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solarbird- Fact check: Trump falsely denies FDA warning on hydroxychloroquine, baselessly alleges political bias in study
- A Snohomish barbershop defies orders to remain closed during coronavirus — and customers line up
- Florida Ousts Top COVID-19 Data Scientist [EDITOR: Worse than it looks]
- Trump allies lining up doctors to prescribe rapid reopening
- There is apparently a card circulating for people who do not want to wear facemasks. The card states they have a medical condition that prevents them from wearing a facemask, they do not need to disclose it, and that not allowing them to shop is discrimination under the ADA. [Why this is bullshit]
- Video: Wisconsin bars packed with customers after court overrules governor's order to stay home
- Texas cases of COVID-19 increasing by thousands since reopening
- Oregon Supreme Court temporarily reinstates Brown's coronarvirus restrictions [EDITOR: After a rural county court threw some of them out]
- Colorado man planning armed protest against state's coronavirus restrictions arrested for pipe bombs
- State no longer allowed to track processing plant data - Local health officials will no longer be able to report COVID-19 data from meat processing plants.
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Fact check: Trump falsely denies FDA warning on hydroxychloroquine, baselessly alleges political bias in study
By Daniel Dale, CNN
Updated 10:36 PM ET, Tue May 19, 2020
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/19/politics/fact-check-trump-hydroxychloroquine-study/index.html
Washington (CNN) - President Donald Trump continued Tuesday to make false and baseless claims about hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug he has repeatedly promoted and now says he is himself taking.
At a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump falsely denied the existence of a Food and Drug Administration warning about the use of hydroxychloroquine for the coronavirus. And he claimed without any evidence that a study on veterans who were given the drug was conducted by political foes who had set out to hurt him.
The FDA warning
Trump was reminded by a reporter on Tuesday that the FDA has said hydroxychloroquine should not be used outside of a hospital setting or research studies.
Trump interjected: "No. That's not what I was told. No."
Facts First: The reporter was right. The FDA issued a safety warning on April 24 that was headlined, "FDA cautions against use of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine for COVID-19 outside of the hospital setting or a clinical trial due to risk of heart rhythm problems."
We don't know what Trump might have been personally told, but he was incorrect when he said "no" in response to the reporter's accurate premise.
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A Snohomish barbershop defies orders to remain closed during coronavirus — and customers line up
By Nicole Brodeur
Seattle Times staff reporter
May 19, 2020
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/a-snohomish-barbershop-defies-orders-to-remain-closed-during-coronavirus-and-customers-line-up/
Stag Barber & Styling in Snohomish has been open since May 1, and owner Bob Martin believes he has a right to defy Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s order to remain closed, in part because he served his country.
“I served several years in the Marine Corps and I’m not going to put up with this crap,” Martin told The (Everett) Herald, by way of explanation. (Martin would not speak to reporters on Tuesday.)
Martin is following the lead of Snohomish County Sheriff Adam Fortney, who last month said he would not enforce Inslee’s stay-home order during the coronavirus pandemic, calling the order unconstitutional and damaging to the economy, and to families. Two recall petitions against Fortney have been filed in the time since.
This, in the middle of a pandemic, when Snohomish County has reported 2,797 confirmed coronavirus cases, and 125 deaths, per Washington state’s coronavirus data.
Last Friday, the Washington State Department of Licensing suspended Martin’s cosmetology operator license, which is valid through June 2021, and served him with a cease-and-desist order for doing business without a salon shop license, the Herald reported, adding his license for the shop expired March 10, 2017.
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Florida Ousts Top COVID-19 Data Scientist
Greg Allen
May 19, 2020
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/19/859119865/florida-ousts-top-covid-19-data-scientist
A scientist who created a dashboard for monitoring Florida's rising number of COVID-19 cases said she's been fired for refusing to manipulate the data.
Rebekah Jones was the manager of the Geographic Information System team at Florida's Department of Health. She helped created a data portal that for months has provided easily accessible and detailed information on COVID-19 cases broken down by ZIP code. The Florida COVID-19 dashboard has been praised by researchers in the state and by Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator.
