Uniquely Nelson

On a Thursday night in early January, the disease that would become known as Covid-19 claimed its first victim, a 61-year-old man who succumbed to the newly identified coronavirus in the city of Wuhan, in the People's Republic of China. Nine months later, the pandemic took its millionth life. And while the vagaries of record-keeping mean we may never know who that victim was, the fact remains: Covid has killed a million people. Tens of millions of things undone. Daughters and sons unborn, works of genius uncreated. Pieces of communities — excised. Entire residential complexes filled with older people — ravaged. Human contribution melted away, with no way of ever knowing or chronicling what was lost. Accounting for what's missing when people die is never an easy task; now it is one multiplied by an entire million. Advertisement A new AP interactive map of the coronavirus' spread — represented by the lives it has claimed — blends data and geography in a way that forces us to see what has happened to the world. And what is still happening to it. The path of Covid-19 to a million deaths. Like so many things in the world, it started small. At first, the map shows only one splash of colour: China, the place where the coronavirus silently began its march. As it began to move around, the map evolved. Month by month, week by week, day by day, the coronavirus spread. Pandemic was declared. Hospitals girded. Cities and countries, shut down. The world changed so fast that its people could barely keep up. How did something so contained at first, so localised, upend the routines and activities of huge chunks of human civilisation? We all have watched it, lived through it, but the visual is striking. From a world largely unsullied by the virus to one merely touched by it to an entire planet feeling its effects. Some of the hardest hit countries. — March 18, 2020 China still leads the world in deaths. In the United States, President Donald Trump has just declared a state of emergency. The US has lost 191 people. The wide belief among Americans: This can still be contained. Advertisement — April 6, 2020Italy is being ravaged; 16,523 have been lost. China has dropped out of the top five when it comes to deaths. The US is second by now at 14,199 dead. — May 22, 2020The US has shot ahead of the rest of the world and sits on the cusp of 100,000 dead — 99,166. It, like the United Kingdom (35,440), Italy (32,616), Spain (28626) and France (28,292), is rendered in a darker forest green, along with Brazil. The march is accelerating. — July 26, 2020In the heart of the summer, the US remains the country with the most dead: 147,656. Brazil, whose president has just tested positive for coronavirus, is second at 87,004. Darker greens are starting to fill the map, including in India. In China, blamed by Trump for the virus in terms some deem racist, the hue is light after strict and protracted containment measures. — Sept. 27, 2020India is third in the world with 95,542 deaths. The United States, still No. 1 and criticised for its haphazard efforts at containment, has just passed the 200,000 mark. Brazil sits at 141,741, with no apparent detrimental political effect on its leader. Russia is now darker green. Africa, Australia and much of Asia are lighter, though swaths of Southeast Asia are showing higher death rates. Olivia Troye, a former adviser on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, recounts her "nightmare to tell," saying there was an organized effort to seek data to underplay the danger of coronavirus for certain populations, ages and demographics. https://t.co/Ep0fGPozYc pic.twitter.com/U0sRWpnQiK — Cuomo Prime Time (@CuomoPrimeTime) September 29, 2020 This map tells the story of an invisible virus that upended the world. It tells of first responses and fear and decisions good and bad. Stories of valiant women and men who tried to stop it, and were sometimes claimed by their efforts. It tells stories of leaders who measured up and leaders who didn't. And how simple human touch ended up killing. Advertisement Most of all, it tells of the one million dead and gone. These are the stories of the human beings who, had they been able to stick around, might have done things we'd all remember — or might have done things just as important that only a few people they loved would remember. The map contains their stories, too, and even amid the elegant lines of the map and the illuminating contours of the data they should not be forgotten. - Ted Anthony, director of digital innovation for AP, oversees the news organisation's coverage of the pandemic's ripple effect on society. - AP

A Delaware judge has rejected a challenge by the state Republican Party to the constitutionality of a new law allowing universal voting by mail in this year's elections. The judge on Monday denied the GOP's request for an injunction to prevent vote-by-mail ballots from being counted in the November election. The judge said the General Assembly's decision to use its emergency powers to declare that voting by mail was necessary to protect public health and ensure the continuity of governmental operations during the coronavirus epidemic was not "clearly erroneous." US Capitol Building in Washington DC. Photo / Brandon Bourdages "Legislation enjoys a presumption of constitutionality," wrote Vice Chancellor Sam Glasscock III, noting that he was not a legislator, "let alone a super-legislator charged with perfecting the laws of the state." The GOP filed a lawsuit last month arguing that lawmakers in the Democrat-controlled legislature exceeded their constitutional authority in invoking emergency powers to pass the measure. In passing the bill, Democrats asserted that voting by mail is "necessary and proper for insuring the continuity of governmental operations" amid the coronavirus epidemic. They also declared that conforming to the requirements of Delaware's constitution, including its explicit limitations on absentee voting, "would be impracticable." Advertisement At the time lawmakers passed the bill, Delaware was in "phase 2" of its coronavirus economic reopening, with indoor gatherings of up to 250 people allowed, businesses authorised to double occupancy limits, and convention centres and meeting facilities allowed to open. Julia Klein, an attorney representing the GOP, said the law impermissibly expanded the constitutional allowances for casting absentee ballots. She cited a 1972 opinion in which the Delaware Supreme Court said that it was "beyond the power of the legislature, in our opinion, to either limit or enlarge upon the... absentee voter classifications specified in the constitution for general elections." State attorneys, meanwhile, argued that courts are required to give deference to decisions of the General Assembly. They also said that, even though all polling places will be open and there is no prohibition against in-person voting, not allowing universal voting by mail could interfere with the "free and equal" elections guaranteed by the constitution. Glasscock said that the constitutional provision authorising the General Assembly to exercise emergency powers acted as a "safe harbour" allowing it to authorise "general absentee voting," that otherwise would be prohibited under the state constitution. "Amending the Delaware constitution to provide for remote voting in response to an epidemic, before Election Day 2020, would be not only impractical, I note, but impossible," he wrote. The judge noted that the plaintiffs' challenge to the law could not stand unless they were able to demonstrate clearly and convincingly that the legislature's finding that the law is necessary was either false or unwarranted. "On the facts of record, the plaintiffs do not come close to meeting that standard," he wrote. Advertisement The legislature, in the face of an epidemic of airborne disease and in light of the health emergency declared by the Governor, has made a determination that vote-by-mail is necessary for the continued operation of governmental functions, and that it would be impracticable to address this problem other than by otherwise-extraconstitutional means," the judge concluded. "These finding are not clearly erroneous. " - AP

