Today's News (2020/7/1): COVID-19 edition
Jul. 2nd, 2020 12:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdThe only good thing I can say about our local numbers is that while our case counts have gone way up, so has our testing, and the positivity rate of tests has gone down as testing has expanded.
That's legitimately good. The rest is a disaster. Like how we're still getting defective supplies from the Feds, because of course we are.
----- 1 -----
‘Our luck may have run out’: California’s case count explodes
By THOMAS FULLER
and Shawn Hubler
June 29, 2020
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/our-luck-may-have-run-out-californias-case-count-explodes/
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Only a few weeks ago, thousands of Southern Californians were flocking to beaches, Disneyland was announcing it would soon reopen and Whoopi Goldberg was lauding Gov. Gavin Newsom on “The View” for the state’s progress in combating the coronavirus. The worst, many in California thought, was behind them.
In fact, an alarming surge in cases up and down the state was only just beginning.
Over the past week California’s case count has exploded, surpassing 200,000 known infections, and forcing Newsom to roll back the state’s reopening in some counties. On Monday, he said the number of people hospitalized in California had risen 43% over the past two weeks.
Los Angeles County, which has been averaging more than 2,000 new cases each day, surpassed 100,000 total cases on Monday, with the virus actively infecting one in every 140 people, according to local health officials. More than 2,800 cases were announced in the county on Monday, the most of any day during the pandemic.
On Sunday, Newsom shut down the bars in a half-dozen counties, including Los Angeles County and in the Central Valley, and recommended that another eight counties voluntarily close their nightspots and gathering places. On Friday, Imperial County, along the Mexican border, was told to return to a stay-at-home order. And Disneyland has since rescinded its decision to open its gates.
California was the first state to shut down and one of the most aggressive in fighting the virus. But the state that was so proactive in combating the spread of the coronavirus is now being forced to ask itself what went wrong.
...
And just as in Texas and Florida, the state’s reopening appears to have triggered a large resurgence. Pressured in part by businesses, church groups and conservatives, Newsom ceded control of much of the timing of reopening to local officials who were eager to regain a sense of normalcy and stem economic losses. The result was a decentralized, haphazard process that sowed confusion and gave residents a false sense that they were in the clear.
----- 2 -----
CDC says U.S. has ‘way too much virus’ to control pandemic as cases surge across country
William Feuer
Published Mon, Jun 29 2020
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/29/cdc-says-us-has-way-too-much-virus-to-control-pandemic-as-cases-surge-across-country.html
The coronavirus is spreading too rapidly and too broadly for the U.S. to bring it under control, Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Monday.
The U.S. has set records for daily new infections in recent days as outbreaks surge mostly across the South and West. The recent spike in new cases has outpaced daily infections in April when the virus rocked Washington state and the northeast, and when public officials thought the outbreak was hitting its peak in the U.S.
“We’re not in the situation of New Zealand or Singapore or Korea where a new case is rapidly identified and all the contacts are traced and people are isolated who are sick and people who are exposed are quarantined and they can keep things under control,” she said in an interview with The Journal of the American Medical Association’s Dr. Howard Bauchner. “We have way too much virus across the country for that right now, so it’s very discouraging.”
----- 3 -----
Protests don’t appear to be driving coronavirus surge in Seattle area or elsewhere, researchers say
By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter
June 30, 2020
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/protests-in-seattle-and-elsewhere-dont-appear-to-be-driving-virus-surge-researchers-say/
Spring brought a wave of cancellations that shut down professional baseball, basketball, concerts, movie theaters, youth sports, school plays, camping in state parks and all sorts of other events to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Then, on May 25, came the brutal death of George Floyd as a Minneapolis police officer held a knee to his neck, an act of violence that set off large protests in a powerful grassroots justice movement that also unfolded as a kind of mass experiment about the risks of such outdoor gatherings amid a global pandemic.
More than one month after Floyd’s death, the number of COVID-19 cases is rising in some parts of Washington state, including the Seattle area, and the national tally of new cases last week reached all-time highs.
But some researchers say that the protests do not appear to be significantly driving this surge. This helps bolster the case that the coronavirus generally does not transmit as easily outdoors, where even a gentle breeze can help diffuse the virus, compared to confined indoor spaces.
