“Jews are built for this”
Well, some Jews anyway, and that's locally.
Looks like they will next be coming for our food.
"With Passover, Easter and Ramadan looming, clergy scramble to create holidays at a distance" by Sarah Pulliam Bailey and Ruth Eglash Washington Post, April 4, 2020
The Rev. Richard Mosson Weinberg canceled the Boston ferns and the yellow daffodils ordered for the Easter service at his Episcopal church in Washington, D.C.’s affluent Kalorama neighborhood. Rabbi Levi Shemtov scrapped plans for the 200-person Seder dinner for Passover in his Chabad synagogue nearby, and Imam Yahya Luqman called off the Ramadan dinners at his mosque down the street.
The Episcopal Reverend is named Weinberg?
These three faith leaders, who normally lead worship within walking distance from each other in Northwest Washington, are all scrambling to find socially distant ways to celebrate major religious holidays this month. They are joined by clergy and the faithful around the world.
On Sunday, Christians will launch Holy Week with Palm Sunday, preparing to recount the biblical story of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Since St. Margaret’s canceled services, including for Easter on April 12, Weinberg has been working on a sermon about the life and message of Jesus that he will post on YouTube.
‘‘People are dealing with profound loss, so we have to adapt,” Weinberg said.
He knows his religious peers are in the same boat.
‘‘We collegially greet one another because we share an alley,’’ Weinberg said of Shemtov and Luqman, whose houses of worship are located around the corner from his Connecticut Avenue church, on Leroy Place NW. ‘‘There’s a beauty in that we’re in this together.’’
That does it! Out of the raft!
At TheSHUL of the Nation’s Capital, Shemtov has personnel arranging boxes that include matzoh and the other traditional elements of a Seder meal to be distributed to the Jewish community. The rabbi, who avoids the use of electronics on holy days, will lead a live-stream demonstration of the Seder before Passover begins at sundown Wednesday.
‘‘Being alone is antithetical to the spirit of Passover,’’ said Shemtov.
For many families, the multigenerational aspect will especially be missing because older people are in isolation, Shemtov said, and Jewish families often invite people who have no place to go to join them for the Seder meal.
‘‘People are doing the absolute best they can,’’ Shemtov said. ‘‘It’s different and not as joyous as other years have been, but people are focusing inward on their family and personally as opposed to outward.’’
The synagogue shares the same tiny, one-way street as the American Fazl Mosque, a stately converted row house that is the oldest Muslim house of worship in the nation’s capital. Luqman said his mosque, established by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in 1950, would normally host about 50 people each night of Ramadan for an iftar, the evening meal when Muslims break their Ramadan fast, starting on April 23. Instead, this year, families will break fast in their homes.
‘‘I wouldn’t say it’s a blessing in disguise because there’s a pandemic, but there are all these distractions in people’s lives that disrupt their religious duties,’’ Luqman said, citing the obligation to pray five times a day as one such duty. ‘‘When people are at home, they can turn their attention to these prayers.”
In Jerusalem, the strict coronavirus social distancing regulations that have been in place for most of March look set to continue through April, upending traditional holiday plans for Jews, Muslims, and Christians and threatening the country’s tourism industry.
Passover, Easter, and Ramadan typically draw hundreds of thousands of international visitors and pilgrims of all faiths to Israel, but this year Christian and Muslim leaders have accepted that flagship events will be carried out with only essential clergy and, in many cases, streamed online for followers.
Israeli Jews, who spend the first night of Passover recounting the exodus from Egypt during the festive Seder meal, were instructed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold a ‘‘lockdown Seder’’ this year.
‘‘I request that you hold in it in the context of the nuclear family that lives with you,’’ he urged in a televised address. He also shared a public service announcement urging Jews not to gather in groups. ‘‘We outlasted and overcame Pharaoh, we’ll outlast and overcome this.’’
There he goes again with the perpetual victimhood stuff, and how did the article devolve to Israeli Jews?
Why are their interests at the bottom of everything in my Zioni$t-controlled Jewi$h War Pre$$!
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Related:
"Meanwhile, the pandemic continued to reshape daily life. Hewing to new guidelines from federal health officials, people donned cloth face masks this weekend as they ventured outside for groceries or a stroll. State bar officials delayed the July bar exam, and churches devised workarounds to mark Palm Sunday....."
Also see:
People wearing protective clothing carry the body of a victim who died after being infected with the new coronavirus at a cemetery just outside Tehran, Iran. (Ebrahim Noroozi/Associated Press)
Yeah, Iran is reeling from the coronavirus and the U.S. has responded with sanctions.
A Passover Seder in New York in 2016. (Chang W. Lee/NYT)
Yes, this too shall pass (over).
"In Italy, going back to work may depend on having the right antibodies" by Jason Horowitz New York Times, April 4, 2020
He decamped from the Washington Post about 7 tears ago.
ROME — There is a growing sense in Italy that the worst may have passed. The weeks of locking down the country, center of the world’s deadliest coronavirus outbreak, may be starting to pay off, as officials announced this past week that the numbers of new infections had plateaued.
That glimmer of hope has turned the conversation to the daunting challenge of when and how to reopen without setting off another cataclysmic wave of contagion. To do so, Italian health officials and some politicians have focused on an idea that might once have been relegated to the realm of dystopian novels and science fiction films.
All those works were preparing you for it.
Having the right antibodies to the virus in one’s blood — a potential marker of immunity — may soon determine who gets to work and who does not, who is locked down and who is free.
Will you have to wear a Star of David if you go out?
Or will it be a Star of Bill?
That debate is in some ways ahead of the science. Researchers are uncertain, if hopeful, that antibodies in fact indicate immunity. That has not stopped politicians from grasping at the idea as they come under increasing pressure to open economies to avoid inducing a widespread economic depression.
The former prime minister, Matteo Renzi, a liberal, has spoken about a “COVID Pass” for the uninfected. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said that while the lockdown remained in place, the government had begun working with scientists to determine how to send people who have recuperated back to work.