Last week, Jones notified public health researchers in an email that she'd been removed from the project. "As a word of caution," she wrote, "I would not expect the new team to continue the same level of accessibility and transparency that I made central to the process during the first two months. After all, my commitment to both is largely (arguably entirely) the reason I am no longer managing it."
Jones now says she's been fired from the state Department of Health. In a statement to CBS12 News in West Palm Beach, Fla., Jones said her dismissal came after she refused to "manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen."
All of Florida entered the first phase of recovery this week when the two largest counties joined the rest of the state in opening restaurants, retail stores and barber shops.
At a news conference in Tallahassee, Gov. Ron DeSantis called Jones' departure from the Health Department a "nonissue." He said he'd seen an email she sent her supervisor saying she never intended to suggest the information on the dashboard might be less reliable going forward. DeSantis said he believes from the email that "she was tired and needed a break."
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Trump allies lining up doctors to prescribe rapid reopening
By JASON DEAREN and MICHAEL BIESECKER
May 19, 2020
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/trump-allies-lining-up-doctors-to-prescribe-rapid-reopening/
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican political operatives are recruiting “pro-Trump” doctors to go on television to prescribe reviving the U.S. economy as quickly as possible, without waiting to meet safety benchmarks proposed by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to slow the spread of the new coronavirus.
The plan was discussed in a May 11 conference call with a senior staffer for the Trump reelection campaign organized by CNP Action, an affiliate of the GOP-aligned Council for National Policy. A leaked recording of the hour-long call was provided to The Associated Press by the Center for Media and Democracy, a progressive watchdog group.
CNP Action is part of the Save Our Country Coalition, an alliance of conservative think tanks and political committees formed in late April to end state lockdowns implemented in response to the pandemic. Other members of the coalition include the FreedomWorks Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council and Tea Party Patriots.
A resurgent economy is seen as critical to boosting President Donald Trump’s reelection hopes and has become a growing focus of the White House coronavirus task force led by Vice President Mike Pence.
Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign communications director, confirmed to AP that an effort to recruit doctors to publicly support the president is underway, but declined to say when the initiative would be rolled out.
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Boozy Badger
twitter.com/BoozyBadger
May 18, 2020
https://twitter.com/BoozyBadger/status/1262456063565139971
[THREAD]
There is apparently a card circulating for people who do not want to wear facemasks. The card states they have a medical condition that prevents them from wearing a facemask, they do not need to disclose it, and that not allowing them to shop is discrimination under the ADA.
It obliquely threatens fines and reporting for not allowing the non-masked to shop in the store.
Please allow me to explain the misconceptions behind this card.
[EDITOR: Example of cards here:
https://twitter.com/imsuchakilljoy/status/1262205466551214080
]
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Video: Wisconsin bars packed with customers after court overrules governor's order to stay home
by Charlie Smith on May 14th, 2020
https://www.straight.com/covid-19-pandemic/video-wisconsin-bars-packed-with-customers-after-court-overrules-governors-order-to-stay-home
On Monday (May 19), British Columbia's phase 2 reopening of the economy will begin.
And that means people will be able to go to restaurants, cafés, and pubs, provided there are sufficient distancing measures in place.
In Wisconsin, on the other hand, there are no such rules keeping patrons apart in these establishments to reduce the spread of COVID-19.
That's because the Wisconsin Supreme Court recently tossed out an order from health officials to extend a "Safer at Home" emergency order.
According to a 4-3 ruling, "an agency cannot confer on itself the power to dictate the lives of law-abiding individuals as comprehensively as the order does without reaching beyond the executive branch's authority."
Democratic governor Tony Evers supported the order, but it's been opposed by the Republican-controlled state legislature.
During oral arguments, one of the judges compared the public-health order to the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War.
