Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, Interceptor7, Magnifico, annetteboardman, jck, and Besame. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Man Oh Man, wader, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.
OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00 AM Eastern Time.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
Chicago Sun-Times: Aldermen who blocked emergency powers ordinance are ‘selfish, grandstanding,’ Lightfoot says by Fran Spielman
Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Wednesday lashed out at the “shameful,” “selfish,” “grandstanding” aldermen who dared to delay a City Council vote to grant her the expanded spending and contracting authority she needs to respond on a dime to the coronavirus pandemic.
The mayor got even with the dissenters by abruptly adjourning a virtual City Council meeting and summoning aldermen back for a 1 p.m. Friday meeting at which the emergency powers ordinance is almost certain to be approved.
Without mentioning Ray Lopez (15th) and Carlos Ramirez (35th) by name, Lightfoot denounced the “small handful” of aldermen who “decided to use this moment of crisis to grandstand.”
“They stuck out like a sore thumb. Choosing to serve themselves, instead of the residents who elected them. Choosing to put their own selfish interest ahead of their city and their communities. And it is selfish. And it’s also shameful,” the mayor said.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Restaurants not ready to reopen dining rooms despite Kemp’s go-ahead by Ligaya Figueras
Georgia restaurants have been given the green light to reopen their dining rooms on Monday, but that is unlikely to happen in metro Atlanta on Gov. Brian Kemp’s proposed timeline, based on reactions from local food-service operators.
Reopened businesses will have to follow social distancing guidelines, screen workers for fever and respiratory illnesses, and take other steps to minimize the risk of transmitting the coronavirus. Specific guidelines are still forthcoming and are expected to be released Thursday.
Restaurants throughout the state have been closed for dine-in service since April 1, when Kemp issued statewide social distancing measures, one of the last of the nation’s governors to do so. By then, numerous metro Atlanta restaurant operators had already made the voluntary decision to close their dining rooms and patios to customers or had done so in response to mandates by city mayors. Some transitioned to a takeout-and-delivery model, and even revamped their operations to include other channels for cash flow, such as online marketplaces. Others temporarily closed down with the hopes of reopening once the threat of contracting the virus has passed.
MLive: Nurse who spoke out about coronavirus concerns fired by Mercy Health by Lynn Moore
MUSKEGON, MI – A nurse who spoke out about the lack of personal protective equipment for medical professionals treating coronavirus patients has been fired by Mercy Health.
Justin Howe, a registered nurse at Mercy Health’s Hackley Campus in Muskegon, told MLive he was fired April 3 just before he was to begin his 12-hour shift that evening. He said Mercy told him he was fired due to patient privacy violations.
Howe was union president of the Hackley R.N. Staff Council, and worked in the intensive care unit at the hospital. Jen Parks, the now acting union president, said in a statement that Howe was fired “just because he was willing to speak out and hold them accountable.”
Ten days before he was fired, Howe told MLive Mercy was imposing inappropriate restrictions on the use of donated N95 masks by hospital staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. The previous day, on March 23, the union had filed an unfair labor practice complaint against Mercy Health that claimed nurses were being restricted from using their own or donated N95 masks.
San Diego Union-Tribune: ‘Second wave’ of coronavirus could be far worse for California than the first, officials warn by Luke Money, Deborah Netburn, Matt Hamilton, Colleen Shalby, and Paige St. John
Even as California continues to bend the coronavirus curve, a rise in the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths as well as concerns about a second wave of the outbreak are reasons to stay vigilant, officials say.
California has recorded more than 37,000 cases, adding nearly 2,000 on Tuesday alone. Part of the uptick in new cases this week is the result of a lag in labs reporting test results and releasing bulk numbers. More than 1,400 people have died across the state.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and others have said that California and the nation have not necessarily seen the worst of coronavirus and that lifting stay-at-home rules could be disastrous.
“If we all pull back, we could see a second wave that makes this pale in comparison,” Newsom told CBS News. “I don’t anticipate that normalcy that many of us wish for happening anytime soon.”
Vanity Fair: Joe Biden Prioritizes Empathy in Scorching Trump Takedown by Christopher Rosen
Throughout his political career, former Vice President Joe Biden has often been referred to as the nation's consoler-in-chief. Now, as the coronavirus pandemic continues to incapacitate American life, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has sought to juxtapose his compassion with President Donald Trump’s public displays of calousness.
