Today's News (2020/4/8): 50% Edition
Apr. 8th, 2020 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdCombine item 1 with yesterday's new big pivot by Fox and a strategy may be revealing itself: if the "let people die, it's for the economy" faction has won in the White House, then if nobody knows how widespread the virus is, they can deny what they're doing.
HHS say these were always to be transitionary sites anyway and maybe that's true? But who even knows. I doubt it.
As for why the Federal government is stealing supplies from people and redistributing it to private companies for further resale, all I can say is that neither the larceny, nor the profiteering, nor the pettiness know any bounds. It's just evil.
----- 1 -----
Federal Support Ends For Coronavirus Testing Sites As Pandemic Peak Nears
April 8, 2020
Jeff Brady
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/08/829955099/federal-support-for-coronavirus-testing-sites-end-as-peak-nears
Some local officials are disappointed the federal government will end funding for coronavirus testing sites this Friday. In a few places those sites will close as a result. This as criticism continues that not enough testing is available.
In the Philadelphia suburbs, Montgomery County has a drive-through site that has tested 250 people a day since March 21.
"It has been a very successful site. We are hoping by the time it closes Friday afternoon that we will have tested a little over 5,000 individuals," says Dr. Valerie Arkoosh, who chairs the commission in the county of more than 825,000 people.
----- 2 -----
Trump could put lives at risk by firing government watchdogs: Conservative columnist
April 8, 2020
By Matthew Chapman
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/trump-could-put-lives-at-risk-by-firing-government-watchdogs-conservative-columnist/
On Wednesday, writing for the Washington Examiner, conservative columnist Quin Hillyer warned that President Donald Trump’s attacks on inspectors general aren’t just a threat to the rule of law — they are a threat to health and public safety.
“In the past five days alone, Trump has fired one inspector general, demoted another who was highly regarded, and publicly and rather viciously castigated a third who was reporting on hospital shortages,” wrote Hillyer. “Trump has taken these actions without any apparent foundation. Reports Tuesday night say these moves are just the beginning of a planned purge of at least seven inspectors general (a number apparently confirmed unintentionally by Trump himself) with even ‘more changes’ possible ‘later.'”
“Inspectors general are not intended to be and historically have not been treated as political appointees to be replaced by each new president,” wrote Hillyer. “They generally serve across administrations of both parties. For example, the inspector general for the Internal Revenue Service, Russell George, has served in that post since 2004. Never before have they been dismissed en masse the way Trump apparently is doing now. Yes, Trump does have that power, but it is a power he is abusing.”
----- 3 -----
Ventilators destined for Barbados seized by U.S.
by Kareem Smith
April 5, 2020
https://barbadostoday.bb/2020/04/05/ventilators-destined-for-barbados-seized-by-u-s/
The seizure of 20 ventilators destined for Barbados appears to have thrust the Mia Mottley administration into a growing global battle for critical supplies to fight the outbreak of COVID-19.
But Minister of Health and Wellness, Lieutenant Col Jeffrey Bostic on Sunday morning assured there is no shortage of the critical supplies, dismissing such suggestions as “absurd”.
During a press conference at Ilaro Court, Bostic revealed that the ventilators donated to the Barbados Government as an act of philanthropy were barred from exportation.
“They were seized in the United States. Paid for, but seized, so we are trying to see exactly what is going to transpire there,” Minister Bostic disclosed.
“But I remind you that ventilators are one of the most in-demand items in the world today and Barbados is merely wrestling with the other 203 countries and territories around the world seeking to secure as many of these pieces of equipment as possible,” he added.
While initially indicating they were part of the $1.4 million in assistance pledged by Barbados-born international pop star Rihanna, he later corrected this and added that five of the ventilators sent by Rihanna would soon reach the country.
The Health Minister did not disclose the U.S. city or state where the seizure took place. But reports of such seizures made news as recently as Friday in New York, where Governor Andrew Cuomo vowed to seize unused ventilators from private entities through an executive order in the hard-hit city.
