Tag: COVID-19

Mike Pence shook hands with 44 military cadets whose fellow student is now being quarantined for coronavirus

AlterNet logoA mother and son from Sarasota Military Academy in Florida are being quarantined for COVID-19, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. On the Academy’s Facebook page, the school posted on Monday that the “mother’s contact with a patient at Sarasota Doctors Hospital in her professional role,” had led to both her and her son to be quarantined as a “precautionary measure.” The two reportedly showed no symptoms of the virus.

On Friday, Feb. 28, Trump’s top coronavirus point man and non-believer in science, Mike Pence, held a fundraiser in Sarasota at the home of Republican Rep. Vern Buchanan. At the event, Pence talked about “possible changes in travel status to the United States,” while shaking hands with dozens of supporters and 44 cadets from Sarasota Military Academy. Ruh-roh.

The school’s executive director Col. Christina Bowman told the Tribune that “We have been in touch with the Pentagon, so we assured them that particular cadet was not present for that occasion.” Of course, his fellow students were and it sounds like Vice President Pence shook all of their hands. Hopefully none of the people involved test positive for COVID-19—including Pence. Continue reading.

Furious Trump fans barrage conservative columnist who admitted coronavirus is a real problem

AlterNet logoA conservative columnist who is generally a supporter of President Donald Trump recently found himself getting barraged by the president’s fans because he admitted coronavirus could be a real problem for the global economy.

As the New York Times reports, Republican Rob Maness recently wrote a column for the conservative LifeZette website that outlined potential negative economic impacts from coronavirus, including the disruption of supply chains.

“The most significant major concern in America is the impact on pharmaceutical supply,” Maness wrote in his column. “Large numbers of drugs used to treat serious medical conditions are manufactured or their key components are produced in China. Medicines such as antibiotics amoxicillin, doxycycline, penicillin and other’s availabilities will be impacted as China continues its lock-down of factory workers because 90% of their sourcing is in China.” Continue reading.

Kept at the Hospital on Coronavirus Fears, Now Facing Large Medical Bills

New York Times logoCare was mandated by the government, but it’s not clear who has to pay.

Frank Wucinski and his 3-year-old daughter, Annabel, are among the dozens of Americans the government has flown back to the country from Wuhan, China, and put under quarantine to check for signs of coronavirus.

Now they are among what could become a growing number of families hit with surprise medical bills related to government-mandated actions.

Mr. Wucinski, a Pennsylvania native who has lived in China for years, accepted the U.S. government’s offer to evacuate from Wuhan with Annabel in early February as the new coronavirus spread. His wife, who is not an American citizen and remains in China, developed pneumonia that doctors think resulted from Covid-19, the disease caused by the respiratory virus. Her father, whom she helped care for, was infected and recently died. Continue reading.

CDC under fire for not releasing information on how coronavirus patients recovered

AlterNet logoThe CDC is again falling short of its responsibilities under the impending coronavirus pandemic. The agency that was once considered the best public health agency in the world for preventing the spread of infectious disease has withered under President Donald Trump, who installed as the head of the CDC a physician who “has no experience leading a public health agency.”

First the CDC botched the coronavirus test. The CDC insisted on creating and producing its own test rather than using one from the World Health Organization. Then it produced a faulty one that renders the test useless.

That likely explains why less than 500 people in the U.S. have been tested for COVID-19, while in other countries the number of people tested is dramatically higher. South Korea, according to the CDC, has tested 70,940 people as of Feb. 28. Continue reading.

Scoop: Lab for coronavirus test kits may have been contaminated

Axios logoA top federal scientist sounded the alarm about what he feared was contamination in an Atlanta lab where the government made test kits for the coronavirus, according to sources familiar with the situation in Atlanta.

Driving the news: The Trump administration has ordered an independent investigation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lab, and manufacturing of the virus test kits has been moved, the sources said.

Why it matters: At the time the administration is under scrutiny for its early preparations for the virus, the potential problems at the lab became a top internal priority for some officials. But the Trump administration did not talk publicly about the Food and Drug Administration’s specific concerns about the Atlanta lab. Continue reading.

Internet recoils as ‘doped-up’ Trump stumbles through coronavirus press conference

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump once again hastily called a press conference held literally minutes after news broke that the U.S. has had its first coronavirus-19 death, in Washington state. Trump by most accounts did not inspire confidence, He also understated the number of people in the U.S. confirmed to have been infected by this new novel coronavirus. But perhaps most disturbing, many say, is Trump once against did not inspire confidence as he rambled and rattled off words that did not seem to make much sense.

Here’s what experts and others are saying in response to the Trump-Pence press conference. Continue reading.

 

Trump is pushing a dangerous, false spin on coronavirus — and the media is helping him spread it

Washington Post logoAmong the many outlandish statements President Trump has made since taking office, one in particular stands out for me.

Speaking in Kansas City, Mo., in the summer of 2018, he urged the attendees of the VFW annual convention to ignore the journalism of the mainstream media.

“Just stick with us, don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news,” he said. “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

In other words, if you didn’t hear from me or my minions, it isn’t true. Continue reading.

Pence defends Trump Jr’s claim that Dems want ‘millions’ to die from coronavirus: ‘Understandable

AlterNet logoVice President Mike Pence said over the weekend that it is “understandable” that President Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., would say that Democrats want millions of Americans to die of the coronavirus.

In an interview that aired on Sunday, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Pence about the remarks made by the son of the president several days earlier.

“For them to try to take a pandemic and seemingly hope that it comes here and kills millions of people so that they can end Donald Trump’s streak of winning is a new level of sickness,” Pence told Fox News on Friday. Continue reading.

5 parts of the economy most at risk from coronavirus

The Hill logoThe growing threat of a coronavirus pandemic is raising fears about the toll it could take on the U.S. economy.

Public health officials say the risk of contracting coronavirus in the U.S. remains low, but economists expect the international scramble to contain the spreading illness to weaken global growth.

An outbreak within the U.S. could also seriously dampen American economic activity and consumer confidence, according to economists, posing threats to a record stretch of prosperity. Continue reading.

Viral Orange Blob Meets Political Orange Blob

If you’re not outraged yet by the systematic crippling of public health and science by Donald Trump now that we have the coronavirus serial killer on the loose — ironically, an orange blob of a virus according to electron miscroscopic images from the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases — than you’d better check your pulse. You may already be dead.

Trump’s vicious, inhumane and vile ideas while in office have already torn families apart, and inspired right wing fanatics to shoot Jews, gays, immigrants, and people of color. Now, as this new global health threat explodes around the world, his incompetence and malfeasance in office will kill even more people.

The dangerous science and fact-denialist came into office with a vendetta against scientists and any expert whose mind he could not bully into submission. He directed his Agriculture Secretary to eliminate the jobs of some of the most world-renowned scientists; left vacant hundreds of critical public health positions at the Centers for Disease Control, the single most important US Infectious Disease agency, whose leaders Trump is now trying to muzzle.