Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and CDC Director Robert Redfield will appear before a Senate committee on May 12.; Credit: Patrick Semansky/AP

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, will join Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield and other administration representatives in testifying before a Senate committee on May 12.

The announcement comes as members of President Trump's coronavirus task force are being asked to limit their appearances on Capitol Hill despite ongoing calls from lawmakers for more oversight into the administration's coronavirus response. Last week, the Trump administration blocked Fauci from appearing before a House committee on the subject of spending on coronavirus testing.

President Trump told reporters Tuesday that he doesn't want the officials appearing before House Democrats.

"The House is a setup," Trump said. "The House is a bunch of Trump haters."

White House officials gave a less adversarial explanation when justifying the decision to limit task force testimony in a memo to top congressional aides.

"For primary response departments, including HHS, DHS, and State, in order to preserve department-wide resources, no more than one COVID-related hearing should be agreed to with the department's primary House and Senate authorizing committee and appropriations subcommittee in the month of May, for a total of no more than four COVID-related hearings department-wide," the memo stated.

Congressional Democrats are demanding greater oversight over the roughly $3 trillion that has already been approved for the coronavirus response. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has launched a new select committee to conduct the oversight, but Republicans have so far refused to name members to the panel despite the plan to make the panel bipartisan.

The Senate hearing was announced shortly after the administration sent the memo to Capitol Hill banning committee appearances from task force members during May unless approved by the White House chief of staff.

Deputy White House Press Secretary Judd Deere said the decision to block Fauci from the House committee appearance was intended to allow him to focus on his primary task of overseeing the coronavirus response.

"While the Trump Administration continues its whole-of-government response to COVID-19, including safely opening up America again and expediting vaccine development, it is counter-productive to have the very individuals involved in those efforts appearing at Congressional hearings," Deere said. "We are committed to working with Congress to offer testimony at the appropriate time."

Fauci, Redfield, HHS Assistant Secretary Brett Giroir and FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn are scheduled to discuss "safely getting back to work and back to school" when they appear before the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions — or HELP — Committee next Tuesday.

Senate Democrats, including Patty Murray, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the HELP committee, have called for the administration to provide greater transparency and a nationwide plan for testing. So far their demands have not received a response.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

President Trump speaks in the Oval Office Wednesday.; Credit: Evan Vucci/AP

In a whistleblower complaint filed this week, top federal scientist Rick Bright alleges he was removed from his post for failing to go along with the president's push to promote a drug as a cure for COVID-19.

On Wednesday, Trump dismissed the complaint, telling reporters Bright "seems like a disgruntled employee who's trying to help the Democrats win an election."

"I never met him, I know nothing about him," Trump said, adding that he didn't think "disgruntled people" should work for his administration.

Trump also observed that Bright is being represented by a legal team that represented "other people" – seemingly an allusion to lawyer Debra Katz's representation of Christine Blasey Ford, who testified against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation.

Bright's legal team declined to comment.

Bright says he was ousted from his position as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority because he wanted to spend money on safe and vetted treatments for COVID-19 — not hydroxychloroquine. The president has called that common anti-malaria drug a possible "game-changer," but there is no proof that it works for COVID patients, and it has side effects. The Food and Drug Administration ultimately warned against using the drug to treat COVID-19 without "strict medical supervision."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

"For Sale By Owner" and "Closed Due to Virus" signs are displayed in the window of Images On Mack in Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich. Congress is considering ways to help those struggling during the economic downturn and stabilize businesses hoping to reopen.; Credit: Paul Sancya/AP

Updated at 3:20 p.m. ET

Democrats and some Republicans are considering ways for the federal government to get money into people's pockets while the coronavirus is keeping much of the economy on ice.

Proposals for the next round of aid are being floated, and Democrats in the House are prepping another relief package as jobless claims continue to rise in the country. The Labor Department announced Friday that 20.5 million jobs were lost in April, pushing the overall unemployment rate to 14.7 %.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., hopes to release another bill, which is being crafted without the input of Republicans or the White House as early as next week.

"This is a reflection of the needs of the American people," Pelosi said Thursday. "We have to start someplace and, rather than starting in a way that does not meet the needs of the American people, want to set a standard."

The latest proposal from Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Ed Markey D-Mass., is a plan for the federal government to provide $2,000 a month for every individual earning less than $120,000, including children and other dependents. The draft legislation would extend the payments until three months after the public health emergency is lifted.

The proposal is a vast expansion on the recovery rebate program that sent a one-time payment of $1200 to every person earning less than $75,000 and an additional $500 for every child.

The trio of Democratic senators wants to make the payments, which would be available to every U.S. resident, retroactive to March. They didn't provide a cost estimate for the ambitious proposal, and it's unclear whether Senate leaders have an appetite for payments like these.

Official scorekeepers at the Congressional Budget Office estimate that the existing one-time $1200 payment program in the CARES Act package enacted in March could cost around $300 billion. Republican leaders have signaled concerns with the growing cost of the relief bills that have already passed.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has called for a pause on any new aid.

"Let's see what we are doing that is succeeding, what is not succeeding, what needs less, what needs more," McConnell told reporters in April. "Let's weigh this very carefully because the future of our country in terms of the amount of debt that we are adding up is a matter of genuine concern."

Not all Republicans agree. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., has introduced a comprehensive response plan that includes a proposal to cover 80 percent of payroll for companies that rehire workers and a bonus for the companies that take advantage of the program.

"The federal government should cover 80 percent of wages for workers at any U.S. business, up to the national median wage, until this emergency is over," Hawley wrote in an editorial in The Washington Post. "The goal must be to get unemployment down — now — to secure American workers and their families, and to help businesses get ready to restart as soon as possible."

Hawley's proposal would cap payments at the national median income level. The median income can be calculated in several different ways. Hawley told St. Louis Public radio the payments could be as high as $50,000. Other calculation set the figure at roughly $33,000, a figure many Democrats say is not sufficient in higher-cost areas like cities.

House Progressive Caucus co-chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., has a separate version that would guarantee a worker's full salary up to $100,000 for three months. Jayapal's plan would automatically renew the payments on a monthly basis until consumer demand returns to pre-crisis levels.

The proposal has nearly two dozen co-sponsors but has not received an endorsement from party leadership.

Pelosi has not ruled out the possibility of including some minimum income payments in an upcoming coronavirus aid bill.

"We may have to think in terms of some different ways to put money in people's pockets," Pelosi said in an interview with MSNBC. "Let's see what works, what is operational and what needs other attention."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

A 2018 exhibit at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State University celebrated the artistic legacy of MAD magazine.; Credit: Andrew Welsh-Huggins/AP

The funny, freckled face of Alfred E. Neuman is more or less retiring.

One of the last widely circulated print satirical magazines in America will leave newsstands after this year, according to sources at DC Comics, which publishes MAD magazine.

While the Harvard Lampoon remains in business, The Onion hasn't been in print since 2013. The once-influential Spy was a casualty of the 1990s.

At MAD's peak in the early 1970s, more than 2 million people subscribed to it, both for its pungent political humor and deeply adolescent jokes.

In 2017, that number had reportedly dropped to 140,000.

MAD isn't completely shutting down, but it will be radically downsized and changed.

Readers will only be able to find the 67-year-old humor magazine at comic book stores and through subscriptions.

After issue No. 10 this fall, there will no longer be new content, except for end-of-year specials which will be all new. Starting with issue No. 11, the magazine will feature classic, best-of and nostalgic content, repackaged with new covers.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Two years after it released the first season of the show 13 Reasons Why with a graphic suicide scene, Netflix has announced that it has edited it out.

The show is centered on the suicide of fictional teen Hannah Baker, and the first season's finale shows her taking her own life. Several organizations, including the National Association of School Psychologists, raised concerns that it could romanticize suicide for vulnerable teens.

"Our creative intent in portraying the ugly, painful reality of suicide in such graphic detail in Season 1 was to tell the truth about the horror of such an act, and make sure no one would ever wish to emulate it," show creator Brian Yorkey said in a statement. "But as we ready to launch Season 3, we have heard concerns about the scene from Dr. Christine Moutier at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and others, and have agreed with Netflix to re-edit it."

"No one scene is more important than the life of the show, and its message that we must take better care of each other," he added. "We believe this edit will help the show do the most good for the most people while mitigating any risk for especially vulnerable young viewers."

After some initial criticism, Netflix added a warning card to the beginning of the episode, alerting viewers that the episode contained "graphic depictions of suicide and violence."

The show also has a website, 13reasonswhy.info, containing resources about suicide prevention. It contains videos of cast members discussing topics such as bullying, consent, depression and how to talk with a teen about the series. The site also warns: "If you are struggling, this series may not be right for you or you may want to watch it with a trusted adult."

The edited version, now on Netflix, shows Hannah looking at herself in the mirror, full of emotion. It then cuts to her parents finding her body in the bathroom and reacting to her death. The previous version was nearly three minutes long, according to The Hollywood Reporter, and showed her cutting her wrists with a razor blade.

Netflix's decision has drawn praise from a number of suicide prevention advocates, such as American Association of Suicidology, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, American School Counselor Association, Dr. Helen Hsu from Stanford, advocacy group Mental Health America, the Trevor Project and Dr. Rebecca Hedrick from Cedars-Sinai, according to THR.

"We support the decision to edit the scene in which Hannah takes her own life from 13 Reasons Why. There has been much debate about the series in the medical community," they said in a joint statement, as THR reported. "But this positive change will ensure that 13 Reasons Why continues to encourage open conversation about mental health and suicide prevention — while also mitigating the risk for the most vulnerable teenage viewers."

Ron Avi Astor at the University of Southern California, who studies adolescent bullying and mental health, discussed with NPR's Anya Kamenetz how the images of self-harm on the show could affect teens.

Avi Astor told Kamenetz that the depiction could be contagious — but just for certain teens. "It's not just that any random kid would see it and do it," he said, but for a kid who was already thinking about suicide, it had the potential to influence their behavior.

If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (En Español: 1-888-628-9454; Deaf and Hard of Hearing: 1-800-799-4889) or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The immersive Haus of Creep opens at ROW DTLA this weekend.; Credit: Courtesy of Just Fix It Productions

Read the full article at LAist

Hachette Book Group employees in New York City, during a Thursday walkout protesting their company's decision to publish Woody Allen's memoir.; Credit: Kendra Barkoff Lamy/Twitter

On Thursday afternoon, dozens of employees of the publishing imprints Grand Central Publishing and Little, Brown staged a walkout to protest Grand Central's decision to publish Woody Allen's memoir, Apropos of Nothing, next month.

Both imprints are owned by Hachette Book Group (HBG), the same house that published journalist Ronan Farrow's Catch and Kill. The walkout comes after Farrow announced on Tuesday that he felt he could no longer work with HBG after the Allen acquisition.

Farrow is Allen's son with actress Mia Farrow; his sister, Dylan Farrow, has accused Allen of having sexually abused her as a child. Allen has long denied her allegations.

In his statement, Farrow wrote in part that HBG "concealed the decision from me and its own employees while we were working on Catch and Kill — a book about how powerful men, including Woody Allen, avoid accountability for sexual abuse."

Dylan Farrow also released a statement on Monday evening, in which she said in part: "Hachette's publishing of Woody Allen's memoir is deeply upsetting to me personally and an utter betrayal of my brother whose brave reporting, capitalized on by Hachette, gave voice to numerous survivors of sexual assault by powerful men. ... This provides yet another example of the profound privilege that power, money and notoriety affords. Hachette's complicity in this should be called out for what it is and they should have to answer for it."

Employees at both HBG's New York and Boston offices participated in the Thursday walkout. Many also sent out an auto-reply email that read in part: "We stand in solidarity with Ronan Farrow, Dylan Farrow and survivors of sexual assault." Those include Little, Brown executive editor Vanessa Mobley, who was the editor of Catch and Kill.

In a statement sent to NPR Thursday afternoon, HBG CEO Michael Pietsch said: "We respect and understand the perspective of our employees who have decided to express their concern over the publication of this book. We will engage our staff in a fuller discussion about this at the earliest opportunity."

NPR reached out for comment to Allen's agent, who did not respond as of publication time.

The New York Post reported that HBG employees approached the company's human resources department on Thursday afternoon to complain about the planned publication of Allen's book. A Hachette employee told NPR that HBG's CEO, Michael Pietch, attempted to hold a town hall meeting on Thursday to discuss the issue, but the employees walked out before the meeting was held.

Farrow's agent, Lynn Nesbit, told NPR on Thursday, "I feel moved almost to tears by the walkout. It was such a brave gesture to management who, in my opinion, made such a misguided decision." Signing Allen, she said, was "a betrayal of Ronan, of the women in his book, of the issues in the book and of the staff of this publisher." She added that Farrow is "grateful for the support of his colleagues at Little, Brown."

Last year, The New York Times reported that Allen had tried to sell the memoir to several major publishing houses, "only to be met with indifference or hard passes"; one source told NPR on Thursday afternoon that the title had been considered "radioactive" in the publishing world.

Farrow also said in his Tuesday statement that HBG had not fact-checked Allen's memoir, nor did it contact Dylan Farrow for any response. "It also shows a lack of ethics and compassion for victims of sexual abuse, regardless of any personal connection or breach of trust here. ... I've also told Hachette that a publisher that would conduct itself in this way is one I can't work with in good conscience."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Opera singer Plácido Domingo, shown here speaking in Spain last July, said earlier this month that he tested positive for the coronavirus.; Credit: Ricardo Rubio/Europa Press via Getty Images

Plácido Domingo has been hospitalized because of COVID-19-related complications, according to multiple reports.

