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Tag: domestic-coronavirus

  • China’s economy faltered before major Covid policy shift | CNN Business

    China’s economy faltered before major Covid policy shift | CNN Business


    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    China’s Covid-battered economy slumped in November before its leaders abruptly eased pandemic restrictions, paving the way for a reopening that economists say will be bumpy and painful.

    On Thursday, a series of indicators pointed to a slowdown in economic activity last month. Retail sales declined 5.9% in November from a year ago, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. It was the worst contraction in retail spending since May, when widespread Covid lockdowns, including in the country’s richest city Shanghai, pummeled the economy.

    Industrial production only increased 2.2% in November, less than half of October’s growth.

    Investment in the property sector, which accounts for as much as 30% of China’s GDP, plunged by 9.8% in the first 11 months of the year. Property sales by value plummeted by more than 26%.

    Unemployment worsened, rising to 5.7% last month, the highest level in six months.

    “In November, Covid outbreaks spread to most parts of the country, forcing residents to cut travel and stay at home, which hit consumption heavily,” Fu Jiaqi, a statistician at the NBS, said in a statement on Thursday accompanying the data release.

    He noted that consumption activities involving personal interaction, for example travel or dining, were greatly affected. Catering sector revenues declined 8.4% last month.

    Sales of big-ticket items — such as cars, furniture, and high-end consumer electronics — also contracted sharply, as consumers were wary of spending amid worries about a weak economy. Spending on household appliances and telecoms devices plunged more than 17%. Car sales dropped over 4%.

    External trade was also weak. Last week, customs data showed the country’s exports contracted 8.7% in November from a year ago, the worst performance since February 2020. That figure was much lower than most economists had expected.

    November’s economic slump happened before Beijing abruptly eased its repressive pandemic restrictions earlier this month. Top leaders signaled at an important political meeting last week that they will shift focus back to growth and seek a turnaround of the economy next year.

    China’s economy has been battered by its stringent zero-Covid policy and persistent property woes this year. Growth is forecast to hit around 3% in 2022, one of the lowest levels since 1976, the year when former leader Mao Zedong’s death ended a decade of social and economic tumult.

    On Wednesday, two of the country’s top ruling bodies, the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the State Council, issued a strategic plan to expand domestic demand and stimulate consumption and investment until 2035. It cited rising external risks, including global economic and geopolitical uncertainties.

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  • Opinion: After their pandemic debut, mRNA vaccines are just getting started | CNN

    Opinion: After their pandemic debut, mRNA vaccines are just getting started | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Many think the now-famous mRNA vaccines came into existence in the blink of an eye, at warp speed, in the throes of a deadly pandemic. But for Drew Weissman, who, along with his research partner Katalin Karikó, is credited with developing the platform that made the life-saving mRNA vaccines possible, RNA technology was a long time coming.

    Weissman, 63, grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, before attending Brandeis University, and then receiving both a doctorate and a medical degree from Boston University. He eventually landed a fellowship in Dr. Anthony Fauci’s lab at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, where he spent the better part of the ’90s researching dendritic cells, a key biological player in starting the body’s immune response. So, when he found himself at the University of Pennsylvania in 1997, the question of how to bolster the human immune system was already burning in his mind.

    Then, serendipity stepped in. Weissman bumped into Karikó, a biochemist at the university, while waiting at the Xerox machine for articles to be photocopied. They began talking about their shared research interest. Karikó, a native of Hungary, had spent decades researching messenger RNA – the biological instruction manual for the production of proteins in human cells – and was convinced of the potential it held for human therapeutics.

    Just like that, a scientific dream team was formed.

    Their research, however, was an uphill battle. For years, Weissman and Karikó’s experiments with RNA ended in failure. The key problem: The RNA was provoking an immune response that made their lab mice sick. But in 2005, with little support left from the scientific community, the pair had a breakthrough. They realized that by modifying the RNA, it would subvert detection by immune cells, and the proteins that the body synthesized from the RNA would train the immune system to recognize a specific foreign invader. With this modified RNA, the mice no longer got sick and showed the immunity Weissman and Karikó had hoped for.

    So, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, it didn’t take long – just the amount of time to sequence the genome of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, create the mRNA based on that sequence and send the final product through the regulatory process – for a safe and effective Covid-19 mRNA vaccine to be approved for use.

    Since then, millions of lives have been saved by the vaccines. Covid-19 is still a threat, but vaccinated and boosted Americans have largely been able to return to a normal cadence of life.

    Across the globe, however, life has looked very different. China has resisted the use of Western mRNA vaccines, instead relying on its zero-Covid policy of strict lockdowns and Covid controls to try to keep the virus from spreading within its borders. This policy recently sparked unprecedented demonstrations among Chinese citizens and, as a result, on Wednesday, the Chinese government released extensive revisions to its restrictive, and ultimately unsuccessful, zero-Covid policy.

    Protests against Covid restrictions spread across China in late November as citizens took to the streets to vent their anger.

    The easing of China’s policy may be heralded as a victory, but it’s one that could come with a steep cost. As of late November, 90% of China’s population had completed two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine, while only about 66% of people over 80 had received two doses, according to Chinese officials. What’s more, the vaccines available to Chinese citizens use an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 virus, and pale in comparison to their mRNA counterparts that are approved in the US, says Weissman.

    But now, it seems, China is recognizing the promise of mRNA vaccines; it’s reportedly close to having one, made in its own country, approved for use. If that approval comes soon, it could deliver the nation from its pandemic turmoil.

    This interview has been edited for length and clarity:

    CNN: Can you explain how an mRNA vaccine works? What happens in the body after someone gets an mRNA shot?

    Weissman: In an mRNA vaccine, the mRNA acts as a kind of middleman. In our cells, DNA contains all the codes for the proteins we need to live. The messenger RNA makes a copy of one of those codes and brings it to a machine called a ribosome that reads the mRNA code and produces a protein from it.

    An mRNA Covid-19 vaccine supplies the codes for part of the SARS-CoV-2 virus called the spike protein. The ribosomes read the mRNA vaccine code and create the virus’ spike protein from it — and the body’s immune system starts recognizing it and creating antibodies to respond to it. Then, if the real virus is ever introduced into the system, the body will recognize its spike protein and will have already built up the antibodies needed to fight it off.

    CNN: What were the biggest challenges to developing the mRNA vaccine platform?

    Weissman: The roadblocks started 25 years before the pandemic hit. Back then, everybody took the attitude that mRNA wasn’t a good therapeutic and that it was a waste of resources to do the research. Support and funding were the biggest roadblocks we hit. We finally got funding, but even after that, it was years before people started to think, “Oh, wait a minute, RNA might actually be useful!”

    CNN: When the scientific community was skeptical of investing in RNA research, what was it that kept you from giving up on it?

    Weissman: The reason I kept at it was the potential I thought RNA had. When you have to make a new vaccine for a new disease using live viruses, it’s a huge amount of work. But RNA is simple. It’s plug and play. You take any protein you want to make an immune response against, you make RNA from it, you stick it in lipids, and you’re done. It was a simple platform that could be used emergently if a new virus suddenly appeared. We were thinking that it would be used against a flu pandemic, but when Covid hit, the vaccine was ready to go.

    I also thought that in addition to vaccines, we might be able to deliver therapeutic proteins and gene edit with RNA. There was so much potential that we felt that the drawbacks needed to be addressed and figured out. And that’s why we stuck with it for so many years.

    CNN: Do you see a future in which we turn to RNA therapeutics to treat or prevent things like the flu, cancers or autoimmune diseases?

    Weissman: We’re now turning to RNA for more than just vaccines. There are therapeutics in the works for a variety of diseases, including HIV, influenza, malaria and others. And there are ongoing clinical trials using RNA to treat cancer. We’ll likely also see clinical trials for RNA therapeutics for autoimmune diseases, too. So, it’s hit the mainstream, and people are looking at it as a potential new therapy.