With its echoes of “Brave New World,” the debate about how to reopen arrived in earnest this past week in Italy. Like the virus’s crushing toll — 14,681 dead in Italy as of Friday evening — the shift is ahead of countries like Spain, Britain, and the United States, where the contagion is still on an upswing.
That is the novel by Huxley that basically paints a future society drugged to the max and perpetually served a 1984-like scenario from the government.
Italy was the first European country to announce a nationwide lockdown, which it began March 9, but the rate of new infections slowed this past week — on Friday, there were about 4,500 new cases, less than in recent weeks — leading officials and first responders alike to talk with guarded optimism.
“We are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel,” said Fabio Arrighini, a supervisor of an ambulance hot line in the Lombardy town of Brescia, which has one of the highest death rates in Italy. “The calls have gone down,” but the debate over an antibody-based workforce has once again placed Italy at the unfortunate vanguard of Western democracies grappling with the virus, its uncomfortable ethical choices, and inevitable aftermath.
That light is followed by a couple of loud horn blasts, just so you know.
Such questions have already been raised by the wrenching decisions of doctors to treat the young, with a better chance of life, before the old and sick, but at some stage, nearly all governments will have to strike a balance between ensuring public safety and getting their countries running again. They may also find themselves weighing what is best for society against individual rights, using biological criteria in ways that almost certainly would be rejected absent the current emergency.
HMMMMMMMMMM!
So the doctors are participating in the killings, huh, via their God-gifted ability to decide that you live, you die?
As for governments having to strike a balance by weighing what is be$t for $ociety while stripping us of our rights makes one at risk from dying laughing, and using biological criteria that would be rejected outside the current fear-driven agenda-shove by the pre$$ exposes the agenda for what it is.
“It looks like it splits humanity into two, the strong and the weak,” said Michela Marzano, a professor of moral philosophy at the Paris Descartes University, “but this is actually the case.”
From an ethical perspective, she argued, the question of using antibodies as a basis for free movement reconciles a utilitarian vision of what is best for society with respect for individual humanity, by protecting “the most fragile, not marginalizing them.”
“It’s not discriminating,” she said. “It’s protecting.”
Didn't Hitler advocate something of the sort?
Scientists in Italy, like their counterparts in Germany, the United States, China, and beyond, are already studying whether antibodies are a potential source of protection or immunity from the virus.
Italy, by dint of its early and widespread exposure to the virus, has an opportunity to gain insight into how the virus works and the biological properties that protect against it.
It has been one long experiment.
“Italy has at the moment . . . one of the largest pools of infected people that have recovered from the infection,” said Andrea Crisanti, top scientific consultant on the virus in Veneto and professor of microbiology at the University of Padua.
“The planning ahead is one of the most important things,” Crisanti said, “because it’s easy to lock down.” Without a proper strategy for the path ahead, “the most likely outcome is that the epidemic starts again.”
I'm thinking September/October. At least, that's what I've read and it would dovetail as a surprise in the upcoming presidential election.
He added that it was “a unique and valuable set of information and data.”
Crisanti emphasized the need for a carefully designed strategy to unlock Italy that would make use of contact tracing, protective gear, and aggressive testing for post-virus antibodies.
Everybody gets tested, then gets Bill Gates's Mark of the Beast.
Veneto plans to begin collecting 100,000 blood samples from people across the region — first from thousands of health care workers and then public employees — to study in labs the antibodies of people who have the virus and those who have healed from it.
File that DNA, will ya'?
Nowhere in Italy is the pursuit of the antibody strategy more intense than in Veneto. With its wealth of resources, high-profile consultants, and biotech presence, it may now be uniquely positioned to influence the global conversation and provide insights for the rest of the world.
The region sits adjacent to the hard-hit Lombardy region, and one of its towns, Vo, had Italy’s first fatality from the virus and was one of the first towns in the country to be quarantined.
Vo also has a relatively homogeneous genetic pool, which may facilitate research, and it has been widely tested. After the outbreak, officials there took the extraordinary step of swab-testing the entire population of 3,000, including people without symptoms.
That helped eliminate an outbreak, and now officials plan to carry out antibody testing and genome sequencing on the entire population to detect patterns in who was and was not susceptible to the virus.
It will be worse than a Brave New World!
Those results, expected in three or four months, perhaps could shed light on why some remained asymptomatic while others got sick, whether those who didn’t get infected already had antibodies, and whether children had something that helped them avoid sickness.....
Maybe they were never sick at all, hmm?
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The bottom half of that page carried this:
How about that wonderful fella with the nice smile on the far left there? He's speaking in October during the second wave of this sh.... sigh.
One also can't help put notice the proliferation of $pla$hy, colorful ads in today's Sunday Globe.
Oh, yeah, flipping backward we find the other master race:
"With 1,295 deaths, Germany’s fatality rate stood at 1.4 percent compared with 12 percent in Italy; around 10 percent in Spain, France, and Britain; 4 percent in China; and 2.5 percent in the United States. Even South Korea, a model of flattening the curve, has a higher fatality rate: 1.7 percent. “There has been talk of a German anomaly,” said Hendrik Streeck, director of the Institute of Virology at the University Hospital Bonn....."
That's from Katrin Bennhold of the New York Times as all is quiet on the German front (many citizen videos out there of empty and quiet hospitals, like in new York City), and it sure was an anomaly that didn't win the prize.
The truth is, the Axis never really had a chance. Japan had to make a choice, and taking on Russia while pushing into the Indian Ocean would have left them exposed to the United States with no resources to fuel their war machine. They needed to take resource-rich European colonies and defend their eastern front.
As for the Germans, they may have been able to take a piece of Russia and push them back beyond the Urals, but they would have been at war forever trying to keep it. Had they been able to push through to Iran they may have been able to stop the supply line running from the U.S. to Australia and up through the Indian Ocean to Iran and then on to Russia. They still would have had a problem defending Africa as well, and the attrition of war undoubtedly favored the Allies.
