Tag: Pandemic Watch
Top Execs Cashed In on Coronavirus
$9.2 billion
“Top executives at U.S.-traded companies sold a total of roughly $9.2 billion in shares of their own companies between the start of February and the end of last week,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Communities Are Competing for Ventilators
“We’re not going to give away our supply chains right now because it is that competitive.”
— County Executive Ryan McMahon (R), the top official in New York’s Onondaga County, said he had acquired 60 ventilators to be on hand when desperately ill patients with COVID-19 need help breathing, but he won’t say where he got them, the Syracuse Post-Standard reports.
Mixed Signals on the Coronavirus Fight
57%
A new CBS News poll finds 57% of Americans say the nation’s efforts to combat the coronavirus are going badly right now, most call it a crisis and see a months-long process before it is contained. But this is curious: 53% say President Trump is doing a good job handling the outbreak, and 54% are optimistic about his administration’s ability to handle it from here, though 66% also feel the Trump administration was not prepared to deal with it when it started.
The Pandemic Is Accelerating
350,000
“The coronavirus pandemic that’s spread to nearly every country in the world is picking up pace, the World Health Organization said Monday, as global cases eclipsed 350,000 and deaths soared past 15,000,” CNBC reports. Reuters reports the WHO was seeing a “very large acceleration” in coronavirus infections in the United States which had the potential of becoming the new epicenter.
CDC: Not a Question of If, but When for Covid-19
“It’s not so much of a question of if this will happen in this country any more but a question of when this will happen.”
— The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that Americans should brace for the likelihood that the coronavirus will spread to communities in the United States, the New York Times reports.
Angry WH Staffer: The Trump Response to the Pandemic, So Far
The Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus thus far:
– it’s fine, it’ll die out when it gets hot
– stocks are looking good
– OMG Johns Hopkins pay-walled me, how the hell am I supposed to find out about the contagion now?!
— Angry Staffer (@AngrierWHStaff) February 25, 2020
Conservatives Who Fear an Epidemic Crossing the Border Should Stop Blocking America’s First Line of Defense: Access to Healthcare
Via: The Advisory Board Company
In July, Rep. Phil Gingrey, a Georgia tea partyist, claimed in a letter to his constituents that amid the “crisis at our southern border,” there are “reports of illegal migrants carrying deadly diseases such as … Ebola virus.” Even the widely discredited fact-checker Politifact labeled Gingrey’s dire assertion a “Pants on Fire” lie. Gingrey, who also happens to be a physician, should know better — and probably does.
Despite having been labeled a lie, Gingrey’s assertion set the right-wing propaganda machine in movtion. Fox News ran with a story headlined, “Ebola Outbreak Fuels Concerns over Health Risks along US-Mexico Border.” Breitbart.com, the website started by the late racist and notorious news-faker Andrew Breitbart, warned that “experts” claim “Ebola Could Cross Unsecured Border.” The birther site World Net Daily asked, “Could Ebola Sneak Across U.S. Border?” The lawsuit-happy Clinton-haters at Judicial Watch expanded the threat level beyond Ebola, warning that, “Illegal Alien Minors Spreading TB, Dengue, Swine Flu.”
The threat of an epidemic in the United States is not unrealistic, nor is it new. The world has been one chicken sneeze away from a global pandemic for decades, even centuries. If the worst were to occur — if the GOP’s fears were realized — it would hit the United States where it is most vulnerable, in its first line of defense: Its healthcare system.