Mike Murphy and Mitch Roschelle break down the GameStop controversy on ‘Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street’
Defiant amateur investors on Reddit say they are not backing down on their investments in GameStop — and even took out billboards in Times Square and across the country urging the faithful to continue holding the line.
“$GME GO BRRR,” blared a digital ad on the corner of 54th and Broadway in Manhattan. The ad ran for an hour on Friday and was a creation of digital billboard maker Matei Psatta.
YOUNG REPUBLICANS PLAN TO ‘RE-OCCUPY WALL STREET’ AFTER GAMESTOP DEBACLE
The line refers to a popular internet meme that uses “Brrr” to signify the sound a money-printing machine makes. GME is the stock’s ticker symbol on the NY Stock Exchange.
Investors on Reddit have driven the price of GameStop — a dusty mall electronics retailer worth only $2.57 a share at one point last year — to astronomical highs in just days. From a value of just under $40 a share on Jan. 14, the stock skyrocketed to $483 a share. Though price swings have been extremely volatile, the stock has spent much of the last five days comfortably above $300.
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The “movement” was initially organized by those on the Reddit page WallStreetBets. The pirate investors convulsed markets all week, pumping up Gamestop’s price in an effort to stick it to hedge fund short-sellers who bet against the stock and planned to profit from its failure. Instead, prices surged because of the renegade buyers, and some Wall Street institutions were brought to their knees.
Former New York Times opinion columnist and editor Bari Weiss mocked her former employer on Thursday, saying the Gray Lady published a “press release” about Vice President Kamala Harris’s stepdaughter.
Weiss seemed to feel the paper lived up to its reputation that it favors liberals when it published a story praising Harris’ stepdaughter for receiving a modeling contract
The piece headlined, “Ella Emhoff Gets a Major Modeling Contract,” called her a “breakout star” of the inauguration, The Daily Wire flagged.
LOS ANGELES TIMES MOCKED AFTER DEDICATING NEW BEAT TO CELEBRATING KAMALA HARRIS: ‘BLATANT HAGIOGRAPHY’
“One week after the Miu Miu coat she wore at President Biden’s swearing in went viral, Ella Emhoff, the 21-year-old stepdaughter of Vice President Kamala Harris, became the newest face at IMG Models, one of the world’s most prestigious modeling agencies,” Times reporters Vanessa Friedman and Jessica Testa wrote
The report featured the president of IMG Models fawning over Emhoff, promoted everything from her Instagram account to her tattoos, and claimed that the fashion world is embracing the Biden administration’s “focus on diversity and empathy” after four “antagonistic” years of dealing with the Trump administration.
LOS ANGELES TIMES MOCKED AFTER DEDICATING NEW BEAT TO CELEBRATING KAMALA HARRIS: ‘BLATANT HAGIOGRAPHY’
Cole and Ella Emhoff arrive during the 59th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
“Emhoff throws a crocheted grenade at the image of typical D.C. political offspring, with a style that could be termed Wes Anderson chic. In her selfies, she doesn’t wear much makeup and doesn’t carefully blow-dry her naturally curly hair. She shows off her armpit hair and cartoonish tattoos, which include eggs and bacon in the shape of a smiley face and a cow,” the Times reported.
Weiss took notice of the glowing piece and mocked it on Twitter.
“A modeling contract (!!) “speaks to the fashion world’s growing embrace of the Biden administration, with its focus on diversity and empathy, after four antagonistic years with the Trump administration,” Weiss wrote. “Please enjoy this press release!”
Weiss published a scathing resignation letter in July that she sent to Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger on her personal website. She said she was was bullied by colleagues for her heterodox views in an “illiberal environment.”
She added she didn’t understand how toxic behavior is allowed inside the newsroom and “showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.”
Weiss wasn’t the only person to criticize the Times’ article, with others like The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf noting the Times made no mention of Emhoff likely getting the deal because of her famous stepmother.
An artist’s rendering of 55 Cancri e, a carbon-rich exoplanet. For the first time in a laboratory setting, experiments conducted through NIF’s Discovery Science program reach the extreme pressures that are relevant to understanding the structure of carbon that occupies the interior of these exoplanets. Credit: ESA/Hubble/M. Kornmesser
Carbon, the fourth most abundant element in the universe, is a building block for all known life and a material that sits in the interior of carbon-rich exoplanets.
Decades of intense investigation by scientists have shown that carbon’s crystal structure has a significant impact on its properties. In addition to graphite and diamond, the most common carbon structures found at ambient pressures, scientists have predicted several new structures of carbon that could be found at pressures greater than 1,000 gigapascals (GPa). These pressures, about 2.5 times the pressure in Earth’s core, are relevant for modeling exoplanet interiors but have been impossible to achieve in the laboratory.
That is, until now. Under the Discovery Science program, which allows academic scientists access to LLNL’s flagship National Ignition Facility (NIF), an international team of researchers led by LLNL and the University of Oxford has successfully measured carbon at pressures reaching 2,000 GPa (5 times the pressure in Earth’s core), nearly doubling the maximum pressure at which a crystal structure has ever been directly probed. The results were reported today in Nature.