Related:
Medical volunteers in Berlin transporting samples from COVID-19 patients. Germany is ramping up to test 100,000 people both for current COVID-19 infections and for potential immunity to the novel coronavirus. (Sean Gallup/Getty)
WTF?
They are like Vannater bringing the vial of OJ's blood back to the crime scene!
WTF?
They are like Vannater bringing the vial of OJ's blood back to the crime scene!
The new master race?
New York gets ventilators in China
Oh, I forgot to read that article by Jennifer Peltz (she has local and national contacts, too), Amy Forliti (God help us) and David Rising of Associated Press?
Oh, well. I guess I will just have to wait for the postcard.
Dispatch from MGH
Brough to you by Liz Kowalczykof the Globe Staff, and I wonder if she knows Colleen Smith.
UPDATE:
"Mayor Martin J. Walsh said Sunday morning that his administration is putting the finishing touches on a set of stricter rules for social distancing intended to slow the spread of COVID-19 in Boston. Walsh has regularly expressed frustration with people who are continuing to gather in public spaces despite a statewide stay-at-home advisory, and on Sunday he said the city may institute measures that go further. The mayor said he was dismayed by reports that people were gathering in places including Castle Island and the Arnold Arboretum on Saturday as the weather improved....."
He is considering a mandatory curfew or stay-at-home order.
Time to resurrect Joe Biden and bury the Trump campaign:
"Coronavirus consumes Trump’s presidency — and Biden’s plan to take him on this spring" by Jess Bidgood and Jazmine Ulloa Globe Staff, April 4, 2020
The authors are award winners.
WASHINGTON — At a campaign rally the night before Super Tuesday in early March, President Trump had plenty to brag about.
“Jobs are booming in our country, incomes are soaring, poverty has plummeted, confidence is surging,” Trump said, ticking off the key bullet points in his argument for reelection before summarily dismissing the threat that the coronavirus could pose to the United States. “We know what we’re doing,” Trump declared.
Former vice president Joe Biden was having a good night, too. Some of his top former rivals had just endorsed him and turbocharged his campaign toward a slew of primary victories that made him the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, but one month later, the country has turned upside down. The coronavirus outbreak has killed thousands of people and the attempt to slow its ravages has ground the economy to a standstill, throwing millions of Americans out of work; nearly all the stock market and employment gains of the Trump era have been erased, as if overnight.
It has also upended the battle for the White House to a degree with little precedent, confronting Trump with a life-or-death test of his governance while Biden, his likely opponent, is relegated to the sidelines.
The election is now likely to turn on Trump’s handling of the crisis, according to political strategists, which means that he has the spotlight to himself, but as he swaps raucous campaign rallies for a series of increasingly somber daily briefings in which the president, as is his pattern, often struggles to get the facts right.
“Crises are make-or-break moments for elected officials,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster. “How they’ve handled the crisis has overshadowed almost everything they’ve done.”
Almost?
That has left Biden, who is campaigning mostly from his home in Wilmington, Del., laboring to find ways to draw attention and raise money without the trappings of a normal campaign, but he and his allies spy an opportunity to hold the president to account — and, some analysts say, Biden could gain from the disproportionate focus on Trump.
Hmmmmmmmmm!
“If ever there were a year when you might benefit from being invisible, it’s this one,” said Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “Biden’s best chance of beating President Trump is being seen in some fashion — maybe just subliminally — on the ballot as Joseph ‘Not Trump’ Biden.”
In recent weeks, Trump has placed himself squarely at the center of the crisis, declaring he is a “wartime” president and often speaking at length at daily briefings on the pandemic. That has given him an unfiltered and widely seen platform where he can depict himself as a leader in command, which may be why his approval has ticked up slightly to 47 percent, the highest point of his presidency, according to an average tracked by Real Clear Politics, but the crisis has also opened him up to new levels of scrutiny as the public has watched his messaging shift by the day. As medical workers plead for crucial equipment and tests, Trump has incorrectly compared the hazards of the disease to the seasonal flu, suggested the social distancing guidelines that have shut down swaths of the economy might be able to end earlier than is scientifically advisable, and sought to blame others for the country’s halting response to the crisis.
You may want to take another look at this.
“Governors are going to have issues, and going out and attacking them doesn’t help the country," said Doug Heye, a Republican consultant, who said Biden needs to hold back for now but acknowledged there could be opportunities for him to criticize Trump’s response “down the road.”
This whole-ginned up panic with a nefarious and evil agenda coming behind it is starting to REEK!
Based on their internal polling, Trump’s campaign believes that most Americans approve of his handling of the crisis, but his administration has already been criticized for downplaying the scale of the disaster and failing to take early steps that could have contained it, and it will probably become more difficult for him to depict his efforts as victorious as the death toll rises.
“I don’t know if being the orchestrator of this each day is such a huge advantage if you’re facing such huge issues and a health crisis, and the economy’s going to get worse,” said Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster.
Several recent polls show Biden with a narrow lead over Trump in head-to-head matchups, but there is much that can change about a race that is still in flux — including the delaying of the Democratic convention, announced last week — and the continued presence of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the race could further constrain Biden’s standing as his party’s clear choice.
Senator Bernie Sanders speaking at a campaign event in Austin on Feb. 23. (TAMIR KALIFA/NYT)
Yeah, Cohen, the Globe columnist, says it's been enough already.
A key question will be whether Americans’ views on the pandemic — and voters’ perceptions about Trump’s response — can break through the nation’s deep political polarization. Will those who back him do so no matter what, as has been the trend in his presidency? Likewise, with those who doubt or loathe him? A survey of 3,000 people in late March found Democrats were more likely to hold him responsible than Republicans, and that a person’s political party affiliation could better predict a person’s attitudes than their age, class, or location.
