Is Trumpism a cult?

The question almost feels like a provocation .
And yet more and more people , like veteran Republican strategist John Weaver , are comfortable saying , “ Yes.
” Famed CBS anchor Dan Rather made the case most recently on the CNN show Reliable Sources .
Even former Trump White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci has likened Donald Trump supporters to a cult .
It ’ s a provocative claim that I ’ m not sure is entirely convincing .
On one hand , there is something cult-like about the hold Trump has over his supporters and the Republican Party @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it a cult seems too easy , a way of avoiding a much scarier truth about our politics — namely , that Trump isn ’ t all that exceptional .
A new book by cult expert Steven Hassan , called The Cult of Trump , is the first serious attempt to argue that Trumpism is a cult .
Hassan has studied cults for years and is himself a former member of the “ Moonies ” cult , an offshoot of the Unification Church of the United States led by Sun Myung Moon that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ convinced that Trump is more than just a manipulative , charismatic politician .
The president , he writes , “ employs many of the same techniques as prominent cult leaders and displays many of the same personality traits.
” I reached out to Hassan to talk about what defines a cult and why he thinks Trump qualifies as a cult leader .
If Trump is , in fact , a cult leader , I really wanted Hassan to explain how he ’ s different from other political figures .
Although he makes some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conception of cults needs rethinking , Hassan ’ s argument about Trump strikes me as thin in some crucial places , and I pushed back during our exchange .
Readers can decide whether or not to buy the argument .
Our conversation , which has been lightly edited for length and clarity , follows .
How do you define a cult ?
I define cults along a continuum of what I call ethical or unethical influence .
There can be cults where people know what they ’ re getting into and have access @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leave without threats .
That ’ s what you might call an ethical cult .
And then on the unethical side , there are cults that are essentially based on authoritarian pyramid structures , usually with somebody at the top that claims to have total power and total wisdom , and they use deception in recruitment , which is crucial .
Are there meaningful differences between a political cult and a religious cult ( or any other kind of cult ) ?
There are differences , but the core influence techniques are basically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ structure of the cult .
And there ’ s almost always a core deception at the center of the cult , which is that the leader is the only [ one ] who has the keys to saving the planet , who has access to the truth .
Do the majority of cult members recognize themselves as being members of cults ?
No , most people would laugh at the idea of being in a “ cult.
” But that ’ s crucial to the sort of mind control you find in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , they think they ’ re making their own decisions , they think they ’ re doing God ’ s work , they think they ’ re saving the world .
And above all , they think they made a conscious decision to do all these things all on their own .
And how do you distinguish a cult leader from what we ’ d normally consider a charismatic leader ?
I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders .
These are people who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be the center of attention , who need to control others , and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation .
These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection .
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies .
Almost every cult leader thinks he ’ s above the law , which is why he ’ s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants .
When someone really believes this , they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior .
Well , let ’ s get to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Trumpism a cult ?
I began this book with the assumption that Trump is a malignant narcissist .
Actually , watching him and listening to him reminded me of Sun Myung Moon , the leader of the cult I joined in college , in that both have a kind of God complex where they ’ re the only one with the answers , the only one who can fix things .
Moon was going to create a theocracy and Trump was going to “ drain the swamp.
” But the way they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ really made me think of Trump as a cult was the way the groups who supported him were behaving , especially religious groups who believed that God had chosen Trump or was using Trump .
There are actual pro-Trump religious groups , like the New Apostolic Reformation , whose leaders were saying , “ We ’ re of God .
The rest of the world is of Satan , and we need to follow our chosen leaders who are connected to God.
” There was this blind-faith aspect to the whole thing and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ facts .
That ’ s all very cult-like .
Politics is all about persuasion , all about influencing people .
What is it that makes Trump ’ s approach fundamentally different from non-cultish politicians ?
First , a lot of people don ’ t know that Trump was raised by an authoritarian father in what I ’ d call a cultic church , where you ’ re taught to believe 100 percent in yourself , that magical things are going to happen , and that the only sin is doubting yourself .
Yeah @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Peale ’ s church growing up .
[ You can read about that here . ]
Peale was an important figure in his life .
He even presided over some of Trump ’ s marriages , I believe .
But Peale preached a cultish prosperity gospel , where everything ’ s about how God is going to bless you with material rewards .
It ’ s not about spirituality or Christ or anything like that .
It ’ s all about turning self-confidence into a religion .
I don ’ t know anything @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t speak to it .
So , what else distinguishes Trump in your mind ?
The bottom line is that I see very sophisticated mind-control techniques being used through the media , through religious broadcasters and radio talk-show hosts .
It ’ s a black-and-white , all-or-nothing , good-versus-evil , authoritarian view of reality that is mostly fear-based .
And there ’ s a deliberate focus on denying facts in order to protect the image of the leader .
These are universal mind-control techniques common to all destructive cults , and something I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are drilled into people ’ s minds so that they can ’ t even imagine leaving the group or questioning the leader without terrible things happening to them .
But that doesn ’ t really map onto our political reality .
No one is being forced to be a Trump supporter in that way .
I guess I ’ m having a hard time seeing how Trump is all that different from other politicians who speak in repetitive clichés and use slogans and platitudes to manipulate voters .
I mean , that ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the cult of Trump is definitely the fruit of decades of issues and problems that have never really surfaced .
But I do think he shows , in a way we haven ’ t quite seen before — at least in modern history — how people can be recruited and indoctrinated to do things completely contrary to their belief system and value system .
And he ’ s exceptionally good at using the media to amplify his messaging techniques .
I ’ ll try to get at this another way .
So , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Barack Obama while reading your book .
Obama is the opposite of Trump in every sense imaginable , and yet he exercised a similar pull on many of his followers .
The big difference between Trump and Obama is that Trump lies and insults and projects weakness onto others , and that seems more straightforwardly cultish , and maybe that ’ s where we cross the line into cult territory .
But Obama still had something like a cult of personality , although many people don ’ t see it that way because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ intentions and he didn ’ t use his influence over people for malicious purposes .
I think that ’ s very true .
If you ’ re going to run for president of the United States , you ’ ve got to have some narcissistic qualities .
But it ’ s the amorality piece that distinguishes Trump from Barack Obama .
Beyond that , Obama was brilliant and he was someone who liked to learn , who wanted to hear different opinions and make reasonable decisions , as opposed to Trump , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and insists he knows more than his generals .
Right , but for people to believe in him and follow him religiously and not question anything he says even when it ’ s obvious that he ’ s lying , that ’ s where I stop and go , “ Wait , this is very cult-like.
” I really want to make the point that not everyone who voted for Trump is in a cult , and not everyone who supports the Republican Party is a mindless follower of Trump .
But those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ think he ’ s some kind of savior or a gift from God , whose loyalty is both unquestionable and irrational , I do think they ’ re behaving more or less like cult members .
Couldn ’ t everything you ’ re saying about Trumpism also be explained as simple partisanship ?
Republicans basically supported Trump at virtually the same rate they supported previous GOP presidential candidates .
I ’ d argue that ’ s a much simpler account of the dynamics here than attributing everything to cult-like brainwashing .
So , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” put it aside , and think about the science of social influence and all the research that ’ s being done , especially about online influence .
Modern tech companies are learning how to make their platforms sticky , how to gather data from our “ likes ” and “ retweets ” and use it to quietly manipulate us .
My reason for doing this book wasn ’ t really about Trump or Republicans or Democrats .
It was to take everything I ’ ve learned about how vulnerable human minds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re living in a very different world where the conventional idea of “ brainwashing ” is really obsolete and the idea of a cult as a small group of people sharing physical space is outdated .
The internet has changed things , and I think Trump is an example of what a 21st-century cult leader looks like .
This article was originally published on December 13 , 2019 .

Has Trumpism become a cult?
The question almost feels like a provocation. And yet more and more people, like veteran Republican strategist John Weaver, are comfortable saying, “Yes.”
Famed CBS anchor Dan Rather made the case most recently on the CNN show Reliable Sources. Even former Trump White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci has likened Donald Trump supporters to a cult.
It’s a provocative claim that I’m not sure is entirely convincing. On one hand, there is something cult-like about the hold Trump has over his supporters and the Republican Party. At the same time, calling it a cult seems too easy, a way of avoiding a much scarier truth about our politics — namely, that Trump isn’t all that exceptional.
A new book by cult expert Steven Hassan, called The Cult of Trump, is the first serious attempt to argue that Trumpism is a cult. Hassan has studied cults for years and is himself a former member of the “Moonies” cult, an offshoot of the Unification Church of the United States led by Sun Myung Moon that made headlines in 1970s.
Hassan is convinced that Trump is more than just a manipulative, charismatic politician. The president, he writes, “employs many of the same techniques as prominent cult leaders and displays many of the same personality traits.”
