hackingbear writes: According to The Washington Post, U.S. deaths soared in the early weeks of the pandemic, surpassing the number of COVID-19 related deaths, as well as the number normally expected for the time period. An estimated 15,400 excess deaths occurred from March 1 to April 4, nearly double the 8,128 deaths attributed to COVID-19 during that time. The excess deaths estimate was calculated by subtracting the expected seasonal baseline from all deaths but may be attributed to causes other than COVID-19 directly, such as patients afraid of visiting hospitals. On April 15, the New York City revised its COVID-19 death toll upward by 3,778 to account for people who were not tested but presumed to have died from the virus. On April 17, the city of Wuhan, the original epicenter of COVID-19, similarly raised death toll by 1,290 to account for omission due to overwhelmed hospitals in the early days of the epidemic in the city, but the change was viewed as an "evidence" of prior cover-up in the West. The excess deaths "could include people who died because of the epidemic but not from the disease, such as those who were afraid to seek medical treatment for unrelated illnesses, as well as some number of deaths that are part of the ordinary variation in the death rate," notes The Washington Post. "The count is also affected by increases or decreases in other categories of deaths, such as suicides, homicides and motor vehicle accidents."

"But in any pandemic, higher-than-normal mortality is a starting point for scientists seeking to understand the full impact of the disease."

schwit1 shares a report from Engadget: The USGS (with help from NASA and the Lunar Planetary Institute) has released the first complete geologic map of the Moon, providing a truly comprehensive look at our nearest cosmic neighbor. The 1:5,000,000 scale map is color-coded to help you quickly identify geological features, including multiple crater types, plains and other features. The team created the map using a mix of Apollo-era maps and data from recent satellite missions, including the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Japans SELENE. Scientists redrew the historical maps to help them line up with the present-day sets while preserving valuable notes. They also established consistent descriptions of features to prevent the confusion that could happen with past maps.

The Starship SN4, a prototype of a SpaceX ship meant to one day take humans to the moon and Mars, has remained intact during pressure testing. ExtremeTech reports: Last year, SpaceX successfully tested the "Starhopper" prototype with one of the company's new Raptor engines. However, the full-scale prototypes haven't fared well in pressure testing. SN1 blew its top in February, and both SN2 and SN3 suffered similar fates during the "cryo" testing phase, which simulates a full-pressure tank in the vacuum of space. SN4 is the first version of the rocket to survive that test.

The success of the SN4 prototype is a big step forward for the Starship program. The next step is to set up a static fire test with a single Raptor engine on the SN4. That could happen as soon as next week. Assuming it's still in one piece, SpaceX will then conduct a brief flight up to 500 feet (150 meters) before setting down. Elon Musk says that the next variant (predictably called SN5) will feature the full-scale tank and a trio of Raptor engines. The final design calls for six Raptor engines on the Starship and a further 37 of them on the Super Heavy stage.

In the worldwide race for a vaccine to stop the coronavirus, the laboratory sprinting fastest is at Oxford University. From a report: Most other teams have had to start with small clinical trials of a few hundred participants to demonstrate safety. But scientists at the university's Jenner Institute had a running start on a vaccine, having proved in previous trials that similar inoculations -- including one last year against an earlier coronavirus -- were harmless to humans. That has enabled them to leap ahead and schedule tests of their new coronavirus vaccine involving more than 6,000 people by the end of next month, hoping to show not only that it is safe, but also that it works. The Oxford scientists now say that with an emergency approval from regulators, the first few million doses of their vaccine could be available by September -- at least several months ahead of any of the other announced efforts -- if it proves to be effective.

Now, they have received promising news suggesting that it might. Scientists at the National Institutes of Health's Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Montana last month inoculated six rhesus macaque monkeys with single doses of the Oxford vaccine. The animals were then exposed to heavy quantities of the virus that is causing the pandemic -- exposure that had consistently sickened other monkeys in the lab. But more than 28 days later all six were healthy, said Vincent Munster, the researcher who conducted the test. "The rhesus macaque is pretty much the closest thing we have to humans," Dr. Munster said, noting that scientists were still analyzing the result. He said he expected to share it with other scientists next week and then submit it to a peer-reviewed journal.