“We discovered that, surprisingly, under these conditions carbon does not transform to any of the predicted phases but retains the diamond structure up to the highest pressure,” said LLNL physicist Amy Jenei, lead author on the study. “The same ultra-strong interatomic bonds (requiring high energies to break) which are responsible for the metastable diamond structure of carbon persisting indefinitely at ambient pressure are likely also impeding its transformation above 1,000 GPa in our experiments.”
The academic component of the collaboration was led by Oxford Professor Justin Wark, who praised the Lab’s open-access policy.
“The NIF Discovery Science program is immensely beneficial to the academic community,” he said. “It not only allows established faculty the chance to put forward proposals for experiments that would be impossible to do elsewhere, but importantly also gives graduate students, who are the senior scientists of the future, the chance to work on a completely unique facility.”
The team—which also included scientists from the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) and the University of York—leveraged NIF’s uniquely high power and energy and accurate laser pulse-shaping to compress solid carbon to 2,000 GPa using ramp-shaped laser pulses. This allowed them to measure the crystal structure using an X-ray diffraction platform and capture a nanosecond-duration snapshot of the atomic lattice. These experiments nearly double the record high pressure at which X-ray diffraction has been recorded on any material.
The researchers found that even when subjected to these intense conditions, solid carbon retains its diamond structure far beyond its regime of predicted stability, confirming predictions that the strength of the molecular bonds in diamond persists under enormous pressure. This results in large energy barriers that hinder conversion to other carbon structures.
“Whether nature has found a way to surmount the high energy barrier to formation of the predicted phases in the interiors of exoplanets is still an open question,” Jenei said. “Further measurements using an alternate compression pathway or starting from an allotrope of carbon with an atomic structure that requires less energy to rearrange will provide further insight.”
Checking out iron under pressure
More information:
A. Lazicki et al. Metastability of diamond ramp-compressed to 2 terapascals, Nature (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-03140-4
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Carbon at pressures 5 times that of the Earth’s core breaks crystal formation record (2021, January 28)
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According to a report from the New York Times, one of the many consequences of our response to the novel coronavirus pandemic might well be the emergence of dangerous, drug-resistant bacteria and fungi.
The report notes that a number of different pathogens, which are considered to be highly dangerous, have been resurgent as hospitals have scrambled to meet the challenges of the pandemic. Of specific concern is the fungus candida auris, which has been described by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a “global health threat.”
Candida auris is extremely difficult to detect and is highly resistant to drugs. According to the report, there are now about 250 confirmed cases in Los Angeles County alone, whereas before the pandemic there were only a “handful” of cases.
Other pathogens noted to be on the rise in the article include the potentially fatal Carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter, which is called an “urgent health threat” by the CDC.
The report notes that a number of factors may have contributed to the spread of these other, drug-resistant pathogens.
First, during the early stages of the pandemic, a number of facilities were forced to reuse protective equipment that was in short supply at the time. Second, the laser-like focus on testing for COVID-19 has hampered the ability of medical providers to adequately test and screen for these pathogens.
Third, the coronavirus pandemic has led to a sharp increase in the use of ventilators, which are known collectors of dangerous pathogens, particularly for long-term patients. And fourth, the strain on the medical system may have led to a breakdown in “infection control” for pathogens like C. auris, because medical personnel are focused on COVID-19 protocols to the exclusion of sanitation measures that were implemented to halt the spread of the fungus in 2019.
Also, we may not yet know the extent of the spread of many of these pathogens because screening for them remains virtually halted due to the emergency presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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When black holes swallow down massive amounts of matter from the space around them, they’re not exactly subtle about it. They belch out tremendous flares of X-rays, generated by the material heating to intense temperatures as it’s sucked towards the black hole, so bright we can detect them from Earth.
This is normal black hole behaviour. What isn’t normal is for those X-ray flares to spew forth with clockwork regularity, a puzzling behaviour reported in 2019 from a supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy 250 million light-years away. Every nine hours, boom – X-ray flare.
After careful study, astronomer Andrew King of the University of Leicester in the UK identified a potential cause – a dead star that’s endured its brush with a black hole, trapped on a nine-hour, elliptical orbit around it. Every close pass, or periastron, the black hole slurps up more of the star’s material.
“This white dwarf is locked into an elliptical orbit close to the black hole, orbiting every nine hours,” King explained back in April 2020.
“At its closest approach, about 15 times the radius of the black hole’s event horizon, gas is pulled off the star into an accretion disk around the black hole, releasing X-rays, which the two spacecraft are detecting.”
The black hole is the nucleus of a galaxy called GSN 069, and it’s pretty lightweight as far as supermassive black holes go – only 400,000 times the mass of the Sun. Even so, it’s active, surrounded by a hot disc of accretion material, feeding into and growing the black hole.
According to King’s model, this black hole was just hanging out, doing its active accretion thing, when a red giant star – the final evolutionary stages of a Sun-like star – happened to wander a little too close.
The black hole promptly divested the star of its outer layers, speeding its evolution into a white dwarf, the dead core that remains once the star has exhausted its nuclear fuel (white dwarfs shine with residual heat, not the fusion processes of living stars).
But rather than continuing on its journey, the white dwarf was captured in orbit around the black hole, and continued to feed into it.