I don't hold the President of the United States responsible. He is a hostage just like the rest of us, and is trying to warn us as best he can.
One day last week offered an example of the perils of the moment for both Trump and Biden. On Tuesday, Trump stood somberly in front of a series of slides projecting the pandemic’s possible death toll, which he said could fall between 100,000 — a figure he called “a very low number” — and 240,000 people if strict containment measures are followed.
David Scharfenberg of the Globe Staff says a quarter million Americans could die from the coronavirus, maybe more, as we are about to endure a collective trauma unlike anything in recent memory.
adimas - stock.adobe.com
That's how quickly people will be moving away from Trump.
“We’re going to go through a very rough two weeks,” he said, offering an unusually grim reckoning with the crisis that will probably define his presidency.
The same day, Biden did an interview with CNN from the humbling environs of his basement — a far cry from the victory speeches he would give and fund-raisers he would probably be attending had the coronavirus outbreak not postponed primary elections and frozen much of the primary in place.
“He should act like a wartime president; he should have someone else in charge with him, making sure all these things get implemented,” Biden said, when asked about Trump. “It’s not like we didn’t know this was coming.”
Biden had premised much of his primary campaign on the idea that Trump is unfit for office and that, as a deeply experienced moderate voice, he was uniquely positioned to beat him, but one challenge now has been finding the right tone for his criticisms of the president during a moment of national crisis.
On Sunday, when NBC anchor Chuck Todd asked him if Trump had “blood” on his hands for coronavirus deaths, Biden said the question was “a little too harsh.”
That has generated frustration from some progressives, who are worried Biden and other Democrats are missing the chance to pursue a stronger case against a president they believe has fundamentally mishandled a life-or-death issue.
“Our side needs to be crystal clear that every action we’re taking is cleaning up Trump’s original sin of ignoring this impending crisis in January and February,” said Adam Green, of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “Every time we’re asked if Trump has blood on his hands, our answer needs to be unequivocally yes,” but other Democrats say Biden is better off striking a restrained tone and relying on his outside allies to lay into Trump, to avoid the appearance of trying to benefit from the crisis.
George W. Bush was drowning in it and they didn't seem to mind.
“You don’t necessarily want to be in full-on attack against the commander in chief, as flawed as this commander in chief may be,” said Mark Longabaugh, a former adviser to Sanders.
Why, because voters like me might cling to the guy?
Two top Democratic super PACS — Unite the Country and American Bridge — have formed a partnership to make the case for Biden. The groups had raised $70 million as of March 28, and leaders said they planned to use those funds to hold Trump accountable for his slow coronavirus response.
They are making the case against Biden then.
Still, Ali Pardo, a Trump campaign aide, says their operation has an advantage over Biden “because of our early and ongoing investment in data and technological infrastructure that began in 2015.” The campaign has not let up its attacks on Biden, but those are hardly breaking through, either.
While the focus on the crisis “means that Biden is not getting a ton of political oxygen, it also means he is not taking incoming fire,” said Amy Walter, the national editor of the Cook Political Report. “It is going to come, but the fact that he can come into the summer with decent favorable ratings would be good news for him.”
I guess that's why Bernie is staying in. Joe is on life support. Probably COVID-19!
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So Biden benefits from all this?
Also see:
Trump fires yet another official who played a key role in investigating him
The article by Aaron Blake of the Washington Post is disguised as News Analysis (probably from where it came) of a "Friday-night news dump for the ages, with President Trump notifying Congress of his intent to fire intelligence community Inspector General Michael Atkinson. The move is merely the latest example of Trump pushing out someone with a degree of oversight over him personally or whose actions impacted investigations of him: The first big one was James. B. Comey, the FBI director. Trump also successfully pushed for the removal of Comey’s deputy, Andrew McCabe. Jeff Sessions eventually resigned as attorney general at Trump’s request. Trump also tried to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, according to former White House counsel Donald McGahn’s testimony. The president recently removed Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman from the National Security Council and sacked his European Union ambassador, Gordon Sondland, after their testimony about the Ukraine scandal led to Trump’s impeachment. Senator Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican, would eventually become the first senator from a president’s party to vote to remove them from office in an impeachment trial. Then-acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire defended both the whistleblower and Atkinson, and the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, referenced that quote in an extraordinary statement Friday night defending Atkinson."
Trump is Caesar, and the following nine pages signal the death of his presidency.
Funny how COVID came on the heels of a failed removal from office after impeachment.
Just another coincidence I guess.
"When the face of America falls ill: A virus’s toll on diplomats" by Lara Jakes New York Times, April 4, 2020
WASHINGTON — The symptoms were more annoying than alarming: A dry cough, achiness, and then sniffles developed a few days after Andrew Young, the US ambassador to Burkina Faso, met with government officials and aid organizations to discuss how to protect the West African nation from the coronavirus.
A week later, Young was sealed in an isolation chamber and loaded into an evacuation flight out of the capital, Ouagadougou, as the first US ambassador to learn he had the virus.
He was once the foreign policy adviser to Senator Joe Lieberman.
He is unlikely to be the last. Already, 154 State Department employees worldwide have tested positive for the virus, and more than 3,500 are symptomatic and in self-isolation, the vast majority of them serving in posts overseas.
The pursuit of diplomacy is mostly idealistic, if usually faceless and often thankless, but outside conflict zones, it is rarely deadly. Even the most placid assignments come with security guards and other protective measures.
The coronavirus has changed that.
Diplomats, whose very jobs are to interact with foreigners and represent 20 million Americans who are abroad at any given time, have been highly vulnerable to the pandemic as it swept around the world and into countries that have been slow to acknowledge its threat, many whose medical facilities are less than adequate to start.
Three State Department employees have died from the coronavirus so far, all of whom were foreign citizens who were hired by the embassies in their respective home nations.
