PROVIDENCE — A little over a year ago, Rhode Island was bustling with visitors exploring the Newport mansions decorated for Christmas and poking into boutiques on Westminster Street in downtown Providence before seeing a live show.
A few months later the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything, and 2020 became a year of canceled or reimagined events, from the Newport Jazz Festival to the International Boat Show, the popular South County’s Seafood Festival, and even WaterFire, which some consider to be the face of the tourism industry in Providence.
Pivoting to virtual events, taking business outdoors, applying for federally funded grants, and postponing large gatherings became the new normal.
Tourism bolsters much of Rhode Island’s economy, and the 10-week long summer season can power some businesses through the rest of the year. So when President Biden recently said the federal government ordered enough COVID-19 vaccine to immunize most Americans by “early fall,” some veterans of the Rhode Island tourism industry braced themselves for a second “summer of sadness” while hoping that perhaps this year would be at least a little better than the last.
“Summer 2021 will be better than summer 2020, but nothing like summer 2019,” said Brian Lavin, a hospitality and tourism management professor at Johnson & Wales University who used to work for the Providence tourism council, “but we’re starting to see that we can’t be as optimistic about this coming summer as people thought we could be.”
So a Dark $ummer, too, huh?
Last year, only 15 percent of hotel rooms in Providence were filled in June; the highest level reached was 31 percent occupancy in August, and revenue from lodging dropped by more than 70 percent compared to 2019. In Newport, where visitors typically come from around the world to see the mansions, lodging sales dipped 25 percent and spending in restaurants declined up to 40 percent in the third quarter.
Evan Smith, chief executive of Discover Newport, said he finds himself awake in the middle of the night trying to figure out new ways to “save tourism” during the pandemic. He said he knows not everyone in the country will receive the vaccine, but businesses and destinations need to boost consumer confidence and convince people that they can travel safely.
“People have cabin fever — even more so this year. They want to travel, just not far,” said Smith, who is planning to target consumers from drive-by markets as far away as Washington, D.C., and Maine in his upcoming advertising campaign.
That will require a proof of vaccination passport as the totalitarian technological nightmare continues apace.
The ads will feature health and wellness themes for leisure travelers looking to go to a spa, find the best biking trail, and exercise in an open environment, Smith said. He’s hoping to bring back events on a smaller scale by using rapid COVID-19 tests.
Louise Bishop, chief executive of South County Tourism Council, said she is ready for the “summer of weddings,” many of which were postponed last year.
“We’re turning a corner, but we didn’t have the losses that everyone else did,” said Bishop, who saw visitors hungry for the area’s ocean views rent whole cottages and have their own spaces, allowing them to stay longer.
On Block Island, where outdoor adventures are always the main attraction, tourism council president Jessica Willis said she froze advertising spending last year, not knowing what would happen with the budget, but with an emphasis on outdoor activities, the area saw an influx of day-trippers, longer lines than usual, and crowded beaches and walking trails. She’s now planning to advertise at the same level as she did in 2019, to help boost hotel and lodging sales.
Cities in Rhode Island took the hardest tourism hits in 2020, as did metropolitan areas in much of the country. Providence lost more than $81 million in hotel revenue last year. The boutique Graduate Hotel remains closed, and the Omni Providence Hotel houses only college students from Brown University.
At this point, experts say it may take until at least 2024 for the city’s tourism levels to get back to where they were during pre-pandemic times — a longer recovery time than other regions of the state are predicting.
Just so happens to correspond to the Great Reset timetable as illuminated by the World Bank document that says project completed by the end of March 2025.
“It’s really hard to paint a broad brush stroke that tourism will be back, up and running, by this summer,” said Lavin, of Johnson & Wales. Some destinations are built to be sustainable, he said, but metro areas are not necessarily so, especially during a global pandemic.
“Providence is a good example of that,” he said. “Right now, it’s like a ghost town. You don’t see anyone, and that’s just not that city.”
Is that what happened to the kids (Globe never bothered to check back)?
“It’s been frustrating, especially on the event side,” said Kristen Adamo, Providence Warwick Convention & Visitors Bureau president, but things are looking brighter. There are sporting events booked for this summer at the Rhode Island Convention Center, she said, though the venue is currently being used as a COVID-19 field hospital.
