Coronavirus: What Makes Meatpacking Plants so Dangerous? History tells all. by Michael Haedicke

Large meatpacking plants have become hotspots for coronavirus infection, along with jails and nursing homes. As of May 1, nearly 5,000 packing plant workers in 19 states had fallen ill, and 20 had died.

Packing plants from Washington state to Iowa to Georgia have temporarily suspended operations, although President Trump has invoked the Defense Production Act in an effort to quickly restart these facilities.

As Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds put it in a press conference, virus outbreaks in packing plants are “very difficult to contain.” But what makes these plants so dangerous? As a sociologist who has studied food system labor issues, I see two answers.

First, working conditions experienced in meatpacking plants, which are shaped by the pressures of efficient production, contribute to the spread of COVID-19. Second, this industry has evolved since the mid-20th century in ways that make it hard for workers to advocate for safe conditions even in good times, let alone during a pandemic.

Together, these factors help to explain why U.S. meatpacking plants are so dangerous now – and why this problem will be difficult to solve.

The meatpacking industry is an important job source for thousands of people. In 2019 it employed nearly 200,000 people in direct meat processing jobs at wages averaging US$14.13 per hour or $29,400 yearly.

Even in normal conditions, meatpacking plants are risky places to work. The job requires using knives, saws and other cutting tools, as well as operating industrial meat grinders and other heavy machinery.

Traumatic injuries due to workplace accidents are common, and mistakes can have gruesome consequences. Government researchers have also documented chronic injuries, such as repetitive motion strains, among packing plant workers.

The same conditions that lead to these accidents and injuries during normal times also contribute to the spread of coronavirus. To understand this connection, it is first important to know that meatpacking is a volume industry. The higher a plant’s daily throughput – that is, the more animals it turns into meat – the more lucrative it is.

For instance, one Smithfield plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which shut down indefinitely in April after hundreds of workers tested positive for COVID-19, employed 3,700 people and produced 18 million servings of pork daily.

To maximize efficiency, production takes place on an assembly line – or more accurately, a disassembly line. Workers stand close together and perform simple, repetitive tasks on animal parts as the parts stream by.

Production lines move quickly, with industry averages ranging from 1,000 animals per hour in pork processing to over 8,000 per hour in chicken plants. In October 2019 the Trump administration eliminated limits on production line speed in pork processing plants, and it has also waived limits for individual chicken processing plants.

The speed and organization of meatpacking both promote the spread of coronavirus. Employees labor alongside one another, working at a rate that makes it difficult, if not impossible, to practice protective behaviors such as covering sneezes and coughs.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued guidelines to allow meatpacking workers to continue working during the pandemic. They include spacing workers at least six feet apart and installing barriers between them. Some plants have adopted these controls, but the pressures of rapid production may well limit their effectiveness.

Unionizing the industry

Understanding why meatpacking workers tolerate these difficult and dangerous conditions requires a look at the industry’s history.

Many people assume that jobs in packing plants have always been as difficult and dangerous as those depicted in journalist Upton Sinclair’s famed 1906 novel “The Jungle.” That book described meatpacking workers in early 20th-century Chicago facing similar conditions to those in the modern industry.

But this assumption conceals an important story. For several decades after World War II, conditions in meatpacking plants steadily improved as a result of pressure from workers themselves.

Starting in 1943, the United Packinghouse Workers of America, a labor union, organized meatpacking employees in major cities. At the height of its influence, this union secured “master agreements” with the largest firms, such as Armour and Swift, ensuring standard wages and working conditions across the industry.

One source of the UPWA’s influence was its ability to build interracial alliances. Racial antagonism between black and white workers, linked to job discrimination and the use of black workers to break strikes in the early 20th century, had historically undermined union efforts in meatpacking plants.

UPWA District Area 5 Members Parade float, circa 1960, Chicago. Source: Chicago Public Library, CC BY-ND

The union’s logo, which depicted clasped black and white hands, symbolized its ability to bridge these differences. Its support for the civil rights movement in the 1960s also revealed its commitment to racial equality.

A changing labor force

But by the 1970s, the union was in decline. A key factor was industry leaders’ decision to shift production from cities with a strong union tradition, like Chicago and Kansas City, to small towns scattered across the Great Plains and the southeastern United States.

Rural work forces are more difficult to organize than their urban counterparts for many reasons. Most small towns do not have a history of union activity, and anti-union sentiment is often strong – as shown by the prevalence of right-to-work laws in many rural states.

