Tag: COVID-19

Trump Is Guilty of Pandemicide

History will show the former U.S. president was staggeringly negligent during the pandemic’s deadly third wave.

At long last, we see glimmers of hope. The COVID-19 epidemic in the United States has fallen below the numbers of daily new cases tallied on the eve of the presidential election, the point at which this viral nightmare soared. Using the New York Times’ coronavirus data tracker, on Nov. 1, 2020, there were 74,195 new cases counted in the country; by Feb. 16, new case reports came in at 64,376.

But in between those dates, a national horror unfolded, peaking on Jan. 8 with 300,619 new cases reported in just 24 hours. This staggering wave, one full year into the pandemic, was completely unnecessary for the world’s richest country. Achieving any sense of closure will require holding Donald Trump accountable for the failure.

There is vast evidence of Trump’s negligence during the pandemic’s third wave. Had I been a member of the House of Representatives during the body’s impeachment deliberations, I would have added to Trump’s indictment the crime of pandemicide, naming him as responsible for most of the COVID-19 deaths that transpired while he, the nation’s leader, was preoccupied with damning Joe Biden’s election victory. Trump’s failure to, as he vowed in his oath of office, “faithfully execute the office of president of the United States” promulgated a scale of lives lost exceeding anything experienced in the country since the Civil War, 160 years ago. Continue reading.

Fauci unloads on Trump: ‘He did things that were terrible’ when I contradicted him

Dr. Anthony Fauci unloaded on former President Donald Trump in an interview with the UK newspaper The Telegraph.

Throughout the interview, Fauci recounted how his former boss would routinely take bad advice on how to handle the novel coronavirus pandemic and would act out whenever anyone with expertise contradicted him.

“When it became clear that in order to maintain my integrity and to get the right message [across] I had to publicly disagree with him, he did things — or allowed things to happen — that were terrible,” Fauci told the paper. “Like he allowed Peter Navarro [Trump’s trade adviser] to write an editorial in USA Today saying that almost everything I’ve ever said was wrong.” Continue reading.

Over 500,000 dead from coronavirus in U.S.

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More than half a million people in the U.S. have died from the coronavirus as of Monday, according to Johns Hopkins data.

Why it matters: The death toll is larger than the total number of U.S. soldiers killed in action in World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War combined. It comes just one year after the country’s first coronavirus death was confirmed.

  • “Each death has left an empty space in communities across America: a bar stool where a regular used to sit, one side of a bed unslept in, a home kitchen without its cook,” the New York Times’ Julie Bosman writes.

The scale of the horrifying loss is hard to visualize. 

  • If 500,000 names were listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the height of the structure would be 87 feet tall (instead of 10 feet), the Washington Post figures.
  • 1 person died of the coronavirus every 28 seconds in January, a Post analysis found. Continue reading.

Why grandparents can’t find vaccines: Scarcity of niche biotech ingredients

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Lipid nanoparticles for RNA vaccines were used in small quantities a year ago. Now Pfizer and Moderna can’t get enough.

Acuitas Therapeutics, a tiny biotechnology firm in Vancouver, B.C., has just 30 employees and leases its labs from the University of British Columbia. The company doesn’t even have a sign on its building. Until last year, it outsourced production of only small volumes of lipid nanoparticles, fat droplets used to deliver RNA into cells, for research and a single approved treatment for a rare disease.

But now, one of Acuitas’s discoveries has become a precious commodity. A proprietary molecule called an ionizable cationic lipid is a crucial piece of the mRNA vaccine made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, and it is in urgent demand for production of billions of vaccine doses worldwide.

Scaling up production of formerly niche substances such as lipid nanoparticles for a global vaccine drive has been among the most complex challenges facing the Biden administration as it aims to ramp up the frustratingly slow provision of shots across the country, according to interviews with company officials and outside scientists and government reports. Continue reading.

Gov. Walz and Lt. Gov. Flanagan Weekly Update: February 19, 2021

More Than 1 Million COVID-19 Vaccine Doses Administered to Minnesotans

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Minnesotans have received more than one million doses of COVID-19 vaccine, Governor Walz announced today. The state reported 1,016,210 doses had been administered as of today’s official report. The seven-day rolling average of doses administered is now 29,705, a pace that has accelerated since Governor Walz took action to increase the rate of vaccinations across the state.