“I would say that outside makes a big difference because of much more air circulation,” said Dr. Jared Baeten, a vice dean at the University of Washington’s School of Public Health, who donned a mask and joined in the June 12 March of Silence through Seattle that drew an estimated 60,000 people.
In King County, the epicenter of Washington’s protests, health investigators have tracked — during a 19-day span in June — less than 5% of 1,008 total positive cases to people who attended protests. In other cities, including Minneapolis and Portland, researchers have yet to find that protests, where many were masked, have caused major spikes in cases.
“The data may be imperfect but … neither here in King County, or elsewhere in the county, where health care authorities are looking, have we been able to document that or find strong evidence of that,” said Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, health officer of Public Health — Seattle & King County in remarks to reporters on Friday.
Others have reached a similar conclusion.
----- 4 -----
A National Mask Mandate Could Save The U.S. Economy $1 Trillion, Goldman Sachs Says
Sarah Hansen
30 June 2020
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahhansen/2020/06/30/a-national-mask-mandate-could-save-the-us-economy-1-trillion-goldman-sachs-says/#40a3ba5b56f1
As mask-wearing becomes a political flashpoint—despite coronavirus cases spiking to record levels across the country—new research from Goldman Sachs suggests a national mask mandate would slow the growth rate of new coronavirus infections and prevent a 5% GDP loss caused by additional lockdown measures.
----- 5 -----
Inslee heckled off stage during Tri-Cities appearance
Updated 12:45 pm PDT, Tuesday, June 30, 2020
https://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Inslee-heckled-off-stage-during-Tri-Cities-15377392.php
PASCO, Wash. (AP) — Washington Gov. Jay Inslee was heckled and had to cut short his speech Tuesday on battling the coronavirus pandemic in Eastern Washington.
Speaking outdoors at Columbia Basin College in Pasco, Inslee was repeatedly interrupted by hecklers as he urged residents to wear masks to prevent the spread of the virus.
“Open it up,'' one heckler shouted in an apparent reference to widespread business closures in the Tri-Cities of Richland, Pasco and Kennewick. The community is still in Stage I of the pandemic, which is largely a shutdown.
----- 6 -----
Christian Activist Scott Lively: I’d Rather Be Beheaded Than Wear A Mask
June 29, 2020 by Michael Stone
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2020/06/christian-activist-scott-lively-id-rather-be-beheaded-than-wear-a-mask/
Lively, a radical anti-LGBT Trump-loving conservative Christian, made his remarks via YouTube earlier this week. In the video, Lively argues that requiring citizens to wear a mask to fight the coronavirus pandemic is like the Nazis requiring Jewish individuals to wear a yellow star on their clothing, and an unacceptable overreach of government power.
In the video, Lively said:
These things must be balanced against the disastrous consequences of surrendering personal liberty to overreaching government, especially regarding face masks, which are in some ways worse than police-enforced lockdowns because they represent a literal in-your-face exercise of statist power like Islamist head coverings for women or the Nazis’ yellow star for Jews.
Unnecessary public mask wearing, as opposed to reasonable usage, is no less a statement of psychological submission to higher authority than a dog collar. In the greater scheme of things, I believe liberty is more important than security if one is forced to choose between those two. Those who don’t believe that are ripe for the Mark of the Beast, which is what this entire season of chaos is really about, in my view.
Personally, I would rather die or be maimed from COVID-19—or be beheaded by a mob of anarchists and Islamists—than become a safe slave in a global totalitarian government.
This is not the first time Lively has made unhinged remarks opposing efforts to stem the pandemic. Last month Lively warned his fellow conservative Christians that they must prepare to wage a violent revolution against those who would use the coronavirus pandemic to impose socialism.
In addition to being a COVID conspiracy theorist, Lively is a leading figure in the global conservative Christian movement against LGBT people. He is the president of Abiding Truth Ministries, and author of The Pink Swastika, an ugly, anti-gay polemic that draws a false connection between homosexuality and the rise of Nazi Germany.
----- 7 -----
Tucker Carlson’s Journey From Coronavirus Alarm-Puller to COVID Truther
The far-right Fox star received plaudits in March for forcing Trump to take the coronavirus seriously. But since then, Carlson has sung the exact opposite tune on the pandemic.