“August is actually kind of busy,” said Adamo, before acknowledging that COVID-19 is still a concern, “but [some] events were originally for 1,000 people,” she pointed out. “What happens now?”
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Let's check out the field house, 'er, hospital:
"Field hospitals open in Rhode Island as COVID-19 cases surge; ‘This can get so much worse before it gets better,’ a Rhode Island health official said" by Edward Fitzpatrick and Felice J. Freyer Globe Staff, November 30, 2020
PROVIDENCE — Rhode Island is opening two field hospitals and public health officials are pleading with residents to stay home as a sharp spike in COVID-19 cases pushed hospitalizations to near-record levels.
A 335-bed field hospital run by Care New England opened Monday in Cranston, while a 594-bed facility at the Rhode Island Convention Center in Providence will begin receiving COVID patients Tuesday. Fewer than a dozen patients were expected to be admitted in Cranston on Monday, while the Providence site anticipates about two dozen on its first day.
The field units are functioning as a relief valve so hospitals can continue treating other ailments, according to Dr. James V. McDonald, a medical director at the Rhode Island Department of Health. “This can get so much worse before it gets better,” he said. “When you look at the numbers, every day they’re constantly going in the wrong direction.”
Then the shutdowns and lockdowns have been miserable failures and need to end now.
On a per capita basis, Rhode Island has been hit harder than any other New England state. It has averaged 850 new cases per day over the past week, or 80 cases per 100,000 people, according to New York Times calculations. In contrast, Massachusetts is seeing from 10 to 48 cases per 100,000, depending on the county. Throughout Maine, the case count is 12 or fewer per 100,000.
Hospital officials said it was hard to pinpoint one reason for Rhode Island’s steep infection rate.
“We are much more densely populated, obviously,” said Cathy E. Duquette, executive vice president and chief nursing executive at Lifespan, the health system that is overseeing the Providence field hospital. “We have 1 million people in a very small geographic location.”
She noted that some of the state’s most densely populated cities, such as Central Falls and Providence, have COVID-19 rates higher than the statewide average.
Dr. Selim Suner, director of disaster medicine and emergency preparedness at Rhode Island Hospital, said he doesn’t know exactly why Rhode Island’s rate is higher, “but it could be because we are not following the instructions.”
He emphasized that people can help lower the rate of spread by wearing face masks, social distancing, and avoiding large gatherings. Also, he said the spread could be curbed with a new medication, called a monoclonal antibody treatment, that can be prescribed for people with underlying conditions.
If so, why is there a need for mass vaccinations with poisonous toxins?
This all BULL$HIT and it is getting more outrageous by the day.
Time to CALL IT OFF!
WE KNOW!!!
Regional differences in COVID-19 can often be explained by differing approaches to public health restrictions, such as mask mandates and closing bars, but the New England states have adopted similar tactics to controlling transmission.
Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said workforce composition can also affect infection rates, if many workers are in jobs that can’t be done from home, and, indeed, a high percentage of Rhode Islanders work in health care, service, and retail jobs.
Since the pandemic started, more than 50,000 Rhode Islanders have come down with COVID-19, leaving 1 million still vulnerable.
As case counts climb throughout the region, Vermont is building field hospitals. The Massachusetts National Guard on Monday began constructing a 250-bed field hospital at the DCU Center, to be staffed by UMass Memorial Health Care when it opens this Sunday.
Monday began with Rhode Island officials issuing a statewide public safety alert, sent to cell phones around 9:30 a.m.
“Hospitals at capacity due to COVID,” the alert read. “Help the frontline by staying home as much as possible for the next two weeks. Work remotely if you can, avoid social gatherings, get tested. If we all decrease our mobility, we will save lives.”
These f**kers are so goddamn offensive by now it stretches the limits of tolerance.
Dr. Megan L. Ranney, an emergency physician at Brown University who specializes in public health research, retweeted the public safety alert, saying, “This is my state right now. To all the people (who I don’t tag, bc they don’t deserve the notoriety) who accused me of ‘fear mongering’ — I hope you don’t get sick, from #covid19 or anything else, because WE HAVE NOWHERE TO TREAT YOU,” but Department of Health spokesman Joseph Wendelken said COVID-19 patients will be able to go to field hospitals in Rhode Island, and very sick patients will be sent to intensive care units in Rhode Island hospitals. He said there will be no need to send COVID-19 patients to hospitals in other states.
