I have to mentally prepare every time I leave my Brooklyn apartment. I dress lightly, avoid carrying a bag if I can help it and make sure I have an ample supply of hand sanitizer before giving myself a little pep-talk. Sunlight is good for you, I tell myself, walking is good, people are good. But there’s a nagging voice in the back of my head that says, what if my luck runs out today? What if this is when I catch it?
Psychologists have developed a name for this: re-entry anxiety. For some, like me, it’s the lurking fear that every move you make outside the walls of your home could lead to getting sick with COVID-19 or spreading it around. For others, it’s the stress of having to to socialize after so much time spent in isolation. Lily Brown, who researches anxiety at the University of Pennsylvania med school, tells TIME health reporter Jamie Ducharme that some anxiety is probably healthy and can serve as a reminder to take precautions as more states and localities reopen across the country. But when anxiety starts to interfere with your day-to-day life, it may be a problem, Brown says.
Ducharme spoke to mental health experts about the best way to overcome this anxiety. To sum up: take baby steps, start soon and think long-term; be wary of crutches; and get a partner or seek professional help. “Both experts I interviewed mentioned the idea that the longer you avoid something you're afraid of, the more you'll begin to fear it over time,” Ducharme says. “Basically, in—rightfully—following public health advice and ‘hiding’ from the threat of coronavirus for months, we've created a perfect storm for anxiety.”
More than 7.3 million people around the world had been sickened by COVID-19 as of 11 PM eastern time last night, and more than 416,000 people had died.
Here is every country with over 100,000 confirmed cases:
The African continent has reported 200,000 cases and more than 5,600 deaths, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced today. But more important than the raw numbers is the rate at which they are changing: it took 98 days to reach 100,000 cases and only 18 days to move to 200,000 cases. Cases are primarily concentrated in South Africa and Egypt; and Morocco, Algeria, Nigeria and Ghana have also reported significant outbreaks. More than 70% of reported COVID-19-related deaths have been in Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa and Sudan, according to the WHO.
The situation in India appears to be worsening. The country reported 9,996 new cases since yesterday, a new daily record, and 357 new deaths. In Delhi, the capital, officials believe cases could surpass half a million cases by the end of July, according to the BBC.
Dialing in from Windsor Palace, where she has been for three months, Queen Elizabeth II joined a conference call today organized by Carers Trust, a U.K.-based organization, to discuss the challenges primary caregivers have faced during the pandemic. This is the first time the queen has ever participated in a video conference.
The Situation in the U.S.
Yet another grim milestone was reached in the U.S. last night. The total number of COVID-19 diagnoses in the U.S. surpassed 2 million as of 11 PM eastern time yesterday, and the death toll increased past 112,000.
On June 10, there were 21,053 new cases and 935 new deaths confirmed in the U.S.
Some 1.5 million people applied for unemployment last week, according to numbers published today by the Department of Labor. Weekly unemployment claims have been steadily declining for 10 weeks, a sign that the situation is slowly starting to improve, although unemployment is still at a historic high.
Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden released a plan today that he says could jump-start the economy by emphasizing consumer safety. It includes a budget for local officials to use to build a system to validate and certify when businesses are complying with COVID-19-related restrictions; makes more money available for small businesses, schools and childcare centers; guarantees personal protective equipment and testing for those going back to work; creates a contact tracing program of more than 100,000 people; covers medical and family leave for those who get sick; and attempts to protect older people and those with disabilities from discrimination, the AP reports.
Biotech company Moderna announced today that it will begin phase three of testing of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate in July. The trial will include 30,000 participants. Moderna is one of five vaccine developers chosen to be a part of the Trump Administration’s Operation Warp Speed program, and said it plans to deliver 500 million to 1 billion doses a year beginning in 2021, TIME senior health writer Alice Park reports.
Nearly half of U.S. states are starting to see an uptick in COVID-19 cases and deaths since reopening, according to the Associated Press. Situations in Arizona and Texas in particular are cause for concern. Texas on Wednesday reported 2,504 new cases, a new daily high. The number of COVID-19 hospitalizations also hit all-time highs. In Arizona, stay-at-home orders were lifted on May 15, and businesses opened with only some restrictions. Now hospitals are being overwhelmed. “It seems pretty clear to me that what we’re seeing is directly related to the end of the stay-at-home order,” Will Humble, executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association, told the AP.
