The right-hand corner lead is a carry-over from last night:
"Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh also delivered an update on the city’s coronavirus response at an afternoon news conference at City Hall. Due to concerns that people are still congregating to play sports in city parks, he said, zip ties would be placed on basketball hoops, hockey and tennis nets were being removed, and new signs were being put up. He urged people to maintain social distancing to slow the spread of the epidemic, saying, “These are extremely difficult times. These adjustments are all hard and these decisions we’re making are not easy,” and said he was concerned about the arrival soon of warm weather. “People need to understand that if we get a 60- or 70-degree day, that doesn’t mean you hang out with each other, that doesn’t mean you have a cookout,” he said. “For the foreseeable future, it’s a very different life we have to lead right now....."
You got that, folks. No more sports, no more cookouts, nothing.
Of course, he isn't leading that different a life at all, and still has all his taxpayer perks. I hope the daily police escort of SUVs are keeping their social distance. At least the traffic is lighter.
Bakers says "models show that a surge in coronavirus cases is expected to arrive sometime between April 7 and April 17," (models say!) so will likely be extending the shutdown "advisory" -- or is it an order by now? -- and Walsh also says “I’m going to be completely honest with you. If we think that May 4 the coronavirus is going to be gone, it’s not. I think that we’re in this for the long haul,” as the virus has caused a global pandemic that has sickened more than 745,000 people and killed more than 35,000 worldwide.
I don't know about those JHU simulation numbers, but you have to laugh when Walsh says "I'm going to be completely honest with you." That's gotta be a one and only!
Somehow the alleged total deaths here are up to 56 now and alleged cases rose nearly 800 (that's what the model says, I'm sure), "as the state entered its second week under a stay-at-home advisory that has emptied busy highways and turned the typical workday rush into an eerie calm. A video on Twitter showed an empty Green Line train rolling past an empty platform in mid-morning, and the usually packed Alewife MBTA parking garage was 4 percent full."
Why are the trains even running, and how is that helping the environment?
Related (page B1, above the fold then below the fold):
"As with essential employees in other sectors, operators, drivers, and maintenance workers at the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority are at risk of contracting the disease simply by working in public. While the transit system has already imposed new health measures, MBTA officials and the Boston Carmen’s Union, which represents bus drivers and train operators, have been negotiating about additional initiatives to curb the virus’s spread. The two sides did not have any details to announce late Monday, but MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo said additional steps were imminent....."
How are they essential when no one is on the trains? It's not only a waste of energy, what it looks like is these workers will be essential once the rest of us useless eaters have either been culled or tagged with a vaccine.
The front-page lead feature:
"Mass. coronavirus peak likely in mid-April, some epidemiologists predict; Some researchers caution that new incoming data can modify predictions" by Mark Arsenault and Naomi Martin Globe Staff, March 30, 2020
New forecasts for the spread of coronavirus predict that stress on Massachusetts hospitals will peak around April 14, and that by summer the deadly virus will have taken nearly 1,800 lives in the state.
I predict the Patriots will lose their first game next season -- if there even is a season.
These projections by the University of Washington forecast that COVID-19 will kill more than 80,000 people in the United States by mid-July. At its peak in mid-April, the virus will kill as many as 2,200 Americans a day, the model predicts.
Now the projected numbers from their models are dropping like a WTC tower, but they are going to go out with a bang and trot out the most grisly death tolls as they tighten their grip!
Those numbers presume that the United States will maintain a policy of social distancing through May, said Christopher Murray, director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which publishes the forecast and will be regularly updating it as new data comes in.
“If we don’t social distance through May . . . things will be worse,” Murray said in a telephone interview.
I will say this: Stay the f*** away from me!
Murray is one of many experts trying to divine the path of the coronavirus pandemic, to provide doctors and policy makers some guideposts for decisions on how to combat the spread of the disease and where to disperse finite resources to treat the infected.
Oh, he is trying to DIVINE a PATH like MOSES!
Yeah, let's not dare criticize the Christ-like savior who is diving our path to hell!
The University of Washington numbers are slightly more optimistic than estimates offered over the weekend by Dr. Anthony Fauci, from the White House’s coronavirus task force, who suggested the coronavirus could kill 100,000 to 200,000 Americans.
The UW modeling project started about two weeks ago, when the hospital system at the University of Washington asked for a forecast to help it plan for how many beds and ventilators the system might need. Other hospitals heard about the project by word of mouth, and they asked for help, too, “and so then rather than go piecemeal — this hospital system, that hospital system — we just decided we’d do it to all 50 states,” Murray said. The first version went live last Thursday and was updated on Monday, “and now because we’re just getting a flood of better data — more inputs, more information on intubation rates, et cetera — we will keep it up-to-date, and we will expand on Wednesday to Europe and then sometime by the weekend to the rest of the world.”
About 60 experts are working on the model, he said.
That would be the SEATTLE MODEL, right?
Some of this looks like they are making up numbers as well as counting the actual deceased no matter what the cause of death.
As more data about the effects of the virus becomes available, coronavirus models should get better. Murray said people who study COVID-19 are this week carefully watching the numbers from hard-hit Northern Italy.....
It's all based on MODELS, and you can add in the "eleven veterans at the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke that have died this month, with at least five of the deaths due to the coronavirus, according to a state official."
Again, there is no context. How many critically ill soldiers would die in a month? How many might have seasonal flu or underlying health conditions? These bastards are lumping in even naturally-occurring deaths into the totals. Somebody dies, coronavirus. Had a heart attack, corona! It's deceptive, it's deceitful, and it's downright EVIL!
--more--"
Did you see the ad for Fortnite the video game?
Medical workers tested for the coronavirus outside at CVS in Shrewsbury. (Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff)
Sure looks like Doomsday to me.
(flip to below fold after scary and heartbreaking picture see B1. Disappearing your elderly beloveds whose world has been upended to later tell you they died of COVID-19 in what is obviously a Trauma-based Mind Control Psychological Operation. I'm already feeling its effects and I've lived a life with minimal contact. The few friends I've run into haven't looked so good, and even I admit I'm acting weird. It's okay, though. The Globe will sooth your souls later in this post after they have read the fine print on how to deal with Social Security and Medicare amid the coronavirus crisis -- even though you won't be collecting)
"With shared stations and sick co-workers, employees at GE’s Lynn plant fear for their health" by Katie Johnston Globe Staff, March 31, 2020
The second-shift workers at the General Electric plant in Lynn were already on high alert when they reported to work Friday afternoon.
The machinists, hand-tool operators, and inspectors who build jet and helicopter engines for the US military were concerned that their shared workstations weren’t being sanitized between around-the-clock shifts while the highly contagious coronavirus ravages the country, according to their union. They knew of co-workers who had reported to work with COVID-19-like symptoms because they couldn’t get tested and didn’t have enough sick time to quarantine themselves. Then, shortly after they clocked in at 3 p.m., they learned that two members of a co-worker’s household had tested positive for COVID-19.
Yes, you read that right. The war machine is on full throttle.
A union representative yanked the roughly 20-member crew outside, called in union higher-ups, and pleaded with the company to allow everybody to be sent home, with pay, for two weeks. When that was rejected, the union tried for five days of self-quarantining until the man’s test results came back, followed by temperature checks at the plant’s medical center before anyone was allowed back to work. Still, no dice.
Gambling with lives there.
The company’s solution: Clear the building for a two-hour deep-cleaning of workspaces and common areas that day, then back to work. The union representative, a machinist with a newborn at home, was already so worried about being exposed at the plant that he had been taking off his clothes in his garage as soon as he got home and showering before he went inside to see his wife and three children. Since Friday’s revelation about the positive tests in the home of one of his co-workers — a man he had been in close contact with — he has confined himself to the garage and an attached family room and has seen his month-old daughter only through video chat.
"The chances of this guy's test coming back negative is slim to none. That's what's killing me right now," said the machinist, who asked not to be identified out of fear of retaliation. "I pleaded with [the company], just make the humane decision and send us home."
Like they wouldn't know who he is.
GE did not go into further detail about the incident on Friday beyond the two-hour sanitizing of the building. The Boston company noted that it has a number of new protocols in place to protect workers against the virus. They include hiring 17 porters to distribute cleaning materials and disinfect common areas; doubling the budget for cleaning products; limiting meetings to no more than 10 people; screening visitors for signs of COVID-19; ending shifts 15 minutes early, both to clean workstations and to increase social distancing between shifts; and closing the gym and cafeteria.
The company said it is also meeting with union health and safety representatives daily, conducting regular plant walk-throughs, and giving groups separate entrances, bathrooms, and break times to increase social distancing.
Workers diagnosed with COVID-19 or medically quarantined will be given additional paid leave.
“GE Aviation’s number one priority is the health and safety of our employees," a spokesman said in a statement, noting that the Lynn facility is considered essential by the Department of Homeland Security because it supplies “mission-critical equipment” to the military.
AAAAAAAAH!
The war machine waits for no man!
“It’s like watching a car accident in slow motion,” said Adam Kaszynski, president of Local 201, which helped the man get more paid time off to recover at home.....
Whatever you do, don't use the bathroom.
--more--"
General Electric workers held a protest on Necco Street out of concern for their safety due to coronavirus. (Suzanne Kreiter/Globe staff)
That's a big benefit of this. The "essential" workers and unions will now have much more power to bargain with the Trillionaires. Maybe they can find work at Raytheon.
Of course, one wonders where is the social distancing but.... oh, right, that's just for us rabble as they bring us to our knees begging for mercy.
US and J&J commit $1b to coronavirus vaccine codeveloped by Beth Israel
Dr. Dan Barouch, head of Beth Israel's Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, says, “We need multiple vaccine programs to move forward because we don’t know which vaccine will be the safest, most effective and most deployable.”
Deployable -- like it's a war, and it is.
The $1 billion dollars was unplanned, and and look juo is having a bad hair day.