Moreover, packing plants are often small towns’ only major employers. Workers and municipal authorities alike depend on plants for jobs and tax revenue. This relationship creates enormous pressure to treat meat processing companies with deference.

Additionally, meatpacking consolidated in the late 20th century. Plants grew larger, and a relative handful of firms such as Cargill and Tyson came to dominate processing of beef, poultry and other meats. Consolidation gives these firms greater ability to control working conditions and wages.

Finally, today’s plants often recruit workers from Mexico and Central America, some of whom may lack legal authorization to work in the U.S. They also hire refugees who may be unfamiliar with U.S. labor protections and have few other employment possibilities.

These workers’ precarious legal and economic standing makes it hard for them to challenge employers. Cultural differences, language gaps and racial prejudice can also pose obstacles to collective action.

The challenge of coronavirus

Workers’ organizations have not disappeared. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union has called on the Trump administration to ensure safety during the pandemic, but it is fighting an uphill battle.

Despite President Trump’s reassurances that closed plants will reopen safely, I expect that the pressures of efficiency and limits on workers’ ability to advocate for themselves will cause infections to persist.

In meatpacking as in other industries, the pandemic has revealed how people who do “essential” work for Americans can be treated as if they are expendable.

Pompeo Denies U.S. Involvement In Botched Venezuela Coup The Maduro government blames U.S. interference for the deadly incident. by Matthew Petti

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that “there was no U.S. government direct involvement” in a failed attempt to overthrow Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro by force earlier this week.  

Venezuelan forces killed six and captured a few dozen armed men who launched a bizarre amphibious raid on a beach in northern Venezuela on Sunday. Maduro has accused the Trump administration of orchestrating the incident as part of an attempted coup d’etat. 

Two of the prisoners appear to be U.S. Army veterans. An eccentric special forces veteran named Jordan Goudreau, who once served as private security for a Donald Trump campaign rally, claimed that his private security company SilverCorp was responsible for the attack. 

“If we had been involved, it would have gone differently,” Pompeo said. “As for who bankrolled it, we’re not prepared to share any more information about what we know took place.” 

He added that “we’ll use every tool that we have available” to secure the release of the American prisoners “if in fact these are Americans that are there.” 

Goudreau claims that Venezuelan parliament leader Juan Guaidó had originally promised to finance the operation but failed to pay up, a claim that Guaidó denies. 

A report by the Associated Press released a few days before the failed raid also suggests that Roen Kraft, heir to the Kraft Foods fortune, also played a role in bankrolling Goudreau. 

The Trump administration had put a $55 million bounty on Maduro in late March after the U.S. Department of Justice indicted Maduro on drug trafficking charges. 

Goudreau was encouraged by Maj. Gen. Cliver Alcalá, a Venezuelan military defector who has also been indicted for drug trafficking by U.S. authorities, according to the Associated Press. 

The United States and several other countries do not consider Maduro to be the president of Venezuela. Instead, they recognize Guaidó, who was declared acting president by the Venezuelan parliament in January 2019 amidst a constitutional crisis. 

Maduro, however, has continued to control most parts of the Venezuelan state, despite numerous uprisings and mutinies. 

Venezuela is currently holding several other U.S. citizens, including the CITGO Six, a group of oil executives who worked for Venezuela’s state-run oil company. 

The Trump administration has pursued an economic pressure campaign aimed at forcing Maduro to step down. 

Elliot Abrams, the State Department official in charge of Venezuelan affairs, had laid out a “framework for a democratic transition” during a March 31 press briefing. 

“It’s obvious that Maduro is going to resist any plan that calls for him to leave power,” he told reporters. “What’s important is the conversations that take place privately within the military and within the regime and within the party and within Venezuela, in labor unions, in the business community.” 

Fire! Russia’s T-14 Tank Has Now Been Tested in Syria The T-14 is Russia’s most advanced tank ever. Now it might have some combat experience under its belt. by Caleb Larson

Speaking to a Russian television station on Sunday, the Russian Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov said that Russia’s newest, and possibly most capable tank ever, has undergone field testing in Syria. “Yes, that’s right. They [the Armata tanks] were used in Syria,” he said to Russia’s Rossiya-1 television channel. “They were used in field conditions, in Syria, so, we took into account all the nuances,” Tass reported. 

This would be a first for the platform, which despite some early hiccups, is at least on paper perhaps one of the more capable tanks in any country’s inventories. It was first shown to the public on May 9, 2015, during Russia’s annual Red Square Victory Day parade which commemorates the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

Tass also reported that the T-14 would finally enter serial production sometime in 2021. “It [the T-14 Armata tank] is expensive because it is still undergoing extra trials and modernization after the defense ministry requested additional technical solutions in order to begin serial supplies starting from the next year under the existing contract,” said Manturov.

