Tag: face masks

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Asked To Wear Face Mask Properly, Iowa Man Commits Assault & Gets 10 Years In Prison

Shane Wayne Michael (mug shot)

Shane Wayne Michael (mug shot)
Shane Wayne Michael (mug shot)
Back in November, Shane Wayne Michael, 42, apparently became irate when he was asked to adjust his face mask to properly cover his nose and mouth at a eyewear store in Des Moines, Iowa. Michael followed the victim out of the business and assaulted him. From the Des Moines Register:

The victim told police that, as he walked to his car, Michael cornered him, began to assault him and took him to the ground. While on the ground, Michael began gouging the victim’s eye and kneed him in the genitals, according to the report, so the victim bit Michael to get him off of him.

The victim also said that Michael coughed in his face, spit on him and said “‘If I have it, you have it,'” according to the report.

Three witnesses identified Michael as the aggressor in the fight, according to the complaint. The victim suffered a swollen left eye, according to the complaint and court records.

In February, Michael was reportedly offered a plea deal which would have resulted in two years probation. Michael refused the offer saying he had merely defended himself. Instead, he chose to take his chances with a jury. Because he was found guilty of assault causing bodily injury, the conviction comes with a mandatory 10 year prison sentence. Just throwing this out there but… Michael COULD have just responded “sure” when asked to adjust his mask and none of this would have happened. Or – he could have chosen to ignore the request altogether. But Michael chose to become the aggressor. And there you have it.

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American Airlines Suspends Alcohol Service Due To Unruly Behavior

An American Airlines plane on the tarmac

An American Airlines plane on the tarmac
(photo: Quintin Gellar/Pexels)
After a recent incident on a Southwest Airlines flight ended with a flight attendant losing two front teeth thanks to a drunk passenger, Southwest announced it would suspend serving alcohol during flights. American Airlines has announced it will now follow suit. From CNN:

“Flight attendants are on the front lines every day not only ensuring our customers’ safety, but are also calming fears, answering questions, and enforcing policies like federally-required face masks,” said Brady Byrnes, managing director of flight service at American, in a memo to flight attendants obtained by CNN.

“Over the past week we’ve seen some of these stressors create deeply disturbing situations on board aircraft,” the memo said. “Let me be clear: American Airlines will not tolerate assault or mistreatment of our crews.”

American had suspended alcohol service in March 2020 to reduce interactions with passengers during the pandemic. Beverage services were resumed on May 1. But now, American Airlines says serving alcohol will remain suspended for coach passengers through September 13. That’s when the Transportation Security Administration’s mask mandate for all planes is scheduled to expire. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, “Since Jan. 1, 2021, the FAA has received approximately 2,500 reports of unruly behavior by passengers, including about 1,900 reports of passengers refusing to comply with the federal facemask mandate.”

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CDC To Ease Guidance On Mask Wearing Indoors

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

A man wearing a face mask during the pandemic The Associated Press reports the CDC will ease its guidance on indoor face mask wearing for people fully vaccinated for the coronavirus. From AP News:

The new guidance will still call for wearing masks in crowded indoor settings like buses, planes, hospitals, prisons and homeless shelters, but could ease restrictions for reopening workplaces and schools.

It will also no longer recommend that fully vaccinated people wear masks outdoors in crowds.

The announcement is clearly part of a push to show the benefits – or ‘what you get to do’ – when folks get their shot. This news comes as new cases of COVID-19 have dropped to their lowest rate since last September. Deaths due to COVID-19 have declined to their lowest numbers since April 2020. According to the CDC, more than 117 million Americans are fully vaccinated. When you add in the number of folks who have received at least one shot of vaccine, the total reaches about 154 million Americans. One thing though: isn’t this just going to give non-vaccinated people the chance to lose the masks meaning they could still be a health threat to others?

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Health Officials: Fully Vaccinated Can Skip Masks When Outdoors

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

A man wearing a face mask during the pandemic As vaccinations for the coronavirus have begun to slow, federal health officials announced today that those Americans who are fully vaccinated will no longer need face masks when exercising outdoors, or at small outdoor gatherings or indoors with family members of their household. From the New York Times:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped short of telling those people that they could shed their masks altogether in outdoor settings — citing the worrying risk that remains for transmitting the coronavirus, unknown vaccination levels among people in crowds and the still high-caseloads in some regions of the country.

