thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-04-21--Eight Things You Need To Know About Coronavirus Today

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The US president has declared he will sign an executive order to suspend immigration amid the coronavirus pandemic, as oil prices dipped below zero for the first time.
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Meanwhile in the UK:
The official UK coronavirus death toll reached 17,337, with another 823 Covid-19 deaths recorded in hospitals.
The number of people who have tested positive in the UK reached more than 129,000.
18,206 tests were carried out on Monday, with just 10 days left for the government to reach its target of 100,000 coronavirus tests a day by the end of April.
As of 9am 21 April, 535,342 tests have concluded, with 18,206 tests on 20 April.
397,670 people have been tested of which 129,044 tested positive.
As of 5pm on 20 April, of those hospitalised in the UK who tested positive for coronavirus, 17,337 have sadly died. pic.twitter.com/rLnm7MWxEw — Department of Health and Social Care (@DHSCgovuk) April 21, 2020
Here are the latest developments on Covid-19:
Coronavirus vaccine to begin trials on Thursday
Health secretary Matt Hancock ASSOCIATED PRESS
The health secretary says government-funded research at the University of Oxford had been accelerated due to the global pandemic.
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Speaking at the Downing Street press conference on Tuesday, he said: “I can announce that the vaccine from the Oxford project will be trialled in people from this Thursday.
“In normal times, reaching this stage would take years and I’m very proud of the work taken so far.
“At the same time, we will invest in manufacturing capability so that, if either of these vaccines safely work[s], we can make it available for the British people as soon as humanely possible.”
While the trials may start this week, it has previously been reported a vaccine will not be available before September.
Oxford University will be granted £20m to fund its clinical trials, while a project at Imperial College London will get £22.5m to support its phase two clinical trials.
Boris Johnson and Donald Trump discuss coronavirus pandemic
Boris Johnson outside Number 10 before he was diagnosed with coronavirus zz/KGC-254/STAR MAX/IPx
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Boris Johnson has told Donald Trump he is “feeling better” as he recovers from coronavirus.
In a sign the PM was making a gradual return to work, Downing Street said two leaders had discussed the need for an international response to the pandemic and a post-Brexit trade deal.
A spokesperson for Downing Street said: “The prime minister spoke to President Trump this afternoon, and thanked him for his good wishes while he was unwell.
“The leaders agreed on the importance of a coordinated international response to coronavirus, including through the G7 – which the US currently chairs.
“They also discussed continued UK-US cooperation in the fight against the pandemic.”
The leaders are committed to continue working together, “including by signing a free trade agreement as soon as possible”.
Meanwhile, the White House said the pair had also discussed the need for co-operation to “reopen global economies”.
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A White House spokesperson added: “President Trump and prime minister Johnson reaffirmed their close cooperation through the G7 and G20 to reopen global economies and ensure medical care and supplies reach all those in need.
“President Trump and prime minister Johnson also discussed bilateral and global issues, including our shared commitment to reaching a United States-United Kingdom free trade agreement.”
Johnson is expected to have a telephone audience with the Queen later this week for the first time in three weeks, during which he spent time in intensive care with Covid-19.
Deaths linked to coronavirus in England and Wales 41% higher than previously thought
The number of deaths linked to coronavirus in England and Wales up to April 10 was 41% higher than previously thought, new figures reveal.
Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show the total number of deaths up to April 10 stood at 13,121.
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This is 3,833 more than those reported daily by Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).
Our weekly deaths data show that
- of all deaths in England and Wales that occurred up to 10 April (registered up to 18 April), 13,121 involved COVID-19
- Comparatively @DHSCgovuk figures show that 9,288 deaths occurred by 10 April https://t.co/g3G5KGuOel #COVID19 #coronavirus pic.twitter.com/0tu6lP9WyT — Office for National Statistics (ONS) (@ONS) April 21, 2020
The ONS statistics include people dying outside hospitals whose death certificates mentioned Covid-19, and people in hospital where Covid-19 is a suspected factor but a patient has not been tested.
National figures released by the DHSC, on the other hand, only include patients who have died in hospital after testing positive for the condition.
Cath Kidston permanently shuts all 60 stores, axing more than 900 jobs
The fashion retailer confirmed its stores will not reopen once the coronavirus lockdown is over after the company’s owners secured a deal to buy back its brand and online operations following its fall into administration.
Only 32 of its 940 staff will see their jobs secured as part of a deal which will see the business exist solely online.
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Melinda Paraie, chief executive officer of Cath Kidston, said: “While we are pleased that the future of Cath Kidston has been secured, this is obviously an extremely difficult day as we say goodbye to many colleagues.
“Despite our very best efforts, against the backdrop of Covid-19, we were unable to secure a solvent sale of the business which would have allowed us to avoid administration and carry on trading in our current form.”
RAF to bring PPE equipment from Turkey ‘in the next few days’
A consignment of personal protective equipment being collected by the RAF from Turkey will be in the UK “in the next few days”, Local Government Minister Simon Clarke has said.
Asked whether it had left Turkey yet, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I can’t speak to that, I’m afraid. All I know is it set off last night.
“It will be with us obviously in the UK in the next few days, which is the core priority.”
Trump says he will suspend immigration In a message posted on Twitter, president Donald Trump said he would suspend all immigration into the United States for an undisclosed amount of time as the nation reels from the ongoing spread of Covid-19. “In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!”
In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 21, 2020
It’s unclear how wide-ranging the suspension would be, and the White House and Department of Homeland Security did not immediately reply to HuffPost’s requests for clarification.
However the US president has been forced to rein in his sweeping proclamations related to the outbreak several times before.
He previously touted what he called a total “ban” on travel from China as cases of the coronavirus began to soar in the United States, but the mandate had notable exceptions for residents of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and for US citizens and permanent residents. Many flights continued to operate for weeks, ferrying nearly 40,000 people to America from China.
Making masks compulsory could put NHS at risk, warn hospital bosses
The NHS’s supply of face masks could be jeopardised if the government begins advising the public to wear them, hospital bosses have warned.
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Scientific advisers for the government are carrying out a review of the use of face masks, despite the World Health Organisation (WHO) saying there is no evidence to support their use by the general population.
Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents hospitals and NHS trusts in England, has urged the government to “fully assess” the impact any new advice could have on health service supplies.
In a statement on Monday, he said: “Fluid repellent masks for health and care staff are key to safety and to avoid the spread of coronavirus.
“Securing the supply of masks, when there is huge global demand, is crucial. This must be a key consideration for government.
“There needs to be clear evidence that wearing masks, along with other measures, will deliver significant enough benefits to take us out of lockdown to potentially jeopardise NHS mask supply.”
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Statista
Price of US oil falls below $0 for first time in history
The price of US oil fell to less than $0 per barrel for the first time in history as the knock-on effects of the coronavirus outbreak shook the world economy.
The price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil for May delivery ended on minus - yes, minus - $37.63. On Friday, the same product was valued at $18.27.
It led to the bizarre situation of oil producers paying buyers to take the commodity off their hands as they feared they had nowhere to put it.
Why has this happened now? The coronavirus pandemic has meant the demand for oil has collapsed. This is the result of the virus’s spread to all corners of the world, lockdowns and other knock-on effects.
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thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-04-21--I Woke Up Grumpy. Can Virtual Laughter Yoga Make Me Feel Better?

