Good afternoon, this is the KBOO News Brief for Tuesday afternoon, May 5th.
The COVID-19 virus was active in France last December, four days before the Chinese government first reported the outbreak to the World Health Organization. WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier, speaking to a United Nations briefing in Geneva, said QUOTE “This gives a whole new picture on everything...[t]he findings help to better understand the potential virus circulation of Covid-19." The discovery came as French researchers investigated preserved viral samples taken from twenty-four French patients who fell ill in December and January, including a man now known to be a survivor of novel coronavirus last year. The researchers said the absence of a link with China and the lack of recent travel by the French patient QUOTE “suggest[s] that the disease was already spreading among the French population at the end of December 2019.” The findings further dilute the re-election messaging coming from the Trump Administration's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has been trying to blame China to distract from the emerging story of the US President's inaction regarding COVID-19.
In related news, According to Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at China’s Renmin University and an adviser to China’s State Council, “The United States and China are actually in the era of a new Cold War.” The South China Morning Post quoted the official, noting that in the past week QUOTE "Over the past week, the Trump administration has threatened to scrap the phase one trade deal and increase tariffs on China, backed tough new export controls for Chinese firms buying American tech products, and continued to push theories claiming the coronavirus was man-made and leaked from a laboratory in the city of Wuhan."
Mitch McConnell, the Republican Majority leader of the Senate, has called the Senate into session despite the dangers of travel and the fact that Washington, D.C., is currently a coronavirus hotspot. McConnell convened the Senate in order to push through confirmations of right-wing judges selected by the Trump Administration, and to pass legislation protecting big business from liability for exposing workers to coronavirus infection and possible death. President Trump has been pushing on Twitter for such legislation to protect businesses like his own hotel chain from legal repercussions. The House Majority leader, Nancy Pelosi, has refused to convene the House of Representatives during the crisis, prompting an insult in a tweet from President Trump.
The US Centers for Disease Control has released new data indicating that the deaths for COVID-19 are grossly undercounted by current methods, which only count persons who died after receiving a positive coronavirus test. For example, in the week ending April 11, the United States saw 79,761 deaths — a 36.8 percent increase over statistically predicted numbers. In the same week, New York City alone recorded 7,029 deaths, a 526.5 percent increase over average. Using the lower, unadjusted, official numbers, the death toll in the USA, which is still increasing in speed, is sixty-nine thousand and seventy-nine; adjusting for unreported coronavirus deaths, it is probably over a hundred thousand. Officially, 109 have died in Oregon, which has had two consecutive days without COVID-19 deaths, and Washington State counts 846 deaths certified as due to COVID-19. In related news, Italy recorded almost 50 percent more fatalities in March than usual, according to new official data showing that the real coronavirus death toll could be far higher than the 29,000 reported. The worldwide death toll is now in excess of a quarter million.
Two more of the captured mercenaries involved in the most recent failed US covert action against Venezuela were revealed to be US citizens. Jordan Goudreau, a former member of the US Army special forces who leads a Florida-based private security firm called Silvercorp USA, admits he was an organizer of the invasion and assassination plot, which used speedboats to deliver a team of heavily armed soldiers onto a Venezuelan beach Sunday. Venezuelan armed forces engaged and defeated the mercenaries, killing eight. The operation was in support of the US designated puppet leader Juan Guiaido, who claims that the whole event was fabricated by the Venezuelan President to distract from his difficulties. Goudreau, however, has produced a document with Guaido’s signature, which contracts with Goudreau’s company for QUOTE “strategic planning,” “equipment procuring” and “project execution advisement,” for $212 million. Meanwhile a US naval armada is in position in the Caribbean just north of Venezuelan territorial waters, supposedly to interdict drug smugglers.
The Salvation Army religious charity, in coordination with the Oregon Food Bank, announced it will be handing out free food boxes tomorrow from 9AM to 1PM, at East Hill Church in Gresham, 701 N. Main Ave., accessible from Portland via the TriMet #20 bus. On Fridays, they will be at Clackamas Town Center, 12000 S.E. 82nd Ave. in Happy Valley, at the corner of Monterey Avenue and 82nd Street, on the TriMet Max Green Line.
You've been listening to the KBOO News afternoon update, I'm Theresa Mitchell.
- KBOO