In late March, there were only 43 kits available in Burkina Faso to test for coronavirus, Young said. The country has one of the highest numbers of infections in Africa: As of Friday, there were at least 288 confirmed cases and 16 deaths.
Young was evacuated March 25 on a flight that was chartered by the State Department to bring him and 120 healthy passengers home from Burkina Faso and Liberia. As soon as the plane landed at Dulles International Airport in the Virginia suburbs of Washington after a 29-hour journey, he was suited up in full biohazard gear and whisked off to a hospital for several days of treatment.
He considers himself lucky, and he wants to return to Burkina Faso as soon as the State Department will let him.
The State Department has brought back more than 38,000 citizens and their relatives — many of them tourists, students, or Americans who live overseas — including about 6,000 diplomats and family members. Another 22,000 US citizens are still waiting, frustrated by the dwindling number of available flights, foreign regulations, and other complications.
At both ends of the process are US diplomats who either are working abroad to get necessary departure permits from foreign governments or are part of a Washington-based task force focused on lining up transportation and health services for stranded citizens.
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Supermarket cashiers wear masks in Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou, last month. Andrew Young, the US ambassador to Burkina Faso, was the first US ambassador to contract coronavirus and has since been evacuated from the country. (NYT/FILE)
The NYT put out a FILE PHOTO?
"In Congress, doctors are pressing for a more aggressive coronavirus response" by Sheryl Gay Stolberg New York Times, April 4, 2020
WASHINGTON — There were just 160 documented cases of the coronavirus in the United States when Representative Raul Ruiz, Democrat of California, told Vice President Mike Pence in a closed-door meeting that President Trump needed to “think about declaring a national emergency.” It took nine more days for Trump to do so.
Some senators needed time to sell their stocks.
That was in early March. Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, also watched the spread of coronavirus with alarm. He is now seeking an audience with Pence to push several ideas, including the creation of a national “immunity registry” for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, that would collect data from widespread blood testing to determine who could safely return to work.
You mean, like what ITALY WANTS?
The senator and the congressmen share a common background: All are medical doctors, part of a small corps of roughly two dozen health professionals in Congress, many of whom were sounding the alarm about the coming pandemic back when Trump was still calling criticism of his administration’s response a “hoax.” Now, with more than 275,000 Americans infected and 7,000 dead from COVID-19, the doctors of Congress are drawing on their expertise to push for more aggressive federal measures to cope with the disease.
Then why did they never listen to Dr. Ron Paul?
A bipartisan trio of doctors — Cassidy, a gastroenterologist with expertise in immunization; Ruiz, an emergency room doctor with a master’s degree in public health; and Representative Kim Schrier, a Washington Democrat and a pediatrician — are collaborating on what Ruiz called “a three-point immediate triage response for mass production and restocking” of medical supplies and equipment, including much-needed masks and ventilators.
The idea, all three said in interviews, is to have a centralized command structure, anchored inside the White House, to manage production and distribution. Ventilators and other equipment would be shipped across the country based on data about where outbreaks were emerging.
If, for example, Des Moines had 5,000 ventilators but few cases of coronavirus, those machines could be sent to New York, with the promise that New York or other cities would supply Des Moines when that city was in need.
Like the mobile German defense units on the Eastern Front post-1942.
How did that work out anyway?
There are 17 doctors in Congress — 14 in the House and three in the Senate — as well as three dentists, two nurses, a pharmacist, and a former health secretary, Representative Donna Shalala, a Florida Democrat who served under President Bill Clinton.
Oh, no, a genocidal Clintonite surfaces!
Shalala, who at 79 is the oldest freshman in Congress, lacks a medical degree but has deep experience in managing epidemics. She is on a first-name basis with the nation’s senior health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, from their work together fighting AIDS.
Shalala has been warning about the nation’s lack of pandemic preparedness for years and says Congress bears some responsibility for the nation’s flat-footed response.
“Every time I said ‘public health infrastructure’ to Congress, their eyes glazed over,” she said. “So I blame both parties for not paying attention.”
The group is overwhelmingly white, male, and Republican. Only the two nurses and three of the doctors are Democrats. The Republican doctors have their own group, the GOP Doctors Caucus.
Then it is no good.
This being Washington, party affiliation tends to color their views of how the president has handled the crisis. Representative Neal Dunn, a Florida Republican and a urologist, organized a classified briefing for members of the doctors caucus in early February, he said, to dispel conspiracy theories that coronavirus was a biological weapon. Dunn, who also served as a surgeon in the military, said he was not troubled by Trump’s early attempts to play down the disease. “I think what he was saying is, ‘Don’t panic, this is a flu, Americans are largely not at risk,’ ” Neal said, echoing Trump’s language as he deemed the federal response “unprecedented, unlike any response in history.”
The fact that they react in such a way to a "conspiracy theory" gives same conspiracy theory more heft and credibility. They doth protest too much!
Representative Mark Green, a Tennessee Republican and retired Army flight surgeon, said much the same: “The president, I admit, was trying to create calm as a leader should — he was saying it’s like flu.”
The Democrats, not surprisingly, have been far more critical. Ruiz was one of four Democrats selected by leadership to question Pence when the vice president came to the Capitol on March 4 to brief lawmakers privately. The congressman said that he had been frustrated to see Trump “downplay and deny” the emerging threat, and that Pence offered no response to the suggestion that the president declare a national emergency.
The doctor-turned-lawmaker who garnered the most attention in recent weeks was Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican and eye surgeon, who drew widespread derision for going about his business — including exercising in a shuttered Senate gym — while quietly awaiting test results for COVID-19 after having been exposed to someone who was infected. He later learned he was positive, which sent some of his colleagues, including Cassidy, into quarantine, but others have been trying — sometimes in vain — to put their training to use. The first coronavirus hearing in Congress was convened by a Democratic doctor from California, Representative Ami Bera, on Feb. 5, before the disease it caused even had a name.
Yeah, and his father is the one who called all this out a few days before. Hmmm.