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I join the Zoom call and a couple of people are in there already – one of them, Lili, is full of beans. “Shalom,” she says. “Hello. You want to see my bird?”
It turns out I’m early for the session – it doesn’t start for another 40 minutes. Lili, who is based in Israel, walks off camera briefly and comes back wearing a frog headband and a large, green plastic tie. She gets out a toy bird that records her voice and replays it back to me. Okay, I think to myself, this is bananas.
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Lili asks me to do some exercises, so I stretch my hands high above my head. She chuckles. It turns out she didn’t mean that kind of exercise. This clearly isn’t her first foray. She pulls funny faces at the camera and tells us to do the same – I oblige. Another woman, called Ja, puts her fingers near her cheeks, like she has whiskers, and meows loudly like a cat. I copy the finger actions, but can’t bring myself to meow loudly at these strangers I’ve only just met.
It’s 10am on a Thursday morning, and I’ve tuned in to an hour-long virtual laughter club – sometimes called laughter yoga – with Dr Madan Kataria, author of Laughter Yoga: Daily Practices for Health and Happiness, who is based in India. The premise is simple: it’s learning to laugh in the absence of humorous stimuli. The aim is to bring more oxygen to the body and brain through laughter.
Dr Kataria’s first ever laughter meeting was in a Mumbai park in 1995 – and it’s now practised in more than 100 countries. Pre-lockdown, laughter clubs took place, physically, in communities all around the world. However, with many of us in lockdown, these clubs have now moved to Zoom or Skype.
It’s my fifth week of working from home, and lockdown in the UK, so I’m really hoping this morning’s laughter session will cheer me up – I’ve woken up feeling grumpy after a terrible night’s sleep.
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When it properly starts, there are close to 100 people in the Zoom room – folks from all over the world: Israel, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Australia, Spain. Someone says it’s 5am where they are – they’re at work at an airport, wearing a high vis jacket. Lili asks people to say ‘I love you’ in their language. It’s a fun conversation starter, I’ll give her that.
Dr Madan Kataria, the host, arrives. “We need to laugh more than ever before,” he says during his brief introduction, acknowledging the coronavirus pandemic.
And then we begin our first exercise: laughing solidly for five minutes.
HuffPost UK Laughter yoga
Almost immediately, 96 people from around the world, sat in living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms and at work, start laughing. There are booming “ho ho hos” and maniacal “ha ha HAAAAAs”. I give it a go and within minutes, I’m breathless. How on earth am I going to keep this up?
During the five minutes, Dr Kataria starts pulling faces, almost like he’s trying to accentuate his laughter – everyone copies, so I follow suit. Then he does hand gestures while laughing: he’s flicking his hands about like he’s trying to shake water off them, then looks like he’s applying invisible suncream to his face. We all do it back. This, it turns out, is because during the session, you should also keep moving.
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The key is to try and laugh for longer to get rid of residual air in your lungs, I later learn. According to Dr Kataria’s book, laughter is often interspersed with deep breathing exercises in these sessions – this isn’t mentioned in the club though. So I just end up belting out some “ho ho hos” and “ha ha has”.
At points, people bring props along. There’s a woman in a colourful hat moving erratically with dough-faced puppets; a man with a toy statue of a Chinese dragon; and Lili with her frog attire, poking out her tongue and waving her hands around her face. Another person has a small dog on their lap while pulling faces. It’s surreal. I find myself genuinely laughing at the weirdness of it all, then I’m soon back to forced laughter. When I spot the woman in her rainbow-coloured hat – like colourful sausages poking out of her head – I’m in hysterics again.
Five minutes pass, and I’m knackered. Thankfully there’s a rest period while Dr Kataria runs through some slides on why forced laughter is beneficial. Longer sustained laughter – we’re talking 15-20 minutes – has physiological benefits, he says. It’s like a workout.
It’s also different to the laughter we get from comedy because that’s often short bursts of passive laughter. With this laughter, you can control it. “We should be laughing every day,” says Dr Kataria. “We should be making it a habit.”
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The session continues with another five minutes of solid laughing, an information break, then back to lolling with silly faces and hand movements. People in the call seem to have limitless energy – some, admittedly, are sat in bed and not doing much, but most people’s faces are crumpled. They’re really going for it. Smile lines are everywhere, limbs are waving frantically.
Because everyone’s laughter is loud and unmuted, it’s hard to tell whether it’s real or forced. At one point my boyfriend walks into the kitchen as I’m belting out some HA HA HAs. He has no idea what’s going on because I’ve got headphones in, so I start genuinely laughing – he looks very confused.
As time goes on, I ease into it. It’s the most bizarre thing I’ve ever witnessed, but I embrace the silliness – and my spirits lift. I forget why I was so grumpy. I forget about the horrendous period pain that kept me up all night. And, just briefly, I forget about coronavirus. Before I know it, it’s the end of the session – it doesn’t feel like a whole hour has passed.
It’s a strange practice, but there’s something incredibly liberating about letting go, sticking your tongue out at a few strangers while HA HA HA-ing at them, and knowing you’re all together, despite being dotted across the world. When I come off the call I feel lighter and reenergised. I also feel a sense of connection.
So, what is this magic? Laughter triggers a beneficial hormonal response in the brain, neuroscientist Professor Sophie Scott previously told HuffPost UK. You get a change in adrenaline and, in turn, become more relaxed. “You also get an increase in endorphins, meaning it feels good to laugh,” she said. “Over a longer time scale, you then get a reduction in cortisol – the stress hormone.”
When I ask Prof Scott whether I feel the benefits because my brain can’t tell the difference between forced and real laughter, she replies: “Yes I think so – partly because even forced laughter gives you an endorphin ‘hit’ and partly because, for people who like it, the forced laughter leads very quickly to ‘real’ laughter.” However, she caveats, for people who don’t like laughter yoga, the opposite is true and they can become highly stressed: “It’s not for everyone, it seems.”
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thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-04-22--Coronavirus Has Killed 15 Care Workers, Matt Hancock Confirms

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Health secretary Matt Hancock has confirmed the deaths of 15 social care workers due to coronavirus in the UK.
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Speaking in the Commons, Hancock paid tribute to the care workers who have lost their lives.
It comes amid reports care homes are running out of personal protective equipment (PPE) to shield themselves from the virus.
Earlier, first secretary of state Dominic Raab confirmed 69 NHS workers had also died due to the disease – meaning that 84 NHS and social care staff have died.
But others, including the campaign group Nursing Notes, put the total at more than 100.
“Fifteen social care staff have sadly lost their lives and, in the same way we pay tribute to and we remember all those NHS staff who have died, so too we do [those] who serve our country and look after people in social care,” Hancock said on Wednesday.
TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady earlier this week called for a judge-led public inquiry into what she called the “grotesque” failures to provide frontline staff with PPE.
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UK ‘at the peak’
The health secretary also said the UK was “at the peak” of the Covid-19 outbreak and that there were 3,000 spare critical care beds.
He said: “That is more than three times more than we had at the start of this crisis.”
The spare capacity was before the new Nightingale hospitals were included, he added.
He also appealed to people suffering from non-coronavirus conditions to seek treatment, too.
“Today, I want to reinforce the message that non-Covid NHS services are open for patients,” he said. “The NHS is there for you if you need advice and treatment.”
Hancock also asked people to continue following the social distancing advice.
He told MPs: “I just want to thank everyone from across the country for their steadfast commitment in following the rules, including in this House.
“It is making a difference. We are at the peak. But before we relax any social distancing rules or make changes to them we have set out the five tests that have to be met.”
Hancock later expanded on the point, saying it was a “question of degree” rather than numbers of new cases of the virus: “We are at a peak and we have high confidence that we are at a peak in this disease, but obviously we need to see that come down.
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“It’s a question of degree. The reason I’m not giving a numerical answer is because it is a question of degree. The fewer new cases, the more effective test, track and trace are as a way of keeping the disease down, and therefore the more of the social distancing measures can be lifted.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-04-22--Keir Starmer Claims 36 British Firms Offering PPE Have Been Ignored By Government

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Keir Starmer has said a “pattern” of government mistakes in dealing with the coronavirus is emerging, as Labour claimed 36 British companies who offered to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) had been ignored.
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In his first PMQs as Labour leader Starmer said “something is going wrong” with the UK’s handling of the crisis.
It came shortly before Matt Hancock, the health secretary, confirmed the UK was now “at the peak” of the Covid-19 outbreak.
Starmer was facing Dominc Raab, who is standing in for Boris Johnson while the prime minister recovers from Covid-19.
But while Starmer and Raab took part in person, most questions from other MPs were asked via video link from TV screens hanging above the chamber to ensure social distancing.
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Raab, the foreign secretary and first secretary of state, told MPs 69 NHS workers had now died from the illness, but was unable to give the same information for care home workers.
Labour said today the firms who had “not received a reply” from the government included Issa Exchange Ltd in Birmingham, which had offered a quarter of a million aprons and masks; Network Medical Products in Ripon, which says it can provide 100,000 face visors a week; and CQM Learning, which says it can provide 8,000 face shields a day.
Speaking in the sparsely populated Commons chamber, Starmer said: “A pattern is emerging here. We were slow into lockdown. Slow on testing. Slow on PPE. And now slow to take up these offers from British firms.”
He told Raab PPE was essential for frontline workers “who are risking their lives to save ours”.
“The least they deserve is the right protective equipment, and we’ve all heard countless examples of frontline workers not getting the equipment they need,” he said.
“This has been a stress test of our resilience and the government plan is clearly not working.”
Raab said getting PPE where it needs to be was “a massive international challenge that every country faces globally from China to Germany”.
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“Since the start of the outbreak, we’ve delivered one billion items of personal protective equipment and tens of millions have been distributed via the devolved administrations,” he said.
Keir Starmer speaking during PMQs in the House of Commons. Most MPs took part using video technology from home. PA
“I don’t accept his premise that we’ve been slow. We have been guided by the scientific advice, the chief scientific adviser, the chief medical officer, at every step along this way,” Raab added.
“If he thinks he knows better than they do with the benefit of hindsight, then that’s his decision, but that is not the way we have proceeded and it is not the way we will in the future.”
He said: “Eight thousand businesses have offered PPE in response to the government’s call and every business receives a response.”
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This morning an RAF plane landed at Brize Norton from Turkey, after being sent to collect a shipment of PPE – including badly-needed surgical gowns.
The government has faced questions about its participation in an EU scheme to secure vital equipment after the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s top civil servant, Sir Simon McDonald, made an extraordinary U-turn in withdrawing his own claim that the UK did not take part because of a “political decision”.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-04-22--Should We Be Wearing DIY Face Masks Or Face Covers In The UK?