I reached out to Hassan to talk about what defines a cult and why he thinks Trump qualifies as a cult leader. If Trump is, in fact, a cult leader, I really wanted Hassan to explain how he’s different from other political figures. Although he makes some interesting points, especially about how our conception of cults needs rethinking, Hassan’s argument about Trump strikes me as thin in some crucial places, and I pushed back during our exchange. Readers can decide whether or not to buy the argument.
Our conversation, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity, follows.
Sean Illing
How do you define a cult?
Steven Hassan
I define cults along a continuum of what I call ethical or unethical influence. There can be cults where people know what they’re getting into and have access to alternative opinions and are free to leave without threats. That’s what you might call an ethical cult.
And then on the unethical side, there are cults that are essentially based on authoritarian pyramid structures, usually with somebody at the top that claims to have total power and total wisdom, and they use deception in recruitment, which is crucial.
Sean Illing
Are there meaningful differences between a political cult and a religious cult (or any other kind of cult)?
Steven Hassan
There are differences, but the core influence techniques are basically the same no matter the purpose or structure of the cult. And there’s almost always a core deception at the center of the cult, which is that the leader is the only [one] who has the keys to saving the planet, who has access to the truth.
Sean Illing
Do the majority of cult members recognize themselves as being members of cults?
Steven Hassan
No, most people would laugh at the idea of being in a “cult.” But that’s crucial to the sort of mind control you find in a cult. When people are being brainwashed, they think they’re making their own decisions, they think they’re doing God’s work, they think they’re saving the world. And above all, they think they made a conscious decision to do all these things all on their own.
Sean Illing
And how do you distinguish a cult leader from what we’d normally consider a charismatic leader?
Steven Hassan
I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior.
Sean Illing
Well, let’s get to the book. Why are you calling a Trumpism a cult?
Steven Hassan
I began this book with the assumption that Trump is a malignant narcissist. Actually, watching him and listening to him reminded me of Sun Myung Moon, the leader of the cult I joined in college, in that both have a kind of God complex where they’re the only one with the answers, the only one who can fix things. Moon was going to create a theocracy and Trump was going to “drain the swamp.” But the way they carry themselves is similar.
But what really made me think of Trump as a cult was the way the groups who supported him were behaving, especially religious groups who believed that God had chosen Trump or was using Trump. There are actual pro-Trump religious groups, like the New Apostolic Reformation, whose leaders were saying, “We’re of God. The rest of the world is of Satan, and we need to follow our chosen leaders who are connected to God.”
There was this blind-faith aspect to the whole thing and an unwillingness to look at any inconvenient facts. That’s all very cult-like.
Sean Illing
Politics is all about persuasion, all about influencing people. What is it that makes Trump’s approach fundamentally different from non-cultish politicians?
Steven Hassan
First, a lot of people don’t know that Trump was raised by an authoritarian father in what I’d call a cultic church, where you’re taught to believe 100 percent in yourself, that magical things are going to happen, and that the only sin is doubting yourself.
Sean Illing
Wait, what? A cultic church?
Steven Hassan
Yeah, Trump was part of Norman Vincent Peale’s church growing up. [You can read about that here.] Peale was an important figure in his life. He even presided over some of Trump’s marriages, I believe. But Peale preached a cultish prosperity gospel, where everything’s about how God is going to bless you with material rewards. It’s not about spirituality or Christ or anything like that. It’s all about turning self-confidence into a religion.
Sean Illing
I don’t know anything about that, so I can’t speak to it. So, what else distinguishes Trump in your mind?
Steven Hassan
The bottom line is that I see very sophisticated mind-control techniques being used through the media, through religious broadcasters and radio talk-show hosts. It’s a black-and-white, all-or-nothing, good-versus-evil, authoritarian view of reality that is mostly fear-based. And there’s a deliberate focus on denying facts in order to protect the image of the leader.
These are universal mind-control techniques common to all destructive cults, and something I call “phobia introduction.” Irrational fears are drilled into people’s minds so that they can’t even imagine leaving the group or questioning the leader without terrible things happening to them.
Sean Illing
But that doesn’t really map onto our political reality. No one is being forced to be a Trump supporter in that way. I guess I’m having a hard time seeing how Trump is all that different from other politicians who speak in repetitive clichés and use slogans and platitudes to manipulate voters. I mean, that’s just mass politics.
Steven Hassan
Well, the cult of Trump is definitely the fruit of decades of issues and problems that have never really surfaced. But I do think he shows, in a way we haven’t quite seen before — at least in modern history — how people can be recruited and indoctrinated to do things completely contrary to their belief system and value system. And he’s exceptionally good at using the media to amplify his messaging techniques.
Sean Illing
I’ll try to get at this another way. So, I kept thinking about a politician like Barack Obama while reading your book. Obama is the opposite of Trump in every sense imaginable, and yet he exercised a similar pull on many of his followers.
The big difference between Trump and Obama is that Trump lies and insults and projects weakness onto others, and that seems more straightforwardly cultish, and maybe that’s where we cross the line into cult territory. But Obama still had something like a cult of personality, although many people don’t see it that way because he was a good man with benign intentions and he didn’t use his influence over people for malicious purposes.
Steven Hassan
I think that’s very true. If you’re going to run for president of the United States, you’ve got to have some narcissistic qualities. But it’s the amorality piece that distinguishes Trump from Barack Obama.
Beyond that, Obama was brilliant and he was someone who liked to learn, who wanted to hear different opinions and make reasonable decisions, as opposed to Trump, who says “I use my gut” and insists he knows more than his generals.
Sean Illing
But that doesn’t necessarily make Trump a cult leader ...
Steven Hassan
Right, but for people to believe in him and follow him religiously and not question anything he says even when it’s obvious that he’s lying, that’s where I stop and go, “Wait, this is very cult-like.”
I really want to make the point that not everyone who voted for Trump is in a cult, and not everyone who supports the Republican Party is a mindless follower of Trump. But those who buy everything he says, who think he’s some kind of savior or a gift from God, whose loyalty is both unquestionable and irrational, I do think they’re behaving more or less like cult members.
Sean Illing
Couldn’t everything you’re saying about Trumpism also be explained as simple partisanship? Republicans basically supported Trump at virtually the same rate they supported previous GOP presidential candidates. I’d argue that’s a much simpler account of the dynamics here than attributing everything to cult-like brainwashing.
Steven Hassan
So, I would take the word “brainwashing,” put it aside, and think about the science of social influence and all the research that’s being done, especially about online influence. Modern tech companies are learning how to make their platforms sticky, how to gather data from our “likes” and “retweets” and use it to quietly manipulate us.
My reason for doing this book wasn’t really about Trump or Republicans or Democrats. It was to take everything I’ve learned about how vulnerable human minds are and how psychology works. We’re living in a very different world where the conventional idea of “brainwashing” is really obsolete and the idea of a cult as a small group of people sharing physical space is outdated.
The internet has changed things, and I think Trump is an example of what a 21st-century cult leader looks like.
This article was originally published on December 13, 2019.


vox--2020-01-27--Fashion has a misinformation problem. That’s bad for the environment.

Whenever a fashion brand makes a commitment to offset its carbon emissions , it needs to explain why it matters .
Whenever a journalist like me writes a story about , say , activists protesting London Fashion Week , I also need to tell you why you should care and should keep reading .
After all , there are so many other worthy things that demand our attention these days .
So consider the following harrowing , commonly repeated facts : • Eight to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions comes from the fashion industry , which is more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ combined .
• The fashion industry produces and sells somewhere between 80 billion and 150 billion garments a year globally .
• Nearly three-fifths of all clothing produced ends up in incinerators or landfills within years of being made .
It ’ s clear that the fashion industry is a big , stinking mess .
But if you take a moment to ponder these facts , you realize that something is … off .
An estimated range of 80 billion to 150 billion garments a year is ridiculously wide .
The two most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gas emissions vary by a billion tons , a huge margin of error .
And saying three-fifths of clothing will be trashed within “ years ” is a meaningless statement .
Yet I pulled all of these statistics and other common facts from reputable sources : McKinsey .
The United Nations .
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation .
The World Bank .
International labor unions .
Advocacy organizations .
And these facts have been cited by publications like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times .
Not all of these highly respected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
Only one out of the dozen or so most commonly cited facts about the fashion industry ’ s footprint is based on science It turns out they could .
Because only one out of the dozen or so most commonly cited facts about the fashion industry ’ s huge footprint is based on any sort of science , data collection , or peer-reviewed research .
The rest are based on gut feelings , broken links , marketing , and something someone said in 2003 .
If we ’ re serious about recruiting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ save our world from burning , these bad facts do us all a disservice .
They make fashion activists look silly .
They allow brands to wave vaguely at reducing their impact without taking meaningful action .
