Daily Archives: April 11, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic has put production on the next season of The Bachelorette on hold, while ABC has scrapped plans for its Bachelor Summer Games spinoff. But fans in need of a Bachelor Nation fix while they quarantine need look no further than their favorite online bookstore, where theyll find a brand-spanking-new memoir courtesy of Colton Underwood.

Published on March 31, The First Time: Finding Myself and Looking for Love on Reality TV unravels the former Bachelors personal history and complicated experience on the dating show. which notoriously played up his status as a then-26-year-old virgin. (Incidentally, Underwood, who is still dating final rose recipient Cassie Randolph, is more tight-lipped about his status these days.)

Speaking to Yahoo Entertainment from Randolphs family home in California where the couple is isolating following Underwoods bout of COVID-19, from which he has since recovered the former reality star addressed some of his books biggest revelations, including his frustrations with producers he felt sometimes crossed the line while filming Season 23 of The Bachelor.

Colton Underwood (pictured with girlfriend Cassie Randolph) spills behind-the-scenes details about his experience on The Bachelor in his new memoir. (Photo: John Fleenor via Getty Images)

I tried to stay really professional with it because theres sort of this fine line, Underwood shared. I understand its showbusiness, I understand what I signed up for, but its still also my personal life. They have another season, another Bachelor to move onto, and I have my life and my decisions that I make on the show carry on into my real life.

Im so appreciative of the franchise and Im very grateful for their opportunities, but of course theres some things we disagreed on, theres some frustrations on my behalf, and Im sure there were things I could have done better for them as well, so Im not downplaying that at all. But when it came to my relationship, I didnt want them to get in the way, and I felt at times there were some certain things that happened that just sort of crossed the line in my opinion.

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That said, Underwood underscored that his book isnt about trashing the franchise, but rather an opportunity to describe his constant struggle with finding love within the constraints of a hugely popular TV show.

But neither Underwood nor Randolph who abruptly left the show in Week 9 after expressing doubts about getting engaged, prompting her beaus infamous fence-jumping moment conformed to the standard Bachelor formula, which caused some friction.

I dont know exactly what their game plan was, I dont know exactly what they wanted out of it, said Underwood, who has written that producers appeared to discourage his romance with Randolph. There was a part of me that maybe thought they just wanted an engagement, and they wanted me to go with somebody who was going to be ready for that, and I dont think they thought Cassie was ready at the time. But that wasnt for them to decide. I signed up for the show to find somebody who I could spend the rest of my life with, and if Cassie wasnt ready for the show, to say yes at the end of the show, but shes going to be ready in a year from now, then Im willing to put in the work, Im willing to be patient, Im willing to compromise [on] what I went into the show expecting at the end. I can change thats allowed, for people to change what they want.

Underwood says that Bachelor producers meddled in his relationship with Randolph on the show. (Photo: Paul Archuleta/Getty Images)

Despite his frustrations, Underwood added that has no hard feelings for his former Bachelor producers, saying theres a mutual respect. But he felt that showrunner interference could be responsible for sabotaging some of the on-screen romances. (Though Underwood didnt name them, neither the last Bachelor, Peter Weber, or the last Bachelorette, Hannah Brown, ended up with their final picks.)

Theyre very good at their job, they know what theyre doing and they have a hit show, he said. Im not here to bash or say anything poorly about them, but theres also a point where I just want to stand up and say, Hey, you guys need to get back to what makes the show so special, and what people love about this show, and thats love.

You look back at the last few Bachelorettes and Bachelors, and they didnt end with love, and you have to sort of ask yourself, why is that? I havent watched those two [seasons] but Ive seen through social media, and even just talking to people, the frustration of [things behind the scenes] that maybe lead to ... not having that fairy-tale ending that theyre used to. I dont know, I just hope that Claire [Crawley, the next Bachelorette] comes out of it very happy at the end of her season.

Underwood admitted that he didnt regret being so open about his virginity during his time on the show, saying, Do I wish that maybe they could have handled it a little different? Of course, [and] I could have handled certain situations different as well. He also laughed as he revealed how his grandma called him up after she read in The First Time about how hed use fake yawns to signal to producers that he had a boner during a hot-and-heavy moment.

And more than a year into his relationship with Randolph, Underwood shared that things are going great.

Obviously were like any other couple, he said. At times it gets hard relationships are hard, and on certain days you have to work harder on that relationship than on others but overall its been a good experience, and weve been very open and honest with each other about expectations, what we want out of the relationship. Weve been supportive of each other, and I cant say enough good things about her.

