Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick suffered two strokes and died of natural causes after defending the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot, Washington, D.C.'s chief medical examiner Francisco Diaz ruled Monday.
Diaz told the The Washington Post that Sicknick's autopsy found no evidence that the officer suffered any internal or external injuries or an allergic reaction to chemical irritants, such as bear spray, which two men are accused of assaulting him with during the riot. Diaz said if Sicknick did have an allergic reaction, his throat would have quickly seized, which did not happen. The ruling "likely will make it difficult for prosecutors to pursue homicide charges" in Sicknick's death, the Post writes.
Citing privacy laws, Diaz did not divulge whether Sicknick had a pre-existing medical condition that may have contributed to the 42-year-old's death, though he did say "all that transpired" during the highly tense situation at the Capitol on Jan. 6 "played a role in his condition." Read more at The Washington Post. Tim O'Donnell
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) looks to be facing another investigation.
New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) has opened an investigation focused on Cuomo's alleged use of state resources during the writing of a book he published about the COVID-19 pandemic last year, The New York Times reports. The attorney general had received a referral from New York's comptroller authorizing a criminal investigation.
This comes after the Times reported last month that staffers and aides for the New York governor worked on his book American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic. Cuomo, the Times wrote, reportedly relied on aides and staffers for "everything from full-scale edits to minor clerical work, potentially running afoul of state laws prohibiting use of public resources for personal gain."
Following this reporting, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli reportedly suggested there be an investigation examining "the drafting, editing, sale and promotion of the governor’s book and any related financial or business transactions." The governor has said that some staffers volunteered to help work on his book, but Cuomo adviser Richard Azzopardi told the Times that "every effort was made to ensure that no state resources were used in connection with this project."
Azzopardi also said Monday that "idea there was criminality involved here is patently absurd on its face and is just the furthering of a political pile-on."
Cuomo has already been facing an investigation focused his administration's handling of data on COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes, as well as an investigation into sexual harassment allegations against him. The governor has continued to resist calls to resign amid these scandals. Brendan Morrow
Researchers at the University of Oxford are looking for 64 healthy people between the ages of 18 and 30 who have recovered from COVID-19. In a new, first-of-its kind study, the volunteers will be reinfected with the original strain of the coronavirus first identified in Wuhan, China, under controlled, quarantined conditions for 17 days, the university said Monday.
The main goal of the challenge trial is to discover what levels and types of immunity are needed to prevent reinfection, which could aid vaccine developers going forward. So far, natural infections and vaccines appear to provide strong protection against reinfection for the most part, but it's unclear how long that will last. The study may also reveal how much virus it takes to reinfect a recovered patient.
While Oxford is excited about the study's potential, challenge trials have their critics, who argue that deliberately infecting someone is unethical, regardless of the circumstances. Read more at Bloomberg. Tim O'Donnell
At this point, Natalie Shure writes in The New Republic, the "ongoing ubiquity" of outdoor masking has turned into "meaningless political theater," even as the coronavirus pandemic continues.
The Atlantic's Derek Thompson seems to concur, writing that "mandating outdoor masks and closing public areas makes a show of 'taking the virus seriously,' while doing nothing to reduce indoor spread,'" adding that such rules may actually backfire in that they force people to gather inside, which is much riskier. Slate's Shannon Palus joined Shure and Thompson in arguing that outdoor masking makes little sense anymore, given how much more information there is about COVID-19 transmission these days.
Shure, Thompson, and Palus were quick to clarify that they're still very much in favor of wearing masks indoors, but they all pointed to several studies that found the risk of passing on the virus outdoors to be very small. The rare cases that do occur tend to "involve considerable close contact," as opposed to, say, "passing someone maskless on the street or in the park," Shure writes.
The counterargument is that wearing masks outdoors reinforces the idea that people should wear them indoors, but Thompson notes that Julia Marcus, a Harvard Medical School epidemiologist, found through some anecdotal interviews with mask skeptics that people became more open to adhering to indoor mandates when they learned outdoor masking wasn't as important. "The purpose of mask wearing isn't to send a message," Shure writes. "If it were we could just iron whatever slogan we wanted to onto a T-shirt. The point of mask-wearing is to reduce infection, and there's simply no reason to believe that wearing a mask while walking to the grocery store accomplishes this." Read more at The Atlantic, The New Republic, and Slate. Tim O'Donnell