It is still unclear how Barbadian authorities will respond, but at least for now, the 48 ventilators on island that are currently at government’s disposal appear to be more than enough with only three of the country’s 56 COVID-19 patients in need of ventilators.
----- 4 -----
Hannity’s latest propaganda actually exposes Trump’s epic failures
By Greg Sargent
Opinion writer
April 8, 2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/08/hannitys-latest-propaganda-actually-exposes-trumps-epic-failures/
Sean Hannity’s latest effort to portray President Trump as a heroic and decisive leader throughout the coronavirus crisis belongs in a time capsule. It will aid future study of one of the most monumental and destructive leadership failures in modern times — and the extraordinary lengths to which Trump’s propagandists are going to rewrite it as a spectacular triumph.
Hannity’s strategy, of course, is Trump’s strategy. Trump has already telegraphed that, however extensive the eventual coronavirus damage in American deaths and economic carnage, Trump will take credit for having kept it to that supposed minimum.
This requires memory-holing Trump’s catastrophic refusal to take coronavirus seriously for weeks and weeks, and instead substituting a narrative in which he acted decisively throughout.
Hannity displayed what this will look like with his broadcast on Tuesday night. Hannity and Trump talked about Trump’s decision to restrict travel from China as if it were a singularly decisive move. (This is an absurd exaggeration, but put that aside for now.)
Importantly, during that banter — which also featured them bashing the media for refusing to recognize Trump’s brilliant leadership — Hannity scrolled a timeline of major actions by the government all throughout this crisis.
The juxtaposition created the propagandistic impression that all these acts demonstrated how seriously Trump took coronavirus all throughout. This deserves close attention, folks: It heralds the major media push that’s coming.
But it’s nonsense. What Hannity doesn’t tell you is that in many of the cases he himself cited, Trump directly resisted those efforts, publicly undercut them, or privately raged over them for the most nakedly corrupt of reasons.
Let’s go through it.
----- 5 -----
Intelligence report warned of coronavirus crisis as early as November: Sources
"Analysts concluded it could be a cataclysmic event," a source says.
By Josh Margolin and James Gordon Meek
April 8, 2020, 4:01 AM ET
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/intelligence-report-warned-coronavirus-crisis-early-november-sources/story?id=70031273
As far back as late November, U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population, according to four sources briefed on the secret reporting.
Concerns about what is now known to be the novel coronavirus pandemic were detailed in a November intelligence report by the military's National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), according to two officials familiar with the document’s contents.
The report was the result of analysis of wire and computer intercepts, coupled with satellite images. It raised alarms because an out-of-control disease would pose a serious threat to U.S. forces in Asia -- forces that depend on the NCMI’s work. And it paints a picture of an American government that could have ramped up mitigation and containment efforts far earlier to prepare for a crisis poised to come home.
"Analysts concluded it could be a cataclysmic event," one of the sources said of the NCMI’s report. "It was then briefed multiple times to" the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the White House.
----- 6 -----
Weijia Jiang
twitter.com/weijia
8 April 2020
https://twitter.com/weijia/status/1247925757193658375
Following up on this a twitter.com/fema spokesperson tells me 50% of the supplies coming in to U.S. are going to “hot zone areas” and the other half to private companies.
So those goods go to the states with the most money to spend, not the states that need it most.
50%
[QUOTED TWEET]
David Begnaud
twitter.com/DavidBegnaud
Apr 2, 2020
This is so important for everyone to understand. This explains why Governors say: I'm not getting the supplies I need - yetpotus says we are sending tons of supplies: It's going from the federal govt to commercial distributors who then deliver to the highest bidder: states!