The UK's coronavirus contact-tracing app is set to use a different model to the one proposed by Apple and Google, despite concerns raised about privacy and performance. From a report: The NHS says it has a way to make the software work "sufficiently well" on iPhones without users having to keep it active and on-screen. That limitation has posed problems for similar apps in other countries. Experts from GCHQ's National Cyber Security Centre have aided the effort. NCSC indicated that its involvement has been limited to an advisory role. "Engineers have met several core challenges for the app to meet public health needs and support detection of contact events sufficiently well, including when the app is in the background, without excessively affecting battery life," said a spokeswoman for NHSX, the health service's digital innovation unit.

Long-time Slashdot reader Charlotte Web writes: "Virus researchers say there is virtually no chance that the new coronavirus was released as result of a laboratory accident in China or anywhere else," writes NPR, citing "10 leading scientists who collect samples of viruses from animals in the wild, study virus genomes and understand how lab accidents can happen."
NPR reports: "All of the evidence points to this not being a laboratory accident," says Jonna Mazet, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Davis and director of a global project to watch for emerging viruses called PREDICT. Rather, the experts interviewed by NPR all believe that the virus was transmitted between animals and humans in nature, as has happened in previous outbreaks — from Ebola to the Marburg virus — and with other known coronaviruses such as SARS and MERS...

Lowering the odds further still, when researchers begin to work in the lab to see what they've collected, the samples they handle aren't actually infectious. Mazet says they are "inactivated," a chemical process that breaks apart the virus itself while preserving its genetic material for study... These protocols are used by scientists all over the world, including in China. Mazet says that the staff at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where much of the suspicion has been focused, has been trained by U.S. scientists as part of the PREDICT program. Scientists working there follow the rules, Mazet says.

Mazet says researchers at the Wuhan institute were so good, they actually helped to shape the protocols. "They were not only completing all of those trainings, but they were also weighing in and helping us to make those trainings very strong from a safety perspective," she says.
U.S. intelligence officials have now also joined additional scientists saying there's zero evidence that the virus escaped from a lab. And NPR also interviewed Peter Daszak, the president of the EcoHealth Alliance researching the origins of pandemics, who points out that nearly 3% of the population in China's rural farming regions near wild animals already had antibodies to coronaviruses similar to SARS. "We're finding 1 to 7 million people exposed to these viruses every year in Southeast Asia; that's the pathway. It's just so obvious to all of us working in the field..."

"We have a bat virus in my neighborhood in New York killing people. Let's get real about this."

America and India "have run an internationally recognized joint vaccine development program for more than three decades," writes long-time Slashdot reader retroworks. And today the BBC reported the two countries are now working together on vaccines against the new coronavirus: India is among the largest manufacturer of generic drugs and vaccines in the world. It is home to half a dozen major vaccine makers and a host of smaller ones, making doses against polio, meningitis, pneumonia, rotavirus, BCG, measles, mumps and rubella, among other diseases. Now half a dozen Indian firms are developing vaccines against the virus that causes Covid-19.

One of them is Serum Institute of India, the world's largest vaccine maker by number of doses produced and sold globally... Now the firm has stitched up collaboration with Codagenix, an American biotech company, to develop a "live attenuated" vaccine, among the more than 80 reportedly in development all over the world... "We are planning a set of animal trials [on mice and primates] of this vaccine in April. By September, we should be able to begin human trials," Adar Poonawalla, chief executive officer of Serum Institute of India, told me over the phone. Mr Poonawalla's firm has also partnered to mass produce a vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford and backed by the UK government...

"It's pretty clear the world is going to need hundreds of millions of doses, ideally by the end of this year, to end this pandemic, to lead us out of lockdown," Prof Adrian Hill, who runs the Jenner Institute at Oxford, told the BBC's Health and Science correspondent James Gallagher. This is where Indian vaccine makers have a head start over others. Mr Poonawalla's firm alone has an extra capacity of 400 to 500 million doses. "We have lots of capacity as we have invested in it," he says.

There's more. Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech had announced a partnership with the University of Wisconsin Madison and US-based firm FluGen to make almost 300 million doses of a vaccine for global distribution. Zydus Cadilla is working on two vaccines, while Biological E, Indian Immunologicals, and Mynvax are developing a vaccine each. Another four or five home-grown vaccines are in early stages of development.
In the article the World Health Organization's chief scientist also applauds "the entrepreneurs and pharmaceutical companies who invested in quality manufacturing and in processes that made it possible to produce in bulk.

"The owners of these companies have also had the goal of doing good for the world, while also running a successful business and this model is a win-win for all."