    I’m also speaking with institutions that treat genetic diseases that afflict only 200 people. There is such a small population affected that no pharmaceutical company, and very few academics, are interested in researching them. But there is potential for RNA to be the key to treatment of these diseases because instead of having to reinvent the gene therapy for each disease, we can use the RNA platform we’ve already developed and easily plug in different diseases. We don’t have to spend $100 million in research to make a new treatment.

    CNN: What does the world need to do to better utilize RNA technologies to fight diseases in the future?

    Weissman: We need to develop the infrastructure to make new medicines, new vaccines, new therapies available to the world. I’ve been working with a lot of low- and middle-income countries to help them develop RNA therapeutics. Take Thailand: Through support from its government and charitable donations, Thailand was able to fund the development of an mRNA vaccine, which is currently in clinical trials, and could be distributed through Southeast Asia.

    And it’s not just Covid vaccines. If countries have the infrastructure to produce RNA therapeutics, they could potentially protect their people from some of the biggest infectious diseases. So, the most important thing is building the infrastructure where it’s needed.

    CNN: What are your thoughts on China’s zero Covid approach? Do you think China did its citizens a disservice by not making mRNA vaccines available to them?

    China has relied on a policy of strict lockdowns and Covid controls to try and keep the virus from spreading within its borders.

    Weissman: Initially, I think China took the right approach, which was to lock down to avoid transmitting Covid-19. And that worked in the beginning. The problem is that, once vaccines became available, China then only gave their citizens vaccines that were made in its own country. And, honestly, the vaccines that they made were lousy.

    Now they find themselves in a situation where the virus can be transmitted very easily when people are out in public. Had they purchased mRNA vaccines and immunized their population, they wouldn’t be in this situation. The bottom line is that China’s zero-Covid policy will never work, because Covid is everywhere. You can’t keep it out.

    CNN: The Covid-19 vaccines use messenger RNA, or mRNA. Is mRNA the only type of RNA that is being studied for use in therapeutics?

    Weissman: No, there’s a new institute at the University of Pennsylvania that does all kinds of RNA research. There are some diseases, particularly muscular diseases, that are caused by incorrect splicing of our RNA. So, we’re looking at new therapies to correct that splicing problem, which use different types of RNA.

    CNN: What are the biggest problems that face RNA therapeutics and vaccines moving forward?

    Weissman: The biggest problem is social media distortion of what RNA is and what it can do. Misinformation scares a lot of people away from taking RNA therapies. I can’t tell you how many times a week I hear people say, “Oh, I won’t take the vaccine, it’ll make me sterile, it’ll give me cancer, it’ll change my genes.” All of that is absolute nonsense, and I think it’s important for scientists to let people know that it’s nonsense – that RNA is safe.

    But there are a lot of ways to address that problem. Scientists aren’t vocal enough about science. There are large groups of people who think scientists are all frauds and who don’t believe in science, and they’re being cultured by some of our far right-wing politicians, religious leaders and community leaders. We need to get to those leaders and tell them to stop creating this unwarranted fear. We need to tell them that science isn’t the enemy.

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  • China scraps virus tracking app as country braces for Covid impact | CNN

    China scraps virus tracking app as country braces for Covid impact | CNN

    Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Sign up here.


    Beijing
    CNN
     — 

    China is bracing for an unprecendented wave of Covid-19 cases as it dismantles large parts of its repressive zero-Covid policy, with a leading expert warning Omicron variants were “spreading rapidly” and signs of an outbreak rattling the country’s capital.

    Changes continued Monday as authorities announced a deactivation of the “mobile itinerary card” health tracking function planned for the following day.

    The system, which is separate from the health code scanning system still required in a reduced number of places in China, had used people’s cell phone data to track their travel history in the past 14 days in an attempt to identify those who have been to a city with zone designated “high-risk” by authorities.

    It had been a point of contention for many Chinese people, including due to concerns around data collection and its use by local governments to ban entry to those who have visited a city with a “high-risk zone,” even if they did not go to those areas within that city.

    But as the scrapping of parts of the zero-Covid infrastructure come apace, there are questions about how the country’s health system will handle a mass outbreak.

    Throughout the weekend, some businesses were closed in Beijing, and city streets were largely deserted, as residents either fell ill or feared catching the virus. The biggest public crowds seen were outside of pharmacies and Covid-19 testing booths.

    Media outlet China Youth Daily documented hours-long lines at a clinic in central Beijing on Friday, and cited unnamed experts calling for residents not to visit hospitals unless necessary.

    Health workers in the capital were also grappling with a surge in emergency calls, including from many Covid-positive residents with mild or no symptoms, with a hospital official on Saturday appealing to residents in such cases not to call the city’s 911-like emergency services line and tie up resources needed by the seriously ill.

    The daily volume of emergency calls had surged from its usual 5,000 to more than 30,000 in recent days, Chen Zhi, chief physician of the Beijing Emergency Center said, according to official media.

    Covid was “spreading rapidly” driven by highly transmissible Omicron variants in China, a top Covid-19 expert, Zhong Nanshan, said in an interview published by state media Saturday.

    “No matter how strong the prevention and control is, it will be difficult to completely cut off the transmission chain,” Zhong, who has been a key public voice since the earliest days of the pandemic in 2020, was quoted saying by Xinhua.

    The rapid rollback of testing nationwide and the shift by many people to use antigen tests at home has also made it difficult to gauge the extent of the spread, with official data now appearing meaningless.

    Authorities recorded 8,626 Covid-19 cases across China on Sunday, down from the previous day’s count of 10,597 and from the high of more than 40,000 daily cases late last month. CNN reporting from Beijing indicates the case count in the Chinese capital could be much higher than recorded.

    One note seen on a residential building in Beijing is indicative of the larger situation, reading: “Due to the severe epidemic situation in recent days, the number of employees who can come to work is seriously insufficient, and the normal operation of the apartment has been greatly affected and challenged.”

    The country is only days out from a major relaxation of its longstanding zero-Covid measures, which came as a head-spinning change for many Chinese living under the government’s stringent controls and fed a longstanding narrative about the deadliness of Covid-19.

    Last Wednesday, top health officials made a sweeping rollback of the mass testing, centralized quarantine, and health code tracking rules that it had relied on to control viral spread. Some aspects of those measures, such as health code use in designated places and central quarantine of severe cases, as well as home isolation of cases, remain.

    Outside experts have warned that China may be underprepared to handle the expected surge of cases, after the surprise move to lift its measures in the wake of nationwide protests against the policy, growing case numbers and rising economic costs.

    While Omicron may cause relatively milder disease compared to earlier variants, even a small number of serious cases could have a significant impact on the health system in a country of 1.4 billion.

    Zhong, in the state media interview, said the government’s top priority now should be booster shots, particularly for the elderly and others most at risk, especially with China’s Lunar New Year coming up next month – a peak travel time where urban residents visit elderly relatives and return to rural hometowns.

    Health authorities on Sunday ordered improvements in medical capabilities in rural areas by the end of the month.

    Measures to be undertaken include increasing ICU wards and beds, enhancing medical staff for intensive care and setting up more clinics for fevers, China’s National Health Commission said in a statement.

    Meanwhile, experts have warned a lack of experience with the virus – and years of state media coverage focusing on its dangers and impact overseas, before a recent shift in tone – could push those who are not in critical need to seek medical care, further overwhelming systems.

    Bob Li, a graduate student in Beijing, who tested positive for the virus on Friday said he wasn’t afraid of the virus, but his mother, who lives in the countryside, stayed up all night worrying about him. “She finds the virus a very, very scary thing,” Li said.

    “I think most people in rural China may have some misunderstandings about the virus, which may come from the overhyping of this virus by the state in the past two years. This is one of the reasons why people are so afraid,” he said, adding that he still supports the government’s careful treatment of Covid-19 during the pandemic.

    There are clear efforts to tamp down on public concern about Covid-19 – and its knock-on effects, like panic buying of medications.

    China’s market watchdog said on Friday that there was a “temporary shortage” of some “hot-selling” drugs and vowed to crackdown on price gouging, while major online retailer JD.com last week said it was taking steps to ensure stable supplies after sales for certain medications surged 18 times that week over the same period in October.

