Tag: Public Health

This is Completely Unsurprising

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It turns out that former Michigan Governor Rick Snyder knew about the dangerous toxicity of the City of Flint’s new water supply months before he admitted it.

In fact, he knew before there were any adverse health consequences, and he knew tht there WOULD be adverse health consequences, which makes him a murderer.

Here is hoping that he goes to jail for a very long time:

During the inauguration of his successor, outgoing Michigan Governor Rick Snyder needed a favor.

At the January 2019 event, Snyder approached Karen Weaver, who was then the mayor of Flint, a city of nearly 100,000 people that was still reeling from financial decay and a toxic-water crisis. He asked whether she could meet with Congressman Elijah Cummings.

“You have a lot of influence with him,” Weaver remembered a worried Snyder saying to her about Cummings. At the time, Cummings was the incoming chairman of the powerful U.S. House Oversight Committee.

Throughout the water crisis, Cummings led the charge as Congress demanded Snyder and his administration provide more information about what he knew about the poisonous water that ravaged the impoverished majority-minority Rust Belt city after it switched water sources to the corrosive Flint River in 2014, and when he knew it. More specifically, Cummings pushed for more information on when Snyder first learned of the lethal Legionella pneumophila bacterial outbreak in Flint. Snyder testified to Congress that he first became aware of Legionella in January 2016 and held a press conference the next day. Flint residents didn’t believe the governor; their doubt intensified after Harvey Hollins, the director of the state’s Urban and Metropolitan Initiatives office, contradicted the governor, testifying to Congress that he informed Snyder about Flint’s Legionella outbreak in December 2015.

Back at the inauguration, Weaver said, Snyder asked her to get Cummings to “back off” from investigating him, emphasizing that he wanted to move on with his life as a private citizen. He said “it would go a long way” if the request to the congressman came from her, Weaver recalled to VICE. Weaver’s former spokesperson, Candice Mushatt, as well as two other sources, confirmed that she had described the governor’s request to them after it occurred. (Snyder did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story).

………

After a VICE investigation spanning a year and a half across the state of Michigan, overwhelming evidence indicates Snyder had good reason to worry.

Hundreds of confidential pages of documents obtained by VICE, along with emails and interviews, reveal a coordinated, five-year cover-up overseen by Snyder and his top officials to prevent news of Flint’s deadly water from going public—while there was still time to save lives—and then limit the damage after the crisis made global headlines.

All told, the waterborne bacterial disease may have killed at least 115 people in 2014 and 2015, and potentially more whose pneumonia wasn’t officially considered Legionnaires’ disease, the illness caused by Legionella. In addition to the outbreak, Flint’s water supply was contaminated with lead and other heavy metals, harmful bacteria, carcinogens, and other toxic components. This wreaked havoc on Flint residents, leaving them with a laundry list of illnesses, including kidney and liver problems, severe bone and muscle pain, gastrointestinal problems, loss of teeth, autoimmune diseases, neurological deficiencies, miscarriages, Parkinson’s disease, severe fatigue, seizures, and volatile mood disorders.

………

VICE has learned that prosecutors leading the criminal investigation secretly subpoenaed key members of Snyder’s inner circle, including chief of staff Dennis Muchmore, Snyder’s “fixer” and top adviser Rich Baird, and state treasurer Andy Dillon, as they built a case against the governor. Documents reveal the governor’s chief legal counsel, Beth Clement, knew Snyder’s top officials were subpoenaed by prosecutors, suggesting Snyder knew as well (a spokesperson for Clement, now a judge, said she couldn’t comment on a case pending in any court). The aggressive investigation into Snyder may explain why the governor’s office’s legal fees, paid for by state taxpayers, came to at least $8.5 million in the years after the water crisis made national headlines.

Snyder and his administration were investigated by a team led by special prosecutor Todd Flood from 2016 to 2019. The team concluded that the administration had “committed conspiracies of ongoing crimes, like an organized crime unit,” a source with knowledge of the probe told VICE.

But before a case against Snyder could develop, the state’s newly appointed attorney general, Dana Nessel, fired top prosecutors and investigators pursuing the case.

Investigative subpoena documents obtained by VICE, along with details from sources with knowledge of the Flint water criminal prosecution, reveal that:

  • Snyder was warned about the dangers of using the Flint River as a water source a year before the water switch even occurred.
  • Snyder had knowledge of the Legionella outbreak in Flint as early as October 2014, six months after the water switch—and 16 months earlier than he claimed to have learned of the deadly outbreak in testimony under oath before Congress.
  • communication among Snyder, his top officials, and the state health department spiked in October 2014 around the same time state environmental and health officials traded emails and calls about the Legionella outbreak in Flint.