Related:
"Bayer agreed to pay $39.5 million to settle allegations that its Monsanto unit ran misleading ads about the controversial Roundup weedkiller and its potential health risks to humans and animals. As part of the deal, language will be removed from Roundup Weed and Grass Killer’s label saying that glyphosate — the product’s active ingredient — only affects an enzyme found in plants. Consumers alleged that the chemical attacks an enzyme found in humans and some animals.The settlement comes as Bayer is feverishly working to resolve more than 13,000 lawsuits blaming exposure to glyphosate in Roundup for cancer in users."
Yeah, Big Pharma and the government would never poison us with chemicals or vaccines. How could you ever think such a thing?
Related: Americans Will Have To Cure The Coronavirus Epidemic on Their Own
You need to get outside if you want to live as "fear will be played to the hilt now to coerce the population into forced vaccination and 100% monitoring of our whereabouts, which was the objective of the plannedemic from the beginning."
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
My A2 World/Nation page lead:
Dutch museum says van Gogh painting stolen in overnight raid
That's a big who gives a fuck.
Co-lead, lower right quadrant:
Trump administration, in biggest environmental rollback, to announce auto pollution rules
So what, New York Times? We have no place to go.
Briefs:
Activists say IS prison riots break out again in Syria
It's a jail in northeastern Syria, run by Kurdish-led forces, and I'm sure they will all be sprung soon.
North Korea says Pompeo made it lose all interest in dialogue with US
That's according to the New York Times, and yeah, he does have that effect on people!
Justice Dept. investigates at least one lawmaker’s stock trades before coronavirus spike in US
I would ordinarily say don't hold your breath, but it's Washington ComPost slop so you might want to.
Phoenix officer killed, 2 others wounded; gunman killed
People are going crazy out there.
Grand jury records from lynching can’t be released
Setting up the legal precedents for the concentration camps, folks.
We need some preemptive lynchings. Too bad I'm a follower of Gandhi who will be led to slaughter. Or we need China and Russia to get off their asses, call out this evil regime at home, and nuke a few cities -- for the world's sake.
Sorry, I take all that back lest I be taken at night with a hood over my head. I'm trying to save the Republic, dammit!
One can't help but notice the full-page Unilever ad on page A3. They will be benefiting big-time because of this months-long shutdown and destruction of the American economy and Freedom and Liberty.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
"Europe’s lockdown gets tighter as Spain’s death toll mounts" by Rodrigo Orihuela and Boris Groendahl Bloomberg News, March 30, 2020
Undertakers wearing protection masks to protect from the coronavirus carried a coffin to a burial at Salvador cemetery, near Vitoria, in northern Spain on Monday. (Alvaro Barrientos/Associated Press/Associated Press).
You know what? Now I'm convinced all this is on the up-and-up and we are finally getting full disclosure from the lying, agenda-pushing authorities and pre$$. My bad.
European governments moved to tighten restrictions to contain the coronavirus outbreak amid an unrelenting rise in infections and deaths.
Spain reported 812 coronavirus fatalities on Monday, a slight decline from the previous day’s figure that took the number of casualties from the pandemic to well past 7,000.
As the country battles Europe’s worst outbreak after Italy, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced plans for even tighter restrictions on public life, ordering those who work in nonessential services to stay home during the Easter period. Austria, Greece, and Cyprus followed on Monday by stepping up their own measures.
European leaders are preparing people for a prolonged period of severe disruptions and minimal social contact.
Evil.
After Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz last week raised prospects of easing restrictions soon, he dashed those hopes on Monday and instead tightened aspects of the lockdown. People will now have to wear face masks while shopping in supermarkets; hotels will be closed completely for tourism; and people who are particularly at risk due to prior illnesses must be relieved from work requirements.
‘‘Many still don’t realize what we’re facing,’’ Kurz told journalists in Vienna, noting that businesses and stores will eventually open before schools and universities. ‘‘The truth is, this is a marathon.’’
Yeah, all these world leaders from Trump on down have got their minds right. and ALL of a SUDDEN they are TELLING the TRUTH(???)!!!
Greece is extending the closure of nonessential shops until April 11 and stopped all flights to and from the Netherlands and almost all connections with Germany, after already cutting links to Italy, Spain, Turkey, and Britain. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s government also stepped up measures to counter the economic fallout. The package now amounts to 3.5 percent of Greece’s gross domestic product, up from 2 percent previously.
The stiffer rules come amid unsettling economic data. Business sentiment in the euro area plunged the most on record as the prospects dwindled that life will return to normal any time soon. In Germany, the government’s economic advisers predicted that the coronavirus pandemic will give the nation its worst recession since the global financial crisis.
Might as well just kill yourself, right?
In Hungary, the parliament handed Prime Minister Viktor Orban unprecedented emergency powers to combat the outbreak, giving him the right to rule by decree indefinitely.
That is where Orban must have cut off print.
There’s another kind of political fallout looming in Poland, where pressure is growing on the ruling party to delay the May 10 presidential election. The first government official publicly called for the vote to be postponed on Monday, as municipalities grow wary of organizing as many as 300,000 volunteers to supervise and count ballots.
In Spain, the number of confirmed cases increased to 85,195 over the past 24 hours, with a total of 7,340 deaths, according to Health Ministry data. The number of new cases declined slightly to 6,398, compared with 6,549 on Sunday.
Sanchez’s government is trying to balance the need to ease the burden on the health service by limiting social interaction, while also seeking to mitigate the economic impact of a near-total nationwide lockdown.
You never hear of the secessionist Catalonia anymore.
The strain on Spanish hospitals was highlighted over the weekend when the number of patients who require intensive care surpassed the number of available beds. The number of ICU patients rose to 5,231 on Monday compared with 4,907 on Sunday, the ministry said. Hotels and conference centers are being used as make-shift clinics and the army has been deployed across the country to assist.
Sanchez has joined French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte in calling for a joint European economic response, including shared bond issuance, which Germany, the Netherlands, and Austria oppose.....
Yes, more debt is the an$wer!
--more--"
How very interesting that the print copy would leave it with Orban because this was at the bottom of the page:
"For autocrats, coronavirus is a chance to grab even more power" by Selam Gebrekidan New York Times, March 30, 2020
LONDON — In Hungary, the prime minister can now rule by decree. In Britain, ministers have what a critic called “eye-watering” power to detain people and close borders. Israel’s prime minister has shut down courts and begun an intrusive surveillance of citizens. Chile has sent the military to public squares once occupied by protesters. Bolivia has postponed elections.
As the coronavirus pandemic brings the world to a juddering halt and anxious citizens demand action, leaders across the globe are invoking executive powers and seizing virtually dictatorial authority with scant resistance.
Governments and rights groups agree that these extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.
States need new powers to shut their borders, enforce quarantines, and track infected people. Many of these actions are protected under international rules, constitutional lawyers say, but critics say some governments are using the public health crisis as cover to seize new powers that have little to do with the outbreak and have few safeguards to ensure that the new powers will not be abused.
We are on to them, but it is too late.
The laws are taking swift hold across a broad range of political systems — in authoritarian states like Jordan, faltering democracies like Hungary, and traditional democracies like Britain, and there are few sunset provisions to ensure that the powers will be rescinded once the threat passes.
“We could have a parallel epidemic of authoritarian and repressive measures following close if not on the heels of a health epidemic,” said Fionnuala Ni Aolain, the United Nations special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights.
As the new laws broaden state surveillance, allow governments to detain people indefinitely, and infringe on freedoms of assembly and expression, they could also shape civic life, politics, and economies for decades to come.
That's the sick globalist cabal's plan.
The pandemic is already redefining norms. Invasive surveillance systems in South Korea and Singapore, which would have invited censure under normal circumstances, have been praised for slowing infections. Governments that initially criticized China for putting millions of its citizens under lockdown have since followed suit.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has authorized his country’s internal security agency to track citizens using a secret trove of cellphone data developed for counterterrorism. By tracing people’s movements, the government can punish those who defy isolation orders with up to six months in prison, and by ordering the closing of the nation’s courts, Netanyahu delayed his scheduled appearance to face corruption charges.
Haven't they heard?
The world is emptying its jails, and how f***ing in your face is that?
The virus is keeping Netanyahu out of prison!
CUI BONO from all this s**t?
In some parts of the world, new emergency laws have revived old fears of martial law. The Philippine Congress passed legislation last week that gave President Rodrigo Duterte emergency powers and $5.4 billion to deal with the pandemic. Lawmakers watered down an earlier draft law that would have allowed the president to take over private businesses.
“This limitless grant of emergency powers is tantamount to autocracy,” a Philippine rights group, the Concerned Lawyers for Civil Liberties, said in a statement.
--more--"
Did you notice what was missing in that New York Times sewage?
No mention of their least-favorite autocrat or any of their favorite governors!
Hmm!
President Trump gave his daily coronavirus update on Monday. (Win McNamee/Getty Images/Getty Images)
A picture is worth a thousand words, and that's about the size of it. He can't do $hit.
The middle section:
"Prisoners in southern Iran broke cameras and caused other damage during a riot, state media reported Monday, the latest in a series of violent prison disturbances in the country, which is battling the most severe coronavirus outbreak in the Middle East. Iran had temporarily released around 100,000 prisoners as part of measures taken to contain the pandemic, leaving an estimated 50,000 people behind bars, including violent offenders and so-called “security cases,” often dual nationals and others with Western ties. Families of detainees and Western nations say Iran is holding those prisoners for political reasons or to use them as bargaining chips in negotiations....."
"Israel meanwhile announced that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will enter self-quarantine after an aide tested positive for the virus. His office says the 70-year-old leader has undergone a test and will remain in quarantine until he receives results or is cleared by the Health Ministry and his personal doctor. His close advisers are also isolating. Speaking from confinement at home, Netanyahu called on Israelis to remain at home and avoid family gatherings during the upcoming spring holiday season. The Jewish holiday of Passover, the Christian holiday of Easter, and the monthlong Muslim holiday of Ramadan all fall in April. All three festivals traditionally entail large social gatherings....."