Video produced by Jon San

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Colton Underwood says 'Bachelor' producers 'crossed the line' by meddling in his relationship with Cassie Randolph - Yahoo Entertainment

(Editor's note: Attention to expletives in 4th and 9th paragraphs that some may find offensive.)

By Nick Brown

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sam remembers the moment he realized he could no longer smile at patients. He was helping a nervous man suffering from COVID-19 at the New York City hospital where he works as a nurse. The patient cracked a joke, and Sam laughed. Then he felt air in his eye.

It was a bleak moment, he said.

The smile had lifted Sams N95 respirator mask off his face, creating an air leak. With COVID-19, the deadly respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus, transmittable through the air, thats a risk.

A big smile helps things feel less scary, said Sam, who was not authorized to speak to the media and asked that his last name not be used. Not having that, in a time when my patients are scared shitless, is challenging.

Already battling overcrowded hospitals and equipment shortages, healthcare workers on the front lines of New York's coronavirus outbreak say the highly contagious virus has hampered their ability to comfort patients fighting to stay alive.

COVID-19 has infected more than 161,000 people in New York and killed 7,000.

One of nurse Peggy Desiderio's elderly coronavirus patients at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan calls her into her room every time she walks by. But Desiderio doesnt have much to give.

I have to say wait a minute, then put on my PPE, says Desiderio, referring to personal protective equipment like masks, gloves and gowns. Then I feel guilty because I need to rush her. She really needs company, a human voice.

`YOU WANT TO SMILE`

When one coronavirus patient wandered from her room in search of a nurse, Sam said, Normally wed politely redirect her. Now its more like screaming: Get back in the fucking room.

A good bedside manner is crucial for Dr. Sonika Randev, 35, a physical medicine and rehabilitation resident at Metropolitan Hospital Center in Manhattan.

Randev provides palliative care to terminal COVID-19 patients and assesses the physical and mental capacity of elderly patients who may have recovered enough to leave the hospital. "Our responsibility is to comfort them," she said.

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Through tears, Randev recalled trying to tell an elderly patient with early signs of dementia, through layers of PPE, that he could not yet go home to his family. You want to smile, you want to hold their hand, she said.

Occasionally, frail COVID-19 patients fall out of bed, said Emily Muzyka, a nurse at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. Normally, nurses would rush to help, but now, Muzyka says, they must pause to first put on gowns, masks and gloves.

Muzyka has held patients hands through final breaths in the past, but things have changed.

If I have to do that now, she said, it will be through gloves.

A lack of warmth from doctors can make an already stressful hospital visit harder to bear, said Jacqueline Sperling, a psychologist and instructor at Harvard Medical School, saying that doctors looking to make patients experiences a little smoother can try to smile with their eyes.

One can sometimes determine the emotion someone is communicating just by seeing the eyes, Sperling said. "Practice in front of a mirror at home. See what that looks like, remember through muscle memory.

Some doctors are finding other ways to create bonds.

Randev is planning to show patients photos of herself on her phone, or via printouts, so they can see what she looks like unmasked, hoping it will make patients feel a little safer.

To be able to say, Hi, my name is Sonika, and this is me, she said. This is what I look like. I know its scary.

(Reporting by Nick Brown; editing by Ross Colvin and Leslie Adler)

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He smiled to comfort his COVID-19 patient - then he realized his mask was leaking - Yahoo News

Flags fly at full staff outside the NYSE on 9 April 2020 in New York City

US stocks have just recorded their biggest weekly gain since 1974 despite the bleak economic outlook.

Wall Street's S&P 500 shares index has risen 12% this week, as the US central bank announced more stimulus measures to support the economy.

Financial markets have experienced extreme volatility as the economic impact from the coronavirus worsens.

Gold prices hit a seven-year high with many investors still remaining cautious about the future of the global economy.

"It looks like the Fed are on a mission to blow holes in every dam that stops the flow of credit. And it sure sounds like they have plenty more dynamite if needed," said Stephen Innes, global chief market strategist at Axicorp.

"Markets have been encouraged by corona curves flattening in Europe, exits from lockdowns in China, and talk of economic reopening globally. The level optimism has caught virtually everyone by surprise."

On Thursday, the Federal Reserve said an additional $2.3 trillion was available to support debt markets saying it would act "forcefully, pro-actively, and aggressively" to combat an economic tidal wave.

The strong words came after data showed US jobless claims jumped by 6.6 million, taking the three-week total to more than 16 million unemployed and seeking benefits.

