Tag: COVID-19

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Florida: Governor Lifts All Coronavirus Restrictions

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
From the Miami Herald:

Gov. Ron DeSantis lifted all restrictions on restaurants and other businesses in Florida on Friday, and banned local fines against people who refuse to wear masks as he seeks to reopen the state’s economy despite the spread of the coronavirus.

The Republican governor’s order unleashed fresh debate in the politically divided state, where pandemic responses have become intertwined with the upcoming presidential election.

DeSantis, a major ally of President Donald Trump, acknowledged that the pandemic is far from over, but he said the threat has eased and the time has come to reopen for business.

Florida added 2,847 confirmed coronavirus cases on Friday, pushing the statewide total since March 1 to 695,887. The state also announced 120 new virus deaths, pushing its total to 14,038. Hospitalizations declined by 34 to 2,137 people.

While local jurisdictions can still impose some restrictions they are not allowed to limit restaurants to reopen at less than 50% capacity. Local regulators will also have to justify limiting any restaurants to less than 100 percent. Today’s order from DeSantis also blocks cities and counties from collecting fines on people who don’t wear face masks, basically nullifying local mask ordinances. Broward County Mayor Dale Holness announced today that restaurants in his county are now allowed to reopen bar counters. BUT alcohol may not be allowed to be served in those areas, customers need to social distance 6-feet apart and plexiglass barriers would need to installed.

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Poll: Majority Of Americans Don’t Trust Trump’s Promises Of ‘Safe’ Vaccine By Spring

The first confirmed case of the omicron variant in the U.S. has been discovered in California.

A new ABC News/Ipsos poll shows the majority of Americans have little to no confidence in Donald Trump vouching for the safety or effectiveness of a coronavirus vaccine he claims could be available to everyone by Spring 2021. From ABC News:

Fewer than 1 in 10 (9%) Americans have a great deal of confidence in Trump to confirm vaccine effectiveness with another 18% reporting only a “good amount” of confidence in the poll conducted by Ipsos in partnership with ABC News using Ipsos’ Knowledge Panel.

In contrast, 69% don’t have confidence in the president vouching for a vaccine, including 16% saying “not so much” and 53% saying “none at all.”

On Wednesday, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield told the Senate Appropriations Committee that he did not foresee a coronavirus inoculation becoming “generally available” to Americans for another year. Later that day, Trump described Redfield as “confused” and said he thought Redfield made “a mistake.”

The survey also asked respondents which of the presidential candidates they believe is “more honest and trustworthy.” Biden scored much higher than Trump garnering 58 percent support on the question while Trump lagged 19 points behind the Democrat at 39 percent.

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Former Pence Aide Endorses Biden, Says Trump Only Concerned With Reelection

Donald Trump smirks during a press event

Donald Trump smirks during a press event
Donald Trump (photo: public domain/Flickr)
Olivia Troye, a former homeland security official who served in Vice President Mike Pence’s office for the coronavirus task force, endorsed Joe Biden for president today. She described her time in the White House (she resigned two months ago) as “terrifying” and said the president “could have saved lives” in his response to the coronavirus pandemic in a video released Thursday. In the video, she says Trump was only concerned with his reelection. From CNN:

A former top aide to Vice President Mike Pence assailed President Donald Trump’s response to the pandemic in a new video Thursday, adding to the growing list of former Trump administration officials who have criticized the President and, in several cases, endorsed his Democratic opponent Joe Biden.

Olivia Troye, who was a homeland security adviser to Pence and his lead staffer on the White House’s coronavirus task force, charged in the two-minute video that Trump failed to protect the American public because he only cared about himself and getting reelected. Troye’s criticism is particularly striking because of her role working on the coronavirus task force, which Pence leads.

“Towards the middle of February, we knew it wasn’t a matter of if Covid would become a big pandemic here, it was a matter of when,” said Troye, who left the White House in late July. “But the President didn’t want to hear that, because his biggest concern was that we were in an election year, and how was this going to affect what he considered to be his record of success?”

At one coronavirus task force meeting, Troye claimed that Trump suggested “maybe this Covid thing is a good thing.”

“I don’t like shaking hands with people. I don’t have to shake hands with these disgusting people,” Troye claimed Trump said at the meeting.

The White House denied Troye’s statements and predictably accused her of being a disgruntled former employee.