AVOID ALL HOSPITALS in RHODE ISLAND!
“Today is the first day of the pause,” Wendelken said, referring to a two-week economic step back that Governor Gina M. Raimondo announced Nov. 19, “and we wanted to be sure people understood the new restrictions in place and reiterate the message we have been sharing — that people need to wear masks, practice social distancing, and keep their groups small and consistent.”
During the pause, recreational businesses including bowling alleys, theaters, casinos, indoor sporting facilities, and gyms must close. Bars and bar areas in restaurants are also required to close, while restaurants are limited to 33 percent of indoor capacity and only people in the same household may sit together at a table. Manufacturing and construction jobs, as well as personal services businesses, such as hair salons, are also allowed to stay open with proper precautions, and houses of worship are limited to 25 percent capacity. Residents are being asked to limit their social circles to only people in their households.
“This will not be easy, but I am pleading with you to take it seriously,” Raimondo said in a statement. “Choosing to gather with those outside your household will have ripple effects that will increase the strain on our hospitals and put lives at risk.”
Rhode Islanders must be ecstatic that she is headed to the Washington $wamp.
To help businesses and workers affected by the pause, the Democratic governor last week announced $100 million in aid, including an additional $200 per week for those who are already receiving unemployment. Raimondo did not rule out another economic shutdown if the pandemic get worse.
That kind of crap, money literally printed out of thin air, is more akin to a bribe these days so you won't revolt at your own destruction.
At the convention center on Monday, Lifespan’s Duquette and Rhode Island Hospital’s Suner led a tour of the 100,000-square-foot field hospital.
Instead of dinners and keynote speeches, the space is filled with row after row of hospital beds, with oxygen and power at each bedside. The ballroom is split into large wards.
In an only-in-Rhode-Island touch, the aisles bear the names of streets from each of the state’s 39 cities and towns. Interstate 95 is a main thoroughfare, and the tour began and ended on a positive note — on Hope Street.....
Makes you want to puke, doesn't it?
"Rhode Island will extend economic pause until Dec. 21 to contain COVID-19 spread; Doses of a vaccine could be in the state as early as next week, signaling ‘the beginning of the end of the pandemic’" by Dan McGowan Globe Staff, December 10, 2020
PROVIDENCE — Governor Gina Raimondo said Thursday that she is extending Rhode Island’s economic pause for another week as she attempts to slow a COVID-19 spread that has made the state the nation’s new hot spot for the pandemic.
The decision means gyms, casinos, and other indoor recreational facilities will remain closed until Dec. 21, and restaurants will continue to have extremely limited indoor seating for another week. Raimondo said the state will provide a $200 boost in unemployment benefits for another week, and businesses affected by the pause can apply for relief through the Division of Taxation.
Raimondo said she’s confident the pause, which took effect Nov. 30, has helped the state get a handle on the virus, pointing to mobility data that shows residents aren’t traveling as often over the last two weeks, but the Department of Health reported another 948 new cases on Thursday, and 14 more fatalities, bringing the total number of deaths to 1,498 since March. There were 466 residents in the hospital, and the state has averaged 54 new hospitalizations a day since the beginning of the month.
“It’s getting scary,” Raimondo said during her weekly televised press conference on the virus.
Rhode Island has risen to the top of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s daily national tracker for average daily COVID-19 cases per 100,000 in population, at 123.8. North Dakota and Indiana are the only other states averaging more than 100 new cases a day per 100,000 residents.
Even when the economy begins to reopen on Dec. 21, Raimondo said, businesses will face other restrictions. Gyms and other indoor recreational facilities will be limited to one person per 150 square feet, and indoor dining will be allowed at 50 percent capacity.
Raimondo once against accused school districts that are moving to remote learning for the rest of 2020 of “throwing in the towel,” on students, even as she faces pressures from teachers unions to halt in-person learning for the time being.
Can they get any more disingenuous?
Here we are in the middle of variants, aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh, and yet the Democrat potentates are ordering the kids back to school.
