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….but first…
Last week in the Wed. April 8th posting of the OND, I linked to a story about the theory that the coronavirus SARS-CoV2 had penetrated the state of California late in 2019 and, as a result, it was possible that California had achieved some sort of “herd immunity.”
I should not have linked to that story, period.
As those of you know that read my link, I noted my suspicions of the primary spokesperson of that theory that was cited in the story; a noted scholar of classical antiquity who also happens to be a conservative crackpot...it was not as if I did not already have my doubts about that story.
Nevertheless, I posted it and the theory has be substantially refuted.
I have amended my Overnight News Digest for April 8, 2020 with appropriate follow-up information.
I was wrong for disseminating that story (which I had my suspicions of from the outset). I usually do a pretty good job of sniffing out and tanking links containing information that I do not trust for whatever reason.
That time I did not do so and for that I was wrong.
Chicago Sun-Times: Lightfoot’s decision to strip aldermen of control over permits at center of Little Village demolition controversy by Fran Spielman
Hours after taking office, Mayor Lori Lightfoot signed an executive order stripping aldermen of their unbridled control over licensing and permitting in their wards.
On Saturday, the mayor’s decision to start delivering on the central promise of her corruption-fighting mayoral campaign came back to haunt the residents of Little Village, several aldermen now say.
Armed with a city demolition permit that local Ald. Mike Rodriguez (22nd) was powerless to block, a subcontractor hired by Hilco Redevelopment Partners demolished a 95-year-old smokestack at the site of a shuttered coal-fired power plant without abiding by the safety measures it had promised to implement.
That caused a giant plume of dust to rain down on the community, making it difficult to breathe during the coronavirus pandemic. Homes, vehicles, streets and sidewalks were left filthy.
On Tuesday, Rodriguez said he would have delayed the smokestack demolition if he could have and twice tried to do just that, only to be told by the city the project would proceed.
Detroit Free Press: Meat shortage could be coming soon as processing plants are forced to close by Susan Selasky
As some food workers across the U.S. are becoming infected by the coronavirus, some plants that process beef, pork and poultry are shutting down -- raising the specter of meat shortages.
With the plant closures, the worry is that consumers will be impacted by shortages and higher prices. In recent weeks, consumers also faced grocers putting buying limits on beef and chicken because of stockpiling.
At Holiday Market, Tom Violantesaid some suppliers have started limiting quantities of pork and beef.
Price increases, Violante fears, will be coming soon.
“At this time, there is more problem with supply and not price,” Violante said. “When the supply chain runs through its current load of beef and pork the supply will be limited and the price increase will follow.”
Food processing giant Smithfield Foods is the most recent to announce the closure of one its largest pork processing facilities in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, due to COVID-19. More than 200 cases of COVID-19 are linked to the employees at the facility, according to reports.
Charleston Post and Courier: SC tornadoes are common in spring, but Monday’s deadly twisters stood out by Chloe Johnson
The line of destructive tornadoes that descended on South Carolina Monday was a sucker punch: Amid a pandemic that kept many confined to their houses, a violent wave of storms left at least 200 people suddenly homeless.
The twisters spun off a fast-moving wave of severe weather that rolled over two days from Louisiana to North Carolina. In South Carolina, at least nine people died. The total number of tornadoes has not been finalized but the National Weather Service has confirmed nine so far, stretching from the Upstate to the coast.
The number of tornadoes will likely rise in the coming days because no twister has yet been confirmed in the coastal area covered by the Weather Service’s Charleston office. Employees of the forecasting service can pick out potential rotation in radar but have to take observations on the ground to make it official.
While a few of the tornadoes Monday were exceptional, their presence this time of year is not. Spring is prime time for the destructive phenomenon in South Carolina. The state is most likely to get hit, according to historical trends, in April and May.
Seattle Times: At Western State Hospital, coronavirus infections add pressure to a psychiatric facility already facing challenges by David Gutman and Joseph O’Sullivan
Western State Hospital has long struggled with an entanglement of challenges: staffing shortages, aging buildings ill-adapted for 21st-century psychiatric care and a lack of beds elsewhere in Washington for patients ready to be discharged.
Now, the coronavirus pandemic is adding a new and unprecedented layer of difficulty at Washington’s largest psychiatric hospital, an 850-bed facility in Lakewood.
As of Tuesday, 27 staff members and six patients have tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, according to the state Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS), which oversees the hospital. One patient has died. Two staff members at Eastern State Hospital, a 317-bed facility near Spokane, have tested positive.