And they stymy the ability to implement meaningful regulation , which needs to be undergirded by solid data .
There are unmissable clues everywhere that something is wrong , from poisonous rivers in Bangladesh and Indonesia to old clothing littering the shores of East Africa to microplastics in our drinking water .
But as long as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ll only get garbage action from brands and governments to fix the problem .
“ Where are the technical papers ?
Where are the peer-reviewed journals ?
Where is the serious work ?
” says Dr. Linda Greer , a former senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council and now a senior global fellow at the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs , a Chinese environmental NGO .
“ You couldn ’ t even get a master ’ s degree with this , not even close.
” ( Sick burn from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) “ And here we are trying to run a whole industry ’ s environmental footprint reduction based on this kind of stuff .
It ’ s kind of preposterous that people put up with it.
” “ Where are the technical papers ?
Where are the peer-reviewed journals ?
Where is the serious work ?
” Greer is intimately familiar with these bad facts and where they come from — she thinks she might inadvertently be responsible for one of the most persistent .
Years ago , she looked at sources of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ China that had good government data , the highly industrialized Shaanxi , and found that the textile industry was the second most polluting after the chemical industry in that particular province .
“ I thought , okay , for my purposes of NRDC trying to get on top of polluters in China , this is fine .
I can use this.
” She went on to found the NRDC ’ s Clean by Design program , which helped increase water and energy efficiency at Chinese textile factories , partly on the basis of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ point in the next decade , the belief that globally , the fashion industry is the second most polluting industry after oil took off , much to her horror .
( It continued to circulate even after I debunked it for Racked in 2017 . )
And better data has never emerged .
“ Somebody by now should have gone ahead and figured out what ’ s really true , ” she says .
As the co-founder of the now-defunct ethical e-tailer Zady , Maxine Bédat used to repeat many of these non-facts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shut down , she founded an organization called the New Standard Institute .
Her goal is to collect all the best information about the fashion industry in one place and leverage it to pressure fashion brands to do something about their footprint .
But as she and NSI research volunteers started to peel away the layers of each statistic , she realized that there was nothing at their core .
I asked Bédat in January if she had found any fashion facts that were true or had a reliable primary source , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to go on the record endorsing anything .
“ I can tell you a bunch that are not true , ” she says .
She homes in on the stat that says that there are 60 million garment workers globally , which the advocacy organization Clean Clothes cited as from the International Labor Organization .
“ We reached out to ILO , who doesn ’ t have a record of this information .
It was also used by BetterWorks , Sustainable Brand Solidarity Center , and IndustriAll .
Seventy-five million garment workers globally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ publication , and they cite Fashion United , but the link doesn ’ t mention that stat.
” This is what happens in the fashion sustainability space .
One organization puts out a fact , and four other organizations link to it , and then nobody remembers or cares who first made the claim .
The statistic that 4 percent of global waste is from the fashion industry is the most well-sourced fact I ’ ve found , eventually leading back to a report by the UK nonprofit Waste & Resources Action Program @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with clothing sold in the UK , which is based on a peer-reviewed tool whose methodology is laid out in a robust technical analysis .
It still may not be true , given that the global waste figure is extrapolated from UK figures and then compared to a stat from the UN , which hasn ’ t proved to be very reliable on fashion figures .
But at least it ’ s transparent .
WRAP ’ s transparency is in contrast to the consulting firm McKinsey , which says that between 2000 and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the number of garments purchased each year by the average consumer increased by around 60 percent , to 100 billion garments per year .
( The documentary The True Cost says we purchase 80 billion garments a year , while the World Economic Forum puts it at 150 billion . )
Where did the figure of 100 billion garments come from ?
McKinsey would only say that it analyzed proprietary data provided by market research firms to come to their conclusions .
And yet , in fashion ’ s desert of scientific @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from a company that has reportedly helped Saudi Arabia silence critics and — over objections from the World Health Organization — brought an ethos of cost-cutting to the arena of global health is what passes for reputable information .
The McKinsey website also used to say that nearly three-fifths of all clothing produced ends up in incinerators or landfills within “ one year ” of being made but at some point changed it to the vague “ within years.
” An Ellen MacArthur Foundation report says that 20 percent of global industrial water @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but EcoTextile News shredded this in its December issue dedicated to myth-busting , tracking the statistic back to a vague assertion by a 2012 paper that attributed it to the World Bank ; the bank denied it was the origin of the fact .
Also attributed to the World Bank is the fact that 80 percent of garment workers worldwide are women , but when I asked , a representative directed me to an article that says 80 percent of garment workers in Bangladesh are women and then to a conflicting World Bank @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 54 percent .
The idea that the average American throws away 80 pounds of clothing comes from a 2014 Environmental Protection Agency report , but that data is also inaccurate : It includes textiles like carpets and mattresses and garment factory waste .
And finally , one statistic you ’ ll see in almost every story and at every panel : the greenhouse gas emissions attributed to the global fashion industry .
According to the UN , it ’ s 10 percent of global emissions .
But according to a 2018 report by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s 8 percent .
“ Let ’ s talk for a moment about the Quantis report , ” says Greer .
“ They refused to provide anybody — me , Climate Works Foundation that funded them , or the general public — any of the data that went into their conclusions .
If you were to try to publish that in a peer-reviewed journal , you would be rejected in 30 minutes .
It should have died a quick death.
” The report didn ’ t die .
It was pulled off @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , then republished without Climate Works ’ name on it .
And it keeps getting cited .
By me , by other journalists , by panelists , by everyone .
There ’ s just nothing else to go on .
Even without good data , brands and countries are attempting to lessen the fashion industry ’ s impact .
Last year , 150 companies joined a pact where they agreed to “ science-based ” targets around emissions , biodiversity , and single-use plastics by 2050 .
It ’ s the latest in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , conferences , promises , and “ sustainable ” product lines .
But companies still don ’ t know what is happening in their supply chains , and so have no baseline for what they will cut their emissions from .
( According to a report by Greer ’ s organization , Nike is the only brand that regularly asks for emissions data from its factories in China . )
Some of this bad data has even cynically been pressed into service to increase our consumption .
“ Double sales and retention , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ carbon emission calculators for eco brands .
“ By purchasing a product , visitors fully understand their positive environmental impact !
” Brands have also zeroed in on circular design , a utopian economy where waste materials would be recycled right back into new clothes .
( Right now , we think that 99 percent of old clothing is eventually landfilled or burned .
Don ’ t ask me to find the primary source for that . )
As a result , Nordic countries — the only governments that have committed any resources @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pouring money into textile R & D .
Sure , that will help with waste , but what if it ends up increasing fashion ’ s footprint in other areas ?
“ If they put out a rule that is based on ... this 20 percent stat , then it ’ s not going to survive a courtroom challenge ” “ Where is the data that shows what the difference is in terms of carbon emissions , water use , toxic chemical use in a fully circular economy for the fashion industry ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ve yet to see numbers.
” She ’ s spent decades at the NRDC working to protect the environment from industrial pollution and knows firsthand the kind of robust research literature that has to undergird government rulemaking on corporate pollution .
The false stat about how much global industrial water pollution comes from the fashion industry , for instance , is not going to cut it .
“ If they put out a rule that is based on something as flip-floppy as this 20 percent stat , then it ’ s not going @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she says .
It ’ s clear that before we do anything else — demand legislation , invent new textiles , set targets — we need to figure out what research we need , then ask the government and big brands to fund it .
“ We need a landscape assessment of the data and an analysis of the gaps and inconsistencies that ’ s crisp , ” Greer says .
“ And then a call for funding the research to fill those gaps .
Then we ’ d be making progress.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government or a consortium of fashion brands , because getting good data is expensive .
For example , the California nonprofit Fibershed is planning a fiber mapping project where it would go into people ’ s closets , look at all the tags in their clothing , weigh the clothing , and then process the data to yield high-quality research on the fiber mix in our closets .
Founder Rebecca Burgess estimates that it will cost more than $ 100,000 just for California .
“ All these sociological and quantitative data sets on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or more money , ” Burgess says .
“ We need funding for people to be on the ground to take water samples , to go into factories and count how many workers are women .
Unless the public is crying for it , who is going to fund that ?
” There is some progress .
Last May , Stella McCartney and Google announced a partnership to test Google ’ s data-processing prowess by quantifying the impact of various types of cotton and viscose , using McCartney ’ s data and more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and brands .
But the fear is that the resulting data will only be available for brands to use .
“ If we don ’ t invest as an industry in this process , any company can say anything and we can ’ t say whether it ’ s meaningful ” “ There ’ s not enough investment in academia , but I can say there ’ s a lot of money in private research , ” says Dr. Joanne Brasch , a lecturer at UC Davis on textile sustainability and special project @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Council .
She sees her students get snapped up by fashion brands at graduation , essentially privatizing the vast majority of fashion science .