According to sources familiar with the criminal investigation, as well as Flint residents VICE spoke to, during those 16 months, Snyder’s top advisor, Baird, attempted to pay off sick Flint residents to keep quiet and silenced a whistleblower sounding alarms over the city using the Flint River while there was still time to save lives. And Snyder himself “punished” Weaver, Flint’s mayor, she said, after she repeatedly refused his administration’s requests for her to declare the water safe in Flint to residents.


What follows is the full, never-before-told story behind the cover-up of a government poisoning tens of thousands of innocent people—and the ongoing, six-year-old crisis.

………
But that latter proposal wasn’t free of flaws either. Genesee County, which Flint is part of, was the majority owner of the proposed KWA; oddly, the county’s elected drain commissioner, Jeff Wright, doubled as KWA CEO. Wright had a checkered past: In 2005, he was accused of laundering funds during his 2000 drain commissioner campaign; he ultimately wasn’t charged and denied the allegations, but the FBI did seize his campaign records. Years later, Wright became an FBI informant.

………
In March 2013, more than a year before the Flint River switch, Stephen Busch, a supervisor with MDEQ’s drinking water division, emailed other environmental officials in preparation for a call about Flint’s water options with state treasurer Dillon, Busch, and MDEQ director Dan Wyant. Busch warned that continuous use of the Flint River would pose “an increased microbial risk to public health” along with an “increased risk of disinfection by-product (carcinogen)” to Flint residents.

In the investigative subpoena interview between treasurer Dillon and special prosecutor Flood obtained by VICE, Dillon didn’t deny that Busch repeated his email’s warnings on the call they had the same day. Soon after the call, a source familiar with the details of the Flint water criminal investigation told VICE that Dillon and MDEQ director Dan Wyant—whom, VICE learned, prosecutors interviewed—briefed Governor Snyder in person on Busch’s warning about the hazards of the Flint River.

………
By the time Snyder received Busch’s October 2014 memo about the potential for a dangerous bacteria to be in the water, Flint residents had already been poisoned for six months.

“The source of the outbreak may be the Flint municipal water,” state epidemiologist Shannon Johnson wrote in an email to colleagues on October 13, 2014. This was the same day General Motors announced it would discontinue using the Flint River because high levels of chloride in the river water corroded its parts. A state health spokesperson told VICE that Johnson couldn’t answer questions “due to the ongoing criminal investigation.”
………


“He’s a fixer, he’s an old-fashioned fixer,” a source familiar with the criminal investigation told VICE. Baird’s M.O. was “by any means possible: threaten, coerce, whatever, to fix these things for Snyder.”

Baird’s “fixing” for Snyder expanded as the water crisis unfolded, allegedly descending into identifying Flint residents who could damage Snyder—and trying to pay them off.

By 2017, Flint resident Adam Murphy had become ill with seizures, memory loss, and double vision. Things grew so bad he could no longer work as a millwright welder. His then-wife Christina developed severe skeletal and muscle pain. Their newborn son Declan’s umbilical cord blood tested positive for lead in 2016 (the CDC cites no safe lead level for children).

Angry and desperate for help, Adam unleashed his rage at a water-crisis town hall in January 2017. A police officer removed him from the event and said she’d connect him with a top state official who could help his family, Christina recalled to VICE. Adam’s outburst received attention in the Flint Journal and the Detroit News.

Weeks later, Baird, an imposing man with broad shoulders and white-grey hair, stood in the Murphys’ living room, bizarrely flanked by former Army National Guard colonel Scott W. Hiipakka, a state trooper, and Sheryl Thompson, an official from the state health department, according to Christina. Baird was there representing Snyder, or as he told them, his “best friend.” He told the Murphys that the Snyder administration would fully pay for a medical treatment for Adam called chelation therapy, which injects agents into the body to bind to heavy metals like lead and extract them.

………
The Murphys weren’t the only Flint family Baird allegedly tried to silence, according to sources familiar with the details of the criminal investigation.

………
According to Mays, Baird approached her in May 2018, not-so-subtly trying to pay her off.