He is in stable condition in an Acapulco, Mexico, hospital and will receive medical attention for "as long as the doctors find it necessary until a hoped-for full recovery," a spokesperson for Domingo told Opera News over the weekend.

Domingo's reported hospitalization comes just days after he posted a March 22 message on Facebook revealing that he had tested positive for the disease caused by the coronavirus.

"I feel it is my moral duty to announce that I tested positive for COVID19, also known as the Corona Virus. My family and I are and will remain individually isolated for as long as it is medically necessary. Today we all enjoyed good health, but I presented symptoms of coughing and fever, so I decided to take the test and the result was positive," Domingo said.

Domingo has been one of opera's most reliable and bankable stars and is known for his ability to sing tenor and baritone and in multiple languages, including Italian, English, Russian and Spanish.

Recently, the 79-year-old has been embroiled in controversy as several women accused the Spanish-born singer of sexual misconduct.

On March 10, NPR reported that LA Opera, which Domingo helped establish, announced that its investigation substantiated 10 "inappropriate conduct" claims levied against him dating back to as early as 1986. Domingo resigned as the LA Opera's general director in October.

Prior to that, he withdrew from a production of the Metropolitan Opera's performance of "Macbeth" amid allegations of sexual misconduct.

He has denied the allegations.

Domingo is among a growing list of celebrities who have announced they have tested positive for the coronavirus, including actor Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson, actor Idris Elba, NBA star Kevin Durant, talk show host Andy Cohen and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Faced with financial issues, the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater closed its Chelsea location in 2017.; Credit: Andrew Toth/Getty Images

When the Upright Citizens Brigade announced plans to permanently close its New York bases last week, comedy lost a beloved home. The scrappy, alternative comedy troupe that grew into a school and theater revolutionized improv in New York and beyond with its embrace of "Yes, and ..."

The New York institution incubated the talents of stars such as Kate McKinnon, Aziz Ansari, Chris Gethard, Donald Glover, Aubrey Plaza and many others in the comedy world. A pillar of longform improv, UCB teachings have been brought into countless comedy writers' rooms and are etched into many successful TV shows.

Four of the company's founding members, known as the "UCB4" — Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, Matt Walsh and Ian Roberts — told staff in an email on April 21 that the organization couldn't afford to renew its leases on the group's two Manhattan locations: the UCB theater in Hell's Kitchen and a training center in the Garment District.

UCB also has two locations in Los Angeles where operations have been temporarily halted during the coronavirus outbreak, but there are currently no plans to close them.

Obits followed, marking the exit of UCB's physical presence in the city where it took off in the '90s, when the group turned a former strip club into its first theater.

"The guys that I came up with in New York at the UCB Theater — we made our bones there basically," said Rob Corddry, who went on to be a Daily Show correspondent and star in comedy films including Hot Tub Time Machine. "It's really sad. Sort of the end of an era."

The news comes a month after layoffs were announced at the group's New York and Los Angeles facilities in response to the coronavirus. A small number of staff were kept at training centers on both coasts.

But UCB was under financial strain long before the pandemic. Many UCBers cast the move as an example of an opaque, top-down decision-making that, over the years, they say has sowed distrust in UCB leadership among its members.

"The biggest issue with UCB was the lack of communication of the company and the owners to their employees," said Paris Adkins, a New York performer who was laid off from her administrative job with the company last month.

A previous round of layoffs took place at the end of 2018, mostly of New York employees. Adkins said the pandemic "is just the extenuating circumstance that put things over the edge."

As for the most recent closures, UCB's founders admitted to falling short of expectations.

"Look, we heard the community when they said, 'We're scared, too, and we want better communication,' " Amy Poehler told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview with the UCB4 after the announcement. "I think we did make mistakes, and we're trying to do better."

UCB has not responded to NPR's attempts to contact the organization.

Chris Renfro, an LA-based performer and show producer who relied on UCB as his main source of income, said that learning in March via a mass email that his 3-year career there had come to an end struck him as a betrayal of the values the UCB4 claimed to live by.

"UCB is about a community, it's about having each other's backs," he said, referencing the improv tradition UCB students learn of literally patting each other's backs and saying "Got your back."

"It felt like they had turned their backs on this massive community they had built up around them," he said. "So now there's a weird taste in a lot of peoples' mouths because of that."

According to a letter sent to staff addressing the layoffs, Poehler said she would pay for an additional month of health care for former full-time staff.

Much of the company's operations run on part-time staff, according to Adkins. She estimated that UCB cut a total of 45 New York-based employees across the city since last month.

Despite the community's frustrations, when the indefinite shutdown of the New York outposts turned definite, the tributes rolled in online.

Stephen Colbert, who studied at the peer improv hub Second City in Chicago before moving to New York, tweeted "I'll always be grateful" for the times he was roped in to perform with UCB during the '90s in the acclaimed sketch show mainstay Asssscat.

Daily Show correspondent Jordan Klepper added, "When I left Chicago, the people at UCB NY welcomed me, challenged me, and embodied the NY spirit of full commitment today because tomorrow you could run out of cash and life ships you back home."

Other dispatches on social media were less endearing.

Former students, many of whom shelled out several hundred dollars for improv classes, wrote about negative experiences and wasted money. Some revived longstanding criticism of the theater's policy to not pay its performers, unlike many of its improv peers.

Despite its problems, many felt a sense of community at UCB, Adkins said.

"I think people are grieving," she said. "It's pretty much my only community in New York and I think a lot of people feel that way. You don't get the support of a community like you do at UCB."

In an effort to financially support herself and her peers following the layoffs, Adkins started a GoFundMe page to raise money for New York staff. To date, the account has raised nearly $60,000. She's splitting the funds between staff members, who will receive a month's worth of pay. The rest will be divided among teachers who are in need, Adkins said.

In the THR interview, Amy Poehler assured the UCB community, "We're not leaving New York."

At least for the short-term, the company has moved both LA and New York classes online. For the long-term in New York, leadership has floated plans to return to the old days of renting other independent spaces to hold classes and performances.

Still, even some of its youngest members see the now-shuttered hubs as a piece of history.

"But that's replaceable and people are not," said former training center staff member Maicy Jo Schwartz, who began her UCB NY career in 2014.

Schwartz sees a silver lining.

"I wouldn't be surprised if in the future some people branch off and start their own theaters or their own training centers or their own underground improv and sketch, because New York is a perfect place to do that," she said. "And I do hope that the UCB4 — Amy, Matt, Matt and Ian — can be part of that and support that when there are future endeavors that their alumni take on."

NPR's Elizabeth Blair contributed to this story.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

I know these Presidential debates aren’t debates in the historical sense.  Regardless, I’m looking forward to seeing how both men do on a topic of immense complexity.  Is Mitt Romney going to be more forthcoming about what tax deductions he’d want cut to keep his tax reform plan from ballooning the deficit?  Will President Obama  give more detail about how he would improve the economy, short of a government stimulus that could never get through a GOP Congress?

I’ll be live tweeting during the debate.  Join me @AirTalk #debates.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

After the San Francisco 49ers beat the Atlanta Falcons for the right to go to the Super Bowl, I tweeted my appreciation of a California team going to the game.  If no local team is in the running (or exists), I'm always glad to root for a Bay Area team that makes it.

My tweet got responses from some Southern Californians who have no interest in supporting a San Francisco team, especially given the Giants' World Series championship.  It goes without saying that many Dodger fans are loathe to support the Giants, under any circumstances. 

Given the historic bad blood between the teams, that's no surprise, but I think it runs even deeper.  The divide between Northern and Southern California is about more than sports, or even water rights.  It's rooted in distinct cultural differences between the two.

However, California has evolved to the point where the bigger cultural divide now might be between coastal and inland regions.  Rural Northern Californians typically dislike San Francisco far more than Angelenos do.  Similarly, inland Southern California residents often see Los Angeles as the prohibitively expensive home of two-hour traffic jams.

Until the Inland Empire or the San Joaquin Valley get major league teams, we won't see that rivalry playing out at a stadium near you.   In the meantime, I'm cheering on the Niners, and my state, on February 3rd.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Shout out to my 20 million brothers and sisters-  The one in seven U.S. taxpayers who waited until the last minute to file. 

This year, the IRS even gave us 'til April 18th-  So the 18th is when I filed- For my extension!  See you in October!

In my defense, it was not due to lack of effort.  It feels like I spent 200 hours on my taxes this year, because they were unusually complicated. 

Back when I was in my twenties?  Much effort was put into stacking red milk crates for bookshelves and trying to fold up a futon without mangling my fingers-30 years later, I'm trying to do really smart grown-up things.

To wit, my life partner and I have been business partners for almost 20 years.  We used to be young-  Now we're-ahem-"less young"-  Picture the Boomers you see in those ads, silver-haired, in wet suits, running towards the ocean with surfboards, very at peace with nature and our fully-funded 401-K plans - Except that we don't surf and, regarding those 401-K plans?

Well, what I have written on the notepad I stole from Charles Schwab is-  And I quote:
"Retirement and write it off, and something about medical." 

When I look at this enigmatic scribble, an image comes to me: A friendly thirty-something man dressed in charcoal gray business casual- And a desk, and a plant-  And that man is saying:

"Sandra, by all means, you need to form a C corp!  NOT an S corp!"

But wait, is that what he said? Maybe it was:
"Sandra, by all means, you need to form an S Corp!  NOT a C corp!"

It was like being in school and confronting a page of long division- Or sitting in a deadly after-lunch class like "US Government"-  There's this mix of incomprehension, coupled with boredom, that makes it all sound like white noise.

S corp, C corp-  These things involve a part of my brain that refuses to fire.  All I know is there was one kind that was right, it's not the one I did, at some moderate expense, and now I'm going to jail. 

Where at least I won't have to fold a futon.  I think.

Next week: Separate Bathrooms, Separate Quicken Accounts

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Dave Ramsey—  The financial radio talk show host—  Says every couple has two people.  One is the nerd with the calculator.   The other is the spendy free spirit. 

In my couple, I am the nerd.  I am calmed by a seven-by-seven Ken Ken and a mechanical pencil.  No surprise that I have used Quicken now for several decades.  But it seems in the last five or 10 years—  What with the Russian hackers stealing our info to get porn—  The cheapo, Windows-based laptops Quicken favors have gotten very buggy. 

So buggy, I bought a sacrificial Dell laptop just for Quicken.   But even that lasted barely six months without crashing.  So Charlie, the free spirit, took over paying the bills!  Writing checks by hand!  Notating them in a large, impressive leatherette binder!  The checks are pretty—tan and sort of antique-looking.  There's a stagecoach on them.

This was all charming until I realized it was tax time. To get all my financial info into the computer, I was going to have to hand-enter each check.  With a quill pen and a butter churn.

While in the joyous process of hand-inputting each check that went out in calendar year 2016— I learned some interesting things!

That beautiful 8-lane highway we drove on that time we visited friends in Orange County? That was a toll road that we apparently didn't pay for. 250 dollar fine! Plus--We're subscribers to something called Cook's Country Magazine, even though I am NOT into "homestyle cooking." And -- we've been paying hundreds of dollars a month for gym memberships that I didn't know we have!

Argh!

Losing it, I throw in the towel and buy myself my own personal version of Quicken—for Mac—  There's a help line to call—  And unbelievably, an operator immediately answers.  He's a courteous gentleman with a lilting, slightly British accent.  He answers my "sign in" question, and asks: "Do you want me to stay on the line while you try it?" "Sure!" I say, surprised.

We click pleasantly through a few more windows—  He's marvelously patient, and attentive—  Wanting to be entertaining, I actually start reciting my passwords aloud as I type them.  

"Let's see—2, 3, 4—asterisk, star, Sparky Sparky, that was my first pet— "Now I'm actually going to have to go downstairs to get my purse," I say, "and maybe go to the ladies' on the way 'cause I've had a lot of coffee— "
"It's fine!" he says—
"Well you can continue playing Solitaire or whatever you're doing!" I say.  And he chuckles!
Doing your taxes?  It takes a village.  And a butter churn.

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The Getty spent $65m (and change) for this late Manet masterpiece, "Spring."

A  132-year-old vision of springtime has landed permanently at the Getty Museum, smack in the middle of this California autumn: "Spring (Jeanne Demarsy)," one of Impressionist painter Edouard Manet’s  last completed pictures.

Here's what Getty Director Timothy Potts had to say about the artist:

Manet was the ultimate painter’s painter: totally committed to his craft, solidly grounded in the history of painting and yet determined to carve out a new path for himself and for modern art. ... Alone of his contemporaries (the only one who comes near is Degas), Manet achieved this almost impossible balancing act, absorbing and channeling the achievements of the past into a radically new vision of what painting could be.

"Spring" somehow manages to be the evocation of youth itself and all its hopes. The subject is 16-year-old actress Jeanne Demarsy, just then seeing her stage career ascend at the same time Manet neared the end of his own career. (He died at age 51 in 1883,  soon after the painting went on display.) 

For most of the years since its creation, the picture has been in private hands. It was recently on loan to the National Gallery.

Getty Assistant Curator Scott Allan said that the Getty worked hard to acquire "Spring" and was lucky to get her. According to news reports, the Christie's auction price paid was an eyebrow-lifting $65 million — about double the top previous sale price for a Manet. "We don’t discuss the price," Potts said.

At the Getty, "Spring (Jeanne Demarsy)" hangs next to an early Manet in the museum's Impressionist-Post Impressionist gallery. It was intended to be one of the "Four Seasons" by the late-19th century French master. The series was never completed (although "Autumn" hangs in a museum in France).