This might be her last year at UC Davis , too .
Her research funding has dried up , and UC Davis shut down the two undergraduate majors , textiles and clothing and polymer science .
Incoming graduate students interested in fashion sustainability will now have to choose either fashion design or material engineering .
Students revolted and signed a resolution against the move , but it was no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ does to our world , they now can only study how to make more of it .
“ This stuff isn ’ t rocket science , ” Bédat says .
“ The industry just hasn ’ t invested and prioritized this information .
And if we don ’ t invest as an industry in this process , any company can say anything and we can ’ t say yes or no on whether it ’ s a meaningful process.
” But despite all this , she thinks the conversation is shifting .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decade that we ’ re moving toward bringing clarity into this space.
” Sign up for The Goods ’ newsletter and we ’ ll send you the best Goods stories exploring what we buy , why we buy it , and why it matters .

Whenever a fashion brand makes a commitment to offset its carbon emissions, it needs to explain why it matters. Whenever a journalist like me writes a story about, say, activists protesting London Fashion Week, I also need to tell you why you should care and should keep reading. After all, there are so many other worthy things that demand our attention these days. So consider the following harrowing, commonly repeated facts:
Eight to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions comes from the fashion industry, which is more than the aviation and maritime shipping industries combined.
The fashion industry produces and sells somewhere between 80 billion and 150 billion garments a year globally.
Nearly three-fifths of all clothing produced ends up in incinerators or landfills within years of being made.
It’s clear that the fashion industry is a big, stinking mess. But if you take a moment to ponder these facts, you realize that something is … off. An estimated range of 80 billion to 150 billion garments a year is ridiculously wide. The two most common estimates for fashion’s greenhouse gas emissions vary by a billion tons, a huge margin of error. And saying three-fifths of clothing will be trashed within “years” is a meaningless statement.
Yet I pulled all of these statistics and other common facts from reputable sources. McKinsey. The United Nations. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation. The World Bank. International labor unions. Advocacy organizations. And these facts have been cited by publications like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
Not all of these highly respected experts could be wrong. Could they?
Only one out of the dozen or so most commonly cited facts about the fashion industry’s footprint is based on science
It turns out they could. Because only one out of the dozen or so most commonly cited facts about the fashion industry’s huge footprint is based on any sort of science, data collection, or peer-reviewed research. The rest are based on gut feelings, broken links, marketing, and something someone said in 2003.
If we’re serious about recruiting the fashion industry into the fight to save our world from burning, these bad facts do us all a disservice. They make fashion activists look silly. They allow brands to wave vaguely at reducing their impact without taking meaningful action. And they stymie the ability to implement meaningful regulation, which needs to be undergirded by solid data.
There are unmissable clues everywhere that something is wrong, from poisonous rivers in Bangladesh and Indonesia to old clothing littering the shores of East Africa to microplastics in our drinking water. But as long as we have only garbage information, we’ll only get garbage action from brands and governments to fix the problem.
“Where are the technical papers? Where are the peer-reviewed journals? Where is the serious work?” says Dr. Linda Greer, a former senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council and now a senior global fellow at the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a Chinese environmental NGO. “You couldn’t even get a master’s degree with this, not even close.” (Sick burn from someone with a PhD in toxicology.) “And here we are trying to run a whole industry’s environmental footprint reduction based on this kind of stuff. It’s kind of preposterous that people put up with it.”
“Where are the technical papers? Where are the peer-reviewed journals? Where is the serious work?”
Greer is intimately familiar with these bad facts and where they come from — she thinks she might inadvertently be responsible for one of the most persistent. Years ago, she looked at sources of water pollution in the only province in China that had good government data, the highly industrialized Jiangsu, and found that the textile industry was the second most polluting after the chemical industry in that particular province. “I thought, okay, for my purposes of NRDC trying to get on top of polluters in China, this is fine. I can use this.” She went on to found the NRDC’s Clean by Design program, which helped increase water and energy efficiency at Chinese textile factories, partly on the basis of this transparently back-of-the-envelope calculation.
At some point in the next decade, the belief that globally, the fashion industry is the second most polluting industry after oil took off, much to her horror. (It continued to circulate even after I debunked it for Racked in 2017.) And better data has never emerged. “Somebody by now should have gone ahead and figured out what’s really true,” she says.
As the co-founder of the now-defunct ethical e-tailer Zady, Maxine Bédat used to repeat many of these non-facts at sustainable fashion panels. After Zady shut down, she founded an organization called the New Standard Institute. Her goal is to collect all the best information about the fashion industry in one place and leverage it to pressure fashion brands to do something about their footprint. But as she and NSI research volunteers started to peel away the layers of each statistic, she realized that there was nothing at their core.
I asked Bédat in January if she had found any fashion facts that were true or had a reliable primary source, but she says NSI is not yet ready to go on the record endorsing anything. “I can tell you a bunch that are not true,” she says. She homes in on the stat that says there are 60 million garment workers globally, which the advocacy organization Clean Clothes cited as from the International Labor Organization. “We reached out to ILO, who doesn’t have a record of this information. It was also used by BetterWorks, Sustainable Brand Solidarity Center, and IndustriAll. Seventy-five million garment workers globally was also found in a Clean Clothes publication, and they cite Fashion United, but the link doesn’t mention that stat.”
This is what happens in the fashion sustainability space. One organization puts out a fact, and four other organizations link to it, and then nobody remembers or cares who first made the claim.
The statistic that 4 percent of global waste is from the fashion industry is the most well-sourced fact I’ve found, eventually leading back to a report by the UK nonprofit Waste & Resources Action Program (WRAP) on the waste associated with clothing sold in the UK, which is based on a peer-reviewed tool whose methodology is laid out in a robust technical analysis. It still may not be true, given that the global waste figure is extrapolated from UK figures and then compared to a stat from the UN, which hasn’t proved to be very reliable on fashion figures. But at least it’s transparent.
WRAP’s transparency is in contrast to the consulting firm McKinsey, which says that between 2000 and 2014, global clothing production doubled, and the number of garments purchased each year by the average consumer increased by around 60 percent, to 100 billion garments per year. (The documentary The True Cost says we purchase 80 billion garments a year, while the World Economic Forum puts it at 150 billion.) Where did the figure of 100 billion garments come from? McKinsey would only say that it analyzed proprietary data provided by market research firms to come to their conclusions. And yet, in fashion’s desert of scientific research, a report with zero footnotes from a company that has reportedly helped Saudi Arabia silence critics and — over objections from the World Health Organization — brought an ethos of cost-cutting to the arena of global health is what passes for reputable information.
The McKinsey website also used to say that nearly three-fifths of all clothing produced ends up in incinerators or landfills within “one year” of being made but at some point changed it to the vague “within years.”
Fashion industry produces 20 % of global wastewater and the grand majority of your closet is doomed to pollute the earth.
It’s not too late to stop this trend. #ActNow, be fashionably sustainable, & register your #ClimateAction on zero-waste fashion https://t.co/cH20vlRbgO pic.twitter.com/KdtUE6h0Qy — UN Geneva (@UNGeneva) August 7, 2019
An Ellen MacArthur Foundation report says that 20 percent of global industrial water pollution is from the fashion industry, but EcoTextile News shredded this in its December issue dedicated to myth-busting, tracking the statistic back to a vague assertion by a 2012 paper that attributed it to the World Bank; the bank denied it was the origin of the fact. Also attributed to the World Bank is the fact that 80 percent of garment workers worldwide are women, but when I asked, a representative directed me to an article that says 80 percent of garment workers in Bangladesh are women and then to a conflicting World Bank report that says it’s actually 54 percent. The idea that the average American throws away 80 pounds of clothing comes from a 2014 Environmental Protection Agency report, but that data is also inaccurate: It includes textiles like carpets and mattresses and garment factory waste.
And finally, one statistic you’ll see in almost every story and at every panel: the greenhouse gas emissions attributed to the global fashion industry. According to the UN, it’s 10 percent of global emissions. But according to a 2018 report by the sustainability consulting firm Quantis, it’s 8 percent.
“Let’s talk for a moment about the Quantis report,” says Greer. “They refused to provide anybody — me, ClimateWorks Foundation that funded them, or the general public — any of the data that went into their conclusions. If you were to try to publish that in a peer-reviewed journal, you would be rejected in 30 minutes. It should have died a quick death.”
Quantis disputes Greer’s characterization, saying that they delivered the data and methodology behind the report to ClimateWorks and the steering committee for the report, though the report is not peer-reviewed. And since the information is proprietary in a project by Quantis involving brands, industry groups, and the Swiss government to collect lifecycle data, they won’t publish the data until 2021.
