center is hoping to use pooled testing to screen patients seeking elective surgeries at the hospital. A health clinic in Germany has already used the technique to screen its workers.
In most situations where pooled testing has been used over the years in screening blood for rare diseases, or soldiers for sexually transmitted diseases the goal has been to lower costs. That may not happen with pooled coronavirus tests: Quest, at least, plans to charge insurance companies the same price for its new pooled test as it would if each test were run individually. But because of shortages of testing materials and machines, pooling could achieve a different kind of savings, by allowing more people to get results from the same amount of testing supplies.
KALAMAZOO, MI -- A forensic lab in Kalamazoo can produce 2,000 coronavirus antibody tests in four hours, but they are waiting for interest from the community to get rolling.
Meanwhile, Kalamazoo County health officials do not see the immediate value in widespread antibody testing.
Antibody testing can identify if a person was exposed to a virus like COVID-19, but it is not considered a diagnostic test. This is because antibody testing is not yet advanced enough to determine the length or strength of immunity granted from antibodies, Kalamazoo County epidemiologist Mary Franks said.
Related: Latest on coronavirus antibodies and immunity: What we know and what we dont at this point
For that reason, Franks said she sees antibody testing for individuals as something to do out of curiosity rather than making behavioral decisions in relation to immunity from the virus.
At the local public health department, it doesnt inform our practice, she said. That data wont help inform our practice and make for evidence based decisions, so I see it as having kind of a low utility.
Forensic Fluids lab director Bridget Lorenz Lemberg believes that widespread antibody testing will give a fuller picture of who has been exposed to the coronavirus.
Forensic Fluids, a drug testing facility in Kalamazoo, can use its equipment and expertise to identify two antibodies that indicate when someone would be contagious and if they could be immune to the virus.
The lab reached out to local hospitals and first responders for volunteers to be tested but did not find any participants in the Kalamazoo area, Lorenz Lemberg said.
The lab was able to test a fire department in the Lansing area. One paramedics test results in particular piqued their interest, Lorenz Lemberg said.
The departments sole paramedic has likely been transporting coronavirus patients since January, Lorenz Lemberg said. Although the paramedic never showed symptoms of the virus and never had a positive result from a nasal swab, his antibodies showed that he had been exposed.
If the demand for antibody testing increased, Lorenz Lemberg said the lab could add a second shift and double the number of tests they could do in a day. Forensic Fluids boasts a turnaround time of 24 hours, she said.
We can give the state capacity to test people, she said. At four to six thousand [tests], if we had more than one shift, we could make a dent in the population of Kalamazoo County.
Both Franks and Kalamazoo County Medical Director William Nettleton agree that antibody testing will be informative for future studies on a larger population scale. But, they stress antibody testing cannot replace the diagnostic testing that happens through a nasal swab.
Decisions about going back to work, for example, should not hinge on an antibody test, Nettleton said.
Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine is developing antibody testing in collaboration with Kalamazoo-based company, IONTOX, according to a news release.
The medical schools associate dean for research, Greg Vanden Heuvel, said it appears around 5% of the population has been infected with the virus, including people who are asymptomatic, according to a WMed press release.
Researchers believe antibody testing could answer the question of whether there is a difference in the rate of transmission in a populous area like New York or Detroit and a more rural area like Southwest Michigan.
Theres a lot of talk about how different the response to being infected with the virus is, Vanden Heuvel said in a statement. Some people get really sick and wind up on a ventilator and other people never get sick at all. The question remains, how many people have been infected with this virus? That is up in the air.
The medical school worked with Bronson Methodist Hospital to obtain serum from patients who had been hospitalized with COVID-19. That serum was used to develop the antibody test.
As of Monday, July 27, Bronson Methodist Hospital was currently treating nine COVID-19 patients. In total, the downtown hospital reports 139 recovered patients.
The hospital currently has capacity to run several hundred tests per day, Bronson Healthcare communication specialist Carolyn Wyllie said. However, the demand has been much lower at an average of 20 tests per day being ordered.
