Report Shows Coronavirus Kills More Americans In One Month Than Seasonal Flu Killed In One Year

The COVID-19, or novel coronavirus, pandemic, has become the public health crisis of our generation, with the U.S confirming more than a million cases of the virus. The virus has been notoriously hard to treat and is extremely contagious, far more dangerous than the flu.

In a report by the News Atlantis, data shows it took 12 months and 61 million infections for the H1N1 swine flu to kill 12,500 Americans between 2009 and 2010. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that the more common seasonal flu killed 34,200 Americans during the 2018–2019 flu season. As of right now, the current death toll for the coronavirus in the United States is estimated to be over 60,000.

Despite the severity of the viral outbreak which has killed tens of thousands of Americans, some on the right still argue that the pandemic will end up being no more serious than a bad flu season. Fox News commentator Bill Bennett said that “we’re going to have fewer fatalities from this than from the flu.”

The seasonal flu kills 0.1% of people infected, but the novel coronavirus has already killed 0.1% of the entire population of the state of New York. Imagine the entire country getting hit as badly as New York state: 0.1% of the U.S. population is 330,000 people.

While there are 1.07 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States—that’s 0.3% of the U.S. population—former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb has noted that anywhere between 1% and 5% of Americans may have actually already been infected with the virus.

The seasonal flu, by contrast, is even less deadly when you take into account that it has a much higher infection rate: the common flu infected 12% of the American population last year.

In U.S., experts suggest to me rate is lower. My informal survey of thought leaders in this area puts estimate anywhere from 1-5%. Ultimately we must confirm this with serology studies (which are underway). But it falls short of the 50-70% needed to achieve “herd” immunity 8/n

— Scott Gottlieb, MD (@ScottGottliebMD) April 8, 2020

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HistoryMakers Announces Its 2020 Digital Archives Awardees

HistoryMakers is the nation’s largest database for black stories. The national nonprofit research and educational institution committed to preserving and making widely accessible the untold personal stories of both well-known and unsung African Americans. As a part of that mission, the organization houses The HistoryMakers Digital Archive program, which recently announced its 2020 Awardees who will be contributing the archive.

The HistoryMakers Digital Archives is an online database of thousands of African Americans from a broad range of backgrounds and experiences. Unlike other resources, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive provides high-quality video content, fully searchable transcripts, and unique content from individuals whose life stories would have been lost were it not for The HistoryMakers.

This year’s awardees are forces to be reckoned with. Each of the storytellers and historians highlight and explore complex issues within the community—both past and present. Each of the projects adds diverse stories to the archives ranging from self-preservation within black civil rights movements to the history of African American gay and lesbian politics—and so much more in the categories of Academic Research, Digital Humanities, and Creative Studies.

Meet the 2020 Awardees.

Academic Research Awardees

Paula Austin, Assistant Professor of History and African American Studies, Boston University

Project Title: A History of Black (un)Rest

Project Description: This second book project aims to examine practices of “self-care” in Black (and people of color) activist and organizing communities from early civil rights through the Black Power era. The project seeks to identify discourses and artifacts of ways in which individuals and groups theorized, articulated, and practiced self-sustainability and care in struggles for economic, racial, and gender equity and justice. It will examine early racial and economic justice movements like black laundresses who mobilized for pay equity in post Reconstruction Atlanta, Ida B. Wells and early NAACP’s anti-lynching campaigns, through movements of the Black Power era, inclusive of an array of organizations from the 1950s through the 1990s.

Simon Balto, Assistant Professor of African American History, University of Iowa

Project Title: I Am a Revolutionary: The Political Life and Legacy of Fred Hampton

Project Description: I Am a Revolutionary is a biography of the life and political afterlife of Fred Hampton, the brilliant organizer and leader of the Illinois Black Panther Party, who was murdered by the FBI and the Chicago Police Department in 1969 at the age of twenty-one. The book explores Hampton’s maturation from child of the Great Migration to youth organizer to his emergence as one of the leading lights of the Black Left in the United States, and also examines the enduring nature of his memory and legacy. In so doing, it winds through the larger ecosystems of post-World War II-era Chicago and America, the long Black freedom struggle in the United States, and the nature and necessity of interracial solidarity and struggle.