"What Australia and New Zealand have already accomplished is a remarkable cause for hope," reports the New York Times, in an inspiring article shared by Slashdot reader tflf (also republished here and here): The results are undeniable: Australia and New Zealand have squashed the curve. Australia, a nation of 25 million people that had been on track for 153,000 cases by Easter, has recorded a total of 6,670 infections and 78 deaths. It has a daily growth rate of less than 1 percent, with per capita testing among the highest in the world. New Zealand's own daily growth rate, after soaring in March, is also below 1 percent, with 1,456 confirmed cases and 17 deaths. It has just 361 active cases in a country of five million...

It all started with scientists. In Australia, as soon as China released the genetic code for the coronavirus in early January, pathologists in public health laboratories started sharing plans for tests. In every state and territory, they jumped ahead of politicians. "It meant we could have a test up and running quickly that was reasonably comparable everywhere," Dr. Collignon said. The government then opened the budgetary floodgates to support suffering workersâ¦

Both nations are now reporting just a handful of new infections each day, down from hundreds in March, and they are converging toward an extraordinary goal: completely eliminating the virus from their island nations.

"Germany changed course on Sunday over which type of smartphone technology it wanted to use to trace coronavirus infections," reports Reuters, "backing an approach supported by Apple and Google along with a growing number of other European countries." Chancellery Minister Helge Braun and Health Minister Jens Spahn said in a joint statement that Berlin would adopt a "decentralised" approach to digital contact tracing, thus abandoning a home-grown alternative that would have given health authorities central control over tracing data.

In Europe, most countries have chosen short-range Bluetooth "handshakes" between mobile devices as the best way of registering a potential contact, even though it does not provide location data. But they have disagreed about whether to log such contacts on individual devices or on a central server -- which would be more directly useful to existing contact tracing teams that work phones and knock on doors to warn those who may be at risk. Under the decentralised approach, users could opt to share their phone number or details of their symptoms -- making it easier for health authorities to get in touch and give advice on the best course of action in the event they are found to be at risk. This consent would be given in the app, however, and not be part of the system's central architecture...

Germany as recently as Friday backed a centralised standard called Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT), which would have needed Apple in particular to change the settings on its iPhones.

When Apple refused to budge there was no alternative but to change course, said a senior government source.
The article notes Germany had also received opposition in a recently-published letter signed by hundreds of scientists.

It had warned that Germany's original plan for centralized tracing would allow "unprecedented surveillance of society at large".

Long-time Slashdot reader RoccamOccam quotes Interesting Engineering: The United States Space force now has offensive power, though it might not be the massive orbiting weapons system that you're envisioning.

The new weapons system delivered to the space force is a jammer type array that can prevent military or intelligence combatants from accessing their military satellites. This functionality allows the space force to neutralize orbiting satellites in a matter of minutes.
The International Business Times adds that "In a previous report, the U.S. identified Russia and China as potential threats to the country's presence in space.

"The U.S. Space Force's recently confirmed that it already has 16 units of its new ground-based offensive weapon system. The agency also reported that it has already started working on the system's successor..."

"SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites will soon sport an accessory to tamp down their surprising brightness," reports Live Science: That brightness worries many astronomers, who say that the huge Starlink constellation could seriously disrupt a variety of scientific observations. And Starlink will indeed be huge, if all goes according to SpaceX's plan: The company has approval to launch 12,000 craft to low Earth orbit (LEO) and has applied for permission to loft 30,000 more. (For perspective, humanity has launched just 9,400 objects to orbit since the dawn of the space age in 1957).

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said that the company will find a way to make Starlink craft fade from scientists' sight, predicting that the constellation will end up having no impact whatsoever on astronomical discoveries. SpaceX has been working with the astronomical community to help make this happen, researchers say, and the company has already tried out some mitigation measures. For example, one of the 60 Starlink satellites that launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket this past January sported an experimental coating to make it less reflective. Observations show that this "DarkSat" is considerably dimmer than its brighter Starlink cohorts, but probably not dim enough to quell most astronomers' concerns about the megaconstellation.

But SpaceX is taking additional measures as well, which brings us to the new accessory. Musk tweeted the following on Wednesday (April 22), in response to a Twitter follower who wished SpaceX luck on a 60-satellite Starlink launch that day: "Thanks! We are taking some key steps to reduce satellite brightness btw. Should be much less noticeable during orbit raise by changing solar panel angle & all sats get sunshades starting with launch 9."

U.K. vacuum cleaner company Dyson "said the British government no longer needed the ventilator it had developed from scratch," reports Reuters: Company founder James Dyson said the company had welcomed Prime Minister Boris Johnson's challenge to build ventilators. "Mercifully they are not required, but we don't regret our contribution to the national effort for one moment," he said in a statement.