Justin Baragona
Contributing Editor
Updated Jun. 30, 2020
https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-news-star-tucker-carlsons-journey-from-taking-coronavirus-seriously-to-covid-truther?amp=1
In early March, while President Donald Trump’s loudest allies at Fox News downplayed the coronavirus pandemic, with some claiming it was nothing more than an “impeachment scam” to destroy the president, Tucker Carlson received widespread—and usual, considering his notoriously far-right rhetoric—praise for calling out his colleagues and Trump for “minimizing” the impending danger.
The Fox News primetime star continues to receive plaudits for reportedly convincing the president to take the crisis seriously. Days after that March 9 monologue, which was delivered shortly after Carlson privately spoke with Trump about the virus, the president publicly addressed the nation and his administration began pushing social-distancing guidelines.
While Carlson sounding the alarm so early on may have a had a positive impact (on his viewers, especially, as studies show his audience took protective measures before Trump confidant Sean Hannity’s), it didn’t take long for the right-wing TV host to shift gears and rage against social distancing, lockdowns, and any other measure implemented to slow the spread of the virus.
Over the past two months, Carlson has devoted much of his coronavirus coverage to discrediting public-health experts, specifically top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force. On top of telling his audience to stop listening to Fauci and other health officials, the Fox News star has repeatedly boosted a fellow contrarian, former New York Times reporter-turned-spy-novelist Alex Berenson, as an expert on COVID-19.
Less than a month after his much-lauded call to action on the virus, Carlson declared the crisis to be over—a claim that received far less attention from the mainstream press than his rogue stance against the president. Despite the United States having already experienced 13,000 deaths by that point, Carlson pointed to revised models that showed fewer estimated deaths, claiming stay-at-home orders should be eased because the “short-term crisis may have passed.”
Since the Fox star’s assertion that the pandemic was over and it was time to go back to business as usual, the nation has suffered roughly 115,000 more deaths and at least two million more confirmed cases.
----- 8 -----
Coronavirus testing supplies from the Trump administration are arriving unlabeled or poorly packaged, state health secretary says
July 1, 2020 at 6:39 pm Updated July 1, 2020 at 6:39 pm
By Elise Takahama
Seattle Times staff reporter
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/coronavirus-testing-supplies-from-the-trump-administration-are-arriving-unlabeled-or-poorly-packaged-state-health-secretary-says/
In the most recent obstacle Washington has run into with federal coronavirus testing supplies, hundreds of thousands of items are arriving unlabeled or poorly packaged, leading to major delays and costs, according to state Secretary of Health John Wiesman.
Wiesman described the problems in a letter sent Tuesday to Adm. Brett P. Giroir, the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Department’s assistant secretary for health, who has been leading the federal government’s testing response.
In the letter, Wiesman first expressed gratitude that the federal support had bolstered Washington’s testing capacity, allowing the state to administer an average of 8,600 tests per day in the past week. (In March, an average of 2,603 tests were administered per day in Washington; more recently, that number was around 4,300.)
But Wiesman went on to describe an array of recurring issues with the supplies the feds have provided and to ask for Giroir’s “personal attention to addressing these issues.”
Among the worst-affected testing supplies: transport media, the chemicals used to preserve specimens during shipment to labs. Washington state has been receiving unlabeled molecular transport media, which could produce cyanide gas if used with incompatible testing platforms, Wiesman wrote.
Other federal supplies Wiesman said “have failed our quality-control checks or presented other major barriers to usage” include: vials without clear expiration dates or identification labels; about 250,000 bulk-packaged polyester spun swabs, which require resterilizing and repackaging; and “a wide variety of other poorly packaged and unlabeled goods.”
Wiesman also mentioned shipping delays without temperature regulation, which require “significant staff time to sort and do unnecessary quality control.”
----- 9 -----
Gov. DeSantis on COVID-19 reopening: ‘We’re not going back’
By Michael Moline -
June 30, 2020
https://www.floridaphoenix.com/blog/gov-desantis-on-covid-19-reopening-were-not-going-back/
Gov. Ron DeSantis reiterated Tuesday that he’s not turning back his plans to reopen the state’s economy as the daily number of positive test results from COVID-19 edged up again above 6,000.
“We’re not going back, closing things,” the governor said.
The Florida Department of Health reported 6,093 infections coming in overnight, pushing the total to 152,434 and the total COVID-19 deaths to 3,505.
The number of cases reported in a single day has ranged as high as 9,557 during the past week.