On Tuesday, James Corden asked Biden what he thought of Trump's marathon press briefings, which often devolve into petty name-calling and abdications of responsibility. Biden told the Late Late Show host that he’s frustrated by the president's attitude.
“The frustration is, he's leaving so many people behind. Look at all the first responders. Look at all the people who are putting themselves in harm's way. Literally, they're risking their lives, and some are losing their lives. ... What I focus on is, look at the damage being done to so many families that wouldn't have to be done if we had just taken action and prepared,” Biden said. “Or, even if he didn't know how to prepare, if once it became to clear to him, if he stopped slow motioning everything. Everything with him is slow motion. We gotta move quickly, provide all this gear for people, the testing materials. There's so much we can do to change this.”
Reuters: Exclusive: Poll signals strengthening support for Biden over Trump in three Midwest battleground states by Chris Kahn
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Republican President Donald Trump trails Democrat Joe Biden among registered voters in three Midwestern battleground states that he narrowly carried in 2016 and are seen as crucial to winning November’s election, according to an Ipsos public opinion poll conducted exclusively for Reuters.
The poll, which ran from April 15-20 in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, showed 45% of registered voters said they would support Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, while 39% said they would support Trump.
It also found that Biden, vice president under Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama, has an advantage of 3 percentage points among registered voters in Wisconsin, 6 points in Pennsylvania and 8 points in Michigan.
The Ipsos poll shows Biden has maintained or slightly improved his lead over Trump in those states over the past few months, even though his campaign and the presidential primaries have been sidelined by the coronavirus pandemic. The United States has the most confirmed cases and deaths in the world with at least 821,000 people infected and at least 46,000 deaths.
Washington Post: A mysterious blood-clotting complication is killing coronavirus patients by Ariana Eunjung Cha
Craig Coopersmith was up early that morning as usual and typed his daily inquiry into his phone. “Good morning, Team Covid,” he wrote, asking for updates from the ICU team leaders working across 10 hospitals in the Emory University health system in Atlanta.
One doctor replied that one of his patients had a strange blood problem. Despite being put on anticoagulants, the patient was still developing clots. A second said she’d seen something similar. And a third. Soon, every person on the text chat had reported the same thing.
“That’s when we knew we had a huge problem,” said Coopersmith, a critical-care surgeon. As he checked with his counterparts at other medical centers, he became increasingly alarmed: “It was in as many as 20, 30 or 40 percent of their patients.”
One month ago when the country went into lockdown to prepare for the first wave of coronavirus cases, many doctors felt confident they knew what they were dealing with. Based on early reports, covid-19 appeared to be a standard variety respiratory virus, albeit a contagious and lethal one with no vaccine and no treatment. They’ve since seen how covid-19 attacks not only the lungs, but also the kidneys, heart, intestines, liver and brain.
Buzzfeed: An ER Doctor’s Diary Of Three Brutal Weeks Fighting COVID-19 by Jason Hill
I’m an emergency doctor working in Manhattan at two NewYork-Presbyterian hospitals. I celebrated my 40th birthday during the peak of COVID-19 at a time when more than 150 patients were coming through our doors every day, more than 2,300 were already admitted, and more than 700 were in intensive care units system-wide. Things wouldn’t start to level off until the following week. I spent the night before my birthday in the thick of the fight, one in a string of long night shifts that now blend together in a haze of sickness and suffering that has left me exhausted and unsure how long we could keep this up.
Along with all the birthday wishes came many questions about how I was faring and what I’d been seeing on the ground. When you are so entrenched in the battle, it is easy to forget that most people never get a glimpse of what we are seeing every day. To help bridge that divide, I am sharing my journal entries from the past few weeks. Stay in. Stay safe. Stay healthy.
Tuesday March 26
The eyes stay with you. In peacetime, most of those we intubate are chronically ill, or profoundly confused, or unconscious and unaware of the world around them. COVID-19 has changed the equation. Most of my patients now remain awake and alert until the end. These days, the ER is permeated with frank conversations about death and dying and what a chance to live entails. It is a hard thing to tell a healthy and functional person who felt fine and well six days ago that they may be dead in a day or two and humbly ask how aggressive they want us to be. A chance to live comes with the risk of pain and dependence on life support. The alternative is the guarantee of an imminent but peaceful death. I have never had more harrowing, more brutally honest, more meaningful, more exhausting conversations in my life. Complete strangers open up to you in profound ways during such times, and you can only hope both your expertise and your humanity serve them well.