They are doing it then, a Soviet-style slaughter.
"In Lebanon, a criminal court ordered the release of 46 prisoners who were being held without trial to protect them from getting infected, the state-run National News Agency reported. Lebanon has reported 446 cases and 11 deaths from the virus....."
"In war-torn Yemen, more than 240 prisoners were released in government-held areas as a precaution against the spread of the coronavirus, according to provincial officials....."
"Elsewhere in the region on Monday, Jordan began releasing thousands of travelers who were quarantined for the last two weeks at five-star hotels on the Dead Sea in order to prevent the spread of the virus....."
"In Egypt, the government extended the closure of the country’s famed museums and archaeological sites, including the Pyramids and the Sphinx at Giza, until at least April 15....."
The world economy is being destroyed on purpo$e.
Why?
Time to ‘revenge shop’ as China virus hot spot reopens
Customers are excited, Americans! They “want to revenge shop!”
"Muscovites got a four-hour notice Sunday night on a sweeping quarantine that will keep them inside their homes unless they are walking a pet, taking out the trash, or visiting the nearest grocery store. Mayor Sergei Sobyanin’s decree did not take effect until midnight, but the confusion was immediate. It capped a week of mixed messaging from Russian authorities on the coronavirus pandemic, as President Vladimir Putin has delegated enacting tough measures to others. He has been silent as Moscow has declared a stricter quarantine than most European cities, prompting one blogger for the popular Echo of Moscow independent radio station to wonder whether Sobyanin is now making the key decisions for Russia. For a country spanning two continents ravaged by the pandemic, Russia has a relatively low number of confirmed cases: 1,836, but the number of new cases per day has been steadily increasing, with Monday’s 302 new diagnoses setting another high....."
Meanwhile, down in the ocean's depths:
"Of a world in coronavirus turmoil, they may know little or nothing. Submariners stealthily cruising the ocean deeps, purposefully shielded from worldly worries to encourage undivided focus on their top-secret missions of nuclear deterrence, may be among the last pockets of people anywhere who are still blissfully unaware of how the pandemic is turning life upside down. Mariners aboard ballistic submarines are habitually spared bad news while underwater to avoid undermining their morale, say current and former officers who served aboard France’s nuclear-armed subs. So any crews that left port before the virus spread around the globe are likely being kept in the dark about the extent of the rapidly unfurling crisis by their commanders until their return, they say. ‘‘They won’t know,” said retired Admiral Dominique Salles, who commanded the French ballistic submarine squadron from 2003-2006. “The boys need to be completely available for their mission.” Salles said he believes submariners will likely only be told of the pandemic as they head back to port, in the final two days of their mission. The French navy won’t divulge what has or hasn’t been said to submarine crews. Nor will it say whether any of the four French ballistic submarines, laden with 16 missiles that each can carry six nuclear warheads, left harbor before France instituted a nationwide lockdown on March 17. French submarine missions last 60 to 70 days, with about 110 crew members aboard. So a crew that left at the end of February wouldn’t be expected back before the end of April. In that case, they will return to a world changed by the pandemic. On March 1, France had just 130 confirmed COVID-19 cases and two deaths. In under a month, those numbers have surged past 2,600 dead and more than 40,000 sickened."
As soon as they surface, back down they go.
So when are they planning to launch?
Let's get this show on the road!
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
It's gonna be a jailbreak:
"‘Jails are petri dishes’: inmates freed as the virus spreads behind bars" by Timothy Williams and Benjamin Weiser New York Times, March 30, 2020
The coronavirus is spreading quickly in America’s jails and prisons, where social distancing is impossible and sanitizer is widely banned, prompting authorities across the country to release thousands of inmates in recent weeks to try to slow the infection, save lives, and preserve medical resources.
Lock them in the cell or set up some tents outside then.
Shouldn't they be sheltering in place like the rest of us, or is the evil and nefarious plan to let them out and hope the rapists, robbers, and murderers will stay home?
Hundreds of COVID-19 diagnoses have been confirmed at local, state, and federal correctional facilities — almost certainly an undercount given a lack of testing and the virus’s rapid spread — leading to hunger strikes in immigrant detention centers and demands for more protection from prison employee unions.
It's all agenda, all the time with these guys. Using this for so many things. It's sickening!
A week ago, the Cook County jail in Chicago had two diagnoses. By Sunday, 101 inmates and a dozen employees had tested positive for the virus. The Rikers Island jail complex in New York City had at least 139 confirmed cases. Michigan prisons reported 77 positive tests, and at least 38 inmates and employees in the federal prison system have the virus, with one prisoner dead in Louisiana.
Yeah, the mistreatment in those facilities, all forgotten. Crisis panic overtakes all.
Defense lawyers, elected officials, health specialists, and even some prosecutors have warned that efforts to release inmates and to contain the spread of the disease are moving too slowly in the face of a contagion that has so far infected more than 142,000 people in the United States, with more than 2,300 deaths.
“By keeping more people in the jails, you are increasing the overall number of people who contract the virus,” and the demand for hospital beds, ventilators, and other lifesaving resources, said David E. Patton, head of the federal public defender’s office in New York City, which represents nearly half of the 2,500 inmates in the city’s two federal jails. “They are playing roulette with people’s lives.”
Of course, the elite will escape to the gated communities with private security that will be walled off by National Guardsman.
America has more people behind bars than any other nation. Its correctional facilities are frequently crowded and unsanitary, filled with an aging population of often impoverished people with a history of poor health care, many of whom suffer from respiratory problems and heart conditions. Practices urged elsewhere to slow the spread of the virus — avoiding crowds, frequent hand washing, disinfecting clothing — are nearly impossible to implement inside.
Land of the Free?
If they are already impoverished, how is letting them out of a state facility and institution good as they are repurposing other sites to take people?
WTF is going on?
The Federal Bureau of Prisons, which holds more than 167,000 people nationwide, has been criticized by its own employees as slow to act.
In charge of Epstein, whose on an island somewhere now no doubt. Probably hanging with Weinstein.
Whatta ya' mean WHO?
Attorney General William Barr said officials were trying to expand home confinement, as opposed to directly releasing federal prisoners, almost all of whom were convicted of felonies. He ordered an assessment of at-risk nonviolent inmates, particularly those who have served much of their sentence, but it was unclear how many would qualify under a complex list of criteria, and Barr cautioned that the review would not result in immediate transfers because of the need to ensure that prisoners would not spread the virus once freed.
I wonder if Assange will be released, and those felons will be sure to stay home. No worries there.
In Chicago, as the number of positive test results at the county jail have skyrocketed, Sheriff Tom Dart has established a quarantine area for those who have the virus and another one for those showing symptoms who have not tested positive but need to be monitored. The most serious patients are being taken to the hospital.
“Our jails are petri dishes,” said Toni Preckwinkle, president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, comparing them to nursing homes or cruise ships — both places where the virus has spread rapidly.
We are all in one you, sick f***s!
That's how they see us, little amoebas, cattle, take your pick, it's all sub-human -- although at this point, I would rather belong to that group if the mon$ters carrying all this out are considered human. They are true manifestations of evil.
--more--"
Same as the boot camps:
"A coronavirus outbreak has infected dozens of Marine recruits and staff members at the service’s East Coast recruit training center, prompting the suspension of additional arrivals for the foreseeable future, defense officials said Monday. The cases at Parris Island, S.C., emerged following a ‘‘wave in testing’’ over the weekend, a defense official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. One official said there are at least 20 positive cases, and another said there are believed to be a few dozen but less than 50. The outbreak could mark the Defense Department’s largest yet. Defense officials have said that dozens of sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt have tested positive for the virus while on deployment in the Pacific, forcing a stop last week for treatment in Guam. The Marine Corps acknowledged the suspension of new recruits arriving at Parris Island but did not detail how many cases have emerged following a Pentagon decision last week to not provide specific information about coronavirus cases from individual bases and units. Marine officials said in a statement that the service is taking steps to ‘‘protect its recruits, recruit training personnel, their families, and the communities where they live and serve by temporarily suspending the shipping of new recruits’’ to Parris Island."
Those soldiers who wish to resist now isolated, and it does make you wonder if the world is right and a US bioweapon was handled rather sloppily. I mean, what are they covering up there when they doth protest too much?
At least we won't be invading anybody, right?
I mean, GE is still turning out aircraft engines so I imagine there will be a lot of bombing.
Maybe sending a ship to NYC wasn't a good idea after all:
"The enormous hospital ship USNS Comfort arrived in New York Harbor on Monday morning, a gleaming white beacon of hope for a besieged city as it fights the novel coronavirus, but in sending a Navy hospital ship to join the battle against a pandemic, military officials have taken a huge and calculated risk: Can a ship, the type of vessel where viruses have been shown to spread with frightening ease, actually remain safe from the infection raging just outside? Navy officials do not plan to treat people with coronavirus aboard the Comfort. The mission is to take patients with other medical problems to relieve New York hospitals overrun by virus patients, but it is not as if the ship’s medical personnel can quarantine patients for two weeks before they accept them on board for treatment. Navy officials insist that they are doing everything short of Saran-wrapping the ship to try to keep it virus-free. That has meant almost sequestering the ship’s crew of 1,200 for the past two weeks to lessen their chances of contracting the virus, Captain Joseph O’Brien, commodore of Task Force New York City, said. The ship closed its workout rooms days ago, and the crew members have been practicing social distancing — at least, as much as they can in the confined quarters of a ship, but there remain challenges....."
Did you know that FEMA has deployed mobile morgue trucks as well?
