In its latest stimulus measure, the Morrison government will extend its first home loan deposit scheme to an extra 10,000 home buyers.
But unlike existing arrangements, where people can purchase a new or existing home, these buyers will have to build a house or buy a newly-built property.
The condition is to direct maximum help to the residential building sector.
As with the existing program, the extended program allows people to buy with a deposit of as little as 5%, much less than the usual deposit of about 20%. The government guarantees the other 15% of the deposit.
The additional guarantee will run until June 30, 2021. The program has already assisted some 20,000 buyers since the start of the year.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said: “Helping another 10,000 first home buyers to buy a new home … will help to support all our tradies right through the supply chain including painters, builders, plumbers and electricians.
"In addition to the government’s HomeBuilder program, these measures will support residential construction activity and jobs across the industry at a time when the economy and the sector needs it most.
"At around 5% of GDP, our residential construction industry is vital to the economy and our recovery from the coronavirus crisis.”
The first home loan deposit scheme began in January, to provide up to 10,000 guarantees for the financial year to June 30, 2020. It saw strong demand in its first six months , with 9,984 out of a maximum of 10,000 guarantees offered.
Between March and June, the scheme supported one in eight of all first home buyers.
The government has announced new caps for the scheme, given newly built homes are usually more expensive than existing homes for first home buyers:
We are both physician-scientists at the University of Virginia. We care for COVID-19 patients and conduct research to find better ways to diagnose and treat COVID-19.
Here we are sharing what physicians have learned over the past eight months treating various stages of this disease. Early in the year, there were few known treatments for people who showed severe COVID-19 symptoms apart from sustaining them on ventilators. Now, several months later, there are a handful of treatments, including drugs, that give doctors far better tools to heal patients, particularly very ill ones.
Is treatment different depending upon how sick one is?
The approach to therapy differs depending on the stage of the illness.
It is therefore important to not only diagnose COVID-19 but to define whether the infection is asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic. Also, how sick a person is – whether it’s a mild, moderate, severe or critical case – changes how a patient is treated.
What treatment is there for asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic infection?
Asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic infection is defined as having a positive diagnostic test for COVID-19 (a PCR or antigen detection test) without symptoms of infection.
Someone with mild COVID-19 does not have shortness of breath, chest pain or evidence of pneumonia during a chest X-ray. The exception to this is children with mild disease who may still have an abnormal X-ray.
There are no treatments that have been demonstrated to benefit those with mild disease. However, such patients should be well versed on the symptoms of moderate illness, so that they and others recognize if they progress to moderate illness. This is important because progression to more severe disease can be rapid – typically five to 10 days after initial symptoms.
Moderate illness
Moderate illness is defined as shortness of breath, chest pain, or on a chest X-ray, evidence of pneumonia but without hypoxia (low blood oxygen levels).
Severe illness is identified by a rapid breathing rate (greater than 30 breaths per minute) or low oxygen levels in the blood, which is called hypoxia. Also, evidence of pneumonia affecting more than half of the lungs, as diagnosed on a chest X-ray, is a sign of a severe case.
Critical illness occurs when the patient becomes so sick that vital organs begin to fail and they require medicines or other therapies to support these vital functions.
If failure of the lungs is severe enough, physicians may put the patient on a mechanical ventilator or high quantities of oxygen. There is no evidence that remdesivir treatment is beneficial during this critical phase. Dexamethasone is still recommended for treatment because it has been shown to decrease mortality.
What therapies don’t work or are still being tested?
Other potential treatments are still in the middle of clinical trials to test whether they are effective. These include human convalescent plasma, which contains antibodies that should bind to the virus and prevent it from entering cells.
There are also drugs to modulate the immune response, such as interferons and inhibitors of IL-6, which in some cases may prevent a harmful overreaction of the immune system, commonly referred to as cytokine storm.
Newer treatments, including one President Trump has been given
Right now there is no approved treatment for outpatients with asymptomatic or mild to moderate COVID-19. But this appears to be changing, with Eli Lilly’s and Regeneron’s release of clinical trial data on the use of laboratory-manufactured antibodies against the spike glycoprotein of the new coronavirus.
In this approach, as with convalescent plasma, the antibodies work by binding to the virus and blocking it from entering cells and multiplying. This could be particularly effective early on in infection before illness becomes severe.
In an early preview of data from an ongoing phase three clinical trial, subjects with COVID-19 who received an injection of a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein had symptoms that lasted only seven days rather than 13. The amount of virus remaining in the nasopharynx – the upper part of the throat behind the nose – was also reduced.
With just a month left until the November 3 US presidential election, contracting the virus could have politically positive or negative consequences for President Donald Trump. These will, of course, be contingent on how severe the president’s illness becomes. But we should not count him out and Biden in just yet.
Here are the ways the diagnosis could swing the election either way for Trump.
