Handling the coronavirus crisis

[Admin]

Senate President Wilton Simpson late Saturday sharply criticized a top official in the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis for failing to adhere to a request from state Sen. Tina Polsky to wear a mask while visiting her in her office. Polsky, a Democrat from Palm Beach County who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and is about to start radiation treatment, asked Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo to leave her office this past week after Ladapo refused to don a mask.

Senate President blasts Florida Surgeon General for his 'unprofessional' actions

[Admin]

Birx said the administration's resistance to promoting basic public health mitigation resulted in more than 100,000 avoidable deaths. She said former President Trump did not do everything he could to try to stop the spread of the virus and save lives. "I believe if we had fully implemented the mask mandates, the reduction in indoor dining, the getting friends and family to understand the risk of gathering in private homes, and we had increased testing, that we probably could have decreased fatalities into the 30 percent less to 40 percent less range," Birx said.

Birx says Trump White House prioritized election over COVID-19 response | TheHill

[Admin]

Contrary to the false claims from right wing extremists that "natural immunity" is more powerful and "better" than the coronavirus vaccines, the CDC released a report finding those who are unvaccinated and contracted COVID-19 are five times more likely to be re-infected than those who are fully vaccinated. That report, CBS News adds, shows that "vaccine-induced immunity was more protective than infection-induced immunity."

Feds release Covid reports that destroy right-wing talking points and conspiracy theories - Alternet.org

[Admin]

New emails and documents released by a congressional committee investigating the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic show the extent to which top White House officials interfered in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s efforts to warn Americans about Covid-19. The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis has conducted interviews over the last several months about how former President Donald Trump and his closest confidantes, including former White House adviser Scott Atlas and son-in-law Jared Kushner, tried to steer the course of the federal response, sidestepping the interagency process.

On Friday, the committee released emails and transcripts with former senior CDC officials about the White House’s attempts to sideline the agency at critical moments at the beginning of the U.S. outbreak. The emails and transcripts detail how in the early days of 2020 Trump and his allies in the White House blocked media briefings and interviews with CDC officials, attempted to alter public safety guidance normally cleared by the agency and instructed agency officials to destroy evidence that might be construed as political interference. The documents further underscore how Trump appointees tried to undermine the work of scientists and career staff at the CDC to control the administration’s messaging on the spread of the virus and the dangers of transmission and infection.

Emails reveal new details of Trump White House interference in CDC Covid planning - POLITICO

[Admin]

Donald Trump tested positive for Covid-19 three days before his first debate against Joe Biden, the former president’s fourth and last chief of staff has revealed in a new book... Despite the president looking “a little tired” and suspecting a “slight cold”, Meadows says he was “content” that Trump travelled that evening to a rally in Middletown, Pennsylvania. But as Marine One lifted off, Meadows writes, the White House doctor called. “Stop the president from leaving,” Meadows says Sean Conley told him. “He just tested positive for Covid.”

Trump tested positive for Covid few days before Biden debate, chief of staff says in new book | Donald Trump | The Guardian

• Trump tested positive on 26 September 2020
  
• Just coming back from the Amy Cohen Barrett nomination party in the Rose Garden, which turned out to be a super spreader event
  
• He already showed symptoms
  
• He took another test that was negative which they took as the all clear
  
• Mark Meadows told people around him to treat Trump as if he was positive
  
• He went to the debate still with some symptoms, according to Meadows he was walking slower than normal
  
• The debate was on September 28, Trump wasn't tested as they arrived late, the Trump family didn't wear masks, despite the venue requiring that.
  
• Trump was tested positive again on October 1 (as was his wife Melania).
  
• Trump was rushed to hospital on October 2 with very low oxygen levels
  
• The latter is a clear indication he was positive well before October 1 as it takes 5-7 days between developing symptoms and getting seriously ill
  
• Between September 26 and October 1 Trump had many meetings like the Presidential debate, the Gold Star families, Press briefings, etc. taking no precautions whatsoever, endangering many. He should have isolated himself.
  
• The whole saga was characterized with a lack of transparency and until now we didn't know about Trump's September 26 positive test, nor when he was given monoclonal antibodies.
  

[Admin]

In a blurb on the cover of Mark Meadows’ new book, Donald Trump calls the former congressman a “great chief of staff – as good as it gets” and predicts “a great future together”. The former president has also promoted the book to his followers. Now the book is in the public domain, however, the former president reportedly thinks it is “garbage” and that Meadows was “fucking stupid” to write it. Influential members of the House committee investigating the deadly Capitol attack, meanwhile, have said Meadows may have undermined his own defence when seeking to block their inquiries.