DeSantis has allowed his Department of Business and Professional Regulation secretary to close the bars, pubs, and nightclubs the governor previously had allowed to reopen following his initial stay-home order amid widespread flouting of social distancing requirements.
But, asked during a news conference in Juno Beach whether he was reconsidering any other elements of his reopening strategy, DeSantis said he was not.
“I don’t think that that really is what’s driving it,” he continued, referring to the reopening.
----- 10 -----
Stonekettle
twitter.com/Stonekettle
1 July 2020
https://twitter.com/Stonekettle/status/1278346789440159748
[THREAD]
Trump told us the pandemic which has now killed more than 126,000 Americans was a hoax made up by his enemies to discredit him.
1/
[QUOTED TWEET]
Donald J. Trump
twitter.com/realDonaldTrump
30 June 2020
The Russia Bounty story is just another made up by Fake News tale that is told only to damage me and the Republican Party. The secret source probably does not even exist, just like the story itself. If the discreditednytimes has a source, reveal it. Just another HOAX!
[NEXT]
Then he told us it was only a few cases that would be cured soon.
[NEXT]
Then he told us there would be a vaccine any day now.
[THREAD CONTINUES AT LINK]
----- 11 -----
Daniel Dale
twitter.com/ddale8
1 July 2020
https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1278432190087528452
Just ludicrous. "Lying" doesn't capture this stuff -- it's aggressively anti-reality.
[QUOTED TWEET]
Eli Stokols
twitter.com/EliStokols
1 July 2020
Asked about Trump's comments to Fox Biz and whether hoping COVID-19 will disappear is his strategy,presssec responds:
"The president's confident it will disappear."
She refers to spikes in AZ, TX, FL as "embers in the country."
[SEE ALSO:
https://twitter.com/briantylercohen/status/1278406604627402752
[EMBEDDED VIDEO]
]
That's legitimately good. The rest is a disaster. Like how we're still getting defective supplies from the Feds, because of course we are.
- ‘Our luck may have run out’: California’s case count explodes
- CDC says U.S. has ‘way too much virus’ to control pandemic as cases surge across country
- Protests don’t appear to be driving coronavirus surge in Seattle area or elsewhere, researchers say
- A National Mask Mandate Could Save The U.S. Economy $1 Trillion, Goldman Sachs Says
- Inslee heckled off stage during Tri-Cities appearance [by Trumpist COVID-19 deniers demanding measures to control the virus be stopped]
- Christian Activist Scott Lively: I’d Rather Be Beheaded Than Wear A Mask
- Tucker Carlson’s Journey From Coronavirus Alarm-Puller to COVID Truther
- Coronavirus testing supplies from the Trump administration are arriving unlabeled or poorly packaged, state health secretary says
- Gov. DeSantis on COVID-19 reopening: ‘We’re not going back’
- Trump told us the pandemic which has now killed more than 126,000 Americans was a hoax made up by his enemies to discredit him.
- "The President's confident it will disappear."
----- 1 -----
‘Our luck may have run out’: California’s case count explodes
By THOMAS FULLER
and Shawn Hubler
June 29, 2020
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/our-luck-may-have-run-out-californias-case-count-explodes/
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Only a few weeks ago, thousands of Southern Californians were flocking to beaches, Disneyland was announcing it would soon reopen and Whoopi Goldberg was lauding Gov. Gavin Newsom on “The View” for the state’s progress in combating the coronavirus. The worst, many in California thought, was behind them.
In fact, an alarming surge in cases up and down the state was only just beginning.
Over the past week California’s case count has exploded, surpassing 200,000 known infections, and forcing Newsom to roll back the state’s reopening in some counties. On Monday, he said the number of people hospitalized in California had risen 43% over the past two weeks.
Los Angeles County, which has been averaging more than 2,000 new cases each day, surpassed 100,000 total cases on Monday, with the virus actively infecting one in every 140 people, according to local health officials. More than 2,800 cases were announced in the county on Monday, the most of any day during the pandemic.
On Sunday, Newsom shut down the bars in a half-dozen counties, including Los Angeles County and in the Central Valley, and recommended that another eight counties voluntarily close their nightspots and gathering places. On Friday, Imperial County, along the Mexican border, was told to return to a stay-at-home order. And Disneyland has since rescinded its decision to open its gates.
California was the first state to shut down and one of the most aggressive in fighting the virus. But the state that was so proactive in combating the spread of the coronavirus is now being forced to ask itself what went wrong.