The T-14 platform has experienced delays before. The Russian producer of the T-14, Uralvagonzavod, had previously given 2020 as the T-14’s serial production entry date, so it would appear that that date has been pushed back.

As I previously explained, the T-14 is remarkable for its armor (both active and passive systems), and its drivetrain. If reports are to be believed, the T-14 may very well be one of the nimblest tanks in existence.

When in dire situations, the tank can “boost” its engine from an output of 1,500 horsepower to an unheard of 2,000 horsepower, though this comes at a price. Engine longevity is significantly decreased after “boost” operation.

Import Export

Technologically decisive platforms like the F-22 Raptor or the M60A2 tank are sometimes barred from being sold abroad. Apparently not so with the T-14.

In a somewhat surprising move, Manturov announced that several foreign buyers had expressed interest in acquiring the T-14 platform. “Next year, when serial supplies of these tanks to the defense ministry are launched and an exports certificate is obtained, we will begin to work with foreign clients,” he said, though he did end his statement with a rather weasel-word statement. “Preliminarily, bearing in mind that we cannot provide all the documentation to our foreign clients, well, we do have preliminary orders.”

Well, we’ll see about that.

Questions remain about what the T-14 in Syria were actually up to. It is possible that the T-14s in Syria did nothing more than collect dust—but hard to say definitively. Perhaps more information will come to light in the future.

Note to Donald Trump: Iran’s Naval Militia Has Deadlier Missiles Armed speedboats belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy habitually harass U.S. Navy and allied vessels in the Persian Gulf, in particular in the strategic Strait of Hormuz that connects the Gulf to the open ocean. Now those boats have farther-flying missiles, the militia claimed. by David Axe

Armed speedboats belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy habitually harass U.S. Navy and allied vessels in the Persian Gulf, in particular in the strategic Strait of Hormuz that connects the Gulf to the open ocean. 

Now those boats have farther-flying missiles, the militia claimed.

The IRGCN now possesses ship-launched anti-ship missiles with a range as far as 430 miles, naval militia leader Adm. Ali Reza Tangsiri told Iranian state media.

As recently as September 2020, the militia said its best anti-ship missile could travel just 180 miles, Defense News noted.

The missile claim could have implications for tensions in the Gulf region.

The IRGCN’s boats in mid-April 2020 sailed dangerously close to a group of U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard vessels practicing helicopter operations.

Eleven Iranian fast attack craft “repeatedly conducted dangerous and harassing approaches of the USS Lewis B. Puller, USS Paul Hamilton, USS Firebolt, USS Sirocco, USCGC Wrangell and USCGC Maui while the U.S. vessels were conducting joint integration operations with U.S. Army AH-64E Apache attack helicopters in the international waters of the North Arabian Gulf,” the Navy stated.

Puller is a sea-base ship with a large flight deck. Hamilton is a guided-missile destroyer. Firebolt and Sirocco are patrol boats. Wrangell and Maui are Coast Guard cutters. Puller’s battle group had been practicing deploying Apaches for strikes on small craft just like the type that harassed the group.

“The IRGCN vessels repeatedly crossed the bows and sterns of the U.S. vessels at extremely close range and high speeds, including multiple crossings of the Puller with a 50 yard closest point of approach and within 10 yards of Maui‘s bow,” the Navy stated.

On April 22, 2020, U.S. president Donald Trump wrote on Twitter that he was authorizing the Navy to “shoot down and destroy” Iranian boats that harass American vessels.

Trump however did not formally instruct the Navy to change its rules of engagement. The Navy periodically fires warning shots near Iranian boats but as a matter of policy does not attack the boats for the mere act of operating unprofessionally. It’s worth noting that U.S. forces also have operated in close, even dangerous, proximity to Iranian forces.

“What he was emphasizing is all of our ships retain the right of self-defense, and people need to be very careful in their interactions to understand the inherent right of self-defense,” Deputy U.S. Defense Secretary David Norquist told NBC News.

The back-and-forth claims and threats mark another month of escalating tensions between the United States and Iran.

Trump in 2018 unilaterally withdrew the United States from the deal that limited Iran’s nuclear-weapons program. Iranian missileers in June 2019 shot down a U.S. Navy Global Hawk spy drone flying near the Strait of Hormuz. In January 2020 U.S. forces assassinated IRGC leader Gen. Qasem Soleimani in Iraq. Iran retaliated with barrages of rockets targeting American facilities in the region.