(More seasoning: Manet's "Autumn." Museum of Fine Arts of Nancy, France)

Allan said that, unlike many of Manet's early works, "Spring" was intended to hang in the Salon, the French art establishment’s showplace of traditional painting, which had rejected innovators like the Impressionists for decades. That led most of the Impressionists to disdain the Salon. But Allan said Manet was extremely pleased that his late work was accepted there. 

Here's Potts again:

So popular was it that "Spring" became the subject of one of the first color photographs of a work of art. Its acquisition by the Getty brings to Los Angeles the most important — and beautiful! — painting by this artist left in private hands and one of the great masterpieces of late-19th-century art. 

The painting depicts a lovely teenager, dressed in the peak of 1880s fashion in a blue-on-white printed dress; a flowered, fringed hat; and a parasol balanced on her left shoulder. The background features white rhododendrons, barely in blossom.

Mlle. Demarsy stares off to the left, the demure image of a confident young woman at the earliest spring of her adulthood, with an entire creative life before her, already immortalized before the world by one of the century’s greatest artists.

But Manet was himself at the peak of his accomplishments,  just before his sudden demise.
 
"Spring" became one of Manet’s most popular works, deeply appreciated by art lovers young and old and by critics of both the old guard and the avant garde. It was his last picture to hang in the Salon. Manet’s powers would soon decline, and he devoted much of his last few months to watercolors, said Allan.

(Getty director Timothy Potts looks at the Getty's new painting, Manet's "Spring." Getty Museum)

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Frank Romero with one of his French paintings, in his home in the South of France. But every year, he and his wife Sharon throw a big studio sale for Christmas, and you're invited.; Credit: John Rabe

"Live! Life's a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!" - Auntie Mame.

Your calendar is filling up, but here are four holiday events you'll want to make room for:

Every year, pioneering Chicano artist Frank Romero and his wife Sharon throw a big studio sale that includes works by a wide group of artists, and a lot of food and drink. It's just as much a party as a sales event, and Frank and the other artists are always there to meet and greet. And now that the couple is spending more time at their home in France, it's a chance for their old friends to catch up with them, so who knows who you'll see from L.A.'s arts community.

RELATED: See Frank's new works - French scenes with an East LA flavor

The Romero Studio annual Christmas party and sale is Saturday, Dec. 6, 6-10pm; and Sunday, Dec. 7, 1-5pm, at Plaza de la Raza, Boathouse Gallery, 3540 North Mission Rd., LA CA 90031 (in Lincoln Park across from the DMV — which BTW is a very good DMV).

Then, on Sunday, Dec. 14, at 4:30pm,  it's the Advent Procession of Lessons and Carols, at St. James Episcopal Church, which a friend describes as "one of the truly beautiful choral events of the season," and the highlight of the Choir of St. James' season. It's free and it's at St. James' Episcopal Church in Koreatown (3903 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles 90010).
 

"Auntie Mame," the 1958 Rosalind Russell movie with more quotable quips than a weekend getaway with Oscar Wilde, has become something of a Christmas tradition. It's screening at the American Cinematheque's Egyptian Theatre on Wednesday, Dec. 17, at 7:30. As delightful as this movie is any day of the week on your TV at home, this is a film to be seen in 35mm with a theater full of people reacting to every bon mot and heart-touching moment.

GO INSIDE: The Disney Hall organ, "Hurricane Mama," turns 10

Last year, my husband and I blindly went to Disney Hall for the Holiday Organ Spectacular. We expected some music and a little fun. But it really was spectacular. It's back this year, on Friday, Dec. 19, with organist David Higgs leading the evening from the console of Hurricane Mama.

If you've never seen or heard the organ in person, this is a great evening because Higgs — a teacher as well as master organist — gives you a guided tour of every stop, and every mood the organ can produce, from cathedral-loud to country-church-quiet. At the end of the night, he breaks the audience into parts to sing "The Twelve Days of Christmas," and you may sing as loud as you like.

These are just a few curated selections, but they're just the tip of the iceberg in Southern California; please make your own holiday event recommendations in the comments below. 

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

One of 4,000 "The Far Side" panels Gary Larson drew over 14 years. The full collection is now out in paperback.; Credit: Gary Larson

Off-Ramp animation expert Charles Solomon reviews "The Complete Far Side: 1980-1994" by Gary Larson.

It’s hard to believe the last panel of Gary Larson’s wildly popular comic strip “The Far Side” ran 20 years ago: January 1, 1995. The comics page of the LA Times (and many other papers) still feels empty without it.

RELATED: Charles Solomon interviews artists responsible for look of "Big Hero 6"

During its 14-year run, "The Far Side" brought a new style of humor to newspaper comics that was weird, outré and hilarious. The strip became an international phenomenon, appearing in over 1,900 newspapers worldwide. Larson won both the National Cartoonists' Society Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year and the Best Syndicated Panel Award. An exhibit of original artwork from the strip broke attendance records at natural history museums in San Francisco, Denver and here in L.A. Fans bought tens of millions of "Far Side" books and calendars.

Much of the humor in “The Far Side” derived from Larson's seemingly effortless juxtaposition of the mundane and bizarre. When a bug-housewife declares "I'm leaving you, Charles...and I'm taking the grubs with me," it's the utter normalcy of the scene that makes it so funny. Mrs. Bug wears cats eye glasses, while Mr. Bug reads his newspaper in an easy chair with a doily on the back.

Or, a mummy sits an office waiting room reading a magazine while a secretary says into the intercom, “Mr. Bailey? There’s a gentlemen here who claims an ancestor of your once defiled his crypt, and now you’re the last remaining Bailey and … oh, something about a curse. Should I send him in?”

"The Complete Far Side" contains every strip ever syndicated: more than 4,000 panels. It should probably come with a warning label, "Caution: reading this book may result in hyperventilation from uncontrollable laughter." Except for a few references to Leona Helmsley or other now-forgotten figures, Larson’s humor remains as offbeat and funny as it was when the strips were first printed.

Andrews and McMeel initially released this collection in 2003 in two hardbound volumes that weighed close to 10 pounds apiece. You needed a sturdy table to read them. The three volumes in the paperback re-issue weigh in around three pounds and can be held comfortably in the lap for a while.

Because “The Far Side” ended two decades ago, many people under 30 don’t know it. The reprinted collection offers geezers (35 or older) a chance to give a present that should delight to that impossible-to-shop-for son, daughter, niece or nephew. How often does an older adult get a chance to appear cool at Christmas or Hanuka? 

And if that ingrate kid doesn’t appreciate it, "The Complete Far Side" also makes an excellent self-indulgence.

Charles Solomon lends his animatio expertise to Off-Ramp and Filmweek on Airtalk, and has just been awarded the Annie's (The International Animated Film Society) June Foray Award, "for his significant and benevolent or charitable impact on the art and industry of animation." Congratulations, Charles!

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Rob Marshall is either the bravest director in Hollywood or the most foolhardy. Three of his five theatrical films — the musicals "Chicago," "Nine" and now "Into the Woods" — don't just invite comparison to the eccentric genius of other artists, they insist on it.

Originally a Bob Fosse stage project, "Chicago" was so imbued with Fosse's vitriolic spirit that even in Marshall's more straightforward hands the movie version felt like the missing piece in a triptych with Fosse's "Cabaret" and "All That Jazz."

"Nine" is the musical created from Fellini's masterpiece "8 1/2."

(Marcello Mastroianni in Fellini's "8 1/2")

Odd enough that someone thought Fellini's intimate but epic fugue on his own creative doubts and sexual fantasies should be adapted by others for Broadway; stranger still to re-import the hybrid back to the screen, in the workmanlike form Marshall gave to it.

And now we have "Into the Woods," a film placing Marshall in the long line of moviemakers defeated by Sondheim's difficult musical brilliance and penchant for challenging material. It's distinguished company, reaching back all the way to "A Hard Day's Night" director Richard Lester's re-invention of "A Funny Thing Happened (On the Way to the Forum)" as a kind of psychedelic Keystone Cops movie, and forward to Tim Burton's more adept but still wrong-headed Murnau-meets-Hammer-Horror approach to "Sweeney Todd."

Even director Hal Prince, the principal theatrical collaborator during Sondheim's most fertile and formative period, made an absolute hash of their shared stage success "A Little Night Music" in a film version later disavowed by both men, and mostly remembered for Elizabeth Taylor's chirpy and discernibly flat rendition of "Send in the Clowns."

Liz singing "Send in the Flat Clowns"

It's just possible that the real problem is that Sondheim's self-reflexive and deconstructive impulse (his musicals are almost always and to varying degrees commentaries on the Musical itself) makes his projects unfit for screen adaptation. In movies, we miss the artifice of the proscenium, the sweat on the actor's brow. But if any of Sondheim's late-period projects held out the hope of a successful movie version it was surely "Into the Woods," a droll recombination of the fairytale form's literary DNA into something like Sondheim's masterpiece "Company," set in a realm of magic beanstalks and slippers made of glass.

The characters are straight out of the Disney pantheon (or "Shrek"): Cinderella meets Rapunzel meets Red Riding Hood meets Jack and his Beanstalk, with a generic Wicked Witch, a couple of not so charming Prince Charmings, plus a peasant couple thrown in. But the issues at stake — marital fidelity, raising children, the fear of aging and death — are complicated, and filled with gray tones which Sondheim and librettist James Lapine masterfully etched across the fairytale's Manichean black and white.

What seemed audacious when Sondheim and Lapine conceived it in 1987 ought to fit comfortably into the era of "Sleepy Hollow" and "Maleficent," but in Marshall's hands, it does not. The good news is that though populated by what old school TV shows used to call a Galaxy of Today's Brightest Stars (Anna Kendrick as an appealingly unglamorous Cinderella; Chris Pine as the nymphomaniac Prince who stalks her; Meryl Streep quite moving in the Wicked Witch role made famous on Broadway by Bernadette Peters) this is mostly a very well-sung movie. There have been controversial excisions and revisions (enabled by Lapine, who is Marshall's screenwriter), but as an introduction to one of Sondheim's more beloved scores, "Into the Woods" makes for a solid musical primer.

WATCH: The "Into the Woods" trailer

But though Marshall has taken a lot of flack for daring to cut out characters (most notably the stage production's Narrator, who served as a kind of Greek Chorus in the original) and for softening plot points (Rapunzel died onstage), the big problem is that Marshall isn't nearly ruthless enough in rethinking "Into the Woods" as an honest-to-God movie. There are many moments (Johnny Depp ending a scene with a stagy howl at the Moon that virtually screams "and... fade out!;" the unseen death of a major character) where Marshall embraces the limitations of stagecraft when something bigger and more cinematic is needed, as if afraid to mar the pedigree of Broadway with Hollywood's debased visual stamp.

"Giants in the Sky," Jack's coming-of-age number, where he describes finding manhood in the sexual and physical dangers available above the clouds in the Giant's Castle, is a showstopper onstage, where we're willing to accept rhetoric in place of physical immediacy. Onscreen, it's simply frustrating for a character to suddenly appear and tell us he's just had the adventure of a lifetime, and that it's too bad we missed it.

The Woods themselves — both character and symbol onstage, a kind of living maze representing moral confusion — are lush here and geographically nondescript, like a particularly plush unit set, done up in a generic Lloyd Webber-meets-Disney house style.

Perhaps most unfortunately of all, Marshall seems constitutionally incapable of conveying the pervasive satiric impulse at the heart of the Sondheim/Lapine original, which could have been called "What Happens After Happily Ever After." Without ironic distancing, the film's second half, where the characters betray each other in decidedly contemporary sexual and self-interested terms, plays as non-sequitur.

It's possible to imagine a more idiosyncratic movie director who both understands and embraces the arsenal of cinematic effects available through editing, camera movement and design transforming "Into the Woods" into a rousing cinematic triumph — the young Terry Gilliam comes to mind. But Hollywood doesn't really embrace its daring cranks and visionaries very often, as Gilliam's difficult career demonstrates. Whenever possible, today's studios like to import genius at a safe remove, and then hand it off to a reliable journeyman who won't make waves or piss off the suits. The limitations of that approach are visible in every scene of "Into the Woods," and perhaps they explain its failure best of all. It's one thing not to be up to the task of adapting a work of odd brilliance. It's something else again to not even take it on.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Actors Carla Gugino, Matthew Lillard and Sir Patrick Stewart pose at the "Match" screening during the Palm Springs International Film Festival on January 3, 2015 in Palm Springs, California. ; Credit: Chelsea Lauren/Getty Images for PSIFF

Is there a happier star in Hollywood than Patrick Stewart?

Certainly no one seems to be having more fun than the onetime Star Trek captain and current (and seemingly permanent) X-Man. And why shouldn't Sir Patrick be pleased with himself? He really has got it all: a thriving stage profile in both New York and London, the unconditional love of a vast and loyal fan base, and a film career that oscillates freely between franchise blockbusters and the small, character-driven chamber pieces Stewart so clearly relishes.

"Match" is about as small a movie as Stewart has ever appeared in: a well-intentioned three-character film studded with very funny dialogue courtesy of writer/director Stephen Belber, upon whose play "Match" is based.

Stewart plays an aging gay dance instructor named Tobi Powell, who may or may not have sired a child back in the swinging 60s – an era movies now take to have been 10 years of uninterrupted orgy punctuated by Beatles records and gunshots aimed at the Kennedy brothers.

As the saying goes, "If you can remember the '60s, you weren't there." Stewart's Tobi Powell was vibrantly there at the time, so it's perhaps natural that he can't seem to recall whether or not one of his rare couplings with a female partner might have had some unintended consequences.