ClimateWorks said in an emailed statement, “While the results were aligned with the original project scope and based on life cycle assessment science and methodology, they are not commensurate with the data sources used by ClimateWorks (IEA energy modeling). ClimateWorks has therefore decided not to co-brand ‘Measuring Fashion’ report, but values the work that Quantis has done to produce this study.” For what it’s worth, IEA’s estimation of the emissions of the textile and leather industries is many times smaller than the Quantis report’s.
The report was pulled off the Quantis website for a few months, then republished without ClimateWorks’ name on it. And it keeps getting cited. By me, by other journalists, by panelists, by everyone. There’s just nothing else to go on.
Even without good data, brands and countries are attempting to lessen the fashion industry’s impact. Last year, 150 companies joined a pact where they agreed to “science-based” targets around emissions, biodiversity, and single-use plastics by 2050. It’s the latest in a long line of industry groups, agreements, conferences, promises, and “sustainable” product lines. But companies still don’t know what is happening in their supply chains and so have no baseline for what they will cut their emissions from. (According to a report by Greer’s organization, Nike is the only brand that regularly asks for emissions data from its factories in China.)
Some of this bad data has even cynically been pressed into service to increase our consumption. “Double sales and retention,” crows a marketing company that creates carbon emission calculators for eco brands. “By purchasing a product, visitors fully understand their positive environmental impact!”
Brands have also zeroed in on circular design, a utopian economy where waste materials would be recycled right back into new clothes. (Right now, we think that 99 percent of old clothing is eventually landfilled or burned. Don’t ask me to find the primary source for that.) As a result, Nordic countries — the only governments that have committed any resources to improving the fashion industry — are pouring money into textile R&D. Sure, that will help with waste, but what if it ends up increasing fashion’s footprint in other areas?
“If they put out a rule that is based on ... this 20 percent stat, then it’s not going to survive a courtroom challenge”
“Where is the data that shows what the difference is in terms of carbon emissions, water use, toxic chemical use in a fully circular economy for the fashion industry?” Greer asks. “I’ve yet to see numbers.” She’s spent decades at the NRDC working to protect the environment from industrial pollution and knows firsthand the kind of robust research literature that has to undergird government rulemaking on corporate pollution. The false stat about how much global industrial water pollution comes from the fashion industry, for instance, is not going to cut it. “If they put out a rule that is based on something as flip-floppy as this 20 percent stat, then it’s not going to survive a courtroom challenge,” she says.
It’s clear that before we do anything else — demand legislation, invent new textiles, set targets — we need to figure out what research we need, then ask the government and big brands to fund it.
“We need a landscape assessment of the data and an analysis of the gaps and inconsistencies that’s crisp,” Greer says. “And then a call for funding the research to fill those gaps. Then we’d be making progress.”
That money needs to come from the government or a consortium of fashion brands, because getting good data is expensive. For example, the California nonprofit Fibershed is planning a fiber mapping project where it would go into people’s closets, look at all the tags in their clothing, weigh the clothing, and then process the data to yield high-quality research on the fiber mix in our closets. Founder Rebecca Burgess estimates that it will cost more than $100,000 just for California.
“All these sociological and quantitative data sets on the labor side would cost as much or more money,” Burgess says. “We need funding for people to be on the ground to take water samples, to go into factories and count how many workers are women. Unless the public is crying for it, who is going to fund that?”
There is some progress. Last May, Stella McCartney and Google announced a partnership to test Google’s data-processing prowess by quantifying the impact of various types of cotton and viscose, using McCartney’s data and more data they hope to collect from researchers and brands. But the fear is that the resulting data will only be available for brands to use.
“If we don’t invest as an industry in this process, any company can say anything and we can’t say whether it’s meaningful”
“There’s not enough investment in academia, but I can say there’s a lot of money in private research,” says Dr. Joanne Brasch, a lecturer at UC Davis on textile sustainability and special project manager at the nonprofit California Product Stewardship Council. She sees her students get snapped up by fashion brands at graduation, essentially privatizing the vast majority of fashion science.
This might be her last year at UC Davis, too. Her research funding has dried up, and UC Davis shut down the two undergraduate majors, textiles and clothing and polymer science. Incoming graduate students interested in fashion sustainability will now have to choose either fashion design or material engineering. Students revolted and signed a resolution against the move, but it was no use. Instead of researching what fashion does to our world, they now can only study how to make more of it.
“This stuff isn’t rocket science,” Bédat says. “The industry just hasn’t invested and prioritized this information. And if we don’t invest as an industry in this process, any company can say anything and we can’t say yes or no on whether it’s a meaningful process.”
But despite all this, she thinks the conversation is shifting. “I am hopeful in this year and decade that we’re moving toward bringing clarity into this space.”
This story has been updated with a quote from Quantis.
Sign up for The Goods’ newsletter and we’ll send you the best Goods stories exploring what we buy, why we buy it, and why it matters.


vox--2020-01-27--A SARS-like virus is spreading quickly. Here’s what you need to know.

On December 31 last year , China announced the outbreak of a mysterious new coronavirus in the city of Wuhan involving a group of people , many of whom had been exposed to animals at a local food market .
Flash-forward to Monday : The number of cases of 2019-nCoV , as the virus is known , has leaped past 2,000 , and there are sick people in at least 12 other countries .
That includes five confirmed cases in the United States .
Nancy Messonnier , director of the CDC ’ s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a “ very serious public health threat , the immediate risk to the US public is low at this time.
” Yet Tom Frieden , the former director of the CDC , told Vox he ’ s concerned by how infectious the virus is .
“ If the sustained human transmission and a high rate of severe illness are confirmed , then it clearly is an event of international concern.
” With information about 2019-nCoV — and its risk of spreading — evolving by the hour , we ’ ve answered basic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ll be updating this story as more information becomes available .
1 ) Where did this coronavirus outbreak come from ?
The outbreak was first reported to the World Health Organization by Chinese officials on December 31 in Wuhan , a city of 11 million in Hubei province .
At that time , cases centered around Wuhan ’ s Huanan South China Seafood Market .
Local health officials reported then that patients with the virus were “ mainly business staff and purchasers ” at the market , where vendors peddle seafood as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rabbits .
Scientists in China quickly ruled out known pathogens as the likely cause .
The leading hypothesis then was that a yet-to-be-identified novel virus had spread to humans from one of the animals in the market .
By January 9 , the state broadcaster , China Central Television , reported a major discovery : a new virus , known as 2019-nCoV .
Many of the people who had become ill tested positive for 2019-nCoV .
Two days later , Chinese scientists shared the genetic sequence of the new virus , and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sharing information readily .
( This transparency was a contrast to the SARS outbreak of 2003 , when China was heavily criticized for withholding information about the outbreak for too long .
The virus eventually killed 774 people and infected more than 8,000 . )
While Chinese authorities still believe the 2019-nCoV outbreak may have started at the market — with animals spreading the virus directly to humans — on January 20 , they confirmed that human-to-human transmission is also occurring .
By January 23 , the WHO confirmed that there is “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wuhan , meaning there are cases where an individual has spread it to a second person , that second person to a third , and the third to a fourth .
( Outside of Wuhan , there ’ s also evidence of second-generation cases . )
Knowing that , “ the scope of this outbreak expands massively , ” Peter Daszak , the president of EcoHealth Alliance , a US global health research organization working in China , told Vox .
2 ) How many people are sick ?
How many have died @ @ @ @ @ @ @ least 2,794 people have fallen ill .
The vast majority of these patients ( 2,737 ) are in mainland China , where most ( 1,423 ) are concentrated in Hubei province , home to Wuhan .
The remaining cases are spread across more than 30 Chinese provinces and cities — including Shanghai , Guangdong , Hong Kong , and Beijing .
To get the latest numbers , check out this website from researchers at Johns Hopkins ; it collects data from various sources : the WHO , the CDC , the National Health @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of China ( NHC ) , and two other sites .
( The map is embedded below . )
Additional cases have turned up in travelers in 12 other countries , including the US , Canada , Thailand , Japan , Taiwan , Malaysia , Singapore , France , Australia , Nepal , Vietnam , and South Korea .
A total of 56 people have died ( all in mainland China ) .
But the real toll may be much higher .
UK-based researchers who have modeled the outbreak ’ s potential suggest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as many as 9,700 , according to the upper end of their estimate .
And the risk of rapid spread is heightened , as hundreds of millions start to travel this week for China ’ s Lunar New Year .
3 ) How is the world responding ?
Chinese authorities first warned people to stop traveling in and out of Wuhan , and then said they would put the city under quarantine beginning January 23 , suspending public transport within Wuhan , and canceling flights and trains leaving the city .
It was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a population of 11 million , more people than New York City .
By the evening of January 24 , quarantine measures had expanded to 12 cities near Wuhan , effectively stifling the movement of 35 million people .
By January 25 , President Xi Jinping said the new virus posed a “ grave ” threat , and his government ordered travel agencies to suspend tours for Chinese citizens inside China and overseas .