From May to July, approximately 800 antibody test were administered at Bronson Methodist Hospital. Bronsons new downtown laboratory will perform antibody testing as well, according to a press release.
The state data hub has also started recording both diagnostic and serology test results. Serology tests include antibody tests and enzyme tests.
As of Sunday, July 26, Michigan recorded only 10.92% of the 1,901,252 tests recorded were serology tests.
More on MLive:
Masks can be powerful tool in keeping coronavirus low in Kalamazoo County, medical director says
Whitmer, Fauci among Michigans most-trusted sources on coronavirus, survey shows
Why youre seeing different numbers for Michigans daily coronavirus cases, and other tips for mining data
The world's biggest Covid-19 vaccine study got underway Monday with the first of 30,000 planned volunteers helping to test shots created by the U.S. government one of several candidates in the final stretch of the global vaccine race.
There's still no guarantee that the experimental vaccine, developed by the National Institutes of Health and Moderna, will really protect.
The needed proof: Volunteers won't know if they're getting the real shot or a dummy version. After two doses, scientists will closely track which group experiences more infections as they go about their daily routines, especially in areas where the virus still is spreading unchecked.
"Unfortunately for the United States of America, we have plenty of infections right now" to get that answer, NIH's Dr. Anthony Fauci recently told The Associated Press.
Several other vaccines made by China and by Britain's Oxford University earlier this month began smaller final-stage tests in Brazil and other hard-hit countries.
But the U.S. requires its own tests of any vaccine that might be used in the country and has set a high bar: Every month through fall, the government-funded Covid-19 Prevention Network will roll out a new study of a leading candidate each one with 30,000 newly recruited volunteers.
The massive studies aren't just to test if the shots work they're needed to check each potential vaccine's safety. And following the same study rules will let scientists eventually compare all the shots.
Next up in August, the final study of the Oxford shot begins, followed by plans to test a candidate from Johnson & Johnson in September and Novavax in October if all goes according to schedule. Pfizer plans its own 30,000-person study this summer.
That's a stunning number of people needed to roll up their sleeves for science. But in recent weeks, more than 150,000 Americans filled out an online registry signalling interest, said Dr. Larry Corey, a virologist with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute in Seattle, who helps oversee the study sites.
"These trials need to be multigenerational, they need to be multiethnic, they need to reflect the diversity of the United States population," Corey told a vaccine meeting last week. He stressed that it's especially important to ensure enough Black and Hispanic participants as those populations are hard-hit by COVID-19.
It normally takes years to create a new vaccine from scratch, but scientists are setting speed records this time around, spurred by the knowledge that vaccination is the world's best hope against the pandemic. The coronavirus wasn't even known to exist before late December, and vaccine makers sprang into action Jan. 10 when China shared the virus' genetic sequence.
Just 65 days later in March, the NIH-made vaccine was tested in people. The first recipient is encouraging others to volunteer now.
"We all feel so helpless right now. There's very little that we can do to combat this virus. And being able to participate in this trial has given me a sense of, that I'm doing something," Jennifer Haller of Seattle told the AP. "Be prepared for a lot of questions from your friends and family about how it's going, and a lot of thank-you's."
That first-stage study that included Haller and 44 others showed the shots revved up volunteers' immune systems in ways scientists expect will be protective, with some minor side effects such as a brief fever, chills and pain at the injection site. Early testing of other leading candidates have had similarly encouraging results.
If everything goes right with the final studies, it still will take months for the first data to trickle in from the Moderna test, followed by the Oxford one.
Governments around the world are trying to stockpile millions of doses of those leading candidates so if and when regulators approve one or more vaccines, immunizations can begin immediately. But the first available doses will be rationed, presumably reserved for people at highest risk from the virus.
"We're optimistic, cautiously optimistic" that the vaccine will work and that "toward the end of the year" there will be data to prove it, Dr. Stephen Hoge, president of Massachusetts-based Moderna, told a House subcommittee last week.