[EMBEDDED VIDEO]
----- 7 -----
David Begnaud
twitter.com/DavidBegnaud
8 April 2020
https://twitter.com/DavidBegnaud/status/1248033196182249472
Adding to what twitter.com/weijia is reporting [ABOVE], a FEMA spokesperson told me: this is not the way we usually do it. FEMA usually gives to the state. Directly. Now 50% of what FEMA is flying in from overseas goes to private companies which sell it to states that offer the highest dollar
[EMBEDDED TWEET of weijia - already included above]
----- 8 -----
Hydroxychloroquine: how an unproven drug became Trump’s coronavirus 'miracle cure'
With help from Fox News and Elon Musk, a misleading French study prompted a wave of misinformation that made its way to the president
6 April 2020
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/06/hydroxychloroquine-trump-coronavirus-drug
This weekend, Donald Trump used his daily White House coronavirus briefings to again urge Americans to take hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug that has not been shown to be safe or effective against Covid-19.
“What do you have to lose? Take it,” the president said on Saturday as he boasted that the US had amassed 29m doses of the drug. On Sunday, facing questions from the press about his aggressive promotion of an unproven treatment, he argued against waiting for the completion of clinical trials. “In France, they had a very good test,” he said. “But we don’t have time to go and say, ‘Gee, let’s take a couple of years and test it out, and let’s go and test with the test tubes and the laboratories.’”
Meanwhile, Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease doctor, has repeatedly warned that there is no conclusive evidence to support using the drug. Asked whether it should be considered a treatment for Covid-19, he said on 24 March: “The answer is no.”
...
And yet, those four patients, as well as the patient with nausea and the one who left the hospital early, were all part of the treatment group. They were excluded from the topline results of the study because of the way that the researchers chose to measure and report the results: strictly based on the measurable presence of viruses in nasal swabs taken each day of the study. Since the patients were in the ICU or dead, their samples could not be taken and they were left out of the final analysis. Based on the nasal swabs of just the 36 patients who completed the study, those who received the drug cleared the virus from their systems faster than those who did not.
This is how an experiment in which 15% of the treatment group and 0% of the control had poor clinical outcomes could end up being reported as showing a “100% cure rate”.
----- 9 -----
Red States Are Exploiting Coronavirus to Ban Abortion
For autocrats everywhere, the crisis is a chance to restrict rights.
By Michelle Goldberg
April 6, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/opinion/abortion-covid.html
Last week, a 24-year-old woman living in Arlington, Texas, filed a court declaration describing what she’s gone through since the governor, Greg Abbott, used the coronavirus crisis as a pretext to essentially ban abortions.
A college student studying to be a teacher, she’d lost her part-time waitressing job at around the same time she found out she was pregnant. She knew without question that she wanted an abortion, but even before Abbott signed the executive order that temporarily outlawed the procedure in the state, she had a hard time finding a clinic that could see her.
----- 10 -----
Fast Foods Workers at 30 Restaurants Across California Are Going on Strike
Hundreds of workers from McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Domino’s, and more chains will walk off the job to demand coronavirus protections.
by Lauren Kaori Gurley
Apr 8 2020
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7kzyxz/fast-foods-workers-at-30-restaurants-across-california-are-going-on-strike
Hundreds of cooks and cashiers at 30 fast food restaurants across California plan to strike on Thursday—demanding that McDonald’s and other fast food chains provide masks, gloves, soap, $3-an-hour hazard pay, and two weeks of paid sick leave to workers exposed to COVID-19.
Workers from Burger King, Taco Bell, Domino’s, Pizza Hut, Subway, Popeye’s, El Pollo Loco, and WaBa Grill will participate in the walkout, which was inspired by two strikes earlier this week at McDonald's locations in San Jose and Los Angeles, where two workers have now tested positive for coronavirus. Organizers at the Fight For $15 campaign, which has helped coordinate Thursday’s strike, say that this is the first time they’ve seen spontaneous walkouts in nearly eight years of the movement. Typically, it takes months to plan something of this scale.