I can't think of a better reason to keep them at home.
Cranston, Warwick, and East Providence are among the larger school districts that have announced plans to move to remote learning. LaSalle Academy, a private school attended by Raimondo’s daughter, also announced this week that it will move classes online until mid January.
“You’re letting the children down and I don’t see any reason for it,” Raimondo said.
In another case of my-$hit-don't-$tink hypocrisy, WOW!
Beginning in January, Raimondo said, the state will offer on-site testing to every school district in Rhode Island, which will allow for all students to be tested. The idea is that if a student or adult falls ill, their close contacts can immediately be evaluated and tested.
Keep the kid home and away from the child-snatching testers.
Dr. Philip A. Chan, an infectious disease specialist affiliated with several Rhode Island hospitals, attended Thursday’s press conference, and laid out Rhode Island’s plan for administering a COVID-19 vaccine once it’s approved. He said the first round of vaccinations could come as soon as next week, and called the news “that bright light” people have been waiting for.
“That is incredibly exciting to me. If offered, I would be the first person at the door to get this,” he said.
Be my guest!
State officials have said the the first doses will go to about 150,000 health care workers, first responders, residents of long-term care facilities, and adults with significant illnesses that make them vulnerable to infection.
“This is the beginning of the end of the pandemic,” Chan said.
Especially now that the 45th president of the United States is gone!
"
Rhode Island Governor Gina M. Raimondo is in quarantine again after being informed that she had a close contact last week who tested positive for COVID-19, a spokesman said Monday. Raimondo has tested negative repeatedly, including earlier Monday, communications director Josh Block said. The governor will be out of quarantine on Thursday and will continue working from home until then, he said. He said he could not share information about the person who tested positive. Since she is in quarantine, Raimondo will be unable to address the House and the Senate when they return on Tuesday for the 2021 legislative session, Block said. Officials tried to find a way for her to address legislators remotely, but were unable to do so, he said. Raimondo’s regular coronavirus press conference, scheduled for Thursday, has been postponed until 1 p.m. Friday, Block said.
"
They are using COVID to HIDE, and have you noticed that very few of them die?
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
"Should residents of hard-hit cities and towns be vaccinated before other groups? Some epidemiologists think so" by Deanna Pan Globe Staff, December 24, 2020
In Central Falls, R.I., a tiny working-class city with a majority Latino population, the coronavirus has run rampant, triggering a crisis so dire public health officials believe half of its residents will have been infected by the end of the year.
And they won't even know it until they are tested, and will have already achieved natural herd immunity by then.
Now Rhode Island is completing plans to move hard-pressed Central Falls to the front of the vaccination line, giving priority to a densely packed city full of immigrants and people of color who have contracted the deadly virus at staggering rates. Some epidemiologists believe Massachusetts should consider a similar strategy for COVID-19 hot spots where residents, for a litany of reasons, find themselves at heightened risk.
“I think it makes a lot of sense,” said Jessica Leibler, an environmental epidemiologist at Boston University, “when we have data to suggest there are certain communities where risk is aggregated for various reasons,” such as housing density and occupational exposure.
An early virus hot spot, Central Falls, where 19,000 residents live within 1.3 square miles, has the highest rate of COVID-19 cases per capita in Rhode Island, with 15,664 infections per 100,000. About two-thirds of the city’s residents are Latino and thousands are undocumented. Many work poorly paid factory and food-processing jobs and live in cramped triple-deckers, alongside several family members. Regular access to medical treatment is a luxury few can afford, and isolating the sick to prevent transmission can be nearly impossible.
Like all states, Rhode Island is rolling out its vaccination program in phases — starting with health care workers and residents of long-term-care facilities, among others — before gradually opening up eligibilityto more residents. The state’s health director, Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott, said Tuesday Central Falls and other highly dense ZIP codes would be placed in the first phase of the state’s distribution plan.
“Rhode Island will be vaccinating people based on their risk level, and we will continue to maintain a focus on equity,” Alexander-Scott said. “We are finalizing plans to vaccinate in Central Falls early on in the vaccination campaign, and we will move on to other ZIP codes and communities that are hardest hit as well.”
