Vice President Mike Pence traveled to Louisiana Tuesday to meet with Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards and the state’s two Republican Senators to share his message about the importance of opening all schools in the fall. Not on the tarmac in Baton Rouge when Air Force Two landed at 11:13 AM was the Bayou State’s Tea Party Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry, who tested positive for coronavirus before he was slated to greet the vice president.
“Out of an overabundance of caution with the Vice President coming to our state, I was tested for Cornavirus,” Landry told the state’s Dept. of Justice employees via email, Louisiana’s The Advocate reports. “Though experiencing no symptoms, I tested positive for COVID-19.”
Attorney General Landry has opposed measures to protect the people of Louisiana from the deadly virus, and the statistics show his efforts are not working.
While Louisiana is only 25th out of America’s 50 states in population, it ranks 12th in coronavirus cases, with 82,051. Worse, coronavirus is exploding across the state. In per capita cases the state ranks third.
Louisiana ranked eighth on Monday in new cases, with 2,224.
And in total deaths Louisiana ranks tenth, with 3,428.
Gov. John Bel Edwards, who lost an aide to the coronavirus, has tried to reduce the infection rate, but his efforts have been undermined by the Attorney General.
Last month Landry declared Governor Edwards’ order to ban live indoor music in response to the coronavirus pandemic was unconstitutional.
In May, GOP lawmakers turned to Landry to help them craft legislation “squashing” Governor Edwards’ stay-at-home order, The Advocate also reported.
Also in May Landry “urged” the Governor to re-open barber shops and salons, saying there are “thousands of licensed cosmetologists in our State; many are independent contractors who have no other source of income and are struggling to make ends meet.”
In late April he “encouraged” Gov. Edwards to allow churches, which have been major spreading sites, to re-open.
Previously, Landry promoted President Donald Trump’s fraudulent claims by “securing” “8,000 packs of azithromycin and 75,000 tablets of hydroxychloroquine sulfate … in addition to the 400,000 tablets of hydroxychloroquine directly donated by Amneal Pharmaceuticals last week.”
President Donald Trump desperately wants to turn the page on the coronavirus pandemic that's killed more than 138,000 in the U.S. and threatens to sink his re-election -- but even his staunchest allies won't let him move on.
A growing number of Trump's reliable allies are undermining White House talking points on the deadly pandemic that's rapidly spreading across the South and West, and Republicans are joining the calls for more testing and other measures the president opposes, reported Politico.
"What he can do, what the president can do, and what his administration can do is make sure [tests] aren't an issue," said "Fox & Friends" host Brian Kilmeade. "I mean, it's been four or five months. It should not be an issue."
Former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney complained Monday in an op-ed that delays for testing results encountered by his family were "simply inexcusable," and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has changed his tone as the virus overruns his state's hospitals.
“I know many Floridians are filled with apprehension as they wonder, you know, what does this mean," DeSantis said Monday, one day after the state recorded 15,000 new cases. "What do these trends mean for our health, for our families, and for our jobs? How long is this going to go on for? What’s going to happen with things like kids being in school?”
“I hear you," he added, "and I along with our federal partners, our local leaders, and our great medical community, we’re working nonstop to be able to respond to this crisis."
Many prominent Republicans have expressed skepticism about attending the GOP convention next month in Jacksonville, Florida, and conservative elected officials and activists are concerned about the White House push to reopen schools on time.
“We don’t want a reemergence," said Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ). "We don’t want young people getting sick or bringing it home to their parents, or the teachers, some of whom are upwards in their age risk who could also be at further risk of contracting the disease."
“Yes, I want kids to go back to school," Smith added, "but if, and only if, and I say that with capital letters, it is safe."
The Republican National Convention in Jacksonville, Florida is a little over one month away, and one of Florida's GOP senators seems to support canceling.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) launched a "coronavirus" section of his official U.S. Senate account where he advocated people wearing masks, staying socially distant, and people gathering in groups of no more than 10.
"Practice social distancing. Avoid gatherings of 10 or more people, and steer clear of bars, restaurants, and other areas where large numbers of people congregate," his site says.
That seems to fly in the face of the GOP's decision to continue holding a Republican convention even if it is dangerous.
Florida has been hitting records of coronavirus cases over 15,000 and 16,000 per day and hospitalizations have also increased as well. An increase in cases generally predicts an increase in deaths and Florida has slowly been growing more deadly. Last week, the state hit a record for COVID-19 deaths at 120 in just one day. That was surpassed Tuesday with 132 new deaths in a single day.
To make matters worse, testing is becoming a problem.
"The state received significantly less tests Monday (67,160) than it did the two days prior (255,231 combined). Of the total tests received, 18.31% were positive. This includes people tested multiple times," WFLA reported.
Rubio said over the weekend that the cost of not reopening schools in August is "extraordinary," even if there is a giant surge in cases.
He acknowledged that there are risks of death if schools reopen, but not going to school is a bigger deal.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) this week defended the federal government's top infectious disease expert after President Donald Trump and the White House put out statements defaming him.