“I’m very afraid for my life and the life of my daughter who also works at McDonald’s,” Maria Ruiz, a 46-year-old cashier at the McDonald’s location in San Jose who has been on strike since Monday and will participate in Thursday’s action, told VICE in Spanish. “Workers are scared of retaliation but we’re not going to wait for one of us to die or get sick with the virus.”
Verli Godinez, a worker at a McDonald’s location in Los Angeles who tested positive for coronavirus, said she was particularly upset when she learned about her positive test on Wednesday because McDonald’s had not provided her with protective gear or communicated quickly enough with employees when they found out another worker had tested positive earlier this week.
----- 11 -----
Bill O’Reilly’s Macabre Take: Many Who Died From Coronavirus ‘Were on Their Last Legs Anyway’
By Reed Richardson
Apr 8th, 2020
https://www.mediaite.com/news/bill-oreillys-macabre-take-many-who-died-from-coronavirus-were-on-their-last-legs-anyway/
Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly offered a decidedly macabre take on the mounting global death toll from coronavirus, telling his former primetime colleague Sean Hannity that many of the fatalities here in the United States and elsewhere were already close to dying.
Per Sean Hannity’s radio show, the pair were contemplating how life could return to normal when O’Reilly commented about the good news from the global pandemic.
“I want life back to normal, can you fix that in a simple way?” Hannity wondered.
“Oh man I wish I could, you know?” O’Reilly responded.
“Oh, me too.”
“But we’re making little steps,” O’Reilly said, before equating the end of the Democratic primary as a boon for the world. “Bernie Sanders, you know, — he’s gone, that’s really good for everybody. The [US death] projections that you just mentioned are down to 60,000, I don’t think it will be that high. 13,000 dead now in the USA. Many people who are dying, both here and around the world, were on their last legs anyway.”
HHS say these were always to be transitionary sites anyway and maybe that's true? But who even knows. I doubt it.
As for why the Federal government is stealing supplies from people and redistributing it to private companies for further resale, all I can say is that neither the larceny, nor the profiteering, nor the pettiness know any bounds. It's just evil.
- Federal Support Ends For Coronavirus Testing Sites As Pandemic Peak Nears
- Trump could put lives at risk by firing government watchdogs: Conservative columnist
- Ventilators destined for Barbados seized by U.S.
- Hannity’s latest propaganda actually exposes Trump’s epic failures
- Intelligence report warned of coronavirus crisis as early as November: Sources
- 50% of the supplies coming in to U.S. are going... to private companies.
- FEMA usually gives to the state. Directly.
- Hydroxychloroquine: how an unproven drug became Trump’s coronavirus 'miracle cure'
- Red States Are Exploiting Coronavirus to Ban Abortion
- Fast Foods Workers at 30 Restaurants Across California Are Going on Strike
- Bill O’Reilly’s Macabre Take: Many Who Died From Coronavirus ‘Were on Their Last Legs Anyway’
----- 1 -----
Federal Support Ends For Coronavirus Testing Sites As Pandemic Peak Nears
April 8, 2020
Jeff Brady
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/08/829955099/federal-support-for-coronavirus-testing-sites-end-as-peak-nears
Some local officials are disappointed the federal government will end funding for coronavirus testing sites this Friday. In a few places those sites will close as a result. This as criticism continues that not enough testing is available.
In the Philadelphia suburbs, Montgomery County has a drive-through site that has tested 250 people a day since March 21.
"It has been a very successful site. We are hoping by the time it closes Friday afternoon that we will have tested a little over 5,000 individuals," says Dr. Valerie Arkoosh, who chairs the commission in the county of more than 825,000 people.
----- 2 -----
Trump could put lives at risk by firing government watchdogs: Conservative columnist
April 8, 2020
By Matthew Chapman
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/trump-could-put-lives-at-risk-by-firing-government-watchdogs-conservative-columnist/
On Wednesday, writing for the Washington Examiner, conservative columnist Quin Hillyer warned that President Donald Trump’s attacks on inspectors general aren’t just a threat to the rule of law — they are a threat to health and public safety.