"New York’s governor issued an urgent appeal for medical volunteers Monday amid a “staggering” number of deaths from the coronavirus, as he and health officials warned that the crisis unfolding in New York City is just a preview of what other communities across the United States could soon face. “Please come help us in New York now,” Governor Andrew Cuomo said as the state’s death toll climbed by more than 250 in a single day to a total of more than 1,200 victims, most of them in the city. He said an additional 1 million health care workers are needed to tackle the crisis. “We’ve lost over 1,000 New Yorkers,’’ Cuomo said. ‘‘To me, we’re beyond staggering already. We’ve reached staggering.” Even before the governor’s appeal, close to 80,000 former nurses, doctors, and other professionals in New York were stepping up to volunteer. ‘‘Whatever it is that they need, I’m willing to do,” said Jerry Kops, a musician and former nurse whose tour with the show Blue Man Group was abruptly halted by the outbreak. He returned to his Long Island home, where he volunteered to be a nurse again. While waiting to be reinstated, Kops has been helping at an assisted-living home near his house in Shirley, N.Y. The spike in deaths in New York was another sign of the long fight ahead against the global pandemic, which was filling Spain’s intensive care beds to capacity and shutting millions of Americans inside even as the crisis in China, where the outbreak began in December, kept easing. More than 235 million people — about two of every three Americans — live in the 33 states where governors have declared statewide orders or recommendations to stay home. The United States reported more than 160,000 infections and over 3,000 deaths, with New York City the nation’s worst hot spot, and New Orleans, Detroit, and other cities also seeing alarming clusters."
It's now a $500 fine if you get too close to anyone.
"A Brooklyn man was arrested for coughing on FBI agents who came to investigate whether he was selling medical supplies, including N95 masks, at inflated prices in what appears to be one of the first cases related to alleged profiteering from the coronavirus pandemic. Baruch Feldheim, 43, was charged with assaulting federal officers and lying to them about his accumulation and sale of medical supplies, the US attorney’s office in New Jersey said Monday. He wasn’t charged with profiteering. The agents had been staking out Feldheim’s residence in Brooklyn, watching people leave with what looked like medical supplies. Prosecutors said that Feldheim sold supplies at as much as a 700 percent markup to doctors and nurses. Hospitals in New York, New Jersey, and elsewhere are running so short on medical equipment that doctors and nurses are being forced to reuse disposable masks for days at a time. That’s spurred a wave of brokers and hustlers who are bombarding purchasing departments with offers, claiming they’ve located sources of supplies. Even if the administrators are willing to pay high prices, they’re having trouble telling who’s legitimate. The Trump administration has said it will crack down on profiteering. One doctor in New Jersey contacted Feldheim on March 18 through a WhatsApp chat group called “Virus2020!” and arranged to buy about 1,000 N95 masks and other goods for $12,000, prosecutors said. Feldheim sent the doctor to an auto repair shop in Irvington, N.J., to pick up his order, according to the statement. The doctor later said that the shop had enough hand sanitizer and surgical supplies to outfit a hospital, prosecutors said."
I'm not even going to comment because, juo know.
Maybe they should send him to Detroit:
"It has seen its population plummet, houses fall to ruin, and the largest municipal bankruptcy in the nation. Now another crisis has descended on Detroit: the coronavirus. In less than two weeks, 35 people with the coronavirus have died in Detroit. The police chief has tested positive for the virus, and more than 500 police officers are in quarantine. On Sunday morning, the city’s downtown, a center of Detroit’s post-bankruptcy resurgence, was quiet and mostly deserted. The virus could place a unique burden on Detroit, a city of 670,000 people where 3 of 10 residents live in poverty, a large number have asthma and other chronic diseases, and hospitals are already overwhelmed. By Monday afternoon, with more than 6,500 cases, Michigan was third in known cases among the states, behind New York and New Jersey. Across the state, at least 196 residents have died, placing Michigan fourth across the nation in deaths from the virus."
That means they are diagnosing any respiratory disease as corona, as well as any death. How duplicitous and disingenuous.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
The forgotten victims, as predicted here on this very site:
"US crime drops in lockdown, domestic violence risk climbs" by Edvard Petterssonand Noah Buhayar Bloomberg News, March 30, 2020
With more than two-thirds of the US population ordered to stay home amid the coronavirus pandemic, it’s tougher for burglars to find an empty house to rob, but the cooped-up residents seem more likely to fight each other.
Who didn't see that coming?
That’s what crime statistics show in major US cities where residents are spending almost all their time inside.
In Los Angeles, property crime was down 18 percent in the four weeks that ended March 21 from the previous four weeks. Calls for police services in Chicago have declined 30 percent for the month, and crime in New York City fell almost 25 percent in the week ended March 22, compared with the week before.
‘‘You know, you’ve never seen Fifth Avenue so open,’’ New York Police Department Commissioner Dermot Shea said last week. ‘‘You never see crosstown streets so open. We saw an immediate drop in most categories, I would say, of crime.’’
Yeah, isn't it great?
The rapidly spreading infections from the coronavirus, with New York City as now the epicenter, have most Americans hunkering down. About 217 million people in at least 23 states, 17 cities and one territory were being urged to stay home as of Friday.
They have you right where they want you, like a sitting duck.
In Los Angeles, the number of burglaries and theft from motor vehicles, the most prevalent crime in the car-loving city, was down 24 percent. In areas such as Hollywood, car break-ins fell more than 40 percent, according to police. Burglaries dropped almost 20 percent in New York and rapes were down by more than half; there was one murder, compared with eight in the earlier week. (The pandemic can offer criminals opportunities. In Europe, a Dutch museum that’s closed to check the virus’s spread said Monday a Van Gogh was stolen in an overnight raid.)
Who cares what portrait they are trying to paint?
Life sure looks a lot better without all of us out and about, huh?
I wonder how the released criminals will affect the crime totals.
They obviously wi9ll be kept out of some sections.
The changes in violent crime were less pronounced in other cities.
In Chicago, there’s been a significant reduction in vehicle and pedestrian stops by police, Charlie Beck, the city’s interim police superintendent, said at a press conference Tuesday.
‘‘All of this indicates to me that people are doing what we ask,’’ Beck said. ‘‘That they are staying home, that they are by and large creating good social distance, that our police officers are only focusing on things that have a direct impact on public safety and making sure that we all get through this together.’’
In San Francisco, larceny-theft, which includes shoplifting and bicycle theft, was down 30 percent during the first three weeks of March versus the same period a year earlier, but with people stuck indoors enduring the stress of an unprecedented public-health crisis and worrying about jobs disappearing, domestic squabbles are rising.
Gee, it only took them THREE-QUARTERS of the article to get around to the BATTERED WOMEN!
In Seattle, police got 614 domestic violence calls in the first two weeks of March, a 22 percent increase from a year earlier.
WOAH!
‘‘The vast majority were for a DV disturbance, which means there is no arrest because it was just an argument where the police ended up responding,’’ Detective Patrick Michaud of the Seattle police department said in an email, referring to domestic violence calls. ‘‘No assault. No property damage. No additional crime. Just an argument.’’
Oh, ladies, we have relegated you to pre-Nicole Simpson days!
And they said TRUMP wanted to take you back!
In San Diego, District Attorney Summer Stephan on Friday acknowledged the increased risk of domestic violence.
‘‘Losing a job and kids at home due to school closures can be triggers for domestic violence,’’ Stephan said in a statement. ‘‘We want people who are seeing warning signs of abuse or who are being abused to know that we stand ready to help them and that they shouldn’t suffer in silence.’’
Yeah, the abuser that put you in this situation stands ready to help.
EVIL!
--more--"
That article was presented on page A6.
Globe, you should be ashamed of yourselves!
Oh, yeah, don't forget to celebrate Women’s History Month!
You will be part of history soon if the Globe has its way.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
The message to the public from the members of Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics and Mass. doctors, nurses, and ethicists is that the public needs to be fully aware that typical medical options may soon become unavailable, so as we strain to adjust to our new world of social distancing, the Globe has graciously offered a blueprint for our own deaths (you good at digging?):
"People are largely following the coronavirus rules — but will that self-control last?" by Naomi Martin Globe Staff, March 27, 2020
The streets are empty as residents hunker down. When people do venture out, most dutifully stay 6 feet from others.
For now, people are largely heeding the state’s stay-at-home advisory and social distancing guidelines aimed at slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus, but how long can people in a nation that prizes personal freedoms be expected to comply with the measures? What if this drags on for months, or, as top epidemiologists project, the rules are relaxed and reimposed intermittently when new outbreaks emerge until drugs or a vaccine become available, possibly in a year?
Well, we know the mind-crippling chain-jerk and yo-yo that is come.
Nobody can say for sure, but experts told The Boston Globe that most people are likely to struggle with the rules in the long run — unless they know their actions truly make an impact.
“Either people will have faith that what they’re being told to do is necessary and makes sense and they’re being given enough rationale for it and information — or it’ll be very difficult for them to stick with it,” said Dr. Edward Silberman, a psychiatrist at Tufts Medical Center.
Need I type it?
The psychological toll of sequestering at home could come into play, Silberman said. As social creatures, humans crave time with those they care about, he said, including people they see regularly who aren’t friends or family, but another scientist who studies behavior said that as time goes on, sticking to the rules may get easier as people adapt to new habits while working from home, calling loved ones on FaceTime, and going for walks.
Wait until you see what this sickening skank is advising.
It doesn’t take long for something that starts as strange to feel more natural, said Katherine Milkman, a behavioral science professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and, she added, humans’ social needs also mean that they care deeply about fitting in with their “herd.” Seeing friends on Facebook homeschooling their children, for example, reinforces that staying home is the social norm, and the right thing to do.
“People are actually quite adaptable,” Milkman said. “Doing a thing that’s unpleasant day in and day out gets easier over time, and gets easier when we see that everyone else is doing it.”
She is a sick totalitarian pushing her group think social conditioning and brainwashing!
I think the "Milkman" should stop making deliveries because that $h!t is $our.
Public health authorities could motivate people to stick with the changes, she said, through channeling the “identifiable victim effect,” meaning publicly sharing the faces and stories of people who could be hurt if the community broke the rules. Studies show that people care far more about a cause when they hear a personal story than just statistics, she said.
Why did I just think of Palestinians, you bitch?