    A hashtag trending on China’s heavily moderated social media platform Weibo over the weekend featured a state media interview with a Beijing doctor saying people who tested positive for Covid-19 but had no or mild symptoms did not need to take medication to recover.

    “People with asymptomatic inflections do not need medication at all. It is enough to rest at home, maintain a good mood and physical condition,” Li Tongzeng, chief infectious disease physician at Beijing You An Hospital, said in an interview linked to a hashtag viewed more than 370 million times since Friday.

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  • US military braces for impact of Covid vaccine mandate repeal | CNN Politics

    US military braces for impact of Covid vaccine mandate repeal | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    As a repeal of the US military’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate took a step closer to becoming law on Thursday, military officials and experts are warning it’s a change that could have adverse ripple-effects on military readiness and the ability of service members to deploy around the world.

    “This isn’t just our side of the equation,” a defense official told CNN regarding the possible impact of the change. “It’s what our partners and people that we would train and work with are asking us to do to enter the country.”

    The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) released on Tuesday includes a provision that would rescind the Pentagon’s current mandate requiring troops receive the Covid vaccine. And while Republican lawmakers have celebrated its inclusion, the White House said it’s a mistake – though President Joe Biden has not made clear if he will sign the bill with the included provision in it.

    The House passed the NDAA on Thursday in a 350-80 vote.

    Deputy Defense Press Secretary Sabrina Singh declined on Wednesday to go into detail about what the Pentagon was preparing for if the mandate was repealed, instead emphasizing that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin believes the mandate is important for the health of the force.

    “What is important to the readiness of the force is getting the vaccine,” Singh said. “So yes, it would impact the readiness of the force – you’re more prone to getting Covid-19.”

    It’s not just about the US. American troops often have additional vaccine requirements depending on the area of the world to which they are deploying or being rotated through. Under the Pentagon’s current policy, service members who have not gotten the vaccine are considered non-deployable, Singh said Wednesday.

    Indeed, retired Gen. Robert Abrams, who previously commanded US troops in South Korea, told CNN that the vaccine repeal “will make our job more difficult,” referring to the duties of overseas commanders. The Covid-19 vaccine is required for entry to South Korea and Japan – countries that host thousands of US service members.

    Repealing the vaccine mandate “will put the US forces in an awkward position,” Abrams said, because “the host nation expects us to follow their regulations (and SOFA [status of forces agreement] requires it).”

    Republicans have long railed against the Covid vaccine requirement – which is one of more than 15 required vaccines, depending on where a service member is deployed.

    An August 2021 policy signed by Austin required all service members to receive the vaccine; the services set their own deadlines for when their troops had to be fully vaccinated.

    Now, roughly a year later, the vast majority of US troops are: 97% of active duty soldiers are completely vaccinated, as are 99% of active duty airmen, 96% of active duty Marines, and 98% of active duty sailors.

    But as the military faces the biggest recruiting crisis in decades, critics of the mandate say it is pushing out willing service members at a time when the military needs them most and standing in the way of recruits who want to join but do not want to get the vaccine.

    Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger said over the weekend that the mandate is having an impact on recruiting, specifically “in parts of the country there’s still myths and misbeliefs about the back story behind it.” Capt. Ryan Bruce, a Marine Corps spokesman, later told CNN Berger was referencing “anecdotal conversations” he has had with recruiters, and not specific data showing an impact of the mandate on recruitment.

    Officials and experts raised other concerns, however, about the impact repealing the mandate could have on troops already in uniform. Rachel VanLandingham, a retired Air Force judge advocate and law professor at Southwestern Law School, told CNN that there could be “ripple effects” for units if some service members are unable to deploy because of the vaccine.

    That is especially notable for smaller units, like those found in the special operations community. While conventional forces may be able to ensure they have the numbers they need for a deployment or rotation, smaller units could face more of a challenge if the few people they have are unable to deploy because of a vaccine requirement.

    “If one unit can’t go, then the unit they’re replacing, they don’t get to go home on leave … It’s not just one unit and one person,” VanLandingham said. “One person’s inability to show up to work in a military unit affects that entire unit, and that unit is depended on by other units. It is truly a team dynamic.”

    Abrams also pointed out that vaccinations “help prevent serious illness,” and US Forces Korea “does not have the medical capacity to handle a large number of very sick infected personnel.” Instead, US personnel would have to be sent to Korean facilities, he said, which could raise issues if there is a lack of availability or if the facility is not approved by TRICARE, the US military’s health care provider.

    Experts also raised questions about the precedent it would set to roll back a lawful military order after so many refused to follow it.

    “If I’m a commander, what concerns do I have about managing this person who failed to comply with a lawful order?” said Kate Kuzminski, the director of the Military, Veterans, and Society Program at the Center for New American Security.

    “I think there are some bigger challenges within the social context and the culture of the military if pushing back on a lawful order actually changes the nature of the lawful order,” she added. “You might see people refusing to do other things in the future that we very much need them to do.”

    Among the debated points of the vaccine repeal is the question of what will happen to the roughly 8,000 service members who have already been separated and forced to leave the military because they refused to be vaccinated. While some speculate that because they refused a lawful order they will remain separated, some lawmakers are pushing for them to be reinstated.

    A letter sent on November 30 to Republican leadership and signed by 13 Republican senators requests that not only is the mandate rescinded, but that service members who have been separated are reinstated “with back pay.” Pentagon leaders are reportedly discussing the possibility.

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  • As China moves away from zero-Covid, health experts warn of dark days ahead | CNN

    As China moves away from zero-Covid, health experts warn of dark days ahead | CNN

    Editor’s Note: Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Sign up here.


    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    China’s zero-Covid policy, which stalled the world’s second-largest economy and sparked a wave of unprecedented protests, is now being dismantled as Beijing on Wednesday released sweeping revisions to its draconian measures that ultimately failed to bring the virus to heel.

    The new guidelines keep some restrictions in place but largely scrap the health code system that required people to show negative Covid-19 tests for daily activities and roll back mass testing. They also allow some Covid-19 cases and close contacts to skip centralized quarantine.

    They come after a number of cities in recent days started to lift some of the harsh controls that dictated – and heavily restricted – daily life for nearly three years in China.

    But while the changes mark a significant shift – and bring relief for many in the public who’ve grown increasingly frustrated with the high costs and demands of zero-Covid – another reality is also clear: China is underprepared for the surge in cases it could now see.

    Experts say though much is still unknown about how the next weeks and months will progress, China has fallen short on preparations like bolstering the elderly vaccination rate, upping surge and intensive care capacity in hospitals, and stockpiling antiviral medications.

    While the Omicron variant is milder than previous strains and China’s overall vaccination rate is high, even a small number of severe cases among vulnerable and under-vaccinated groups like the elderly could overwhelm hospitals if infections spike across the country of 1.4 billion, experts say.

    “This is a looming crisis – the timing is really bad … China now has to relax much of its measures during the winter (overlapping with flu season), so that was not as planned,” said Xi Chen, an associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health in the United States, pointing to what was likely an acceleration in China’s transition, triggered by public discontent.

    The guidelines released Wednesday open up a new chapter in the country’s epidemic control, three years after the first cases of Covid-19 were detected in central China’s Wuhan and following protests against the zero-Covid policy across the country starting late last month.

    Where China once controlled cases by requiring testing and clear health codes for entry into a number of public places and for domestic travel, those codes will no longer be checked except for in a handful of locations like medical institutions and schools. Mass testing will now be rolled back for everyone except for those in high-risk areas and high-risk positions. People who test positive for Covid-19 but have mild or asymptomatic cases and meet certain conditions can quarantine at home, instead of being forced to go to centralized quarantine centers, as can close contacts.

    Locations classified by authorities as “high risk” can still be locked down, but these lockdowns must now be more limited and precise, according to the new guidelines, which were circulated by China’s state media.

    The changes mark a swift about-face, following mounting public discontent, economic costs and record case numbers in recent weeks. They come after a top official last week first signaled the country could move away from the zero-Covid policy it had long poured significant resources into – though another official on Wednesday said the measures were a “proactive optimization,” not “reactive” when asked in a press briefing.