“Rick and I are out at the end of the year, so we have nothing to lose,” Mays recalled Baird saying. Baird allegedly said he was so tired of Flint residents’ complaining and lacking appreciation for all Snyder had done for them that he unilaterally, without the governor knowing, decided to end free water-bottle sites throughout Flint.

Mays told VICE she offered Baird to shower in her home as a demonstration of how unsafe the water still was. She also emphasized the need for transparent, non-state or EPA-funded water testing.

Baird’s response wasn’t subtle, according to Mays. “How about I do this: If I come in and replace your interior plumbing, your fixtures, the water heater, and your service line, would that make you happy and would that make you quiet?”

She didn’t flinch: “I just looked at him and said ‘If you do that for everybody,’” she remembered. “He turned beet red.”

Unfortunately, it does appear that the Snyder coverup will work, because the statute of limitations will expire in just a few months.

Here is Hoping that the Piranhas Wipe Him Out

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Jerry Falwell, Jr. decided that Covid-19 was a left wing hoax, and so kept his Liberty “University” open.

When the press reported on this, he filed trumped up (pun not intended) charges against the reporters.

Now, after being forced to shut down by public outrage and the implied threat of actions by the local authorities, he is refusing to refund tuition and fees, and he is being sued for this:

Liberty University breached contracts with its students and profited from the pandemic by refusing to refund fees for campus services scrapped when the Covid-19 outbreak hit, an unnamed student has alleged in a federal class action lawsuit against the prominent Christian school.

The lawsuit stands to ratchet up attention first prompted by Liberty President Jerry Falwell Jr.’s decision to welcome students back to campus last month for online learning, while the virus continued to kill and sicken growing numbers of Americans.

………

At Liberty, the lawsuit claims the school refused to refund unused portions of fees despite ending on-campus services and activities for the rest of the semester. The lawsuit further alleges that any refunds offered to students have been a “mere fraction” of what the school actually owes. The school offered a $1,000 credit to students who didn’t return to campus residence halls, the lawsuit said.

“Liberty University is, in a very real sense, profiting from the COVID-19 pandemic — keeping its campus and campus services ‘open’ as a pretext to retain Plaintiff’s and the other Class members’ room, board, and campus fees, despite no longer having to incur the full cost of providing those services, all the while putting students’ finances and health at risk,” the lawsuit alleged.

………

It also says the plaintiff is unnamed because of “a legitimate fear of retaliation and harassment, both from Liberty and its supporters, for proceeding with this claim”— including expulsion.

Here is hoping that Liberty gets bankrupted.  It is a cancer on the face of American education.

She’s Got Michelle Bachmann Eyes*

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Republican Crazy Eyes

It looks like another right wing politician worshiping at the altar of Trump is now discovering that that whole Golden Calf thing was a warning, not an instruction.

So now South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has one of the largest Covid-19 clusters, and a significant proportion of the United States pork production has been taken off line, and her state is in a world of hurt.

And yes, she has some seriously CRAZY eyes:

As governors across the country fell into line in recent weeks, South Dakota’s top elected leader stood firm: There would be no statewide order to stay home.

Such edicts to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus, Gov. Kristi L. Noem said disparagingly, reflected a “herd mentality.” It was up to individuals — not government — to decide whether “to exercise their right to work, to worship and to play. Or to even stay at home.”

And besides, the first-term Republican told reporters at a briefing this month, “South Dakota is not New York City.”

But now South Dakota is home to one of the largest single coronavirus clusters anywhere in the United States, with more than 300 workers at a giant ­pork-processing plant falling ill. With the case numbers continuing to spike, the company was forced to announce the indefinite closure of the facility Sunday, threatening the U.S. food supply.

“A shelter-in-place order is needed now. It is needed today,” said Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken, whose city is at the center of South Dakota’s outbreak and who has had to improvise with voluntary recommendations in the absence of statewide action.

You know, if your only goal is to drown the government in a bath tub, it’s a tough to sell in the middle of a pandemic.

*Apologies to Kim Carnes.

Some Garbage Airline ———

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You know, I don’t wanna name an actual airline so let’s just make one up; let’s call it, “Delta Airlines,” just instructed its employees not to tell other employees if they test positive for Covid-19, because allowing employees to take precautions might interfere with the cash flow.

Can we find a way to throw these motherf%$#ers in jail?

Delta Air Lines has directed flight attendants who test positive for the coronavirus to “refrain from notifying” fellow crew members or posting about their health on social media, according to an email HuffPost reviewed.

