Daily Archives: February 27, 2021

The New York Times

Across the United States, and the world, the coronavirus seems to be loosening its stranglehold. The deadly curve of cases, hospitalizations and deaths has yo-yoed before, but never has it plunged so steeply and so fast. Is this it, then? Is this the beginning of the end? After a year of being pummeled by grim statistics and scolded for wanting human contact, many Americans feel a long-promised deliverance is at hand. Americans will win against the virus and regain many aspects of their pre-pandemic lives, most scientists now believe. Of the 21 interviewed for this article, all were optimistic that the worst of the pandemic is past. This summer, they said, life may begin to seem normal again. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times But of course, theres always a but researchers are also worried that Americans, so close to the finish line, may once again underestimate the virus. So far, the two vaccines authorized in the United States are spectacularly effective, and after a slow start, the vaccination rollout is picking up momentum. A third vaccine is likely to be authorized shortly, adding to the nations supply. But it will be many weeks before vaccinations make a dent in the pandemic. And now the virus is shape-shifting faster than expected, evolving into variants that may partly sidestep the immune system. The latest variant was discovered in New York City only this week, and another worrisome version is spreading at a rapid pace through California. Scientists say a contagious variant first discovered in Britain will become the dominant form of the virus in the United States by the end of March. The road back to normalcy is potholed with unknowns: how well vaccines prevent further spread of the virus; whether emerging variants remain susceptible enough to the vaccines; and how quickly the world is immunized, so as to halt further evolution of the virus. But the greatest ambiguity is human behavior. Can Americans desperate for normalcy keep wearing masks and distancing themselves from family and friends? How much longer can communities keep businesses, offices and schools closed? COVID-19 deaths will most likely never rise quite as precipitously as in the past, and the worst may be behind us. But if Americans let down their guard too soon many states are already lifting restrictions and if the variants spread in the United States as they have elsewhere, another spike in cases may well arrive in the coming weeks. Scientists call it the fourth wave. The new variants mean were essentially facing a pandemic within a pandemic, said Adam Kucharski, a publich health expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The declines are real, but they disguise worrying trends. The United States has now recorded 500,000 deaths amid the pandemic, a terrible milestone. As of Wednesday morning, at least 28.3 million people have been infected. But the rate of new infections has tumbled by 35% over the past two weeks, according to a database maintained by The New York Times. Hospitalizations are down 31%, and deaths have fallen by 16%. Yet the numbers are still at the horrific highs of November, scientists noted. At least 3,210 people died of COVID-19 on Wednesday alone. And there is no guarantee that these rates will continue to decrease. Very, very high case numbers are not a good thing, even if the trend is downward, said Marc Lipsitch, a researcher at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. Taking the first hint of a downward trend as a reason to reopen is how you get to even higher numbers. In late November, for example, Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island limited social gatherings and some commercial activities in the state. Eight days later, cases began to decline. The trend reversed eight days after the states pause lifted on Dec. 20. The viruss latest retreat in Rhode Island and most other states, experts said, results from a combination of factors: growing numbers of people with immunity to the virus, either from having been infected or from vaccination; changes in behavior in response to the surges of a few weeks ago; and a dash of seasonality the effect of temperature and humidity on the survival of the virus. Parts of the country that experienced huge surges in infection, like Montana and Iowa, may be closer to herd immunity than other regions. But patchwork immunity alone cannot explain the declines throughout much of the world. The vaccines were first rolled out to residents of nursing homes and to the elderly, who are at highest risk of severe illness and death. That may explain some of the current decline in hospitalizations and deaths. But young people drive the spread of the virus, and most of them have not yet been inoculated. And the bulk of the worlds vaccine supply has been bought up by wealthy nations, which have amassed 1 billion more doses than needed to immunize their populations. Vaccination cannot explain why cases are dropping even in countries where not a single soul has been immunized, like Honduras, Kazakhstan or Libya. The biggest contributor to the sharp decline in infections is something more mundane, scientists say: behavioral change. Leaders in the United States and elsewhere stepped up community restrictions after the holiday peaks. But individual choices have also been important, said Lindsay Wiley, an expert in public health law and ethics at American University in Washington. People voluntarily change their behavior as they see their local hospital get hit hard, as they hear about outbreaks in their area, she said. If thats the reason that things are improving, then thats something that can reverse pretty quickly, too. The downward curve of infections with the original coronavirus disguises an exponential rise in infections with B.1.1.7, the variant first identified in Britain, according to many researchers. We really are seeing two epidemic curves, said Ashleigh Tuite, an infectious disease modeler at the University of Toronto. The B.1.1.7 variant is thought to be more contagious and more deadly, and it is expected to become the predominant form of the virus in the United States by late March. The number of cases with the variant in the United States has risen from 76 in 12 states as of Jan. 13 to more than 1,800 in 45 states now. Actual infections may be much higher because of inadequate surveillance efforts in the United States. Buoyed by the shrinking rates over all, however, governors are lifting restrictions across the United States and are under enormous pressure to reopen completely. Should that occur, B.1.1.7 and the other variants are likely to explode. Everybody is tired, and everybody wants things to open up again, Tuite said. Bending to political pressure right now, when things are really headed in the right direction, is going to end up costing us in the long term. Another wave may be coming, but it can be minimized. Looking ahead to late March or April, the majority of scientists interviewed by The Times predicted a fourth wave of infections. But they stressed that it is not an inevitable surge, if government officials and individuals maintain precautions for a few more weeks. A