Mincing slightly and speaking in an accent that sounds Midwestern by way of Wales, Stewart is an absolute blast to watch. His genuine (and usually underutilized) flair for comedy is roguishly on display, allowing "Match" to shift between pathos and farce with an assurance born more of the performer's bravado than the emotional contours of Belber's somewhat overeager text.

Though allegedly a bit of a shut-in, Tobi is a minor masterpiece of a lost and exuberant art form: the exaggerated star turn. It's unsurprising Frank Langella got a Tony nomination for playing him on Broadway a decade ago, and at least a bit unexpected that Stewart has gone completely unnoticed this awards season, even by the nomination-happy Golden Globes.

Belber's best writing is mostly his comedic stuff. One aria comparing cunnilingus to knitting may just be the best scene of its type since Meg Ryan faked an orgasm in "When Harry Met Sally" a quarter century ago.

Solid and believable supporting turns from Carla Gugino and Matthew Lillard add to the fun until Belber's script bogs down in the third act into the kind of paint-by-numbers epiphany shtick even TV has given up on at this point.

WATCH: The official trailer for "Match," starring Patrick Stewart

Everybody cries. Everybody changes. Everybody yawns.  Or I did anyway.

Still, go see this movie — or better yet, watch it on your phone, since it's shot almost entirely in close up — to see a grand and gracefully aging actor strut his stuff with contagious delight. You will definitely laugh, and, God, does this movie hope you'll also cry.

But if you do weep, don't be surprised if, like Tobi himself, you hate yourself in the morning.

Off-Ramp contributor R. H. Greene is covering the 26th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival, where he recently saw the new comedy "Match" starring Patrick Stewart. "Match" comes to theaters and video-on-demand on Jan. 14.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

A scene from Tomislav Mrisic's "Cowboys (Kauboji)," which screened at the Palm Springs Film Festival.; Credit: Kino films

It has escaped the average filmgoer's notice, but Eastern Europe has been in the midst of a cinematic renaissance for quite a while now. A few individual titles and filmmakers have bubbled to the surface in U.S. cinemas, including Danis Toanovic's Serbian antiwar satire "No Man's Land," which won an Oscar in 2001, and Cristian Mungiu's Romanian abortion drama "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days," which nabbed the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2007.

Those are both great movies, but they are also the small tip of a very large iceberg. This year, Estonian filmmaker Zaza Urushadze's "Tangerines" — a humanist drama about the Georgian civil war of 1992 — is a leading contender for a foreign film Oscar.

As of now, its main competitor for the trophy would seem to be the Polish film "Ida" by Pawel Pawlikowski, which has taken most of the top critics prizes for foreign film this awards season. And who has heard of Radu Jude, the witty Romanian director of "The Happiest Girl in the World," or Kamen Kalev, Bulgaria's great hope for the cinematic future? Among so many others.

A sort of "Waiting for Guffman" with a Croat twist, the delightful Croatian Oscar entry "Cowboys (Kauboji)" isn't in the same league as the best Eastern Europe has to offer, and in an odd way this is one of its strengths.

Tomislav Mrisic's film utterly lacks pretension, which is not to say that it has no point to make. If there's an Eastern European precedent for "Cowboys'" assured mix of satire, drama and farce, it's probably the "Loves of a Blonde"-era Milos Forman.

Mrisic shares with Forman an acute eye for the foibles of small town bureaucracy and a soft humanism that simultaneously allows "Cowboys" to embrace its rag-tag ensemble of eccentrics and to spoof them mercilessly.

(A screen shot from Croation Oscar entry "Cowboys (Kauboji)")

The plot sees Sasa (Sasa Anlokovic), a failed and hangdog theater director with health problems, returning to his small and economically desolate Croatian town, where he is enlisted by an old friend-turned-local-bureaucrat to bring Big City "culture" to the sticks.

Aware that his lung cancer may have fallen out of remission and that time may be running out for him, Sasa sets about the task of creating what may be his last opus with the clay available to hand: a half dozen unskilled, uneducated and, in most cases, un-hygienic misfits, culled from the dregs of the town. They decide to create a Western stageplay based on their shared love of "Stagecoach," "High Noon" and John Wayne. Something decidedly unlike "Stagecoach" is the result.

There are titters and belly laughs abounding in "Cowboys" — a film that may actually be even funnier to an American audience than it is in Croatia, given Mrisic's deft mangling of the worn-out genre cliches of old school horse opera.

The performances are all solid and specific: This is no undifferentiated cluster of cliche yahoos, but rather a broadly drawn ensemble, in which each character has a specific logic and an unspoken need he or she is trying to fill.

WATCH the "Cowboys" trailer in the original Croatian

Mrisic finds much to mock in his small town provincials, but also much to celebrate. "Cowboys" is a smart film that still sees goodness everywhere it looks, which makes it a refreshing change not just from the American school of rote affirmation comedy but also from the relentless bleakness we associate with so much European fare.

For all the farce on hand, "Cowboys" is in the end a covertly passionate defense of the creative act: Its imperishability and its importance for its own sake, excluding aesthetic considerations. It is also a plea for that hoary old chestnut, the healing power of laughter. While that may read like a cliche, with "Cowboys," Mrisic's point is made.

Off-Ramp contributor R.H. Greene is covering the 26th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival and will be posting regularly from there.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Andrew J. West stars in Anna Mastro's "Walter"; Credit: "Walter"

It's always dicey to characterize a major film festival based on the movies you personally see there, because no matter how diligent you try to be, your impression will always be statistically anecdotal.

I'll see perhaps 10 percent of the films at this year's Palm Springs International Film Festival by the time they roll up the red carpets for the final time, added to the 25 or so I'd watched before I got here, owing to the festival's unique programming policies.

Not bad considering there are 190 movies being screened. So I think I've got the feel of things here. I wouldn't want my doctor to diagnose me based on a test with a 35 to 40 percent chance of accuracy, but I'm not a doctor. Instead of "Do no harm," I quote Spencer Tracy to myself. He said the secret to the creative process is to "just look 'em in the eye and tell 'em the truth."

And the truth is, with the exception of a couple of documentaries and a horror movie, virtually every film I've seen at Palm Springs so far shared some obvious characteristics: the Palm Springs International Film Festival loves it some poignancy and affirmation.

I've already commented on "Match," the Patrick Stewart acting showcase, and "Cowboys," a very funny Croatian comedy with cross-currents of seriousness. I may comment later about "Today," Iran's Oscar submission. (It's terrific by the way, a deeply affecting story about a burnt out cab driver who gets yanked into the world of a battered, unwed mother who steps into his cab.)

(Still from "Today” (Emrooz) by Iranian filmmaker Reza Mirkarimi)

I also saw an Anne Hathaway passion project called "Song One" here. I'm not going to write about it because I'm not in the mood to stomp on somebody else's butterfly. Plus the dramedy "1001 Grams" by the splendiferous-ly named Norwegian Bent Hamer, whose deadpan satire is routinely compared to Jacques Tati.

WATCH the official trailer for "1001 Grams," which includes some foreign languages

At their best, these are all movies that want to move the audience to tears before bouncing a ray of hope off the screen at them. At their worst, these movies are about pain in the same way Novocain is. They acknowledge its reality, in order to neutralize it.

Filmmaker Anna Mastro's debut film "Walter" (one of the Palm Springs premieres) fits what seems to be the festival's programming model, too, and is, I think, a really quite appealing little indie film, with the by now familiar mildly magical realist bent.

It's is a story about grief, though one with a screwball premise so that it doesn't quite present that way at first. Walter (portrayed with charisma and nuance by Andrew J. West) is a 20-something slacker, but a very uptight one, with a soldier's commitment to dress and routine.

He still lives with mom (Virginia Madsen, now shifting toward the character actress portion of her career with ease and grace) and has a job one rung above fast food worker on the ladder of success: He's a ticket taker at the local multiplex.

But what the world surely sees as failure, Walter knows to be his cover for a far more important vocation. Walter's father died when he was just 10 years old; ever since the funeral, Walter has realized something we don't: His real job in life is to decide where people go after they die.

His snap judgments secretly send people to heaven or hell ... until a dead guy from Walter's past shows up and demands that Walter determine his fate, and then all hell breaks loose.

It's an odd premise, bordering on the labored, but Mastro and her extremely appealing cast pull it off, in part by wearing their influences on their sleeves. The fingerprints of Wes Anderson are all over this picture, especially in terms of the way shots are framed and music is used, and I was able to identify the pivotal contribution of "Beasts of the Southern Wild" co-composer Dan Romer by ear, long before I noticed his screen credit.

I suppose that's supposed to be a damning criticism of a first-timer, but I don't see it that way. Tarantino aped Scorsese for years and virtually remade a minor Hong Kong gangster picture when he debuted with "Reservoir Dogs."

Spielberg acknowledges his debt to David Lean. Hitchcock's apprenticeship at Germany's UFA film studio resulted in a lifelong visual and thematic debt to the great Expressionist master Fritz Lang.

The question is, what do you do with your influences, how do you make them your own? And Mastro — who has a real gift for casting, pacing a scene and maneuvering her actors easily between farce and seriousness — has her own talents. She understands how Anderson's visual syntax has become a cinematic shorthand for quirk, and she deploys it to that effect, then tells the story at hand.

There are some issues with that story, though. There's a girl in concessions (Leven Rambin) Walter likes, and there's a bully at work. For all its surface oddity, the mechanical underpinnings of "Walter" frequently feel like they belong in an "American Pie" sequel.

And yet this movie won me over. I liked its faith in the movie palace as a place that still vibrates with the marvelous. I found a dream sequence, where Rambin undresses to camera while sprawled on a rich yellow bed of movie house popcorn hilarious and deeply expressive.

But I think my affection for this picture is mostly centered on Mastro and her cast, which includes a standout performance by Justin Kirk as a very grounded ghost and a broad but successful cameo from William H. Macy as Walter's psychiatrist. They're all groping toward something rather grim and real about loss, while doing their best to serve up some laughs and wonder along the way.

It touched me, because it feels kind of wise.

Off-Ramp contributor R.H. Greene, former editor of Boxoffice Magazine, is in Palm Spring this week to cover the 26th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival. Look for his missives here, and listen Saturday at noon to Off-Ramp, when he'll interview Chaz Ebert about her late husband Roger Ebert's contributions to the film festival circuit.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

There are still a couple dozen tickets left for one of the most interestingly-cast performances of H.G. Wells, Orson Welles and Howard Koch's "War of the Worlds." On Saturday, Jan. 17,  generations of Star Trek actors will take on the world's most famous radio show.

The cast — directed by Jim Fall — features: René Auberjonois (“Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”), Michael Dorn (“Star Trek: TNG”), Dean Haglund (“The X-Files”), Walter Koenig ("Star Trek"), Linda Park ("Star Trek: Enterprise"), Jason Ritter (“The Event”), Tim Russ (“Star Trek: Voyager”), Armin Shimerman (“Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”) and Wil Wheaton, playing... Orson Welles.

The performance is a fundraiser for Sci-Fest LA, the new annual science fiction play festival, so tickets aren't cheap — but they're scarce, and this looks like a memorable night.

KPCC and "Off-Ramp" celebrated the 75th anniversary of the broadcast last year by distributing the original 1938 performance, and a new documentary, internationally... introduced by George Takei, another original Trek actor you might have heard of.

War of the Worlds: Sat., Jan. 17,  8 PM; The Acme Theatre, 135 North La Brea Ave. LA CA 90036

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

A cleaning crew disinfects a New York City subway train on May 4, 2020 in New York City. ; Credit: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

As of Monday afternoon, L.A. County has at least 1,260 deaths and 26,238 confirmed cases of coronavirus. The United States has more than a million cases of the virus with more than 67,000 deaths. Meanwhile, new models put together by FEMA project that we could see up to 200,000 new cases a day by the end of the month, according to the New York Times. 

The L.A. Times reports that scientists have discovered a new strain of the deadly coronavirus that is even more contagious. The study finds that the new strain first appeared in February in Europe and has been the dominant strain across the world since mid-March. Plus, some COVID-19 patients are experiencing issues with blood clotting even after respiratory issues have died down. Today on AirTalk, we get the latest with an infectious disease specialist who will take your questions. Call 866-893-5722 to join the conversation. 

With files from LAist. Read the full story here.

Guest:

Dean Blumberg, M.D., professor of medicine and chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at UC Davis Children’s Hospital

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Phlebotomists process specimens of people getting tested for coronavirus antibodies in Spring Valley. ; Credit: Yana Paskova/Getty Images

As of Tuesday afternoon, L.A. County has at least 1,314 deaths and 27,836 confirmed cases of coronavirus.

New confirmed infections per day in the U.S. exceed 20,000, and deaths per day are well over 1,000,000 according to figures from Johns Hopkins University. And public health officials warn that the failure to flatten the curve and drive down the infection rate in places could lead to many more deaths — perhaps tens of thousands — as people are allowed to venture out and businesses reopen. From the marbled halls of Italy to the wheat fields of Kansas, health authorities are increasingly warning that the question isn’t whether a second wave of coronavirus infections and deaths will hit, but when — and how badly. President Donald Trump said his COVID-19 task force would keep working but focus more on rebooting the economy. According to the Orange County Register, more OC beaches received approval to open with limited hours.

Today on AirTalk, we get the latest on COVID-19. Do you have questions for our infectious disease specialist? Join the conversation by calling 866-893-5722. 