Based on the magnitude of the X-ray flares, and our understanding of the flares that are produced by black hole mass transfer, and the star’s orbit, King was able to constrain the mass of the star, too. He calculated that the white dwarf is around 0.21 times the mass of the Sun.
While on the lighter end of the scale, that’s a pretty standard mass for a white dwarf. And if we assume the star is a white dwarf, we can also infer – based on our understanding of other white dwarfs and stellar evolution – that the star is rich in helium, having long ago run out of hydrogen.
“It’s remarkable to think that the orbit, mass and composition of a tiny star 250 million light years away could be inferred,” King said.
Based on these parameters, he also predicted that the star’s orbit wobbles slightly, like a spinning top losing speed. This wobble should repeat every two days or so, and we may even be able to detect it, if we observe the system for long enough.
This could be one mechanism whereby black holes grow more and more massive over time. But we’ll need to study more such systems to confirm it, and they may not be easy to detect.
For one, GSN 069’s black hole is lower mass, which means that the star can travel on a closer orbit. To survive a more massive black hole, a star would have to be on a much larger orbit, which means any periodicity in the feeding would be easier to miss. And if the star were to stray too close, the black hole would destroy it.
But the fact that one has been identified offers hope that it’s not the only such system out there.
“In astronomical terms, this event is only visible to our current telescopes for a short time – about 2,000 years, so unless we were extraordinarily lucky to have caught this one, there may be many more that we are missing elsewhere in the Universe,” King said.
As for the star’s future, well, if nothing else is to change, the star will stay right where it is, orbiting the black hole, and continuing to be slowly stripped for billions of years. This will cause it to grow in size and decrease in density – white dwarfs are only a little bigger than Earth – until it’s down to a planetary mass, maybe even eventually turning into a gas giant.
“It will try hard to get away, but there is no escape,” King said. “The black hole will eat it more and more slowly, but never stop.”
The research has been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
A version of this article was first published in April 2020.
When it comes to metallurgy, it is common knowledge that smaller grains make for harder metals. But how exactly do you achieve these grains?
A group of Brown University researchers has found a method for smashing individual metal nanoclusters that leads to metals that are up to four times harder than naturally occurring structures. This new method is quite different from conventional hardening techniques.
RELATED: THE RISE OF METALLURGY AND A LOOK AT MATERIALS JOINING TECHNOLOGY
“Hammering and other hardening methods are all top-down ways of altering grain structure, and it’s very hard to control the grain size you end up with,” said in a press release Ou Chen, an assistant professor of chemistry at Brown and corresponding author of the new research.
“What we’ve done is create nanoparticle building blocks that fuse together when you squeeze them. This way we can have uniform grain sizes that can be precisely tuned for enhanced properties.”
For this research, the team used nanoparticles of gold, silver, palladium, and other metals and chemically stripped them of the organic molecules called ligands, which generally prevent the formation of metal-metal bonds between particles. The clusters were then able to fuse together with just a bit of pressure.
The new metal coins made with the technique were found to have electrical conduction and light reflectance virtually identical to standard metals but their optical properties were dramatically changed.
“Because of what’s known as the plasmonic effect, gold nanoparticles are actually purplish-black in color,” Chen said. “But when we applied pressure, we see these purplish clusters suddenly turn to a bright gold color. That’s one of the ways we knew we had actually formed bulk gold.”
The researchers are now looking to apply the technique to commercial products as the chemical treatment is relatively simple to execute. Chen has currently patented the technique and sees great potential for it” both for industry and for the scientific research community.”
A healthcare worker administers a Covid-19 vaccine in Harlem on Friday. The C.D.C. has updated its guidelines on vaccine doses from multiple manufacturers.Credit…James Estrin/The New York Times
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has quietly changed its recommendations for coronavirus immunizations to allow patients to switch the authorized vaccines between the first and second doses in “exceptional situations,” and to extend the interval between doses to six weeks, even though such changes have not been studied in large clinical trials.
The new guidelines were posted on the agency’s website on Thursday with little public notice. With the possibility of vaccine shortages on the horizon and little expectation that supply can be increased before April, the changes may offer a way to vaccinate more people — a high priority for President Biden, who outlined his national Covid-19 strategy on Thursday.
A C.D.C. spokeswoman, Kristen Nordlund, said the agency’s “intention is not to suggest people do anything different, but provide clinicians with flexibility for exceptional circumstances.”
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the president’s special adviser for Covid-19, has repeatedly said advised against delaying the second dose or making any other changes in vaccination protocol without the data to support them.
Earlier this month, Britain quietly updated its vaccination playbook to allow for a mix-and-match vaccine regimen if the second dose of the vaccine a patient originally received isn’t available, or if the manufacturer of the first shot isn’t known. Some scientists questioned the move at the time, saying Britain was gambling with its new guidance.
In the United States, two vaccines have emergency federal authorization — one by Pfizer and BioNTech, and the other by Moderna — and both rely on the same mRNA technology and call for two doses. Until now, the C.D.C. has strictly adhered to the recommendations from its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which specifically stated that the vaccines were not to be mixed.