Continue reading “Gov. Walz and Lt. Gov. Flanagan Weekly Update: February 19, 2021”

Rep. Dean Phillips PSA: Vaccines Near You

COVID VACCINE UPDATE

Hi Neighbors,

Optimism is infinitely stronger than fear, and, while this has surely been one of the most challenging years in many Americans’ lifetimes, the creation of safe and effective vaccines to fight COVID-19 is reason to hope.  

I’ve made it my mission to help get us through this pandemic as safe, economically sound, and prepared for the future as possible. When it comes to vaccines, it’s clear that we need more doses, more vaccination sites, and more health care workers to administer vaccines if we are going to get this virus under control. As your member of Congress, I will continue doing everything I can to ensure our Minnesota leaders have the funding and information they need to get vaccines to Minnesotans as quickly as possible. I’m hopeful we’re on the right path, and I am encouraged by the Biden Administration’s steps to ramp up production and distribution.  

Governor Tim Walz, the Minnesota Department of Health, and our local leaders are responsible for determining eligibility standards and distributing vaccines to Minnesotans. They are the best point of contact for specific questions about our state’s vaccination plan. Data about vaccine eligibility and availability changes quickly, and I know that can be frustrating. We’re in this together, so the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions my team and I have been receiving are below. The information in this update was compiled on February 19, 2021 and will change as more vaccines become available.

Continue reading “Rep. Dean Phillips PSA: Vaccines Near You”

Minnesota unveils online COVID-19 vaccine tool, reopens lottery for seniors

Shortage of doses continues to frustrate providers. 

Minnesota debuted an online COVID-19 Vaccine Connector on Thursday that will notify all residents when they are eligible for shots and give senior citizens immediate access to a lottery for appointments at state-operated sites.

While initial doses are reserved for 1.5 million seniors, health care workers, educators and long-term care residents, Gov. Tim Walz said the tool at least gives people confidence that they will know when it is their turn to get the vaccine. Registrants provide their birth date and contacts, but also can opt to enter demographic and employment information, which can be used later on to determine their vaccine eligibility.

“We still have a frustratingly limited vaccine supply from the federal government, but every Minnesotan should know their chance to get a vaccine will come,” Walz said. Continue reading.

White House announces $4 billion in funding for Covax, the global vaccine effort that Trump spurned

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The White House is throwing its support behind a global push to distribute coronavirus vaccines equitably, pledging $4 billion to a multilateral effort the Trump administration spurned.

At a Group of Seven meeting of leaders of the world’s largest economies Friday, President Biden will announce an initial $2 billion in funding for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to be used by the Covax Facility, senior administration officials said in a briefing.

The United States will release an additional $2 billion over two years once other donors have made good on their pledges and will use this week’s G-7 summit to rally other countries to do more. Continue reading.

Pandemic cut U.S. life expectancy by a year during the first half of 2020

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Life expectancy in the United States fell by a full year during the first half of 2020, a staggering decline that reflects the toll of the covid-19 pandemic as well as a rise in deaths from drug overdoses, heart attacks and diseases that accompanied the outbreak, according to government data released Thursday.

The last time life expectancy at birth dropped more dramatically was during World War II. Americans can now expect to live as long as they did in 2006, according to the provisional data released by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Black and Latino Americans were hit harder than Whites, reflecting the racial disparities of the pandemic, according to the new analysis. Black Americans lost 2.7 years of life expectancy, and Latinos lost 1.9. White life expectancy fell 0.8 years. Continue reading.

Walz: All Minnesota schools should offer at least some in-person learning by March 8

All districts should have some form of it in place by March 8 

All Minnesota schools should offer some form of in-person instruction by March 8, Gov. Tim Walz said Wednesday, announcing a move he characterized as “critical” for students’ and families’ well-being, mental health and economic stability in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Many districts have already started bringing secondary school students back to classrooms, and Walz said other middle and high schools could reopen as soon as Feb. 22.

A majority of the state’s elementary schools are already providing face-to-face instruction, following an earlier pivot by state officials to prioritize in-person learning for the youngest students. Continue reading.