“In the past five days alone, Trump has fired one inspector general, demoted another who was highly regarded, and publicly and rather viciously castigated a third who was reporting on hospital shortages,” wrote Hillyer. “Trump has taken these actions without any apparent foundation. Reports Tuesday night say these moves are just the beginning of a planned purge of at least seven inspectors general (a number apparently confirmed unintentionally by Trump himself) with even ‘more changes’ possible ‘later.'”
“Inspectors general are not intended to be and historically have not been treated as political appointees to be replaced by each new president,” wrote Hillyer. “They generally serve across administrations of both parties. For example, the inspector general for the Internal Revenue Service, Russell George, has served in that post since 2004. Never before have they been dismissed en masse the way Trump apparently is doing now. Yes, Trump does have that power, but it is a power he is abusing.”
----- 3 -----
Ventilators destined for Barbados seized by U.S.
by Kareem Smith
April 5, 2020
https://barbadostoday.bb/2020/04/05/ventilators-destined-for-barbados-seized-by-u-s/
The seizure of 20 ventilators destined for Barbados appears to have thrust the Mia Mottley administration into a growing global battle for critical supplies to fight the outbreak of COVID-19.
But Minister of Health and Wellness, Lieutenant Col Jeffrey Bostic on Sunday morning assured there is no shortage of the critical supplies, dismissing such suggestions as “absurd”.
During a press conference at Ilaro Court, Bostic revealed that the ventilators donated to the Barbados Government as an act of philanthropy were barred from exportation.
“They were seized in the United States. Paid for, but seized, so we are trying to see exactly what is going to transpire there,” Minister Bostic disclosed.
“But I remind you that ventilators are one of the most in-demand items in the world today and Barbados is merely wrestling with the other 203 countries and territories around the world seeking to secure as many of these pieces of equipment as possible,” he added.
While initially indicating they were part of the $1.4 million in assistance pledged by Barbados-born international pop star Rihanna, he later corrected this and added that five of the ventilators sent by Rihanna would soon reach the country.
The Health Minister did not disclose the U.S. city or state where the seizure took place. But reports of such seizures made news as recently as Friday in New York, where Governor Andrew Cuomo vowed to seize unused ventilators from private entities through an executive order in the hard-hit city.
It is still unclear how Barbadian authorities will respond, but at least for now, the 48 ventilators on island that are currently at government’s disposal appear to be more than enough with only three of the country’s 56 COVID-19 patients in need of ventilators.
----- 4 -----
Hannity’s latest propaganda actually exposes Trump’s epic failures
By Greg Sargent
Opinion writer
April 8, 2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/08/hannitys-latest-propaganda-actually-exposes-trumps-epic-failures/
Sean Hannity’s latest effort to portray President Trump as a heroic and decisive leader throughout the coronavirus crisis belongs in a time capsule. It will aid future study of one of the most monumental and destructive leadership failures in modern times — and the extraordinary lengths to which Trump’s propagandists are going to rewrite it as a spectacular triumph.
Hannity’s strategy, of course, is Trump’s strategy. Trump has already telegraphed that, however extensive the eventual coronavirus damage in American deaths and economic carnage, Trump will take credit for having kept it to that supposed minimum.
This requires memory-holing Trump’s catastrophic refusal to take coronavirus seriously for weeks and weeks, and instead substituting a narrative in which he acted decisively throughout.
Hannity displayed what this will look like with his broadcast on Tuesday night. Hannity and Trump talked about Trump’s decision to restrict travel from China as if it were a singularly decisive move. (This is an absurd exaggeration, but put that aside for now.)
Importantly, during that banter — which also featured them bashing the media for refusing to recognize Trump’s brilliant leadership — Hannity scrolled a timeline of major actions by the government all throughout this crisis.
The juxtaposition created the propagandistic impression that all these acts demonstrated how seriously Trump took coronavirus all throughout. This deserves close attention, folks: It heralds the major media push that’s coming.