The email, sent Thursday afternoon to more than 25,000 flight attendants, stated that Delta management will “follow an established process” to alert co-workers who recently came in contact with flight attendants who “are symptomatic or diagnosed with COVID-19,” the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus.

“Please refrain from notifying other crew members on your own,” read the email, which was sent at 2:20 p.m. Eastern time. “Once you have completed the reporting procedures listed above, leaders will follow the established process to notify any impacted flight attendants.”

The Current Crisis is the Direct Result of the For Profit Healthcare System

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It should go without saying, but no one actually discusses it, so it has to be said, that the reason that the US health care system is in such bad shape because we have spent the past 40+ years reserve capacity out of the system in the name of “efficiency”.

To quote Bill S., “It is a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing.”

Capitalism leads to just in time, and just in time leads to a fragile system:

By the middle of this week, nearly fifty thousand residents of New York City were confirmed to have the coronavirus. The actual number of coronavirus cases is of course much higher, as testing has been elusive. But the crisis is visible: over a thousand New Yorkers have died. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has sent the city eighty-five refrigerated trucks to be used as mobile morgues.

Hospitals are overwhelmed. The volume of calls for ambulance rides has nearly doubled. Nurses are comparing the situation to “battlefield triage.” In response, the city has transformed the Javits Convention Center and a tennis stadium into ad-hoc hospitals. A Navy hospital ship has docked at Pier 90 and opened its doors to overflow patients.

In Central Park, an evangelical Christian organization erected a field hospital with the blessing of the city and at the request of Mt Sinai. The organization, Samaritan’s Purse, is run by Franklin Graham, who’s known for his homophobic extremism. Mayor Bill de Blasio promised that the facility wouldn’t discriminate.

When you’ve reached the point where the mayor is assuring the public that the makeshift tent hospital in the city’s park won’t deny treatment to those condemned to an eternity in hell by the founder of the charity organization supplying the beds, something has gone terribly wrong.

Of course, desperate times call for desperate measures. But these times didn’t have to be so desperate to begin with. Typically if one hospital is overcrowded, a patient can be transferred to another hospital in the vicinity. But all of New York City’s hospitals are overcrowded. This wasn’t inevitable: New York City has lost nearly twenty hospitals, and tens of thousands of hospital beds, in the last two decades. In 2000, New York City had 73,931 hospital beds. Now it has 53,000, a reduction of nearly thirty percent.

The problem is not unique to New York City. Across the country, in rural and urban environments alike, hospitals are shuttering. A report by Morgan Stanley analysts “found that 8% of U.S. hospitals were at risk of closing and another 10% were considered weak.” At least thirty US hospitals entered bankruptcy last year alone.

If you want cheap underwear, capitalism works.

If you want public health and safety in an emergency, capitalism leaves you bereft of resources.

Thanks, Elon

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After promising to deliver hundreds (thousands) of ventilators to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, Elon Musk has delivered high end CPAP machines:

Some of you might have noticed that we recently started a series called Corona Tools, in honour of those who are really standing out from the crowd during this crisis. But we needn’t have bothered, really. Because one man is fast emerging from this virus as the Corona Super Tool, leaving all the others in the (space) dust.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Elon Musk.

………

After playing down the virus since January, our Elon suddenly last week seemed like maybe he had taken a Trump-style turn, and had decided that maybe Covid-19 was something that needed to be taken seriously after all. Though he earlier said he would produce ventilators but only “if there’s a shortage” (as if there weren’t already one), he then announced on March 24 that he’d bought over 1,255 “FDA-approved ventilators” from China and had delivered them to Los Angeles.

A few days later, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio was thanking him for “donating hundreds of ventilators to New York City and State, including our public hospitals”, saying he was “deeply grateful”.

Fair play, we thought. At least he seems to be trying to help, rather than mounting some silly PR stunt, like, we dunno, building a kid-size submarine or something. We were a bit confused, however, by how it seemed so easy for him to procure over 1,000 ventilators when the rest of the world’s governments seemed to be suffering from such a dire shortage.

On Wednesday, we got a sneak peek of some of these ventilators:

………

You might also be surprised to see there, on top of the boxes, not a ventilator, but a BPAP (Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure, also called a “BiPAP” machine), which is used to treat sleep apnoea by maintaining a consistent breathing pattern at night (it’s very similar to a CPAP machine, but it has two pressure settings rather than just one).