CNN: Abigail Disney on Disney furloughs: 'What the actual f---'? by Jordan Vallnsky
New York (CNN Business)Abigail Disney is flabbergasted over the Walt Disney Co.'s decision to furlough hundreds of thousands low-paid workers after paying its executives millions of dollars.
"WHAT THE ACTUAL F***?????" tweeted Disney, the granddaughter of Walt Disney's brother, Roy Disney.
In a Twitter thread Tuesday, the
outspoken family heiress slammed Disney's decision to furlough theme park employees after the company paid dividends to shareholders and gave executives big bonuses. Disney hasn't revealed dividend plans for 2020, and the company's
top executives took substantial pay cuts because of Covid-19.
The Walt Disney Co.
announced earlier this month it's furloughing employees "whose jobs aren't necessary at this time." The coronavirus pandemic has forced a major chunk of Disney's businesses to temporarily suspend operations, including its parks, resorts and entertainment productions. More than 75% of the company's 223,000 employees work for the Parks and Products division.
Abigail Disney is one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter.
Washington Post: The joke’s on us, thanks to Mark Warner’s viral tuna melt video. It’s just a PSA in disguise. By Tim Carman
His kitchen-wear should have been your first clue: Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) sports a sky-blue dress shirt and slacks, as if he just came home from an all-nighter on the Intelligence Committee and couldn’t shed his suit jacket and tie fast enough. We already know lawmakers can’t feast in the Senate chamber, or even drink a glass of milk, and Warner looks as if he’s ready to eat like it’s 1969, with a tuna melt from his youth.
Your second clue should have been this quote, delivered with the kind of deadpan, bone-dryness usually reserved for Bill Murray or Steven Wright: “I’m going to be moving fairly quickly, so unless you’re a professional chef you may want to occasionally pause the video so you can keep up.”
But we’re living under quarantine. Many of us are bored. We’re spending more time with our phones than with our loved ones (unless your phone is your beloved, and then we have larger issues to deal with here). We spot a U.S. senator trying to foist off a childhood tuna melt on social media channels, where we’re desperately holding on to our gastronomic bona fides during a pandemic when hunger is real and ingredients are difficult to acquire. We, in short, see an easy target at a stressful moment in history: a lawmaker, an incompetent cook, a seemingly self-satisfied Instagram video and a stupid sandwich.
To be perfectly honest, even now I am not sure what Senator Warner was doing earlier today but Senator Kamala Harris got him straightened out.
South China Morning Post: Coronavirus study points to vast number of cases under the radar in China by Josephine Ma
China’s official tally of
coronavirus cases could have quadrupled in mid-February if one broader system for classifying confirmed patients had been used from the outset of the pandemic, according to researchers at the University of Hong Kong.
In a study published in the medical journal The Lancet on Tuesday, the researchers said China might have had 232,000 confirmed cases – rather than the official total of about 55,000 – by February 20 if a revised definition adopted earlier in the month had been applied throughout.
“We estimated that there were at least 232,000 infections in the first epidemic wave of Covid-19 in mainland China,” they said, referring to the disease caused by the coronavirus.
“The true number of infections could still be higher than that currently estimated considering the possibility of under-detection of some infections, particularly those that were mild and asymptomatic, even under the broadest case definitions.”
Guardian: Earth Day: Greta Thunberg calls for 'new path' after pandemic by Jonathan Watts
Greta Thunberg has urged people around the world to take a new path after the coronavirus pandemic, which she said proved “our society is not sustainable”.
The Swedish climate activist said the strong global response to Covid-19 demonstrated how quickly change could happen when humanity came together and acted on the advice of scientists.
She said the same principles should be applied to the climate crisis.
“Whether we like it or not, the world has changed. It looks completely different now from how it did a few months ago. It may never look the same again. We have to choose a new way forward,” she told a YouTube audience in a virtual meeting to mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day.
“If the coronavirus crisis has shown us one thing, it is that our society is not sustainable. If one single virus can destroy economies in a couple of weeks, it shows we are not thinking long-term and taking risks into account.”
CBC News: RCMP give new details on timeline of manhunt for N.S. shooter
RCMP have provided new details around the timeline of a manhunt for a gunman who killed 22 people in Nova Scotia over the weekend.
Police have also said that they have a "fairly good idea" that the gunman did not have a firearms licence in Canada.