But it’s nonsense. What Hannity doesn’t tell you is that in many of the cases he himself cited, Trump directly resisted those efforts, publicly undercut them, or privately raged over them for the most nakedly corrupt of reasons.
Let’s go through it.
----- 5 -----
Intelligence report warned of coronavirus crisis as early as November: Sources
"Analysts concluded it could be a cataclysmic event," a source says.
By Josh Margolin and James Gordon Meek
April 8, 2020, 4:01 AM ET
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/intelligence-report-warned-coronavirus-crisis-early-november-sources/story?id=70031273
As far back as late November, U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population, according to four sources briefed on the secret reporting.
Concerns about what is now known to be the novel coronavirus pandemic were detailed in a November intelligence report by the military's National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), according to two officials familiar with the document’s contents.
The report was the result of analysis of wire and computer intercepts, coupled with satellite images. It raised alarms because an out-of-control disease would pose a serious threat to U.S. forces in Asia -- forces that depend on the NCMI’s work. And it paints a picture of an American government that could have ramped up mitigation and containment efforts far earlier to prepare for a crisis poised to come home.
"Analysts concluded it could be a cataclysmic event," one of the sources said of the NCMI’s report. "It was then briefed multiple times to" the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the White House.
----- 6 -----
Weijia Jiang
twitter.com/weijia
8 April 2020
https://twitter.com/weijia/status/1247925757193658375
Following up on this a twitter.com/fema spokesperson tells me 50% of the supplies coming in to U.S. are going to “hot zone areas” and the other half to private companies.
So those goods go to the states with the most money to spend, not the states that need it most.
50%
[QUOTED TWEET]
David Begnaud
twitter.com/DavidBegnaud
Apr 2, 2020
This is so important for everyone to understand. This explains why Governors say: I'm not getting the supplies I need - yet
potus says we are sending tons of supplies: It's going from the federal govt to commercial distributors who then deliver to the highest bidder: states![EMBEDDED VIDEO]
----- 7 -----
David Begnaud
twitter.com/DavidBegnaud
8 April 2020
https://twitter.com/DavidBegnaud/status/1248033196182249472
Adding to what twitter.com/weijia is reporting [ABOVE], a FEMA spokesperson told me: this is not the way we usually do it. FEMA usually gives to the state. Directly. Now 50% of what FEMA is flying in from overseas goes to private companies which sell it to states that offer the highest dollar
[EMBEDDED TWEET of weijia - already included above]
----- 8 -----
Hydroxychloroquine: how an unproven drug became Trump’s coronavirus 'miracle cure'
With help from Fox News and Elon Musk, a misleading French study prompted a wave of misinformation that made its way to the president
6 April 2020
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/06/hydroxychloroquine-trump-coronavirus-drug
This weekend, Donald Trump used his daily White House coronavirus briefings to again urge Americans to take hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug that has not been shown to be safe or effective against Covid-19.
“What do you have to lose? Take it,” the president said on Saturday as he boasted that the US had amassed 29m doses of the drug. On Sunday, facing questions from the press about his aggressive promotion of an unproven treatment, he argued against waiting for the completion of clinical trials. “In France, they had a very good test,” he said. “But we don’t have time to go and say, ‘Gee, let’s take a couple of years and test it out, and let’s go and test with the test tubes and the laboratories.’”
Meanwhile, Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease doctor, has repeatedly warned that there is no conclusive evidence to support using the drug. Asked whether it should be considered a treatment for Covid-19, he said on 24 March: “The answer is no.”
...
And yet, those four patients, as well as the patient with nausea and the one who left the hospital early, were all part of the treatment group. They were excluded from the topline results of the study because of the way that the researchers chose to measure and report the results: strictly based on the measurable presence of viruses in nasal swabs taken each day of the study. Since the patients were in the ICU or dead, their samples could not be taken and they were left out of the final analysis. Based on the nasal swabs of just the 36 patients who completed the study, those who received the drug cleared the virus from their systems faster than those who did not.