Gillian Bayne, Associate Professor of Science Education, Lehman College (CUNY)

Project Title: African American Scientists: Strengthening a New Wave of Hope and Inspiration in Youth

Project Description: The African American Scientists: Strengthening a New Wave of Hope and Inspiration in Youth research project analyzes uncovered motivating factors that can facilitate and support the achievement of vulnerable youth in science through examining select dimensions of interviews housed in

The ScienceMakers Digital Archive. The project qualitatively examines intersections of scientists’ professional and personal identities; expectations, persistence and enhancement of self-efficacy; personal and family histories; and moments that reveal inspiration. Emergent themes detailing scientists’ means of support, culture, and impactful experiences are utilized creatively in the development of curricular tools that embed the African American scientists’ lived experiences into culturally responsive pedagogical resources. Through engaging in activities that underscore the sociocultural influences in science teaching and learning, and examining individual “case studies” of select ScienceMakers in this manner, a prototype is forged, providing for a holistic and realistic interpretation of the experiences had and contributions made by African American scientists.

Kevin Quin, Ph.D. Student, Cornell University

Project Title: Queer Visions of the Black Past: A History of African American Gay and Lesbian Politics, 1970-1989

Project Description: This dissertation examines how changing attitudes toward gender and sexuality shaped the scope and direction of black activism in postwar urban America. Centering the lives and experiences of black gays and lesbians, this project investigates how a vanguard of black queer and feminist activists developed and mobilized a unique political practice in their individual and collective efforts at contesting sexual discrimination and antiblack racism while advocating for better housing, education, and employment opportunities in their communities. Using archival research and oral histories, this project illuminates how black queer activists used a diverse range of political strategies from grassroots activism to cultural production to forge new paradigms for understanding the relationship between race and sexuality. The project builds on and extends historical scholarship that has examined the gendered and sexual dimensions of black nationalist politics by examining how black queer advocates of black power challenged the forms of sexism and homophobia that undergirded prevailing expressions of black nationalism.

Digital Humanities Awardees

Denise McLane-Davison, Associate Professor of Social Work, Morgan State University

Project Title: Mapping Black Thought and Resistance: Digital Storytelling Through Primary Data Resources of The HistoryMakers Digital Archive and the National Association of Black Social Workers, Inc. (NABSW) National Repository at Morgan State University

Project Description: Mapping Black Thought and Resistance applies the use of Black spatial and public humanities techniques for curating and reconstructing Black intellectual identity research through the historic preservation practices of the National Association of Black Social Workers, Inc’s National Repository at Morgan State University. The HistoryMakers Digital Archive provides accessible use of the largest collection of oral histories by Black thought leaders whose contributions have shaped remarkable American and African Diaspora events. Mapping Black Thought and Resistance advance pedagogical and epistemological stances of intergenerational knowledge through Black storytelling cultural traditions by repurposing the use of complex technology to create corrective narratives and representation of Black experiences towards self-determination and liberation. Working with a transdisciplinary team of Morgan State University faculty, staff, and students, as well as, external content experts, the overall goal is to produce an interactive ARcGis StoryMap of the Black Social Work Movement (1968-1978) and Hashtag Syllabus.