The Republican senator praised Fauci as "one of the smartest people I know."
"Has he been right all the time? No," Graham said. "We don't have a Dr. Fauci problem. We need to be focusing on doing things to get us where we need to go. So, I have all the respect in the world for Dr. Fauci."
Graham added: "I think any effort to undermine him is not going to be productive, quite frankly."
A Michigan man has been shot and killed by an Eaton County deputy on Tuesday after he stabbed an elderly man who confronted him in a store for not wearing a mask, the Detroit Free Press reports.
Sean Ernest Ruis, 43, was confronted by a 77-year-old male customer for not wearing a mask inside the store. The argument continued outside in the parking lot, where Ruis stabbed the man and then fled on foot. The victim, whose name has not been released, is reportedly in stable condition.
Later that morning, Ruis was pulled over by an Eaton County deputy. Ruis then exited his vehicle carrying a knife and ignored the deputy’s warnings to drop it, police said, ultimately prompting the deputy to open fire. Ruis later died at the hospital.
The incident took place just two days after Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ordered that masks must be worn inside Michigan businesses.
Some of Rio's biggest samba schools say they will not participate in next year's Carnival unless a coronavirus vaccine is widely available, Brazilian media reported Tuesday.
Five of the 12 top samba schools, including Mangueira and Beija Flor, told Brazil's O Globo newspaper they would vote to postpone the parades at a meeting set for Tuesday.
"It's simple. If there's no vaccine, there will be no samba," said the head of the Sao Clemente school, Renatinho Gomes.
"How can you gather crowds without collective immunity?"
The mayor of the northwestern city of Salvador de Bahia, where festivities also attract thousands of tourists, has proposed postponing the carnival season nationwide until April or June.
However samba school directors remain doubtful about fixing a date without a vaccine.
"Without a vaccine, it is impossible to organize the carnival on any day, be it February or June," said Fernando Fernandes, director of Vila Isabel school.
He said schools could also find themselves exposed to a court ruling which could cancel festivities at the last minute.
"Once we've made heavy investments, the infections curve could rise again and the courts could step in to suspend" the parades, he said.
The sumptuous parades and monumental floats attract tens of thousands of tourists to Rio for the carnival every February.
Each school parades with nearly 3,000 costumed members, dancing close together in the purpose-built Sambodrome.
But the close proximity of dancers and spectators in the tumult of the carnival poses a massive problem for organizers.
"How are we going to do it? With a distance of two meters between the dancers? Everybody singing in masks?" asked Fernandes.
"How heavy would it weigh on a school director's conscience if he saw about 50 members of his school die after the parade?" said Elias Riche, president of Mangueira.
Rio's health ministry reported more than 132,000 infections and more than 11,400 deaths from COVID-19 by Tuesday.
However, the daily death toll has been gradually tailing off over recent weeks, with 59 over the past 24 hours.
Shops and restaurants have gradually been reopening, though schools remain closed.
Two vaccines under development are currently being tested on thousands of volunteers in Brazil, one of the countries worst-hit by the pandemic.
Overall, Brazil has nearly 1.9 million cases and nearly 73,000 deaths.
The most optimistic forecasts are for a vaccine to be developed and in distribution by early 2021.
A columnist for an Australian newspaper has been watching the United States' response to the novel coronavirus with a mix of shock and horror -- and he now believes "we are witnessing the fall of a great power."
"Look at the U.S. now," he writes. "Its president is so psychiatrically disordered with narcissism that he is incapable of dealing with the COVID-19 crisis in a coherent, empathetic way. Everything he says and does is through a prism of himself. He has now turned his whole re-election campaign into one of race hate, law and order and a bizarre invention of a threat from 'left-wing fascists.'"
However, Hull cautions Americans that merely getting rid of Trump this fall will not instantly fix what ails the nation.
"The underlying weakness in present U.S. democracy is that partisanship has become so extreme that the nation is incapable of dealing with the major issues that face it," he writes. "COVID-19 has illustrated that starkly, with every word and act predicated on party allegiance. Meanwhile, other problems like race, police violence, gun control, inequality, the health system, climate change and energy policy go unattended."
This is a headline I hoped to not see again after the number of coronavirus infections had finally started to decline in the Northeast and Pacific Northwest. However, the pandemic has now shifted to the South and the West – with Arizona, Florida, California and Texas as hot spots.
At the same time, cases, hospitalizations and the percentage of positive tests in Northeastern states have declined. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently declared, “We now have the lowest transmission rate in the United States of America.” In fact, there are now more daily hospitalizations in Arizona than in New York, Pennsylvania and the entire Northeast combined.
What explains the difference?
My physician colleagues and I have learned a lot since a mysterious respiratory virus first appeared in mainland China over six months ago. We can now rattle off stats about the coronavirus as if we were sports commentators. It spreads through droplets and aerosols. It binds to ACE-2 receptors in the lungs. It can last on certain surfaces up to 72 hours. It can cause loss of taste and smell.
