Tag: pandemic

Cell phone data shows Sturgis rally attendees later visited 61% of US counties

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Just as many health officials feared, South Dakota’s annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is on its way to further the current health crisis. Cases of the novel coronavirus continue to grow nationwide and with bikers from across the country returning home from the event states are bound to see an increase in local cases. More than 100 COVID-19 cases have been linked to the event so far, the Associated Press reported.

The event brought at least 250,000 individuals, many who attended maskless. According to Camber Systems, which collects and analyzes cellphone data, 61% of counties in the U.S. have been visited by someone who was at Sturgis. Multiple states have already reported cases linked to the 10-day event which began Aug.7.

“Imagine trying to do contact tracing for the entire city of (Washington), D.C., but you also know that you don’t have any distancing, or the distancing is very, very limited, the masking is limited,” Navin Vembar told the AP, co-founder of Camber Systems. “It all adds up to a very dangerous situation for people all over the place. Contact tracing becomes dramatically difficult.” Continue reading.

Trump Program to Cover Uninsured Covid-19 Patients Falls Short of Promise

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Some patients are still receiving staggering bills. Others don’t qualify because conditions other than Covid-19 were their primary diagnosis.

WASHINGTON — Marilyn Cortez, a retired cafeteria worker in Houston with no health insurance, spent much of July in the hospital with Covid-19. When she finally returned home, she received a $36,000 bill that compounded the stress of her illness.

Then someone from the hospital, Houston Methodist, called and told her not to worry — President Trump had paid it.

But then another bill arrived, for twice as much. Continue reading.

Joe Biden: Let’s Get Back in the Game

Minnesota Leaders Call Out Trump’s COVID-19 Failures as Pence Visited Duluth

ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA – Ahead of Vice President Pence’s visit to Duluth, Minnesota Friday, DFL Party leaders held a press call slamming the Trump admin’s failed response to the coronavirus pandemic, his divisive rhetoric, and the harmful impacts of his policies on Minnesotans. Featured on the call were DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin, General President of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers Joseph Sellers, Duluth Mayor Emily Larson, North East Area Labor Council President Alan Netland, nurse Chris Rubesch, and Duluth resident Beth McCuskey. 

Excerpts from the call:

Joseph Sellers, General President of Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers: “[The Trump administration] doesn’t feel the way we do. They can’t understand it. They can’t relate to the issues that we experience as working families. Joe Biden does. We at SMART call Vice President Biden, ‘Blue Collar Biden,’ why? Because he does. He understands workers. He understands working issues. He understands working family issues, and he can relate to us. Our country is not a company where the mantra is, ‘You’re fired, and you’re fired and you’re fired.’ This administration’s cavalier attitude has collapsed our economy for the 22nd time, more than a million unemployment insurance claims were filed. This administration is disconnected from the pain and the suffering of workers.”

Continue reading “Minnesota Leaders Call Out Trump’s COVID-19 Failures as Pence Visited Duluth”

The Malign Fantasy of Donald Trump’s Convention

Using the White House as his prop, the President makes war on Joe Biden, and pretends the pandemic is all but defeated.

For four years, Donald Trump has been asking us to believe the unbelievable, to accept the unthinkable, to replace harsh realities with simple fantasies. On Thursday night, using the White House as a gaudy backdrop, the President made his case to the American people for four more years. His speech capping the Republican National Convention was long, acerbic, untruthful, and surprisingly muted in comparison to the grandeur of the setting, which no chief executive before him has dared to appropriate in such a partisan way. “We will make America greater than ever before,” he promised.

Even for a salesman like Trump, it was never going to be an easy deal to close, what with a deadly pandemic, mass unemployment, nationwide protests over racial injustice, and even a killer hurricane smashing into the Gulf Coast hours before his speech. Some seventy per cent of Americans currently believe that the country is on the wrong track, according to recent polls. Who can blame them?