Or the stacks of corpses from the last three war criminals that masqueraded as president (and I don't mean the current President of the United States)?
Even within the federal government, a debate rages over the rules, which could prompt more people to flout them.
President Trump has suggested that the economically devastating restrictions were worse than the virus itself and said he wanted the country’s businesses “opened up" by Easter, but on Sunday he reversed course and extended social distancing guidelines through April, after New York’s hospitals became increasingly overwhelmed and his advisers projected up to 200,000 Americans could die, even with aggressive actions were taken to slow the virus’ spread.
He got his mind right!
Kristopher Cere, 32, a Jamaica Plain resident who lost his catering job due to the coronavirus closures, said that as much as he and others who were laid off need to start working again, the country should heed the experts.
“It’s going to be difficult, but if the scientists say it’s what we need to do, we have to do it to save as many lives as possible,” Cere said. “The quicker we abide by all this, the quicker we can get back to work."
What if they are mad scientists, or evil?
Just because they are wearing a white coat, it doesn't make them saints.
For those who are able to work from home, the measures are even less difficult to handle, said Richard Bonanno, 54, a professor of Italian studies at Assumption College in Worcester. He recommended people read historical accounts of pandemics, famine, and war for perspective, including Anne Frank’s diary, which recounts the hardships of a Jewish teenager who hid from the Nazis for two years in an attic with her family.
OMFG!!
He throws out that forged piece of ballpoint pen crap as reading material.
Of course, our current string-pullers are ten times worse than the Nazis. Genocidal Jewi$h supremacists demonizing the greatest threat they ever faced.
“This is so minimal, what we’re required to do for the good of others,” said Bonanno, a Cambridge resident. “We have the luxury of being able to stretch out in our homes, of being able to follow our routines, and this wonderful digital world that allows us to connect with others.”
This guy is a profe$$or, huh?
That's who ejewkhating the kids from the ivory towers, or was anyway. Now it will be a computer connection after they have cleared out the rest of us.
Baker announced last Monday that he was shutting down the state’s nonessential businesses, prompting relief from many who had started staying home weeks ago and watched as others didn’t.
How would you like to be told your life's dream and everything you have worked for is "non-essential?"
How many of these sick psychopathic puppets issuing these orders are non-essential?
Truth be told, the ruling cla$$ is non-essential. Then this world would finally have peace.
“It stunk that it’s taken this long,” said Caty Yuen, 30, a biotech marketing professional who has worked from her South Boston home since March 10. “We can’t even start to see any kind of light at the end of the tunnel until everyone stops going out.”
What one you will see will be attain barreling down on us all, I figure about September after your last summer.
Enforcing the rules also could prompt people to comply, as authorities in Italy, Spain, and France have done.
The Baker administration’s new order allows for police to penalize those who gather in groups of more than 10. A first offense would result in a warning, followed by a $300 fine for a second offense and a $500 fine or prison for additional offenses.
That's not freedom of assembly! That is UNCONSTITUTIONAL, but I know. That governing document no longer applies, and I should be shunned for saying so as well as making the domestic terrorist list Barr is compiling.
Kaylin Ridge, 22, a student at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, said she hoped the rules would end in a few weeks.
Then she supports the President of the United States then?
“That would be really hard” if the situation continued for months, Ridge said, noting that she would struggle to visit her family in North Carolina. “Everything being so different and not being able to go out and get things if I want them is kind of frustrating.”
Jill Veader, 20, a North Reading college student and Market Basket cashier, said she was managing fine with her current distractions of work and online classes, for now.
“Once classes end and you really don’t have anything to do, that’s when it’ll be the most difficult,” she said. “Another month or two of this I’m down for, but after that it makes me nervous.”
You kids are never going back to school, sorry. Those places are being repurposed as I type, and as for a month or two, I'm not "down with that," sorry. It's going to be a loot longer than that -- unless you get your shot and papers.
--more--"
Yeah, you get knocked down, you get up again, your never gonna keep me down.....
Related:
Boston College professors, staff, and alumni open homes to displaced students
Katie Rapier, an assistant professor at Boston College, has offered to store students' belongings after classes were canceled because of COVID-19. (Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff)
She must be wearing their shirts.
BU makes test scores optional for applicants in response to coronavirus
You know, BU has a bio lab.
Could it be connected to the outbreak at Biogen?
"Local physicians form group to advocate on COVID-19" by Felice J. Freyer Globe Staff, March 31, 2020
A group of Massachusetts physicians who are alarmed about the spread of COVID-19 have formed an advocacy group to push for safety measures for patients and providers.
The group’s first action, even before it had a name, was collecting the signatures of more than 1,000 doctors on a letter to Governor Charlie Baker calling on him to provide national leadership and forceful action.
The letter asked Baker to join with other governors in organizing a nationwide two-week pause in all nonessential activities and in pressuring President Trump to broadly mandate more manufacturing of personal protective equipment. It also asks Baker to increase testing capacity and include infectious disease and public health experts in the Command Center recently established to deal with the crisis.
What Command Center?
Health care workers, the letter said, are being asked “to choose between their own lives and those of their patients. ... Some physicians report having no access to protective gear.”
They want their money or they start blabbing!
It continued, “We urge you to mobilize leaders of corporations and community organizations in a war-like fashion across the Commonwealth to halt community transmission and to produce, purchase and provide PPE [personal protective equipment].”
MASH!
How long until you kids are drafted?!!
Be putting your lives on the line.
Dr. Karen Leitner, one of the group’s founders, said that she had not received a response from Baker to the letter, which was sent Wednesday. Leitner said that the group originated with three physicians in Newton and Wellesley and quickly expanded via social media. Over the weekend about 20 core members adopted a name — the COVID-19 Action Coalition — and identified four “action points”:
♦ To promote social distancing that prohibits any group gathering, not just groups of 10 or more, and that continues until data show that the virus is contained.
What is it about the 11th person -- hmmm. That number again, 9 and 11, 9 and 11 -- that spoils the whole thing? How is it THAT PERSON who would be the contagion?
♦ To push for full deployment of the Defense Production Act to force more production of protection equipment nationwide.
Deploy, yes.
♦ To detect illness and protect every infected person, with broader testing and a safe place for infected people to recuperate without endangering others.
Fu*k you and your fake positives. Even if it weren't, I wouldn't trust you guys. Everybody's positive!
♦ To start planning to address the financial hardships that the preventive measures will cause.
“Our health care system is really at risk,” Leitner said.....
Oh, I thought you meant us. They are worried about the $y$tem by which they all make a nice, comfortable living and are part of the elite of $ociety.
--more--"
Drive-thru coronavirus testing at Cambridge Health Alliance at the Somerville Hospital in Somerville on March 25. (David L. Ryan/Globe Staff)
Better put it in reverse and turn around before flooring it, and here is another Four Point Plan:
"A new ‘roadmap’ lays out how we might emerge from coronavirus crisis" by Martin Finucane Globe Staff, March 30, 2020
How do we get out of this coronavirus pandemic nightmare? A new paper suggests the road we should take and the signposts we should look for on the way.
The 20-page report, published on the American Enterprise Institute website, comes from a group of public health experts led by former US Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb. Gottlieb, now a fellow at AEI, is one of the experts on the advisory group guiding Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker.
The Globe is now taking advice from the far-right AEI?
These must be the end times.
The report envisions four phases:
Phase 1 is the current phase, when the pandemic is growing, there is community transmission in every state and social distancing measures are in place, causing massive disruption to everyday life. “These measures will need to be in place in each state until transmission has measurably slowed down and health infrastructure can be scaled up to safely manage the outbreak and care for the sick,” the report said.
In Phase 2, schools and businesses can reopen, and much of normal life can begin to resume “in a phased approach,” but there will still be various restrictions, the report said. In Phase 3, with widespread testing and a vaccine or a treatment available, physical distancing and other restrictions can be lifted. In Phase 4, the authors recommend, we should prepare for the next pandemic.
For many cooped-up people now, the biggest question is how we get from Phase 1 to Phase 2. The report suggests the signposts that will indicate when it’s safe to move to Phase 2....
By the time your are finished reading the article you totally forgot about Phase 3 and 4.
How about that, huh?
--more--"
Time to build a FORT:
"Kids at home until May? The Boston Public Library thinks you should build a fort; ‘It’s a great way to keep your kids actively connected to the library community at this unusual time,’ staff says" by Steve Annear Globe Staff, March 30, 2020
Here’s the hard truth: You’re now going to be stuck at home with your kids until at least May 4, and by now — just days into this “stay-at-home” advisory — it may feel like you’ve already exhausted everything in your arsenal to keep your children immersed and engaged.
Like the Globe would have any connection to the truth. That's a joke, and this whole be at war with your own family shit is sick. Domestic violence calls are soaring cause of this enforced imprisonment.
The crafts. The breaking-all-the-screentime rules. Watching “Frozen” and then “Frozen 2,” and then “Frozen” again.
If that’s the case, the Boston Public Library has a mission for you: It’s time to build an epic fort.
Are they kidding?
Not read a book, huh?
Or even a newspaper?
The Library, right?
“Kids, grab some old blankets (or pillows or sheets or towels) and build your own blanket fort!,” the BPL’s Children’s Library branch wrote on Facebook Wednesday. “How wide can you make it? How tall? How stable? Can you add signs or decorations?”
Oh, man, this is sickest s**t yet!
Let's train the youngsters who haven't had, and likely will never have, any play. Let's screw the kids over and make the shelter-in-place a staple of development. It's almost as if....
"..... someone wants parents to abuse their children--creating a future generation alienated from parents/families. Now who would THAT be? What's worse...old people dying from a hyped-up flu?...or a generation of children being routinely isolated/abused/tortured? Well, folks, looks like we're gonna find out....."
The above comes from one who flies high and sees more, and I bow down in respect.
EVIL!
Library staff posted the challenge to Facebook shortly before Governor Charlie Baker announced that all schools — public and private — and non-essential day-cares across the state must remain closed through April.