It found the surgical mask was best at keeping germs under wraps, followed by the two-layer covering. The researchers concluded: “Guidelines on home-made cloth masks should stipulate multiple layers.” If in doubt, three is best.
Mechanical engineer Taher Saif, professor at the University of Illinois, examined the effectiveness of common household fabrics in blocking droplets. His team tested the breathability and droplet-blocking ability of 11 common household fabrics, using a medical mask as a benchmark. The fabrics selected ranged from new and used garments, quilted cloths, bedsheets and dishcloth material. The researchers then characterised the fabrics in terms of their construction, fibre content, weight, thread count, porosity and water-absorption rate.
“We found that all of the fabrics tested are considerably effective at blocking the 100 nanometer particles carried by high-velocity droplets similar to those that may be released by speaking, coughing and sneezing, even as a single layer,” he said. “With two or three layers, even the more permeable fabrics, such as T-shirt cloth, achieve droplet-blocking efficiency that is similar to that of a medical mask, while still maintaining comparable or better breathability.”


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-04-22--The Government PPE Blunder Doesn't Just Affect NHS Workers, It's Putting All Our Lives In Danger

PPE shortages endanger us all Getty Editorial
Here’s a simple question: should you be wearing face-masks outside during this pandemic? The answer seems to be obviously, yes, especially if the Far East is any guide. Even the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – which is world renowned – recommends people wear masks, even if homemade. Germany is also recommending citizens wear masks in public places. So why isn’t the UK Department of Health?
This question is more important than it looks at first glance. The controversy over face masks increasingly looks like the UK government is trying to cover up its failings, and then trying to get scientists to back them up.
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“The government message should be unambiguous: “Yes, we don’t have enough PPE for NHS workers because we made some mistakes. Please make your own masks and help protect yourself and others.””
The UK has an unprecedented crisis on its hands, one it couldn’t predict. We should cut them some slack over that. But it is also a crisis it could have better prepared for once alarm-bells started ringing. The lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) is a good example. Every country in the world is trying to buy ship-loads of PPE, but since only a few nations can produce it at large scale there is a global shortage.
That is, unless you started planning earlier, which is what Germany did. Even by late April, Germany and other nations were able to source PPE from the UK because “their offers of help had been repeatedly ignored by the British Government,” reported the Telegraph.
Worse, the government won’t admit it was slow to act and is now trying to cover that up. On Tuesday, a senior civil servant admitted that ministers were told they could take part in a EU-wide PPE procurement scheme but decided not to take part. It was a “political decision,” he said. This sparked worries they didn’t want to look like they were still part of the EU.
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The UK is so short of PPE even frontline NHS workers can’t get enough to adequately protect themselves. On 9 April, Dr Chowdhury, a London-based consultant died from Covid-19. Just weeks ago, he had posted a plea to Boris Johnson on his Facebook page for equipment. But it was too late. As recently as last week, NHS staff were being told to wear “aprons” as protective gear had run out, despite health secretary Matt Hancock insisting that guidance for NHS workers hasn’t changed.
And now it seems even scientists are being pressured to support the government.
On Tuesday, ITV’s Robert Peston asked at the daily briefing: “Is it correct you are not ready to change your mind on the usefulness to the general public on wearing masks because you don’t want to deprive healthcare workers of masks?”
Hancock said: “We are advised by the science... and we listen to what the scientists say.” Don’t look at me guv.
But that’s not the whole picture. When pressed again, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer Prof. Jonathan Van-Tam was a bit more careful: “I have always said, we will keep the evidence under review, and we are absolutely doing that. I have also said we will change if we feel the evidence is driving us that way, and advise ministers accordingly...
“There is an absolutely enduring principle here that SAGE places great value and prime importance on never jeopardising the supplies of PPE to our health and social care workers. And that is a line we are not going to cross under any circumstances.”
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I understand that NHS workers should get priority for protective equipment. But this isn’t putting the science ahead of political considerations – it is the opposite. Since NHS workers can’t get enough PPE, thanks to the government’s lack of planning, we are not being advised to wear it either.
It is true that not all scientists agree we should wear face masks. Many say it can make people complacent and feel safer than they actually are – since masks still allow some particles to get through. But studies show masks do reduce spread of flu and some coronaviruses. A recent piece in The Lancet made a simple but effective point: “As evidence suggests Covid-19 could be transmitted before symptom onset, community transmission might be reduced if everyone, including people who have been infected but are asymptomatic and contagious, wear face masks.”
This government has already had criticism for contradictory messages. Just days before the lockdown, they had allowed the huge Cheltenham races to go ahead, while Boris Johnson himself admitted going out and shaking people’s hands. Now again, it looks unwilling to stick to a line to save its skin.
The message should be unambiguous: “Yes, we don’t have enough PPE for NHS workers because we made some mistakes. Please make your own masks and help protect yourself and others.”
During a crisis we need to be able to trust our government is doing the best it can. Mistakes always get made of course. But lying and obfuscation can quickly turn into distrust, fuel conspiracy theories and lead to a breakdown in law and order. The scandal over lack of PPE for NHS workers isn’t just a matter of government incompetence, it is putting all our lives in danger.
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thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-04-22--Police Must Not Unfairly Target Ethnic Minorities During Lockdown, MPs Warn

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Priti Patel has been warned by MPs that police must not repeat the “problems of stop and search” by unfairly targeting ethnic minorities while enforcing the coronavirus lockdown.
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In a letter to the home secretary seen by HuffPost UK, the cross-party group said while the emergency powers handed to police were “clearly necessary” to prevent the spread of the virus, civil liberties must not be “curtailed more than necessary”.
Last week police in England revealed they had issued 3,203 fines against people for breaching lockdown measures between March 27 and April 13.
Men were overwhelmingly the worst offenders, accounting for 82% of cases.
The majority (60%) of offenders identified as white, 23% did not identify their ethnicity, 10% were Asian, 4% were Black and 2% were mixed race.
Police chiefs said this showed no ethnicity was suffering disproportionate enforcement.
But the MPs want the Home Office to publish regular statistics including figures for the number of fixed penalty notices, arrests and detention in the two-monthly reports required under the Coronavirus Act.
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They also have demanded the reports include information about the ethnicity of those who are issued with penalties, arrested or detained.
Christine Jardine, the Lib Dem home affairs spokesperson, said scrutiny of how the police were using emergency powers was essential to win the consent of the public.
“This is about ensuring no community is disproportionately impacted by new policing powers, and that no one is wrongly detained, prosecuted or convicted. Transparency will be central to maintaining public trust,” she said.
As well as Jardine, the letter is signed by MPs including former Labour leadership candidate Clive Lewis, Labour MPs Rushanara Ali and Zarah Sultana, Lib Dem acting leader Ed Davey, and Lib Dem MPs Munira Wilson and Layla Moran.
PA
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“Like everyone on the frontline of this crisis,” the MPs wrote, “our police are doing a very difficult job in extremely difficult circumstances. That job depends on the consent and cooperation of the public.
“As with all police powers, there should be robust monitoring of the use of these emergency powers, with statistics published regularly for public scrutiny.
“It is also essential that we guard against these new emergency powers being used disproportionately against certain communities – especially Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.
“The problems of stop and search, whereby a Black person is 10 times more likely to be stopped and searched than a white person, must not be repeated.
“Will you and your department therefore work with police forces to ensure that records of the use of these powers include the ethnicity of the people they are used on, and that these statistics are also published regularly?
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“During this difficult and challenging time, it is essential that police enforcement of emergency laws builds up public trust and cooperation. This will help to effectively implement the lockdown and flatten the coronavirus curve. We cannot afford for these new powers to be used in a way that undermines that trust.”
Several police forces have been criticised for threatening to take action that is not included in the new laws.
One chief constable was forced to backtrack after he said officers would check the contests of peoples shopping trollies.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-04-22--Joe Wicks Let His Two-Year Old Daughter Give Him A Makeover And It Went As Well As Expected