This is how an experiment in which 15% of the treatment group and 0% of the control had poor clinical outcomes could end up being reported as showing a “100% cure rate”.
----- 9 -----
Red States Are Exploiting Coronavirus to Ban Abortion
For autocrats everywhere, the crisis is a chance to restrict rights.
By Michelle Goldberg
April 6, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/opinion/abortion-covid.html
Last week, a 24-year-old woman living in Arlington, Texas, filed a court declaration describing what she’s gone through since the governor, Greg Abbott, used the coronavirus crisis as a pretext to essentially ban abortions.
A college student studying to be a teacher, she’d lost her part-time waitressing job at around the same time she found out she was pregnant. She knew without question that she wanted an abortion, but even before Abbott signed the executive order that temporarily outlawed the procedure in the state, she had a hard time finding a clinic that could see her.
----- 10 -----
Fast Foods Workers at 30 Restaurants Across California Are Going on Strike
Hundreds of workers from McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Domino’s, and more chains will walk off the job to demand coronavirus protections.
by Lauren Kaori Gurley
Apr 8 2020
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7kzyxz/fast-foods-workers-at-30-restaurants-across-california-are-going-on-strike
Hundreds of cooks and cashiers at 30 fast food restaurants across California plan to strike on Thursday—demanding that McDonald’s and other fast food chains provide masks, gloves, soap, $3-an-hour hazard pay, and two weeks of paid sick leave to workers exposed to COVID-19.
Workers from Burger King, Taco Bell, Domino’s, Pizza Hut, Subway, Popeye’s, El Pollo Loco, and WaBa Grill will participate in the walkout, which was inspired by two strikes earlier this week at McDonald's locations in San Jose and Los Angeles, where two workers have now tested positive for coronavirus. Organizers at the Fight For $15 campaign, which has helped coordinate Thursday’s strike, say that this is the first time they’ve seen spontaneous walkouts in nearly eight years of the movement. Typically, it takes months to plan something of this scale.
“I’m very afraid for my life and the life of my daughter who also works at McDonald’s,” Maria Ruiz, a 46-year-old cashier at the McDonald’s location in San Jose who has been on strike since Monday and will participate in Thursday’s action, told VICE in Spanish. “Workers are scared of retaliation but we’re not going to wait for one of us to die or get sick with the virus.”
Verli Godinez, a worker at a McDonald’s location in Los Angeles who tested positive for coronavirus, said she was particularly upset when she learned about her positive test on Wednesday because McDonald’s had not provided her with protective gear or communicated quickly enough with employees when they found out another worker had tested positive earlier this week.
----- 11 -----
Bill O’Reilly’s Macabre Take: Many Who Died From Coronavirus ‘Were on Their Last Legs Anyway’
By Reed Richardson
Apr 8th, 2020
https://www.mediaite.com/news/bill-oreillys-macabre-take-many-who-died-from-coronavirus-were-on-their-last-legs-anyway/
Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly offered a decidedly macabre take on the mounting global death toll from coronavirus, telling his former primetime colleague Sean Hannity that many of the fatalities here in the United States and elsewhere were already close to dying.
Per Sean Hannity’s radio show, the pair were contemplating how life could return to normal when O’Reilly commented about the good news from the global pandemic.
“I want life back to normal, can you fix that in a simple way?” Hannity wondered.
“Oh man I wish I could, you know?” O’Reilly responded.
“Oh, me too.”
“But we’re making little steps,” O’Reilly said, before equating the end of the Democratic primary as a boon for the world. “Bernie Sanders, you know, — he’s gone, that’s really good for everybody. The [US death] projections that you just mentioned are down to 60,000, I don’t think it will be that high. 13,000 dead now in the USA. Many people who are dying, both here and around the world, were on their last legs anyway.”
no subject
Date: 2020-04-10 07:03 am (UTC)