minority of experts were more sanguine, saying they expected powerful vaccines and an expanding rollout to stop the virus. And a few took the middle road. Were at that crossroads, where it could go well or it could go badly, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The vaccines have proved to be more effective than anyone could have hoped, so far preventing serious illness and death in nearly all recipients. At present, about 1.4 million Americans are vaccinated each day. More than 45 million Americans have received at least one dose. A team of researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle tried to calculate the number of vaccinations required per day to avoid a fourth wave. In a model completed before the variants surfaced, the scientists estimated that vaccinating just 1 million Americans a day would limit the magnitude of the fourth wave. But the new variants completely changed that, said Dr. Joshua Schiffer, an infectious disease specialist who led the study. Its just very challenging scientifically the ground is shifting very, very quickly. Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida, described herself as a little more optimistic than many other researchers. We would be silly to undersell the vaccines, she said, noting that they are effective against the fast-spreading B.1.1.7 variant. But Dean worried about the forms of the virus detected in South Africa and Brazil that seem less vulnerable to the vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna. (On Wednesday, Johnson & Johnson reported that its vaccine was relatively effective against the variant found in South Africa.) About 50 infections with those two variants have been identified in the United States, but that could change. Because of the variants, scientists do not know how many people who were infected and had recovered are now vulnerable to reinfection. South Africa and Brazil have reported reinfections with the new variants among people who had recovered from infections with the original version of the virus. That makes it a lot harder to say, If we were to get to this level of vaccinations, wed probably be OK, said Sarah Cobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago. Yet the biggest unknown is human behavior, experts said. The sharp drop in cases now may lead to complacency about masks and distancing, and to a wholesale lifting of restrictions on indoor dining, sporting events and more. Or not. The single biggest lesson Ive learned during the pandemic is that epidemiological modeling struggles with prediction, because so much of it depends on human behavioral factors, said Carl Bergstrom, a biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. Taking into account the counterbalancing rises in both vaccinations and variants, along with the high likelihood that people will stop taking precautions, a fourth wave is highly likely this spring, the majority of experts told The Times. Kristian Andersen, a virus expert at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, said he was confident that the number of cases will continue to decline, then plateau in about a month. After mid-March, the curve in new cases will swing upward again. In early to mid-April, were going to start seeing hospitalizations go up, he said. Its just a question of how much. Summer will feel like summer again, sort of. Now the good news. Despite the uncertainties, the experts predict that the last surge will subside in the United States sometime in the early summer. If the Biden administration can keep its promise to immunize every American adult by the end of the summer, the variants should be no match for the vaccines. Combine vaccination with natural immunity and the human tendency to head outdoors as weather warms, and it may not be exactly herd immunity, but maybe its sufficient to prevent any large outbreaks, said Youyang Gu, an independent data scientist, who created some of the most prescient models of the pandemic. Infections will continue to drop. More important, hospitalizations and deaths will fall to negligible levels enough, hopefully, to reopen the country. Sometimes people lose vision of the fact that vaccines prevent hospitalization and death, which is really actually what most people care about, said Stefan Baral, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Even as the virus begins its swoon, people may still need to wear masks in public places and maintain social distance, because a significant percent of the population including children will not be immunized. Assuming that we keep a close eye on things in the summer and dont go crazy, I think that we could look forward to a summer that is looking more normal, but hopefully in a way that is more carefully monitored than last summer, said Emma Hodcroft, a molecular epidemiologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland. Imagine: Groups of vaccinated people will be able to get together for barbecues and play dates, without fear of infecting one another. Beaches, parks and playgrounds will be full of mask-free people. Indoor dining will return, along with movie theaters, bowling alleys and shopping malls although they may still require masks. The virus will still be circulating, but the extent will depend in part on how well vaccines prevent not just illness and death, but also transmission. The data on whether vaccines stop the spread of the disease are encouraging, but immunization is unlikely to block transmission entirely. Its not zero and its not 100 exactly where that number is will be important, said Shweta Bansal, an infectious disease modeler at Georgetown University. It needs to be pretty darn high for us to be able to get away with vaccinating anything below 100% of the population, so thats definitely something were watching. Over the long term say, a year from now, when all the adults and children in the United States who want a vaccine have received them will this virus finally be behind us? Every expert interviewed by The Times said no. Even after the vast majority of the American population has been immunized, the virus will continue to pop up in clusters, taking advantage of pockets of vulnerability. Years from now, the coronavirus may be an annoyance, circulating at low levels, causing modest colds. Many scientists said their greatest worry post-pandemic was that new variants may turn out to be significantly less susceptible to the vaccines. Billions of people worldwide will remain unprotected, and each infection gives the virus new opportunities to mutate. We wont have useless vaccines. We might have slightly less good vaccines than we have at the moment, said Andrew Read, an evolutionary microbiologist at Penn State University. Thats not the end of the world, because we have really good vaccines right now. For now, every one of us can help by continuing to be careful for just a few more months, until the curve permanently flattens. Just hang in there a little bit longer, Tuite said. Theres a lot of optimism and hope, but I think we need to be prepared for the fact that the next several months are likely to continue to be difficult. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. 2021 The New York Times Company