He is like the basketball player who mocked this and then tested positive.
What a coinkydink!
Trump had imposed a ban on travel from China just days earlier, but Bera, the former chief medical officer for Sacramento County, said he was concerned at the time about the lack of “a clear command control structure” inside the White House, and felt the travel ban was an inadequate response. “We were sounding the alarms,” he said, recounting his message: “The travel ban on China wasn’t going to stop this virus. It was going to buy us time, but this virus is coming to the United States.”
I'm glad he bought us some time.
Now that it is here in full force. Representative Phil Roe, a Tennessee Republican who concluded that the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship, was a “viral petri dish” for the coronavirus, badgered top federal health officials until the Trump administration eventually evacuated Americans from the ship. Roe, the chairman of the GOP Doctors Caucus, agreed that this is no time for politics. “I spent a career and a lifetime taking care of patients,” he said. “This ought to be all hands on deck. This is ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,’ where we both hold hands and jump off together.”
Then why are the Democrats playing politics and hiding below decks?
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GERONIMOOOOOOOO!
Related:
Pagan Kennedy says we need a coronavirus czar around here because if this is like a war, we need a statewide commander in charge of hospitals:
A station in Brigham and Women's hospital where staff members get their badges scanned to keep track of protective equipment. (Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff)
The question then becomes one of mask confusion:
Beth Wolfensberger Singer is a Boston-based artist. Her comics appear on her blog ambitionectomy.tumblr.com.
Now be a good boy and get to work:
Maybe now that we're all isolated, we will get a taste of what millions of dogs experience: the profound distress of being alone when we don’t want to be. (Tatyana Gladskih - stock.adobe.c)
Some workers are not able to do their jobs from home, so they must take precautions to not get sick and miss work. (Kathy Willens/Associated Press)
Also see:
Eleven Mass. police departments distribute fentanyl test kits to drug users
And while they were doing that, this happened:
"Jose Oliva, 20, entered the Cumberland Farms convenience store located at 290 County St. and threatened a store clerk with a pellet gun that was “identical in appearance to a semi-automatic pistol,” according to a statement from Attleboro Police Chief Kyle P. Heagney. Oliva fled with an undetermined amount of cash, according to the release. Police responded to a 911 call about the incident at 12:32 a.m. and found the store clerk “visibly frightened but uninjured,” according to the statement....."
Look who was driving the getaway car:
"Suspect Adam Bolus was operating under the influence and in possession of a Class B drug with the intent to distribute....."
Where will they put them?
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Meanwhile, the stench of death is right in front of the Untermensch:
"Residents and families angry and helpless as coronavirus overwhelms nursing homes; They complain of a lack of preparation and poor communications" by Robert Weisman and Laura Krantz Globe Staff, April 4, 2020
COVID-19 has ripped through many of the state’s 800 or so nursing homes and assisted living facilities with astonishing speed.
Despite reports of COVID-19′s rapid spread in a nursing home in Washington state earlier this year, many Massachusetts facilities appear to be overwhelmed and lacked the necessary training, testing, and equipment. State health officials have identified clusters of infection in at least 94 senior facilities, where so far at least 480 residents have tested positive, according to state officials.....
People are “sad and scared,” and I don't blame them one bit.
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"Plan to turn nursing homes into COVID-19 recovery sites stirs anxiety" by Laura Crimaldi Globe Staff, April 4, 2020
Governor Charlie Baker’s plan to use skilled-nursing beds for patients recovering from COVID-19 has already encountered a formidable foe in the virus itself as two facilities that agreed to offer space are now contending with outbreaks among their residents, and the virus-free residents at the participating nursing homes in Wilmington and Worcester face a struggle of their own as some have been moved to new facilities on short notice and others worry they won’t be able to stay where they are.
“It’s just very distressing,” said Michele Nortonen, whose husband, Allan, 73, lives at AdviniaCare at Wilmington, which volunteered to provide its 142 beds to recovering COVID-19 patients. “Why do they have to outfit a little facility like AdviniaCare Wilmington?”
On Friday, the facility’s parent company announced it was delaying plans to convert the facility into a recovery center because 51 of its 98 patients tested positive for the virus while asymptomatic. Beaumont Rehabilitation and Skilled Nursing Center in Worcester, the other nursing home to disclose its participation in Baker’s plan, encountered the same dilemma after learning about infected patients there.
The virus has had a devastating impact on senior housing, infecting 480 patients at 94 long-term care facilities as of Saturday, according to state figures. Massachusetts has 11,736 cases of COVID-19 and 216 people have died of the virus, according to Saturday figures.
Nortonen said she worries about uprooting her husband, who tested negative for the virus. Nursing home staff, she said, told her he would be tested again Sunday, and if the test was negative, he would be relocated to another facility owned by the same company, likely in Chelsea or Salem. When she asked whether patients there had been tested for COVID-19, Nortonen said she was told no because they weren’t exhibiting symptoms.
“They are not testing them because they are not symptomatic. Hello, your patients were not symptomatic either, but half of them had it,” Nortonen said. “It’s a reckless decision.”
Chris Hannon, chief operating officer at Pointe Group Care, LLC, which runs the facility, said Saturday the company will proceed with plans to participate in the program, though a timeline hasn’t been established for relocating patients who tested negative for the virus. Patients with COVID-19 won’t be moved until they have recovered, he said.
On Friday, Hebrew SeniorLife announced it is urging all 1,700 residents at its five campuses in Dedham, Canton, Randolph, Brookline, and Revere to stay in their homes.....
If it is good enough for them, it's good enough for you!
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Related:
Kurt Fischer died Monday
His family will never know if it was COVID-19 as this pandemic has transformed the way we live and the way we die, according to Yvonne Abraham, a Globe Columnist.