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Pastor Being Treated In ICU After Holding Maskless Church Services

Pastor Paul Van Noy holds open church services during COVID-19 pandemic

Pastor Paul Van Noy holds open church services during COVID-19 pandemic
Pastor Paul Van Noy (screen capture via YouTube)
A pastor in A Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, is being treated for COVID-19 at the Kootenai Health intensive care unit after who opening his church in May for in-person services that encouraged unmasked congregants to gather. Who’d have ever guessed something could go wrong? From the Spokesman-Review:

Paul Van Noy, the senior pastor at Candlelight Christian Fellowship, has spent the past two weeks in the ICU while his wife, Brenda Van Noy, recovered from her own bout with COVID-19 at home. Five other church staff have been infected, said Eric Reade, body ministry coordinator the church.

The church closed its doors for two weeks and underwent deep cleaning before reopening for in-person services Sunday, Reade said.

“We didn’t want, obviously, to be spreading the virus,” he said.

Church staffers don’t know how Van Noy contracted the virus, Reade said.

Van Noy, who apparently has a history of sharing his political views from the pulpit, has publicly shared his doubts regarding the efficacy of wearing face coverings to help protect against the virus.

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Fact-Checking Trump’s ABC News Townhall

(screen capture via ABC News)
NowThis News fact-checks Donald Trump’s ABC News town hall earlier this week where he took questions from undecided voters. During the session, Trump blamed Joe Biden for not implementing a national face-mask mandate (even though Biden isn’t president) and said he thinks he’s done a “great job” handling the COVID-19 pandemic as the U.S. approaches 200,000 coronavirus-related deaths. This is a terrific quick wrap-up of the event. Hit the play button below.

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Town Hall: Trump Cites ‘Herd Mentality’ And Churchill Atop Buildings During Bombing Of London

Donald Trump (screen capture)

Donald Trump during ABC News Town Hall (screen capture)
In case you missed it, Donald Trump didn’t have a great time during last night’s town hall event hosted by ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos. At one point, he was asked by an undecided voter about a national mandate on wearing face masks during the coronavirus pandemic. In an odd twist, Trump pointed to his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, for failing to implement such a mandate. Note – Joe Biden is a private citizen holding no public office meaning he has no authority to enact such policies. Did Trump forget HE is currently president? “A good question is, you ask, like Joe Biden. They said, ‘We’re going to do a national mandate on masks,'” Trump said Tuesday evening. “But he didn’t do it, I mean, he never did it.” Biden has said he would encourage governors to support the use of face masks and promised to lead by example by wearing face coverings in public. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci recommend universal mask-wearing when in public and around people who don’t live in your household to help prevent coronavirus transmission. Trump also said “a lot of people” don’t like face masks. When asked who those folks were, Trump said “waiters.”

Additionally, Trump declared, again, that the coronavirus will just disappear citing “herd mentality.” “Over a period of time, sure, with time, it goes away and you’ll develop, you’ll develop like a herd mentality — it’s going to be herd-developed, and that’s going to happen. That will all happen.” Most people believe he meant to say “herd immunity,” but, you know, four-syllable words can be hard… Along the way, the Donald also told some wild story about Winston Churchill standing on the roof of buildings while the Nazis were bombing London during WWII telling folks, “Everything’s going to be ok.” Actually, as soon as Churchill became prime minister, he warned the UK of ‘struggle and suffering’ and told Londoners the Nazi campaign was ‘killing large numbers of women and children.’

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Trump: COVID-19 Restrictions Don’t Apply To Me

Donald Trump smirks during a press event

Donald Trump smirks during a press event
Donald Trump (photo: public domain/Flickr)
Donald Trump told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in an interview Sunday that he doesn’t believe Nevada’s COVID-19 restrictions regarding large gatherings of over 50 people apply to him giving himself permission to hold his indoor rally in Henderson attended by a few thousand followers.

The president blamed the Democratic governor for forcing his campaign to abandon plans to hold an outdoor rally Sunday at Cirrus Aviation near McCarran International Airport and a Saturday rally in Reno, which was moved to an outdoor venue in Minden.

After failing to arrange alternative venues in the Las Vegas area, the campaign decided to hold the rally indoors at the Xtreme Manufacturing facility, owned by his friend Don Ahern, Trump said. “They canceled six different sites because the governor wouldn’t let it happen, all external sites,” the president said.

Henderson officials issued written and verbal warnings of compliance to the event organizers. Kathleen Richards, a spokeswoman for the city of Henderson, said in a statement “gatherings of more than 50 people in a private or public setting is prohibited.”

“If the governor’s directives are not followed,” she said, “the city may assess a fine of up to $500 per violation as well as suspend or revoke the business license.”

Sisolak was not targeting Trump in any way. Currently, no one is supposed to hold large gatherings of more than 50 people in Nevada. That’s the rule for everyone.