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Now Joe Wicks has let his two-year-old daughter loose with the lippy and eyeliner, and well… practice makes perfect, eh?
Joe, AKA The Body Coach, shared a video of Indie giving him a makeover with her mum Rosie’s make-up after his latest PE lesson to the nation.
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“I’ve just been signed up to have a baby makeover by Indie Harper Wicks,” he told fans. “She’s got Rosie’s make-up and is about to let loose, so wish me luck.”
Joe Wicks posing with Indie after his makeover Instagram/Joe Wicks
After raiding her mum’s make-up bag, Indie got to work doodling all over her dad’s face.
“What you putting on me?” Joe asks his daughter in the clip. “What you done? Indie, look what you’ve done to me! What have you started?”
Oh dear Instagram/Joe Wicks
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When he’s not getting a makeover, Joe’s been busy keeping the nation fit during lockdown with his daily PE classes.
The 33-year-old designed the PE classes with kids in mind, but adults – parents and non-parents alike – have thrown themselves into the sessions, too, bringing his YouTube channel 13 million new views in just five days.
Last month, the he announced he was donating all of the revenue generated by the classes to help the National Health Service during the coronavirus crisis.
Writing on Instagram, he said: “Words can’t express how happy and proud I have felt every day this week as the nations P.E. teacher. I’ve been overwhelmed with the response and the support it’s had from everyone.
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“As a result of so many people viewing the #PEWithJoe workouts on YouTube the advertising revenue generated has been unlike anything I’ve seen or experienced on my channel before.
“So I’ve decided that as long as I’m the nation’s P.E. teacher, every single penny of the money generated on these videos is going to the place where we need it the most right now. All of it is going straight to the NHS, to support the real heroes right now.
He concluded: “Thank you for watching, joining in and sharing… I’m loving being your P.E. Teacher and now you can watch again, knowing you’re not only staying fit, you’re also helping raise money for the NHS.”


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-04-22--Forget The Queen’s Speech, UK MC Lady Leshurr Releases ‘Quarantine Speech’ Rap

Forget The Queen’s Speech, UK MC Lady Leshurr Releases ‘Quarantine Speech’ Rap
Lady Leshurr has released a relatable rap about lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic. Called ‘Quarantine Speech’ the song has similarities with her ‘Queen’s Speech’ series of freestyle raps released in 2016. The tune serves as a serious message with elements like a chorus saying “wash them hands” but also is tongue-in-cheek and fun. The rapper from Birmingham is donating profits from the song’s streams, and from face masks she is selling, to the NHS.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-04-22--Watch: Here’s The Latest On Coronavirus Today

Watch: Here’s The Latest On Coronavirus Today
Human vaccine trials are set to start in the UK as the government allocated over £40 million in funding towards vaccine research and testing. Captain Tom Moore received a standing ovation, as he joined via video to open a new Nightingale Hospital in Harrogate. In the US, Donald Trump is moving forward with a 60 day pause on immigration in what he says is an effort to help unemployed Americans. The UN World Food Programme executive director David Beasley warns the world is "on the brink of a hunger pandemic of biblical proportions.”And in South Africa, when travel restrictions blocked international workers from travelling to The Rhino Orphanage in Limpopo province, hundreds of local volunteers stepped up to care for the young rhinos before they are returned to the wild.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-04-22--Ansel Elgort's Nude Instagram Post Helps Raise Thousands For Coronavirus Relief

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Hollywood actor Ansel Elgort has helped raise thousands of dollars for coronavirus relief, with the help of a naked photo he posted on Instagram.
Allow us to explain.
On Tuesday night, jaws hit the floor the world over when the Fault In Our Stars actor posted a seriously candid photo of himself in the shower.
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“OnlyFans link in bio,” he teased, referring to the paid-for subscription service that’s become popular with amateur porn performers in recent years.
yeah only ansel elgort would post nudes on insta to raise money for charity pic.twitter.com/HhYS1miEAG — ᴠɪᴄ⁷₁₂₇⁶ᵛ⁶ ☻ jjong (@tinglyjimin) April 21, 2020
However, when fans arrived at his bio, they were instead greeted with a GoFundMe page, raising money for hospital workers at a hospital in Brooklyn, set up by fellow actor Jeffrey Wright.
In the hours that followed, thousands of dollars were donated to the page by Ansel’s fans, which he addressed on his story shortly afterwards.
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“Hey you guys, I just wanted to say thanks so much, look how much everybody’s raised,” he said. “I don’t know how much is from the [Instagram] post, but it seems like a lot of people have been giving in the last few hours. So thanks a lot, looks like it was worth it.”
Ansel Elgort as we're more used to seeing him, at the Golden Globes in January Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP
Ansel continued: “Unfortunately, Instagram told me I gotta take my post down. Because it’s nudity. So I’m going to take it down. Or maybe I’ll repost the version that [crops] a little higher, how about that?
“Sorry if I offended anybody, but we did a good thing. And my dad took the picture by the way, he was mad, he said I needed to give him credit.”
However, this isn’t the first time that a scantily-clad Ansel Elgort has made headlines with his Instagram content.
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thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-04-22--On Stephen Lawrence Day, Coronavirus Reminds Us Black Inequality Is Still Endemic

On Stephen Lawrence Day, black inequality is more obvious than ever PA
Today, on Stephen Lawrence Day, the Coronavirus pandemic lays bare the extent to which black inequality is still endemic.
Many people vividly remember Stephen’s story, the teenager who was murdered in a racially motivated attack on 22 April 1993. The subsequent police investigation into his death sparked decades of campaigning which eventually exposed shocking institutional racism within the police and British society.
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Thanks to activists and campaigners working in the wake of Stephen’s death, much has changed. Stephen’s case changed our laws and triggered an examination of attitudes in the UK towards racism and discrimination.
Last year, Stephen’s mother, Baroness Doreen Lawrence OBE, inaugurated the first annual Stephen Lawrence Day. Established by Theresa May as prime minister at the memorial of the 25th anniversary of Stephen’s death, it’s a day dedicated to Stephen’s memory, which allows us to reflect on the good that has come out of the tragedy.
Yet today, on the second annual Stephen Lawrence Day, we must accept that, despite progress, more needs to be done to achieve equality. In these uncertain times it is more important than ever.
“This health crisis affects us all in different ways, yet now we see the world’s inequalities exacerbated and exposed on a global scale.”
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Sadly, we are still seeing racism and discrimination across our society. For evidence of this, we need look no further than our workplaces. Research by the TUC shows that even when the differences caused by location, ethnicity and class are accounted for, race still makes a difference to wages. Race discrimination is still happening in our workplaces today. The government has announced an inquiry into why coronavirus is disproportionately affecting BAME people.
Yet, vast numbers of frontline workers are now in positions where their health is at risk on a daily basis and the value placed on their roles in terms of pay and status far lags behind. In coming together every Thursday to clap for our carers, we’ve collectively shown how much we value these workers – we cannot go back to pretending these lifesaving roles are worth less.
Our employment market isn’t a level playing field. This has a starker impact now during a global pandemic than ever before. Black and minority ethnic workers are more likely to be in the most insecure types of employment, more likely to be in key worker roles, more than a third more likely than white workers to be in temporary or zero-hours work, and consequently less likely to have access to the employment rights that full-time workers enjoy, such as redundancy pay and parental rights. This health crisis affects us all in different ways, yet now we see the world’s inequalities exacerbated and exposed on a global scale – felt most, and disproportionately, by workers who are already subject to inequality.
For Britain to be a fair and equal society, where opportunities are open to everyone, these injustices need to be tackled and the government must take the lead. It should legislate to strengthen protections for those in the most insecure forms of work; we must end the two-tier system and ensure full employment rights are granted to all these workers.
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We need to see better protections for these most discriminated-against groups of workers, and we need to see the government’s current goodwill towards the UK’s workforce extend past coronavirus – to permanent employment reforms that will close economic and societal gaps.
At the same time as BAME workers save our lives, deliver us food and care for our elderly, a disproportionate amount of people from BAME backgrounds lose their lives to coronavirus. Coronavirus has laid bare the extent to which Britain relies on BAME workers. Simultaneously we hear more reports of racist abuse on the streets. The same racist prejudices that led to Stephen’s death still exist and are being expressed today.
Despite social distancing measures, we should all come together and share in the message of fairness and equality. Now, more than ever, it is important that no-one is left behind.
Stephen’s death was a tragedy – let his legacy be one of hope. Let it inspire us to build a fairer and more inclusive Britain.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-04-22--Is The Coronavirus Lockdown Good For The Planet?