The updated C.D.C. guidance still states that the authorized vaccines are “not interchangeable with each other or with other Covid-19 vaccine products.” The agency put the word “not” in bold on its website, and noted that the safety and efficacy of mixing doses has not been studied.
But “in exceptional situations in which the first-dose vaccine product cannot be determined or is no longer available,” the guidelines added, any available mRNA vaccine can be used for the second dose.
With respect to dosing, the guidance says that the second dose should be administered as close as possible to the recommended interval — three weeks for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and four weeks for Moderna. But if that is “not feasible,” the agency wrote, the interval between doses may be extended to six weeks.
The pace of vaccination is critical not just to curbing disease and death, but also to heading off the impact of more infectious forms of the virus. The C.D.C. has warned that one variant, which is thought to be 50 percent more contagious, might become the dominant source of infection in the United States by March.
Although public health experts are optimistic that the existing vaccines will be effective against that variant, known as B.1.1.7, it may drive up the rate of new cases if enough people remain unvaccinated.
At a White House briefing on Thursday — his first since November — Dr. Fauci said that experts are particularly concerned about new variants of the virus in South Africa and Brazil, which have not yet reached the United States. He said vaccines still appear effective against those variants, but the variants may sidestep the immune system to some degree, making it all the more urgent for people to be vaccinated.
“Replicating viruses don’t mutate unless they replicate,” Dr. Fauci said, “and if you can suppress that by a very good vaccine campaign, then you can actually avoid this deleterious effect that you might get from the mutations.”
Federal health officials and corporate executives agree that it will be impossible to increase the immediate supply of vaccines before April because of lack of manufacturing capacity. And the current vaccination effort, which had little central direction under the Trump administration, has so far sown confusion and frustration. Some localities are complaining they are running out of doses, while others have unused vials sitting on shelves.
According to a senior administration official, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are on track to deliver up to 18 million doses a week. Together, they have pledged to deliver 200 million doses by the end of March.
A third vaccine maker, Johnson & Johnson, is due to report the results of its clinical trial shortly. If approved, that vaccine would also help shore up production. If all of that supply were used, the nation could average well over two million shots a day.
In April and afterward, the outlook brightens. Pfizer and Moderna have each committed to supply another 100 million doses by the end of July; the companies may be able to provide even more. A week ago, Pfizer and BioNTech, its German partner, increased their global production target for the year to two billion doses from 1.3 billion doses.
United States ›
United StatesOn Jan. 21
14-day change
New cases
190,630
–21%
New deaths
4,142
+11%
World ›
WorldOn Jan. 21
14-day change
New cases
663,029
–5%
New deaths
16,819
+21%
Where cases per capita are highest
In Philadelphia International Airport last month. President Biden’s new executive orders will require all interstate travelers to wear masks.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
A year into the worst global health crisis in a century, and much of the world feels frozen in place.
Countries that had loosened up their frontiers after imposing restrictions earlier in the pandemic are now tightening them again, worried about new, more contagious variants of the coronavirus. Some are tightening travel restrictions or imposing new rules on travelers.
In the United States, President Biden signed a series of executive orders aimed at thwarting the pandemic, including a requirement that travelers coming from abroad quarantine after arriving in the United States, though it is not clear how that will be enforced.
He also signed an order requiring masks for many kind of interstate travel. Travelers will have to wear masks in airports, as well as on commercial airplanes, trains and public maritime vessels, including ferries, and on certain other modes of public transportation like intercity buses.
While the United States is merely making traveling less hospitable, countries in Europe are going further, with plans to tighten its borders.
European Union leaders agreed to limit nonessential travel within the bloc and from nonmember countries in a bid to slow the spread of two variants that are already present in multiple countries in the region.
Leaders from the bloc’s 27 nations, meeting via teleconference late Thursday, agreed to take coordinated action in response to the variants, which scientists believe originated in Britain and in South Africa and appear to be significantly more contagious than others.
Some E.U. countries have already limited access for their neighbors, a move that is generally avoided in the principally borderless bloc but has been tolerated because of the extraordinary circumstances.
After the conference call, President Emmanuel Macron’s office announced that France would make PCR tests compulsory for all travelers coming from other European Union countries, starting Sunday at midnight. The tests must be done no later than 72 hours before departure.
In Britain, which completed its exit from the bloc on Jan. 1, flights from Latin America and Portugal were banned over fears of a variant first discovered in Brazil. Flights from South Africa, where another highly contagious variant was discovered last month, are also banned.
In all, Britain itself is isolated from more than a dozen countries.
And in China, where the virus spiraled out of control during the Chinese Lunar New Year in 2020, officials are discouraging travel over the holiday, which begins Feb. 12. The new year is usually the occasion for the largest annual human migration in the world.
Beijing is restricting the number of passengers allowed on public transit and has extended the quarantine period for travelers returning from overseas. Schools have been closed, and the authorities said on Wednesday that people returning to rural areas for the holiday must test negative for the virus and quarantine at home for 14 days.
Ma Xiaowei, the National Health Commission minister, has blamed the recent outbreak on travelers returning from overseas and on workers handling imported food.
Three locally transmitted coronavirus cases were confirmed on Thursday in Shanghai, China’s largest city, the first in the city in about two months.