Northwest Medicine in Chicago announced today that a young woman received a double-lung transplant on Friday. “We are one of the first health systems to successfully perform a lung transplant on a patient recovering from COVID-19,” said Dr. Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery and surgical director of Northwestern’s Lung Transplant Program,in a public statement. “We want other transplant centers to know that while the transplant procedure in these patients is quite technically challenging, it can be done safely, and it offers the terminally ill COVID-19 patients another option for survival.”
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of June 10, 11 PM eastern time. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Eviction Moratoriums Threaten the Future of Affordable Housing in the U.S.
Giant hedge fund investors and large real estate firms can often weather a stretch without rent coming in, but small landlords may not. “They’re forgetting about the small mom-and-pop people that have two units or four units and serve such a great need in the community,” says one landlord in California. Read more here.
The Pandemic Closed Art Galleries' Doors. These Artists Are Making the Most of it
Artists are transforming the traditional curated experience using approaches like video games and “drive-by” exhibits. “In general, the typical museum experience is very rigid. It’s set up for you; there’s a flow you have to follow—but with [approaches using video games] you can make it whatever you want.” says Selina Chang-Yi Zawacki, a software engineer at the Getty Museum. Read more here.
How Fed Chair Jay Powell’s Coronavirus Response Is Changing the Reserve Forever
Since the start of the pandemic, the Federal Reserve has worked in crisis-management mode to respond to a crumbling U.S. economy. But it’s plausible that the Fed will be grappling a decade from now with how to undo the emergency actions of today. Read more here.
I Thought I Was Doing Pretty Well. Then Came the Pandemic
“Those of us who struggle with mental illness have known for a long time that isolation is a symptom of our disease. What happens when isolation is also a public-health mandate?” writes TIME west coast editor Sam Lansky. Read more here from Linsky, and from author Lauren Slater, about coping with depression during the pandemic.
Pressure on Good Science During a Pandemic Is Leading to Confusing Advice
TIME senior health reporter Alice Park writes on how the pandemic has upended the meticulous process that scientific research normally goes through. Read more here.
Q&A
TIME editor-at-large Belinda Luscombe interviewed Dr. Francis Collins, head of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, about vaccine research, the WHO and whether evangelicals are more given to conspiracy theories. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:
TIME: Are you worried when we get a vaccine that people will accept it?
Collins: I am worried. Naively, I thought if people actually saw a disease around them that was causing suffering and death of people they knew, that they would have a harder time resisting the idea that this could be our best hope as a nation. But I’m seeing stirrings that may not actually have that turn out to be true. We don’t at the moment have sort of an organized counter approach, but maybe we should start thinking about that.
Talk about a terrible outcome here: suppose we are fortunate and by January of 2021 have three hundred million doses of vaccine to give to people in the U.S. and millions more in the rest of the world. And a significant proportion of the people, whose lives could be saved, decide they don’t want it, because of conspiracy theories and other false information. And as a result, we end up not achieving the kind of herd immunity that you need to keep this from coming back year after year. What a terrible tragedy for us, supposedly advanced society.
TIME: Has this made you rethink whether or not the U.S. would benefit from a system of healthcare that has more universal basic health coverage?
Collins: There’s no question that COVID-19 has shown a bright light on the very serious issue about health disparities in the United States. Look at the State of Georgia where 30% of its citizens are African American, but 80% of the people in the hospital with COVID-19 are African American. We’ve kind of known that; NIH has been deeply engaged in trying to come up with ways to change that. But most of the public hasn’t really paid that much attention to the fact that our healthcare system has so many inequities built into it. You can’t look at this now without seeing those. And it does make you wish for a better system.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com.
If you were forwarded this and want to sign up to receive it daily, click here.
Today's newsletter was written by Jasmine Aguilera and edited by Elijah Wolfson.
沒有留言:
張貼留言