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We’re here to guide you through the coronavirus lockdown. Sign up to the Life newsletter for daily tips, advice, how-tos and escapism.
Coronavirus has changed our daily lives beyond recognition; we’re driving less, connecting digitally and baking banana bread like our lives depend on it. Because of this, our environmental footprints are changing, too.
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Early reports suggest global greenhouse gas emissions have been slashed and air quality improved thanks to factories closing and fewer planes in the sky. It’s too early to say what the overall environmental impact of lockdown may be, but Miriam Turner, acting CEO of Friends of the Earth, is optimistic that future data will show we’re living greener lives in our homes.
For starters, many of us are wasting less food, as we carefully plan meals to reduce supermarket trips. Pre-lockdown, more than 10 million tonnes of food were binned each year in the UK, pointlessly taking up fresh water, land and labour to produce. “People are being much more conscious of what’s in our fridges now,” says Turner. “We’re looking up recipes to use up the ends of stuff and being more conscious of what we buy.”
Global food waste generates around about 8% of the total human-generated greenhouse gas emissions each year, which Turner describes as “a big chunk” of the overall emissions globally. “If we can start eating into that chunk, as it were, that would be a really meaningful thing that people can do on a household level,” she adds.
With thousands of people across the country working from home, we’re also clawing back the environmental damage caused by commuting. Add to that the limits on weekend travel, and initial data seems to show car emissions have dramatically fallen. Research from AA suggests the UK lockdown has led to a 60% drop in weekday journeys, a 70% drop on Saturdays and an almost 80% drop on Sundays. Turner is hopeful the move away from cars will stick.
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Nozomi Inoue via Getty Images
“Motor vehicles are a major source of pollution and emissions, and with people walking and cycling more – obviously while following government advice for local shopping and exercise – that gives us the experience of what that feels like, and that it’s enjoyable and possible,” she says.
Working remotely indefinitely is unlikely to apply to everyone, but Turner believes it may be possible to have the best of both worlds in the future, by cutting down on the days we commute and giving workers more options.
“Many of us are using technology that we may not have used before, so it shows we can live and work in different ways,” she says. “Let’s hope holding some meetings online can continue, to reduce travel even when restrictions are lifted. That could save money and cut pollution at the same time.”
Individually, there may be other ways you’re being more green in quarantine. Perhaps you’re buying less fast fashion, no longer grabbing your usual coffee in a disposable cup, or not getting lunch-on-the-go in plastic packaging.
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cienpies via Getty Images
Of course, not every element of lockdown is environmentally friendly. Some of our recently-established green habits may have fallen by the wayside as our attentions are focussed elsewhere. We’re all feeling drained, so researching and purchasing the greenest possible products is not top priority.
You might also be throwing certain packaging straight into the bin instead of the recycling box, because of concerns about contamination. Or, you may be buying more single-use plastic items, such as plastic gloves.
While we’re all trying to make fewer trips to the supermarket, some of you could be using more freezer bags than usual – and therefore more plastic – to store your shopping. Or, if you’re opting for home supermarket deliveries, there are likely to be lots of plastic bags that arrive on your doorstep, when we’ve all become so accustomed to reusable ones.
Much has also been said about the environmental impact of online streaming, as we spend our days on video meetings and evenings binging Netflix. But even considering these factors, Turner believes the scales may be tipping in the right direction when it comes to our green habits.
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“The latest papers suggest some of the previous reports on the carbon impact of streaming may have been over-egged,” she says. “I think it would be hard to say that, on balance, it wouldn’t be a net positive to have people travelling less and working from home more. Emissions-wise, transport infrastructure is a really big one.”
wetcake via Getty Images
Turner is also unconcerned about single-use plastic gloves and says, by far, the bigger plastic challenge is the increase in household waste, with many of us spending the majority of the day in our homes.
However, she points out that seeing our bins rapidly fill up is not a bad thing, as it increases awareness about the waste usually hidden at our workplaces and favourite lunch hangouts.
“Things are becoming more visible and more obvious to us,” she says. “Now, we’re our own baristas and sandwich makers and it’s right in front of us. It might be a good thing that we become more conscious of the waste a whole house generates in a day.”
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Post-lockdown, we might feel more compelled to act on this knowledge, thanks to our new-found love of nature. HuffPost UK spoke to readers who say spending large stints indoors has revived their appreciation for the natural world – they are noticing bees, butterflies and birdsong with renewed enthusiasm.
Enduring a global pandemic is not the way any of us would have liked to learn environmental lessons, but one tiny glimmer of hope is that we may emerge with a revived urge to protect what we have.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-04-22--The Restaurant That Burns Calories Sparks Surge In Calls To Eating Disorder Helpline

Eating disorder charity Beat has said its helpline received three times as many calls as usual following the first episode of the divisive new show The Restaurant That Burns Calories.
The first episode of the BBC Two series – fronted by First Dates star Fred Sirieix and This Morning medic Dr Zoe Williams – saw 20 diners presented with a menu, where each item was accompanied by the amount of exercise that would be required to burn it off.
In addition to this, the restaurant had an adjoining gym, where fitness fanatics on exercise bikes had to work out harder for everything the diners ordered.
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Before it even aired on Monday night, the show was met with criticism, with many on social media questioning whether it promoted an unhealthy relationship with food, and could be triggering for anyone who has an existing eating disorder.
Dr Zoe Williams and Fred Sirieix in The Restaurant That Burns Calories BBC/Voltage TV
Beat’s Director of Services has now told Metro that calls to the charity’s helpline tripled after the hour-long show debuted.
“We have today on the helpline seen three times the amount of people that would normally have contacted our helpline by this point in the day…and the majority of those contacts are referring to the programme that ran last night,” she said.
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“So it has had an impact, it’s not just a few people on Twitter that were upset.”
She continued: “We deliver about 150 support sessions in a day. Yesterday we did over 300. Double the amount of people needed our support.
“Three hours in [after the helpline opened today], we’ve had three times the amount of people that we would at this point in the day so I can only assume that trend is going to mean that today we could end up supporting 450 people rather than the 150 that we would normally.”
A BBC rep told HuffPost UK on Tuesday: “The intention of the programme was to give viewers information about the latest research into the science of calories, about why our bodies need them and how our bodies use them.
“In particular, it looked at recent studies by academics in both the US and the UK, which suggest that diners may make healthier choices when presented with information about how much activity is required to burn off the calorie content of dishes.
“The voiceover is clear throughout that there are government guidelines for the recommended number of calories needed for the average man or woman to remain healthy.”
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They added: “The programme never endorses or suggests restricting calories below these levels.”
The BBC had no additional comment when contacted by HuffPost UK following the new statistics from Beat.
Beat previously condemned The Restaurant That Burns Calories on their Twitter page, only to be rebuked by its presenter Fred Sirieix, who accused them of “jumping on a bandwagon”.
After saying they were “appalled” by the format, they wrote: “We’ve are keeping our Direct message service and online peer support group open until 11pm tonight (usually closes at 8pm) to support anyone triggered by this content. We are encouraging people not to watch it if they think it will trigger them.”
We are aware and appalled! 🙈We’ve are keeping our Direct message service and online peer support group open until 11pm tonight (usually closes at 8pm) to support anyone triggered by this content. We are encouraging people not to watch it if they think it will trigger them 😔 — Beat (@beatED) April 20, 2020
Fred then responded: “You seem very quick to judge and jump on an inexistant band wagon. Remember you represent a charity when you tweet.”
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You seem very quick to judge and jump on an inexistant band wagon. Remember you represent a charity when you tweet. — Fred Sirieix (@fredsirieix1) April 20, 2020
We do and we listen to our beneficiaries that are impacted by this type of content. Which is why we’ll be encouraging them not to watch it and supporting them if they happen to see and are affected. — Beat (@beatED) April 20, 2020
HuffPost UK contacted Fred’s management for additional comment on Tuesday, and is awaiting a response.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-04-22--What We Do And Don't Know About Kim Jong Un's Health