Sisolak clapped back in a lengthy thread on Twitter writing, “Tonight, President Donald Trump is taking reckless and selfish actions that are putting countless lives in danger here in Nevada.”

“The president appears to have forgotten that this country is still in the middle of a global pandemic,” added Sisolak.

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Jake Tapper Ends Scrappy Interview With Peter Navarro Over Trump’s COVID Lies

L-R CNN anchor Jake Tapper, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro
There’s a strategy in public relations. During a scandal or debacle, send out a representative to do an interview with a news outlet. When asked a question about the scandal, begin spewing the talking points you’ve been told to repeat. When asked to get back to the question at hand, repeat the talking points to continue killing time out of the 7 or so minutes of the segment. When the host tries to get back to the question at hand AGAIN, become irate and say, “You’re not letting me answer the question” when you KNOW you’re just running out the clock AND you’re just repeating the scripted talking points without addressing the actual issue. This is what happens in the clip below between CNN anchor Jake Tapper and White House trade adviser Peter Navarro. Now, you might wonder why a trade adviser is speaking to the news about the coronavirus pandemic. It has nothing to do with his background, he’s just the kind of pugnacious scrapper that Donald Trump likes to see defend him. That’s why he’s doing the interview. In this appearance, Navarro has an audience of one. His boss. When Tapper asked Navarro to explain why Trump privately acknowledged the coronavirus was deadlier than the flu but said otherwise publicly, Navarro repeatedly goes down a rabbit hole with his talking points. At one point, as Navarro throws out the false statement that Trump was “called a xenophobe and a racist by Joe Biden” (he wasn’t) and later apologized for it (he didn’t), Tapper corrects him. Navarro says, “We’ll do the fact-checker on that.” “I just did,” responds Tapper. In the end, Tapper ends the segment and reminded viewers of the facts: “I would just like to remind the American people that the United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, and the United States has more than 20 percent of the world’s coronavirus deaths. That is a fact. It does not matter how many times he insults CNN.”

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No, Fauci Didn’t Say Live Theater Won’t Come Back For Another Year

(photo: Ludovic Bertron/Flickr)
This has blown up across many outlets online and I feel the need to underscore Dr. Anthony Fauci’s true words. Per the New York Times, he did not say it would be more than a year after a coronavirus vaccine becomes available that theaters can open. He said it would be a year before “people feel comfortable returning to theaters without masks.”

As theaters look to see how they might reopen with safety accommodations including mask use, Dr. Anthony Fauci says it will likely be more than a year before people feel comfortable returning to theaters without masks.

“If we get a really good vaccine and just about everybody gets vaccinated,” he said in an Instagram Live interview with Jennifer Garner on Wednesday, “you’ll have a degree of immunity in the general community that I think you can walk into a theater without a mask and feel like it’s comfortable that you’re not going to be at risk.”

He said that would likely not be until mid- to late 2021.

But that doesn’t mean he is saying when it would be safe to go to the theater without a mask. Dr. Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, clarified in a phone interview on Friday that he was referring to when people could return to theatergoing at their pre-coronavirus comfort levels. “Words like ‘safe’ are charged,” he said. “I’m talking about the general trend of when we’ll start to feel comfortable going back to normal if we get a safe and effective vaccine.”

It’s an important difference to note because Broadway and regional theaters may open by January or February. The pandemic situation changes weekly. So, folks, please don’t misconstrue Dr. Fauci’s comments to mean we need to write Broadway and live theater off for another whole year. It’s not what he said.

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UK Prime Minister Proposes Testing Every Brit Every Week For COVID-19

New York state is about to drop its face mask mandate as COVID-19 cases continue to drop in the Empire State.

The Washington Post is reporting UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is proposing testing every citizen of his country every week for coronavirus in lieu of any health precautions like face masks or social distancing.

No masks. No distancing. The ability to go to work or school, the theater or a soccer match, as if living in a virus-free world.

That’s the vision British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pitched this past week, as he unveiled “Operation Moonshot” — a plan to test 10 million Brits every single day, or everyone in the country every week, at a cost of $130 billion.

The prospect of a return to normal has wide appeal, especially at a moment Britain is about to implement a new round of social distancing measures, prompted by rising coronavirus infections.

But many public health experts are dubious. Some say the plan is not a moonshot, but a Jules Verne fantasy.

Such massive population-wide testing for disease would be unprecedented. Though some countries have deployed mass screening during this pandemic, “Operation Moonshot” would go where no public health campaign has gone before — and yet Britain doesn’t have the best track record on coronavirus testing.

For such a plan to work, the government would need inexpensive, quick-result tests readily available on a massive scale. But such tests aren’t available or approved at this time.