The Fed's chairman Jerome Powell emphasised the central bank's measures were temporary, but that there was "no limit" to the dollar amounts it can deploy for programmes already on the books.

Markets were also lifted by comments from Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who said there may end up being fewer fatalities from the coronavirus than earlier forecast.

He placed the number at around 60,000 Americans, compared to earlier estimates of up to 240,000 deaths.

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US shares see their biggest weekly gain in 46 years - Yahoo News

The original TB12 isnt as impressed with the current TB12 as most everyone else is.

Appearing Thursday on 97.3 the Fan in Pittsburgh, Terry Bradshaw rattled off various quarterbacks whom Bradshaw regards as more talented than Tom Brady.

I dont think hes the greatest quarterback of all time, Bradshaw said, via the New York Post. Its hard to say. He may be the best quarterback weve had in the last 30 years. Is he better than [Roger] Staubach? No. Is he better than Dan Fouts? No. Dan Marino? No. Im talking talent-wise when youre putting all of it together.

Does he have more Super Bowls than anybody? Yes. Therefore, hes the best. I absolutely have no problem saying it. If youve got the most Super Bowls, you can be in there, but I dont put anybody as the greatest of all time. . . . Is he better than Montana? Not in my opinion. Is he better than Drew Brees? Yeah, maybe.

Bradshaw also isnt impressed with the drama surrounding Brady after 20 seasons in New England.

Im a little bit tired of all this soap opera going on between him and Belichick,Bradshaw said. Look, he left because he wanted to prove something, and he wants to prove to everyone that he can win without Bill Belichick.

The comments continue a recent trend by Bradshaw, who believes Brady wants to show he was more important to the Patriots success than Belichick. As both men move forward without the other, the performances of the Patriots and Buccaneers will be compared as closely as any two teams, in any sport.

Terry Bradshaw doesnt think Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time originally appeared on Pro Football Talk

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Terry Bradshaw doesnt think Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time - Yahoo Sports

In his 2014 book The Loudest Voice in the Room, journalist Gabriel Sherman reported that top Fox News executives meet every morning to strategize about how the network can angle its daily coverage to advance the Republican Partys political agenda.

After first downplaying the threat of the coronavirus, then accusing Democrats of overhyping it to hurt President Trump, then claiming the cure of shutting down the economy could be worse than the disease, Fox News hosts now seem to be following a new set of marching orders when discussing the deadly pathogen: questioning whether all that many people are really dying from it.

Like each of its predecessors, Foxs latest pandemic talking point that the coronavirus death toll could be exaggerated because it includes individuals who had other health issues in addition to COVID-19 doesnt stand up to scrutiny.

Weve made it very clear, every time Ive been up here, about the comorbidities, Dr. Deborah Birx, the U.S. coronavirus response coordinator, said Wednesday during the White House coronavirus task force press briefing. This has been known from the beginning. So those individuals will have an underlying condition, but that underlying condition did not cause their acute death when its related to a COVID infection.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nations top infectious disease expert, also made a point to weigh in, cautioning against such conspiracy theories.

They are nothing but distractions, Fauci said. Let somebody write a book about it later on. But not now.

Yet that didnt stop former Fox News host Brit Hume from appearing on Tucker Carlsons show Tuesday to speculate that the overall U.S. death toll by Thursday,more than 14,800 and rising may be inflated.

There are lots of people who are asymptomatic who may have other terrible diseases, Hume said. And if everybody is being automatically classified, if theyre found to have COVID-19, as a COVID-19 death, were going to get a very large number of deaths that way, and were probably not going to have an accurate count of what the real death total is.

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Carlson agreed, adding that there may be reasons people seek an inaccurate death count and that when journalists work with numbers, there sometimes is an agenda.

As if on cue, Fox anchor Harris Faulkner joined the chorus Wednesday even though she is a member of the networks news division, not an opinion host like Carlson or an analyst like Hume.

The federal government now is classifying all COVID-19 patient deaths as such, regardless of whether any other underlying health issues were a factor, Faulkner said before playing a clip of Birx confirming that if someone dies with COVID-19, we are counting that as a COVID-19 death.

How many of those people had other health risks at play, though, and maybe it wasnt in fact COVID-19 that caused their death? Faulkner asked.

Despite the furrowed brows on Fox, however, Faulkners question isnt all that hard to answer. According to actual experts, if theres any problem with the COVID-19 death count, its not that its too high.

Its that its too low.