...
And just as in Texas and Florida, the state’s reopening appears to have triggered a large resurgence. Pressured in part by businesses, church groups and conservatives, Newsom ceded control of much of the timing of reopening to local officials who were eager to regain a sense of normalcy and stem economic losses. The result was a decentralized, haphazard process that sowed confusion and gave residents a false sense that they were in the clear.
----- 2 -----
CDC says U.S. has ‘way too much virus’ to control pandemic as cases surge across country
William Feuer
Published Mon, Jun 29 2020
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/29/cdc-says-us-has-way-too-much-virus-to-control-pandemic-as-cases-surge-across-country.html
The coronavirus is spreading too rapidly and too broadly for the U.S. to bring it under control, Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Monday.
The U.S. has set records for daily new infections in recent days as outbreaks surge mostly across the South and West. The recent spike in new cases has outpaced daily infections in April when the virus rocked Washington state and the northeast, and when public officials thought the outbreak was hitting its peak in the U.S.
“We’re not in the situation of New Zealand or Singapore or Korea where a new case is rapidly identified and all the contacts are traced and people are isolated who are sick and people who are exposed are quarantined and they can keep things under control,” she said in an interview with The Journal of the American Medical Association’s Dr. Howard Bauchner. “We have way too much virus across the country for that right now, so it’s very discouraging.”
----- 3 -----
Protests don’t appear to be driving coronavirus surge in Seattle area or elsewhere, researchers say
By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter
June 30, 2020
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/protests-in-seattle-and-elsewhere-dont-appear-to-be-driving-virus-surge-researchers-say/
Spring brought a wave of cancellations that shut down professional baseball, basketball, concerts, movie theaters, youth sports, school plays, camping in state parks and all sorts of other events to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Then, on May 25, came the brutal death of George Floyd as a Minneapolis police officer held a knee to his neck, an act of violence that set off large protests in a powerful grassroots justice movement that also unfolded as a kind of mass experiment about the risks of such outdoor gatherings amid a global pandemic.
More than one month after Floyd’s death, the number of COVID-19 cases is rising in some parts of Washington state, including the Seattle area, and the national tally of new cases last week reached all-time highs.
But some researchers say that the protests do not appear to be significantly driving this surge. This helps bolster the case that the coronavirus generally does not transmit as easily outdoors, where even a gentle breeze can help diffuse the virus, compared to confined indoor spaces.
“I would say that outside makes a big difference because of much more air circulation,” said Dr. Jared Baeten, a vice dean at the University of Washington’s School of Public Health, who donned a mask and joined in the June 12 March of Silence through Seattle that drew an estimated 60,000 people.
In King County, the epicenter of Washington’s protests, health investigators have tracked — during a 19-day span in June — less than 5% of 1,008 total positive cases to people who attended protests. In other cities, including Minneapolis and Portland, researchers have yet to find that protests, where many were masked, have caused major spikes in cases.
“The data may be imperfect but … neither here in King County, or elsewhere in the county, where health care authorities are looking, have we been able to document that or find strong evidence of that,” said Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, health officer of Public Health — Seattle & King County in remarks to reporters on Friday.
Others have reached a similar conclusion.
----- 4 -----
A National Mask Mandate Could Save The U.S. Economy $1 Trillion, Goldman Sachs Says
Sarah Hansen
30 June 2020
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahhansen/2020/06/30/a-national-mask-mandate-could-save-the-us-economy-1-trillion-goldman-sachs-says/#40a3ba5b56f1
As mask-wearing becomes a political flashpoint—despite coronavirus cases spiking to record levels across the country—new research from Goldman Sachs suggests a national mask mandate would slow the growth rate of new coronavirus infections and prevent a 5% GDP loss caused by additional lockdown measures.
----- 5 -----
Inslee heckled off stage during Tri-Cities appearance
Updated 12:45 pm PDT, Tuesday, June 30, 2020
https://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Inslee-heckled-off-stage-during-Tri-Cities-15377392.php
PASCO, Wash. (AP) — Washington Gov. Jay Inslee was heckled and had to cut short his speech Tuesday on battling the coronavirus pandemic in Eastern Washington.
Speaking outdoors at Columbia Basin College in Pasco, Inslee was repeatedly interrupted by hecklers as he urged residents to wear masks to prevent the spread of the virus.