The call-out for people to put together giant hiding places made of pillows, blankets, and other household materials is part of a larger online initiative to keep children active, called the “Creative Kids Challenge.” A new activity will be posted each week to social media, with the hope that participants will post and share pictures of their own attempts.
It's an agenda-pushing propaganda effort, and I expected better from the LIBRARY!!
Silly me.
Rebecca Fox, a children’s librarian at the BPL, explains why it only made sense for the storied institute to launch this online program:
--more--"
She says why building a fort is a good idea (just don't arm yourself in it, 'kay?), and it is because they will be in their ComfortZone (sorry, The Office is no longer funny. No social distancing).
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Better go get your T-SHIRT:
"R.I. shop selling T-shirts with Raimondo’s message to social distancing scofflaws: ‘Knock it off’; ‘We all need an Italian mother right now,’ Frog & Toad co-owner Asher Schofield said. ‘Break out the wooden spoon.’" by Edward Fitzpatrick Globe Staff, March 30, 2020
My printed headline says it has GONE VIRAL!!
PROVIDENCE — The most Rhode Island store in Rhode Island, Frog & Toad, is selling T-shirts emblazoned with the words “Knock it off” — Governor Gina M. Raimondo’s admonition for social distancing scofflaws.
Screw you and you're shaming.
So far, the quirky Providence gift shop has sold more than 450 of the $22 T-shirts online, and it is donating 20 percent of the proceeds to the Rhode Island Foundation’s COVID-19 Response Fund, which has provided grants to nonprofits such as the Pawtucket Soup Kitchen and Meals on Wheels.
During daily news conferences about the coronavirus, Raimondo has taken an increasingly stern tone with those who disobey directives aimed at containing the outbreak.
Man, that's DICTATORSHIT right there!
Related:
"Florida officials have arrested the pastor of a megachurch after detectives say he held two Sunday services with hundreds of people and violated a safer-at-home order in place to limit the spread of the coronavirus. According to jail records, Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne turned himself in to authorities Monday afternoon in Hernando County, where he lives. He was charged with unlawful assembly and violation of a public health emergency order. Bail was set at $500, according to the jail’s website, and he was released after posting bond. said “Shame on this pastor, their legal staff and the leaders of this staff for forcing us to do our job. That’s not what we wanted to do during a declared state of emergency,” Chronister said. “We are hopeful that this will be a wakeup call,” said Hillsborough Sheriff Chad Chronister....."
Yes, for shame, and let's go straight to the source on that one.
Maybe they should be shaming the people in the pictures here, and they better hold a wake for the Constitution because it's dead.
The governor has ordered Rhode Islanders to stay at home for all but essential reasons, avoid gatherings of more than five people, and remain six feet apart, but she has reported seeing large groups playing football in a field or standing in line to buy clam cakes in Narragansett. And she has repeatedly demanded that those people “Knock it off!” and “Shut it down!”
“We all need an Italian mother right now,” Frog & Toad co-owner Asher Schofield said Monday. “Break out the wooden spoon.”
She should call Walsh to get ideas, and what's with the hateful stereotypes and lecturing?
When it comes to clam cakes, he said he gets it. “They are our sustenance,” he said. “Just queue up at a socially responsible distance.”
Schofield said Raimondo’s message seems to be getting through.
“The messaging has been on point,” he said. “It would have been nice if it were received by more people sooner. But if you do go out, you don’t see anybody out there right now.”
Says Schofield(!!).
Frog & Toad, which opened 19 years ago, shut its doors two weeks ago, but is still selling items online, including the “Knock it off” T-shirts, which were designed by Maret Bondorew of Frog & Toad Press and printed by Parched.
“We are not selling this shirt to capitalize on a crisis,” Schofield said. “The margin is razor thin,” and 20 percent of the money is going to help nonprofits supported by the COVID-19 Relief Fund, he said. “We saw what the Rhode Island Foundation was doing, and we wanted to do what little we could.”
No, it's to $upport the agenda in the mo$t conde$cending way po$$ible, and he's $till making a little bit of money. Why not lie to your face, too?
Schofield said he is seeing locals help each other during the crisis.
“Rhode Islanders are a special breed,” he said. “They are plucky and they care, and they see that to get through this, we need to come together as neighbors.”
Yeah, the Globe jerked us off the other day, too.
Now Frog & Toad is working on another T-shirt bearing the words: “Shut it down!”
--more--"
Just wondering where you are going to wear it.
Also see:
"Interlopers have invaded online classrooms for Massachusetts schools with offensive displays at least twice in recent days, the FBI’s Boston office said Monday, as increased use of teleconferencing software opens a new door for threats, hate speech, and other disturbing behavior. As a growing number of schools and businesses shift to video teleconferencing amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Federal Bureau of Investigation encourages people to use precautions built into the popular Zoom teleconferencing software. In one "Zoom-bombing incident, a high school teacher was interrupted by someone who “yelled a profanity and then shouted the teacher’s home address in the middle of instruction,” according to the FBI. In another, an unidentified person appeared on camera in a Zoom classroom and displayed tattoos that featured swastikas."
Interlopers and swastikas, whatever. This more false flag fakery and phoniness for the usual agenda-pushing purposes. No one is fooled by it anymore.
"Massachusetts medical marijuana dispensaries will temporarily be allowed to offer curbside or at-the-door pickup to patients and caregivers in an effort to curb the spread of coronavirus. Through the program, which went into effect on Saturday, dispensaries are allowed to take preorders and make sales using electronic payment methods over the phone. When the customer arrives at the dispensary, an employee can either bring the purchased items directly to the customers’ car in the store’s parking lot or hand the items to the customer at the front door. Customers looking to pay in cash will need to go inside the dispensary. For curbside pickup that involves a vehicle, anyone in the car has to either be age 21 or older, or be registered as a medical marijuana patient or caregiver with the state."
It stinks so you might want to hold your breath.
"The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday in an action brought by the state criminal defense bar seeking the release of vulnerable inmates and pretrial detainees amid the coronavirus pandemic. The SJC is slated to hear arguments at 10 a.m. from petitioners including the state public defender agency, the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the ACLU Foundation of Massachusetts. The defense bar has the strong support of Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins. Attorney General Maura Healey’s office said in court papers that any guidance from the SJC regarding release “should focus on those pretrial detainees accused of nonviolent offenses,” while “dangerous and violent” people should “remain incarcerated.”
I've already covered the blanket amnesty that are granting prisoners. You gotta jail yourself at home and keep your distance. I'm sure the criminals will obey, and if so, maybe they should have never been there in the fir$t place, huh?
"A 25-year-old Boston man was arrested Sunday night on charges of slashing another person in the neck with a box cutter in the Back Bay, according to police. In a statement, Boston police identified the suspect as Gary Dumas II. It wasn’t known if he had hired a lawyer. Police said the violence unfolded around 6:45 p.m., when they were alerted to a person stabbed in the area of Mass. Ave. and Newbury Street. Responding officers spotted Dumas and two other men, later identified as the victim and another who was allegedly threatened, engaged in a verbal altercation at the scene, the statement said."
He was on his way to hijack a plane.
"Massachusetts’ two senators decried the federal government’s disestablishment of Mashpee Wampanoag land Sunday, a decision they said would “re-open a shameful and painful chapter of American history," Senators Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey said in a joint statement Sunday. The tribe is still federally recognized, as it has been since 2007, but the move announced Friday would mean it will lose its reservation status, and that 321 acres of land across Cape Cod and Taunton are no longer being held in trust by the U.S. government. Holding the land in trust gave the Mashpee Wampanoag more control over taxing and developing the land, as well as legal jurisdiction. It also would have paved the way for the tribe to build a casino in Taunton, a plan that has spurred years of legal disputes."
Israel can steal as much land as they want without comment.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Ordered to close and excluded from federal aid, marijuana entrepreneurs staring down insolvency
The virus has done a great job of killing what Baker and others didn't want anyway. Imagine that.
I think manufacturers and authorities are holding it back and taking it with them because they are all heading to the hills.
"Is that nagging cough a sign of a COVID-19 infection, or just a spring allergy? You could go to a doctor, but in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, getting an appointment might be difficult, or even needlessly increase your risk of infection. That’s why a growing number of technology companies are offering online tools that use simple question-and-answer tests to assess the likelihood that someone is infected with the virus. The Massachusetts state government has partnered with the maker of one such tool, Boston-based Buoy Health. The company offers a website where nervous people can get guidance on whether they may have contracted the disease, or are at high risk of catching it. Alpha Software of Burlington is also unveiling a COVID diagnostic app developed in conjunction with New York City cardiologist Warren J. Wexelman. “The initial idea was diagnosis for heart disease," said Alpha Software’s chief executive Richard Rabins. "Then we pivoted because of this crazy horrible thing,” and on Monday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also launched its own online diagnostic tool....."
Yup, you are infected! Tech $oftware $ays $o!
Hope you are in$ured:
"Insurers worry virus-linked costs may reach $383 billion a month" by Katherine Chiglinsky Bloomberg News, March 30, 2020
The battle over business-interruption losses is heating up.
Legislators in at least three states — Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Ohio — have proposed bills to require that insurers pay out for certain claims related to COVID-19.
The American Property Casualty Insurance Association is pushing back, arguing that the costs aren’t covered under current policies and can threaten the stability of the sector. It estimates that business-continuity losses for small firms could total as much as $383 billion a month.
Businesses across the United States, including many restaurants, have been forced to limit operations as cities and states try to fight the spread of the coronavirus. That’s fueled a record number of jobless claims and led small business groups to urge the government to act.
James Eldridge, a Massachusetts state senator, said the bill here is an attempt to protect small businesses, including restaurants.
(Blog editor throws hands upon in air. At least they got their raises!)
Without ‘‘some form of financial relief — whether it’s from the insurance industry, whether it’s from the government — many of these restaurants are not going to come back,’’ Eldridge said in a phone interview. ‘‘That’s going to make all of us worse off, including the insurance industry, which will have fewer clients.’’