Julian Chambliss, Professor of English, Michigan State University; Justin Wigard, Ph.D. Student, Michigan State University; and Zack Kruse, Ph.D. Student, Michigan State University

Project Title: The Michigan State University Comics Open Educational Resource

Project Description: What do comics tell us about community, culture, and identity? The Graphic Possibilities Research Workshop (GPRW) group at Michigan State University (MSU) believes The HistoryMakers database can be a vital tool to understand how black imagination has shaped modern culture. While Michigan State University has been home to several avenues of comics scholarship for many years (the MSU Comic Art Collection, a minor in comic art and graphic novels, the long-running MSU Comics Forum, and the Graphic Narratives Network), most recently, the GPRW has centralized critical questions concerning identity and representation in comics through digital means. To this end, over the past year the GPRW at MSU has developed a collaborative Comics Library Guide as an Open Educational Resource (OER) centered around the Comic Art Collection, a collection of over 300,000 items including American and international comic books and comic strips, along with “several thousand books and periodicals about comics.” This Comics OER will serve as an introduction to working with the Comic Art Collection, but more importantly, it is a public-facing, foundational resource that serves students, educators, and scholars invested in Comics and Popular Culture Studies. In this latter capacity, the OER will include a number of videos and resources from The HistoryMakers, including, but not limited to interviews with readers and creators of comic books and graphic narratives.

Creative Studies Awardees

Yunina Barbour-Payne, Ph.D. Student, University of Texas at Austin

Project Title: One of a few: Performing Black Experiences in America’s Appalachia

Project Description: This project proposes a devised theater and dance performance focusing on Black experiences in the Appalachian region, foregrounding the role of Black Appalachians (Affrilachian) and African Americans in resisting discrimination in the U.S. at large. One of a few: Performing Black Experiences in America’s Appalachia is committed to stimulating discourse around identity, activism and artistic practice. The performance process carefully considers the role of archives in dramaturgical approaches to Affrilachian performance. During rehearsal, director Yunina Barbour-Payne will draw from The History Makers Digital Archive interviews based in the Appalachian region to foster spaces for cultural exchange. The process will involve exposure to Black Acting Methods, Affrilachian art forms and advocate for theater-making as a tool for activism in and outside the rehearsal room.

Catherine Valdez, MFA Student, University of Michigan

Project Title: Dinner at My Body

Project Description: Dinner at My Body is a hybrid poetry and graphic short story collection that explores the relationship between self-image and food in Black communities. Using personal anecdotes, interviews, and archival sources as anchoring documents, this creative work demonstrates the many ways in which discussions surrounding food and food production impact self-narratives. Food exists as a mode of celebration, an act of labor, insecurity, frustration, a political-tool, an item of scientific inquiry, tradition, rite, a religious experience, an item of mockery, joy, a racially and ethnically coded object, an entry point from which to think of one’s own body, and more. Jointly, image and verse paint an honest and intimate portrait of body-food.

Congratulations to all of the HistoryMakers!

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This Entrepreneur Wants To Educate Black Women About Firearm Safety

America has always had a complex relationship with firearms. According to a Pew Research study, 30% of American adults say they own a gun, and an additional 11% say they live with someone who does. One of the many reasons owners use for obtaining a firearm was for safety and protection. For one entrepreneur, it was her chance to use her knowledge of firearms to teach others in her community how to protect themselves.

Javondlynn Dunagan is the owner of JMD Defense, a company focused on workplace safety, firearm training, and safety education. She founded the security and firearm safety company in 2017 in addition to the Ladies of Steel Gun Club after retiring from her career of 25 years as a United States probation officer based out of Chicago.

“Then I married a police officer; so I was around guns all day. When we divorced, I called the job and said, “I’m ready to carry a gun now because I’m scared to be at home without protection,” said Dunagan in an interview with Rolling Out. “I was the only person in the class. After having this one-on-one experience for the entire week with an excellent instructor, I fell in love with firearms.”

One of the reasons Dunagan wanted to create her business was to give a space for black women to learn about concealed carry and self-defense. “When I started the business, initially I was just teaching concealed carry. That was my initial vision,” she said. “I said [to myself], “Whenever I go to the gun range, I never see other black women by themselves shooting or even in a group,” and that’s how the Ladies of Steel Gun Club came about.”