Also see:
"The reality of dying of COVID-19 is that there aren’t even guaranteed hospital visits by family. One of the heartbreaking consequences of this pandemic is how it has ruptured the rituals of death and dying. We can no longer assume that our loved ones will pass away in their familiar homes surrounded by family and friends, that they will be eulogized at well-attended funerals, and that they will be buried or cremated with their beloveds standing witness....."
That article was written by Zoe Greenberg, Liz Kowalczyk and Mark Arsenault of Globe Staff, and they will tell you your elderly beloved died while you were at work:
"There’s no real precedent for the coronavirus effect on the economy — and that could be a good thing" by Jim Puzzanghera Globe Staff, April 4, 2020
As the economy crashes around them, economists are flying blind.
There are no real precedents to point to; no data that mean much. The last time a major pandemic struck the United States — the Spanish Flu in 1918 — was years before the federal government even began calculating a national unemployment rate.
For economists, that dearth of hard information and history leaves them floundering as they try to gauge how deep and long the looming coronavirus recession will be, but just as the unprecedented nature of the crisis is stoking fear and anxiety, it is fueling some hope because this is such a different blow to the economy — a sudden and overwhelming shock instead of the slow breakdowns that triggered the Great Depression and the Great Recession — maybe the recovery will also be quicker.
One can dream.
“The Great Recession was totally different than this recession. That was a financial and economic collapse. This is one where we are actually forcing the economy to shut down, which is causing a pullback in spending,” said Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist for the National Retail Federation. “Fortunately, we were on pretty firm ground going into this situation. In fact, we thought this was going to be a good year.”
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, an economics research and consulting firm, doesn’t agree. In his view, the economy was not in great shape heading into the crisis. After a steep decline this spring, Zandi predicts a robust bounce-back in the third quarter before the economy settles into a period of relatively flat growth before picking up in the second half of 2021, but Shai Akabas, director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, thinks that "the possibility of us just flipping the light switch back on and getting back to full steam is very unlikely at this point.”
The extent of the outbreak’s economic damage is just starting to emerge as the first reports roll in — and it’s stunning, and just like with the virus outbreak, economists are warning the worst is yet to come. A “back of the envelope” projection from a researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis sketches one extreme scenario: 47 million Americans out of work, rocketing the unemployment rate to 32.1 percent, higher than at any point during the Great Depression.
“They’re going to get worse before they get better. That I can say with certainty,” economist Jared Bernstein said of job losses. “How much worse is more of a question for an epidemiologist than an economist."
“What we know is when you put an economy in deep freeze, you get massive cascading layoffs,” said Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "What we don’t know is when we can thaw out and what will happen when we do.”
Do you know who founded the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities?
It’s the size of that economic wake that’s the game-changer. “It’s like the entire globe is getting hit by a hurricane,” Zandi said.
Our economy is dead!
The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic killed about 675,000 in the United States and 50 million worldwide, but estimating its impact on the US economy of that time is difficult.
A 2007 study from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis noted that “the greatest disadvantage of studying the economic effects of the 1918 influenza is the lack of economic data.” The research paper relied on newspaper accounts to determine that effects were “short-term."
A new study from researchers at the Federal Reserve and Massachusetts Institute of Technology looked at the economic effects of the 1918 pandemic based on state- and city-level manufacturing activity available at the time. They found that cities that took “early and extensive” nonpharmaceutical measures such as social distancing suffered no negative economic effects in the medium term, and that cities that intervened earlier and more aggressively saw “a relative increase in real economic activity after the pandemic subsided,” but Bernstein said it’s hard to draw any broad economic conclusions from the 1918 outbreak.
Is that why Shribman is advocating an old treatment for infectious disease?
Triage tents are being set up in Central Park to help in the battle against the coronavirus, and while other cities are also seeing triage tents spring up, no one is advocating for the outdoors itself as a treatment. (JUAN ARREDONDO/NYT)
You will be able to take a hike, but you can’t stray far.
The federal government has taken bold steps to keep the economy afloat, with the Federal Reserve lowering its interest rate to near zero percent while promising to purchase hundreds of billions in bonds. Congress has approved three major coronavirus bills, including a $2 trillion measure that expands unemployment benefits, sends up to $1,200 to many Americans, and provides hundreds of billions of dollars for small businesses and large corporations, but that’s not nearly enough, Zandi said. The economy will need another $2 trillion just to keep going, with additional longer-term stimulus to pull the nation out of recession, he predicted. “We’re just getting started here,” Zandi said. “I think people need to buckle in. This is going to be very difficult.”
He estimated the US economy will contract by about 18 percent from April through June and the unemployment rate will peak at 12 percent this spring. Those figures could be worse if efforts to contain the outbreak fail.
“It’s not hard to go very dark here,” Zandi said. “There’s no precedent. Nothing comes close. The only thing that was in the same species was 9/11 because we had broad-based shutdowns for a day or two and people were rattled for a week or two.”
Yep, this is another Trauma-based Mind Control Psychological Operation.
The US has plenty of company. With the virus striking worldwide, a new poll by Reuters of more than 50 economists in North America, Europe, and Asia had a median forecast that the global economy will contract 1.2 percent this year. The worst-case scenario was a 4.9 percent contraction.
Those economists, like many in the US, expect a rebound starting this summer, but the economic data just can’t keep up with the outbreak.
After Thursday’s record jobless claims, two researchers at the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, calculated that the true unemployment rate last month was 18 percent, given the troubles many workers have had filing for benefits and those not covered. For Massachusetts, their calculations were even worse: 27 percent.
Wow, the Century Foundation really makes one think.
“The impact of this at the very micro level is going to be much worse for one group of people: those who are just not insulated against this kind of shock,” Bernstein said. “They don’t have paid leave. They don’t have any savings. They work in services, which expose them to other people.”
A quick rebound will be difficult given economic problems the crisis has exposed, like troubled unemployment programs in some states and the huge amount of student loan debt, Akabas said.
Almost as if the virus acted as a cover, huh?
