Handling the coronavirus crisis

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A video of a woman in a Nebraska supermarket without a mask and "appearing to deliberately cough" on other shoppers has gained national attention, and now her employer says they are investigating. The video went viral, with one copy garnering nearly 3 million views on Twitter in just 24 hours.
An internet sleuth apparently identified the woman, and her employer, a $27 billion multinational software company, SAP, is responding and appearing to validate that she does work for them. The Germany-based corporation says they are "taking the matter of an SAP employee incident very seriously.""

Employer of anti-masker caught on camera coughing on supermarket shoppers says they are 'investigating' - Alternet.org

• If this is true, can it get any sicker?!
  

The Oklahoma State Medical Association (OSMA) is expressing concern about Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt's ® removal of the board's only physicians. On Saturday, September 5, Stitt removed Jean Hausheer, M.D., and Laura Shamblin, M.D. from the Oklahoma Health Care Authority Board of Directors, according to KTUL. The seemingly strategic removal prompted a response from the OSMA. Shortly after the physicians' removal, former OSMA president Dr. George Monks released a statement criticizing the decision which he described as the governor's "political agenda.""

OSMA accuses Oklahoma governor of 'stifling dissent' by removing 'the only physicians from the OHCA Board' - Alternet.org

• A medical board with actual physicians, we can't have that, can we? 
  

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Dr. Anthony Fauci offered Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' ® a critical history lesson when he corrected the Republican governor for his careless remarks about the importance of getting vaccinated. On Tuesday, September 7, the top infectious disease expert appeared on CNN's "New Day" where he addressed DeSantis' remarks suggesting getting vaccinated "doesn't impact me or anyone else." Fauci briefly discussed the historical timeline of vaccines and how critical they have been in the evolution of medicine.

"If he feels that vaccines are not important for people, that they are just important for some people, that's completely incorrect," said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Just days ago, DeSantis rebuked the idea of vaccine passports as he argued that the form of verification is essentially pointless, reports Florida Politics. "It's about your health and whether you want that protection or not," DeSantis said of COVID-19 vaccinations. "It really doesn't impact me or anyone else."

The Florida governor also argued that vaccinations promote divisiveness. "I also don't want two classes of citizens," DeSantis said. "We have some people in our communities who just made the decision this is something that they're not going to do. So what? You're going to write them out of society?:
However, Fauci argues otherwise. Speaking to CNN's Jim Scuitto, he continued with more vaccination history and benefits. "Vaccination ... has been the solution to every major public health issue in which a vaccine was developed for," Fauci continued. "I mean: smallpox, polio, measles. I'm not sure what people are talking about when they push back on vaccinations. It is historically, over decades and decades and decades, shown to be the way you control an infectious disease."

'Not true at all': Fauci gives DeSantis a history lesson over 'completely incorrect' claim about vaccines - Alternet.org

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MAGA Republican Fred Lowry — a far-right Christian fundamentalist, conspiracy theorist and QAnon supporter who serves on the Volusia County Council — has been one of Central Florida's most unhinged COVID-19 deniers, railing against social distancing measures, slamming Dr. Anthony Fauci as "Dr. Falsey" and claiming numerous times that the pandemic is a hoax. And now, according to the Daytona Beach News-Journal, the 66-year-old Lowry is hospitalized with COVID-19. During a September 7 meeting, Volusia County Chairman Jeff Brower announced, "He is in the hospital wrestling with COVID-19" — and Volusia County Councilwoman Billie Wheeler said of Lowry, "He's pretty darned sick."

QAnon Republican known for coronavirus denial is now hospitalized with COVID-19: 'He’s pretty darned sick' - Alternet.org

A four-year-old girl has become the youngest Covid-19 victim in Texas’s Galveston County since the onset of the pandemic, after several members of her family were infected. Kali Cook died in her sleep at home on 7 September, within hours of showing symptoms of the coronavirus. She was unvaccinated, with children below the age of 12 not yet eligible for inoculation. Her mother Karra Harwood, however, was also not jabbed and described herself as against vaccination. “I was one of the people that was anti, I was against it. Now, I wish I never was,” she told The Daily News. Kali’s death comes amid reports of an increasing number of Delta variant cases being observed in children in the US.