Federal health officials and President Biden were announcing the updated advice on Tuesday, linking the news with the administration’s public campaign to get most American adults vaccinated by summer and trying to offer reassurances that some semblance of normal life can return.

But the C.D.C. is maintaining advice on other safety measures, saying vaccinated adults should continue wearing masks and staying six feet apart in large public spaces, like outdoor performance or sports events, indoor shopping malls and movie theaters, where the vaccination and health status of others would be unknown. And they still should avoid medium and large gatherings, crowds and poorly ventilated spaces, officials said.

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Study Warning About Face Masks Debunked, Soon To Be Retracted

Stock photo of a man working out

Stock photo of a man working out
(stock image via Depositphotos)
A study that purportedly criticized the efficacy of wearing face masks during the pandemic is about to be retracted after some funky facts came to light. From Retraction Watch:

A study that warned of the perils of using face masks as a precaution against contracting Covid-19 appears slated for retraction, Retraction Watch has learned. The 2020 paper, “Facemasks in the COVID-19 era: A health hypothesis,” was written by Baruch Vainshelboim, who listed his affiliation as Stanford University and the VA Palo Alto Health System.

But the study gained wide circulation earlier this month, thanks in part to some conservative politicians, and became the subject of fact-checks by the Associated Press and Snopes, which pointed out that the paper was published by an exercise physiologist with no academic connection to Stanford University or the NIH in a journal that accepts “radical, speculative and non-mainstream scientific ideas.

Stanford has disavowed both Vainshelboim and the paper. Snopes, the fact-checking site, cited the study as false and misleading: “The paper was published by an exercise physiologist with no academic connection to Stanford University or the NIH in a journal that accepts ‘radical, speculative and non-mainstream scientific ideas.'” Vainshelboim is not a medical doctor but reportedly holds a PhD in exercise physiology from the University of Porto in 2014. The paper got renewed traction this month after the far-right leaning fake-news site, The Gateway Pundit, which has been banned from Twitter for repeatedly posting misinformation.

(h/t JoeMyGod)

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Biden Implores Governors To Reinstate Face Mask Mandates

President Joe Biden asks governors to reinstate face mask requirements before pandemic surges again

President Joe Biden asks governors to reinstate face mask requirements before pandemic surges again
President Joe Biden (screen capture)
During an event today announcing wider coronavirus vaccine eligibility, President Joe Biden called on “every governor, mayor, and local leader to maintain and reinstate the mask mandate – please.” “This is not politics,” Biden emphasized. “Reinstate the mandate if you let it down. And businesses should require masks as well. The failure to take this virus seriously — precisely what got us in this mess in the first place — risks more cases and more desks — deaths.” “We’re in the life-and-death race for the virus that is spreading quickly, with cases rising again, new variants are spreading,” added Biden. “And, sadly, some of the reckless behavior we have seen on television over the past few weeks means that more new cases are to come in the weeks ahead.”

Hours after Biden’s speech, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a White House briefing that while the nation has “much reason for hope,” she added, “but right now I’m scared.” “I am asking you to just hold on a little longer, to get vaccinated when you can, so that all of those people that we all love will still be here when this pandemic ends,” said Walensky. According to the New York Times COVID tracker, over the past week there has been an average of 63,204 cases per day, an increase of 15 percent from the average two weeks earlier. Biden also announced he’s directed his COVID team to make sure there’s a vaccine site within 5 miles of 90 percent of Americans by 3 weeks from today. In related news, the latest Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey found that 71% of voters approve of how Biden has reacted to the pandemic, an increase of 3 points since February. Biden’s overall job approval stands at 61 percent with a relatively low disapproval at 39 percent.

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COVID Denier Hurls N-Word At Bakery Employee

Stephanie Denaro of Queens, NY
Stephanie Denaro of Queens, NY
When an employee at Davidovich Bakery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan asked a woman ordering bagels to mask up while in the establishment, she lobbed the n-word his way. Oh, and it turns out she’s a COVID denier as well. From the New York Daily News:

A security guard tells the clerk it’s up to him if he wants to serve her — and he said he did not — the guard tells the customer: “Ma’am, he’s not going to serve you, so please leave.”

“Why, cause he’s a b—h-ass n—–?” she responded, and then repeated the slur.