Longer-range missiles could make the IRGCN more dangerous in wartime. It’s not clear whether or how the new munitions might alter the militia’s tactics during peacetime.

Meet Russia's KA-50 Helicopter: A Real 'Flying' Tank? Very maneuverable and well-armored. by Caleb Larson

The KA-50 helicopter is heavily armed and heavily armored. It’s also incredibly maneuverable.  

Two is Better than One

Rather than a main blade rotor and a tail rotor assembly, the KA-50 forgoes the tail rotor for another main rotor. These two main rotors spin in opposite directions and give the KA-50 a very high degree of maneuverability and performance when compared to typical tail-rotor helicopters. 

The KA-50 is also one of the few helicopters with a pilot ejection system. Like most jets, the KA-50 has rocket or explosive-assisted seats. Prior to ejection, the helicopter’s rotors blades are destroyed and thrown away from the KA-50 frame by integrated explosives. The helicopter’s canopy is then hurled outward and the pilot or pilots are ejected to safety. 

In addition to relatively large winglets that can carry a variety of air-to-surface missiles, the KA-50 also has a large 30 millimeter cannon affixed to its right wing. Though the cannon is not free-turning, as on other attack helicopters, it benefits from improved accuracy. 

Substantial armor protects the KA-50 from ground fire. The pilot canopy is designed to withstand 12.7 millimeter hits, and the cockpit provides protection from 23 millimeter rounds. The rotor blades are made of a composite material, and can withstand several hits from automatic weapons fire. 

A naval variant of the KA-50 was intended to fly on the Mistral-class amphibious assault ships Russia ordered from France. This variant is a two-seater, and has anti-corrosion properties and inwardly-folding rotor blades for compact storage. 

In response to the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, the tender was canceled and the Mistrals were never delivered. The Mistral-class can carry around 16, possibly as many as 30 helicopters, depending on the airframe’s size and weight. 

Following the failed bid, France sold the Russian-intended Mistrals to Egypt. Ironically, Egypt will likely equip its Mistrals with a KA-52 naval variant from Russia. 

Zapad 2017

In 2017, a KA-50 variant, the KA-52, was involved in a live-fire accident during Russia and Belarus’ massive 2017 Zapad military drills, which included 12,000 personnel and hundreds of aircraft, tanks, and other vehicles. 

Video footage from an onlooker’s cell phone showed two KA-52s approaching a group of people and mix of civilian cars and military trucks. In the video, one of the KA-52s fired what appears to be two rockets towards the group, striking the foreground in front of the people. 

While there were no fatalities, several people were reportedly injured and the military-style truck lost at least one wheel and appears to sustain damage to its suspension. 

Another video surfaced online which appeared to be a recording of the pilot’s helmet-mounted display. In the video, a targeting reticle appeared to target the military-style truck. After firing, the pilot appeared to quickly lift the nose of the KA-52, possibly confirming the incident’s accidental nature. 

Action!

Depending on how Egypt plans to employ their Mistrals, the KA-50 may end up seeing some action in the Middle East. We’ll see.

Coronavirus Might Have Taken a Decade of Live from Those Who Died According to two new studies, those who have died from COVID-19 could have expected to live for another 10 years. by Ethen Kim Lieser

According to two new studies, those who have died from COVID-19 could have expected to live for another 10 years. 

The findings from the studies show that the novel coronavirus isn’t only killing seniors and those with underlying health conditions who may have had only months to live prior to infection.

“Some people think that these people dying would have died this year anyway,” author of one study Andrew Briggs, a professor of health economics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medical, told The Wall Street Journal. “That’s simply not the case.”

Some scientists have said this new data is proof that social distancing and shelter-in-place directives should remain in place to curb the further spread of the virus.

The other study was a paper by Scotland-based researchers that was published online by the Wellcome Trust, a London-based foundation that funds scientific research.

This particular study discovered that the average number of years cut due to COVID-19 for healthy adults was 14 for men and 12 for women. Briggs’ data put the U.S. average at 14 years and U.K. average at 11.

The two studies, which were published separately, looked at mortality data in several badly affected countries. The figures were then used to compare the age at which COVID-19 victims are dying with the region’s life expectancy. Also taken into account were the differences in life expectancy connected to common ailments, such as heart disease, diabetes and dementia.