Four-year-old girl dies of Covid after anti-vaxxer mom contracts virus | The Independent

• Stories like these are popping up all over the place..
  

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During the current delta-driven Covid-19 wave, Americans are being transported hundreds of miles from their homes because no nearby hospital has room for them. Some of them have even died waiting for medical attention. In other words, US hospitals are being forced — in the middle of a public health emergency — to ration health care for their patients.

Rationing has long been a dirty word in US health policy, used as an attack on any socialized health program that more centrally determines which medical services will be covered and for whom. The US health system has always rationed care through cost: It’s de facto rationing when a patient doesn’t get the medical care they need because they can’t pay out-of-pocket costs or because they live in a rural community without a facility nearby.
“We’re so used to rationing by ability-to-pay in this country that classic capacity rationing feels a bit foreign,” Hannah Neprash, a health economist at the University of Minnesota, said in an email..

US hospitals and ICUs are full of Covid-19 patients, forcing care rationing - Vox

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Who’s been talking up ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment? An incomplete list includes Fox hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Maria Bartiromo, Brian Kilmeade, Greg Gutfeld, and Will Cain, along with regular network guests Drs. Harvey Risch, George Fareed, and Ramin Oskoui; influential podcasters Joe Rogan and Bret Weinstein; an array of personalities on One America News Network; and PragerU founder Dennis Prager. Discussions of the drug are also rampant on social media platforms including Facebook..

What’s getting obscured in the ivermectin debate | Media Matters for America

• The usual suspects, but they have a lot more influence on the right compared to any official medical channel, leading to lots of people turning to Ivermectin rather than vaccines, with predictable results:
  

A QAnon conspiracist has died from COVID-19 after becoming the center of a harassment campaign against the Chicago hospital where she was being treated for the deadly virus. Veronica Wolski died early Monday after spending weeks at Amita Resurrection Hospital, which was targeted for harassment by pro-Donald Trump conspiracists Lin Wood, Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn over doctors' refusal to treat her with ivermectin instead of proven therapies, reported Newsweek. "I have just learned that Veronica Wolski saw the face of God this morning at 12:44 a.m.," Wood posted on his Telegram account..

QAnon conspiracist dies from COVID-19 — and Trump-loving attorney accuses hospital of 'medical murder' - Alternet.org

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When the coronavirus first swept across Florida last year, Angela Gambrel did everything she could to lock down her home in Sumter County, northeast of Tampa. Her 10-year-old grandson Jayden has a rare brain disease that disrupts his immune system and impairs his memory, making it harder for him to process complex tasks. His doctors urged her to take every possible precaution against the virus. No more supermarket runs. No more football scrimmages with his Special Olympics team. Fact-based, independent journalism is needed now more than ever. Donate Jayden’s school, like others across the state, halted in-person instruction, distributing worksheets to students to complete at home. The only time Jayden was around other people was when he had bloodwork done or underwent his monthly treatment about an hour away at Tampa General Hospital.

When schools reopened last fall, Gambrel, who’s been Jayden’s guardian since he was a toddler, kept him and his brother home, unwilling to risk exposing Jayden to a virus the world was just beginning to understand. But without the intensive in-person instruction that he had been receiving for years, Jayden struggled, unable to keep up with his coursework. Watching him languish, Gambrel knew he needed to go back to school as soon as it was safe, and so she was relieved to hear last month that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was advising school districts to have students and teachers mask and socially distance and to vaccinate staff. Jayden, she thought, could finally go back to school in person.

But a few days later, her plans were scuttled by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, who imposed a statewide ban on mask mandates in schools. Without assurances that all the students in Jayden’s school would be masked, Gambrel decided she could not take the risk of sending him back to the classroom. “If they could just require masks, then these boys could have a life,” Gambrel said.

A Boy With an Autoimmune Disease Was Ready to Learn in Person. Then His State Banned Mask Mandates. — ProPublica

• There are many Jayden's out there, what about their freedom?
  