Dyson said his company had spent around 20 million pounds ($25 million) on the project to date, and would not accept any public money. "I have some hope that our ventilator may yet help the response in other countries, but that requires further time and investigation," he said.

"Australia's coronavirus tracing app, dubbed COVIDSafe, has been released as the nation seeks to contain the spread of the deadly pandemic," reports ABC.net.au: People who download the app will be asked to supply a name, which can be a pseudonym, their age range, a mobile number and post code. Those who download the software will be notified if they have contact with another user who tests positive for coronavirus... Using Bluetooth technology, the app "pings" or exchanges a "digital handshake" with another user when they come within 1.5 metres of each other, and then logs this contact and encrypts it.

The data remains encrypted on a user's phone for 21 days, after which it is deleted if they have not been in contact with a confirmed case. The application will have two stages of consent that people will have to agree to: initially when they download the app so data can be collected, and secondly to release that data on their phone if they are diagnosed with the virus. If a person with the app tested positive to COVID-19, and provided they consent to sharing the information, it will be sent to a central server. From here, state and territory health authorities can access it and start contacting other people who might have contracted coronavirus...

The app is voluntary and it will be illegal to force anyone to download it.
In addition, Australia "will make it illegal for non-health officials to access data collected on smartphone software to trace the spread of the coronavirus," reports Reuters, citing comments Friday by Prime Minister Scott Morrison "amid privacy concerns raised by the measure." Australia has so far avoided the high death toll of other countries, with only 78 deaths, largely as a result of tough restrictions on movement that have brought public life to a standstill. The federal government has said existing "social distancing" measures will remain until at least mid-May, and that its willingness to relax them will depend on whether people download the smartphone "app" to identify who a person with the illness has had contact with...

Morrison also confirmed a local media report which said the data would be stored on servers managed by AWS, a unit of U.S. internet giant Amazon.com Inc, but added that "it's a nationally encrypted data store".
"The spec for it is very privacy-positive," writes Slashdot reader Bleve97, adding "It will be interesting to see what it looks like once it's been disassembled in a sandbox and played with!"

And Slashdot reader betsuin has already installed it (adding that the app "does not require GPS... I've installed, GPS is off on my rooted device."

America's generally pro-Trump media site Fox News felt compelled to report today that "Some poison control centers reported a spike in calls following President Trump's suggestion that injecting disinfectant might help people infected with coronavirus." The comment alarmed medical professionals around the world. The president subsequently claimed on Friday that he was being "sacrastic," although at the press conference he was soberly addressing health experts on the coronavirus task force, urging them to launch a study.

Lysol parent company Reckitt Benckiser issued a statement Friday reminding people that "under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route)." In Maryland, the Emergency Management Agency received over 100 calls inquiring about the president's suggestion, forcing the service to issue an alert to remind citizens that "under no circumstances should any disinfectant product be administered into the body through injection, ingestion or any other route." Washington State's Emergency Management Division similarly issued a public statement to remind people to not "drink bleach" or "inject disinfectant."

More concerning, though, is the number of people who actually went ahead with the suggestion. In New York City, the Daily News reported that the Poison Control Center saw 30 cases of "exposure to Lysol, bleach and other cleaners in 18 hours after Trump's suggestion" that cleaning products might be used to treat coronavirus. NYC Poison Control saw only 13 such cases in a similar period last year.

Anna Sanders, who wrote the Daily News article, reported that no one died or was hospitalized as a result.
"After raising the idea of putting disinfectant inside people's bodies, Trump cautioned Thursday that he's not a medical expert," reports one New York-based news site.

" 'Maybe you can. Maybe you can't. I'm not a doctor. I'm, like, a person who has a good you-know-what,' Trump said, pointing to his head."

sciencehabit writes: Although tales of people being killed by meteorite impacts date back to biblical times, few have been documented until the past decade or so. Now, Turkish researchers have uncovered the earliest evidence that a meteorite killed one man and paralyzed another when it slammed into a hilltop in what is now Iraq in August 1888.

Documents chronicling the event were found in Turkish state archives, the team reports online today in Meteoritics & Planetary Science. According to one of three letters written by local authorities in the region shortly after the event, the killer meteorite was one of several that fell during a 10-minute interval. Reports of a fireball seen in a city nearby suggest the object approached the area from the southeast before it blew up high in the atmosphere.