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transcript
transcript
Fauci Promises Coronavirus Response Based on Science
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser for Covid-19, addressed reporters from the White House on Thursday, and warned the nation was “still in a very serious situation” because of the pandemic.
First of all, obviously, we are still in a very serious situation. I mean, to have over 400,000 deaths is something that, you know, is unfortunately historic in the very in the very bad sense. When you look at the number of new infections that we have, it’s still at a very, very high rate. Hospitalizations are up. There are certain areas of the country, as I think you’re all familiar with, which are really stressed from the standpoint of beds, from the standpoint of the stress on the health care system. However, when you look more recently at the seven-day average of cases, remember, we were going between three and 400,000, and two and 300,000. Right now, it looks like it might actually be plateauing. One of the things that we’re going to do is to be completely transparent, open and honest. If things go wrong, not point fingers, but to correct them and to make everything we do be based on science and evidence. It was very clear that there were things that were said, be it regarding things like hydroxychloroquine hydroxychloroquine and other things like that, that really was an uncomfortable because they were not based on scientific fact. I can tell you, I take no pleasure at all in being in a situation of contradicting the president. So it was really something that you didn’t feel that you could actually say something, and there wouldn’t be any repercussions about it. The idea that you can get up here and talk about what you know, what the evidence, what the science is, and know, that’s it. Let the science speak. It is somewhat of a liberating feeling.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser for Covid-19, addressed reporters from the White House on Thursday, and warned the nation was “still in a very serious situation” because of the pandemic.CreditCredit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the longtime government infectious disease expert, has returned to the White House spotlight, offering both reassurances and warnings.
Dr. Fauci, shunned by President Donald J. Trump but embraced by President Biden, appeared in the White House briefing room on Thursday to speak to reporters about the pandemic.
He did not mince words, and appeared to enjoy feeling that he no longer had to.
“Historic, in the very bad sense,” was his take on the pandemic, as total cases in the United States edged near the 25 million milestone.
He warned that the nation was “still in a very serious situation,” even if the number of cases appears to be plateauing, pointing to more infectious variants of the virus that could cause spikes in cases in the coming months.
Dr. Fauci, who is now Mr. Biden’s chief medical adviser for the pandemic, said that the vaccines now in use in the United States appeared effective against the new variants so far.
And even if variants do end up diminishing the vaccines’ effectiveness, the drugs will still provide good protection, he said, citing their considerable “cushion effect.”
If need be, he said, the vaccines can be modified.
“That is not something that is a very onerous thing,” he said. “We can do that given the platforms we have.”
The federal government and the states have stumbled, however, in vaccinating Americans on a large scale. And it is more important than ever to do so, Dr. Fauci said. The more viruses spread, the more opportunities they have to mutate.
“If you can suppress that by a very good vaccine campaign, then you could actually avoid this deleterious effect that you might get from the mutations,” he said.
If the United States can vaccinate 70 percent to 85 percent of the population by the middle or end of the summer, he predicted, “by the time we get to the fall, we will be approaching a degree of normality.”
On Thursday, speaking of the problems ahead without a president glowering over his shoulder, Dr. Fauci appeared to be enjoying his own return to normality. Asked how it felt, he paused a beat or two before delivering his review.
“It is somewhat of a liberating feeling,” he said.
Lab employees in Italy working to produce the antibody treatments developed by Eli Lilly.Credit…Riccardo Antimiani/EPA, via Shutterstock
An unusual experiment to prevent nursing home staff members and residents from infection with the coronavirus has succeeded, the drug maker Eli Lilly said on Thursday.
A drug containing monoclonal antibodies — laboratory-grown virus fighters — prevented symptomatic infections in residents who were exposed to the virus, even the frail older people who are most vulnerable, according to preliminary results of a study conducted in partnership with the National Institutes of Health.
The researchers found an 80 percent reduction in infections among residents who got the drug compared with those who got a placebo, and a 60 percent reduction among the staff,Eli Lilly said.
The study included 965 participants at nursing homes: 666 staff members and 299 residents. The data have not yet been peer-reviewed or published. The company expects to present the findings at a future medical meeting and to publish them in a peer-reviewed journal, but did give a timeline.
The drug, bamlanivimab, has an emergency-use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration that allows it to be provided to symptomatic patients early in the course of their infection. This study sought to establish whether the drug could stop infections before they started.
It was an unusual experiment: In trucks equipped with mobile labs, medical workers sped to nursing homes the moment a single infection was detected there. Then they set up temporary infusion centers to administer the drug.
Although the study has ended, Dr. Daniel Skovronsky, Eli Lilly’s chief scientific officer, said the company would continue to rush to nursing homes in its study network when an outbreak is detected.
“Everyone will get the drug,” he said.
A nursing home resident receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine in Budapest this month.Credit…Zoltan Balogh/EPA, via Shutterstock
The Hungarian government has for months lauded the opportunities of Russia’s Sputnik vaccine. In November, the foreign minister made public his talks with Russian counterparts about the possibility of manufacturing the Russian vaccine in Hungary. On Thursday, the country approved the Russian vaccine and one made by AstraZeneca for use.