The first thing to note is that despite all the innuendo on Fox, there is nothing unusual about the way the media or the government is counting coronavirus deaths. In any crisis whether its a pandemic or a hurricane people with preexisting conditions will die. The standard for attributing such deaths to the current crisis is determining whether those people would have died when they did even if the current crisis had never happened.

When it comes to the coronavirus, the data is clear: COVID-19 is much more likely to kill you if your system has already been compromised by some other ailment, such as asthma, HIV, diabetes mellitus, chronic lung disease or cardiovascular disease. But that doesnt mean patients with those health problems would have died this week (or last week, or next month) no matter what. The vast majority of them probably wouldnt have. COVID-19 was the catalyst the reason they died now and not later.

Given the potentially large number of asymptomatic cases circulating in the population, its possible, as Hume suggested, that some number of people who never got sick from the coronavirus but tested positive and then died from a different underlying cause are being mistakenly counted as COVID-19 deaths. But that number is likely to be vanishingly small, for one simple reason: People who dont feel sick arent getting tested.

Much larger is the number of people who arent getting tested even though they have experienced symptoms. And thats why, contra Fox News, experts say the coronavirus death toll is almost certainly an undercount. As Birx noted, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counts only deaths in which the presence of the coronavirus is confirmed by a test. But as the New York Times reported Sunday, inconsistent protocols, limited resources and a patchwork of decision making from one state or county to the next have made it impossible to test every likely coronavirus death. Victims with flulike symptoms in February and early March werent tested. Victims in rural areas, where coroners say they dont have the tools they need to detect the disease, still arent being tested. Victims who die at home or in overburdened nursing homes arent being tested.

Meanwhile, postmortem testing by medical examiners varies widely across the country, and some officials say testing the dead is a misuse of scarce resources that could be used on the living, the Washington Post reported over the weekend. In addition, some people who have the virus test negative, experts say.

You cant rely on just the laboratory-confirmed cases, Marc-Alain Widdowson, an epidemiologist who left the CDC last year and now serves as director of the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp in Belgium, told the Post. Youre never going to apply the test on everybody who is ill and everybody who dies. So without doubt its a truism the number of deaths are underestimated globally.

When adjudicating debates over the data, its worth checking both sides sources. In the case of the Times, the Post and other mainstream news outlets, these sources include hospital officials, doctors, public health experts and medical examiners. Fox News sources, on the other hand, appear to be right-wing media figures such as Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin. People die on this planet every day, Limbaugh said during anApril 2 segmenton the massive speculation that virus patients may actually be dying because of other things; Levin has suggested that heart failure, heart disease, a heart attack may account for an inflated and extraordinarily misleading number of reported COVID-19 fatalities.

I have suspected this for weeks, Levin crowed Tuesday on Twitter.

Yet when Faulkner asked her panel Wednesday whether comorbidities were inflating the overall COVID-19 death count, Fox News medical contributor Dr. Janette Nesheiwat said, I dont think its going to be a huge discrepancy in the data in the end.

A day earlier, even Trump himself described the death count as very, very accurate.

When you say death counts, I think theyre pretty accurate on the death counts, Trump said. The death counts, I think, they are very, very accurate.

Cover thumbnail photo: Alex Brandon/AP, Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

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Click here for the latest coronavirus news and updates. According to experts, people over 60 and those who are immunocompromised continue to be the most at risk. If you have questions, please refer to the CDCs and WHOs resource guides.

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Fox News says the coronavirus death toll is inflated. Experts say the opposite. - Yahoo News

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon says there should have been a pandemic playbook to tackle the COVID-19 crisis, and the lack of preparation is part of a larger set of problems facing the country.

As a nation, we were clearly not equipped for this global pandemic, and the consequences have been devastating, Dimon wrote in his firms widely-read annual letter to JPMorgan shareholders.

The outspoken bank CEO went on to provide a laundry list of flaws in the U.S. beyond the lack of preparedness for the pandemic, from education to infrastructure, which he argues can be fixed in a non-partisan manner.

Dimon wrote: Our inner city schools dont graduate half of their students and dont give our children an education that leads to a livelihood; our healthcare system is increasingly costly with many of our citizens lacking any access; and nutrition and personal health arent even being taught at many schools. Obesity has become a national scourge. We have a litigation and regulatory system that cripples small businesses with red tape and bureaucracy; ineffective infrastructure planning and investment; and huge waste and inefficiency at both the state and federal levels. We have failed to put proper immigration policies in place; our social safety nets are poorly designed; and the share of wages for the bottom 30% of Americans has effectively been going down.

We need to acknowledge these problems and the damage they have done if we are ever going to fix them, he said.