Computer systems across a major hospital chain operating in the US and Britain were down on Monday (US time) due to what the company termed an unspecified technology "security issue". Universal Health Services Inc (UHS), which operates more than 400 hospitals and other clinical care facilities, said in a short statement posted to its website that its network was offline and doctors and nurses were resorting to "back-up processes" including paper records. The Fortune 500 company, with 90,000 employees said "patient care continues to be delivered safely and effectively" and no patient or employee data appeared to have been "accessed, copied or misused". UHS provided no details, but people posting to an online Reddit forum who identified themselves as employees said the chain's network was hit by ransomware overnight on Sunday. The posts echoed the alarm of a clinician at a UHS facility in Washington, DC, who described to The Associated Press a mad scramble, including anxiety over determining which patients might be infected with the virus that causes Covid-19. Advertisement John Riggi, senior cybersecurity adviser to the American Hospital Association, called it a "suspected ransomware attack", adding that criminals have been increasingly targeting the networks of health care institutions during the coronavirus pandemic. Ransomware is a growing scourge in which hackers infect networks with malicious code that scrambles data and then demand payment to restore services. Increasingly, ransomware purveyors are downloading data from networks they infiltrate before encrypting targeted servers, using it for extortion. Earlier this month, the first known fatality related to ransomware occurred in Duesseldorf, Germany, after an attack caused IT systems to fail and a critically ill patient needing urgent admission died after she had to be taken to another city for treatment. UHS itself may not be a household name, but its hospitals are part of communities from Washington, DC, to Fremont, California, and Orlando, Florida, to Anchorage, Alaska. Some of its facilities provide care for people coping with psychiatric conditions and substance abuse problems. The company based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, did not immediately respond to emails seeking more information, such as whether patients had to be diverted to other hospitals. The Washington clinician described a high-anxiety scramble to handle the loss of computers and some phones starting Sunday. The person, involved in direct patient care, was not authorised to speak publicly and described the chaotic situation on condition of anonymity. The loss of computer access meant that medical staff could not easily see lab results, imaging scans, medication lists, and other critical pieces of information doctors rely on to make decisions. Phone problems complicated the situation, making it harder to communicate with nurses. "These things could be life or death," the clinician said. Advertisement The facility has a "downtime protocol" in which everything is supposed to be done with paper and pencil, the staffer added, "but no one was expecting to have to use it". Lab orders had to be hand-delivered. There was a lot of concern about how to determine whether or not patients had been exposed to the coronavirus. The clinician said no harm came to any of the 20 or so patients they attended to. However, anxiety reigned during the entire shift. Handing off a patient to another department, always a delicate task because of the potential for miscommunication, became especially nerve-wracking. "We are most concerned with ransomware attacks which have the potential to disrupt patient care operations and risk patient safety," said Riggi, the cybersecurity adviser to hospitals. "We believe any cyberattack against any hospital or health system is a threat-to-life crime and should be responded to and pursued as such by the government." Ransomware attacks have crippled everything from major cities to school districts, and federal officials are concerned they could be used to disrupt the current presidential election. Last week, a major supplier of software services to state, county and local governments, Tyler Technologies, was hit. In the US alone, 764 healthcare providers were victimised last year by ransomware, according to data compiled by the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft. It estimates the overall cost of ransomware attacks in the US to $9 billion a year in terms of recovery and lost productivity. The only way to effectively recover, for those unwilling to pay ransoms, is through diligent daily system data backups. Advertisement In an apparently unrelated cyberattack affecting a US medical facility, Nebraska Medicine hospital in Omaha suffered an outage last week that led to the postponement of appointments for patients with elective procedures or other non-critical health concerns, The Omaha World-Herald reported. The hospital said emergency rooms remained open, and no patients were diverted to other hospitals. It said no records were deleted or destroyed thanks to the system's back-up and recovery processes. The statement did not include any further information about the attack. - AP