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, 36, may or may not be on his deathbed, according to several media reports across the US and South Korea.
On Tuesday, several conflicting accounts about Kim’s status emerged, raising the possibility that the young dictator could be incapacitated or die without a clear successor to his regime, which has overseen some of the world’s worst human rights offences.
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Here’s what we know – and don’t know – about Kim’s health right now.
The US is monitoring his health, which may be in critical condition
Sources familiar with the intelligence told CNN that US officials are closely monitoring reports that Kim’s health is quickly deteriorating.
The intelligence suggests he may be “in grave danger after undergoing a previous surgery,” CNN reported on Tuesday after speaking with four sources, one of whom said the severity of Kim’s illness is hard to assess.
In a tweet, MSNBC’s Katy Tur said that Kim was brain dead after slipping into a coma, citing CNN and MSNBC. She later deleted the tweet “out of an abundance of caution” and said she was waiting on more information.
At approximately 36 years old, Kim Jong Un oversees the most secretive regime in the world. Athit Perawongmetha / Reuters
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While one official told CNN the evidence does not yet suggest that Kim is incapacitated, other officials told NBC News that there’s evidence he is.
National security adviser Robert O’Brien has only confirmed that the US is “keeping a close eye” on reports about Kim’s health, saying Tuesday on Fox News that the US is “monitoring these reports very closely.”
He’s been missing from the public eye since a reported procedure
Antennas went up when Kim did not make an appearance at the Day of the Sun celebration, an annual commemoration of his grandfather’s birthday on April 15. It’s considered the most important day on North Korea’s calendar and brings out crowds in the tens of thousands. Since ascending to power in 2012, Kim had never missed the celebration.
His absence came after he had a cardiovascular procedure on April 12, reported Daily NK, a South Korean online newspaper covering news on North Korea. The report cited a single North Korean source, who speculated the surgery may be tied to Kim’s obesity, smoking habit or “overwork.”
South Korea is contradicting these reports
Confusion over Kim’s health grew on Tuesday as South Korean officials issued a statement contradicting reports on Kim’s health by American media outlets.
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“We confirm that Chairman Kim Jong Un is currently touring provincial areas with his close aides and we do not detect evidences to support speculation about his ill health,” President Moon Jae-in’s office said in a statement.
South Korea has contradicted U.S. media claims that Kim is in dangerously poor health right now. KCNA KCNA / Reuters
“Even North Korea’s Worker’s Party, military or cabinet aren’t showing any special movements such as emergency decree. We believe that Chairman Kim is active as normal as he has been,” the office said.
The South Korean currency took a hit after reports about Kim’s health broke.
The lack of clarity on Kim’s health reflects how difficult it is to confirm anything happening in the closed-off dictatorship. North Korea has stricter controls on media than any other country in the world, and the government has a tight hold on what information gets in or out.
In 2011, for example, the country managed to conceal then-leader Kim Jong Il’s death for two days. Officials are suspected of rewriting some of the details about his death to make it seem nobler than it was, as projecting an image of a strong, invincible leader is a key element of North Korea’s politics.
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He is suspected to have generally poor health
Given the instability his death could cause, the global community has long kept tabs on Kim’s health.
The supreme leader reportedly smokes and drinks in excess. Experts on Kim have also pointed to his significant weight gain while in office, which could be dangerous for him given reports he is diabetic and has high blood pressure.
For six weeks in the fall of 2014, Kim did not make any public appearances. In a rare admission about his health, officials announced he was dealing with an “uncomfortable physical condition.” After seeing him limping or walking with a cane, some suspected he had gout.
He has no clear successor
It’s not cut and dry who would take over if Kim were to die. North Korea’s leadership has only changed hands twice since its official founding in 1948, and both instances involved a son taking over when his father died.
But Kim is not known to have named a successor, and the children he reportedly has are very young. The oldest, a son, is believed to have been born in 2010.
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Kim's sister, Kim Yo Jong, is his most public-facing relative. POOL New / Reuters
The only member of Kim’s family with any real power appears to be his sister, Kim Yo Jong, who reportedly helps craft his public persona and organises many of his events. She accompanied him on his summits with President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. However, it remains unclear whether North Korea’s patriarchal society would allow a woman in charge.
Kim has few other known relatives. One is his only surviving brother, who is focused on a music career, and the other his his 24-year-old nephew, whose whereabouts remain unknown.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-04-22--Black Mirror Creator Charlie Brooker Announces New Special Centred Around Lockdown

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Given the unsettling times we’re currently living through, the only man who could really sum it all up would probably be Charlie Brooker.
It’s been announced that he’s returning to our screens with a brand new special centred around lockdown.
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However, rather than a new instalment of his dystopian series Black Mirror with pandemic themes, Charlie is actually resurrecting his satirical Wipe series (which included Screenwipe, Newswipe and Election Wipe) with a new show brilliantly titled Charlie Brooker’s Antiviral Wipe.
The one-off special will take a closer look at how the nation has coped with lockdown, as well as exploring our viewing habits and ways we’ve kept ourselves entertained during the coronavirus pandemic.
Charlie Brooker Jeff Spicer via Getty Images
Charlie said: “The BBC asked me to supply a quote for the press release, which is what you’re reading now.”
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So there you have it.
It’s also been confirmed the special will feature regular characters Philomena Cunk and Barry Shitpeas, played by Diane Morgan and Al Campbell, the former of whom has become a break-out star in her own right in recent years.
Charlie is now probably best known as the creator of the dystopian anthology series Black Mirror, which ran for two series on Channel 4 before being acquired by Netflix, where it has become a global success.
The show has won eight Emmys in total, namely for its stand-out episodes San Junipero and USS Calister.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-04-22--Covid-19 Has Shown The Economy Isn't Working. But For Women, It Never Has

Care home staff and residents in Hertford participate in Clap For Our Carers Reuters
The Covid-19 outbreak is shining a blinding light on the state of our economy: we can no longer look away from the big questions about how fit for service our health and social care systems are, how humane our social security system is, and whose jobs are really essential to the functioning of society.
As the UK marks a month in lockdown, analysis of who is facing the brunt of this crisis is emerging. Men are at higher risk of dying from Covid-19, while women are at greater risk from the economic crisis caused by the lockdown. Women are the majority of workers with highest exposure to Covid-19: 77% of the 3.2 million workers in “high risk” roles are women. Many of these high-risk roles are paid poverty wages – and women make up a staggering 98% of those jobs.
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Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups are also over-represented in front-line, high-exposure jobs, and this has been suggested as a reason why people from these groups are disproportionately contracting, and dying from, Covid-19. The government has now announced it will investigate this in a formal review.
One of the most high-risk sectors is social care. While outpourings of support for the NHS, both from the government and the public, have been forthcoming, social care has once again been an afterthought. Health and social care secretary Matt Hancock was last week derided for presenting a pin badge honouring social care workers alongside vague promises to increase testing and supplies of personal protective equipment in care homes, despite the badge actually having been released in spring 2019. MP for Nottingham East, Nadia Whittome, who worked as a care worker before becoming an MP, and who has returned to care work part-time since the outbreak, responded to the badge by asking how her colleagues could “cash this in for a real living wage?”
But this isn’t new: systematic neglect of the care sector has been a consistent feature of the last few years. The crucial, life-sustaining and life-enriching work that carers do continues to be undervalued, underpaid, and under-resourced. And it has taken a global pandemic for this to come to light.
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We’re seeing a staggering amount of Covid-19 deaths occurring in care homes when they are counted (in other European countries), but chronic under-counting of deaths in care homes, or in people’s own homes in the UK. Care home providers complain that the care sector is struggling to cope with staff shortages and a lack of personal protective equipment. The lives and wellbeing of older people and disabled people living in care homes, as well as those caring for them, are being neglected. And guess what? Women are disproportionately represented in both groups: the majority of people who require care are women, and 83% of social care workers are women. And 1 in 5 care workers are migrant workers.
Why is it that there are more women in these low-paid, frontline jobs, such as social care? The Women’s Budget Group argues that, through spirals of inequality, women’s unpaid care work has a knock-on impact on so many other parts of the economy. Women do more unpaid care and domestic work (60% more, in fact), so it is seen as “natural” that they do more paid care work too. And this care work is hugely underpaid (the median hourly pay for a care worker is £7.40), because it’s seen as an extension of the unpaid care work women do at home and in the community.
Women’s caring responsibilities also mean they have less time for paid work, so they go for part-time work, which is local to home, which restricts their job choices, and results in lower-paid work (women are 69% of workers on low pay).
This, in turn, has implications on lifetime earnings, poverty in older age, how women and men are impacted differently by changes to taxes, social security and public service provision, and whose voices are heard in decision-making positions. We’ve never seen this more clearly than now, when every evening men dominate the daily Westminster press conferences and all the major decision makers are men. Is it any wonder that social care, a sector dominated by women, continues to be neglected, despite unprecedented urgency for reform?
But the growing attention paid to social care by the media in the last few days gives reason for hope. Across the political spectrum, we are seeing an acceptance that things have to change, and that our economy is not fit for purpose. With Piers Morgan declaring that ”care workers 100% deserve the same recognition as NHS workers”, and the Financial Times editorial accepting the necessity of “radical reforms, reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades”, perhaps this is the point at which we start to do things differently. This brings hope for fundamental change, hope for a widespread rethinking of whose jobs are really crucial, and hope that the contribution of migrant key workers will be truly valued, instead of being dismissed as ”low-skilled”. The turning point. When, finally, care work – both paid, and unpaid – is valued for what it is: the backbone of the economy. But we have to ask, why did it take a global pandemic for us to sit up and listen to women about care?
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thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-04-22--Environmental Destruction Brought Us COVID-19. What It Brings Next Could Be Far Worse.