[See Also: Mark Cuban: Capitalism will lift us up from where we are]

If theres a silver lining to the current coronavirus crisis, its forcing us to work together and improving civility and remind us that we live on one planet.

I am hoping that civility, humanity, empathy and the goal of improving America will break through. We have the resources to emerge from this crisis as a stronger country, Dimon added.

He went on to sing Americas praises as the most prosperous nation the world has ever seen built on plentiful natural resources; friendly neighboring countries; and rights and values including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and freedom of speech, religion and enterprise.

Jamie Dimon, Chairman & CEO of JP Morgan Chase & Co, speaks during the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York on September 25, 2019. (KENA BETANCUR/AFP via Getty Images)

These gifts have led to the most dynamic economy the world has ever seen one that nurtures vibrant businesses large and small, exceptional universities, and a welcoming environment for innovation, science and technology, he wrote. America was an idea borne on principles, not based upon historical relationships and tribal politics. It has and will continue to be a beacon of hope for the world and a magnet for the worlds best and brightest.

All said, the 64-year-old executive remains hopeful that this crisis can bring people together to recognize our shared responsibility, acting in a way that reflects the best of all of us.

As we have seen in past crises of this magnitude, there will come a time when we will look back and it will be clear how we at all levels of society, government, business, healthcare systems, and civic and humanitarian organizations could have been and will be better prepared to face emergencies of this scale. While the inclination of some will be to finger-point and look for blame, I hope we can avoid that. I also hope we can avoid people using times of crisis to argue for what they already believe. We need to demand more of ourselves and our leaders if we want to prevent or mitigate these disasters.

According to Dimon, attacking these problems would help the country prepare for these catastrophic events and create better economic outcomes for everyone and strengthen Americas role in the world.

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JPMorgans Dimon: 'There should have been a pandemic playbook' - Yahoo News

The Federal Reserve said it will temporarily ease its regulatory pressure on Wells Fargo to allow the massive lender to underwrite emergency small business loans under the Paycheck Protection Program.

The Fed announced Wednesday that it will allow Wells Fargo to exceed the asset cap that the central bank had imposed on the bank in 2018 after revelations that the company had opened millions of accounts in customers names without their permission.

Wells Fargo was barred from growing its balance sheet until it could prove to regulators that it had cleaned up its act. Two CEO changes later, the bank is still working through those efforts.

But the asset cap forced the company to quickly close its PPP application process over the weekend. The bank said its participation in the program would be limited to $10 billion because any lending in excess of that risked surpassing the Feds asset cap.

The Fed will now allow the San Francisco-based bank to exclude any PPP loans from any calculation of its asset growth. The Fed also said it would allow Wells Fargo to exclude any loans made under the forthcoming Main Street Business Lending Program, which the central bank has yet to set up.

Customer, some wearing face masks, line up outside a Wells Fargo branch in the Atwater Village neighborhood of Los Angeles on Friday, April 3, 2020, during the coronavirus outbreak. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Wells Fargo said it would re-open its PPP website for applications beginning Wednesday afternoon.

In a statement, Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf said the order does not, and should not, in any way relieve us of our obligations under the consent order and committed to meeting the requirements under the Feds 2018 order.

While the asset cap does not specifically restrict Wells Fargos participation in this program, this action by the Federal Reserve will enable Wells Fargo to provide additional relief for our customers and communities, Scharf said.

The PPP cap hobbled the largest small business lender in the country. Wells Fargo has about 3 million small business clients and claims it loaned more money to small businesses than any other bank, based on data between 2002 and 2017.

The Fed had received calls to ease the asset cap on Wells Fargo as the logistical challenges with administering the $349 billion in PPP loans continued. Former Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chair Sheila Bair tweeted Monday that the Fed needed to be given latitude.

The Fed said nothing else about the February 2018 enforcement order is changed by the temporary tweak.

The Board continues to hold the company accountable for successfully addressing the widespread breakdowns that resulted in harm to consumers identified as part of that action and for completing the requirements of the agreement, the Fed said in a statement.

The Fed added that any benefits made from Wells Fargos PPP or Main Street Lending Program loans will be forfeited to the U.S. Treasury or to non-profits supporting small businesses.

Story updated at 1:15 p.m. ET on April 8 to include comment from Wells Fargo.

Brian Cheung is a reporter covering the Fed, economics, and banking for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on Twitter@bcheungz.

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Federal Reserve to temporarily lift asset cap on Wells Fargo to spur emergency small business lending - Yahoo Finance