"Confirmed coronavirus cases world-wide Friday exceeded 2.7 million, with more than 190,000 dead," reports the Wall Street Journal, citing data from Johns Hopkins University.

While America has just 4.3% of the world's population, "The U.S. accounted for nearly a third of the cases, exceeding 869,000, and more than a quarter of the deaths, at 49,963." [Note: This comparison might be skewed by the number of countries underreporting their cases or deaths.]

The Miami Herald reports: The coronavirus has killed more than 50,000 people in the United States, just four days after passing 40,000 U.S. deaths on Sunday, Johns Hopkins University reports. The total as of early Friday afternoon was more than 50,370, up about 400 deaths since Thursday night, the data shows...

More than 25,000 people have died in Italy, and more than 22,000 in Spain... Most of the U.S. deaths have occurred in New York City: 16,388, the university says.
Two weeks ago America had just 20% of the world's confirmed fatalities.

Amazon is asking warehouse employees who have stayed away from work during the pandemic to return for scheduled shifts beginning May 1, or request a leave of absence. Bloomberg reports: The move sets up a critical choice for employees at a company that has become a lifeline for Americans locked down to contain outbreaks of Covid-19. After the coronavirus began spreading through the U.S., Amazon offered unpaid time off without penalty for workers uncomfortable with coming in, along with $2-an-hour hazard pay for those who report for duty. The offers run through April. In a blog post published Friday, Amazon said it would extend the raise through May 16 but made no mention of unlimited unpaid time off. Amazon said it was "providing flexibility with leave of absence options, including expanding the policy to cover Covid-19 circumstances, such as high-risk individuals or school closures."

President Trump has long pinned his hopes on the powers of sunlight to defeat the Covid-19 virus. He returned to that theme at the White House coronavirus briefing on Thursday, bringing in a science administrator to back up his assertions and eagerly theorizing about treatments involving the use of household disinfectant that would be dangerous if put inside the body, as well as the power of sunlight and ultraviolet light. From a report: After the administrator, William N. Bryan, the head of science at the Department of Homeland Security, told the briefing that the agency had tested how sunlight and disinfectants -- including bleach and alcohol -- can kill the coronavirus on surfaces in as little as 30 seconds, an excited Mr. Trump returned to the lectern. "Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous -- whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light," Mr. Trump said. "And I think you said that hasn't been checked, but we're going to test it?" he added, turning to Mr. Bryan, who had returned to his seat. "And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, either through the skin or some other way."

Apparently reassured that the tests he was proposing would take place, Mr. Trump then theorized about the possible medical benefits of disinfectants in the fight against the virus. "And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute -- one minute -- and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning?" he asked. "Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that." Experts have long warned that ultraviolet lamps can harm humans if used improperly -- when the exposure is outside the body, much less inside. The link between ultraviolet light and skin cancer is well established. Bleach and other disinfectants may kill microbes but they also can kill humans if swallowed or if fumes are too powerful. That is why bottles of bleach and other disinfectants carry sharp warnings of ingestion dangers.

Citing a "primary outcome" of death, researchers cut short a study testing anti-malaria drug chloroquine as a potential treatment for Covid-19 after some patients developed irregular heart rates and nearly two dozen of them died after taking doses of the drug daily. From a report: Scientists say the findings, published Friday in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association, should prompt some degree of skepticism from the public toward enthusiastic claims about and perhaps "serve to curb the exuberant use" of the drug, which has been touted by President Donald Trump as a potential "game-changer" in the fight against the coronavirus. Chloroquine gained widespread international attention following two small studies, including one with 36 Covid-19 patients published March 17 in France, found that most patients taking the drug cleared the coronavirus from their system a lot faster than the control group. The JAMA report said those trials didn't meet the publishing society's standards.

This month, Jaguar Health more than tripled the price of its lone FDA-approved drug, right after asking the federal government to expand the use of its drug to coronavirus patients. AmiMoJo shares a report: Jaguar Health drastically raised the price of a drug during the height of the pandemic, but executives argued the move was needed to stave off the company's collapse. Going into this year, the list price of a 60-pill bottle of Mytesi -- an antidiarrheal medication specifically for people with HIV/AIDS who are on antiretroviral drugs -- was $668.52. On April 9, Jaguar Health raised the price to $2,206.52, according to pricing data from Elsevier's Gold Standard Drug Database. On March 21, Jaguar Health asked the FDA to authorize emergency use of Mytesi for COVID-19 patients who were experiencing any diarrhea or "diarrhea associated with certain antiviral treatments" including remdesivir, among others.