On Wednesday, RCMP Chief Supt. Chris Leather said police first responded to a possible shooting at 10:26 p.m. AT on Saturday in the rural community of Portapique, N.S.
Leather said that it was determined to be a homicide, and police began searching the area. But the only information provided to the public at the time was a tweet at 11:32 p.m. AT saying they were responding to a firearms complaint and asking residents to lock their doors.
Leather said officers set up a perimeter and continued their search for the suspect throughout the night.
Following new information that the suspect was not in the secure perimeter, at 8:02 a.m. AT on Sunday, RCMP began providing more real-time information on Twitter.
DW: Morocco's LGBT community faces death threats after online outing by Tom Allinson
Members of Morocco's LGBT community say they fear for their lives after a prominent social media influencer sparked an online campaign to reveal their identities.
On April 13, Sofia Talouni, a gay Instagram personality also known as Naoufal Moussa, told her 600,000 followers to set up fake accounts on dating apps like Grindr and Planet Romeo to geolocate and identify gay family members, advocacy organizations KifKif and Nassiwiyat reported.
The ensuing online campaign to out those identified has led to a "wave of homophobia and hate in the country," one community member and DW reader, who did not want to be named, wrote in to DW.
"I'm living in constant fear," they wrote, after their photo was found through one of the dating apps and spread on social media. "I risk losing everything if my family find out about it and it may cost me my life for the sake of the honor of the family name."
Homosexuality carries a heavy stigma in Moroccan society and, according to Article 489 of the penal code, can be punished by up to three years in jail.
BBC News: Tsunami risk identified near future Indonesian capital by Jonathan Amos
Scientists have identified a potential tsunami risk in the region chosen by Indonesia for its new capital.
The researchers mapped evidence of multiple ancient underwater landslides in the Makassar Strait between the islands of Borneo and Sulawesi.
If the largest of these were repeated today, it would generate tsunami capable of inundating Balikpapan Bay - an area close to the proposed capital.
But the international team cautions against an overreaction.
"We still have a lot more work to do to properly assess the situation. That said, this is something that Indonesian governments probably should have on the risk register somewhere - even if we're only talking about 'low frequency, high impact' events," said Dr Uisdean Nicholson from Heriot-Watt University, UK.
His British-Indonesian research team used seismic data to investigate the sediments and their structure on the Makassar seafloor.
The survey revealed 19 distinct zones along the strait where mud, sand and silt have tumbled downslope into deeper waters.
AlJazeera: Doctor's Note: Why are smokers more vulnerable to coronavirus? by Dr. Sara Kayat
Smoking is one of the leading causes of death in the world, killing more than eight million people a year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Now, it is thought that smoking may also make people more vulnerable to developing serious complications if they catch coronavirus.
In the United Kingdom, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, has said: "It is abundantly clear from the research into previous coronaviruses that smoking makes the impact of a coronavirus worse."
We do know that smokers contract more respiratory illnesses, including the common cold which is also a coronavirus, than non-smokers. They also tend to have a higher rate of bacterial pneumonia and tuberculosis. During the Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak in 2012, smokers were found to be more likely to die than non-smokers if they caught the virus.
Furthermore, smokers are twice as likely as non-smokers to contract influenza and have more severe symptoms.
However, the evidence has been less clear when it comes to the relationship between smoking and COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, specifically.
Yes, I am a smoker.
The Hollywood Reporter: Richard Branson and Demi Lovato Among Backers of Mental Health Fund by Chris Gardner
Richard Branson and Demi Lovato are among the backers of a new fund aimed at easing the strain of the coronavirus pandemic by providing mental health services to those in need.
Branson and Lovato, who has long been open about her mental health and substance abuse challenges, have partnered with Royal Bank of Canada, Virgin Unite, Canadian Family Foundations and Draper Richards Kaplan on the initiative, known as The Mental Health Fund. So far, they've already raised $2 million to support the work of organizations that provide crisis intervention via text message, 24/7.
Crisis Text Line serves as founder of The Mental Health Fund, which is operating with a goal of reaching $5 million.
"So many people have been left alone with their thoughts, their abusers, their anxieties, and are struggling with the uncertainty of these times," said Lovato in a statement. "I know not everyone has the ability to get the help they need so my hope is that this fund can bring support to help alleviate some of the hardship and pain people are going through."
Don’t forget that Meteor Blades is hosting a Wedensday night owls thread tonight.
Everyone have a good evening!