Now BPAP and CPAP machines are sometimes called “non-invasive ventilators”, but these are not the ventilators that can be used in intensive care units, which are invasive ventilators that deliver oxygen to the lungs and are used as part of life support.

Well, that’s at LEAST honest as Musk’s promises of self driving mode for his cars, I guess.

Instacart Treats Its Employees Like Sh%$, and Now Its Customers Will Die

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Some Instacart employees went on strike because the the grocery delivery company was not protecting its employees from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Now we know that they have endangered their customers as well:

Late last night (Monday, March 30), an In-Store Shopper in the Cambridge, MA area shared with us an email they received from Instacart corporate —probably the last email anyone would want to see at this point in time:


Instacart’s email sent to an In-Store Shopper, as provided to Gig Workers Collective

As Instacart spent Monday discrediting our workers’ strike, downplaying the requests we and thousands of other Shoppers and customers were making, they were also busy informing their workers that they may have been working alongside a confirmed case of COVID-19 at a store in Cambridge.

This is the exact worst-case scenario we wrote about when giving our reasons for a strike. In-Store and Full-Service Shoppers work in close quarters with each other and with other people in stores. The virus is confirmed to be present in at least one of these workplaces now. These Shoppers handle produce, groceries and supplies that are then delivered to Instacart customers. Often many hundreds of customers per day. Without adequate measures, Instacart Full-Service Shoppers and In-Store Shoppers can unknowingly become vectors for the disease and multiply the danger for everyone involved.

(emphasis original)

Once again, I will remind you that if an employers treats its own employees like sh^%, they will treat their customers like sh%$.

They are Keeping Sailors Confined to a Plague Ship

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It’s the USS Theodore Roosevelt, and its skipper is begging for its crew to be put ashore because of a Covid-19 outbreak:

The captain of a nuclear aircraft carrier with more than 100 sailors infected with the coronavirus pleaded Monday with U.S. Navy officials for resources to allow isolation of his entire crew and avoid possible deaths in a situation he described as quickly deteriorating.

The unusual plea from Capt. Brett Crozier, a Santa Rosa native, came in a letter obtained exclusively by The Chronicle and confirmed by a senior officer on board the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, which has been docked in Guam following a COVID-19 outbreak among the crew of more than 4,000 less than a week ago.

“This will require a political solution but it is the right thing to do,” Crozier wrote. “We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset — our Sailors.”

In the four-page letter to senior military officials, Crozier said only a small contingent of infected sailors have been off-boarded. Most of the crew remain aboard the ship, where following official guidelines for 14-day quarantines and social distancing is impossible.

………

Mark Cancian, a Marine colonel who served for 37 years before retiring, said that “the Navy has got to figure out how to do this right or else they can’t deploy the rest of the fleet. 

Indeed.

God, It’s Me, Matthew, Could You Smite These Motherf%$#ers?

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The religious nutjobs setting up a tent hospital in central park are requiring anyone who volunteers for service sign an agreement to discriminate against the LGBT community:

On Tuesday morning, a makeshift tent hospital in Central Park will begin treating overflow patients from Mount Sinai, as the spread of COVID-19 begins to overwhelm local hospitals. Announcing the 68-bed respiratory unit this weekend, Mayor Bill de Blasio praised the relief organization, Samaritan’s Purse, responsible for funding and erecting the facility.

The mayor did not mention that the group is led by Franklin Graham, a notorious anti-LGBTQ and Islamophobic preacher with a track record of using humanitarian missions to proselytize an evangelical agenda.

Graham, the son of prominent minister Billy Graham, has specifically sought to recruit Christian medical staff to the Central Park facility. According to the group’s website, all volunteers, including health care workers, should read and adhere to a statement of faith, in which marriage is defined as “exclusively the union of one genetic male and one genetic female” and the unrighteous are sentenced to “everlasting punishment in hell.”

………

Samaritan’s Purse, which holds a reported $650 million in net assets, has a lengthy history of using disaster aid to spread their agenda. A campaign known as Operation Christmas Child, which delivers gift boxes to children in Muslim countries, has been criticized as a conversion scheme.

Seriously, Hashem, you smote the Israelites for conducting a census in an sloppy manner. 

Smite Franklin Graham.  It’s long overdue.

“Rat Faced Andy” Cuomo Strikes Again

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Tax pied-a-terres.
Tax private jets.
Tax yachts.
Tax stock transfers and buybacks.
Tax commercial vacancies.
Tax carried interest.