Negative
Trump’s days in isolation will halt his intense campaign schedule. Trump was much better at energising crowds in airport hangers than Joe Biden has been. This advantage is now gone.
Trump is a sick man. Campaigning in any form requires robust health. Any physical advantage born of being the younger and fitter of the two candidates has now gone.
Because he has often disparaged the virulence of the disease, the president faces the public humiliation of being its victim. Trump does not deal well with humiliation – the excoriating account of his childhood, as told by his estranged niece, Mary L. Trump, is replete with examples of the young Donald dishing out but being unable to take humiliation.
Trump has traded on his strong man image for decades. If he gets a bad dose, he will look every bit and more of his 74 years. If his experience is like that of Boris Johnson, Trump could well be out of action for weeks with the attendant psychological challenge of recovery weighing on him. The British PM, several intimates have observed, is still in recovery, still cognitively and emotionally impaired by his personal fight with COVID-19.
Trump thrives on rallies but won’t be able to attend them for at least a couple of weeks.AAP/AP/ Jack Rendulich
Positive
There are also potential political advantages in Trump’s COVID diagnosis.
Because of the virus, Joe Biden was already cautious about face-to-face campaigning. His younger opponent falling ill may well keep Biden more basement-bound and less willing to crisscross the battleground states.
Trump is not the first leader to catch the virus. While Boris Johnson became very sick, Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian president, had a relatively mild dose. He was able to claim from personal experience how few people who catch the virus are actually killed by it. This has been Trump’s basic refrain over the course of the pandemic. Catching and recovering from the virus will prove he was right all along. Lockdowns, he will insist, were one big overreaction to a contagious but not virulent disease.
History tells us sick presidential candidates often win the ensuing election – Ronald Reagan nearly died from an assassin’s bullet in 1981 but won big in 1984 – or that their party will. When Warren G. Harding died in office (in 1923), his Republican party stayed in the White House for another ten years.
Indeed, assassinated presidents tend to guarantee their party retains the White House at the next election: Lincoln’s murder in 1865 was a cause of his great general, Ulysses S. Grant, winning in 1868. William McKinley’s murder in 1903 put his vice president, Theodore Roosevelt, into office for eight years. John Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 lead to Lyndon Johnson winning in a landslide the next year. Dying is, of course, not Trump’s plan, but sickness and death need not mean the GOP lose the White House.
The greatest president in US history, measured by victories (1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944), Franklin Roosevelt, was also the most challenged by his health. A victim of polio, he spent his entire presidency in a wheelchair. The point is not that COVID could turn Trump into FDR. It is to observe how far illness can empower a president.
Trump’s illness could have a positive effect on the tone of political discourse. Biden will not want to be seen to demonise a sick opponent. The presidential debates will almost certainly be cancelled – which will likely mean a more civil national debate.
Again, we can only begin to properly estimate the political ramifications of Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis when we know his prognosis. It is another element of uncertainty in this strangest and most uncertain of election years.
Monday, 28 September 2020 06:56 Written by oasesnews
Donald Trump paid just 750 dollars in federal income tax in 2016, the year he won the U.S. presidential election, the New York Times wrote in an explosive investigative report late Sunday.
The president, a self-proclaimed billionaire, paid the same amount in 2017, and nothing at all in 10 of the 15 previous years largely because he lost so much more money than he made, the paper reported.
At a news conference held minutes after the newspaper published its report, Trump said it was “fake news” and claimed the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) “does not treat me well.”
“It will all be revealed, I paid a lot of taxes, I paid a lot of state taxes too. but when you under audit, you don’t publish them.
“I’m going to release many things and people are going to be shocked,” he told reporters.
The Times has long sought to get hold of Trump’s tax returns but the president has refused to release them, though his predecessors have traditionally done so.
On Sunday the paper said it had got hold of more than two decades’ worth of returns, but that it did not include Trump’s personal returns for 2018 and 2019.
The revelations come just over a month before the U.S. is set to vote in a new presidential election, with polls suggesting Trump is in danger of losing to his Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
The Times said its reporting showed that Trump, former star of the reality show “The Apprentice,” had been “more successful playing a business mogul than being one in real life.”
A 2019 investigation by the Times of Trump tax returns it managed to get hold of dating from 1985 to 1994 showed the president lost more money than almost any other individual US taxpayer in many years.It also suggested that his financial condition in 2015 lent “some credence to the notion that his long-shot campaign was at least in part a gambit to reanimate the marketability of his name.”
In Sunday’s report, the Times said he was “a businessman-president in a tightening financial vise,” with 300 million dollars worth of debt for which he is personally responsible coming due within the next four years.
It said he was increasingly dependent on income from businesses such as his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, that put him in direct, or potential, conflicts of interest with his job as president.