An assortment of key data from Italy and the U.K. were used to gauge the long-term conditions often witnessed in COVID-19 victims and the general population. After accounting for years lost due to common chronic illnesses and cancer, the victims on average died about a decade sooner than expected. For the sickest patients, they lost between one and six years, depending on their age.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, of the 37,000 people who died in the U.S. due to COVID-19 between Feb. 1 and April 25, 31% were over the age of 85. But 40% of the individuals were between 45 and 75 years old.

There have been more than 3.5 million confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide and about 250,000 deaths due to the virus. Disease experts, though, have said such numbers likely underestimate the real toll.

Estimates regarding the fatality rate of those infected by COVID-19 can vary. According to a March paper published in the British medical journal Lancet, the percentage of Chinese citizens infected by the virus and later dying came in between 0.4% and 1.3%, while other figures have it closer to 3% to 6%.   

The Problem With Stories About Dangerous Coronavirus Mutations There’s no clear evidence that the pandemic virus has evolved into significantly different forms—and there probably won’t be for months.by ED YONG

As if the pandemic weren’t bad enough, on April 30, a team led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory released a paper that purportedly described “the emergence of a more transmissible form” of the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. This new form, the team wrote, “began spreading in Europe in early February.” Whenever it appeared in a new place, including the U.S., it rapidly rose to dominance. Its success, the team suggested, is likely due to a single mutation, which is now “of urgent concern.”

The paper has not yet been formally published or reviewed by other scientists. But on May 5, the Los Angeles Times wrote about it, claiming that “a now-dominant strain of the coronavirus could be more contagious than [the] original.” That story quickly went … well … viral.

But “the conclusions are overblown,” says Lisa Gralinski of the University of North Carolina, who is one of the few scientists in the world who specializes in coronaviruses. “To say that you’ve revealed the emergence of a more transmissible form of SARS-CoV-2 without ever actually testing it isn’t the type of thing that makes me feel comfortable as a scientist.” She and other virologists I’ve spoken with who were not involved in the Los Alamos research agree that the paper’s claims are plausible, but not justified by the evidence it presents. More important, they’re not convinced different strains of the coronavirus exist at all.

“We have evidence for one strain,” says Brian Wasik at Cornell University.

“I would say there’s just one,” says Nathan Grubaugh at Yale School of Medicine.

“I think the majority of people studying [coronavirus genetics] wouldn’t recognize more than one strain right now,” says Charlotte Houldcroft at the University of Cambridge.

Everyone else might be reasonably puzzled, given that news stories have repeatedly claimed there are two, or three, or even eight strains. This is yet another case of confusion in a crisis that seems riddled with them. Here’s how to make sense of it.

Whenever a virus infects a host, it makes new copies of itself, and it starts by duplicating its genes. But this process is sloppy, and the duplicates end up with errors. These are called mutations—they’re the genetic equivalent of typos. In comic books and other science fiction, mutations are always dramatic and consequential. In the real world, they’re a normal and usually mundane part of virology. Viruses naturally and gradually accumulate mutations as they spread.

As an epidemic progresses, the virus family tree grows new branches and twigs—new lineages that are characterized by differing sets of mutations. But a new lineage doesn’t automatically count as a new strain. That term is usually reserved for a lineage that differs from its fellow viruses in significant ways. It might vary in how easily it spreads (transmissibility), its ability to cause disease (virulence), whether it is recognized by the immune system in the same way (antigenicity), or how vulnerable it is to medications (resistance). Some mutations affect these properties. Most do not, and are either silent or cosmetic. “Not every mutation creates a different strain,” says Grubaugh. (Think about dog breeds as equivalents of strains: A corgi is clearly different from a Great Dane, but a black-haired corgi is functionally the same as a brown-haired one, and wouldn’t count as a separate breed.)

There’s no clear, fixed threshold for when a lineage suddenly counts as a strain. But the term has the same connotation in virology as it does colloquially—it implies importance. Viruses change all the time; strains arise when they change in meaningful ways.  

New strains of influenza arise every year. These viruses quickly acquire mutations that change the shape of the proteins on their surface, making them invisible to the same immune cells that would have recognized and attacked their ancestors. These are clearly meaningful changes—and they're partly why the flu vaccine must be updated every year.

But influenza is notable for mutating quickly. Coronaviruses—which, to be clear, belong to a completely separate family from influenza viruses—change at a tenth of the speed. The new one, SARS-CoV-2, is no exception. “There’s nothing out of the ordinary here,” says Grubaugh. Yes, the virus has picked up several mutations since it first jumped into humans in late 2019, but no more than scientists would have predicted. Yes, its family tree has branched into different lineages, but none seems materially different from the others. “This is still such a young epidemic that, given the slow mutation rate, it would be a surprise if we saw anything this soon,” Houldcroft says.