“Open it up,'' one heckler shouted in an apparent reference to widespread business closures in the Tri-Cities of Richland, Pasco and Kennewick. The community is still in Stage I of the pandemic, which is largely a shutdown.
----- 6 -----
Christian Activist Scott Lively: I’d Rather Be Beheaded Than Wear A Mask
June 29, 2020 by Michael Stone
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2020/06/christian-activist-scott-lively-id-rather-be-beheaded-than-wear-a-mask/
Lively, a radical anti-LGBT Trump-loving conservative Christian, made his remarks via YouTube earlier this week. In the video, Lively argues that requiring citizens to wear a mask to fight the coronavirus pandemic is like the Nazis requiring Jewish individuals to wear a yellow star on their clothing, and an unacceptable overreach of government power.
In the video, Lively said:
These things must be balanced against the disastrous consequences of surrendering personal liberty to overreaching government, especially regarding face masks, which are in some ways worse than police-enforced lockdowns because they represent a literal in-your-face exercise of statist power like Islamist head coverings for women or the Nazis’ yellow star for Jews.
Unnecessary public mask wearing, as opposed to reasonable usage, is no less a statement of psychological submission to higher authority than a dog collar. In the greater scheme of things, I believe liberty is more important than security if one is forced to choose between those two. Those who don’t believe that are ripe for the Mark of the Beast, which is what this entire season of chaos is really about, in my view.
Personally, I would rather die or be maimed from COVID-19—or be beheaded by a mob of anarchists and Islamists—than become a safe slave in a global totalitarian government.
This is not the first time Lively has made unhinged remarks opposing efforts to stem the pandemic. Last month Lively warned his fellow conservative Christians that they must prepare to wage a violent revolution against those who would use the coronavirus pandemic to impose socialism.
In addition to being a COVID conspiracy theorist, Lively is a leading figure in the global conservative Christian movement against LGBT people. He is the president of Abiding Truth Ministries, and author of The Pink Swastika, an ugly, anti-gay polemic that draws a false connection between homosexuality and the rise of Nazi Germany.
----- 7 -----
Tucker Carlson’s Journey From Coronavirus Alarm-Puller to COVID Truther
The far-right Fox star received plaudits in March for forcing Trump to take the coronavirus seriously. But since then, Carlson has sung the exact opposite tune on the pandemic.
Justin Baragona
Contributing Editor
Updated Jun. 30, 2020
https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-news-star-tucker-carlsons-journey-from-taking-coronavirus-seriously-to-covid-truther?amp=1
In early March, while President Donald Trump’s loudest allies at Fox News downplayed the coronavirus pandemic, with some claiming it was nothing more than an “impeachment scam” to destroy the president, Tucker Carlson received widespread—and usual, considering his notoriously far-right rhetoric—praise for calling out his colleagues and Trump for “minimizing” the impending danger.
The Fox News primetime star continues to receive plaudits for reportedly convincing the president to take the crisis seriously. Days after that March 9 monologue, which was delivered shortly after Carlson privately spoke with Trump about the virus, the president publicly addressed the nation and his administration began pushing social-distancing guidelines.
While Carlson sounding the alarm so early on may have a had a positive impact (on his viewers, especially, as studies show his audience took protective measures before Trump confidant Sean Hannity’s), it didn’t take long for the right-wing TV host to shift gears and rage against social distancing, lockdowns, and any other measure implemented to slow the spread of the virus.
Over the past two months, Carlson has devoted much of his coronavirus coverage to discrediting public-health experts, specifically top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force. On top of telling his audience to stop listening to Fauci and other health officials, the Fox News star has repeatedly boosted a fellow contrarian, former New York Times reporter-turned-spy-novelist Alex Berenson, as an expert on COVID-19.
Less than a month after his much-lauded call to action on the virus, Carlson declared the crisis to be over—a claim that received far less attention from the mainstream press than his rogue stance against the president. Despite the United States having already experienced 13,000 deaths by that point, Carlson pointed to revised models that showed fewer estimated deaths, claiming stay-at-home orders should be eased because the “short-term crisis may have passed.”
Since the Fox star’s assertion that the pandemic was over and it was time to go back to business as usual, the nation has suffered roughly 115,000 more deaths and at least two million more confirmed cases.