Until then, Haller, the volunteer vaccinated back in March, wears a mask in public and takes the same distancing precautions advised for everyone while hoping that one of the shots in the pipeline pans out.
"I don't know what the chances are that this is the exact right vaccine. But thank goodness that there are so many others out there battling this right now," she said.
TheWest Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) reports as of 10:00 a.m., on July 27,2020, there have been 263,669 total confirmatory laboratory results receivedfor COVID-19, with 5,999 total cases and 106 deaths.
DHHR hasconfirmed the deaths of a 60-year old female from Wyoming County, an 84-yearold female from Mineral County and a 93-year old female from Brooke County. The passing of these three West Virginiansis reported with great sadness and we extend our sympathies to their lovedones, said Bill J. Crouch, DHHR Cabinet Secretary.
In alignment with updated definitions fromthe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the dashboard includes probablecases which are individuals that have symptoms and either serologic (antibody)or epidemiologic (e.g., a link to a confirmed case) evidence of disease, but noconfirmatory test.
CASESPER COUNTY (Case confirmed by lab test/Probable case):Barbour (28/0), Berkeley (598/20), Boone (70/0), Braxton (8/0), Brooke(47/1), Cabell (278/9), Calhoun (6/0), Clay (17/0), Doddridge (2/0), Fayette(117/0), Gilmer (14/0), Grant (42/1), Greenbrier (82/0), Hampshire (62/0),Hancock (81/4), Hardy (50/1), Harrison (161/1), Jackson (153/0), Jefferson(279/5), Kanawha (683/13), Lewis (24/1), Lincoln (49/2), Logan (89/0), Marion(156/4), Marshall (98/2), Mason (41/0), McDowell (14/1), Mercer (87/0), Mineral(97/2), Mingo (99/2), Monongalia (814/16), Monroe (18/1), Morgan (24/1),Nicholas (23/1), Ohio (230/0), Pendleton (27/1), Pleasants (6/1), Pocahontas(39/1), Preston (98/22), Putnam (148/1), Raleigh (131/4), Randolph (202/4),Ritchie (3/0), Roane (14/0), Summers (6/0), Taylor (39/1), Tucker (8/0), Tyler(11/0), Upshur (34/2), Wayne (175/2), Webster (3/0), Wetzel (41/0), Wirt (6/0),Wood (214/10), Wyoming (16/0).
As case surveillance continues at thelocal health department level, it may reveal that those tested in a certaincounty may not be a resident of that county, or even the state as an individualin question may have crossed the state border to be tested.
Pleasenote that delays may be experienced with the reporting of information from thelocal health department to DHHR.
Please visit thedashboard at www.coronavirus.wv.gov for more detailed information.
Coronavirus vaccines: What looks promising and who will be the first to get one? Vallejo Times-Herald
Conspiracy theories about the origins of the coronavirus have swirled around discussion of the pandemic since it began. Such theories tend to proliferate during times of crisis, as people search for elusive explanations at a time of tremendous uncertainty. But theres also something else thats keeping them alive: Institutions in American life entrusted to inform the public have been amplifying them.
The latest example of this phenomenon was a controversial decision by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns one of Americas largest local television networks. The company planned to air a new interview with discredited researcher and conspiracy theorist Judy Mikovits, who suggests despite all evidence and research stating otherwise that one of the Trump administrations top scientists, Dr. Anthony Fauci, may have created the coronavirus.
Sinclair was fiercely criticized for its decision to give Mikovits a platform on an episode of America This Week initially set to air on its local stations this weekend, and after facing pushback from progressive watchdogs like Media Matters and influential journalists, the company announced that it would delay broadcasting the episode so it can bring together other viewpoints and provide additional context.