With files from LAist and the Associated Press 

Guest: 

Peter Chin-Hong, M.D., infectious disease specialist and professor of medicine at the UCSF Medical Center; he tweets @PCH_SF

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The temperature of a Bolivian child is measured in front of Bolivian embassy during a demonstration requesting repatriation on April 28, 2020 in Santiago, Chile. ; Credit: Marcelo Hernandez/Getty Images

As of Wednesday afternoon, L.A. County has at least 1,367 deaths and 28,646 confirmed cases of coronavirus. Meanwhile, parts of the state are slowly reopening some industries. 

Certain businesses and recreational spaces in Los Angeles County will be allowed to reopen beginning Friday, county officials announced at a media briefing. Those include hiking trails, golf courses, florists, car dealerships and certain retail stores. School districts continue to work through challenges as they consider how to reopen. Kids and teens are coming down with an inflammatory syndrome that experts believe could be linked to COVID-19, NPR News reports. Today on AirTalk, we get the latest on the pandemic with a noted physician, plus we’ll look at the expanding list of symptoms associated with the coronavirus. Are you a parent who has questions about the virus and kids? We want to hear from you. Join the conversation by calling 866-893-5722. 

With files from LAist

Guest:

Richard Jackson, M.D., pediatrician, epidemiologist and professor emeritus at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, he’s served in many leadership positions with the California Health Department, including as the State Health Officer, for nine years he served as director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The TLC Chinese Theatre is shown on April 11, 2020 in Hollywood, California. ; Credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Last week, L.A. City Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell introduced a motion that would create a taskforce to revitalize on-location television and film production, which went down 18 percent in the first quarter of 2020, thanks to the coronavirus. 

The motion asks Film L.A., the nonprofit that oversees film and TV productions in Los Angeles, to create a taskforce of industry experts who will prepare recommendations for how filming might be resumed safely. It also asks the nonprofit to create a guideline of best practices for on-location filming, as well as protocols regarding sets and facilities. 

We sit down with the president of Film L.A. to discuss what progress has been made and how Hollywood might start up again. 

If you’re in the industry, whether in front of the camera or behind it, tell us about how the pandemic has affected your work life. Can you see a way for filming to resume while following public health best practices? Call ust at 866-893-5722.

Guests:

John Horn, host of KPCC’s “The Frame”; he’s been reporting on the reopening of Hollywood; he tweets @JGHorn

Paul Audley, president of Film L.A., the nonprofit that oversees film and TV productions in Los Angeles

Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, chief operating officer and general counsel of SAG-AFTRA, the union representing media artists; he is currently leading SAG-AFTRA’s “Safety and Reopen Initiative”

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LAKE MEAD NRA, NV - AUGUST 12: Perseid meteors streak across the sky early August 12, 2008 near Rogers Spring in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada. The meteor display, known as the Perseid shower because it appears to radiate from the constellation Perseus in the northeastern sky, is a result of Earth's orbit passing through debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle. Tuesday morning was considered the peak of the shower, which is visible every August. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images); Credit: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

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A Southern California Edison sign outside the San Onofre Nuclear Plant.; Credit: Grant Slater/KPCC

Large utilities cut off power to millions of Californians over the past two months to reduce the risk that power lines might spark new fires. Nearly 200,000 Southern California Edison customers were blacked out, some for days at a time. These public safety power shutoffs mean that many rural residents lose a lot more than just their electricity. 

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Blowing snow on the Grapevine.; Credit: Photo by FrankBonilla.tv via Flickr Creative Commons

We’ve spent a lot of time recently stressing out about bad weather here in Southern California. It’s been too hot, too dry and too smoky. So, we thought it'd be appropriate on Thanksgiving to give thanks to this latest storm, which should leave you feeling good.

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The engineered Dominguez Gap Wetlands in Long Beach filters stormwater and runoff from the Los Angeles River, then the water is siphoned under the river to a spreading ground to the west.; Credit: Sharon McNary/KPCC

Angelenos are used to looking up Heal the Bay's annual beach water quality report card each May as we search out the cleanest places to swim and surf.

Now, the environmental advocacy group is focusing on a new target — the often polluted water that flows into the ocean from the mountains and across the L.A. Basin.

In a first-ever report, it concludes the managers of 12 watersheds from Malibu to Long Beach are making too little progress toward cleaning up this major source of pollution in the Pacific.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Levi Draheim, 11, wears a dust mask as he participates in a demonstration in Miami in July 2019. A lawsuit file by him and other young people urging action against climate change was thrown out by a federal appeals court Friday.; Credit: Wilfredo Lee/AP

A federal appeals court has dismissed a lawsuit brought by nearly two dozen young people aimed at forcing the federal government to take bolder action on climate change, saying the courts were not the appropriate place to address the issue.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Friday the young plaintiffs had "made a compelling case that action is needed," but they did not have legal standing to bring the case.

The lawsuit, Juliana v. United States, was filed in 2015 on behalf of a group of children and teenagers who said the U.S. government continued to use and promote the use of fossil fuels, knowing that such consumption would destabilize the climate, putting future generations at risk.

By doing so, the plaintiffs argued, the U.S. government had violated their constitutional rights to life, liberty and property.

Judge Andrew D. Hurwitz agreed with some of that assertion, writing in a 32-page opinion that "the federal government has long promoted fossil fuel use despite knowing that it can cause catastrophic climate change."

But, he continued, it was unclear if the court could compel the federal government to phase out fossil fuel emissions and draw down excess greenhouse gas emissions as the plaintiffs requested.

"Reluctantly, we conclude that such relief is beyond our constitutional power," Hurwitz wrote, "Rather, the plaintiffs' impressive case for redress must be presented to the political branches of government."

The decision reversed an earlier ruling by a district court judge that would have allowed the case to move forward.

Philip Gregory, who served as co-counsel for the plaintiffs, strongly disagreed with the 2-1 ruling, saying in an interview with NPR that they would seek an "en banc petition," which would put the issue before the full 9th Circuit for review.

Gregory, who spoke to some of the young plaintiffs following the decisions, says they were hopeful that their pending petition will be considered, "because as we all know, this Congress and this President will do nothing to ameliorate the climate crisis."

Both the Trump and Obama administrations opposed the lawsuit. All three of the judges involved in Friday's ruling were appointed under Obama.

Hurwitz and Judge Mary Murguia made up the majority but the third, Judge Josephine L. Staton, wrote a blistering dissent.

"In these proceedings, the government accepts as fact that the United States has reached a tipping point crying out for a concerted response — yet presses ahead toward calamity," she wrote. "It is as if an asteroid were barreling toward Earth and the government decided to shut down our only defenses."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

February satellite readings in the troposphere (the lower atmosphere) of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a pollutant primarily from burning fossil fuels, show a dramatic decline compared to early January when power plants were operating at normal levels.; Credit: /NASA Earth Observatory

As China seeks to control the spread of COVID-19, fewer cars are driving, fewer factories are running and — in some places — skies are clearer.

Air pollution levels have dropped by roughly a quarter over the last month as coal-fired power plants and industrial facilities have ramped down so employees in high-risk areas can stay home. Levels of nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant primarily from burning fossil fuels, were down as much as 30%, according to NASA.

"It is an unprecedentedly dramatic drop in emissions," says Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, who tallied the reductions. "I've definitely spoken to people in Shanghai who said that it's been some of the most pristine blue skies that they remember over the winter."

Myllyvirta estimates that China's carbon emissions have dropped by a quarter over the same period. While that's a tiny fraction of its overall annual emissions, it's substantial in a worldwide context, since China is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

There's potentially a health benefit — although any gains due to a drop in pollution are set against the toll taken by the coronavirus outbreak.

Air pollution is estimated to contribute to more than 1 million premature deaths in China each year. Fine particle pollution, also known as PM 2.5, can enter the bloodstream through the lungs and has been linked to asthma attacks, heart attacks and respiratory problems.

Even a short-term reduction in air pollution can make a difference.

"There is no question about it: When air quality improves, that will be associated with a reduction in health-related problems," says Jim Zhang, professor of global and environmental health at Duke University.

Zhang says that was evident during the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing. To help improve the air, government officials shut factories and dramatically limited car travel before and during the games. Levels of some air pollutants dropped by half.

He and colleagues studied a group of young men and women in Beijing and found that during that time period, their lung and cardiovascular health improved. He also followed pregnant women.

"What we found is that the kids whose mothers had a third trimester pregnancy during the Olympics when the air quality was better, their birth weight was substantially higher than the kids who were born a year before and a year later," he says.

But health specialists sound a cautionary note.

"It would be a mischaracterization to say that the coronavirus was beneficial to health because of these air pollution reductions," says Jill Baumgartner, associate professor and epidemiologist at McGill University.

"The health impacts from the virus itself, the stress on the health-care system, the stress on people's lives — those health impacts are likely to be much greater than the short-term benefits of air pollution on health," she says.

Baumgartner says people with health issues other than COVID-19 may have avoided seeing doctors during the outbreak or potentially couldn't receive treatment they needed in areas with overtaxed health systems.

Those isolated at home and avoiding crowds may also have been exposed to more indoor air pollution.

"People spent a lot more time indoors and it's possible that they were exposed to higher levels of indoor tobacco smoke," Baumgartner says. "Or in the suburban areas, it's possible that they were using their traditional wood or coal stoves for heating."

Not all cities have experienced the recent improvements. In mid-February, Beijing saw a spike in pollution due to local weather patterns trapping air in the region.

The drop in air pollution and carbon emissions is also likely to disappear as Chinese industry ramps up again in an attempt to offset its economic losses.

"If you think back to the global financial crisis, the immediate impact was for China's emissions to fall," says Myllyvirta. "But then the government response was to roll out the biggest stimulus package in the history of mankind that then drove China's emissions and global emissions up for years."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer, seen here in 2017, says his office has reached a settlement with a company that had been selling at-home tests for the coronavirus. The Food and Drug Administration says it has not authorized any at-home tests.; Credit: Christopher Weber/AP

Mike Feuer, the city attorney of Los Angeles, announced on Monday that his office had "filed a civil law enforcement action against, and achieved an immediate settlement with," a company that had been "illegally selling" an at-home test for the coronavirus.

The Food and Drug Administration has stated that the agency "has not authorized any test that is available to purchase for testing yourself at home for COVID-19."

But in March, Yikon Genomics Inc. offered a coronavirus test for sale online, claiming that the test could be performed "using a simple at-home finger stick blood sample." The company offered tests for $39 each and, in a since-deleted tweet, stated, "Our COVID-19 Test Kit is now FDA APPROVED!"

Yikon's "unlawful, unfair, and fraudulent business acts or practices," the LA city attorney alleged in the lawsuit against the company, "present a continuing threat to members of the public."

At a news conference, Feuer said that FDA validation of tests is crucial because an inaccurate result could lead someone infected with the coronavirus to "unknowingly expose others."

Under the settlement between Yikon and LA authorities, the company agreed to stop marketing or selling home test kits unless they receive FDA approval. Yikon also agreed to provide refunds to anyone who purchased its test kits, though Feuer said it's unclear how many tests were sold.

Yikon Genomics released a statement saying it "is committed to complying with all state & federal laws and regulations regarding the marketing & sale of medical devices. We intend to pursue FDA approval for the market & sale of COVID-19 test kits, which we hope will aid in mitigating this global health crisis."

The Trump administration has said it will "aggressively" prosecute cases of fraud related to the pandemic, and state attorneys general have also pledged to take legal action against scams around the country.

In LA, Feuer said his office continues to investigate other companies' sales of unapproved test kits.

"This is not an isolated incident," Feuer said, noting that his office separately sent a cease-and-desist letter to the California-based Wellness Matrix Group, which, as NPR first reported, had also been offering "at-home" test kits for sale.

"Whenever consumers are motivated in part by fears," the city attorney's office stated in its lawsuit against Yikon, "they are particularly vulnerable to fraudsters, scammers, and 'snake oil' hucksters and charlatans."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Updated at 10 p.m. ET

Australia's High Court has found reasonable doubt that Cardinal George Pell sexually assaulted two boys in the 1990s and has overturned his conviction.

The court acquitted the former Vatican treasurer of the charges, and no retrial will be possible.

Pell, 78, had been serving a six-year prison sentence in the case. The High Court ordered that he be released.

He was convicted of sexually abusing two 13-year-old choirboys at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne.

As an adult, one of them went to the police in 2015 and accused the cardinal of abusing him and the other boy in 1996. The other individual died of a heroin overdose the previous year without reporting abuse.

In a statement after the acquittal, as reported by Reuters, Pell said, "I hold no ill will toward my accuser, I do not want my acquittal to add to the hurt and bitterness so many feel; there is certainly hurt and bitterness enough."

Pell was convicted in 2018 and an appellate court upheld those convictions last year.

The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference's comments on the acquittal recognize that the outcome will be good news for some people and "devastating for others."

"The result today does not change the Church's unwavering commitment to child safety and to a just and compassionate response to survivors and victims of child sexual abuse. The safety of children remains supremely important not only for the bishops, but for the entire Catholic community. Any person with allegations of sexual abuse by Church personnel should go to the police."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments remotely this week, and for the first time the arguments were streamed live to the public.; Credit: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

For the first time in its 231-year history, the Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments remotely by phone and made the audio available live.

The new setup went off largely without difficulties, but produced some memorable moments, including one justice forgetting to unmute and an ill-timed bathroom break.

Here are the top five can't-miss moments from this week's history-making oral arguments.

A second week of arguments begin on Monday at 10 a.m. ET. Here's a rundown of the cases and how to listen.

1. Justice Clarence Thomas speaks ... a lot

Supreme Court oral arguments are verbal jousting matches. The justices pepper the lawyers with questions, interrupting counsel repeatedly and sometimes even interrupting each other.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who has sat on the bench for nearly 30 years, has made his dislike of the chaotic process well known, at one point not asking a question for a full decade.