We need government in New York more than ever. Now is not the time to starve it. Tax the super-wealthy. #BudgetJustice

— Senator Brad Hoylman (@bradhoylman) March 27, 2020

In response to a the pandemic Andrew Cuomo is proposing cuts to the state Medicaid program, because he has spent his ENTIRE time in office cutting taxes on rich people, so the only solution to a hole blown in the state budget is to f%$# the poors:

A panel appointed by New York governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled on Thursday its plan to reduce the state’s Medicaid spending by some $400 million over the next year. The plan will now go to the state legislature for consideration. Remarkably, the proposal is being put forward in the middle of a healthcare crisis that threatens the very lives of the many vulnerable New Yorkers who depend upon such services as Medicaid.

The proposed $400 million cut is part of a bigger program to slash the medicaid budget by $2.5 billion over several years. As the state’s Department of Health website put it, the panel, known as the Medicaid Redesign Team (MRT), was put together in February with the goal of “restoring financial sustainability to the Medicaid program while connecting other programmatic initiatives that would advance the core healthcare strategies [Cuomo] has pursued since taking office in 2011.”

As the Doctors Council noted in an urgent call to action released on March 10, the MRT has “little to no frontline doctor representation or representatives of patients and communities, and no one from NYC Health + Hospitals (NYCH+H).”

I would note that this guy is considered to be the “Great White Hope” by the Democratic Party establishment (there is no Democratic Party establishment), and being considered as a replacement for Joe Biden should he have issues as a result of ……… well ……… being Joe Biden.

“Rat Faced Andy” Cuomo  abides, I guess.

ない愚かさはない薬です*

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So, Jerry Falwell, Jr. decided that Covid-19 was a a liberal hoax, and brought his students back, and now there is an explosion of cases at the “educational” institution:

As Liberty University’s spring break was drawing to a close this month, Jerry Falwell Jr., its president, spoke with the physician who runs Liberty’s student health service about the rampaging coronavirus.

 “We’ve lost the ability to corral this thing,” Dr. Thomas W. Eppes Jr. said he told Mr. Falwell. But he did not urge him to close the school. “I just am not going to be so presumptuous as to say, ‘This is what you should do and this is what you shouldn’t do,’” Dr. Eppes said in an interview.

 So Mr. Falwell — a staunch ally of President Trump and an influential voice in the evangelical world — reopened the university last week, igniting a firestorm. As of Friday, Dr. Eppes said, nearly a dozen Liberty students were sick with symptoms that suggested Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. Three were referred to local hospital centers for testing. Another eight were told to self-isolate.

………

For critical weeks in January and February, the nation’s far right dismissed the seriousness of the pandemic. Mr. Falwell derided it as an “overreaction” driven by liberal desires to damage Mr. Trump.

Though the current crisis would appear epidemiological in nature, Dr. Eppes said he saw it as a reflection of “the political divide.”

Seriously, only Jerry Falwell, Jr. could make Jerry Fallwell, Sr. look good.

There are going to be dead students at Liberty because of his arrogance, and the blood will be on his hands.

*Pronounced in Japanese, “baka ni tsukeru kusuri wanai”, which means, “There is no medicine for stupidity.” Apologies for any inaccuracies in the text, I do not know Japanese.

Dan Patrick, While You Are Doing Your Patriotic Duty and Expiring, Could You Please Also Dine on Excrement?

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Tx Lt Gov Dan Patrick says grandparents would be willing to die to save the economy for their grandchildren pic.twitter.com/wC3Ngvtsbj

— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) March 24, 2020

Yes, I am suggesting that the Lt. Governor of the Great State of Texas eat sh%$ and die.

After all, he is a grandparent, and apparently a card carrying member of the Cult of Trump™, and he is suggesting that we need to throw HIM from the train to help the US economy:

Everyone is talking about Dan Patrick’s on-air death plea.

Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas, touched off an outpouring of anger when he declared to Tucker Carlson that people like him — grandparents in their twilight years — should risk death so people can stop social distancing to avert economic calamity.

………

Patrick, a Republican, noted that it’s time to “get back to work,” adding that seniors such as him should be willing to be “sacrificed” if necessary, so our children don’t “lose our whole country” to an “economic collapse”:

No one reached out to me and said, “As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?” And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in.

Seriously, eat sh%$ and die dude.