In addition to firearm safety, the company also offers self-defense classes and offers safety seminars for women.

 

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Trump speculates that China released virus in lab ‘mistake’

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday speculated that China could have unleashed the coronavirus on the world due to some kind of horrible “mistake,” and his intelligence agencies said they are still examining a notion put forward by the president and aides that the pandemic may have resulted from an accident at a Chinese lab.

Trump even suggested the release could have been intentional.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the clearinghouse for the web of U.S. spy agencies, said it had ruled out the virus being man-made but was still investigating the precise source of the global pandemic, which has killed more than 220,000 people worldwide.

READ MORE: Trump plans to have large rallies in 2020 with no vaccine in sight

Though scientists suggest the likeliest origin of the pandemic remains natural, that it spread from an infected animal to a human, Trump claimed to have seen evidence to support the theory that the origin was an infectious disease lab in Wuhan, the epicenter of the Chinese outbreak.

He said the U.S. now “is finding how it came out.”

“It’s a terrible thing that happened,” the president said. “Whether they made a mistake or whether it started off as a mistake and then they made another one, or did somebody do something on purpose.”

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in the press briefing room with members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force April 3, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

The intel statement said the federal agencies concur “with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified.”

“The IC will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”

In recent days the Trump administration has sharpened its rhetoric on China, accusing the geopolitical foe and vital trading partner of failing to act swiftly enough to sound the alarm about the outbreak or to stop the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19. U.S. officials have said the Chinese government should “pay a price” for its handling of the pandemic.

This all comes as the pace of Trump’s own original response continues to come under scrutiny, questioned as too meager and too slow.

READ MORE: Trump administration let millions of pounds of food rot during scarcity

Earlier Thursday, before Trump’s comments, the Chinese government said that any claims that the coronavirus was released from a laboratory are “unfounded and purely fabricated out of nothing.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang cited the institute’s director, Yuan Zhiming, as saying the lab strictly implements bio-security procedures that would prevent the release of any pathogen.

“I would like to point out again that the origin of the virus is a complex scientific issue, and it should be studied by scientists and professionals,” Geng said.

He also criticized those in the U.S. who say China should be held accountable for the global pandemic, saying they should spend their time on “better controlling the epidemic situation at home.”

At the White House, Trump repeatedly blamed China for its handling of the outbreak, criticizing the country for restricting domestic travel to slow the virus but not international travel to keep it from spreading abroad.

“Certainly it could have been stopped,” Trump said during an event in the East Room on his administration’s efforts to aid seniors during the outbreak. “They either couldn’t do it from a competence standpoint, or they let it spread.”

“It got loose, let’s say, and they could have capped it.”

Earlier this month, Trump addressed the lab theory saying, “More and more, we’re hearing the story.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo added at the time, “The mere fact that we don’t know the answers — that China hasn’t shared the answers — I think is very, very telling.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks about refugees as he makes a statement to the media Monday, Sept. 17, 2018, at the State Department in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Pompeo also pressed China to let outside experts into the lab “so that we can determine precisely where this virus began.”

While Trump and Pompeo have made their feelings clear, a U.S. intelligence official disputed the notion that there was pressure on agencies to bolster a particular theory. The intelligence official was not authorized to publicly discuss the issue and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Scientists say the virus arose naturally in bats. Even so, Pompeo and others have pointed fingers at an institute that is run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It has done groundbreaking research tracing the likely origins of the SARS virus, finding new bat viruses and discovering how they could jump to people.

READ MORE: Ugandan politician Bobi Wine to airlift mistreated Africans out of China

“We know that there is the Wuhan Institute of Virology just a handful of miles away from where the wet market was,” Pompeo said two weeks ago. The institute has an address 8 miles, or 13 kilometers, from the market that is considered a possible source.

U.S. officials say the American Embassy in Beijing flagged concerns about potential safety issues at the lab in Wuhan in 2018, but they have yet to find any evidence the virus originated there nearly two years later.