    “China has pursued this policy for so long, they’re now between a rock and a hard place,” said William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in the US. “They don’t have good options in either direction anymore. They had really hoped that this epidemic globally would run its course, and they could survive without impact. And that hasn’t happened.”

    As restrictions are relaxed, and the virus spreads across the country, China is “going to have to go through a period of pain in terms of illness, serious illness, deaths and stress on the health care system” as was seen elsewhere in the world earlier in the pandemic, he added.

    Since the global vaccination campaign and the emergence of the Omicron variant, health experts have questioned China’s adherence to zero-Covid and pointed out the unsustainability of the strategy, which tried to use mass testing and surveillance, lockdowns and quarantines to stop a highly contagious virus.

    But as some restrictions are lifted, in what appears to be a haphazard transition following years of focus on meticulously controlling the virus, experts say change may be coming before China has made the preparations its health officials have admitted are needed.

    “An uncontrolled epidemic (one which only peaks when the virus starts running out of people to infect) … will pose serious challenges to the health care system, not only in terms of managing the small fraction of Covid cases that are severe, but also in the ‘collateral damage’ to people with other health conditions who have delayed care as a consequence,” said Ben Cowling, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong.

    But even with easing restrictions, Cowling said, it was “difficult to predict” how quickly infections will spread though China, because there are still some measures in place and some people will change their behavior – such as staying at home more often.

    “And I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that stricter measures are reintroduced to combat rising cases,” he said.

    Experts agree that allowing the virus to spread nationally would be a significant shift for a country that up until this point has officially reported 5,235 Covid-19 deaths since early 2020 – a comparatively low figure globally that has been a point of pride in China, where state media until recently trumpeted the dangers of the virus to the public.

    Modeling from researchers at Shanghai’s Fudan University published in the journal Nature Medicine in May projected that more than 1.5 million Chinese could die within six months if Covid-19 restrictions were lifted and there was no access to antiviral drugs, which have been approved in China.

    However, death rates could fall to around the levels of seasonal flu, if almost all elderly people were vaccinated and antiviral medications were broadly used, the authors said.

    Last month, China released a list of measures to bolster health systems against Covid-19, which included directives to increase vaccination in the elderly, stockpile antiviral treatments and medical equipment, and expand critical care capacity – efforts that experts say take time and are best accomplished prior to an outbreak.

    “(Is China prepared?) If you look at surge capacity three years on and the stockpiling of effective antivirals – no. If you talk about the triage procedures – they are not strictly enforced – and if you talk about the vaccination rate for the elderly, especially those aged 80 and older, it is also overall no,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

    Chinese authorities, he added, would likely be closely assessing outcomes like the death rate to decide policy steps going forward.

    Citizens wearing masks board a subway train on Monday in Henan province's Zhengzhou, where negative Covid-19 test results are no longer required for riding public transport.

    The US has at least 25 critical care beds per 100,000 people, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development – by contrast, China has fewer than four for the same number, health authorities there said last month.

    The system also provides limited primary care, which could drive even moderately sick people to hospitals as opposed to calling a family doctor – putting more strain on hospitals, according to Yale’s Chen.

    Meanwhile, weak medical infrastructure in rural areas could foster crises there, especially as testing is reduced and younger people living in cities return to rural hometowns to visit elderly family members over the Lunar New Year next month, he said.

    While China’s overall vaccination rate is high, its elderly are also less protected than in some other parts of the world, where the oldest and most vulnerable to dying from Covid-19 were prioritized for vaccination. Some countries have already rolled out fourth or fifth doses for at-risk groups.

    By China’s accounting, more than 86% of China’s population over 60 are fully vaccinated, according to China’s National Health Commission, and booster rates are lower, with more than 45 million of the fully vaccinated elderly yet to receive an additional shot. Around 25 million elderly who have not received any shot, according to a comparison of official population figures and November 28 vaccination data.

    For the most at-risk over 80 age group, around two-thirds were fully vaccinated by China’s standards, but only 40% had received booster shots as of November 11, according to state media.

    But while China refers to third doses for its widely used inactivated vaccines as booster shots, a World Health Organization vaccine advisory group last year recommended that elderly people taking those vaccines receive three doses in their initial course to ensure sufficient protection.

    The inactivated vaccines used in China have been found to elicit lower levels of antibody response as compared to others used overseas, and many countries using the doses have paired them with more protective mRNA vaccines, which China has not approved for use.

    Cowling said evidence from Hong Kong’s outbreak, however, showed China’s inactivated vaccines worked well to prevent severe disease, but it was critical that the elderly receive three doses in the initial course, as recommended by the World Health Organization. They should then use a fourth dose on top of that to keep immunity high, he added.

    Top health officials on November 28 announced a new plan to bolster elderly vaccination rates, but such measures will take time, as will other preparations for a surge.

    Minimizing the worst outcomes in a transition out of zero-Covid depends on that preparation, according to Cowling. From that perspective, he said, “it doesn’t look like it would be a good time to relax the policies.”

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  • Congress faces time crunch on government funding and sweeping defense policy bill | CNN Politics

    Congress faces time crunch on government funding and sweeping defense policy bill | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are scrambling to try to fund the government and pass a sweeping defense policy bill before a new Congress is sworn in, but there are signs that both sides have struggled to reach agreement over these key outstanding issues.

    Government funding expires at the end of next week on December 16 – and it appears all but certain that lawmakers will have to pass a short-term extension as they try to reach a broader full-year funding agreement.

    Separately, the House has been expected to take up the National Defense Authorization bill for fiscal year 2023 this week, but it’s not yet clear when a vote will take place amid questions over whether certain controversial policy provisions will be included in the legislation – like eliminating a Covid-19 vaccine mandate for the military. Once the House has passed the bill, it would next have be taken up by the Senate.

    Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell warned on Tuesday that rather than passing a full-year funding bill, lawmakers may have to pass a short-term stop-gap measure to kick the can into early next year. This would set up a huge funding fight and create fears of a government shutdown early in the new Congress, when Republicans will take control of the House and would have to cut a deal with Democrats who run the Senate.

    On government funding legislation, McConnell said: “We don’t have agreement to do virtually anything, which can only leave us with the option of a short-term CR into early next year,” referring to a short-term bill known as a continuing resolution.

    He added: “We don’t even have an overall agreement on how much we’re going to spend, and we’re running out of time.”

    Despite the threat of a stop-gap, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer reiterated on Tuesday that senators are “working very hard” to reach a deal to fully fund the government before the upcoming deadline, but acknowledged that “there’s a lot of negotiating left to do.”

    Senate Republican Whip John Thune signaled Tuesday that he doesn’t have a “high level of confidence” both parties will be able to reach a deal on an omnibus government funding bill, as time is running short to pass that massive bill.

    “I don’t have a high level of confidence because I’m looking at the calendar,” the South Dakota Republican said. “It’ll be a very heavy lift, but who knows? I guess I would say is, you know, bring your Yuletide carols and all that stuff here because we may be singing to each other.”

    McConnell complained Tuesday that Democrats were preventing quick passage of the National Defense Authorization Act by trying to add unrelated items at the last minute that Republicans oppose.

    “Senate Democrats are still obstructing efforts to close out the NDAA by trying to jam in unrelated items with no relationship whatsoever to defense. We’re talking about a grab bag of miscellaneous pet priorities,” McConnell said in remarks on the Senate floor.

    “My colleagues across the aisle need to cut their unrelated hostage taking and put a bipartisan NDAA on the floor,” he added.

    Lawmakers released text of an agreement for the NDAA Tuesday night.

    The summary, released by the Senate Armed Services Committee, said it “requires the Secretary of Defense to rescind the mandate that members of the Armed Forces be vaccinated against COVID-19.”

    CNN reported earlier this week that the mandate was likely to be rescinded as part of the defense policy bill.

    In a tweeted statement Tuesday night, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy said that “the end of President Biden’s military COVID vaccine mandate is a victory for our military and for common sense.”

    House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, said earlier Tuesday that the House was considering eliminating the Covid-19 vaccine mandate for military members in order to gather enough Republican votes to pass the annual defense authorization. Republicans have said they will not support the NDAA with the vaccine mandate in place.