----- 8 -----
Coronavirus testing supplies from the Trump administration are arriving unlabeled or poorly packaged, state health secretary says
July 1, 2020 at 6:39 pm Updated July 1, 2020 at 6:39 pm
By Elise Takahama
Seattle Times staff reporter
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/coronavirus-testing-supplies-from-the-trump-administration-are-arriving-unlabeled-or-poorly-packaged-state-health-secretary-says/
In the most recent obstacle Washington has run into with federal coronavirus testing supplies, hundreds of thousands of items are arriving unlabeled or poorly packaged, leading to major delays and costs, according to state Secretary of Health John Wiesman.
Wiesman described the problems in a letter sent Tuesday to Adm. Brett P. Giroir, the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Department’s assistant secretary for health, who has been leading the federal government’s testing response.
In the letter, Wiesman first expressed gratitude that the federal support had bolstered Washington’s testing capacity, allowing the state to administer an average of 8,600 tests per day in the past week. (In March, an average of 2,603 tests were administered per day in Washington; more recently, that number was around 4,300.)
But Wiesman went on to describe an array of recurring issues with the supplies the feds have provided and to ask for Giroir’s “personal attention to addressing these issues.”
Among the worst-affected testing supplies: transport media, the chemicals used to preserve specimens during shipment to labs. Washington state has been receiving unlabeled molecular transport media, which could produce cyanide gas if used with incompatible testing platforms, Wiesman wrote.
Other federal supplies Wiesman said “have failed our quality-control checks or presented other major barriers to usage” include: vials without clear expiration dates or identification labels; about 250,000 bulk-packaged polyester spun swabs, which require resterilizing and repackaging; and “a wide variety of other poorly packaged and unlabeled goods.”
Wiesman also mentioned shipping delays without temperature regulation, which require “significant staff time to sort and do unnecessary quality control.”
----- 9 -----
Gov. DeSantis on COVID-19 reopening: ‘We’re not going back’
By Michael Moline -
June 30, 2020
https://www.floridaphoenix.com/blog/gov-desantis-on-covid-19-reopening-were-not-going-back/
Gov. Ron DeSantis reiterated Tuesday that he’s not turning back his plans to reopen the state’s economy as the daily number of positive test results from COVID-19 edged up again above 6,000.
“We’re not going back, closing things,” the governor said.
The Florida Department of Health reported 6,093 infections coming in overnight, pushing the total to 152,434 and the total COVID-19 deaths to 3,505.
The number of cases reported in a single day has ranged as high as 9,557 during the past week.
DeSantis has allowed his Department of Business and Professional Regulation secretary to close the bars, pubs, and nightclubs the governor previously had allowed to reopen following his initial stay-home order amid widespread flouting of social distancing requirements.
But, asked during a news conference in Juno Beach whether he was reconsidering any other elements of his reopening strategy, DeSantis said he was not.
“I don’t think that that really is what’s driving it,” he continued, referring to the reopening.
----- 10 -----
Stonekettle
twitter.com/Stonekettle
1 July 2020
https://twitter.com/Stonekettle/status/1278346789440159748
[THREAD]
Trump told us the pandemic which has now killed more than 126,000 Americans was a hoax made up by his enemies to discredit him.
1/
[QUOTED TWEET]
Donald J. Trump
twitter.com/realDonaldTrump
30 June 2020
The Russia Bounty story is just another made up by Fake News tale that is told only to damage me and the Republican Party. The secret source probably does not even exist, just like the story itself. If the discredited
nytimes has a source, reveal it. Just another HOAX![NEXT]
Then he told us it was only a few cases that would be cured soon.
[NEXT]
Then he told us there would be a vaccine any day now.
[THREAD CONTINUES AT LINK]
----- 11 -----
Daniel Dale
twitter.com/ddale8
1 July 2020
https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1278432190087528452
Just ludicrous. "Lying" doesn't capture this stuff -- it's aggressively anti-reality.
[QUOTED TWEET]
Eli Stokols
twitter.com/EliStokols
1 July 2020
Asked about Trump's comments to Fox Biz and whether hoping COVID-19 will disappear is his strategy,
presssec responds: "The president's confident it will disappear."
She refers to spikes in AZ, TX, FL as "embers in the country."
[SEE ALSO:
https://twitter.com/briantylercohen/status/1278406604627402752
[EMBEDDED VIDEO]
]