Dr Richard Kock was on duty at London’s Royal Veterinary College in January 2017 when he received an urgent message from international health officials. He was needed for an emergency response mission in the Mongolian countryside, where a deadly viral outbreak was underway.
He packed his things, caught a flight to the capital city of Ulaanbaatar and drove for two days into the arid steppe. He found a disturbing scene: frozen corpses scattered on hillsides, burn pits stacked with bodies and residents addled with anxiety.
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But this pandemic was not targeting humans. It was goat plague, a lethal and highly infectious virus that has killed goats, sheep and other small ruminants in huge numbers since it was first detected last century. There is a vaccine, but its application in Mongolia had been botched. The virus had spilled from domestic livestock into local populations of critically endangered saiga antelope, and it wiped out about 85% of the infected, Kock said.
“Nearly everything died across a huge landscape,” said Kock, who has worked for decades to stem infectious diseases around the world. There are only a few thousand saiga antelope left in Mongolia today, largely due to the goat plague.
The only comforting element of this tale is that the disease is not transmissible to humans. At least, not yet.
But Kock worries. Goat plague is a paramyxovirus, a virus in the same family as measles. Its case-fatality rate can be as high as 90%, and some animals that contract it can infect eight to 12 others.
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“They are nasty viruses,” Kock said, adding that they’re formidable in their spread and aggressiveness. It wouldn’t take a big tweak in the goat plague’s genome ― “just two amino acids, essentially” ― for it to become infectious to humans, he said. “In theory, it is very possible.”
Residents pay for groceries by standing on chairs to peer over barriers set up by a wet market on a street in Wuhan, the epicenter of China's coronavirus outbreak, on April 1. Aly Song / Reuters
As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, killing thousands and crushing the global economy, the potential threat of zoonotic spillover — when novel viruses and bacteria jump from animals to people — is becoming increasingly clear. The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 almost certainly originated in bats and is believed to have spilled into humans at a live animal market in Wuhan, China. Readily transmissible and far deadlier than the seasonal flu, COVID-19 is now one of the worst pandemics of animal origin that humans have faced in a century. But it won’t be the last.
There are millions of viruses and bacteria out there that reside in wild animals and can potentially infect humans, and these emerging diseases are on the rise everywhere as humans disrupt ecosystems and exploit animal habitat across the globe. We are living in an age of pandemics, and the next one — let’s call it “Disease X,” as scientists often do — could be even more devastating than COVID-19.
“On a scale of 1 to 100, we could place [the current outbreak] probably somewhere a little below midway,” said Dennis Carroll, the chair of the Global Virome Project and former director of the emerging threats division at the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
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Some known viruses circulating today have much higher mortality rates than the novel coronavirus but don’t spread easily among humans. If one of them mutated and became highly infectious in humans, Carroll said, Disease X could make this pandemic “look like a warmup.”
Workers wearing personal protective equipment bury bodies in a trench on Hart Island, which is in the Bronx borough of New York City, earlier this month. John Minchillo/ASSOCIATED PRESS
A Plague Rooted In Environmental Destruction
Political leaders are taking unprecedented measures to contain a virus that has infected at least 2.31 million people, killed at least 157,000 and forced national economies to their knees. Yet those unprecedented measures address only the symptoms of this crisis, an entirely reactionary response that has so far avoided addressing the root causes of novel disease emergence.
“COVID-19 is just the latest zoonotic disease to emerge that has its roots in the rampant habitat loss occurring around the world and the burgeoning wildlife trade,” a group of more than 100 conservation organizations wrote in a letter to the US Congress last month, urging it to include in its stimulus bill new funding to combat the conditions that give rise to outbreaks like COVID-19. “Global pandemics will likely continue and even escalate if action isn’t taken.”
So far, though, Congress has failed to act on that threat, and the Trump administration is exacerbating the problem with its relentless campaign to roll back wildlife protections and cut environmental programs at home and abroad. All the while, the threat of zoonotic disease continues to intensify.
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The virus that causes COVID-19 is just the latest infectious agent to jump from animals into people. HIV, Ebola, Marburg virus, SARS, MERS, Zika ― those, too, originated in animals and are part of the same perilous trend of novel diseases that have surfaced with increasing frequency as population growth, industrial agriculture, deforestation, wildlife exploitation, urban sprawl and other human activities bring our species into continuous contact with animal-borne pathogens.
Illustration: Jun Cen for HuffPost
“Emerging infectious diseases, the majority of which are zoonotic and have their origin in wildlife, have been increasing significantly — both numbers of outbreaks and diversity of diseases — over the past 50 years,” said Dr Christian Walzer, chief global veterinarian at the New York City-based Wildlife Conservation Society.
The majority of emerging infectious diseases originate in animals, a 2017 study in the journal Nature Communications concluded, and “their emergence often involves dynamic interactions among populations of wildlife, livestock, and people within rapidly changing environments.” A 2015 study found that land-use changes, such as urban expansion and deforestation, is the single most significant driver of many of the zoonotic outbreaks that have occurred since 1940.
“In the broadest sense, humans are the main drivers of zoonotic disease outbreaks,” said Catherine Machalaba, a policy adviser and research scientist at the EcoHealth Alliance.
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A small island of trees in a clear-cut pine forest. Dramatic changes in land use have contributed to the rise of zoonotic diseases. eppicphotography via Getty Images
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought global attention to live wild animal markets, which are common throughout Southeast Asia and Africa and which scientists say provide ideal conditions for new pandemics to spawn. The markets, which are often located in dense, urban areas, bring a wide variety of domestic and wild species, living and dead, into contact with humans. They are potential petri dishes for novel pathogens to evolve and spread.
It is at one such “wet market” in Wuhan, a city of 11 million, that the novel coronavirus, labeled SARS-CoV-2, is believed to have first spilled from its original host (thought to be a bat) into an intermediary host species or directly into humans. The crowded market featured dozens of live and dead animals for sale that rarely, if ever, come in contact in the wild, from fish and rats to monkeys and foxes. These markets are poorly regulated, and endangered species are known to end up in them.
This coronavirus crossed over to humans in China, but the spillover of such diseases is occurring all over the world, including in the United States. Walzer points, for instance, to the rise of Lyme disease in North America, where our suburban developments and shopping malls wiped out wild forests, killed native predators, amplified rodent and deer populations, and fueled outbreaks of the tick-borne illness.
“It’s the classic example of how biodiversity loss has increased the risk for spillover,” Walzer said.
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Consider also Nipah, a paramyxovirus, like the goat plague, that first appeared in Malaysia in 1998. That virus — an inspiration for the 2011 film “Contagion” — has its origins in fruit bats, but it spilled over to pigs on a farm where livestock pens abutted mango trees that bats used as a food source.
“Bats were coming in in large numbers, feeding on mangos and, in the process of chewing on the mango, they would drop mangos laden with mucus and other body fluids into the pig pens,” said Jonathan Epstein, vice president for science and outreach at the EcoHealth Alliance, which works to study and prevent zoonotic disease spillover. “That is how it started.”
Nipah does not harm bats. But it sickened pigs and soon infected humans, too. First, it spread to workers on the farm. Then, as pigs were traded around the country, it infected other humans. By the end of the outbreak in 1999, 265 people had contracted the virus and more than 100 had died. Malaysian authorities, meanwhile, had slaughtered millions of pigs to stanch the infection’s spread.
But the story doesn’t end there. Nipah, scientists soon discovered, was also in Bangladesh. Since the early 2000s, the country has suffered from a series of recurrent outbreaks that have claimed scores of lives. In these cases, however, there were no pigs involved. The virus spread here happened via sap from date palm plants, which some in Bangladesh harvest and drink raw in the winter months. Fruit bats have learned to exploit this food source, too, and their saliva, urine and droppings sometimes fall into the pots that people use to collect the palm sap. In this way, scientists say, Nipah has spread from bats to Bangladeshis.
“Nipah is a scary virus because it is super deadly,” said Epstein, who has studied the virus’s spread and notes that it has a case fatality rate in Bangladesh of about 75%.
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But there’s another reason Nipah keeps disease experts up at night: Humans can spread the virus directly to each other, with no animal intermediary necessary.
“Nipah has shown human-to-human transmission consistently in Bangladesh, and that is why it is among the top listed infectious disease threats,” Epstein said. “It is only a matter of time before a version of Nipah virus gets into people, one that is both deadly and highly transmissible.”
In other words, there’s no need to speculate about the spillover of a scary disease like goat plague when Nipah is already on the scene.
Live animal markets and COVID-19. Degraded forests and Lyme disease. Agricultural production, disrupted bat habitat and a petrifying new paramyxovirus. These examples all tell the same story: Humanity’s effect on the natural world, and on wildlife especially, is causing novel pathogens to infect, harm and kill us. When we mine, drill, bulldoze and overdevelop, when we traffic in wild animals and invade intact habitat, when we make intimate contact with birds, bats, primates, rodents and more, we run an intensifying risk of contracting one of the estimated 1.6 million unknown viruses that reside in the bodies of other species.