Samuel Scarpino, an assistant professor and head of the Emergent Epidemics Lab at Northeastern University, said states have an ethical imperative to use the vaccine to address the health inequities amplified by the pandemic and communities that have suffered the worst should be prioritized.....
I'm told the “vaccine alone isn’t a silver bullet” Nason Maani, a public health researcher at Boston University who studies structural determinants of health.
In fact, we are being told it will NOT PREVENT INFECTION or TRANSMISSION -- but might lessen the mild symptoms you didn't even notice.
Related:
Related:
"
With the pandemic exposing racial disparities in the United States — Black people have died of COVID-19 at nearly three times the rate of white people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — health officials have been working to promote vaccinations in Black communities, and to combat doubt. So doctors in Atlanta turned to Tyler Perry — a popular and prolific actor, director and studio head — to spread the word to Black audiences that the vaccine was harmless. He agreed to interview the experts, turning it into a TV special that aired Thursday night on BET. On the show, he peppered doctors from Grady Health System with questions about the safety of the vaccine, how it was developed, how it was tested, and how it works. At the end of the interview, with his sleeve pulled up, Perry
got the jab as cameras rolled. Perry is
one of the most powerful people in the entertainment industry. He
built his fortune portraying the character of Madea, a
tart-tongued and irreverent matriarch, onstage and onscreen, before retiring her in 2019 to concentrate on other projects, which include running his 330-acre studios in Georgia. Skepticism about the COVID-19 vaccine among Black people has been deeply concerning to health officials. A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that one in three Black people was hesitant about the vaccine. A recent CNN analysis found that Black and Latino Americans were getting the vaccine at significantly lower rates than white people — rates attributed to, among other factors, lack of access to health care for many Black people, but also to an
entrenched mistrust about the medical establishment. On the BET special, Perry spoke of episodes in history that have led to a lack of faith in the medical establishment and the government, among them the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which doctors allowed syphilis to progress in Black men by withholding treatment from them, and the case of Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951, whose cells were used in research without her knowledge or consent. “We as Black people have healthy hesitation when it comes to vaccinations and so on and so forth, and even disease,” he said. Perry
said he didn’t want people getting vaccinated just because he had. “What I want to do is give you the information, the facts,” he said. “There’s a lot of misinformation out there.”
They sure is, and my morning paper is full of it.
God bless the Black people who can smell a rat, and not that it matters, but I never liked Perry's shows and he should be ashamed of himself for betraying his race and people in favor of the Washington and wealthy donors and their nonprofits.
"Hundreds have tried to cut to the front of the COVID-19 vaccine line in R.I.; Appointments were cancelled after health officials realized that people who were ineligible to receive the vaccine had signed up for shots" by Amanda Milkovits Globe Staff, January 7, 2021
PROVIDENCE — With only enough doses available to vaccinate about 1.5 percent of the state’s population against COVID-19 each week, Rhode Island health officials have been working to prioritize vaccinating those at highest risk first.
Several hundred people have already tried to cut in line anyway.
The line-jumpers were caught this week, after health officials realized that a special link given to employers for their workers to register for vaccinations was shared with others, said Alysia Mihalakos, the colead of the state’s COVID-19 mass vaccination workgroup and chief of Health’s Center for Emergency Preparedness and Response. She didn’t identify the employers.
Health officials were preparing to vaccinate about 5,000 EMS workers, police officers, firefighters, and home health care and hospice employees through five regional pods this week. They ended up taking down registration links and canceling hundreds of appointments after discovering that people who were ineligible in this phase of the rollout had made appointments for vaccinations, she said. Health officials are working with the vendor to make sure there are checkpoints so people can’t cheat the system.
“The demand for the vaccine is clearly high and people are willing to push others aside to get themselves and their loved ones vaccinated,” Mihalakos said during a remote news conference Tuesday. “We understand everyone’s concern, and we understand there are a lot of people at the front of the line, and we have limited amounts of vaccine.”
Dr. Philip Chan, an infectious disease expert with the state Health Department’s Division of Preparedness, Response, Infectious Disease and Emergency Medical Services, said there have been no reports of Rhode Islanders suffering adverse side effects from the vaccine.....
There have been, but it hasn't been "reported," while at the hospitals, “there’s a lot of excitement and people are chomping at the bit.”