    Hoyer said at his weekly pen and pad with reporters that Democrats were not “willing” to give up the mandate, but that a compromise is required to get the NDAA across the finish line.

    “We’re not willing to give it up. This is not a question of will; it’s a question of how can we get something done? We have a very close vote in the Senate, very close vote in the House. And you just don’t get everything you want,” he said.

    Thune said of the defense policy bill, “I think the ransom the Democrats wanted for stripping the vaccine mandate is a whole bunch of things to include the permitting reform, but also some other things that are just going to be non-starters on our side, and I don’t think we’re going to get in the business of, you know, allowing them to hold us hostage.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Antony Blinken says Biden administration supports zero-Covid protesters in China | CNN Politics

    Antony Blinken says Biden administration supports zero-Covid protesters in China | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that the Biden administration supports the zero-COVID protesters in China, explaining that he will address the topic when he visits the country early next year.

    “Of course, we do,” Blinken told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” when asked about the US support for the protesters demonstrating against the Chinese government’s stringent Covid-19 restrictions. “We support the right for people everywhere, whether it’s in China, whether it’s Iran, whether it’s any place else, to protest peacefully, to make known their views, to vent their frustrations.”

    Blinken said he would bring up the protests with Chinese officials in person next month.

    “We will say what we always say and what President (Joe) Biden has said to (Chinese leader) Xi Jinping, which is that human rights and basic civil liberties go to the heart of who we are as Americans. And no American government, no American president is going to be silent on that,” Blinken said.

    The demonstrations in China were triggered by a deadly fire on November 24 in Urumqi, the capital of the far western region of Xinjiang. The blaze killed at least 10 people and injured nine in an apartment building – leading to public fury after videos of the incident appeared to show lockdown measures had delayed firefighters from reaching the victims.

    The city had been under lockdown for more than 100 days, with residents unable to leave the region and many forced to stay home.

    As the protest numbers have swelled, many are also demanding greater political freedoms – and some have even called for Xi’s removal.

    Protests on such a large scale are highly unusual in China. While demonstrations over local grievances occur periodically, the protests are the most widespread since the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement of 1989.

    The Chinese government has cracked down swiftly, deploying police at key protest sites, calling protesters to warn them and tightening online censorship.

    Blinken said Sunday that the US would take the same approach when the rights of protesters are repressed anywhere else: “We speak out against it, we stand up against it, and we take action against it.”

    Demonstrations have rocked Iran for several months, sparking a deadly clampdown from authorities. The nationwide uprising was first ignited by the death of Mahsa (also known as Zhina) Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman who died in mid-September after being detained by the country’s morality police. Since then, protesters across Iran have coalesced around a range of grievances with the Iranian government.

    Iranian Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said Thursday that Iran’s parliament and judiciary are reviewing the country’s mandatory hijab law, according to pro-reform outlet Entekhab.

    Montazeri was also quoted as saying that Iran’s feared morality police had been “abolished,” but Iranian state media strongly pushed back on those comments, saying the interior ministry oversees the force, not the judiciary.

    In an interview with CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday, Blinken wouldn’t say if the US believes that a move to abolish the morality police would end the protests in the country.

    “That’s up to the Iranian people. This is about that. It’s not about us. And what we’ve seen since the killing of Mahsa Amini has been the extraordinary courage of Iranian young people, especially women, who’ve been leading these protests, standing up for the right to be able to say what they want to say, wear what they want to wear,” Blinken said.

    In his interview with Tapper, Blinken pointed to US sanctions on those responsible for the crackdown on protesters in Iran, but he did not mention any cost that has been imposed on China for its crackdown on protests.

    Blinken said that “fundamentally” the protests in China and Iran were not about the US.

    “This is about people in both countries trying to express their views, trying to have their aspirations met, and the response that the governments are taking to that,” he said.

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  • Huge trade partner and ‘systemic rival.’ Europe has a China problem | CNN Business

    Huge trade partner and ‘systemic rival.’ Europe has a China problem | CNN Business


    London
    CNN Business
     — 

    Europe is becoming increasingly reliant on China for trade, and many of its top companies are eager to invest in the world’s second biggest economy despite the disruption caused by Covid lockdowns.

    But a souring relationship with an increasingly unpredictable Beijing, regret about the price Europe has paid for getting too close to Russia, and rising geopolitical tension has some EU officials considering whether the bloc should start to reduce its exposure.

    It’s a calculation EU Council President Charles Michel is weighing up Thursday as he visits Chinese leader Xi Jinping for talks aimed at shoring up diplomatic ties.

    A lot has happened since the last time an EU president — appointed by the leaders of the 27 EU member states — met with Xi in person four years ago.

    The Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and tit-for-tat sanctions between China and EU lawmakers have strained relations since. The United States, which imposed controls on exports of semiconductors to China in October, is reportedly exerting pressure on Europe to adopt a similarly hard line.

    Michel’s spokesperson, Barend Leyts, said in a statement last week that Michel’s visit provides a “timely opportunity” for Europe and China to engage on matters of “common interest.” He did not specify which subjects would be discussed.

    But some within Europe are growing wary of close relations with China. The bloc has been badly burned this year by its historic reliance on Russia as its main energy supplier, and diversification has shot up the political agenda.

    Those concerns bubbled up last month when German Chancellor Olaf Scholz flew to Beijing with a delegation of top business leaders to meet Xi, a move intended to shore up Germany’s second biggest export market after the US.

    The bloc is in a similar bind.

    “Any problems you have from a political and strategic level [between the EU and China], they tend to spill over to the economic level,” Ricardo Borges de Castro, associate director at the European Policy Centre, told CNN Business.

    Both sides have a lot invested in their partnership. The total value of the goods trade between China and Europe hit €696 billion ($732 billion) last year, up by nearly a quarter from 2019.

    China was the third largest destination for EU goods exports, accounting for 10% of the total, according to Eurostat data. China is Europe’s biggest source of imports, accounting for 22% in 2021.

    “The European market’s importance as a destination for Chinese exports is around double that of the Chinese market for Europeans,” Jörg Wuttke, president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China (ECCC) wrote in a September report.

    Overall, the relationship is simply “too big to fail,” according to Borges de Castro. Europe is not seeking to decouple from the lucrative Chinese market, he added.

    “I don’t see [the EU’s strategy] as a decoupling strategy. I think the EU strategy, for the moment, is a diversification strategy… the lesson [from Russia] is that you cannot have a single provider,” he said.

    Machinery, vehicles, chemicals, and other manufactured goods account for the vast bulk of goods traded between the two powers, according to Eurostat.

    “European companies have done extremely well here and the overall long term outlook is very positive,” ECCC Secretary General Adam Dunnett told CNN Business, adding that he expects European company revenues to keep growing in China over the next decade.

    There are areas where Europe is dependent on Beijing, namely for the supply of rare earth metals required to make hybrid and electric vehicles, and wind turbines. Europe’s solar panels are also mostly manufactured in China.

    But those dependencies shouldn’t be exaggerated, Dunnett said.

    “When you look at some of the broader things that China exports to the EU such as furniture and consumer goods, a lot of those things you can get elsewhere,” he said.

    Even so, the United States may exert more pressure on Europe to pull away from China, Borges de Castro noted. In early October, Washington banned Chinese firms from buying its advanced chips and chip-making equipment without a license.

    Benjamin Loh, the head of Dutch chipmaker ASM International, told the Financial Times on Wednesday that the US was “putting a lot of pressure” on the Dutch government to take a similarly tough stance.

    The pressure may already be beginning to show. Germany last month blocked the sale of one of its chip factories to a Chinese-owned tech company because of security concerns.

    Economic ties between Brussels and Beijing, though mutually beneficial, have frayed in other ways in recent years.

    Last year, Chinese direct investment into the European Union dropped to its second lowest level since 2013, only behind 2020, according to analysis by the Rhodium Group, a research firm. It has fallen almost 78% since 2016.