The woman, who spoke to The News on Tuesday, identified herself as Stephanie Denaro of Queens. “I said, ‘You’re a bitch-ass n—-r,’ a term they use,” she said in a phone interview. “All of my children have a Black father. That’s a term I’ve heard them use all my life.”

When asked if she was concerned about the video going viral, she said, “It’s actually great, because they’re forcing people in New York City to wear masks. It’s political theater. I don’t believe in COVID-19. It’s a hoax to convince people to use absentee ballots to steal the election from Donald Trump.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/CMv4EaLhTCd/ That’s it. The entire planet – all the hospitalizations and deaths in the U.S., Brazil, Europe, the UK…all of that was staged in order to scrounge up absentee ballots so Trump would lose. Okay… Davidovich Bakery issued a statement expressing its strong support for the employee via social media:

We want to commend our employee on his handling of the sad incident which occurred at the Essex Market. As is true with any family an attack on one member of the family is an attack on all of us. Davidovich is a family run business and a family. We stand with all our employees for handling this situation of hate and bigotry with professionalism and grace. We intend to make it clear that this customer or anyone who uses racism and any insensitive language, simply is not welcome in our stores.

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Diner Posts ‘Surcharge’ For Having To Explain Face Mask Rule

Legends Diner in Denton, Texas, says it will charge customers $50 if they don't wear a face mask

Legends Diner in Denton, Texas, says it will charge customers $50 if they don't wear a face mask From the Dallas Morning News:

Customers at Legends Diner in Denton are met with a new pink sign on the door when they visit the breakfast spot: “Our new surcharge,” the sign says: “$50 if I have to explain why masks are mandatory” and “$75 if I have to hear why you disagree…”

Co-owners Wayne and Kat LaCombe are asking their customers and employees to continue to wear masks even though the mask mandate lifted in Texas on March 10.

“I just can’t afford to get the virus. We’d have to shut our business down,” said Wayne LaCombe, a 41-year resident of Denton. His wife, Kat, is a retired nurse. She is now the chef and co-owner of Legends, and she makes what her husband says is “the best patty melt in town.”

Lacombe says the sign is meant to be humorous, but adds the bulk of his customers are over 60-years-old and the restaurant wants “to stay safe for them.”

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Police Called On Covidiot ‘Karen’ 2nd Time In One Week

Covidiot 'Karen' - Terry Lynn Wright (screen captures)
Covidiot ‘Karen’ – Terry Lynn Wright (screen captures)
OMG, the police were called to deal with this woman a second time in just under a week. Terry Lynn Wright, 65, was taken into custody on Wednesday by police officers at a Texas City Office Depot when she refused to wear a face mask per the company’s policy. A mere six days prior, she was arrested on criminal trespass and resisting charges in a viral video moment at a bank in Galveston, Texas. In body cam footage, Wright was seen resisting arrest and screaming she didn’t have to wear a “face diaper.” She later told local news reporters that the pandemic is a hoax. In the video clip, she calls her treatment ‘police brutality,’ as others in the bank lobby say, “No, it’s not.”

Police were called to the Office Depot in Texas City just after 9 a.m. on Wednesday after Wright was asked to leave the store by employees for refusing to wear a face mask. No new charges were filed, but Wright was taken into custody on warrants related to the Galveston incident. She was then transferred to the Galveston County Jail. Lord, what do these people think they are going to achieve with these silly antics? Is all this really worth being detained/arrested?

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Passenger Faces $27K Fine For Slapping Flight Attendant

Photo of a Delta Airlines plane

Photo of a Delta Airlines plane
(image via Flickr/Thomas Arnoux)
A Delta Air Lines passenger on a flight from Miami to Atlanta now faces a $27,500 fine for slapping a flight attendant while arguing over the flight attendant’s instructions to follow safety and the airline’s mask policy, officials said. The Federal Aviation Administration handed down it’s decision that the passenger pay the fine on February 26. From FOX35:

The FAA said the unnamed passenger was traveling with another person who refused to wear his mask, fasten his seat belt or put up the tray table in front of him. As a result, the flight returned to the gate due to his refusal to follow the flight attendant’s instructions and the two passengers were asked to voluntarily get off the plane, the agency said.

“In response, the passenger accompanying the non-compliant traveler ignored the flight attendant’s instructions, began yelling expletives at the flight attendant and other passengers, and struck the flight attendant under her left eye,” the FAA said in a statement.