And on Friday, after a meeting in Moscow with his Russian counterpart, Hungary’s foreign minister said that Hungary would buy two million doses of the Russian vaccine.
The moves make Hungary the first European Union nation to move outside the bloc’s supply chain, which the country’s president, Viktor Orban, said was moving too slowly.
“What I need, and what the Hungarian people need, is not an explanation, but a vaccine,” Mr. Orban said. “And if it is not coming from Brussels, then it must come from elsewhere.”
The European Union has approved two coronavirus vaccines: one made by Moderna and one made by Pfizer and BioNTech. The bloc is expected to decide this month whether to authorize the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Each E.U. member state is allotted vaccine doses based on population size, and the bloc has ordered 2.3 billion doses of several vaccines, some of which are still in development.
But a disruption in Pfizer’s production facility in Puurs, Belgium, has stalled or stopped deliveries in Europe and elsewhere, causing frustration. The company has vowed to resume deliveries by mid-February, and says that production upgrades will enable it to increase its output.
In a radio interview on Friday morning, Mr. Orban called the E.U.’s vaccination rate “simply unacceptable.” He added, “It cannot be that Hungarian people are dying because vaccine procurement in Brussels is slow.”
Some Hungarian experts have expressed concern that the government’s approach might increase vaccine skepticism, which might thwart a national vaccination plan.
“The Hungarian authority suddenly approved these two vaccines under political pressure,” said Dr. Ferenc Falus, Hungary’s former chief medical officer, said in reference to the AstraZeneca and Sputnik vaccines. “It would have been better for them to wait for the approval of the European Union’s medicine agency. This is especially incomprehensible in the case of Astra, which will receive the European Union’s approval within days.”
The European Union drugs regulator, the European Medicines Authority, said that the developer of the Sputnik vaccine had “submitted a request for scientific advice to the agency.” That step comes well before a company is ready to submit data for the regulator’s review of its work, let alone applying for authorization to distribute a vaccine to European Union countries.
Dave Chappelle had been hosting socially distanced shows since June.Credit…Owen Sweeney/Invision, via Associated Press
The comedian Dave Chappelle has tested positive for the coronavirus and has canceled several upcoming shows at the Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheater in Austin, Texas, a spokeswoman told The Associated Press.
The venue’s website showed cancellations for four shows through Tuesday.
Mr. Chappelle, who had been hosting socially distanced shows in Ohio since June, with rapid testing for audience members and himself, moved his shows to Austin during the winter, the spokeswoman said.
Mr. Chappelle is asymptomatic and quarantining, she said.
Joe Rogan, a comedian and podcast host who had been scheduled to perform with Mr. Chappelle on Friday and Saturday, apologized for the cancellations. “We’ll reschedule them as soon as we can,” Mr. Rogan said early Friday in an Instagram post.
Mr. Chappelle’s positive test result came about three months after he hosted “Saturday Night Live” and commented on the pandemic in a monologue that also heavily touched on the presidential election.
“Do you guys remember what life was like before Covid?” Mr. Chappelle said. “I do. There was a mass shooting every week. Anyone remember that? Thank God for Covid. Someone had to lock these murderous whites up and keep them in the house.”
Waiting to receive Covid-19 vaccine shots in London on Friday.Credit…John Sibley/Reuters
For weeks, Britain has reported eye-watering coronavirus death numbers, hospitals have continued to fill up, and fears are high that it will take months to control the spread of a highly transmissible variant first detected in the Kent region of England last year.
Yet vaccination figures have offered a glimmer of hope: Nearly five million people had received a first vaccine dose in Britain as of Friday, according to government data. That amounts to about 8 percent of the population.
Fewer than 500,000 have received a second injection, as the National Health Service is prioritizing first injections and second jabs are given up to 12 weeks after the first.
Since the authorities imposed new lockdown restrictions in England this month, Britain has reported its highest daily death figures and remains one of the worst-hit countries in Europe. Nearly 95,000 people have died of the coronavirus in British hospitals, and the authorities have said that England’s lockdown could remain in place throughout the spring.
The situation is so grim that the authorities are considering offering £500 (about $680) to anyone testing positive for the virus, in a bid to encourage people to respect quarantine rules, according to British news reports.
There are also fears that cuts in vaccine deliveries from Pfizer, as has occurred in other places, may slow down the rollout, and that variations in vaccination rates within the country puts some areas at a disadvantage.
Yet six weeks after becoming the first Western country to approve a vaccine, Britain is among those championing their mass vaccination campaign. By comparison, the United States has vaccinated around 4.5 percent of its population, and most European countries less than 2 percent.
In Britain, a racecourse, rugby fields and religious buildings have been turned into vaccination centers, in addition to 1,200 hospitals and medical offices. More than two million people were vaccinated in the past seven days, twice as many as two weeks ago.
At such a pace, Britain may fall short of its goal to vaccinate 13.9 million people by mid-February, but the authorities have said they can reach the target if they continue to increase the pace.
Elsewhere in Europe, members of the European Union have meanwhile urged the bloc to accelerate the delivery of their vaccine doses, and several leaders expressed frustration on Thursday over the rate of the rollout.
Government officials in Romania and Poland said that Pfizer had halved the amount of vaccine doses being delivered to their countries, and Italian officials have threatened legal action against the U.S. vaccine maker.