The same day , Hong Kong authorities declared a state of emergency over the virus , and decided to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Beijing suspended all inter-province buses .
According to the New York Times , the government said the quarantine was needed to “ effectively cut off the transmission of the virus , resolutely curb the spread of the epidemic , and ensure the safety and health of the people.
” But the evidence for travel restrictions during outbreaks shows , counterintuitively , that they don ’ t actually do much to stop the spread of disease .
Health officials in China and the region are now scrambling to find cases through screening at transportation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those infected with the virus — an effort that ’ s supported by the WHO .
Other countries at risk of imported cases have also implemented screening measures .
In the US , the CDC — along with the Homeland Security Department ’ s Customs and Border Protection — began screening travelers from Wuhan for the virus at US airports on January 17 , and all travelers from the city will be funneled through airports that are looking out for cases .
On January 25 , the US government announced it would be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from Wuhan .
4 ) What do we know about the cases in the US ?
Right now there are five confirmed cases in the US , according to the CDC .
All involved travelers from Wuhan : • The first patient ’ s name hasn ’ t been released , but we know he ’ s a resident of Snohomish County in Washington state .
We also know he ’ s in his 30s and he recently traveled to Wuhan , returning to Seattle on January 15 , two days before airport @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t have symptoms yet ) .
By January 19 , he reached out to health care providers to report his symptoms and travel history .
They suspected 2019-nCoV .
The man is being treated for mild pneumonia at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett , Washington .
• The second case , reported on January 24 , involves a woman in her 60s who lives in Chicago .
She returned from Wuhan on January 13 , and didn ’ t have any symptoms while traveling .
A few days after returning , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she called healthcare providers to report her symptoms and was admitted to hospital and placed in isolation .
Right now , she ’ s in stable condition .
• The third , fourth , and fifth cases , reported over the weekend , concerned individuals in Orange County and LA County , California , and Maricopa County , Arizona , respectively .
They had all recently traveled to Wuhan , and that they ’ re getting care in a local hospital .
As of January 25 , CDC officials said they ’ ve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ US for the disease on 200 flights , and found zero cases .
The agency also said it ’ s investigating 100 possible cases of coronavirus in 26 states .
5 ) How does the new coronavirus spread ?
We don ’ t yet know the exact way the virus is spreading , but we do know it ’ s part of a large family of viruses called coronaviruses , which mostly infect mammals , including bats .
Coronaviruses attack the respiratory system , sometimes targeting the cells deep within the lungs .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and MERS , have evolved to infect humans .
According to the CDC , human coronaviruses are most commonly passed via : • Touching an object or surface with the virus on it , then touching your mouth , nose , or eyes before washing your hands As for how easily the new coronavirus spreads , that ’ s also unclear .
According to a preliminary estimate from WHO , at the moment , each individual has transmitted the virus to an average of 1.4 to 2.5 others .
That makes 2019-nCoV @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , less contagious than SARS .
But there are many different estimates floating around as the situation evolves — and some suggest 2019-nCoV is even more contagious .
We also know at least 15 health care workers have been infected .
“ It ’ s unusual to get health care worker infections in outbreaks , ” explained Tom Inglesby , director of the Center for Health Security of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health .
“ It ’ s always a sign of alarm when that happens , ” he added @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be easily transmitted , even in settings where people are taking precautions .
6 ) What are the symptoms of the new coronavirus ?
Two of the seven coronaviruses that infect humans , SARS and MERS , can cause severe pneumonia and even death .
The rest lead to milder symptoms , like a common cold .
Right now , it ’ s not clear where 2019-nCoV falls on that spectrum .
An early report , published in the Lancet , had a good overview of what ’ s known about symptoms so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the first 41 patients with confirmed 2019-nCoV in Wuhan .
The most common symptoms in this group were fever , cough , muscle pain , and fatigue ; less common were headache , diarrhea , and coughing up mucus or blood .
A little more than half of the 41 patients had difficulty breathing , and 63 percent had low levels of white blood cells .
As for the disease severity : 13 patients were admitted to an ICU and six died .
By January 22 , 68 percent of the patients @ @ @ @ @ @ @ patients had pneumonia and lung abnormalities on CT scans .
( A quick refresher : Pneumonia is an infection in the lungs that can be caused by a variety of organisms — bacteria , fungi , viruses , even parasites .
In this case , 2019-nCoV is causing the infection and leading the lungs ’ air sacs to become inflamed and fill up with fluid or pus instead of air . )
In the Lancet group , most patients were men and over half didn ’ t have underlying diseases .
The median @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Chinese health officials have said the deaths are occurring in mostly older people with pre-existing health conditions .
It ’ s possible there are many more people with the virus who have very mild symptoms or who are asymptomatic , said Dr. Jeremy Farrar , director of the Wellcome Trust , a research charity focused on global health .
If that ’ s the case , and there are thousands carrying 2019-nCoV while only a few people have died , this outbreak will look milder .
It ’ s also possible this virus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Inglesby , which kills about one in 10 patients infected .
With SARS , “ We saw substantial spread in health care settings where health care workers became ill during care for patients , ” for example .
“ This is a very serious outbreak with the potential for widespread transmission.
” 7 ) What ’ s the likelihood this becomes a global public health emergency ?
The potential for this virus to spread further is so great that the WHO gathered an expert committee on Wednesday and Thursday last week to decide @ @ @ @ @ @ @ global public health emergency , a rare designation the agency gives outbreaks that pose an international threat .
By the end of Thursday , WHO ’ s Director-General , Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus , announced the committee ’ s decision that the outbreak doesn ’ t yet constitute one , mainly because of the limited number of cases outside of China , and China ’ s efforts to control the spread of the disease .
“ Make no mistake , this is an emergency in China .
But it has not yet become a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He also vowed to reconvene the emergency committee in the coming days to review new data .
“ At this time , there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission outside China , but that doesn ’ t mean it won ’ t happen , ” Tedros added .
Formally , a public health emergency of international concern , or PHEIC — pronounced “ fake ” — is defined as “ an extraordinary event which is determined to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” In reality , it ’ s a political tool the WHO uses to sound the alarm about a serious disease that has caught the world off guard and put people ’ s health in danger .
It ’ s meant to draw countries ’ immediate attention , to galvanize resources , and stop the disease from spreading further across borders .
A key consideration in declaring a PHEIC is whether the disease threat is dire enough to risk countries enacting travel and trade restrictions .
Declarations can be devastating to local economies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
So they ’ re not taken lightly .
In fact , the WHO has only declared a public health emergency five times since the International Health Regulations , which govern global health emergency responses , were enacted in 2007 .
The first time was in 2009 , with the outbreak of the H1N1 swine flu pandemic .
The second time was in May 2014 , when polio seemed to surge again , threatening the eradication effort .
The third time , in August 2014 , came as the Ebola outbreak in West @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The fourth was related to Zika in 2016 .
And the fifth , in 2019 , was another outbreak of Ebola that ’ s ongoing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo .
8 ) How worried should I be about a pandemic ?
There are too many unknowns to say .
We don ’ t know which animal carries this virus .
We don ’ t know how exactly it spreads .
We don ’ t know how easily it spreads among people , or how deadly and severe the virus is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so far into perspective , remember that seasonal flu kills between 250,000 and 650,000 people each year .
“ Right now , you ’ re probably more likely to be catching flu than you are to be getting coronavirus , ” said Devi Sridhar , chair in global public health at the University of Edinburgh .
Even so , the fact that cases are already turning up in so many countries — mere weeks after this outbreak was first declared — suggests we should brace ourselves for an escalation .
The WHO stopped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ restrictions at this time , instead suggesting people take precautions — like making sure their hands are clean and that they don ’ t cough on others if they ’ re sick .
Messonnier of CDC said there are likely to be more cases in the coming days — in the US and beyond .
Her agency is advising Americans to avoid non-essential travel to Hubei province .
As for those traveling to other parts of China , officials suggest avoiding contact with sick people , and practicing good hand hygiene .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ abroad and domestically — and we ’ re still learning , ” Messonnier said .
That doesn ’ t , however , mean American officials expect the US to be inundated with dozens of patients or that the virus will spread broadly within the country .
It ’ s the major cities in and around China that are most at risk , according to a paper posted on January 14 in the Journal of Travel Medicine .
The top travel destinations out of Wuhan — and most at risk of spread of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Tokyo , and Taipei .
A SARS-like virus has sickened thousands in China , and made its way to the United States .
Vox ’ s Julia Belluz explains what ’ s known and what ’ s next .
Subscribe to Today , Explained wherever you get your podcasts , including : Apple Podcasts , Google Podcasts , Spotify , Stitcher , and ART19 .

On December 31 last year, China announced a small outbreak of a new coronavirus in the city of Wuhan involving 27 cases.