    “The level of Chinese investment in Europe is now at a decade low,” Agatha Kratz, director at Rhodium Group, told CNN Business, citing Beijing’s strict capital controls and greater scrutiny by EU regulators.

    EU investment into China has also become more concentrated. Between 2018 and 2021, the top 10 European investors in China, including those from the United Kingdom, made up almost 80% of the continent’s total investment in the country, Rhodium Group data shows.

    And just four German companies — automakers Volkswagen

    (VLKAF)    , BMW, and Daimler

    (DDAIF)    , and chemicals giant BASF

    (BASFY)     — made up more than one third of all European investment in those four years.

    An investment deal between Beijing and Brussels was shelved last year after EU lawmakers slapped sanctions on Chinese officials over alleged human rights abuses, prompting China to retaliate with its own penalties.

    The deal, agreed in principle in 2020 after years of talks, was designed to level the playing field for European companies operating in China, who have long complained that Beijing’s subsidies have put them at a disadvantage.

    EU diplomats said in April that a “growing number of irritants” were hurting relations, including China’s tacit acceptance of Russia’s war in Ukraine. They have described China as “a partner for cooperation and negotiation, an economic competitor and a systemic rival.”

    The most pressing issue for European businesses in China, according to Dunnett, is its stringent zero-Covid policy.

    “For the last year, it’s been the Covid carousel, [the] Covid rollercoaster,” he said. “Every time you think [it was] about to open up, something pulls us back,” he added.

    Over the weekend, thousands of protestors took to streets across China in a rare series of demonstrations against the country’s strict Covid controls. Some restrictions have since been lifted in Shanghai and other major cities.

    Beijing’s uncompromising approach is helping to further dampen foreign investment in the country, especially among smaller companies, Raffaello Pantucci, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a security research group, told CNN Business.

    “The general business environment in China is perceived as becoming harder to navigate, and while companies still feel they have to engage given its size and potential, increasingly small to medium sized companies are giving up,” he said.

    — Laura He contributed reporting.

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  • China’s Zhengzhou, home to world’s largest iPhone factory, ends Covid lockdown | CNN Business

    China’s Zhengzhou, home to world’s largest iPhone factory, ends Covid lockdown | CNN Business


    Hong Kong
    CNN Business
     — 

    The central Chinese city of Zhengzhou, home to the world’s largest iPhone factory, has lifted a five-day Covid lockdown, in a move that analysts have called a much-needed relief for Apple and its main supplier Foxconn.

    Zhengzhou is the site of “iPhone City,” a sprawling manufacturing campus owned by Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn that normally houses about 200,000 workers churning out products for Apple

    (AAPL)    , including the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max. Last Friday, the city locked down its urban districts for five days as Covid-19 cases surged there.

    Foxconn’s massive facility is not part of the city’s urban districts. However, analysts say the lockdown would have been detrimental to efforts to restore lost production at the campus, the site of a violent workers’ revolt last week.

    “This is some good news in a dark storm for Cupertino,” Daniel Ives, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities, told CNN Business, referring to the California city where Apple is based. “There is a lot of heavy lifting ahead for Apple to ramp back up the factories.”

    Ives estimates the ongoing supply disruptions at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou campus were costing Apple roughly $1 billion a week in lost iPhone sales. The troubles started in October when workers left the campus in Zhengzhou, the capital of the central province of Henan, due to Covid-related fears. Short on staff, bonuses were offered to workers to return.

    But protests broke out last week when the newly hired staff said management had reneged on their promises. The workers, who clashed with security officers, were eventually offered cash to quit and leave.

    Analysts said Foxconn’s production woes will speed up the pace of supply chain diversification away from China to countries like India.

    Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at TF International Securities, wrote on social media that he estimated iPhone shipments could be 20% lower than expected in the current October-to-December quarter. The average capacity utilization rate of the Zhengzhou plant was only about 20% in November, he said, and was expected to improve to 30% to 40% in December.

    Total iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max shipments in the current quarter would be 15 million to 20 million units less than previously anticipated, according to Kuo. Due to the high price of the iPhone 14 Pro series, Apple’s overall iPhone revenue in the current holiday quarter could be 20% to 30% lower than investors’ expectations, he added.

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  • Meta phased out Covid-19 content labels after finding they did little to combat misinformation, Oversight Board says | CNN Business

    Meta phased out Covid-19 content labels after finding they did little to combat misinformation, Oversight Board says | CNN Business



    CNN
     — 

    Late last year, Facebook-parent Meta quietly phased out certain content labels on its platforms that for much of the pandemic had directed viewers to its central Covid-19 information page, after internal research concluded the labels may be ineffective at changing attitudes or stopping the spread of misinformation, according to a report Thursday by the company’s external oversight board.

    Facebook rolled out the labels in early 2021, after coming under criticism for the spread of Covid-19 misinformation on its platforms during the first year of the pandemic. The company applied the labels to a wide range of claims both true and untrue about vaccines, treatments and other topics related to the virus.

    But Meta’s use of the labels began slowing on Dec. 19, and ended completely soon after, the report said, following the internal research. Study results provided to the Meta Oversight Board, a quasi-judicial body, showed that the company’s labels appeared to have “no detectable effect on users’ likelihood to read, create or re-share” claims that had previously been rated as false by third-party fact-checkers or that discouraged the use of vaccines, the report said.

    The research focused on Meta’s direct labeling interventions as opposed to labels the company applies to content as part of its third-party fact-checking program. The research found that the more frequently a user was exposed to the labels, the less likely they were to visit the Covid-19 information center, which offers authoritative resources and information linked to the pandemic.

    “The company reported that initial research showed that these labels may have no effect on user knowledge and vaccine attitudes,” the report said.

    Meta’s internal research on the labels has not been previously released, and the Oversight Board on Thursday called for Meta to publish its findings as part of a broader review of the company’s handling of Covid-19 misinformation.

    The new details highlight the struggles platforms have faced in fighting misinformation and could raise broader questions about the efficacy of labeling and directing users to more accurate information. It also comes at a time when some of the biggest social media companies, including Twitter and Meta, are either rolling back their Covid-19 misinformation policies or considering doing so.

    Meta should not relax its approach to Covid-19 misinformation as the company has proposed, the Oversight Board added. Until the World Health Organization determines that the pandemic has eased, Meta should instead continue to remove misinformation that violates the company’s policies, rather than shifting toward more lenient treatments such as labeling or downranking misleading information, the board said.

    Meta said Thursday it will publicly respond to the Oversight Board’s recommendations within 60 days.

    “We thank the Oversight Board for its review and recommendations in this case,” a company spokesperson said. “As Covid-19 evolves, we will continue consulting extensively with experts on the most effective ways to help people stay safe on our platforms.”

    In the past, Meta has touted its ability to direct users to the Covid-19 information center. Last July, the company said it had connected more than 2 billion people across 189 countries to trustworthy information through the portal.

    Some of those visits occurred through labels that Meta referred to internally as “neutral inform treatments,” or NITs, and “facts about ‘X’ informed treatments,” also known as FAXITs.

    The labels were automatically applied to content that Meta’s automated tools determined were about Covid-19, the Oversight Board said. The labels never directly addressed the claims within any given post, but they provided a link to the Covid-19 information center as well as more contextual information, including messages saying that vaccines have been proven safe and effective or that unapproved Covid-19 treatments could cause bodily harm. (Meta provided examples of a NIT and a FAXIT in its July 2022 request for Oversight Board guidance on whether it should relax its Covid-19 misinformation policy.)

    The decision to begin phasing out the labels came after Meta’s product and integrity teams ran an experiment studying Meta’s global userbase, the report said. The study found that users who were shown the labels approximately once a month were more likely on average to click through to the Covid-19 information center than users who were shown the labels both more and less frequently.

    In light of the results, Meta later told the Oversight Board it would stop using the labels altogether, to ensure they could remain effective in other public health emergencies, according to the report.

    While the Oversight Board’s report Thursday did not pass judgment on Meta’s decision to stop using the labels, it urged the company to reevaluate the 80 distinct types of claims that the company considers to be Covid-19 misinformation and therefore subject to removal from its platforms.