As things stand, Sinclair may still air a newly edited version of the episode, giving Mikovits a broadcast platform. (Sinclair did not respond to a request for comment.) Even if the company ultimately decides to kill the episode, serious damage has already been done. The episode was placed on the shows website, and the controversy alone has brought a new wave of attention to Mikovitss bizarre and widely debunked conspiracy theories about the virus, giving her fearmongering about Covid-19 a broader audience.
Ahead of the interview, Mikovits had struggled to find a platform for her fringe views; a viral video featuring an interview with her an extended trailer for a documentary called Plandemic was banned by YouTube, Facebook, and Vimeo in May. In the clip, she made false claims that coronavirus is activated by protective masks, that a coronavirus vaccine will kill millions, and that Fauci was involved in a plot by elites to use the pandemic to seize political power and profit off vaccines.
In her new interview with America This Week, Mikovits alleges that Fauci has, for the past decade, manufactured and shipped coronaviruses to Wuhan, China. Her attorney Larry Klayman, a conservative lawyer with his own history of peddling bizarre conspiracy theories, also appeared on the show and claimed the origins of the coronavirus were in the US. The host of the show, Eric Bolling, did not challenge or refute the evidence-free claims, despite scientists research suggesting Covid-19 jumped from an animal to humans. Throughout the segment, an onscreen graphic reads, DID DR. FAUCI CREATE COVID-19?
After his interview with Mikovits and Klayman, Bolling interviewed Fox News medical contributor Nicole Saphier, a radiologist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, in what appeared to be an attempt to balance the conspiracy theories of his earlier guests. Saphier said she did not believe that Fauci engineered the coronavirus, but she also said that there were several theories about its origins and endorsed the theory of Covid-19 possibly being man-made within a laboratory, a theory for which there is no evidence.
Sinclair is not the first media outlet to play a role in amplifying conspiracy theories. For example, in April, former Trump adviser Roger Stone shared the theory that philanthropist Bill Gates may have created the coronavirus and planned to use a vaccine to surveil the public with injected microchips on a New York radio show and the New York Post ran a story on it without questioning or refuting it.
The most influential political office in the land the presidency has lent credence to theories that the virus is part of a nefarious plan as well. President Donald Trump has said that he also believes a Chinese lab may have accidentally or deliberately released the virus. His own intelligence agencies, however, had ruled out theories of an intentional release of the virus and had not found evidence it was man-made.
But Sinclairs plan to broadcast conspiracy theories has experts uniquely worried. The broadcaster has vast national reach with its channels, and some may not realize their local news typically a domain for what is perceived as apolitical information is coming from a pro-Trump company with a questionable commitment to truth-telling and an agenda to spread right-wing ideas.
People tend to trust their local news stations, more than many other types of media, Liz Suhay, a scholar of political psychology at American University, told me. Misinformation spread via these outlets will persuade millions.
Experts say that, historically speaking, the public is more receptive to conspiracy theories during catastrophes.
Conspiracy theories flourish in times of crisis, which is obviously the case here, Karen Douglas, a professor of social psychology at the University of Kent and an expert in conspiratorial thinking, told Voxs Jane Coaston in April. They tend to surround big events that require big explanations [because] small explanations are unsatisfying.
But the specific content of conspiracy theories is also important and can provide clues about the societies where the theories take hold. As Coaston has explained, pandemics fuel conspiracy theories that grapple not only with disease but also with social and political structures:
Historically, with every plague and pandemic, there have been conspiracy theories to explain their origin and how to potentially stop their progression. Often, those conspiracy theories play on existing concerns and work within cultural contexts. For example, during the Black Death, a 14th-century outbreak of bubonic plague that killed at least 35 percent of Europes population, conspiracy theories targeted Jewish people already the subject of ire and deep concern as the source of the plague, leading to the torture and murder of thousands of Jews in response. (As anti-Semitism is itself a conspiracy theory, its not surprising to see anti-Semitic conspiracy theories arise during the coronavirus pandemic as well.)