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What first struck Nathaniel Osborn when he and his wife took their son, Seth, to the emergency room this summer was how packed the waiting room was for a Wednesday at 1 p.m. The Florida hospital’s emergency room was so crowded there weren’t enough chairs for the family to all sit as they waited. And waited. Hours passed and 12-year-old Seth’s condition worsened, his body quivering from the pain shooting across his lower belly. Osborn said his wife asked why it was taking so long to be seen. A nurse rolled her eyes and muttered, “COVID.”

Seth was finally diagnosed with appendicitis more than six hours after arriving at Cleveland Clinic Martin Health North Hospital in late July. Around midnight, he was taken by ambulance to a sister hospital about a half-hour away that was better equipped to perform pediatric emergency surgery, his father said. But by the time the doctor operated in the early morning hours, Seth’s appendix had burst — a potentially fatal complication. As the nation’s hospitals fill and emergency rooms overflow with critically ill COVID-19 patients, it is the non-COVID-19 patients, like Seth, who have become collateral damage.

A Boy Went to a COVID-Swamped ER. He Waited for Hours. Then His Appendix Burst. — ProPublica

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Phil Valentine, a prominent Tennessee rightwing talk radio host, had released a song called Vaxman, an anti-Covid vaccination ditty based on the Beatles track Taxman. Marc Bernier, a host in Daytona Beach, Florida, had declared himself “Mr Anti-Vax”. Dick Farrel, also from Florida, urged his listeners not to get vaccinated, and Jimmy DeYoung asked on air whether the vaccine could be a “form of government control of the people”.

All four men died in August of coronavirus. A fifth conservative radio host, Bob Enyart, died on 13 September, weeks after he told his listeners to boycott vaccines that were “immorally developed”. The death of the men, just weeks apart, illustrated both the depth of anti-vaccine feeling among some conservatives, but also hinted at the problems rightwing talk radio, along with other conservative media, is causing as vaccination rates in the US have slowed. Local talk radio is not often mentioned in discussions about conservative media and messaging in America..

Dangerous transmissions: anti-vax radio shows reach millions in US while stars die of Covid | US news | The Guardian

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A far right wing anti-vaxx, anti-mask commentator who threatened to shoot anyone who even tried to vaccinate him against the coronavirus only to say recently he had contracted COVID-19 is lashing out at those on the left he says mocked him. In an obscenity-laden tirade Josh Bernstein went as apoplectic as anyone can while battling the grave disease and the exhaustion he admits comes with it. Last week Bernstein called his bout with COVID "brutal," and "unbearable," but on on Saturday Newsweek reported he contacted them to say his COVID test came back negative. Despite that, in his latest video he appears in what he called his COVID quarantine room appearing to talk about what having the disease "taught" him. Bernstein claims in the clip below that "left wing ________" wished him "death," and claims that list includes Newsweek and Right Wing Watch. NCRM found no evidence those publications did so. Back in April Bernstein promised a "lead injection" to anyone who tried to inject him with the vaccine.

Far-right anti-vaxxer who contracted COVID launches massive obscenity-laden tirade against the left - Alternet.org

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A Republican lawmaker is facing bipartisan scrutiny for his recent bizarre conspiracy theory about COVID-19. According to HuffPost, New Hampshire state Rep. Ken Weyler ® believes there are "Satan, the pope and 5G as well as tentacled creatures lurking in the COVID-19 vaccine." Weyler, who also serves as chair of the House finance committee, sent a 52-page document to his Congressional colleagues claiming the COVID-19 vaccine initiative is part of a conspiracy "to gain 100% control over the minds of all of humanity." WMUR-TV has also reported that the 79-year-old lawmaker's document also consists of "anti-Catholic bigotry" that suggests "the Vatican is ruled by multiple popes, including a 'grey pope' who is the 'supreme puppet master.'"'

'Satan, the Pope and 5G': GOP lawmaker unleashes bizarre '52 pages of lies' about COVID vaccine initiative - Alternet.org

• Outflanking Trump, where do they find these people??