It’s all left economists scrambling for analogies to try to explain an unprecedented situation. Kleinhenz likens the outbreak to a massive traffic jam. The longer the coronavirus pandemic rages, the longer the backup gets.
“Just imagine this backup could be hundreds of miles,” he said. “To start that first car going at 10 mph, then the next one then the next one, it’s a sizable achievement for this economy to get back on track.”
Given the lack of traffic due to the lockdown, that's a bad analogy.
I guess all Ubers will have to be AI from now on, huh?
Heck, there will be none one left except the ruling cla$$ and the $lave cla$$ in what will be a Hunger Games type of situation.
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Those dudes are waaaaaaaay too close together!
The Last Supper:
"Can we ever eat out again? A look at the future of Boston restaurants" by Shirley Leung Globe Columnist, April 4, 2020
Like many people forced to work from home these days, Jeff Gates, a partner in the Aquitaine Group of restaurants, is glued to his computer. He is obsessively following the resumption of normal activity in China as it emerges from a two-month lockdown.
Me, too, as I scour the Internet to find the truth.
What do the streets look like? Is everyone still wearing masks? Are people eating out?
Gates, whose company operates seven restaurants in the Boston area, including Aquitaine and Gaslight, said, “We now not only need to win the battle, we need to plan the peace.”
Restaurateurs know the shutdown is necessary to save lives, and at the moment they aren’t in a hurry to reopen. Consumers won’t want to eat out unless they know the virus is under control, and when the pandemic does ebb, and restaurants get the go-ahead to welcome back diners, they face a social as well as a business challenge: filling seats during an economic downturn, while courting a profoundly-changed consumer.
How long can they go without food?
The latter is perhaps the biggest hurdle of all: How does an industry built around socializing convince people to break bread with each other again?
Dining out may seem like an absurd luxury right now with the pandemic in full force, but the restaurant industry serves as an important barometer of the public’s mood, an indication of how quickly the economy will bounce back from an abrupt and deep shutdown.
Restaurant owners are bracing for a slow climb out of the abyss. After being told the safest place to be is at home, some people may not be ready to venture out and sit in close proximity to strangers and eat food.
Some will $tarve to death and never make it.
Maybe that is how it should be, huh? Survival of the Fittest!
Coronavirus struck Boston restaurants at their most vulnerable time, as they came out of the lean months of January and February. With cash reserves running out, many restaurants now are trying to stave off financial ruin.
The federal economic rescue package, which provides $349 billion in emergency loans to small businesses, will help owners pay the bills, but it’s unclear how long it will take for that cash to arrive, and how far it will go.
It is being $ent to tho$e that need protecting, and your paycheck has been stamped Return to Sender so you will have to live like an animal.
“There’s no question there is going to be a shakeout,” said Boston bankruptcy attorney Harry Murphy, whose practice has been fielding an uptick in calls from worried business owners. “Some of them will never reopen.”
To survive, restaurants will need to constantly evolve safety protocols to ensure employees and customers don’t get sick. Think temperature checks, masks, and gloves for employees, and tables spaced far apart. Already, delivery and takeout during the pandemic has been designed as a “contactless” interaction, with online payments and food left at front doors or picked up curbside.
Who is really going to want to work there, never mind go there to eat?
Aquitaine Group has kept three restaurants open for takeout and delivery, and Gates has thermometers on order to monitor employees. He’s not sure he will use them on customers, nor whether patrons will welcome safety measures in a place that’s supposed to be all about good food, good company, and no worries.
Brian Moy, whose family owns the China Pearl restaurants in Boston and Quincy, worries the hiatus will reset the culinary pecking order. Chinese restaurants were the first to feel the financial fallout from the virus because COVID-19 originated in China, a fact that scared customers away. Business was so slow the Moy family shuttered China Pearl in Chinatown in late February. The Quincy location remains open for delivery. As hard as it is to close restaurants, Moy finds the prospect of reopening just as daunting. “That is one of my biggest fears. Who’s relevant anymore?” said Moy, who also runs ShoJo and Ruckus in Chinatown.
You mean essential, right?
Raffi Festekjian, co-owner of Anoush’ella Saj Kitchen, worries that eating at home will be a hard habit to break for many people, forcing changes in restaurant designs and menus. In the post-coronavirus world, Festekjian said, "smaller cramped restaurants won’t work.” Consumers will still crave a level of intimacy with friends and family, Festekjian added, but they’ll be more comfortable socializing at home for the foreseeable future.
I wasn't going out to eat anyway.
Before coronavirus, the Boston restaurant business was in full bloom. Long gone were the days when the only place for a proper meal was at Anthony’s Pier 4 or a private club. Glitzy new restaurants, offering a wide range of modern and ethnic foods, cropped up in places from the Seaport District to Somerville, but there were signs of trouble even before the shutdown. The market felt saturated, and a growing number of venerable restaurants were calling it quits.
Almost as if the virus was some sort of gravy or sauce, huh?
When we come out of our COVID-19 induced hibernation, the marketplace will almost certainly be reshaped by a new reality. Working from home, for example, could be the norm. Suddenly places that rely on an office lunch crowd will find themselves with far fewer customers, but that also invites ingenuity. Ed Doyle, president of RealFood Hospitality Strategy and Design in Cambridge, anticipates a rise in “ghost restaurants," eateries with no physical storefront — just online orders and delivery service. There will be restaurateurs who take this an opportunity to rethink what they’re going to do,” he said......
I think I ate something rotten, excuse me.
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The lower half of the page contains an advertisement for Wild Arbor Liqueur, and they tell you to "indulge with a clear conscience." Weird.
Related:
Pomp and (tumultuous) circumstance
The dinner has been cancelled, and he who controls the present controls the past:
"In 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death following their conviction in New York on charges of conspiring to commit espionage for the Soviet Union."
They were, in fact, spies who leaked nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. That is now an incontrovertible and unquestioned fact.