I think you are getting the picture, dude. The restaurants are not coming back, Applebees and TGI Fridays will get bailouts and scoop up the properties. Ain't $hit you guys can do about it, either, with all the special tax breaks for businesses to the tune of over a billion dollars a year (he was drunk on power when he wrote it).
The proposal in Massachusetts would cover businesses with 150 or fewer employees and require insurers to pay out — even if policies included language to exclude losses from virus-related issues.
A New Orleans restaurant, Oceana Grill, is already pursuing legal action against underwriters at Lloyd’s of London. It is seeking a declaratory judgment after a civil-authority order by Louisiana’s governor and actions by the city’s mayor to restrict gatherings at restaurants.
A New Jersey bill, currently on hold, would require insurers to cover certain business-interruption claims for companies with 100 or fewer in-state full-time employees. Ohio followed with a similar measure.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners, a group of state regulators, said the policies were ‘‘generally not designed or priced to provide coverage against communicable diseases.’’ Daniel Rabinowitz, a lawyer who runs Kramer Levin’s insurance practice, said the move to force insurers to cover losses they had excluded would be extraordinary and might face challenges.
‘‘It would be unprecedented for policy makers and lawmakers, on sort of a wholesale basis, to take a whole set of policies that have already been written and say, ‘We’re going to invalidate language in there, not even so much because it’s abusive or unconscionable, but just because it doesn’t suit the current needs’ ’’ Rabinowitz said in an interview. ‘‘It would be harmful to just our whole understanding of contracts and predictability.’’
They do it all the time to us!
What do you think reopening health and pension benefits was?
The American Property Casualty Insurance Association said many commercial policies exclude losses caused by viruses, and should be honored.
‘‘If policy makers force insurers to pay for losses that are not covered under existing insurance policies, the stability of the sector could be impacted and that could affect the ability of consumers to address everyday risks that are covered by the property casualty industry,’’ David Sampson, president and chief executive officer of APCIA, said in an e-mailed statement.
Ah, an indu$try!
How $table will the $ector be with no one to in$ure?
Looks like they just want to walk away with a pile of money and f*** you!
--more--"
Maybe the CITY can bail you out:
"Low-interest loans are nice, but many small businesses need grants to survive this pandemic. That’s the urgent plea that advocates for inner-city businesses in Boston, led by CommonWealth Kitchen executive director Jen Faigel and Joe Kriesberg, president of the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations, made to the Walsh administration and members of the City Council on Monday....."
Did you $ee juo he talked to?
"Macy’s furloughing most of its 125,000 employees" by Abha Bhattarai and Rachel Siegel Washington Post, March 30, 2020
WASHINGTON — Macy’s is furloughing most of its 125,000 employees because coronavirus-fueled store closures have caused its sales to all but disappear.
The nation’s largest department store chain, which shuttered its 775 Macy’s, Bloomingdales, and Blue Mercury locations on March 18, said the outbreak continues to take ‘‘a heavy toll’’ on its business. ‘‘We have lost the majority of our sales due to the store closures,’’ it said in a statement Monday.
The company said it will keep ‘‘the absolute minimum workforce’’ for streamlined operations, with a focus on its digital business, distribution centers, and call centers. Furloughed employees will continue to receive health insurance at least through May. Macy’s said it expects to bring back employees ‘‘on a staggered basis as business resumes.’’
Macy's is finished, unless we are cleared out of here.
The New York-based retailer said it has taken significant steps to stem the financial fallout in recent weeks. It has canceled orders, implemented hiring and spending freezes, and suspended payouts of its dividend. It also has delayed bonuses and 401(k) matches, and says executives will take temporary pay cuts beginning in April. Jeff Gennette, Macy’s chairman and CEO, is forgoing pay until the crisis subsides.
Keep tossing those deck chairs overboard.
Industry experts said the announcement was probably just the beginning of widespread layoffs and furloughs by major retail chains as they come to grips with what could be months of store closures.
They are never coming back, and the shop-happy American is a thing of the past. Unless you are rich enough to do it online.
‘‘The floodgates are wide open,’’ said Mark Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia University’s business school and the former chief executive of Sears Canada. ‘‘Now that the pipe dream of an Easter opening is over, companies are trying to figure out how to protect their ability to come out of this when it’s all over, whenever that might be.’’
Look at that. They take a guy from Sears Canada, where all the stores are out of business and closed, and where does he go? To a nice profe$$or$hip at Columbia. $cum elite like all the rest.
President Trump on Sunday extended social-distancing guidance through April 30 and backed off his earlier hopes that the country would be ‘‘opened up’’ by Easter, adding that US deaths from the outbreak are likely to peak in two weeks. Shortly before Trump’s comments, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx, told Trump the country could see up to 200,000 coronavirus-related deaths.
President Trump gave his daily coronavirus update on Monday. (Win McNamee/Getty Images/Getty Images)
Yeah, what do you expect him to do?
Macy’s was already on shaky ground before the coronavirus outbreak. In February, it announced it would close 125 stores — about a fifth of its total — and lay off about 2,000 workers after a disappointing holiday season.
We were told a mere three months ago that it was the be$t Chri$tma$ ever in a record economy! Now not! I gue$$ it was only good for $ome.
From tourism to retail to white-collar jobs, workers nationwide are facing an unprecedented wave of layoffs, furloughs, and pay cuts as entire industries come to a virtual standstill. Last week, Labor Department data showed that a record 3.3 million Americans had applied for unemployment benefits the week before, and economists say more than 40 million Americans could lose their jobs by mid-April.
That's always annoyed me. The jobs were TAKEN from Americans. They didn't "lose" them like a misplaced object that can be found.
Then again, consider the source of the report and the authors of such.
Retailers such as Macy’s have struggled for years to get more shoppers into their stores, but those efforts have ground to a halt in recent weeks. Thousands of stores have temporarily closed as local governments order millions of Americans to stay home. Macy’s struggles, analysts said, are likely to reverberate throughout the retail industry: The chain is an important anchor for hundreds of shopping malls in the country, which means every move it makes has lasting impacts for a number of smaller retailers and mall operators.
Those are to be repurposed as concentration camps.
Foot traffic at retail stores has largely vanished, and the retail sector is likely facing ‘‘broad store and mall closures . . . as the nation works together to’’ reduce spread of the novel coronavirus, Cowen’s Oliver Chen wrote in a note to clients on Monday.
Macy’s, he and colleagues said, has enough cash to survive about 4½ months of store closures. They estimated the retailer spends about $227 million a month on workers’ paychecks, with about half of that going to its 100,000 store employees.
Macy's will be NO MORE!
As the pandemic wreaks economic havoc, the US government is preparing to send checks or direct deposits to most Americans. The stimulus would provide $1,200 payments to adults with annual incomes up to $75,000, plus an additional $500 per child, but some analysts say those payments will do little for most retailers.
‘‘I don’t suspect many people are in the market for spring fashion right now,’’ said Cohen. ‘‘There is no telling when this is going to end.’’
How long does it take to destroy an economy and ruin people's lives and dreams?
--more--"
Look who will be joining them in the unemployment line:
"Gannett will furlough workers at more than 100 newspapers over next three months" by Jacob Bogage Washington Post, March 30, 2020
GOOD!
Less $cum peddling $h!t, and what, I'm supposed to feel sorry for the damn whoreporate pre$$titutes?
WASHINGTON — Newspaper giant Gannett will begin furloughing employees over the next three months to cut costs during the economic slowdown caused by the novel coronavirus, according to a memo distributed to employees Monday.
My advice to them: become a citizen journalist and start a blog!
Certain employees paid more than $38,000 a year by one of the company’s more than 100 newspapers, including USA Today, will be required to take one week of unpaid leave in April, May, and June, according to a memo from USA Today Network president Maribel Wadsworth.
Living the Good Life, huh?
In a separate memo, Gannett chief executive Paul Bascobert told staff on Monday that while subscriptions and audience engagement was up, the company expects revenue to ‘‘decline considerably’’ in the second quarter and that the involuntary leave was the way to address the difficulties ‘‘head on.’’
‘‘Direct sold advertising has already slowed and many businesses have paused their scheduled marketing campaigns,’’ Bascobert wrote.
They won't be able to survive -- unle$$ they get a BAILOUT!
Noted Wadsworth: ‘‘As businesses close and live events cancel across the globe for the next few months, we are seeing many advertisers and sponsors reducing or even eliminating their marketing spend. With the current pressures and so much uncertainty, it’s difficult to chart our next steps for more than the next few months.’’
Oh, you are going to a casualty of this, too?
Talk about blowback!
Advertising is another industry expected to face hard times as the economic woes wrought by the virus begin to settle. A record 3.3 million Americans filed for unemployment last week, a number experts expect to rise this week as job losses hit white-collar workers, collapsing consumer demand. That may well kneecap many advertising campaigns as individuals and businesses tighten their belts and hunker down for a painful few months.
They must not be "essential."
Bascobert said he will not take a salary until the furloughs are reversed and Gannett’s executive team would take a 25 percent pay cut. Wadsworth said the company hoped this round of cutbacks would avert more involuntary furloughs past the coming quarter.
‘‘By choosing a collective sacrifice,’’ Bascobert wrote, ‘‘we can keep our staff intact, reduce our cost structure, deliver for our readers and clients and be ready to emerge strong and with opportunity to grow when this crisis passes.’’
--more--"
Look who is coming to the re$cue:
Facebook to spend $100m supporting local news
European budget airline easyJet grounds all of its planes
Former business partner of Trump can pursue claims in Panama lawsuit
Clothing manufacturers in Bangladesh look at $3b in lost orders
No more factories catching fire, even though they never did the reforms.
Prices at the pump near $2 a gallon
We can start drinking it!