More recent pandemics have seen the rise of their own conspiracy theories, ones that formed in response to underlying concerns as much as they did to a virus or disease. AIDS denialists, for example people who believe that HIV does not cause AIDS were responding not just to AIDS, but to the context of AIDS in the United States of the 1980s, a disease that seemed to kill the most vulnerable and most despised in society with little attention or care from mainstream authority figures. That led some people, already experienced in distrusting institutions that had only served to disadvantage and oppress them, to distrust them even more in the face of a crisis.
Were seeing some analogous dynamics play out today: Conspiracy theories discussed during the era of coronavirus also reflect certain strands of popular thought about power in America and the world today. At a time of staggering socioeconomic inequality in the US, and at a specific moment when disease is revealing the life-or-death stakes of that inequality, the emergence of conspiracy theories that suggest the virus is a plan by elites to accumulate profit and power should not be surprising.
A Pew Research Center survey from June found that about a quarter of Americans see at least some truth in the conspiracy theory that the coronavirus outbreak was intentionally planned by powerful people. (Five percent say its definitely true and 20 percent say its probably true, with a 1.6 percentage point margin of error.)
Matt Motta, a professor of political science at Oklahoma State University who studies the intersection of politics and science, said in an email that Sinclairs decision to air the interview could increase the number of true believers in the most extreme theories.
Even though many Americans accept misinformation about the origins of Covid-19 (e.g., that it was created in a lab), belief in the Plandemic conspiracy has largely been relegated to only the most ardent conspiracy theorists. Thats in part due to the relatively swift action social media companies took to remove the video from their platforms, he wrote. Sinclairs decision to air this interview without challenging its claims risks pushing some of these extreme views into the mainstream.
Experts have emphasized that local news is a particularly potent way to spread conspiracy theories because of the unique role local broadcasts play in distributing news meaning even a new version of Sinclairs Mikovits interview providing additional context may not be enough to limit the proliferation of Mikovitss conspiracy theory.
The fact that the story is ostensibly balanced is nonsense, as the view being presented [by Mikovits] has no support among experts, and balanced formats can be misleading, Brendan Nyhan, a professor at Dartmouth who researches misperceptions about politics and health care, told me.
In fact, placing Mikovits among credible experts may actually give her conspiracy theory greater credence to viewers, effectively giving her ideas the same legitimacy as the scientifically based statements those experts make.
Pew polling conducted in June found most Americans dont have much trust in national news outlets ability to deliver facts about the coronavirus, a result mirrored in a late June New York Times/Siena College poll. Americans were found to have greater trust in their local news outlets, however, with 50 percent saying their local news presents factual coverage of Covid-19 at least most of the time 6 percentage points more than national outlets (again, with a 1.6 percentage point margin of error).
Overall, studies show that the public generally has substantially more trust in local television news and newspapers than in their national counterparts.
In other words, Sinclair broadcasting conspiracy theories could influence peoples attitudes and beliefs more deeply than CNN or Fox News.
The mainstreaming of conspiracy theories about the inception and spread of Covid-19 could seriously complicate the countrys ability to manage the pandemic by corroding the publics inclination to comply with expert guidance.
Motta pointed to a study he co-authored that found that people who have been more exposed to misinformation about the origins of the coronavirus in the media through right-leaning news, in particular are more likely to accept those claims as true, and are subsequently less likely to accept warnings about the severity of the pandemic from scientific experts. The risks are very real, he warned.
Suhay noted that the pandemics end could be delayed by conspiracy theories, telling me, I think the most concerning harm in this instance is that many of the Covid conspiracy theories circulating are directly and indirectly anti-vax which means they are likely to drive down the number of people willing to be vaccinated against the disease when a vaccine eventually becomes available.
If major media outlets continue to give oxygen to ungrounded theories about the virus and trust in experts diminishes, delayed vaccination times and poor compliance with social distancing protocols could intensify the crisis. Conspiracy theories about the world will always exist, but its up to institutions tasked with telling the truth to avoid giving a platform to claims that have no demonstrable basis in reality and to rigorously refute them through careful and factual explanation.
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