What of the Los Alamos study, then? The team, led by Bette Korber, looked at mutations that affect the virus’s “spike”—the protein on its surface that it uses to recognize host cells. One particular mutation, known as D614G, caught their attention. It changes just one of the many molecules that make up the spike, subtly altering the protein’s shape. The viruses without this mutation—the D lineage—include the one that first emerged in Wuhan, China. The viruses with the mutation—the G lineage—appeared sometime in February. Worldwide, the G’s were relatively uncommon in early March, but by April, they had become dominant in much of Europe, North America, and Australia.

But this pattern is hard to interpret. The D614G mutation might make the coronavirus more transmissible, and G-viruses might have become more common because they outcompeted the D-viruses. But it’s also possible that the mutation might do nothing, and G-viruses have become more common because of dumb luck.

If those viruses happened to be in the right people—those who traveled from China to Italy before the latter went into lockdown—they could easily have spread explosively across Europe, and eventually into the U.S. Indeed, that’s the pattern we see: The D614G mutation first appeared just before the coronavirus moved into Europe, and almost all the G-viruses around today are descendants of that initial continent-hopping pioneer. China’s intense social restrictions likely stamped out many other coronavirus lineages within its borders, and stopped them from spreading further. “The only lineages you’ll see are those that got out, which include the ones with this mutation,” says Bill Hanage of Harvard, who studies pathogen evolution.

Such events are especially important in the early stages of a pandemic. Some virus lineages will do really well and others will disappear for reasons that have nothing to do with the viruses themselves and everything to do with the movements of their human hosts, whom those hosts interact with, and the policies enacted by the countries those hosts live in.

This isn’t to say that the Los Alamos study is bad or wrong—it comes from a respected team and presents interesting data. But the evidence it provides cannot distinguish between two equally plausible explanations—that the G-viruses were more transmissible, or that the G-viruses were just lucky. (Korber didn’t respond to a request for an interview.)

More definitive evidence could take two forms. First, scientists could compare the spread of the epidemic among groups of people who were infected by the D- and G-viruses. But “that’s a very difficult study to design,” Houldcroft says. You’d need to ensure that the two groups were closely matched, so that any differences between them were actually due to the virus. You’d need both reliable clinical data and viral sequences from each person. And you’d need to look at a lot of people—and viruses—to be confident the results weren’t statistical flukes. “I wouldn’t put much weight on studies that had fewer than thousands of viral genomes, or tens of thousands,” Houldcroft says. “And we won’t have those kinds of samples collected and analyzed for several months yet.”

Second, scientists could compare the two types of viruses in experiments with lab-grown cells or lab-reared animals. Do the G-viruses stick to cells more readily, or grow more quickly, or spread more easily? Such studies aren’t easy, and results would likely take months to arrive. Even then, Grubaugh cautions, several labs would need to find the same results before virologists at large could be confident about them. Past epidemics illustrate why it pays to be careful. In 2016, two independent teams of scientists showed that during the West African Ebola outbreak, that virus picked up a mutation called A82V, which made it better at infecting lab-grown human cells. Those teams had a stronger case than the Los Alamos team now does for SARS-CoV-2—but they still clarified that they didn’t know whether the mutation influenced the course of the historic outbreak. Sure enough, later work revealed that the A82V mutation doesn’t affect Ebola’s ability to infect actual animals.

The bottom line: It will take time to know whether different strains of the new coronavirus even exist, let alone whether any are more or less dangerous than the others. Any claims of that kind should be taken with a grain of salt for the next several months, if not longer. “In the short term, it’s highly unlikely that we’d be able to define new strains,” Wasik says.

The same goes for the studies from Singapore and Arizona showing that certain coronavirus lineages are missing sections of their genes that might (or might not) make them less dangerous. It goes for the much-discussed S and L groups. It goes for the so-called A, B, and C groups, two of which supposedly pummeled New York from opposite directions. (The study behind that claim was heavily criticized by experts for its methods and for using a backdoor route to publication.) “None of these has convinced me that they have a smoking gun for why one particular sequence of SARS-CoV-2 is more successful than any other,” Houldcroft says.