"Oil crashes to 18-year low with broken market" by Catherine Ngai and Alex Longley Bloomberg News, March 30, 2020
Oil tumbled to an 18-year low as coronavirus lockdowns cascaded through the world’s largest economies, leaving the market overwhelmed by cratering demand and a ballooning surplus, while President Trump spoke with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin Monday to discuss the importance of stable energy markets, that did little to stanch the decline.
I wonder what was said.
I wonder what was said.
A huge oversupply is further collapsing the oil market’s structure, and there may be more weakness to come as the world quickly runs out of storage capacity. The slump in demand has shut refineries from South Africa to Canada, leading to excess barrels in the market.
At the key storage hub of Cushing, Okla., inventories are said to have ballooned by more than 4 million barrels last week, according to traders with knowledge of Genscape data, raising fears about storage capacity limits being reached.
Better get a WAR GOING to SUCK ALL THAT UP!
Better get a WAR GOING to SUCK ALL THAT UP!
“We’re grinding lower here and we’ll continue to get lower as runs get cut globally,” said John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital LLC, a New York hedge fund focused on energy. “As we see specific points like Cushing near its limits, it’s just going to put greater and greater pressure on the price till we get to a clearing point.”
Prices are on track for the worst quarter on record. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimates consumption will drop by 26 million barrels a day this week as measures to contain the coronavirus hurt global GDP. Consultant FGE estimated that refinery operating rates have been cut by over 5 million barrels a day worldwide, and could bottom out at between 15 million and 20 million lower.
At least nature has been allowed to catch her breath.
It will be a much cleaner earth when we are all gone.
At least nature has been allowed to catch her breath.
It will be a much cleaner earth when we are all gone.
Meanwhile, Riyadh and Moscow are showing no signs of a detente in their supply battle as Saudi Arabia announced plans to increase its oil exports in the coming months.
In the market for physical barrels of crude, prices are already far below those of futures benchmarks. It’s a similar picture in Europe, where Kazakh crude was offered at a 10-year low. The six-month contango on the global Brent benchmark has grown bigger than in the financial crisis, at more than $13 a barrel. The equivalent six-month contango for WTI is about $12.
The plunge in prices has caused distress in some OPEC nations. Algeria, which holds the cartel’s rotating presidency, urged the secretariat to convene a panel but the call has failed to gather the majority backing necessary to go ahead. Riyadh is among those opposing the idea.....
Who gives a f*** when there is nowhere to drive?
Cheaper for richers, less traffic. Think they want to give that up?
Sure, the frackers will go broke but we are now swimming in oil we can't use.
Sure, the frackers will go broke but we are now swimming in oil we can't use.
--more--"
Why would we need oil anyway when they are no longer making cars?
"Inside GM’s race to build ventilators" by Neal E. Boudette and Andrew Jacobs New York Times, March 30, 2020
While much of the US economy has ground to a halt because of the coronavirus outbreak, several dozen workers in orange vests and hard hats were hauling heavy equipment Sunday at a General Motors plant in Kokomo, Ind.
The crew was part of a crash effort to make tens of thousands of ventilators, the lifesaving machines that keep critically ill patients breathing. The machines are in desperate demand as hospitals face the prospect of dire shortages. New York state alone may need 30,000 or more.
President Trump on Friday accused GM and its chief executive, Mary T. Barra, of dragging their feet on the project and directed his administration to force the company to make ventilators under a 1950s law, but accounts from five people with knowledge of the automaker’s plans depict an attempt by GM and its partner, Ventec Life Systems, a small maker of ventilators, to accelerate production of the devices.
With deaths surging as cases snowball, the two companies have moved urgently to find parts, place orders, and deploy workers, the people said. Tasks that normally would take weeks or months have been completed in days. The companies expect production to begin in three weeks and the first ventilators to ship before the end of April.
On March 19, GM began collaborating with Ventec, which normally makes about 200 machines a month, to figure out how to make about 10 times as many in that time. Working through the weekend of March 21-22, they hurried to find new suppliers that could provide parts in high volumes, said the five people, who asked not to be named because they fear it would further antagonize Trump.
Over the weekend, GM called in workers to clear out the Kokomo plant, which has been idled because of the outbreak, of machinery previously used to make electrical components for cars. Over the next few days, the automaker and Ventec plan to begin setting up an assembly line. GM is already taking applications for the hundreds of jobs.
Maybe the GE guys can go over there!
“We continue to work around the clock on our efforts with Ventec,” GM said in a statement Sunday night. “We are working as fast as we can to begin production in Kokomo.”
“I’m pretty amazed at what they’ve done,” said Kristin Dziczek, vice president for industry and economics at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich, “but automotive production involves a massive supply chain, and GM has risen to the occasion on other big manufacturing challenges.”
Trump does not see it that way. GM wasn’t negotiating price and other details with the government. Ventec has led the talks with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services about how many ventilators the government would like to buy, and at what price. The automaker has said it will not make a profit on the ventilators it assembles and is only seeking to cover its costs.
GM’s involvement in ventilators began with a phone call asking for help.
Sort of like the way impeachment began.
This month, Barra was contacted by a representative of Stop the Spread, a nonprofit campaign started by Rachel Romer Carlson, chief executive of Guild Education, and Kenneth I. Chenault, chairman and managing director at venture capital firm General Catalyst and a former chief executive and chairman of American Express, four people familiar with the discussion said.
Why does that name ring a bell?
The two wrote an opinion essay on March 18 in The New York Times calling on corporate executives to join the fight against the pandemic. Some 1,500 corporate executives have signed a letter pledging to help in response to their plea.
The four people familiar with the call said that Barra offered to help and the representative from Stop the Spread suggested the company ought to use its manufacturing and purchasing might to help Ventec scale up ventilator production.
Ventec isn’t a giant in the ventilator industry, but it is known for its VOCSN model, which received FDA approval in 2017. The VOCSN, which is the size of a large toaster oven, combines a number of functions that had previously been performed by several machines to pump air into the lungs, suction out secretions and produce oxygen when a central oxygen line is not available. The device is used in critical-care hospital units but also can be used for home care.
When Trump lashed out at GM on Friday, executives at both companies were stunned. GM executives were furious Trump would attack the company after it had made so much progress in a week and the administration had earlier been supportive of their effort.
“What we’ve accomplished in five days is incredible,” Larryson Foltran, who works in a technology support group at GM, wrote on Facebook, noting he had been working 14 to 18 hours a day. He said that the president’s posts had bothered him “on a deeper level.”
He must be "essential."
--more--"
Also see:
"US stocks climbed Monday, led by big gains for health care companies announcing developments that could aid in the coronavirus outbreak. The rally tacked more gains onto a recent upswing for the market. Nascent optimism is budding that the worst of the selling may be over, but markets around the world are still tentative as global authorities try to nurse the economy through the pandemic. The S&P 500 remains 22.4 percent below its record, set last month, and oil tumbled to an 18-year low. The S&P 500 rose 3.4 percent Monday for its fourth gain in the last five days. European indexes climbed after erasing earlier losses. Asian markets were down, but by much milder degrees than the huge swings that have rocked investors over the last six weeks. A surge for health care stocks led the way at the week’s open. Johnson & Johnson leaped 8 percent after saying it expects to begin human clinical studies on a vaccine candidate for COVID-19 by September. Abbott Laboratories jumped 6.4 percent after saying it has a test that can detect the new coronavirus in as little as five minutes. Stocks jumped last week after the Federal Reserve promised to buy as many Treasurys as it takes to get lending markets running smoothly and Capitol Hill reached a deal on a $2.2 trillion rescue package for the economy. Some of Monday’s sharpest action was in the oil market, where benchmark US crude fell 6.6 percent to $20.09 a barrel after touching its lowest price since 2002....."
Oh, I think I can speak for the entire country when I say how relieved I am that stock market optimism is budding after trillions have been poured in (money down the old memory hole now).
"Oil started the year above $60 and has plunged on expectations that a weakened economy will burn less fuel. The world is awash in oil, meanwhile, as producers continue to pull more of it out of the ground. The S&P 500 rose 85.18 points to 2,626.65. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 690.70, or 3.2 percent, to 22,327.48, and the Nasdaq gained 271.77, or 3.6 percent, to 7,774.15. “We have to look at this rally suspiciously,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist for CFRA. He pointed to prior bear markets where stocks rallied more than 20 percent only to fall to new lows. A bear market is usually defined as a long-term decline of more than 20 percent for an investment. ‘‘Granted, this bear is like no other,” he said. “There are too many uncertainties out there for the market masses to have concluded that March 23 was the ultimate bottom.’’ Still, the 17.4 percent surge for stocks since last Monday has the first green shoots of optimism appearing. Forced selling by investors needing to raise cash is easing, according to Morgan Stanley strategists. They say another pullback in stocks is likely, but current levels offer some buying points for investors willing to wait six to 12 months. “Our base case is that the lows are in for this bear market for most stocks,” they wrote in a report. Most investors say they expect markets to remain extremely volatile until the virus slows its spread. Until then, investors won’t know how long the economic downturn will ultimately last. In a sign of increased caution, the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 0.70 percent from 0.74 percent late Friday. Economists expect a number of weak reports on the economy to come in through the week. The lowlight will likely be Friday’s jobs report, where economists expect to see the steepest drop in the nation’s payrolls since the Great Recession. ‘‘The market wants to see everything line up, and last week everything lined up,’’ said Nela Richardson, investment strategist at Edward Jones, referring to the unprecedented aid from the Fed and Congress. Now, she said, President Trump also appears to be in sync with health experts about the need to restrict the economy to slow the spread of the virus. Trump on Sunday extended social-distancing guidelines, which recommend against group gatherings larger than 10, through the end of April. Earlier, he had said he wanted the economy open by Easter. “Now that message is in line,” said Richardson. “All these things line up coming into this week, and that’s why you saw strong performance last week continuing today.”
President Trump gave his daily coronavirus update on Monday. (Win McNamee/Getty Images/Getty Images)
Yeah, he's now "in sync" and has got the "message in line" now, so whadda ya' want?