    Meta should perform the reassessments regularly, the Oversight Board said, consulting with public health officials to determine which claims on Meta’s banned list continue to be false or misleading and worthy of removal. Meta should also publish a record of when and how it updates that list, the board added.

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  • Ron DeSantis praised Anthony Fauci for Covid response in spring 2020 for ‘really doing a good job’ | CNN Politics

    Ron DeSantis praised Anthony Fauci for Covid response in spring 2020 for ‘really doing a good job’ | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis is attacking former President Donald Trump for “turning the country over to [Dr. Anthony] Fauci in March 2020” but DeSantis was praising the chief public health official at the same time in previously unreported quotes, saying Fauci was “really, really good and really, really helpful” and “really doing a good job.”

    In other comments, the Florida governor said he deferred to Fauci’s guidance on COVID-19 restrictions and later cited his guidance when communicating the policies he was putting in place early in the pandemic in the state of Florida.

    “You have a lot of people there who are working very, very hard, and they’re not getting a lot of sleep,” DeSantis said on March 25, 2020, at a briefing on Florida’s response. “And they’re really focusing on a big country that we have. And from Dr. Birx to Dr. Fauci to the vice president who’s worked very hard, the surgeon general, they’re really doing a good job. It’s a tough, tough situation, but they’re working hard.”

    In one of his first appearances as a candidate for the Republican nomination for president, DeSantis attacked Trump for following Fauci’s guidance during the Covid pandemic. Fauci served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases until retiring in 2022. He played a key early role in crafting the administration’s response to the pandemic, but often was criticized and sidelined by then-President Trump.

    “I think [Trump] did great for three years, but when he turned the country over to Fauci in March of 2020 that destroyed millions of people’s lives,” DeSantis said last Thursday. “And in Florida, we were one of the few that stood up, cut against the grain, took incoming fire from media, bureaucracy, the left, even a lot of Republicans, had schools open, preserved businesses.”

    “If you are faced with a destructive bureaucrat in your midst like a Fauci, you do not empower somebody like Fauci. You bring him into the office and you tell him to pack his bags: You are fired,” DeSantis said Tuesday at one of his first campaign events in Iowa.

    Bryan Griffin, a spokesman for DeSantis, told CNN he initially followed guidance from Fauci but changed course and didn’t look back.

    “Like most Americans, the governor initially assumed medical officials were going to serve the interests of the people and keep politics out of their decision making. When it became clear that this wasn’t the case, the governor charted his own course and never looked back,” Griffin told CNN in an email. “Governor DeSantis would’ve fired Anthony Fauci.”

    In a news conference on Tuesday, DeSantis also acknowledged mistakes early in the pandemic.

    “And what I’ve said about it is it was a difficult situation and we didn’t know a lot,” he said. “So I think people could do things that they regret. I mean I’ve said there are things we did in those first few weeks that I pivoted from.”

    Though Fauci did help craft the administration’s Covid response, Trump was often critical of Fauci as he attacked his own administration’s pandemic guidelines. Trump began criticizing Fauci early in spring 2020, retweeting calls to fire him in April of that year and in May blasting comments Fauci made against reopening schools. In July 2020, the White House’s deputy chief of staff for communications, Dan Scavino, posted a cartoon on Facebook that showed Fauci as a faucet flushing the American economy for his COVID guidance.

    In spring 2020, Fauci was provided with around-the-clock security after he began receiving escalating threats after his providing guidance to Trump for the country to remain as locked down as possible to help control the spread of the virus, which to date has claimed more than a million lives in the US.

    DeSantis, like Trump, later broke with Fauci over reopening Florida in July 2020, but he didn’t begin regularly harshly criticizing Fauci until spring 2021.

    Trump urged reopenings by May 2020 and DeSantis was one of the first to put in place plans to do so – for which Trump praised the Florida governor at an October 2020 rally.

    Last week, DeSantis’ campaign’s rapid response account and a spokesperson also shared a video from a Republican congressman that attacked Trump for praising Fauci, which used comments from March and February 2020, the same time DeSantis himself was praising Fauci.

    But DeSantis’ attacks rewrite history, according to a CNN KFile review of public appearances by DeSantis in 2020 as Trump began harshly criticizing Fauci much earlier than DeSantis. And in at least 10 different instances at press briefings in April and March, DeSantis cited Fauci or mentioned his guidance when discussing his own support for restrictive policies like closing beaches and putting in place curfews.

    Speaking at a news briefing on March 21, 2020, DeSantis made similar comments praising Fauci.

    “The president’s task force has been great,” DeSantis said. “I mean, you’ve called, you know, we’ve talked Dr. Fauci number of times, talked to, you know, the surgeon, US surgeon general number of times, VP, you know, they’ve been really, really good and really, really helpful.”

    At other press briefings in March 2020, DeSantis also cited Fauci’s guidance on mobile testing, individual testing, and how long the timeline on COVID might be.

    “I would defer to people like Dr. Fauci,” DeSantis said on March 14, 2020. “I think Dr. Fauci has said nationwide, you’re looking at six to eight weeks of where we’re really gonna be having to dig in here.”

    On March 25, 2020, DeSantis cited Fauci’s guidance on isolating.

    “So please, please if you’re one of those people who’ve come from the hot zone, Dr. Fauci said yesterday, you know, you have a much higher chance being infected coming out of that region than anywhere else in the country right now. So please, you need to self-isolate. That’s the requirement in Florida.”

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  • With Robert F. Kennedy Jr. interview, Musk again uses Twitter to promote candidates aligned with his views | CNN Business

    With Robert F. Kennedy Jr. interview, Musk again uses Twitter to promote candidates aligned with his views | CNN Business



    CNN
     — 

    Twitter owner Elon Musk has proposed hosting Twitter Spaces interviews with political candidates of all stripes, reflecting the billionaire’s supposed commitment to ideological neutrality and to promoting Twitter as a true “public square.”

    So far, however, Musk appears to be more interested in platforming candidates that align with his own views rather than those who might challenge them. On Monday, Musk is set to share an audio chatroom with Robert Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaccine activist and Democratic candidate for president.

    The decision to host Kennedy again highlights, for the second time in as many weeks, Musk’s unique potential to shape public opinion through a combination of his own personal celebrity and his private control of a social media megaphone. But this time, it also deepens doubts about Musk’s claims to open-mindedness — and his willingness to use Twitter as anything other than a tool for his own activism.

    Musk, who built much of his early reputation as an entrepreneur on a concern for ensuring humanity’s survival, has opposed the Covid-19 vaccine and spent much of the pandemic railing against Anthony Fauci, the government’s former top infectious disease expert. Musk has claimed as recently as January that he is “pro vaccines in general” but that they risk doing more harm than good “if administered to the whole population.”

    Medical experts widely agree that the broad application of vaccines helps prevent the spread of disease not only by making it less likely for an individual to get sick, but also by creating herd immunity at the societal level. In other words, part of the purpose of vaccines is to administer them as universally as possible so that even if one person falls ill, the infection cannot find other suitable hosts nearby.

    For years, Kennedy has pushed back on that consensus, including by invoking Nazi Germany in an anti-vaccine speech in Washington last year. Instagram shut down his account in 2021 for “repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines,” though the company announced Sunday it has restored Kennedy’s account because he is now running for office. Instagram’s parent, Meta, has also banned accounts belonging to Kennedy’s anti-vaccine advocacy group.

    Kennedy has also attacked the closing of churches, social distancing and government track-and-trace surveillance. At the start of the pandemic, churches were closed and social distancing was enforced across the country to contain the spread of coronavirus, while the government used methods to track cases. (Musk, for his part, also objected to state lockdown orders earlier in the pandemic.)

    It’s unclear if Musk has reached out to other candidates. Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    According to a CNN poll published last month, 60% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters say they back President Joe Biden for the top of next year’s Democratic ticket, 20% favor Kennedy and 8% back Williamson. Another 8% say they would support an unnamed “someone else.”