Flash-forward to Wednesday: The number of cases of 2019-nCoV, as the virus is known, has leaped past 6,000, and there are sick people in more than a dozen other countries.
That includes five confirmed cases in the United States.
Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said Friday that although the outbreak is a “very serious public health threat, the immediate risk to the US public is low at this time.”
Yet Tom Frieden, the former director of the CDC, told Vox he’s concerned by how infectious the virus is. “If the sustained human transmission and a high rate of severe illness are confirmed, then it clearly is an event of international concern.”
With information about 2019-nCoV — and its risk of spreading — evolving by the hour, we’ve answered basic questions about the outbreak here. We’ll be updating this story as more information becomes available.
1) Where did this coronavirus outbreak come from?
The outbreak was first reported to the World Health Organization by Chinese officials on December 31 in Wuhan, a city of 11 million in Hubei province. At that time, cases centered around Wuhan’s Huanan South China Seafood Market. Local health officials reported then that patients with the virus were “mainly business staff and purchasers” at the market, where vendors peddle seafood as well as animals such as birds and rabbits.
Scientists in China quickly ruled out known pathogens as the likely cause. The leading hypothesis then was that a yet-to-be-identified novel virus had spread to humans from one of the animals in the market.
By January 9, the state broadcaster, China Central Television, reported a major discovery: a new virus, known as 2019-nCoV. Many of the people who had become ill tested positive for 2019-nCoV. Two days later, Chinese scientists shared the genetic sequence of the new virus, and the WHO applauded China’s efforts for sharing information readily. (This transparency was a contrast to the SARS outbreak of 2003, when China was heavily criticized for withholding information about the outbreak for too long. The virus eventually killed 774 people and infected more than 8,000.)
By January 20, Chinese authorities confirmed that human-to-human transmission is also occurring. By January 23, the WHO confirmed that there is “fourth-generation” spread of the virus in Wuhan, meaning there are cases where an individual has spread it to a second person, that second person to a third, and the third to a fourth. (Outside of Wuhan, there’s also evidence of second-generation cases.) Knowing that, “the scope of this outbreak expands massively,” Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a US global health research organization working in China, told Vox.
But the picture of the beginnings of this outbreak is changing. A recent study, published on January 24 in The Lancet, suggests the outbreak may not have actually started at the market. The first known patient had no market exposure. And that person became ill on December 1, nearly two weeks earlier than Wuhan health authorities had suggested about the first case.
2) How many people are sick? How many have died?
As of January 29, at least 6,057 people have fallen ill. The vast majority of these patients (5,970) are in mainland China, and most (3,554) are concentrated in Hubei province, home to Wuhan. The remaining cases are spread across more than 30 Chinese provinces and cities — including Shanghai, Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Beijing. To get the latest numbers, check out this website from researchers at Johns Hopkins; it collects data from various sources: the WHO, the CDC, the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China (NHC), and two other sites. (The map is embedded below.)
Source: Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering
Additional cases have turned up in travelers in more than a dozen other countries, including the US, Canada, Thailand, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, France, Australia, Nepal, Vietnam, Germany, and South Korea. A total of 132 people have died.
But the real toll may be much higher.
Hong Kong University infectious disease researchers have estimated that the virus may be spreading person-to-person in all of China’s major mainland cities, and that there are already 44,000 cases in Wuhan alone. UK-based researchers who have modeled the outbreak’s potential suggest there are likely many more cases — as many as 9,700, according to the upper end of their estimate. And the risk of rapid spread is heightened, as hundreds of millions have been traveling for China’s Lunar New Year.
3) How is the world responding?
Chinese authorities first warned people to stop traveling in and out of Wuhan, and then said they would put the city under quarantine beginning January 23, suspending public transport within Wuhan, and canceling flights and trains leaving the city. It was an extraordinary move given that Wuhan has a population of 11 million, more people than New York City. By the evening of January 24, quarantine measures had expanded to 12 cities near Wuhan, effectively stifling the movement of 35 million people. By January 25, President Xi Jinping said the new virus posed a “grave” threat, and his government ordered travel agencies to suspend tours for Chinese citizens inside China and overseas. The same day, Hong Kong authorities declared a state of emergency over the virus and closed schools for three weeks, while Beijing suspended all inter-province buses.
According to the New York Times, the government said the quarantine was needed to “effectively cut off the transmission of the virus, resolutely curb the spread of the epidemic, and ensure the safety and health of the people.” But the evidence for travel restrictions during outbreaks shows, counterintuitively, that they don’t actually do much to stop the spread of disease.
Health officials in China and the region are now scrambling to find cases through screening at transportation hubs and follow-up with the contacts of those infected with the virus — an effort that’s supported by the WHO.
Other countries at risk of imported cases have also implemented extraordinary measures. In the US, the CDC — along with the Homeland Security Department’s Customs and Border Protection — began screening travelers from Wuhan for the virus at US airports on January 17, and all travelers from the city will be funneled through airports that are looking out for cases. The US government evacuated American diplomats and citizens from Wuhan. Its also advising Americans to avoid non-essential travel to China. Hong Kong has suspended ferry and train links with mainland China, and cancelled flights. Meanwhile, several airlines have begun cancelling flights to China — including Air Canada, British Airways, and United.
4) What do we know about the cases in the US?
Right now there are five confirmed cases in the US, according to the CDC. All involved travelers from Wuhan:
The first patient’s name hasn’t been released, but we know he’s a resident of Snohomish County in Washington state. We also know he’s in his 30s and he recently traveled to Wuhan, returning to Seattle on January 15, two days before airport screening started (though the man didn’t have symptoms yet). By January 19, he reached out to health care providers to report his symptoms and travel history. They suspected 2019-nCoV. The man is being treated for mild pneumonia at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Washington.
The second case, reported on January 24, involves a woman in her 60s who lives in Chicago. She returned from Wuhan on January 13 and didn’t have any symptoms while traveling. A few days after returning, when she started to feel ill, she called health care providers to report her symptoms and was admitted to a hospital and placed in isolation. She’s currently in stable condition.
The third, fourth, and fifth cases, reported over the weekend, concerned individuals in Orange County and LA County, California, and Maricopa County, Arizona, respectively. They had all recently traveled to Wuhan, and they’re receiving care in local hospitals.
As of January 25, CDC officials said they’ve screened over 2,000 people coming into the US for the disease on 200 flights, and found zero cases. The agency also said it’s investigating 100 possible cases of coronavirus in 26 states.
5) How does the new coronavirus spread?
We don’t yet know the exact way the virus is spreading, but we do know it’s part of a large family of viruses called coronaviruses, which mostly infect mammals, including bats. Coronaviruses attack the respiratory system, sometimes targeting the cells deep within the lungs. Only seven, including 2019-nCoV, SARS, and MERS, have evolved to infect humans.
According to the CDC, human coronaviruses are most commonly passed via:
Through coughing and sneezing
Close personal contact, including touching and shaking hands
Touching an object or surface with the virus on it, then touching your mouth, nose, or eyes before washing your hands
And rarely, through fecal contamination
As for how easily the new coronavirus spreads, that’s also unclear. According to a preliminary estimate from the WHO, at the moment, each individual has transmitted the virus to an average of 1.4 to 2.5 others. That makes 2019-nCoV, based on what we know now, less contagious than SARS. But there are many different estimates floating around as the situation evolves — and some suggest 2019-nCoV is even more contagious.
For the moment, the WHO estimates the virus’s incubation period — before symptoms start to show — is between two and 10 days, but it’s not yet known whether the virus can spread during that time.
We also know at least 15 health care workers have been infected. “It’s unusual to get health care worker infections in outbreaks,” explained Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “It’s always a sign of alarm when that happens,” he added, because it means the virus may be easily transmitted, even in settings where people are taking precautions.
6) What are the symptoms of the new coronavirus?
Two of the seven coronaviruses that infect humans, SARS and MERS, can cause severe pneumonia and even death. The rest lead to milder symptoms, like a common cold. At the moment, it’s not clear where 2019-nCoV falls on that spectrum.
An early report, published in the Lancet, provided a good overview of what’s known about symptoms so far — in a subset of the first 41 patients with confirmed 2019-nCoV in Wuhan. The most common symptoms in this group were fever, cough, muscle pain, and fatigue; less common were headache, diarrhea, and coughing up mucus or blood. A little more than half of the 41 patients had difficulty breathing, and 63 percent had low levels of white blood cells. As for the disease severity: 13 patients were admitted to an ICU and six died. By January 22, 68 percent of the patients had been discharged from the hospital.
All patients had pneumonia and lung abnormalities on CT scans. (A quick refresher: Pneumonia is an infection in the lungs that can be caused by a variety of organisms — bacteria, fungi, viruses, even parasites. In this case, 2019-nCoV is causing the infection and leading the lungs’ air sacs to become inflamed and fill up with fluid or pus instead of air.)