It will make the world, and America, a better place.

This is a Shocker (Not)

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Donald Trump is talking about relaxing the Covid-19 restrictions for to boost the economy.

It turns out that he started talking about this when his most lucrative properties started getting shut down:

President Trump’s private business has shut down six of its top seven revenue-producing clubs and hotels because of restrictions meant to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, potentially depriving Trump’s company of millions of dollars in revenue.

Those closures come as Trump is considering easing restrictions on movement sooner than federal public health experts recommend, in the name of reducing the virus’s economic damage.

In a tweet late Sunday, Trump said the measures could be lifted as soon as March 30. “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF,” he wrote on Twitter.

………

The company, which Trump says is run day-to-day by his sons Eric and Don Jr., has not said whether it would apply for a bailout of the hotel industry, if Congress created one.

Trump has not, either. On Sunday, he was asked if his business would abstain from any federal bailout. He did not give a clear answer. “Everything’s changing, just so you understand, it’s all changing,” he said. “But I have no idea.”

Trump’s business includes some commercial office buildings, which have long-term leases and should not be hurt as immediately by the virus. But he is also heavily invested in the hotel business, with 11 hotels around the world.

………

So far, the Trump Organization has closed hotels in Las Vegas; Doral, Fla.; Ireland; and Turnberry, Scotland — as well as the Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida and a golf club in Bedminster, N.J. Many of the clubs closed because they had to, under local orders. Others closed on their own, following strong guidance or recommendations from local officials.

Those are six of Trump’s top seven revenue-producing clubs and hotels, bringing in about $174 million total per year, according to Trump’s most recent financial disclosures. That works out to $478,000 per day — revenue that is likely to be sharply reduced with the clubs shuttered. The disclosures provide self-reported revenue figures but not profits.

Another of Trump’s golf clubs, in Aberdeen, Scotland, appeared likely to shut down soon, after an order from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson that “nonessential” shops should close and that people should leave home only to buy food, buy medicine or exercise alone.

Even the Trump properties that remain open have been sharply affected: In Chicago, New York and Washington, the restaurants have closed, cutting off a key source of revenue.

………

If Trump did loosen restrictions on movement in the name of restarting the U.S. economy, that would probably increase the number of people staying in hotels, said Freitag, the hotel industry analyst from STR.

Donald Trump raises self-dealing to heretofore undreamt levels in the United States.
This man is literally going to infect millions of people in order to protect his bottom line.

Welcome to the 3rd World

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The US State Department is begging lesser developed nations for medical supplies.

This is what 45 years of embracing neoliberal policies, or, to put it in another way, we have been eating our seed corn:

The U.S. State Department is instructing its top diplomats to press governments and businesses in Eastern Europe and Eurasia to ramp up exports and production of life-saving medical equipment and protective gear for the United States, part of a desperate diplomatic campaign to fill major shortcomings in the U.S. medical system amid a rising death toll from the new coronavirus.

The appeal comes as European governments are themselves struggling to cope with one of the worst pandemics to spread around the globe since the 1918 Spanish flu. It represents a stark turnaround for the United States, which has traditionally taken the lead in trying to help other less-developed countries contend with major humanitarian disasters and epidemics.

The request could also undercut claims by U.S. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly insisted that the United States can handle demands for tests and medical equipment on its own, declining to fully implement the Defense Production Act to mandate that U.S. companies produce these products. “We have so many companies making so many products—every product that you mentioned, plus ventilators and everything else. We have car companies—without having to use the act. If I don’t have to use—specifically, we have the act to use, in case we need it. But we have so many things being made right now by so many—they’ve just stepped up,” Trump said at a press conference on March 21.

Gee, you really think that, “The request could also undercut claims by U.S. President Donald Trump?”

Really?

Politics in the Coronavirus Response

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The Republican Attorney General of Ohio has decided to use the corona virus as a way to shut down abortion clinics in the state.

When Democrats talk about not politicizing the crisis, you need to understand that the Republicans ARE politicizing the crisis as we speak:

Ohio’s attorney general has ordered clinics to halt many abortions under a new statewide measure to conserve health-care resources amid the coronavirus pandemic, going against the urgings of many medical professionals.

Officials in Washington state and Massachusetts have clarified that similar orders pausing elective surgeries do not apply to abortions, and several national medical associations earlier this week advised against canceling or delaying the procedures — a key part of “comprehensive health care,” they said — because of the coronavirus outbreak. But Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost (R) on Friday and Saturday ordered several facilities, about which he said the Health Department has received complaints, to stop their “nonessential” abortions.