But with no line of sight, the telephone arguments have to be rigidly organized, and each justice, in order of seniority, has an allotted 2 minutes for questioning.

It turn out that Thomas, second in seniority, may just have been waiting his turn. Rather than passing, as had been expected, he has been Mr. Chatty Cathy, using every one of his turns at bat so far.

Thomas broke a year-long silence on Monday in a trademark case testing whether a company can trademark by adding .com to a generic term. In this case, Booking.com.

"Could Booking acquire an 800 number, for example, that's a vanity number — 1-800-BOOKING, for example?" Thomas asked.

2. The unstoppable RBG

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg participated in Wednesday's argument from the hospital. In pain during Tuesday's arguments, the 87-year-old underwent non-surgical treatment for a gall bladder infection at Johns Hopkins Hospital later that day, according to a Supreme Court press release.

But she was ferocious on Wednesday morning, calling in from her hospital room in a case testing the Trump administration's new rule expanding exemptions from Obamacare's birth control mandate for nonprofits and some for-profit companies that have religious or moral objections to birth control.

"The glaring feature" of the Trump administration's new rules, is that they "toss to the winds entirely Congress' instruction that women need and shall have seamless, no-cost, comprehensive coverage," she said.

3. Who flushed?

During Wednesday's second oral argument, Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants, a case in which the justices weighed a First Amendment challenge to a federal rule than bans most robocalls, something very unexpected happened.

Partway through lawyer Roman Martinez's argument time, a toilet flush could be distinctly heard.

Martinez seemed unperturbed and continued speaking in spite of the awkward moment.

The flush quickly picked up steam online, becoming the first truly viral moment from the court's new livestream oral arguments.

4. Hello, where are you?

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, considered one of the most tech-savvy of the justices, experienced a couple of technical difficulties with her mute button.

In both Monday and Tuesday arguments, the first time she was at bat, there were prolonged pauses, prompting Chief Justice John Roberts to call, "Justice Sotomayor?" a few times before she hopped on with a brief, "Sorry, Chief," before launching into her questions.

By Wednesday she seemed to have gotten used to the new format, but the trouble then jumped to Thomas, who was entirely missing in action when his turn came. He ultimately went out of order Wednesday morning.

5. Running over time

Oral arguments usually run one hour almost exactly, with lawyers for each side having 30 minutes to make their case. In an attempt to stick as closely as possible to that format, the telephone rules allocate 2 minutes of questioning to each justice for each round of questioning.

Chief Justice John Roberts spent the week jumping into exchanges, cutting off both lawyers and justices in the process, to keep the proceedings on track. Even so the arguments ran longer than usual.

But in Wednesday's birth control case, oral arguments went a whopping 40 minutes longer than expected.

Justice Alito, for his part, hammered the lawyer challenging the Trump administration's new birth control rules for more than seven minutes, without interruption from the chief justice.

Referencing a decision he wrote in 2014, Alito said that "Hobby Lobby held that if a person sincerely believes that it is immoral to perform an act that has the effect of enabling another person to commit an immoral act, the federal court does not have the right to say that this person is wrong on the question of moral complicity. That is precisely the question here."

Christina Peck is NPR's legal affairs intern.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Two tents in Hollywood erected beneath the 101 Freeway during a January rainstorm. (Matt Tinoco/KPCC)

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Albert Rad, a mobile phone wholesaler who fled religious persecution in Iran decades ago, said that he fully backs President Trump's decision to assassinate Iran's top military commander. ; Credit: Josie Huang/LAist

Los Angeles is home to the largest Iranian population outside of Iran. The killing of top Iranian commander Qassem Suleimani is generating some strong emotions here. KPPC’s Josie Huang reports from Persian Square in Westwood. 

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: Courtesy Randy Newman

Read the full article at LAist

A spike in texts and calls to crisis hotlines reflects Americans' growing anxiety about the coronavirus and its impact on their lives.; Credit: Richard Bailey/Getty Images

Normally, Laura Mayer helps the most acutely suicidal callers find the nearest hospital emergency room. But in a pandemic, that has become a crisis counselor's advice of last resort.

"It's a difficult decision because we do know that by sending them into an overburdened health care system, they may or may not get the treatment that they need," says Mayer, who is director of PRS CrisisLink in Oakton, Va., which also takes calls for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. "The resources may or may not be there, and we're exposing them to the illness."

So instead, counselors are devoting more time to each caller, offering ad hoc therapy and coaxing them to talk through their pain. These days, that pain often has many sources: lost jobs, severed relationships and sick family.

"The type of call and the seriousness of the call is very different this year than it was in previous years," Mayer says. "There's environmental issues, internal issues, family issues. ... It's never one thing."

America's crisis centers and hotlines are themselves in crisis. As people grapple with fear, loneliness and grief, on a grand scale, those stresses are showing up at crisis hotlines. Not only are the needs greater, but their clients' problems are more acute and complex and offer a window into the emotional struggles Americans face.

Across the board, hotlines of all kinds are reporting increases in volume.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration saw a fivefold increase at its National Helpline in March. The Crisis Text Line says its volumes are up 40% in the pandemic, to about 100,000 conversations a month.

Volunteer counselors and good Samaritans are responding by lining up to help.

But Mayer says the heaviness takes its toll. Those offering this kind of support end up needing support themselves.

"This illness is starting to impact each of our crisis workers and counselors themselves personally," she says. "So everyone is kind of a client right now, and that's been really challenging."

Nancy Lublin, CEO and co-founder of the Crisis Text Line, says she is bracing for sustained need. "This echo of the physical virus, the mental health echo, we fear it's going to last a very long time and that the intensity will remain," she says.

Over the last two months, the focal point of the emotional pain has shifted, she says. Initially, the spike in traffic was over anxiety about the virus itself. That shifted to complaints of isolation. Now, texters talk of depression and grief.

"So we've doubled the number of conversations that are about grief, and there the top two words that we see are 'grandma' and 'grandpa,' " she says.

And it's no longer just young people texting. Adults are complaining of loneliness, sexual abuse and eating disorders.

"As the quarantines go on and continue, we're seeing it's the people over the age of 35 who are increasing at a higher percentage of our volume," Lublin says. "For the first time, we're seeing people over the age of 60 texting us."

Texting is an ideal medium, she says, for those stuck at home with no personal space: "You don't have to find a quiet space where no one else can hear you."

And for some, that might be the only form of escape. The text line has seen a 74% increase in references to domestic violence. "We see words like 'trapped' [and] 'hurt,' " says Lublin.

Many shelters have shut down, and some of those in-person centers, including the Salvation Army in Philadelphia, now rely on their own hotlines instead.

Arielle Curry, director of the Salvation Army's anti-human trafficking program, says many of her clients can't afford cell phones and have lost touch; those who remain in contact are in dire straits, searching for a shorter supply of money or drugs, and are often suicidal. Curry says addressing those acute emotional needs by phone is frustrating; sometimes she doesn't even know where they are and can't send help to intervene.

"You can't ... comfort someone and look them in their eyes and support them face-to-face," she says. That makes it hard, Curry says, not to feel helpless and hopeless herself.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Physical and occupational therapists carry bags of personal protective equipment on their way to the room of a COVID-19 patient in a Stamford Hospital intensive care unit in Stamford, Conn., on April 24. This "prone team" turns over COVID-19 to help them breathe.; Credit: John Moore/Getty Images

Intensive care teams inside hospitals are rapidly altering the way they care for patients with COVID-19.

The changes range from new protective gear to new treatment protocols aimed at preventing deadly blood clots.

"Things are moving so fast within this pandemic, it's hard to keep up" says Dr. Angela Hewlett, an infectious diseases physician at University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha and medical director of the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit. To stay current, she says, ICUs are updating their practices "on an hourly basis."

"We are learning at light speed about the disease," says Dr. Craig Coopersmith , interim director of the critical care center at Emory University. "Things that previously might have taken us years to learn, we're learning in a week or two. Things that might have taken us a month to learn beforehand, we're learning in a day or two."

The most obvious changes involve measures to protect ICU doctors, nurses and staff from the virus.

"There is a true and real probability of infection," says Dr. Tiffany Osborn a critical care specialist at Washington University School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. "You have to think about everything you touch as if it burned."

So ICUs are adapting measures used at special biocontainment units like the one at the University of Nebraska. These units were designed to care for patients affected by bioterrorism or infected with particularly hazardous communicable diseases like SARS and Ebola.

The Nebraska biocontainment unit "received several patients early on in the pandemic who were medically evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship," Hewlett says. But it didn't have enough beds for the large numbers of local patients who began arriving at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

So the nurses, respiratory therapists and physicians from the biocontainment team have "fanned out and are now working within those COVID units to make sure that all of our principles and protocols are followed there as well," Hewlett says.

Those protocols involve measures like monitoring ICU staff when they remove their protective gear to make sure the virus isn't transmitted, and placing infected patients in negative pressure rooms, which draw air inward, when possible to prevent the virus from escaping.

One of the riskiest ICU procedures is inserting a breathing tube in a COVID-19 patient's airway, which creates a direct path for virus to escape from a patient's lungs. "If you're intubating a patient, that's a much higher risk than, say, going in and doing routine patient care," Hewlett says.

So ICU teams are being advised to add several layers of protection beyond a surgical mask.

Extra personal protective equipment may include an N95 respirator, goggles, a full face shield, a head hood, an impermeable isolation gown and double gloves.

In many ICUs, teams are also placing a clear plastic box or sheet over the patient's head and upper body before inserting the tube. And as a final safety measure, the doctor may guide the tube using a video camera rather than looking directly down a patient's airway.

"It usually takes 30 minutes or so in order to get all of that equipment together, to get all of the right people there," says Dr. Kira Newman, a senior resident physician at UW Medical Center in Seattle. "and that would be a particularly fast intubation."

But most changes in the ICU are in response to an ongoing flood of new information about how COVID-19 affects the body.

There's a growing understanding, for example, that the infection can cause dangerous blood clots to form in many severely ill patients. These clots can kill if they block arteries supplying the lungs or brain. But they also can prevent blood from reaching the kidneys or even a patient's arms and legs.

Clots are a known risk for all ICU patients, Cooperman says, but the frequency and severity appears much greater with COVID-19. "So we're starting them on a higher level of medicine to prevent blood clots and if somebody actually develops blood clots, we have a plan B and a plan C and a plan D," he says.

ICU teams are also recalibrating their approach to ensuring that patients are getting enough oxygen. Early in the pandemic, the idea was to put patients on mechanical ventilator quickly to make sure their oxygen levels didn't fall too far.

But with experience, doctors have found that mechanical ventilators don't seem to work as well for COVID patients as they do for patients with other lung problems. They've also learned that that many COVID-19 patients remain lucid and relatively comfortable even when the oxygen levels in their blood are extremely low.

So many specialists are now recommending alternatives to mechanical ventilation, even for some of the sickest patients. "We're really trying now to not intubate," Osborn says.

Instead, ICU teams are relying on devices that deliver oxygen through the nasal passages, or through a mask that fits tightly over the face. And there's renewed interest in an old technique to help patients breathe. It's called proning.

"Instead of them being on their back, we're turning them on their front," Osborn says. The reason, she says is to open up a part of the lung that is collapsed when a patient is on their back.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: Alyson Hurt/NPR

To safely phase out social distancing measures, the U.S. needs more diagnostic testing for the coronavirus, experts say. But how much more?

The Trump administration said on April 27 the U.S. will soon have enough capacity to conduct double the current amount of testing for active infections. The country has done nearly 248,000 tests daily on average in the last seven days, according to the nonprofit Covid Tracking Project. Doubling that would mean doing around 496,000 a day.

Will that be enough? What benchmark should states try to hit?

One prominent research group, Harvard's Global Health Institute, proposes that the U.S. should be doing more than 900,000 tests per day as a country. This projection, released Thursday, is a big jump from its earlier projection of testing need, which was between 500,000 and 600,000 daily.

Harvard's testing estimate increased, says Ashish Jha, director of the Global Health Institute, because the latest modeling shows that the outbreak in the U.S. is worse than projected earlier.

"Just in the last few weeks, all of the models have converged on many more people getting infected and many more people [dying]," he says.

But each state's specific need for testing varies depending on the size of its outbreak, explains Jha. The bigger the outbreak, the more testing is needed.

Thursday Jha's group at Harvard published a simulation that estimates the amount of testing needed in each state by May 15. In the graphic below, we compare these estimates with the average numbers of daily tests states are currently doing. (Jump to graphic)

Two ways to assess whether testing is adequate

To make their state-by-state estimates, the Harvard Global Health Institute group started from a model of future case counts. They calculated how much testing would be needed for a state to test all infected people and any close contacts they may have exposed the virus. (The simulation estimates testing 10 contacts on average.)

"Testing is outbreak control 101, because what testing lets you do is figure out who's infected and who's not," Jha says. "And that lets you separate out the infected people from the non infected people and bring the disease under control."

This approach is how communities can prevent outbreaks from flaring up. First, test all symptomatic people, then reach out to their close contacts and test them, and finally ask those who are infected or exposed to isolate themselves.

Our chart also shows another testing benchmark for each state: the ratio of tests conducted that come back positive. Communities that see around 10% or fewer positives among their test results are probably testing enough, the World Health Organization advises. If the rate is higher, they're likely missing a lot of active infections.

What is apparent from the data we present below is that many states are far from both the Harvard estimates and the 10% positive benchmark.