Finding a smoking gun is not a priority right now, according to the experts I spoke with. Gralinski, for example, is focused on testing vaccines and drugs. She wouldn’t start checking whether different mutations affect the virus’s behavior until next year, “when the urgency has waned,” she says. Grubaugh agrees: Studies of viral evolution are the backbone of his career, but he says they “wouldn’t change the public-health picture.” To control the coronavirus, countries need to test widely, isolate infected people, trace their contacts, and use social-distancing measures when other options fail. “Identifying a mutation that does something different doesn’t really change our response,” Grubaugh says. “It just creates a diversion from what we need to be focusing on.”

Last month, in an article about why the pandemic is so confusing, I wrote that “individual pieces of research are extremely unlikely to single-handedly upend what we know about COVID-19.” But between our insatiable need for information to assuage our anxiety and uncertainty, the media’s tendency to report uncritically on incremental studies, and social channels that amplify extreme voices over careful ones, it’s no wonder that confusion reigns.

The misconceptions about dangerous strains are also seductive in their own right. If we believe that the virus has changed into some especially challenging form, we can more easily explain why certain people and places have been hit worse than others—a mystery whose answer more likely (but less satisfyingly) lies in political inaction, existing inequalities, and chance. Powerful antagonists make for easy narratives. Ineptitude, bias, and randomness make for difficult ones.

China's Bargain on Global Influence Is Paying Off The U.S. gives more money than China to many international organizations. So why do they seem more sympathetic to Beijing? by KATHY GILSINAN

This spring, President Donald Trump declared that he would halt U.S. funding for the World Health Organization, previously more than $400 million annually—and he announced this right in the midst of a global pandemic. A week later, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged another $30 million—which would nowhere near make up for the shortfall (not to mention that China still owes the organization $60 million in membership dues, an amount the WHO expects to get later this year). But the moment was a clear case in point for China’s success at checkbook diplomacy, in which the amount matters less than the message: You can’t count on the U.S., but you can count on us.

America was, until Trump ordered a review of the contributions, the single largest state funder of the WHO—China was contributing just over a 10th of what the U.S. was. Yet for years now, even before Trump accused the WHO of being too “China-centric,” American officials worried that China kept somehow buying more influence, with less money, around the world.

“The Chinese give as little money as they can get away with,” Rear Admiral Kenneth Bernard, who previously served as a political adviser to the director-general of the World Health Organization, and as a special assistant for biodefense to President George W. Bush, told me. “They give as little money as will buy influence.”

“This isn’t about being fair,” he added. “This is about winning.”   

The WHO isn’t the only example. Last year, the United States gave more than $670 million to the United Nations’ operating budget, while China gave almost $370 million—yet Chinese nationals currently head four of the body’s 15 specialized agencies. “No other nation leads more than one,” Melanie Hart, a senior fellow and the director of China policy at the Center for American Progress, told me. “Making contributions is one thing, but [Chinese personnel] show up big, and they push.”

China’s muscle-flexing is also occurring at a time in which the U.S. president has expressed disinterest in, or outright contempt for, international organizations, canceling or suspending funding for some, and calling it into question for others. The most powerful country in the world is perhaps entitled to take this posture—after all, U.S. presidents have ignored or sidestepped international organizations for decades, not least in launching bombing campaigns over Kosovo in the 1990s and Iraq in the 2000s. But China clearly sees such organizations not as irrelevant hindrances but as convenient vehicles for expanding its global influence. The Trump administration, meanwhile—though the U.S. appointed a special envoy to counter “malign influences” of China and others at the UN toward the beginning of the year, and finally announced a nomination for America’s years-vacant seat on the WHO’s executive board—has largely ceded the field.

Besides Beijing’s splashy but meager contribution to the WHO, in the past week China sent a representative to an EU-led pledging conference to find a vaccine. The United States declined to participate. In a phone call with reporters, a senior administration official repeatedly sidestepped questions about why, and insisted that “our cooperation with European partners continues to be extremely robust.”

The pattern repeats itself all over the planet. The U.S. still gives billions in foreign aid every year, and the funding touches all facets of life in other countries including public health, military training, sanitation, and women’s rights. But China is a shiny relative newcomer in many developing countries that have come to take U.S. assistance for granted. In the past 15 years China has been plowing money into megaprojects like airports and dams—strategic and flashy investments, unavoidable monuments to China’s ambitions and staying power. And the funding doesn’t tend to come with the same kinds of pro-transparency and human-rights-protection strings attached to American aid, which makes it more attractive to corrupt or authoritarian governments. So even if China doesn’t give more, it advertises better.

Chinese leaders also present their own country as a voice for the developing world against the dominant Western global powers. “They were the big players” in trying to get the World Health Organization to focus on developing countries’ issues, David Hohman, who formerly served as Deputy Director of the Office of Global Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, told me. “Fortunately in WHO you don’t vote on things, but if you ever did, [China has] the votes … It was a big advantage to them.”

