Tag: Trump politicization of COVID-19 response

‘You’re ruining my country!’ Man has epic public meltdown after gym trainer asks him to wear a mask

A man was caught on camera last week having a public meltdown at an Anytime Fitness gym after a trainer asked him to wear a face mask.

Local news station WISTV reports that Adrian Aguilar, a trainer at the Anytime Fitness located in Edgewater, Illinois, tried to ask 30-year-old Anthony Myers to comply with the gym’s policies regarding face masks to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Myers did not take kindly to his requests, however, and started angrily berating him. Continue reading.

He didn’t take covid-19 seriously. Being hospitalized ‘made a believer’ out of him.

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The coronavirus didn’t seem like a big deal to Craig Buescher at first. Still, he thought he was being careful.

He wore a mask in public — most of the time. He limited his circle of friends, but still saw six or eight people. He largely followed the rules, but admits that he occasionally stretched them.

Buescher was 69 and in good health. Surely, he thought, the virus wouldn’t be that bad if he came down with it. Continue reading.

COVID-19 surveys halted in Minnesota amid racism, intimidation

A door-to-door COVID-19 testing survey has been halted due to multiple incidents in greater Minnesota of residents intimidating and shouting racial and ethnic slurs at state and federal public health survey teams.

The CDC pulled its federal surveyors out of Minnesota this week following reports of verbal abuse and intimidation, including an incident in the Iowa border town of Eitzen, Minn., in which a survey team walking to a house was blocked by two cars and threatened by three men, according to state health officials. One man had his hand on a holstered gun.

Frustration with the state’s pandemic response “is totally understandable,” said Dr. Ruth Lynfield, state epidemiologist, “but that is distinctly different than taking out frustration on another human being who is trying to help and is especially galling when there is a taint of racism. There is no justification for this — the enemy is the virus and not the public health workers who are trying to help.” Continue reading.