As clinics say they will proceed undeterred, the fight over what constitutes essential care in Ohio could be the first of many as more states heed the U.S. government’s calls for hospitals to suspend unneeded operations and as doctors and nurses warn they’re running out of masks, gowns and drugs.

Seriously, the Democrats are bringing a rubber chicken to a gun-fight.

Could Not Happen to a More Deserving Rat-F%$#

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Senator Rand Paul, who voted against Covid-19 relief, is the first Senator to test positive for the virus.

I am intensely amused by this. Does this make me a bad person?

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has tested positive for the coronavirus, his office announced on Twitter Sunday.

 Why it matters: He’s the first U.S. senator to test positive. According to his office, Paul is asymptomatic and was not aware of making direct contact with an infected person.

  • Paul, a licensed physician and notorious deficit hawk, was the only senator to vote against a bipartisan $8 billion deal to provide emergency coronavirus funding earlier this month.

  • He sought to introduce an amendment that would take the funding from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, but it was voted down 80-16.

It’s the little things that make life good.

This is one of them.

Ha Ha!!

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Facing a crisis with COVID-19, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is reversing himself, and bringing back the Cuban doctors that he expelled when he toook office, because he now realizes just how badly he has f%$#ed himself now that he, and the rest of the world, is facing a potentially deadly pandemic:

Brazil is set to hire more doctors to fight coronavirus and the drive will include Cuban doctors in Brazil as part of a medical program that was canceled in late 2018 amid a diplomatic spat between Havana and Jair Bolsonaro, the health ministry said on Monday.

Health ministry officials said they will initially look to hire Brazilian nationals, but after that, they would try to bring in Cuban doctors – collateral damage in a war-of-words between President Jair Bolsonaro, who was then the president-elect, and Havana.

Bolsonaro, a far-right army captain, has for years railed against communist Cuba, which had close ties to previous leftists administrations in Brasilia.

It appears that Bolsonaro thinks that the Cubans have a robust system of medical schools, which allows them to provide doctors countries around the world which lack proper medical personnel.

I guess that this makes him Putin’s stooge.

What Dealing With the Pandemic Seriously Looks Like

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The Spanish Government has taken control of all private hospitals in order to effectively fight the corona virus pandemic:

The Spanish government has nationalized all of its hospitals and healthcare providers in the country in its latest move to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

The Ministry of Health in Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s administration on Monday announced it would put all of Spain’s private health providers and their facilities into public control as the spread of COVID-19 continues to grip the country.

………

“The government of Spain will protect all its citizens and will guarantee the right life conditions to slow the pandemic with as little inconvenience as possible,” Sánchez said.

Madrid has also closed restaurants, bars, and shops — except for supermarkets and pharmacies. Authorities are using drones to monitor the movements of its citizens.

There were 9,191 confirmed cases of the virus in Spain as of Monday, with 309 deaths linked to it.

In one fell swoop, Spain has dealt with a problem, profiteering, that the US government is actively encouraging.

That’s why Trump’s head of the CDC said, “I guess I anticipated that the private sector would have engaged and helped develop it for the clinical side.”

The powers that be in the United States, in both parties, are so wedded to the rules of Neoliberalism:

  1. Because markets.
  2. Go die!

Gee, You Think?

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An interconnected world is one which is more vulnerable to disruptions, so, when Christine Lagarde, the head of the European Central bank is warning that COVID-19 could trigger a bigger meltdown than the Great Recession of 2008, she is merely stating the obvious:

The president of the European Central Bank has warned that the coronavirus outbreak will spark an economic downturn in Europe similar to the 2008 financial crash unless EU governments provide financial support for their economies.

Christine Lagarde held a call with EU leaders on Tuesday night to urge them to take action and raise spending in order to counter the economic effects of Covid-19, a source with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg.

The eurozone’s central bank boss reportedly added that Europe would otherwise be at risk of a “scenario that will remind many of us of the 2008 Great Financial Crisis”. Lagarde said the ECB was considering all of its options before its meeting on Thursday, when it is widely expected to cut interest rates and expand its quantitative easing programme, according to Bloomberg.

The downside of globalization,  is that you creating a system which is more vulnerable, and more more likely to suffer from catastrophic cascading cascading failures.

This is exactly what happened in 2008.