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Texas cases of COVID-19 increasing by thousands since reopening
by ABC News
Saturday, May 16th 2020
https://ktxs.com/news/local/texas-cases-of-covid-19-increasing-by-thousands-since-reopening
Texas has seen a steady rise in novel coronavirus cases and fatalities since reopening just over two weeks ago.
There are now 45,198 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. That is an increase of 1,347 cases from Thursday to Friday. The new numbers have not yet been recorded for Saturday.
Last Friday, the daily case increase was 1,219.
While the cases are still well below New York, the state with the most confirmed cases at more than 345,000, the steady increase shows that the curve has not yet flattened in Texas.
The state also experienced its highest and second-highest daily death toll just a day apart. On Thursday, 58 deaths were recorded in 24 hours and Friday that number dropped only slightly to 56, according to the health department. The total number of fatalities is at 1,272.
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Oregon Supreme Court temporarily reinstates Brown's coronarvirus restrictions
Monday, May 18th 2020
https://komonews.com/news/local/oregon-supreme-court-temporarily-reinstates-browns-coronarvirus-restrictions
PORTLAND, Ore. — The Oregon Supreme Court late Monday halted a rural judge's order earlier in the day that had tossed out statewide coronavirus restrictions imposed by Democratic Gov. Kate Brown.
Baker County Circuit Judge Matthew Shirtcliff had ruled that Brown erred by not seeking the Legislature’s approval to extend the stay-at-home orders beyond a 28-day limit. The Supreme Court's ruling stays Shirtcliff's decision pending review by all the high court justices.
In a statement, Brown praised the Supreme Court action.
“There are no shortcuts for us to return to life as it was before this pandemic. Moving too quickly could return Oregon to the early days of this crisis, when we braced ourselves for hospitals to be overfilled," she said.
The lower court judge had issued his opinion in response to a lawsuit filed earlier this month by 10 churches around Oregon that argued the state's social-distancing directives were unconstitutional.
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Colorado man planning armed protest against state's coronavirus restrictions arrested for pipe bombs
Bradley Bunn first came to the attention of authorities on social media.
By Clayton Sandell
May 4, 2020
https://abcnews.go.com/US/colorado-man-planning-armed-protest-states-coronavirus-restrictions/story?id=70491370
A Colorado man arrested after federal agents allegedly discovered pipe bombs in his home had also been helping organize an armed protest demanding the state lift its coronavirus restrictions, an official briefed on the case tells ABC News.
FBI and ATF agents served search warrants Friday morning at the Loveland, Colorado, home of Bradley Bunn, 53. Agents discovered four pipe bombs and potential pipe bomb components inside the house, according to a press release from the office of U.S. Attorney for Colorado Jason Dunn.
It is not clear what, if anything, Bunn planned to do with the pipe bombs, the official said.
Bunn came to the attention of law enforcement after using social media to encourage people to bring assault rifles to a planned May 1 rally at the Colorado capitol building, ABC News has learned.
In the days leading up to the protest, investigators discovered social media posts described as angry and aggressive, the official said. Soon after, investigators received information that he was in possession of pipe bombs. Bunn was arrested before he could attend Friday’s rally.
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State no longer allowed to track processing plant data
Local health officials will no longer be able to report COVID-19 data from meat processing plants.
May 7th 2020
https://northeast.newschannelnebraska.com/story/42102669/state-no-longer-allowed-to-track-processing-plant-data
NEBRASKA - Local health officials will no longer be able to report COVID-19 data from meat processing plants.
Governor Pete Ricketts said Wednesday that the state won't be releasing specific numbers of cases at meatpacking plants, saying it's a matter of privacy.
Some local health departments like the Elkhorn Logan Valley Public Health Department and Public Health Solutions had been providing updates on positive cases at plants in their district as they came in.
Wednesday Elkhorn Logan Valley Health Director Gina Uhing provided a final update at the Tyson plant in Madison, saying 220 cases of the coronavirus were tied to employees there. The Madison plant has stopped production for the time being.
Public Health Solutions says the Smithfield Plant in Crete has seen 139 positive cases.