Western State staff, increasingly frustrated by what they see as a potential coronavirus outbreak, are calling on DSHS to take the crisis more seriously. They want more protective medical gear, better screenings for symptoms of the virus and better communication when workers have been potentially exposed to COVID-19.
Philadelphia Inquirer: ‘The impact of the loss of human touch’: Philly-area suicide hotlines see an increase in calls related to coronavirus by Bethany Ao
When Gov. Tom Wolf issued a stay-at-home order for Philadelphia-area residents on March 23, Julie Peticca braced herself for a deluge of calls to the Montgomery County suicide prevention hotline. Peticca, the director of crisis intervention at Montgomery County Emergency Service Inc., knew that isolation could exacerbate mental health issues, especially for people with depression and anxiety.
The first two weeks were quieter than she expected. But then the calls flooded in. On one day in March, Peticca said her team received 25 calls — more than double the center’s daily average.
“People dealt with not having access to their usual coping mechanisms OK for the first few weeks, but now we’re settling into a longer situation," Peticca said. "We’re seeing the impact of the loss of human touch.”
Other suicide hotlines across the country are experiencing similar patterns. A Los Angeles mental health clinic reported 1,800 COVID-19 related calls in March, compared with just 20 in February. Montana’s Department of Public Health and Human Services said it has seen calls double since March 13.
Buzzfeed: Trump’s Coronavirus Briefings Are Just Another Chance For Him To Break Your Brain by Miriam Elder
If you close your eyes and sit still for a few minutes, you can remember a time when things weren’t so strange — the daily flood of people dying alone, the fear of those forced to venture out, the millions who have lost their jobs, the fact that many (though far from all) of us are taking this in while sheltering at home, staring at the same four walls.
If you try this exercise around 5 p.m., however, you will be quickly shaken from your pre-coronavirus nostalgia. For that, give or take 45 minutes, is the witching hour. In addition to the myriad adjustments Americans have made to try to survive a deadly pandemic, they have also allowed Donald Trump into their homes on a nightly basis. No matter if he has an announcement or not, a message to the nation or not, there he is, riffing on whatever enters his mind. And there we are — millions of us — to take it in. It sets a rhythm to the day: breakfast, lunch, Trump press conference, drink, dinner, drink.
It’s obvious why Trump, obsessed with attention, has settled into the routine. The question is why we do this.
Washington Post: The $1,200 stimulus checks are arriving. People are mostly spending them on food by Heather Long
The U.S. government has started sending $1,200 checks to Americans to help ease the financial pain caused by shutting down the economy to fight the deadly coronavirus. By Wednesday, 80 million people are expected to receive a direct deposit in their bank account, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said.
The checks are the centerpiece of the U.S. government’s economic relief package, and many Americans have taken to social media to celebrate the arrival of the money by posting photos of the money hitting their bank account. Singles earning up to $75,000 a year receive a payment of $1,200. Married couples earning up to $150,000 a year receive a payment of $2,400. Parents receive an additional $500 for each child under 17.
Early evidence indicates Americans are using the money to buy the basics, including food and gas.
The Nation: Amazing Grace and Courage Amid the Plague by Sasha Abramsky
Let’s begin today’s column with some righteous Noise. On Easter Sunday, the singer Andrea Bocelli performed a concert, accompanied only by an organist, from the empty interior of the cavernous Duomo cathedral in Milan, Italy. Streamed live on YouTube, it was one of the most glorious, moving, and emotionally devastating affirmations of the human power to endure that I have ever experienced.
Bocelli sang inside for nearly 20 minutes, with the soaring columns and wondrous stained-glass windows of the cathedral his backdrop; and then, the silence broken only by the sound of his shoes clacking on the stone floor as he walked toward the exit, he left the cathedral, and, with the impossibly intricate carved exterior as background—surely one of the most stunning buildings ever erected—he performed a magnificent version of “Amazing Grace.” As he sang, viewers around the world saw images of empty streets in locked-down Milan, Paris, London, and New York, with views of the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe, Trafalgar Square, Times Square.
Those scenes of eerily quiet, empty metropolises conveyed both the horror of the moment but also the remarkable cooperation that humans are capable of: All of those absent people are doing their part to socially distance, no matter how emotionally draining the isolation is, to keep other people—their neighbors, friends, and family, but also strangers they might pass casually on the streets—safe.
I did not see Andrea Bocelli’s performance live but I have seen it and I plan on seeing it again. I found it very very very moving.
New York Times: What Doctors on the Front Lines Wish They’d Known a Month Ago by Jim Dwyer
Just about a month ago, people stricken with the new coronavirus started to arrive in unending ranks at hospitals in the New York metropolitan area, forming the white-hot center of the pandemic in the United States.