It also said that most of his core businesses, including his golf courses and Washington hotel, reported “losing millions, if not tens of millions, of dollars year after year.”
In response to the Times investigation, Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organisation said that “most, if not all, of the facts appear to be inaccurate.”
He said that over the past decade Trump had paid “tens of millions of dollars in personal taxes to the federal government” although the Times said he appeared to be conflating personal taxes such as Social Security with income tax.
Despite hopes that the president’s tax records might shed some light on his ingratiating attitude towards Russia, the Times said they revealed nothing about his connections to the country that had not previously been reported.
The paper said it would publish further stories on Trump’s tax records in the coming weeks. (NAN)
In the latest episode of her eponymous Spotify podcast, Michelle Obama said she and Barack “never could’ve gotten away with some of the stuff that’s going on now” under the Trump administration when her husband was president, claiming the Black community would have deemed it unacceptable.
The former First Lady was joined by her mother, Marian Robinson, and her brother, Craig Robinson to discuss topics including race and expectations of Black Americans for the season finale of her widely popular podcast on Wednesday, according to The Hill.
“When we were in the White House, we could’ve never gotten away with some of the stuff that’s going on now, not because of the public, but our community wouldn’t have accepted that. You worked, you did your best every day. You showed up,” Obama said, throwing light on the current protests in the country against racial discrimination and police brutality in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
“The fact that there are people out there that treat us less than, when we’re working so hard to be better than, that’s where the pain comes from. That’s what these young people are so angry about,” she said. “The notion that people are out there wondering about these protests, it’s like, do you know how much it takes, that it takes to get up everyday, and be accused of being less than what you are?”
During their discussion, the family also recalled an episode during childhood when Craig was accused of stealing his own bike by the police. Craig was around 10 or 11 when he was stopped by the police around the South Side of Chicago while riding a new bright yellow 10-speed bike his parents had gifted to him.
Craig, who is currently the executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, recalled that one of the officers grabbed the bike after accusing him of stealing it. Despite his pleas that the bike was his, one of the officers grabbed it and wouldn’t let it go.
“I was always taught that the police are your friends…and they’ll believe the truth, and I was tellin’ ‘em the truth and this guy would not believe me,” Robinson recounted.
“I was like ‘Oh, you got this all wrong, this is my bike. Don’t worry, this isn’t a stolen bike,’ and [the cop] would not believe me, and I was absolutely heartbroken. And I finally said to him, ‘Listen, you can take me to my house, and I will prove to you, this is my bike.’”
With the bike in the back of the police car, the officers drove Craig to his home, where his mom, Marian, made it known to them that they had made a serious mistake.
“I could tell [the cops] were trying to ask me questions that would trip me up,” Craig recalled. “If I wasn’t so sure that that bike was mine and showed any kind of reticence, I could see them taking me off to the police station, not calling mom until after I’ve been, you know, booked or whatever they do.”
Michelle then went on to describe how Black families have had to safely navigate potential encounters with police. “Nobody thinks about, you know, the fact that we all come from good families that are trying to teach values, but when you leave the safety of your home and go out into the street, where being Black is, is a crime in and of itself, we have all had to learn how to operate outside of our homes with a level of caution, and fear, because you never know,” she said.
Interestingly, the police officers who drove Craig home that fateful day were Black but Marian believes that their “discriminatory treatment was part of a culture among police.”
“…They were acting exactly the same as any other policeman,” she said. “It’s almost like, this is what they thought they were, how they were thought they were supposed to act.”
The government is extending the COVID health measures for a further six months, until the end of March, in its latest acknowledgement that pandemic assistance will be needed on various fronts for a longer period.
The extension, costing $2 billion, covers the telehealth services provided by doctors and a range of allied health professionals, home medicine delivery, and free COVID-19 pathology tests.
It also includes the cost of funding for further personal protective equipment for the national medical stockpile, GP-led respiratory clinics, half the cost of activities to respond to COVID-19 in hospitals, and continuation of the private hospital agreement to ensure access to beds.
Telehealth, which started in March, has proved highly popular with three out of every ten GP services at present done virtually. So far, over 30 million services have been provided to more than ten million patients, delivered by more than 77,000 practitioners. Some $1.55 billion has been paid in benefits.
Given the convenience and high usage of telehealth, the government will be under pressure to build it into the health system permanently.
Scott Morrison said telehealth and home delivery medicine services reduced the risk of exposure to COVID-19 in the community while supporting people in isolation.
“Importantly this also includes mental health services, delivered over the phone, by trained specialists and GPs,” he said.
The extension of the health funding comes as national cabinet meets on Friday, when it will discuss the increase in the cap — from 4,000 to 6,000 a week nationally – that the government has announced for people coming home from overseas.
Western Australia has been critical of the government for pre-empting the national cabinet with its announcement.