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Robocallers have gotten out of control here's how you can stop them - Yahoo Finance

The remaining Spurs schedule will likely keep fans busy and stressed.

Yahoo Sports is calling the Spurs march to play 40 games in 68 days the "hardest" schedule, alongside that of the Memphis Grizzlies. The plan to complete pandemic-stricken season was released Wednesday. In it, the Spurs will play 11 back-to-backs with no more than a day of rest between matchups.

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"The Memphis Grizzlies and San Antonio Spurs, both battling for playoff positioning in the Western Conference, have had their schedules hardest hit by the pandemic," Yahoo's look at the league's schedule release said.

Yahoo Sports also noted the Spurs have the most road games left by a "wide margin" with 23.

Yahoo Sports is calling the Spurs march to play 40 games in 68 days the "hardest" schedule, alongside that of the Memphis Grizzlies. The plan to complete pandemic-stricken season was released Wednesday. In it, the Spurs will play 11 back-to-backs with no more than a day of rest between matchups.

Spurs fans reacted to the docket on Twitter and "yikes" were abound. Others blamed the NBA for the "brutal" scheduling.

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"Unbelievable. Unfair. Wickedness," Twitter user @DS_Mide said.

Five of the games postponed due to recent COVID-19 protocols the Spurs underwent will have to be made up in the second-half.

The remaining games will pick up after the All-Star Break on March 10 in Dallas. The Spurs' regular season ends in a back-to-back homestead against the Phoenix Suns on May 16.

The Spurs have not released plans to welcome back a limited number of fans to the AT&T Center for games.

Wrap your head around the doozie of a schedule here.

Madalyn Mendoza covers news and puro pop culture for MySA.com | mmendoza@mysa.com | @maddyskye

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Yahoo agrees with Spurs fans the team has one of the 'hardest' second-half schedules - mySA

Charlie Sheen, of all people, was the talk of Twitter this month, after Sen. Ted Cruz flew to Mexico for vacation with his family as his constituents endured massive power and water outages. As in, "Charlie Sheen called it #winning," after the Texas Republican seemingly blamed his daughters. Sheen was referenced the previous week when another Republican senator, South Carolina's Lindsey Graham said during an appearance on Fox News Sunday, "I'm into winning." In that case, one of the comments was, "You know who else was 'winning'? Charlie Sheen."

You wouldn't know that Sheen infamously uttered "winning," along with memorable terms such as "tiger blood," "warlock" and "Adonis DNA" in a series of interviews that began 10 years ago an eon in internet time this week. (He's repeated some of them since.)

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It was a tumultuous period in the life of Sheen, who was then the highest paid actor on TV. As one of the leads in the popular CBS comedy Two and a Half Men, he earned nearly $2 million per episode at the show's height. But he struggled in his personal life, with issues including domestic violence charges, to which he pleaded guilty in August 2010, and drug addiction. His show went on hiatus so that he could go to rehab, which he chose to do from home. At the same time, he was fighting very publicly with Chuck Lorre, the creator of Two and a Half Men, and he made sure to mention Lorre in this string of sit-downs.

Im so glad that I traded early retirement for a f****** hashtagCharlie Sheen

Sheen himself is not amused by people continuing to bring up his infamous 2011 interviews, but he's also not offended they're still talking about what was an intensely difficult time in his life.

"People have [said to] me, 'Hey, man, that was so cool, that was so fun to watch. That was so cool to be a part of and support and all that energy and, you know, we stuck it to the man," Sheen tells Yahoo Entertainment. "My thought behind that is, 'Oh, yeah, great. I'm so glad that I traded early retirement for a f***ing hashtag.'"