Just nine states are near or have exceeded the testing minimums estimated by Harvard; they are mostly larger, less populous states: Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Several states with large outbreaks — New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut among others — are very far from the minimum testing target. Some states that are already relaxing their social-distancing restrictions, such as Georgia, Texas and Colorado, are far from the target too.

Jha offers several caveats about his group's estimates.

Estimates are directional not literal

Researchers at the Global Health Initiative at Harvard considered three different models of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak as a starting point for their testing estimates. They found that while there was significant variation in the projections of outbreak sizes, all the models tend to point in the same direction, i.e. if one model showed that a state needed significantly more testing, the others generally did too.

The model they used to create these estimates is the Youyang Gu COVID-19 Forecasts, which they say has tracked closely with what's actually happened on the ground. Still the researchers caution, these numbers are not meant to be taken literally but as a guide.

If social distancing is relaxed, testing needs may grow

The Harvard testing estimates are built on a model that assumes that states continue social distancing through May 15. And about half of states have already started lifting some of those.

Jha says, that without the right measures in place to contain spread, easing up could quickly lead to new cases.

"The moment you relax, the number of cases will start climbing. And therefore, the number of tests you need to keep your society, your state from having large outbreaks will also start climbing," warns Jha.

Testing alone is not enough

A community can't base the decision that it's safe to open up on testing data alone. States should also see a consistent decline in the number of cases, of two weeks at least, according to White House guidance. If their cases are instead increasing, they should assume the number of tests they need will increase too.

And Jha warns, testing is step one, but it won't contain an outbreak by itself. It needs to be part of "a much broader set of strategies and plans the states need to have in place" when they begin to reopen.

In fact, his group's model is built on the assumption that states are doing contact tracing and have plans to support isolation for infected or exposed people.

"I don't want anybody to just look at the number and say, we meet it and we're good to go," he says. "What this really is, is testing capacity in the context of having a really effective workforce of contact tracers."

The targets are floors not goals

States that have reached the estimated target should think of that as a starting point.

"We've always built these as the floor, the bare minimum," Jha says. More testing would be even better, allowing states to more rapidly tamp down case surges.

In fact, other experts have proposed the U.S. do even more testing. Paul Romer, a professor of economics at New York University proposed in a recent white paper that if the U.S. tested every resident, every two weeks, isolating those who test positive, it could stop the pandemic in its tracks.

Jha warns that without sufficient testing, and the infrastructure in place to trace and isolate contacts, there's a real risk that states — even those with few cases now — will see new large outbreaks. "I think what people have to remember is that the virus isn't gone. The disease isn't gone. And it's going to be with us for a while," he says.

Daniel Wood contributed to this report.

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The serious inflammatory syndrome sending some children and teens to the hospital remains extremely uncommon, doctors say. But if your child spikes a high, persistent fever, and has severe abdominal pain and vomiting that doesn't make them feel better, call your doctor as a precaution.; Credit: Sally Anscombe/Getty Images

Sixty-four children and teens in New York State are suspected of having a mysterious inflammatory syndrome that is believed to be linked to COVID-19, the New York Department of Health said in an alert issued Wednesday. A growing number of similar cases — including at least one death — have been reported in other parts of the U.S. and Europe, though the phenomenon is still not well-understood.

Pediatricians say parents should not panic; the condition remains extremely rare. But researchers also are taking a close look at this emerging syndrome, and say parents should be on the lookout for symptoms in their kids that might warrant a quick call to the doctor — a persistent high fever over several days and significant abdominal pains with repeated vomiting, after which the child does not feel better.

"If [the child is] looking particularly ill, you should definitely call the doctor," says Dr. Sean O'Leary, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Children's Hospital Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and member of the infectious disease committee for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The new condition associated with COVID-19 is called Pediatric Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome. Symptoms include persistent fever, extreme inflammation, and evidence of one or more organs that are not functioning properly, says cardiologist Jane Newburger, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and director of the Kawasaki Program at Boston Children's Hospital.

"It's still very rare, but there's been a wave of cases. Physicians and scientists are working hard to understanding the mechanisms at play, and why only some children are so severely affected," Newburger says.

Some symptoms can resemble features of Kawasaki Disease Shock Syndrome. Kawasaki Disease is an acute illness in children involving fever, together with symptoms of rash, conjunctivitis, redness in the lips, tongue and mucous membranes of the mouth and throat, swollen hands and/or feet, and sometimes a large group of lymph nodes on one side of the neck, says Newburger. Some children with the condition develop enlargement of the coronary arteries and aneurysms in those blood vessels.

A small percentage of Kawasaki cases go on to develop symptoms of shock – which can include a steep drop in systolic blood pressure and difficulty with sufficient blood supply to the body's organs. Kawasaki disease and KDSS more often affect young children, although they can sometimes affect teens, Newburger says.

Some cases of the new inflammatory syndrome have features that overlap with KD or with KDSS — including rash, conjunctivitis, and swollen hands or feet. The new inflammatory syndrome can affect not only young children but also older children and teens.

But patients with the new syndrome have lab results that look very different, in particular, "cardiac inflammation to a greater degree than we typically see in Kawasaki shock syndrome," which is usually very rare, O'Leary says. In New York City and London, which have seen large numbers of cases of COVID-19 cases, "those types of patients are being seen with greater frequency."

Some patients "come in very, very sick," with low blood pressure and high fever, O'Leary says. Some children have had coronary artery aneurysms, though most have not, he adds.

Other patients exhibit symptoms more similar to toxic shock syndrome, with abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea and high levels of inflammation in the body, as well as the heart, O'Leary says. Most cases are treated in the intensive care unit, he says. Treatment includes intravenous immunoglobulin, which can "calm the immune system," says Newburger, as well as steroids and cytokine blockers.

The evidence so far from Europe, where reports of the syndrome first emerged, suggests most children will recover with proper supportive care, says O'Leary, though one adolescent, a 14-year-old boy in London, has died, according to a report published Wednesday in The Lancet.

Most children with the syndrome, O'Leary and Newburger note, have either tested positive for a current infection with the coronavirus, or for antibodies to the virus, which would suggest they were infected earlier and recovered from it.

And, according to case reports, some of the kids with the inflammatory syndrome who tested negative on coronavirus tests had been exposed at some point to someone known to have COVID-19. The inflammatory syndrome can appear days to weeks after COVID-19 illness, doctors say, suggesting the syndrome arises out of the immune system's response to the virus.

"One theory is that as one begins to make antibodies to SARS-COV-2, the antibody itself may be provoking an immune response," says Newburger. "This is only happening in susceptible individuals whose immune systems are built in a particular way. It doesn't happen in everybody. It's still a really uncommon event in children."

In late April, the U.K.'s National Health Service issued an alert to pediatricians about the syndrome. Reports have also surfaced in France, Spain and Italy, and probably number in the dozens globally, Newburger and O'Leary say, though doctors still don't have hard numbers. Newburger says there needs to be a registry where doctors can report cases "so we can begin to generate some statistics."

"Doctors across countries are talking to each other, but we need for there to be some structure and some science so that everybody can interpret," she says.

Earlier this week, the New York City Health Department issued an alert saying 15 children ranging in age from 2 to 15 had been hospitalized with the syndrome. Newburger says that she's been contacted about cases in New Jersey and Philadelphia, as well.

While the syndrome's precise connection to the coronavirus isn't yet clear, O'Leary says the fact that the children in most of these cases are testing positive for exposure to the virus, one way or another, provides one point of evidence. The sheer number of cases — small in absolute terms, but still "much higher than we would expect normally for things like severe Kawasaki or toxic shock syndrome" — provides another, he says.

And then there's the fact that most reports of the syndrome have come out of the U.K. and New York City, places that have been hit with large numbers of COVID-19 cases.

"It's pure speculation at this point," he says, "but the U.K. cluster kind of went up about a month after their COVID-19 infections went up, which would suggest that it is some kind of an immune phenomenon."

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President Trump has said he wants to see the country begin to reopen. The pandemic crashed the economy by keeping people at home, leading to millions of job losses.; Credit: Pool/Getty Images

The White House coronavirus task force rejected detailed guidance drafted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how workplaces ranging from schools to bars to churches should resume operations to prevent the spread of the virus because it was viewed as "overly prescriptive."

President Trump has said he wants to see the country begin to reopen. The pandemic crashed the economy by keeping people at home, leading to millions of job losses. The White House task force issued guidelines on how to gradually and safely reopen but left decisions up to governors based on conditions in their states.

Experts have warned that a rush to reopen could have disastrous implications for containing COVID-19. Many businesses have said they want more details about how to do things safely.

The draft detailed guidance was provided to the task force in late April, a couple of weeks after it released its April 16 guidance to states for reopening.

The task force sought "certain revisions" to the CDC's detailed guidance, two administration officials told NPR. But revised recommendations were never returned to the task force.

The Associated Press first reported on the task force decision to shelve the detailed guidance. Copies obtained and published by the AP, The New York Times and The Washington Post revealed detailed, staged directions for child care centers, schools, camps, restaurants and bars, churches and mass transit providers about how to safely resume operations.

"I think many people would argue that it is not the role of the federal government to tell specific entities — whether they be schools or churches or businesses — how they should go about doing things because the nation is so diverse," one of the administration officials said.

The task force said that some of the points may be helpful, but they needed to "zoom out a little bit and not be so prescriptive," according to the official. The task force said they would welcome a new set of recommendations, but that never happened, the official said.

"Issuing overly specific instructions — that CDC leadership never cleared — for how various types of businesses open up would be overly prescriptive and broad for the various circumstances states are experiencing throughout the country," the second administration official said. "Guidance in rural Tennessee shouldn't be the same guidance for urban New York City."

The United States last month reached 1 million known coronavirus cases, representing one-third of all coronavirus cases worldwide. Nearly 74,000 Americans have been felled by the disease as of Thursday, according to data compiled by the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

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Most people infected with the novel coronavirus develop antibodies in response.

But scientists don't know whether people who have been exposed to the coronavirus will be immune for life, as is usually the case for the measles, or if the disease will return again and again, like the common cold.

"This to me is one of the big unanswered questions that we have," says Jeffrey Shaman, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University, "because it really says, 'What is the full exit strategy to this and how long are we going to be contending with it?' "

He's one of many scientists on a quest for answers. And the pieces are starting to fall into place.

Antibodies, which are proteins found in the blood as part of the body's immune response to infection, are a sign that people could be developing immunity. But they are by no means a guarantee they will be protected for life – or even for a year.

Shaman has been studying four other coronaviruses that cause the common cold. "They're very common and so people seem to get them quite often," Shaman says. Ninety percent of people develop antibodies to those viruses, at least in passing, but "our evidence is those antibodies are not conferring protection."

That may simply because colds are relatively mild, so the immune system doesn't mount a full-blown response, suggests Dr. Stanley Perlman, a pediatrician who studies immunology and microbiology at the University of Iowa. "That's why people get colds over and over again," he says. "It doesn't really tickle the immune response that much."

He's studied one of the most severe coronaviruses, the one that causes SARS, and he's found that the degree of immunity depended on the severity of the disease. Sicker people remained immune for much longer, in some cases many years.

For most people exposed to the novel coronavirus, "I think in the short term you're going to get some protection," Perlman says. "It's really the time of the protection that matters."

Perlman notes that for some people the symptoms of COVID-19 are no worse than a cold, while for others they are severe. "That's why it's tricky," he says, to predict the breadth of an immune response.

And it's risky to assume that experiences with other coronaviruses are directly applicable to the new one.

"Unforutunately, we cannot really generalize what kind of immunity is needed to get protection against a virus unless we really learn more about the virus," says Akiko Iwasaki, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the Yale University School of Medicine.

An immunobiologist, she is part of a rapidly expanding effort to figure this out. She and her colleagues are already studying the immune response in more than 100 patients in the medical school hospital. She's encouraged that most people who recover from the coronavirus have developed antibodies that neutralize the coronavirus in a petri dish.

"Whether that's happening inside the body we don't really know," she cautions.

Research like hers will answer that question, eventually.

But not all antibodies are protective. Iwasaki says some can actually contribute to the disease process and make the illness worse. These antibodies can contribute to inflammation and lead the body to overreact. That overreaction can even be deadly.

"Which types of antibodies protect the host versus those that enhance the disease? We really need to figure that out," she says.

The studies at Yale will follow patients for at least a year, to find out how slowly or quickly immunity might fade. "I wish there was a shortcut," Iwasaki says, "but we may not need to wait a year to understand what type of antibodies are protective."

That's because she and other immunologists are looking for patterns in the immune response that will identify people who have long-term immunity.

Researchers long ago figured out what biological features in the blood (called biomarkers) correlate with immunity to other diseases, says Dr. Kari Nadeau, a pediatrician and immunologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She expects researchers will be able to do the same for the new coronavirus.

Nadeau is working on several studies, including one that seeks to recruit 1,000 people who were previously exposed to the coronavirus. One goal is to identify people who produce especially strong, protective antibody responses. She says the antibody-producing cells from those people can potentially be turned into vaccines.

Another critical question she's zeroing in on is whether people who become immune are still capable of spreading the virus.

"Because you might be immune, you might have protected yourself against the virus," she says, "but it still might be in your body and you're giving it to others."

That would have huge public health implications if it turns out people can still spread the disease after they've recovered. Studies from China and South Korea seemed to suggest this was possible, though further studies have cast doubt on that as a significant feature of the disease.

Nadeau is also trying to figure out what can be said about the antibody blood-tests that are now starting to flood the market. There are two issues with these tests. First, a positive test may be a false-positive result, so it may be necessary to run a confirmatory test to get a credible answer. Second, it's not clear that a true positive test result really indicates a person is immune, and if so for how long.