Morrison was adamant on Thursday the increased cap was a fait accompli, not a request to the states.
“The planes will land with people on them … It’s a decision. It’s not a proposal. The Commonwealth government has made a decision that those caps have been moved to those levels and planes will be able to fly to those ports carrying that many passengers a week,” he said.
Jane Halton, a former health department secretary who is on the government’s COVID-19 commission and has done an audit of quarantine arrangements around the country, will brief Friday’s meeting.
Meanwhile tensions remain over state border restrictions, especially in relation to the Queensland border. But with the Queensland election looming and the state government’s policy favoured by many voters, Morrison on Thursday was treading carefully.
“I’ve never said the Queensland border should be taken down,” he insisted. “What I’ve said is it should be managed sensibly. What I’ve said is it should be managed compassionately. What I’ve said is that they should explain to people what the rules for it are and the medical basis of it are,” he said.
“No doubt people in Queensland may feel that the borders are protecting their health situation. I understand that. But there’s also the impact that it is having more broadly on jobs and business and industry in Queensland.”
The 14-day quarantine rule operating in Queensland will mean neither Morrison nor Anthony Albanese will be able to campaign on the ground for the late October election.
Morrison said NSW and Victoria and South Australia were working to get their borders down.
“The border between New South Wales and Victoria is likely to come down before the one in New South Wales and Queensland,” he said.
Wednesday, 16 September 2020 01:55 Written by face2faceafrica
Eleanor Bumpurs would have been 102 years old this month if she were alive. But for being four months behind on her monthly rent of $98.65, the disabled elderly Black woman, remembered for her gloomy-looking 1981 photograph, was shotgunned to death by NYPD officers, an example of how Black folks have been vulnerable to state-sanctioned violence since time immemorial.
The 67-year-old’s killing indeed drew widespread media coverage and public outcry from Black leaders, who demanded changes in policing. The tragic death of the mother of seven and grandmother of 10 occurred on October 29, 1984, in her Bronx apartment as the police made efforts to evict her.
Months before Bumpurs’ death, her rent payment history was good but that didn’t stop authorities from starting eviction proceedings against her when she was only one month behind. Records showed that the city’s Human Resources Administration (HRA) had emergency rent funds for seniors facing eviction, but Bumpurs was denied such funds.
Rather, the HRA brought in a psychiatrist, who spoke with her for a short period before advising that she should be evicted and hospitalized over what he deemed to be psychosis.
On October 29, the day of her eviction, the city marshal came to evict Bumpurs but when she refused to answer the door, the police were called. Housing authority workers requested NYPD assistance to evict her after telling it that Bumpurs “was emotionally disturbed, had threatened to throw boiling lye, and was using a knife to resist eviction.”
A team of a half dozen officers from the Emergency Services Unit (ESU), wearing masks and carrying shields and a long iron restraining bar as well as a shotgun, broke down her door and forcibly entered her apartment, a 1985 Unity Newspaper reported. The team found inside the apartment Bumpurs, 275 pounds, naked, and allegedly holding a 10-inch kitchen knife. They then attempted to subdue Bumpurs, but in the struggle to do so, one officer shot Bumpurs twice with a 12-gauge shotgun.
Here’s how the Unity Newspaper reported it: “As she tried to dodge the restraining bar, Stephen Sullivan fired his shotgun at Mrs. Bumpurs. Though the blast destroyed her hand (and with it, a knife she was allegedly holding), Sullivan fired a second and fatal blast at her chest.”
That wasn’t the end of Bumpurs’ woes as reports said the police carried her out of the building still naked and when her family came back to her apartment weeks after her death, they found part of her finger.
Soon, Bumpurs’ killing sparked local and national outrage. Demonstrations, marches, and candlelight vigils that were organized to protest her murder and the rising police violence in the city, led in the pursuit of legal justice for Bumpurs.
Investigations did commence in her case but concluded that her eviction was justified because she was behind on rent. Sullivan was later indicted on manslaughter charges and acquitted.
The city in the end paid the Bumpurs family $200,000 to settle a civil suit but not without grassroots organizing led by Mary Bumpers, the daughter of the deceased. Mary, alongside Veronica Perry, whose 17-year-old son was shot and killed by the police, led a grassroots initiative in New York City to fight police violence in Black communities in the 1980s.
At the end of the day, the NYPD “changed its guidelines to require a senior officer to be on hand before police confront an emotionally disturbed person,” according to a report. The police also began to carry less-lethal weapons, including tasers, and since then, they are only supposed to use deadly force if there is an immediate threat to someone’s life.
But what do we see today? It’s unfortunate that circumstances surrounding Bumpurs’ death still achingly linger on, as evident in the excessive police use of deadly force and racial discrimination in the deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, among others.
But Black communities have shown in the wake of recent protests that they will never rest until they see the end of police killings of Black people in the United States.
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