Charlie Sheen appears on 20/20 on March 1, 2011. (Photo: Walt Disney Television via Getty Images NEWS via Getty Images)

He was officially fired from his sitcom on March 7, 2011. Today, he says, it didn't have to be that way.

"There's a moment when [former CBS CEO] Les Moonves and his top lawyer, Bruce, were at my house and they said, 'OK, the Warner jet is fueled up on the runway. Wheels up in an hour and going to rehab, right?' My first thought was sort of like really there's some comedy value to what my first thought was," Sheen says. "In that moment, when I said, 'Oh, damn, I finally get the Warner jet.' That's all I heard. But if I could go back in time to that moment, I would've gotten on the jet. And it was that giant left turn in that moment that led to, you know, a very unfortunate sequence of public and insane events."

He has many regrets about what he did during that time, especially demanding a higher salary. He says now that he wasn't being a team player.

Charlie Sheen, middle, appears alongside Angus T. Jones and Jon Cryer in a 2007 episode of Two and a Half Men.(Photo: CBS/courtesy Everett Collection)

"There was 55 different ways for me to handle that situation, and I chose number 56. And so, you know, I think the growth for me post-meltdown or melt forward or melt somewhere however you want to label it it has to start with absolute ownership of my role in all of it," Sheen explains. "And it was desperately juvenile."

He says he had agreed to do things their way, and he wasn't living up to his end of the bargain.

"I think it was drugs or the residual effects of drugs and it was also an ocean of stress and a volcano of disdain. It was all self-generated, you know," Sheen says of what prompted the incident. "All I had to do was take a step back and say, 'OK, let's make a list. Let's list, like, everything that's cool in my life that's going on right now. Let's make a list of what's not cool.' You know what I'm saying? And the cool list was really full. The not cool list was, like, two things that could've been easily dismissed."

He sums it up as, "I was getting loaded and my brain wasnt working right."

The reaction to Sheen's bizarre behavior was intense, he admits now: "To say it was a tad overwhelming is a radical understatement."

Sheen quickly joined Twitter, where his words attracted just as much interest as they did offline. Within roughly one day, he was a social media standout, says Lia Haberman, a social media instructor at UCLA Extension.

They showed up in droves with banners and songs, all types of fanfare and celebration of, you know, what I think was a very public display of a mental health moment.Charlie Sheen

"Ashton Kutcher had already reached 1 million followers in 2009. But in 2011, Charlie Sheen did set the record for quickest growth to a million followers in 25 hours and 17 minutes," says Haberman.

She notes that his record has since been beaten by some big names: Robert Downey Jr. in 2014 and, the following year, former President Barack Obama and Caitlyn Jenner.

Charlie Sheen encounters fans as he leaves his hotel on April 9, 2011 in New York City. (Photo: Marcel Thomas/FilmMagic)

In other words, the world was watching Sheen with amusement. As in the case of Britney Spears circa 2007-08, they gawked, but they didn't seem to comprehend the seriousness of it all. It's the kind of thing that might be treated very differently in 2021 by a media better educated on mental health issues.

"I was really a guy that needed someone to reach out to and say, 'Hey, man, obviously theres a ton of other s*** going on. How can we help?'" Sheen says. "And instead they showed up in droves with banners and songs, all types of fanfare and celebration of, you know, what I think was a very public display of a mental health moment."

An L.A. bakery offered these Charlie Sheen cookies which sold out in March 2011. (Photo: Axel Koester/Corbis via Getty Images)

Sheen points out that he'd experienced many dramatic changes in his life during his eight seasons on Two and a Half Men.

"I had four children and went through two divorces in and around trying to navigate the landscape of being on the most popular show in the known universe, so it was a lot," Sheen says. "And sometimes you pick a target, you need a scapegoat, you need someone to put it all on. You know? It can't be me, it's gotta be him or them or those folks. And that's just not the road best traveled."

As far as social media, Sheen doesn't spend a lot of time there nowadays. Tweets pop up on his page maybe a few times a month, and he says he's never logged into Facebook or personally posted on Instagram.

"If somebody wants to enlist my corpse at my funeral to TikTok, that's on them, but in this lifetime, that won't happen," he says.

Sheen is more focused on developing a new show, which he says is at "first and goal."

He's accepted that his words will continue circulating, but he hopes they don't.

"It's all right if it still means something to them and, you know, I was the delivery device for them, then that's fine," Sheen says. "I just, I have absolute faith that the things I'm going to do professionally in Act 3 are going to put a muzzle on all that stuff and people can celebrate me again for what I actually do for a living."

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Charlie Sheen took over the internet 10 years ago. He has serious regrets. - Yahoo Entertainment