    With the national profile and visibility that comes with running for high office, Kennedy’s anti-vaccine ideology and vocal stances against prior Covid policies were already primed to become a topic of the 2024 presidential race. But by putting Kennedy center stage on Twitter, Musk appears poised to promote these views further to his millions of followers.

    Musk took a similar tack in sharing a stage with Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who announced his White House bid with Musk during a Twitter Spaces event last month plagued by technical glitches. Musk declined to endorse a candidate but has previously tweeted that he would support DeSantis if he ran for president.

    As Twitter’s owner, Musk has shared conspiracy theories and welcomed extreme voices back to the platform who had been suspended for violating Twitter’s rules in the past. He has also laid off more than 80% of Twitter’s staff, including many who had previously been responsible for content moderation.

    All of that, combined now with his direct association with Kennedy, could have significant ramifications both for Twitter as a platform and for Musk’s credibility.

    DeSantis at least has the plausible distinction of being a top challenger to former President Donald Trump. But as a marginal candidate who espouses debunked medical claims, Kennedy and his appearance with Musk could further cement the perception that Twitter actively mainstreams extremism.

    That could be the very thing that drives away more moderate candidates from accepting Musk’s “invitation” to appear alongside him.

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  • Senate votes to end Covid-19 emergency, 3 years after initial declaration | CNN Politics

    Senate votes to end Covid-19 emergency, 3 years after initial declaration | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The Senate on Wednesday passed a bill that would end the national Covid-19 emergency declared by then-President Donald Trump on March 13, 2020.

    The final vote was overwhelmingly bipartisan, 68-23. The joint resolution, which cleared the House earlier this year, now heads to President Joe Biden’s desk.

    The vote comes on the heels of two other successful efforts led by Republicans in approving legislation rescinding Biden administration policies.

    A White House official said in a statement to CNN that while the President “strongly opposes” this bill, the administration is already winding down the emergency by May 11, the date previously announced for the end of the authority.

    Still, the official noted, if the Senate passed the measure and it heads to Biden’s desk, “he will sign it, and the administration will continue working with agencies to wind down the national emergency with as much notice as possible to Americans who could potentially be impacted.”

    The White House said in January that Biden “strongly opposes” the GOP resolution to end the Covid-19 emergency, according to its statement of administration policy, but did not threaten a veto.

    While the lack of an explicit veto threat left the possibility of Biden signing the measure a clear, if not likely, option, Biden’s ultimate decision to sign the bill marked another moment where House Democrats have privately voiced frustration that the lack of clarity – or outright messaging mishap – from the White House left lawmakers in a lurch.

    House Democrats largely voted against the bill when it was brought to the floor in February except for 11 Democrats who joined Republicans in support. A separate White House official noted that the Senate vote comes after several weeks when the Biden administration has had time to accelerate its wind-down efforts – and just a little over a month before they’d announced the emergency would end.

    But it also comes after the administration drew blowback from House Democrats after sending what lawmakers viewed as mixed signals over how the president planned to respond to a Republican-led resolution that would block a controversial Washington, DC, crime bill, which opponents criticized as weak on crime. The president ultimately did not veto the measure.

    The measure was able to succeed in the Senate by a simple majority through the Congressional Review Act, which allows a vote to repeal regulations from the executive branch without breaking a filibuster at a 60-vote threshold that is required for most legislation in the chamber.

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  • Americans hold mixed views on getting back to ‘normal’ after Covid-19, new polling shows | CNN Politics

    Americans hold mixed views on getting back to ‘normal’ after Covid-19, new polling shows | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Three years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Americans’ views of the disease’s impact have stagnated into a complex set of mixed feelings, recent polling suggests, with few believing that the pandemic has ended but most also saying that their lives had returned mostly – if not entirely – to normal.

    The US Senate passed a bill last week that would end the national Covid-19 emergency declared in March 2020. The US House approved the measure earlier this year, and the White House has said President Joe Biden will sign it despite “strongly” opposing the bill. The administration had already planned to wind down the emergency by May 11.

    In a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey about the Biden administration’s original plan to end the public health emergency by May, 59% of Americans said they expected the decision to have no impact on them or their family, with the remainder about evenly split between the 20% who thought it would have a positive effect and the 21% who thought the impact would be negative.

    Only 24% of Americans personally feel that the pandemic is over, a recent Monmouth University poll found, with 20% saying it will end eventually and 53% saying that it’ll never be over. Those numbers were very similar to Monmouth’s polling last fall, suggesting that a sense of some lingering abnormalcy may well be the new normal.

    Relatively few Americans say either that their lives have completely returned to a pre-pandemic normal or that their lives are still completely upended by it. The Monmouth poll found a 69% majority saying that their daily routine was at least mostly back to what it was pre-pandemic – but only about a third, 34%, say that things were completely the same as they were three years ago. Another 20% said things were partially back to normal, and 11% that they were still not normal at all.

    Declaring to pollsters that the pandemic is over may be something of a political statement for ordinary Americans as well. Republicans were 17 points likelier than Democrats to say that their own routines were mostly back to normal, the Monmouth poll found, and 28 points likelier to say that the pandemic had completely ended.

    The results of the Monmouth survey echo a February Gallup poll that found 33% of Americans saying that their life was completely back to pre-pandemic normal, 20% saying that they expected it would eventually return to normal and nearly half that their life would never fully return to the way it was pre-pandemic. Gallup also found that views about the pandemic’s trajectory were nearly unchanged from their polling in October, when 31% thought normalcy had completely returned.

    “The 47% who don’t foresee a return to normalcy may be getting used to a ‘new normal’ that, for some, means occasional mask use, regular COVID-19 vaccines and avoidance of some situations that may put them at greater risk of infection, particularly at times when COVID-19 infections are spiking,” Gallup’s Megan Brenan wrote.

    About half of Americans, 48%, are continuing to mask up in public on at least some occasions, the Monmouth poll found, though only about 21% said they do so most or all of the time. In KFF polling from earlier this year, 46% of Americans said they’d taken some form of precautions – including mask-wearing or avoiding large gatherings, travel or indoor dining – over the winter due to news about the triple threat of Covid-19, the flu and RSV.

    In KFF’s latest poll, just over half the American public said they’d been boosted against Covid-19, but only 23% reported receiving the latest bivalent version of the booster vaccine.

    At the broader societal level, in a CNN poll last fall, more than 6 in 10 Americans said they believed the pandemic had permanently reshaped multiple aspects of the American landscape, from healthcare (66%) and education (63%) to the economy (61%) and the way most people do their jobs (69%).

    But while the public sees the pandemic’s effects as far-reaching and ongoing, they’re also not top of mind. In a Quinnipiac University survey released last week, fewer than 1% of Americans picked Covid-19 as “the most urgent issue facing the country.”

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  • Biden signs bill ending Covid-19 national emergency | CNN Politics

    Biden signs bill ending Covid-19 national emergency | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden signed legislation Monday to end the national emergency for Covid-19, the White House said, in a move that will not affect the end of the separate public health emergency scheduled for May 11.

    A White House official downplayed the impact of the bill, saying the termination of the emergency “does not impact our ability to wind down authorities in an orderly way.”

    The bill to end the national emergency cleared the Senate last month in a bipartisan 68-23 vote and passed the House earlier this year with 11 Democrats crossing party lines to vote for the joint resolution.

    “Since Congress voted to terminate the National Emergency earlier than anticipated, the Administration has worked to expedite its wind down and provide as much notice as possible to potentially impacted individuals,” the official said, adding that the country is in a “different place” than it was in January.

    The administration has been winding down authorities over the past few months, the official noted.

    The official said that “to be clear, ending the National Emergency will not impact the planned wind-down of the Public Health Emergency on May 11” – which enabled the government to provide many Americans with Covid-19 tests, treatments and vaccines at no charge, as well as offer enhanced social safety net benefits, to help the nation cope with the pandemic and minimize its impact, as CNN previously reported.

    “But since Congress moved to undo the National Emergency earlier than intended, we’ve been working with agencies to address the impacts of ending the declaration early,” the official said.

    The White House had signaled strong opposition to the bill but said that ultimately, the president would sign it if it came across his desk. The White House had planned end to both emergencies by May 11.

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