Through its seat on the United Nations Security Council, China’s Communist government has had the ability to thwart other members’ ambitions for decades. But only recently has it begun to flex this muscle. In the past 15 years, China has vetoed 11 Security Council resolutions, more than five times as many as in the preceding 15 years. (It still has not caught up to the United States, which vetoed 18 resolutions over the same 30-year period.)

Meanwhile, Beijing is working to rewrite the rules of the liberal system America once prided itself on having built. China has gotten two resolutions through the UN’s Human Rights Council, Hart explained in written testimony to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission this spring, one “suggesting that human rights must be balanced with economic development needs,” and another asking that cultural contexts be taken into account when considering human rights standards. Hart told me that “the U.S. currently doesn’t care about the UN Human Rights Council. China does.” (The U.S. withdrew from that body in 2018 when then–UN Ambassador Nikki Haley accused it of being biased against Israel.) And the watering-down of international standards, Hart says, creates “maneuvering room” for authoritarians around the world.

“It is not a good idea to let dictators run UN agencies,” said Bernard, who retired from the U.S. Public Health Service. “Not because it’s particularly China or not China. It’s because the constituencies for those issues get hurt.” China is currently holding up to 1 million Uighur Muslims in what it calls “re-education” camps in conditions that rights groups and other governments have condemned.

“If any government other than China was holding a million Muslims arbitrarily, I think we can reasonably assume we would already be well under way in a discussion, not just about investigation, but about accountability,” Sophie Richardson, the China director at Human Rights Watch, told me. But the UN hasn’t even launched an investigation. At one point in April 2017, according to a Human Rights Watch report, UN security escorted a Uighur activist out of UN headquarters, where he was participating in a forum. A Chinese diplomat later bragged about it on state media, Hart noted in her testimony.

In another instance that Human Rights Watch highlighted, the Chinese government detained an activist who tried to go to Geneva for a session at the Human Rights Council. After the activist, Cao Shunli, died following a six-month detention, Chinese diplomats in Geneva blocked efforts to hold a moment of silence in her memory. China’s “human-rights agenda is not about human rights,” Bernard said. “It’s about Chinese politics.”

The same is true of any other mechanism China uses to build its influence around the world. If China has pushed to install its diplomats at the helm of the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization and Food and Agriculture Organization, it’s not necessarily because the Chinese Communist Party cares a great deal about the issues at the core of those agencies. It’s about gaining political and economic influence over member states. Case in point: Cameroon put forward a candidate to lead the Food and Agriculture Organization, who withdrew after Beijing forgave Cameroonian debt. China also reportedly threatened to cut off important exports to other countries if they refused to back Beijing’s candidate. The Chinese candidate won.

The clearest example of how China uses this influence involves Taiwan, the democratically governed island that the Chinese Communist Party claims as part of its own territory. Hart noted that after Taiwan, in 2016, elected President Tsai-Ing Wen, who ran as an advocate for Taiwanese sovereignty from Beijing, the WHO stopped inviting Taiwan to its global summit—though Taiwan’s attendance hadn’t been cause for concern the prior year, when a pro-Beijing president was in charge of the island. “As soon as the people of Taiwan elected a candidate that Beijing didn’t like, ‘Oops,’” Hart said. “You cannot convince me that it no longer made sense for the WHO to have those people represented there because the presidency changed.” More recently, a senior WHO official dodged questions about Taiwan’s success in responding to the pandemic, saying instead: “When you look across different areas of China, they’ve actually done quite a good job.”  

Still, all this maneuvering might have its limits. A Pew Research Center survey from December, before the coronavirus crisis engulfed the entire world, found negative views of China in much of the United States, Western Europe, and Asia. China has economic clout and is savvy about using it, but this hasn’t necessarily bought it enduring influence in the world’s other economic power centers.

Now U.S public opinion toward China is at an all-time low, according to Pew, and though data do not yet exist on how world public opinion has changed since the crisis, Chinese leaders are already clearly worried. They are pumping out propaganda disparaging the U.S. response and touting their help to stricken countries. Reuters reported on an internal Chinese document fretting about the possibility of a global backlash akin to what China saw after the Tiananmen Square massacre. China is a great deal richer and militarily stronger than it was in 1989, but with the world awash in a pandemic and the U.S. trumpeting China’s culpability, Beijing may soon find that there are some things money can’t fix.