This should be devastating context for a President, any President, seeking reëlection, a true picture of American carnage to replace the false one that Trump conjured four years ago. Yet the strategy of Trump and his team is now clear: to talk about how bad things would be in Joe Biden’s America, a violent socialist ruin in which freedom itself will no longer exist and rampaging protesters, like those now committing “rioting, looting, arson, and violence” in “Democrat-run cities,” will be coming soon to a suburb near you. “The hard truth is, you won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America,” Vice-President Mike Pence said on Wednesday night. “No one will be safe in Biden’s America,” Trump said on Thursday night. To say this sounded a bit off in actual America, Trump’s America, does not do justice to the bizarre dissonance of this year’s Republican Convention. Continue reading.

Trump DOJ Targets Democratic Governors For COVID-19 Outbreaks In Veterans Homes

“This really does smell,” said one former Civil Rights Division official who worries the Justice Department is weaponizing its power for political purposes.

President Donald Trump’s top civil rights official at the Department of Justice announced this week that he was considering launching investigations into how state-owned nursing homes responded to the coronavirus. The four states he targeted all have Democratic governors. This highly unusual public announcement of potential investigations raised alarm bells among Civil Rights Division alumni and Democrats that DOJ’s move was motivated by partisan politics. 

Eric Dreiband, the assistant attorney general running the Civil Rights Division, sent letters to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday, requesting documents and information under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA) about how public nursing homes in their states responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cuomo and Whitmer said in a joint statement that the inquiries were “nothing more than a transparent politicization of the Department of Justice in the middle of the Republican National Convention.” They called DOJ’s move a “nakedly partisan deflection” and questioned why Republican-run states that, based on federal guidelines, had similar rules about nursing home admissions were not being targeted. Continue reading.

Four at RNC in Charlotte test positive for coronavirus

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Two attendees and two staffers contracted to work at the Republican National Convention in Charlotte have tested positive for the coronavirus, local health officials said Friday.

Mecklenburg County officials said the four people were isolated and that those with whom they came into contact had been alerted. The health department did not say whether any had shown symptoms of the virus. The two staffers were sent home before attending any convention functions.

Charlotte officials had raised concerns over the lack of social distancing measures taken at even the scaled-back convention, where only a few hundred Republicans gathered to formally renominate President Trump and Vice President Pence. Video of the event showed few people wearing masks and many posing close together for photographs. Continue reading.

Shifting CDC testing guidance sparks backlash

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Public health experts warn that the Trump administration’s change to testing guidance is a step backward in the COVID-19 response that could lead to more cases, outbreaks and deaths.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) altered its guidance this week to say people who have been exposed to COVID-19 “don’t necessarily need a test” if they don’t have symptoms, threatening contact tracing efforts which seek to stop lines of transmission. 

The change alarmed public health officials and experts, who note that about 40 percent of people with COVID-19 are asymptomatic, meaning they will never show symptoms of the virus and won’t know they have it without testing, but can spread it to others who may become seriously ill or die.  Continue reading.

CDC director walks back change in coronavirus testing guidelines

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The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday issued new guidance for coronavirus testing, days after a quiet change sparked protests from the scientific and medical communities.

In a statement, Director Robert Redfield said those who come into contact with confirmed or probable COVID-19 patients could be tested themselves, even if they do not show symptoms of the virus.

“Testing is meant to drive actions and achieve specific public health objectives. Everyone who needs a COVID-19 test, can get a test. Everyone who wants a test does not necessarily need a test; the key is to engage the needed public health community in the decision with the appropriate follow-up action,” Redfield said. Continue reading.

US faces long road on COVID-19 amid signs of improvement

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Coronavirus cases nationally are falling from their July peaks and some hard-hit states are showing signs of improvement, a hopeful sign even as the country deals with about 1,000 COVID-19 deaths every day.

The positive news is still dwarfed by the negative reality of the pandemic’s hold over the country.

Though the situation is not as bad as it was in July, when cases peaked around 70,000 per day, the virus is still circulating around United States at a very high level, with around 40,000 new cases per day, according to the COVID Tracking Project.  Continue reading.