A monkey is kept in a cage for sale at an animal market in Jakarta, Indonesia, in May 2007. AFP via Getty Images
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Far From An ‘Unforeseen Problem’
Throughout his presidency, Donald Trump has consistently undermined science as part of his pro-development, anti-environment agenda. And the administration’s response to COVID-19 has, unsurprisingly, been defined by similar denial.
Trump spent weeks downplaying the threat, only to suddenly change his tune and insist that no one could have possibly predicted or prepared for such a devastating pandemic. He described the outbreak as an “unforeseen problem,” “something that nobody expected.”
But a crisis of this magnitude was not only possible, it was all but inevitable. Many people, from business leaders to intelligence officials to infectious diseases experts, have been saying so for years.
“If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war,” billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates said in a 2015 Ted Talk, stressing that the U.S. and the world at large are wildly unprepared to respond.
Even Trump’s own appointees in the intelligence community had issued warnings.
“We assess that the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support,” says the 42-page Worldwide Threat Assessment that then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats presented to the Senate Intelligence Committee in January 2019.
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The report highlights stalled progress in combating infectious diseases such as malaria and the measles, as well as the link between emerging pathogens and human encroachment.
“The growing proximity of humans and animals has increased the risk of disease transmission,” it says. “The number of outbreaks has increased in part because pathogens originally found in animals have spread to human populations.”
And yet the Trump administration was caught unprepared, confused and unable to craft a coherent strategy to tackle the threat. Indeed, even in mid-March, the president was still comparing COVID-19 to the seasonal flu.
Beyond their hapless response, Trump and his Cabinet have also promoted a slew of policies that actively exacerbate the potential for zoonotic spillover.
Since taking power in 2017, the Trump administration has been on an anti-environment bonanza, rolling back wildlife and land protections while also working to cut funding for key international conservation programs that help prevent the sort of activities that give rise to infectious disease emergence. In its proposed budget for fiscal year 2021, for instance, the administration seeks to cut more than $300 million from critical USAID and State Department programs that combat wildlife trafficking, conserve large landscapes and otherwise promote biodiversity and wildlife protection abroad.
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“USAID is one of the largest global donors for biodiversity conservation,” said Kelly Keenan Aylward, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Washington, DC, office.
She pointed, for instance, to the agency’s Central Africa Regional Program for the Environment, a landscape-scale effort that focuses on combating wildlife trafficking and deforestation, two key drivers of biodiversity loss. USAID, Aylward said, also funds essential biodiversity programs in the Amazon and Southeast Asia, among other places.
A poisonous, critically endangered golden mantella frog in the rainforest of Madagascar. Habitat loss from logging and agriculture has driven the species toward extinction. Trump administration policies have exacerbated the loss of biodiversity. Ger Bosma via Getty Images
Trump and his small army of industry-linked political appointees are also going after the country’s key domestic wildlife agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is responsible for enforcing the Endangered Species Act and fighting the illegal wildlife trade. In fiscal year 2021, they aim to slash the agency’s budget by roughly $80 million, including significant cuts to its law enforcement programs. They also want to whittle away at the agency’s Multinational Species Conservation Fund, which finances conservation programs for imperiled species abroad.
The administration also finalized regulations that significantly weaken both the Endangered Species Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, two bedrock conservation laws. It engineered the largest rollback of public lands protection in U.S. history and has presided over a steep decline in the number of new species listed under the ESA. It has withdrawn U.S. membership in UNESCO, a United Nations program that protects hundreds of natural sites around the world, and earlier this month Trump threatened to halt U.S. funding for the World Health Organization over its pandemic response, a clear effort to shift blame away from his administration. All this while advocating drastic cuts to U.S.-sponsored global health programs that fight infectious diseases.
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Wildlife and land protection programs, advocates say, should be getting more support, not less — especially in light of a raging pandemic that has its origins in environmental destruction and disruption.
“Conservation and wildlife protection efforts must be prioritized in order to protect not only our precious resources,” said Kate Wall, the senior legislative manager at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, “but the stability of our global economy and, indeed, our very existence.”
‘It Should Be A Defining Movement’
Carroll, the former USAID official, said fighting emerging disease requires social engineering that invests not only in the capability to disrupt future spillover but also measures to manage outbreaks when they occur.
Carroll designed and directed Predict, a USAID disease surveillance program that identified more than 1,000 previously unknown wildlife viruses, including strains of Ebola and dozens of coronaviruses, over the last decade. The project proved that our existing technologies could pinpoint future viral threats. But operating on that scale, it would take centuries to catalog the estimated 1.6 million viruses out there ― what Carroll calls “unknown viral dark matter.”
In September, after $200 million and a decade of virus hunting, Trump’s USAID announced it would not renew the Predict program for another five-year cycle. Carroll left USAID around that time. And on March 31, as the coronavirus pandemic ravaged the U.S., the administration officially shuttered the program. USAID subsequently granted the program a six-month extension on April 1 to “provide emergency support” to other countries in their response to COVID-19, but the effective cancellation of Predict had already caused real damage — its field work came to a halt months earlier, and some of the organizations that worked on the program were forced to lay off staffers, according to an April report in the Los Angeles Times.
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USAID is now in the process of developing a new project, called STOP Spillover, which is expected to be launched this fall and cost $50 million to $100 million over five years. An agency spokesperson told CNN the program will “build on the lessons learned and data gathered” during Predict and “focus on strengthening national capacity to develop, test and implement interventions to reduce the risk of the spillover.”
Carroll now leads the Global Virome Project, a nonprofit that is working to create what he describes as a “global atlas” of animal viruses that would help prepare for, and ideally prevent, pandemics. Mapping viruses by species and location would allow governments to target hot spots for increased surveillance and ecosystem protections.
Carroll also hopes it will make it possible for scientists to develop vaccines that protect humans from not just one virus but perhaps even whole viral families.
“The demise of Predict,” Carroll said, “will only be a tragedy if we don’t continue to invest in viral discovery.”
Workers prepare to spray disinfectant at the Wuhan Railway Station in Wuhan, China on March 24, 2020. The city in central China is where the coronavirus first emerged late last year. STR via Getty Images
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Disease research and preparing for pandemics isn’t cheap. The Global Virome Project estimates it would cost $1.5 billion over a decade to identify 75% of the unknown viruses in mammals and birds. On the heels of the Ebola crisis in 2016, a commission of global health experts called for an annual global investment of $4.5 billion to help prevent and fight future pandemics, including $3.4 billion to upgrade public health systems across the globe and $1 million for the development of vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics.
But those figures pale in comparison to the costs of a global pandemic, as highlighted by the untold trillions of dollars that COVID-19 is now costing the world economy.
Perhaps the frequency of deadly disease outbreaks ― SARS in 2003, swine flu in 2009, MERS in 2012, Ebola in 2014 and now COVID-19 ― will convince the world it is time for a different approach, Carroll hopes. But he fears that, as with previous outbreaks, resources will dry up once the coronavirus threat dissipates and “collective amnesia” sets in.
“We should not accept the idea that spillover from wildlife into people is inevitable,” he said. “It’s not. Viruses don’t move from animals to people. We facilitate that.”
But we can change our ways.
More than 240 environmental and animal advocacy groups signed an April 6 letter urging the World Health Organization to recommend that governments institute permanent bans on wildlife markets and the use of wildlife in traditional medicines.
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To truly solve the underlying conditions that fuel zoonotic pandemics, experts and wildlife conservationists are also calling for a new paradigm that recognises the interconnection of people, animals and ecosystems, which they call the “One Health” approach.
“It should be a defining movement,” Dr. Christine Kreuder Johnson, project director of the USAID’s Predict program and associate director of the One Health Institute at the University of California, Davis, said of One Health, which seeks to prevent infectious disease outbreaks by safeguarding wild animals and their habitat.
Humans have driven up to 1 million species around the globe to the brink of extinction, a United Nations report last year found. A UN draft biodiversity plan released earlier this year calls for protecting 30% of all lands and oceans by 2030 to combat the biodiversity crisis, which experts say would help keep new infectious diseases at bay.
Other experts told HuffPost that the US should establish a high-level One Health task force that brings together agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Fish and Wildlife Service, USAID and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to chart a course forward for protecting wildlife habitat, strengthening disease surveillance and preventing pandemics.
Still others, like Dr. Richard Kock, say humans must drastically scale back livestock production, which brought the goat plague to Mongolia and fueled the Nipah virus outbreak in Malaysia.
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