The Chief’s Chief will be published next week. This week, the Guardian broke the news that according to Meadows, Trump tested positive for Covid three days before the first presidential debate with Joe Biden in September last year. Meadows also details how that test, like another which came back negative, was covered up. Trump eventually announced a positive test on 2 October, the day he was admitted to hospital in Maryland. The White House said that positive result was announced within an hour.

This week, amid huge controversy over whether Trump had endangered not only Biden but the White House press corps, debate staff, the families of fallen US service members, businessmen and more, Trump called the Guardian report “fake news” – a judgment with which Meadows, bizarrely, agreed. But outlets including the New York Times and the Washington Post confirmed the cover-up. Late on Friday, the Daily Beast cited three anonymous sources as saying Trump had spent “an inordinate amount of the past few days privately railing against Meadows, the revelation in the memoir, and, of course, the extensive media coverage of the matter”.

Trump rails against Meadows for revealing Covid test cover-up – report | Trump administration | The Guardian

[Admin]

NPR examined deaths per 100,000 people in about 3,000 counties across the US since May 2021. According to NPR, 1 May was chosen as the start date as it is roughly the time when vaccines became universally available to adults. The study found that areas that voted for Trump by at least 60% in November 2020 had death rates 2.7 times higher than counties that voted heavily for Biden.

The study also found that counties that voted for Trump by an even higher percentage had lower vaccination rates and higher Covid-19 death rates. Charles Gaba, an independent analyst who helped review NPR’s methodology, said that in October, the reddest 10th of the country saw death rates six times higher than the bluest 10th. “Those numbers have dropped slightly in recent weeks,” he said. “It’s back down to 5.5 times higher.”

People in counties that voted Trump more likely to die from Covid – study | US news | The Guardian

[Admin]

In reality, when 4.3 billion people worldwide have received a dose of the Covid vaccine, breakthrough infections are to be expected. In the period 2 January to 2 July 2021, 640 fully vaccinated people died of breakthrough infections in England, out of 51,281 deaths. Of those 640 deaths, 84 (13%) were in immunocompromised people. Unvaccinated people are currently estimated to be 32 times more likely to die of Covid-19 than fully vaccinated people, although experts have warned that there is uncertainty in this headline figure.

Michele Brown was vaccinated - but had a suppressed immune system. Would better health advice have saved her? | Society | The Guardian

[Admin]

Right-wing media personality Candace Owens on Thursday urged supporters of former President Donald Trump to go easy on him for promoting COVID-19 vaccines. In a video Owens posted on social media, she explained that Trump was an "old" person who came from a generation where people believed the advice of medical professionals. "People oftentimes forget that, like, how old Trump is," she said. "He comes from a generation -- I've seen a lot of people who are older, have the exact same perspective, like, they came from a time before TV, before internet, before being able to conduct independent research. And everything they read to them that was in a newspaper that was pitched to them, they believed that that was a reality." In fact, Trump has lived with television for his entire life and also became famous throughout his presidency for telling followers not to believe things they read in newspapers. Owens went on to explain that Trump's trust in vaccinations was why he wasn't paying attention to all the videos posted on right-wing website Rumble that document purported instances of vaccine "injury."

Candace Owens asks conservatives to go easy on Trump: He's too 'old' to do 'independent research' on vaccines - Alternet.org

• Where do they find these people??
  

[Admin]

The true number of deaths from the Covid pandemic in the US are likely being undercounted, due to the long-lasting and little-understood effects of Covid infection and other deadly complications that surged during the past two years. “We are seeing right now the highest death rates we have ever seen in the history of this business,” J Scott Davison, CEO of insurance company OneAmerica, told journalists on 30 December. “Death rates are up 40% over what they were pre-pandemic,” he said, among working-age people between 18 and 64. Deaths among older Americans have also increased, with one in 100 Americans over the age of 65 dying.

There have been an estimated 942,431 excess deaths in the US since February 2020, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hispanic, Black and Native American and Alaska Native populations have been disproportionately affected with high death rates, research shows. The pandemic pales in comparison to other previous crises, Davison said. “A one-in-200-year catastrophe would be a 10% increase over pre-pandemic [levels]. So 40% is just unheard of.”

True number of Covid deaths in the US likely undercounted, experts say | US news | The Guardian