“Leaders want vaccination to be accelerated,” said Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, the group of E.U. leaders.
Covid-19 patients in Lviv, Ukraine, this month.Credit…Evgeniy Maloletka/Associated Press
KYIV, Ukraine — After a revolution seven years ago, Ukrainians discovered that their ousted president had used public money to build himself a gigantic palace with a private zoo, a golf course and a garage full of antique cars.
To prevent repeats of such corruption, a raft of reforms were put in place, including a requirement that nearly all government contracts be made public, lest secret kickbacks slip into the pockets of high-ranking officials.
The overhaul, widely seen as a rare success in the country’s otherwise halting anticorruption drive, covered tens of millions of dollars in annual medical procurement deals.
But to secure coronavirus vaccine supplies, Ukraine has been forced to largely abandon the rule — a move that the government says is not its choice but rather a demand of the pharmaceutical giants that control the supply.
In negotiating with national governments, drug companies like Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson have insisted that many of the deals’ terms amount to trade secrets and must therefore be kept confidential.
Health advocacy groups have criticized those arrangements, saying that governments far better positioned than Ukraine to spend vast sums on doses have been too willing to accept such secrecy.
The requirement has hamstrung the Ukrainian government and forced one state-owned procurement company that was set up to prevent graft in the medical system to be sidelined because it was legally required to disclose the terms of all contracts.
“This is due to extremely strict privacy rules and nondisclosure policies, which the procurement company will not be able to comply with under Ukrainian law,” Svitlana Shatalova, a deputy minister of health, said at a news conference on Thursday.
The nondisclosure agreements allow pharmaceutical companies to negotiate prices, delivery timelines and other conditions for vaccine deals without governments or their citizens comparing the agreements to those struck with other nations.
According to a document that a European official posted on social media in December and quickly deleted, the European Union negotiated a lower price for Pfizer’s vaccine — 12 euros, or about $14.60, per dose — than the U.S. government, which agreed to pay $19.50 per dose. European nations tend to pay substantially lower prices for drugs than the United States does.
global roundup
Lining up to be tested for the virus at a school in Beijing on Friday.Credit…Thomas Peter/Reuters
Nearly two million residents of Beijing were being tested for the coronavirus on Friday as the city rushed to stem mainland China’s worst outbreak since the virus was first detected.
Health officials set up temporary testing facilities in two major districts of Beijing, China’s capital, after three locally transmitted cases were confirmed there on Thursday.
The authorities in Shanghai, China’s business capital and biggest city, were also testing hospital employees after two health care workers tested positive on Thursday. Shanghai recorded six new locally transmitted cases on Friday.
New infections were also reported on Friday in four northern provinces — Hebei, Heilongjiang, Jilin and Shanxi — and in the eastern province of Shandong. That brings the total number of new cases across China this week to at least 500.
While the active case count is still far lower than that of the United States and other countries, the outbreak threatens to undermine the government’s success in stamping out the virus and bringing life in China back to normal.
More than 28 million people have been placed under some kind of lockdown across China in recent weeks, mostly in northern areas. Officials fear that new infections could lead to another major outbreak during the Lunar New Year holiday, when hundreds of millions of people travel across the country to celebrate with their families.
Last January, the coronavirus was spread far beyond its original epicenter, the central Chinese city of Wuhan, in part by people traveling home for Lunar New Year — weeks before health officials in Beijing acknowledged the risk of human-to-human transmission.
In Beijing this month, the authorities have closed all schools, limited the number of passengers allowed on public transit and extended quarantine requirements for travelers returning from overseas to three weeks, up from two weeks.
The central authorities are also requiring anyone traveling to rural areas for Lunar New Year to first test negative for the virus and then quarantine for 14 days — a move that could discourage many people from returning to their hometowns for the seven-day holiday.
In other developments around the world:
Bangladesh will begin a nationwide coronavirus vaccination campaign starting with a gift from India — two million vaccine doses — by next week. Bangladesh, whose population is about 163 million, will also buy 30 million additional doses from India, said Muhibur Rahman, a health ministry secretary. He said that Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, had pledged to cover doses for 20 percent of Bangladesh’s population. The rollout plan includes “freedom fighters of Bangladesh’s war of independence in the priority list,” Mr. Rahman said, referring to the 1971 conflict with Pakistan that led to Bangladesh’s creation. The country’s health minister told reporters this week that 42,000 volunteers had been trained to carry out the inoculation drive.
Paraguay’s health minister announced that the country had arranged to buy three million doses of coronavirus vaccines from two pharmaceutical companies and plans to start vaccinations in the second half of February, Reuters reported. The minister, Julio Mazzoleni, said the companies would be named when the contracts are signed. The country plans to purchase another 4.2 million doses through Covax, a World Health Organization program.
Because of the high number of deaths related to the coronavirus, a crematorium in Meissen, Germany, is struggling to store coffins.Credit…Filip Singer/EPA, via Shutterstock
Despite early successes in handling the pandemic, Germany’s health authorities have now registered a total of 50,000 Covid deaths since the virus was first detected in the country nearly a year ago. And 30,000 of those deaths have occurred since Dec. 9.