Companies would like to be able to use these tests to identify people who can return to work without fear of spreading the coronavirus.

"I see a lot of business people wanting to do the best for their employees, and for good reason," Nadeau says. "And we can never say you're fully protected until we get enough [information]. But right now we're working hard to get the numbers we need to be able to see what constitutes protection and what does not."

It could be a matter of life or death to get this right. Answers to these questions are likely to come with the accumulation of information from many different labs. Fortunately, scientists around the world are working simultaneously to find answers.

You can contact NPR Science Correspondent Richard Harris at rharris@npr.org.

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Remdesivir, an experimental antiviral drug made by Gilead Sciences, has been authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use in treating severely ill COVID-19 patients.; Credit: Ulrich Perry/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Now that the Food and Drug Administration has authorized remdesivir for emergency use in seriously ill COVID-19 patients, the experimental drug is another step closer to full approval. That's when most drugs get price tags.

Gilead Sciences, which makes remdesivir, is donating its initial supply of 1.5 million doses, but the company has signaled it will need to start charging for the drug to make production sustainable. It's unclear when that decision might be made.

"Going forward, we will develop an approach that is guided by the principles of affordability and access," Gilead CEO Daniel O'Day told shareholders during the company's annual meeting Wednesday.

In a quarterly financial filing made the same day, Gilead said its investment in remdesivir this year "could be up to $1 billion or more," much of it for scaling up manufacturing capacity.

The company also acknowledged that it's in the spotlight. "[G]iven that COVID-19 has been designated as a pandemic and represents an urgent public health crisis, we are likely to face significant public attention and scrutiny about any future business models and pricing decisions with respect to remdesivir," Gilead said in the quarterly filing.

How will the company balance its business calculations with the drug's potential value to society?

"Gilead has not yet set a price for remdesivir," company spokeswoman Sonia Choi wrote in an email to NPR. "At this time, we are focused on ensuring access to remdesivir through our donation. Post-donation, we are committed to making remdesivir both accessible and affordable to governments and patients around the world."

Among potential treatments for COVID-19, remdesivir, an intravenous drug that was once studied for Ebola, is one of the furthest along.

"It's hard to imagine a situation in which there will be more public scrutiny," said Michael Carrier, a professor at Rutgers School of Law who specializes in antitrust and pharmaceuticals. "On the one hand, Gilead will try to recover its R&D in an atmosphere in which it is able to potentially make a lot of money. On the other hand, the pressure will be intense not to charge what's viewed as too high a price."

Breaking with its usual practices, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, or ICER, an influential nonprofit that analyzes drug pricing, issued an expedited report on remdesivir.

"Under normal circumstances, we would be unlikely to do a report when the evidence is this raw and immature," ICER President Steven Pearson said in an interview with NPR. "But it was quite clear that the world is moving at a much quicker pace."

If the price is based just on the cost of making the drug, then a 10-day course of remdesivir should cost about $10, according to the ICER report. (Gilead said results of a recently completed study suggest a five-day course of treatment may be just as effective.)

But if the drug is priced based on the drug's effectiveness, ICER estimates it should cost around $4,500 — assuming the drug is proven to have some benefit on mortality. If it doesn't and the drug only shortens hospital stays, that value-based price goes down to $390.

Results from a federally funded study described by Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, suggested that remdesvir could reduce recovery time by a median of four days — 11 days to recovery for patients treated with remdesivir compared with 15 days for those who got a placebo. A potential survival benefit is less clear.

Rutgers's Carrier said he expects Gilead to set the remdesivir price somewhere between the $10 and $4,500 that ICER estimated. The company has already shown that it can respond to public pressure when it asked the FDA to rescind the orphan drug status it won for remdesivir, he pointed out.

"When you see that $10 figure, that sets a benchmark for a figure that is eminently affordable," Carrier said. Ultimately, he said a price more than $1,000 per treatment course would be unpopular.

Gilead "will be watched very carefully," he said, because of its prior history of pricing. He referred to two other Gilead drugs that drew scrutiny over high price tags. The company charged $1,000 per pill for Sovaldi, a cure for hepatitis C. And its HIV drug Truvada can cost $22,000 per year.

But there is such a thing as pricing remdesivir too low, said Craig Garthwaite, who directs the health care program at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

"We don't think this is the only drug we need," he said, adding that remdesivir doesn't appear to be a "home run" against the coronavirus, based on existing data. "The thing that would worry me the most is that we're somehow telling people that if you take the risky bet to try, and you'll go after a coronavirus cure and you do it, you're not going to get paid."

Instead, he said he would like to see acceptance of a generous price for remdesivir to send the message to drug companies that the best thing they can do is "dedicate every waking moment to trying to develop that cure, and that if they do that, we will pay them the value they create," he said.

During a Gilead earnings call on April 30, analysts asked executives whether they could expect similar financial returns on remdesivir as they've seen with Gilead's other drugs.

"There is no rulebook out there, other than that we need to be very thoughtful about how we can make sure we provide access of our medicines to patients around the globe," Gilead CEO O'Day said. "And do that in a sustainable way for the company, for ... shareholders, and we acknowledge that."

On May 1, the FDA authorized remdesivir for emergency use, meaning it will be easier to administer to hospitalized patients with severe disease during the pandemic, but the drug is not yet officially approved. The federal government is coordinating distribution of the treatment.

Day acknowledged on the recent earnings call that the company "could" charge for remdesivir under an emergency use authorization, but he stressed that Gilead is donating its current supply, which should last through "early summer."

To date, the National Institutes of Health said it has obligated $23 million toward its COVID-19 remdesivir trial. And the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases did some of the early in vitro and animal studies with the medicine prior to the pandemic.

"Taxpayers are often the angel investors in pharmaceutical research and development, yet this is not reflected in the prices they pay," Reps. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, and Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., wrote in a April 30 letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.

Concerned about remdesivir's price, they asked for a full breakdown of taxpayer funds that have gone toward the development of the medicine. "An unaffordable drug is completely ineffective," they wrote in the letter. "The substantial taxpayer investments in COVID-19 pharmaceutical research must be recognized."

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; Credit: /Janice Chang for NPR

The high school senior sitting across from Franciene Sabens was in tears over the abrupt amputation of her social life and turmoil at home. Because of the coronavirus, there will be no prom, no traditional send-off or ceremony for the graduates of Carbondale Community High School in Carbondale, Ill. And Sabens, one of the school's counselors, could not give the girl the one thing Sabens' gut told her the teen needed most.

"I want to hug them all, but I really wanted to hug that one," Sabens remembers.

Instead of a desk between counselor and student, there were miles of Internet cable and a computer screen. No hug. No private office. This is Sabens' new normal.

"Zoom is just not gonna ever bridge that gap," she says. "That one was pretty rough."

The job of the school counselor has evolved over the years, from academic guide to something deeper: the adult in a school tasked with fostering students' social and emotional growth, a mental health first responder and a confidant for kids, especially teens, who often need a closed door and a sympathetic ear. But the closure of nearly all U.S. schools has forced counselors like Sabens to reimagine how they can do their jobs. And the stakes have never been higher.

Why students need counselors now more than ever

Between closed schools, social isolation, food scarcity and parental unemployment, the coronavirus pandemic has so destabilized kids' support systems that the result, counselors say, is genuinely traumatic.

Sarah Kirk, an elementary school counselor in Tulsa, Okla., is especially worried about her students who were already at-risk, whose families "really struggle day to day in their homes with how they're going to pay the next bill and how they're going to get food on the table. Being home for this extended period of time is definitely a trauma for them."

For so many children, Kirk says, "school is their safe place. They look forward to coming. They don't want to leave when the day is over. And to take that away from them, I do worry about the traumatic experience that will cause for many of our students."

Counselors say part of the trauma comes from students being isolated from each other.

"In a middle school, that social piece is so important," says Laura Ross, a middle school counselor in Lawrenceville, Ga. Yes, they do a lot of connecting via social media, and that's still happening, "but that face-to-face and being with their friends... they're missing that."

Students are also experiencing a kind of grief "over what they've lost," Sabens says, especially seniors. "Losing out on the end of their senior years — something that they've dreamed about their whole life... has really been overwhelming for them. So there have been a lot of tears. There have been a lot of questions... 'What did we ever do to deserve this?'"

Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. Instead, Sabens says, she tries to let students know "that it's OK to not be OK. I mean, most of the world is not OK right now... It's OK to grieve about what you're losing because it is tragic."

Brian Coleman, a high school counselor in Chicago, says trauma is nothing new to many of his students, but he hopes awareness of the potentially traumatic effects of school closures means "trauma-informed care is going to really, really explode in ideally healthy, meaningful ways."

That means school leaders should right now be planning for the future, asking how they can best support students when they come back to school, Ross says, "making sure that we're prepared to deal with some of those feelings that are going to increase — of anxiousness, of grief, of that disconnect that they had for so long."

Broken connections

Not only are many students grieving and struggling with new trauma, it's also harder now for school counselors to help them. That's because counselors have lost one of the most powerful tools they had before schools closed: access. Before, counselors could speak to entire classrooms about bullying and how to manage their feelings, plus they enjoyed office space where students could drop in for a quick visit or schedule a tough conversation.

"I think about my eighth graders," says Laura Ross in Lawrenceville. "My office is in their hallway. I mean, they just stop by to say hello. They stop by when they're upset, just to come in and talk and, you know, figure out their feelings."

But all of that has changed. Today, a face-to-face video meeting is the closest a counselor can get to the old ideal. Before that can happen, though, Sabens says she has to find her students.

"Email, email, email, email — lots of emails," she says, calling it her "primary mode of communication with the students."

Connecting is even more complicated for elementary school counselors whose students generally don't have cell phones or email addresses. In Tulsa, Sarah Kirk says this inability to speak directly with children is "exactly what keeps me up at night."

So far, Kirk has mostly been in contact with parents and caregivers. "That's whose [phone] number I have... But it's really up to the parent if they want to hand the phone over [to the student]." She worries that, if a child is not OK at home and needs help, she won't know.

Kirk's focus on these calls has also shifted away from academics toward "the basic needs of our kids... making sure they have enough food. We're making sure they're safe."

Evelyn Ramirez, a first-year middle school counselor in rural Redwood Valley, Calif., agrees: "Our main priority right now is just to check the welfare of each student."

Ramirez, a first-generation Mexican-American, says online learning can put additional strain on immigrant and low-income families. "I feel for the students whose parents don't know English or don't really know how to help their students."

"It's no longer private"

NPR spoke with counselors across the country, from California to Georgia, Oklahoma to Ohio, and nearly all said they worry about even the best-case scenario — when they're able to connect with a student face-to-face using video chat technology. Their fear: privacy.

At school, "we have some sort of office space... where students can feel like they're having a private conversation with counselors," says Coleman in Chicago. "Now we're asking them to be vulnerable in some capacity at home. And for so many students, home is a space where they're triggered or they don't feel comfortable sharing ... because it's no longer private."

Yes, the student's bedroom door may be closed, says Ramirez in Redwood Valley, but "at any given point, someone can walk in or, you know, mom's down in the living room. She can probably hear [our] conversation." And that might keep students from really opening up about things like basic stress or even abuse.

The same holds true for many elementary school counselors.

"We do small group counseling for kids [who] are adjusting to a variety of changes, and there's an element of confidentiality that's built into that group," says Marie Weller, an elementary school counselor in Delaware, Ohio. "So I can't do a group online. I can't use Canvas or Zoom or Google Hangouts for a group because I can't get the confidentiality. So [I'm] trying to figure out, how can I check in?"

Getting creative

In Lawrenceville, Laura Ross admits: These have been trying times. But there's also a surprising upside, she says. The distance from students has forced her to get creative about how she uses technology to build a bridge back to them.

Before the outbreak, Ross helped create an after-school club for students who identify as LGBTQ+. When school closed, Ross set up a Google Classroom and asked if the club's members wanted to continue to meet virtually. "They definitely did. And the reactions were just a relief that they were still going to have the support of that club... the place that they could truly be themselves."

Ross says they even meet at the same time each week, just on Zoom.

On her last day in the office, before Ohio closed its schools, Marie Weller remembers starting to leave — then hesitating beside the childlike puppets she sometimes uses in her classroom counseling presentations. "Huh," she thought. "Maybe I'll be able to use these."

Weller and her fellow elementary school counselors say one important part of their job is making sure all students have the social-emotional skills and coping strategies they'll need to navigate a complex world. How can they do that now, from home?

Weller improvised.

She set up a smartphone camera in her house, surrounded by those puppets — a kind of surrogate classroom audience — and set about recording mini counseling lessons from her kitchen. Instead of the chime she normally uses to begin a lesson, she rings a mixing bowl with a red spatula. To teach kids about how and why they should filter what they say, leaving hurtful thoughts unspoken, she opens the coffee maker to show them how a real, paper filter works.

Weller does her own editing and even got permission from folk music favorites The Irish Rovers to use their song "What's Cooking In The Kitchen" as her opening theme. The resulting videos are brief, rich and charming, with lines like, "Your brain's amygdala acts like a guard dog."

And in Tulsa, Sarah Kirk is doing something similar, posting videos where she's sitting on the floor of her house, surrounded by colorful pennants and stuffed animals. Her dog, Crew, a cuddly 80-pound sheepadoodle (nearly as big as Kirk), even makes a camera-blocking cameo.

In her first episode, Kirk read a story meant to reassure children she can no longer hug. It's about how we all have an invisible string that connects us, even when we're far apart.

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