In the Lancet group, most patients were men and over half didn’t have underlying diseases. The median age was 49.
It’s possible there are many more people with the virus who have very mild symptoms or who are asymptomatic, said Dr. Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, a research charity focused on global health. If that’s the case, and there are thousands carrying 2019-nCoV while only a few people have died, this outbreak will look milder.
It’s also possible this virus winds up behaving like SARS, said Inglesby, which kills about one in 10 patients infected. With SARS, “We saw substantial spread in health care settings where health care workers became ill during care for patients,” for example. “This is a very serious outbreak with the potential for widespread transmission.”
7) What’s the likelihood this becomes a global public health emergency?
The potential for this virus to spread further is so great that the WHO gathered an expert committee on Wednesday and Thursday last week to decide whether the emergence of 2019-nCoV constitutes a global public health emergency, a rare designation the agency gives outbreaks that pose an international threat.
By the end of Thursday, the WHO’s Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced the committee’s decision that the outbreak doesn’t yet constitute one, mainly because of the limited number of cases outside of China, and China’s efforts to control the spread of the disease.
“Make no mistake, this is an emergency in China. But it has not yet become a global health emergency,” Tedros explained. He also vowed to reconvene the emergency committee in the coming days to review new data. “At this time, there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission outside China, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen,” Tedros added.
Formally, a public health emergency of international concern, or PHEIC — pronounced “fake” — is defined as “an extraordinary event which is determined to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease and to potentially require a coordinated international response.” In reality, it’s a political tool the WHO uses to sound the alarm about a serious disease that has caught the world off guard and put people’s health in danger. It’s meant to draw countries’ immediate attention, to galvanize resources, and stop the disease from spreading further across borders.
A key consideration in declaring a PHEIC is whether the disease threat is dire enough to risk countries enacting travel and trade restrictions. Declarations can be devastating to local economies and are often associated with economic losses. So they’re not taken lightly. In fact, the WHO has only declared a public health emergency five times since the International Health Regulations, which govern global health emergency responses, were enacted in 2007.
The first time was in 2009, with the outbreak of the H1N1 swine flu pandemic. The second time was in May 2014, when polio seemed to surge again, threatening the eradication effort. The third time, in August 2014, came as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was growing out of control. The fourth was related to Zika in 2016. And the fifth, in 2019, was another outbreak of Ebola that’s ongoing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
8) How worried should I be about a pandemic?
There are too many unknowns to say. We don’t know which animal carries this virus. We don’t know how exactly it spreads. We don’t know how easily it spreads among people, or how deadly and severe the virus is.
To put the cases and deaths so far into perspective, remember that seasonal flu kills between 250,000 and 650,000 people each year. “Right now, you’re probably more likely to be catching flu than you are to be getting coronavirus,” said Devi Sridhar, chair in global public health at the University of Edinburgh.
Even so, the fact that cases are already turning up in so many countries — mere weeks after this outbreak was first declared — suggests we should brace ourselves for an escalation.
Messonnier of the CDC said there are likely to be more cases in the coming days — in the US and beyond. “This is a rapidly changing situation — abroad and domestically — and we’re still learning,” Messonnier added.
That doesn’t, however, mean American officials expect the US to be inundated with dozens of patients or that the virus will spread broadly within the country. It’s the major cities in and around China that are most at risk, according to a paper posted on January 14 in the Journal of Travel Medicine. The top travel destinations out of Wuhan — and most at risk of spread of the infection — include Bangkok, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Taipei.
Listen to Today, Explained
A SARS-like virus has sickened thousands in China, and made its way to the United States. Vox’s Julia Belluz explains what’s known and what’s next.
Subscribe to Today, Explained wherever you get your podcasts, including: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and ART19.


vox--2020-01-27--Billie Eilish makes history at her first Grammys, sweeping the top categories

The Grammy Awards hand out trophies in more than 80 categories , honoring artists across all genres .
But the four biggest categories — Album of the Year , Song of the Year , Record of the Year , and Best New Artist — all went to just one artist this year : Billie Eilish .
Eilish took the stage wearing her trademark oversized , androgynous couture and neon green roots to collect all six of the awards that she and her brother/producer/co-writer , Finneas O ’ Connell , were nominated for .
( She also won Best Pop Vocal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ . )
It was a historic sweep , and not just because Eilish is a total newcomer on the pop music scene .
In picking up the coveted Album of the Year trophy , the 18-year-old became the youngest artist ever to win that category .
Eilish is also the first woman to win all four of the Grammys ’ big-deal trophies .
And yes , it really took until this , the 62nd annual edition of this awards show , for that to happen .
Welcome to the 21st century , Grammys @ @ @ @ @ @ @ honoree , though : Her eclectic and often ingenious debut When We All Fall Asleep , Where Do We Go ?
heralded the teen as a unique , anxious , delicate voice of the post-millennial generation , one who speaks across the age gap .
And almost exactly one year after the album ’ s release , the Grammys have affirmed her as the queen of pop , beating out tough competition like Lizzo , Lil Nas X , and Ariana Grande for the crown .
The nominees for Album of the Year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Year , and Best New Artist are listed below , with the winner ( a.k.a .
Billie Eilish ) in bold .
Visit the Grammys ’ website for the full list of 2020 Grammys winners .
• “ Always Remember Us This Way ” — Natalie Hemby , Lady Gaga , Hillary Lindsey , and Lori McKenna , songwriters ( Lady Gaga ) • “ Hard Place ” — Ruby Amanfu , Sam Ashworth , D. Arcelious Harris .
H.E.R.
, and Rodney Jerkins , songwriters ( H.E.R . )
• @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Do We Go ?
— Billie Eilish **WINNER** • I Used to Know Her — H.E.R .

The Grammy Awards hand out trophies in more than 80 categories, honoring artists across all genres. But the four biggest categories — Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best New Artist — all went to just one artist this year: Billie Eilish.
Eilish took the stage wearing her trademark oversize, androgynous couture and neon green roots to collect five of the awards that she and her brother/producer/co-writer, Finneas O’Connell, were nominated for. (She also won Best Pop Vocal Album.) It was a historic sweep, and not just because Eilish is a total newcomer on the pop music scene. In picking up the coveted Album of the Year trophy, the 18-year-old became the youngest artist ever to win that category.
Eilish is also the first woman to win all four of the Grammys’ big-deal trophies. And yes, it really took until this, the 62nd annual edition of this awards show, for that to happen. Welcome to the 21st century, Grammys.
Eilish is a memorable and welcome honoree, though: Her eclectic and often ingenious debut When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? heralded the teen as a unique, anxious, delicate voice of the post-millennial generation, one who speaks across the age gap. And almost exactly one year after the album’s release, the Grammys have affirmed her as the queen of pop, beating out tough competition like Lizzo, Lil Nas X, and Ariana Grande for the crown.
The nominees for Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best New Artist are listed below, with the winner (a.k.a. Billie Eilish) in bold.
Visit the Grammys’ website for the full list of 2020 Grammys winners.
Song of the Year
(This award goes to the songwriters of a song.)
“Always Remember Us This Way” — Natalie Hemby, Lady Gaga, Hillary Lindsey, and Lori McKenna, songwriters (Lady Gaga)
“Bad Guy” — Billie Eilish O’Connell and Finneas O’Connell, songwriters (Billie Eilish) **WINNER**
“Bring My Flowers Now” — Brandi Carlile, Phil Hanseroth, Tim Hanseroth, and Tanya Tucker, songwriters (Tanya Tucker)
“Hard Place” — Ruby Amanfu, Sam Ashworth, D. Arcelious Harris. H.E.R., and Rodney Jerkins, songwriters (H.E.R.)
“Lover” — Taylor Swift, songwriter (Taylor Swift)
“Norman Fucking Rockwell” — Jack Antonoff and Lana Del Rey, songwriters (Lana Del Rey)
“Someone You Loved” — Tom Barnes, Lewis Capaldi, Pere Kelleher, Benjamin Kohn, and Sam Roman, songwriters (Lewis Capaldi)
“Truth Hurts” — Steven Cheung, Eric Frederic, Melissa Jefferson, and Jesse Saint John, songwriters (Lizzo)
Best New Artist
(This award is given to artists who have released their breakthrough recording during the Grammy eligibility period — October 1, 2018, to August 31, 2019, in the case of the 2020 awards — not to artists who made their first recording during that time.)
Billie Eilish **WINNER**
Black Pumas
Lil Nas X
Maggie Rogers
Rosalia
Tank and the Bangas
Yola
Record of the Year
(This award goes to the overall production of a single song and is awarded to the artist who records it.)
Album of the Year
(This award is given to an entire album and all of its songs.)
Correction: Billie Eilish won a total of five awards on Grammys night, not six. We’ve amended the story above to reflect this.