Medical staff wearing hazmat suits work inside a nucleic acid testing clinic in Beijing on April 29, 2020. (Photo by NOEL CELIS / AFP) (Photo by NOEL CELIS/AFP via Getty Images)

Scientists studying the virus for months have made clear they believe it wasn’t man-made but are still working to determine a point at which it may have jumped from animals to humans.

Early attention focused on the live-animal market in Wuhan where the first cases were reported in December. But the first person identified with the disease had no known connection to that market.

Kristian Andersen, who studies the virus at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, puts the odds of it being accidentally released by the Wuhan lab at “a million to one,” far less likely than an infection in nature. But virus expert David O’Connor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison said he thinks too little is known to rule out any source, except the idea the virus was man-made. Finding the source is important, he said, because it may harbor the next pandemic virus.

The U.S. was providing funding to the Wuhan lab for its research on coronaviruses, Michael Morell, former acting director and deputy director of the CIA, said Thursday.

He said State Department cables indicate that there have been concerns in past years among U.S. officials about the safety protocols at that lab. If the virus did escape from a Chinese lab, it not only reflects negatively on China but also on the United States for providing research funding to a lab that has safety concerns, Morell said during an online forum hosted by the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy and International Security at George Mason University.

“So if it did escape, we’re all in this together,” Morell said. “This is not a gotcha for China. This is a gotcha for both of us.”

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Armed protestors storm Michigan Capitol over stay-at-home-orders

Hundreds of protestors took to the streets of Lansing to protest Michigan’s statewide stay-at-home order, with several armed demonstrators storming the Michigan State Capitol building on Thursday.

In a video posted to activist Rob Gill‘s Twitter account, the protestors can be heard yelling “Let us in!” and “This is the people’s house, you cannot lock us out!” as they brandish firearms and hold signs in the statehouse. Many members of the crowd are pictured in “Make American Great Again” campaign hats and American flags.

Multiple armed gunmen storm Michigan’s State House, State police are protecting @GovWhitmer and blocking the gunmen from gaining access to the house floor.

This is America in the age of Trump. pic.twitter.com/tLWR2bvjtR

— Rob Gill (@vote4robgill) April 30, 2020

Michigan United for Liberty organized the event in an effort to get legislators to open up businesses that have been shut down due to the virus.

At the time, the Michigan legislature had gathered to vote on Governor Gretchen Whitmer‘s request to extend the state of emergency, which grants her certain powers during a time of crisis, for 28 more days.

READ MORE: Trump administration official likens MAGA protesters to Rosa Parks

The House ultimately decided not to approve Whitmer’s request, and instead passed a resolution authorizing the Speaker of the House to commence legal action on behalf of the House, according to local news outlet WILX 10.

Thursday’s protest, dubbed the “American Patriot Rally,” is the latest in a string of demonstrations that have occurred in Michigan since the COVID-19 crisis has emerged.

Protestors try to enter the Michigan House of Representative chamber and are being kept out by the Michigan State Police after the American Patriot Rally organized by Michigan United for Liberty protest for the reopening of businesses on the steps of the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing, Michigan on April 30, 2020. (Photo by JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images)

Demonstrators took to the streets in April to speak out against Whitmer’s stay-at-home mandate, which was extended earlier this month until May 15. The demonstration, known as “Operation Gridlock,” was met with both adulation and criticism from the public.

READ MORE: Kentucky sees highest spike in coronavirus cases after protests

Whitmer, meanwhile, has faced backlash from Republicans, including President Donald Trump, for her no nonsense approach to the pandemic. Michigan currently has more than 41,000 cases of coronavirus, with 3,789 lives lost.

Detroit, the state’s largest city, has been especially impacted by the virus, with more than 8,500 infections reported. Of those cases, Black people account for more than 64 percent of them, according to AP. Almost 77 percent of the Detroit residents who have died from coronavirus complications have been Black.

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