“These are not just numbers. These are people who died in loneliness,” Chancellor Angela Merkel said at a news conference on Thursday. “These are families who mourn them. We have to be aware of that, too, again and again.”
Daily reported new infections in the country are decreasing amid a weekslong lockdown, with the authorities registering 17,862 new cases on Thursday, almost 4,500 fewer than a week earlier. But rising death tolls typically trail behind spikes in infection numbers.
In response to the coronavirus’s first wave, Germany locked down early and effectively. Experts attributed the country’s relatively low early fatality rate to high testing rates, well-equipped hospitals and the young age of many of the first people to become infected there.
Since mid-December, however, the daily tolls have regularly surpassed 1,000, in a country of about 83 million people.
Early this month, pictures taken inside a mortuary in Meissen, in the east of the country, showed coffins stacked three-high. And on Thursday of last week — the country’s worst pandemic day so far — 1,244 people died from Covid in 24 hours.
A protest in Ulaanbaatar, the Mongolian capital, on Wednesday over the treatment of a Covid patient.Credit…Byambasuren Byamba-Ochir/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Mongolia’s prime minister has resigned after protests in the country’s capital, Ulaanbaatar, over the government’s pandemic response.
The country’s Parliament on Friday approved the resignation of Prime Minister Khurelsukh Ukhnaa, who will be replaced by the chief cabinet minister, the state news media reported. The deputy prime minister and health minister also submitted their resignations.
Protesters took the streets on Wednesday after a widely circulated video showed a Covid-19 patient and her newborn baby being hastily escorted from a hospital to a quarantine facility. Demonstrators were protesting the treatment of the patient, who was still wearing a nightgown and slippers when she was escorted out of the hospital. Some protesters wore nightgowns and slippers in a show of support for the woman.
The World Health Organization praised Mongolia early on in the pandemic for its quick response, with the country shutting down its borders and ceasing much of its coal mining activity. Mining makes up nearly half of its export revenue and provides some of the best-paying jobs in the country.
And although Mr. Khurelsukh won landslide elections last year, the government has faced dissatisfaction over a flailing economy and unemployment. He said in a resignation letter that he would “accept the demand of the public.”
“I remember the second time I thought I would die,” said Laura M. Holson, a Times reporter and editor.Credit…Adam Ferguson for The New York Times
Laura M. Holson, a Times reporter and editor, caught Covid during the New York City outbreak last April, but the acute phase of the illness was just the beginning. Here, she tells her story.
I remember the second time I thought I would die.
The first time was April 17, 2020, when, after finding out I had Covid-19 nine days earlier with aches and a cough, my fever shot up to 101.8, I could barely breathe, and my family doctor told me I had bacterial pneumonia.
The second time I thought I would die was different, yet eerily the same. It was June 22, nearly three months after the initial diagnosis. By then the cough had softened, and I was well past the acute phase of Covid-19, having tested negative twice. The chest tightness had passed, supplanted by a nagging ache. I had lost eight pounds as nausea tamped my appetite, and my heart seemed to race without reason. I was so tired I sometimes fell asleep upright in my chair. And my fever persisted, too.
On that cloudless day in June, the temperature outside hovered at a pleasant 85. I was seated on the couch, working on my laptop when, at about 4 p.m., the crushing chest pain I experienced during Covid’s earliest days suddenly returned. My pulse began to quicken, and a shawl of heat gathered around my shoulders, crept up my neck and swallowed my head. I began to sweat. It felt as if the air was being squeezed out of my lungs. Breathe, I told myself. BREATHE. I stood up, gasping, and walked to the window to look outside.
Could this really be happening again?
Read her full account.
Harvesting oranges in New South Wales in October. The neighboring state of Victoria is one of the last in Australia to allow in Pacific Islanders to help on farms.Credit…Lukas Coch/EPA, via Shutterstock
About 1,500 people from Pacific Island nations are due to be flown into the Australian state of Victoria to pick fruit on farms. And although the move will help alleviate a shortage of farm hands that has plagued the industry for months because of the coronavirus, it also underscores the greater health risks and economic effects that poorer and non-white populations have faced in the pandemic.
Victoria is one of the last states in Australia to allow Pacific Islanders in to help on farms. Nearly 200 workers from Vanuatu flew into the Northern Territory to harvest mangos in August, and other states have since followed.
Over the summer, the country has been flooded with news reports of fruit and vegetables being left to rot in fields amid a shortage of workers to pick them.
Farmers say they have had difficulty attracting locals to do the work, while some Australians counter that farmers have been unwilling to employ locals because they are “not as exploitable as a foreigner.” The sector has also been the subject of recent reports of underpaying and exploiting workers.
The supply of backpackers and foreign seasonal workers who typically make up the majority of the industry has been cut off since the country shut its borders last March in an effort to stop the spread of the virus.
Before arriving in Victoria, the Pacific Islander workers will be required to quarantine for two weeks on the Australian island state of Tasmania, Victoria’s government said on Friday. In exchange, 330 Tasmanians who have been stuck overseas will be able to return to the country and quarantine in Melbourne hotels.
Victoria has eased its pandemic restrictions after 16 consecutive days with no cases of community infection.