Now, doctors in the region have started sharing on medical grapevines what it has been like to re-engineer, on the fly, their health care systems, their practice of medicine, their personal lives.
Doctors, if you could go back in time, what would you tell yourselves in early March?
“What we thought we knew, we don’t know,” said Dr. Nile Cemalovic, an intensive care physician at Lincoln Medical Center in the Bronx.
Medicine routinely remakes itself, generation by generation. For the disease that drives this pandemic, certain ironclad emergency medical practices have dissolved almost overnight.
Reuters: Exclusive: Emails show U.S. officials brushed off state concerns on drive-through virus tests by Ned Parker and Chad Terhune
(Reuters) - As coronavirus infections exploded in New Orleans, state and local officials repeatedly told the Trump administration that its new drive-through testing effort wasn’t going well. Those tested often waited more than a week for results, and local officials had no information on who had been notified by a federally contracted call center, according to emails between local and federal officials reviewed by Reuters.
As deaths mounted, local officials requested details on the notifications as they increasingly fielded calls by those left in limbo - including health workers. But Washington officials largely brushed off their concerns, according to the correspondence, which has not been previously reported.
Frustrated city officials started their own operation to notify people after the state began receiving test results on March 26, nearly a week after testing started. One big problem: The lab initially sent many results with no phone numbers to reach those tested.
The delays and confusion created new problems for local officials managing the crisis in one of America’s emerging hot spots. As of Tuesday, Louisiana had more than 21,500 confirmed cases, including more than 1,000 deaths. Timely test results are crucial to containing the virus and enabling essential workers such as doctors and nurses to stay safely on the front lines. The problems in New Orleans underscore the challenges the Trump administration faces in ramping up testing nationwide in hopes of reopening the U.S. economy.
DW: Chernobyl: Ukraine crews extinguish forest fires in exclusion zone
Large fires that ripped through forest surrounding the abandoned Chernobyl nuclear plant have been extinguished, Ukrainian emergency officials said on Tuesday.
Hundreds of firefighters battled the blazes over the past 10 days, using planes and helicopters to put out the flames.
Recent rain helped emergency crews put out the larger blazes, preventing the fire from spreading to either the defunct nuclear plant or other facilities in the area, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's office said in a statement.
Officials acknowledged that some grassy areas were still smoldering, but said no large open fires remained.
On Monday, environmental activists warned that the fires in the forest posed a radiation risk to surrounding areas and that they were getting dangerously close to radioactive waste storage facilities.
Mykola Chechetkin, the head of the Emergencies Service, said the fires were put out before they reached radioactive waste storage facilities.
"Background radiation in the exclusion zone remains within normal limits and is not increasing," Chechetkin told the president during a conference call.
AlJazeera: India extends world's biggest coronavirus lockdown till May 3
India's nationwide coronavirus lockdown, the biggest in the world, will be extended until at least May 3, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said.
The three-week lockdown of the nation of 1.3 billion people, which started at midnight on March 25, was scheduled to end at midnight on Tuesday.
"From the economic angle, we have paid a big price," Modi said in a nationwide address. "But the lives of the people of India are far more valuable."
Modi said some restrictions in areas further away from infection hotspots would be eased on April 20 to help poor people dependent upon daily wages.
"Till April 20, each police station, each district, each state will be monitored closely to see whether the lockdown is being followed and if that area has saved itself from the virus," he said.
"We can then decide on relaxing restrictions in those areas that are successful in this test, have successfully contained the hotspots and prevented new ones."
At least PM Modi sounds like he gives a damn!
South China Morning Post: Beijing’s attack on Hong Kong opposition viewed as ‘taste of what’s to come’ as attention pivots from coronavirus to city’s legislative elections by Gary Cheung and Kimmy Cheung
A fight that has erupted between Beijing’s top representatives on Hong Kong affairs and the opposition camp is putting the legislature squarely at the heart of an escalating struggle for power in the city, with just months to go before an election set that could upend the current political landscape.
Both sides view the flare-up over the work of the House Committee sending bills to a floor vote as part of a larger debate stretching back to the handover, but which has since the previous summer pushed the city to the brink of chaos: just how much autonomy do Hongkongers have to decide their own affairs?
The House Committee sets the agenda for weekly council meetings, deciding the dates when certain bills are to be put forward for a final vote.
The answer comes down to the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution, the scope of which the central government has increasingly defined in response to a surging localist movement calling for greater self-determination.
Don’t forget that Meteor Blades is hosting a Tuesday night owls thread tonight.
Everyone have a good evening.