We could go on and on if you pressed us, but the most important thing we have learned is how it spreads and how to slow it down. A critical piece of that – and a key difference between the Northeast today and many of the areas where coronavirus is spreading now – is people’s behavior.
Hard-hit states quickly learned value of masks
As a respiratory virus, SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted mainly through droplets that leave the mouth and nose as a person talks, sneezes, coughs or exhales. It thrives in environments where there are lots of people in enclosed spaces – especially if they are laughing, talking, singing or otherwise coming into close contact. It thrives physically in the same settings where we thrive socially.
This is why the early hard-hit areas were able to crush the curve by closing businesses and implementing stay-at-home orders. Without significant close human interaction, the coronavirus couldn’t spread.
While other states are now seeing hospitals fill with COVID-19 patients, most of the Northeast is maintaining control of community spread as its economies reopen. The difference reflects, at least in part, each state’s behavior expectations and the willingness of residents to keep up safety precautions like wearing masks, avoiding large crowds, maintaining social distance of at least six feet and staying isolated when they are ill or may have been exposed to the virus.
Rhode Island is an example. When the state began allowing businesses to reopen in early May, Gov. Gina Raimondo said success would depend on how people behaved – if they continued social distancing and wearing masks. Rhode Island is small, but it sits in the middle of the busy New York-Boston corridor. It was one of the first states to close businesses and schools, and one of the first to require people to wear face masks in public places. To locate the virus and stop its spread, it launched partnerships to make testing widely available and developed a contact tracing program with regular check-ins through a phone app. It also required travelers to self-quarantine for 14 days.
“We have to embrace new ways of living our lives,” Raimondo said in May.
In many parts of the Northeast, the months of illnesses, deaths and the struggle to turn the COVID-19 tide are still fresh in people’s minds. The progress isn’t uniform, however. New York City’s mayor has expressed concern about an uptick in positive cases among people in their 20s.
The problems of a political divide
Elsewhere in the country, the current surge in COVID-19 cases began to pick up after Memorial Day weekend, when people in several states that hadn’t seen the same toll from the pandemic let their guard down. Video and pictures showed parties, barbecues, crowded beaches and political rallies – all with very little social distancing or mask-wearing – giving more fuel for the coronavirus to spread.
Despite the overwhelming evidence for what we should be doing, following the advice of public health experts has also, sadly, become politicized. Depending on the news sources people listen to, they might hear warnings from health officials being taken seriously or being dismissed by pundits and politicians.
A recent national poll shows that Democrats report consistently wearing a mask 68% of the time, while Republicans reported doing the same only 34% of the time. The national conversation has devolved into a false dichotomy: Either you’re on the side of prioritizing safety or you’re on the side of personal freedom and opening the economy.
When the Rhode Island General Assembly returned on June 17, 2020, plexiglass separated the desks as a coronavirus precaution. Republican Rep. Michael Chippendale was among members without a mask on.
In reality, the two should be partners, as these preventative measures are the best tools we have to reach our common goals of reopening businesses and schools safely. It’s the same reason we stop at stoplights and go through metal detectors at the airport – we make a small sacrifice for the greater public good.
For the foreseeable future, Americans will have to collectively agree to live life a little differently. Until we can all agree on this, the coronavirus will continue to have the upper hand, and our health and wealth will suffer.
Last week it was revealed that nearly one-third of Americans couldn't pay their mortgages or their rent. It's the third month in a row with over 30 percent of American renters and homeowners showing that they're in trouble, despite the stimulus check from Washington.
Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal wrote that the largest bank in the United States, JP Morgan Chase, put aside $10 billion, anticipating that the numbers of home loan defaults are going to get far worse.
"The pandemic also took a toll on two other big U.S. lenders," said the Journal. "Wells Fargo & Co. posted its first quarterly loss in more than a decade and socked away $9.57 billion to prepare for a wave of loan defaults. Citigroup Inc.’s second-quarter profit fell 73%, weighed down by the $7.9 billion the bank set aside for an expected increase in soured loans."
JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon explained that the 2020 economic crisis “is not a normal recession.”
"The recessionary part of this you’re going to see down the road," he said.
Whatever stimulus, unemployment and help the Congress can deliver are what is keeping things stable for now.
"JPMorgan’s outlook for the economy has darkened since the bank reported first-quarter earnings, and its increased loan-loss provisions reflect that view," said the Journal. "The bank put aside extra to prepare for unemployment to remain above 10 percent through the first half of next year, said Chief Financial Officer Jennifer Piepszak."
Their models are predicting a wave of mortgage defaults coming up in the next year, particularly if the economy continues to take a hit as the virus resurges and has a second or third wave.
"The biggest portion of the quarter’s provision—$5.83 billion—came from the consumer bank, while $2 billion came from the corporate and investment bank and another $2.43 billion came from the commercial bank," said the Journal. "In the consumer and small-business banking operations, revenue fell 9 percent and the provisions it set aside for loan losses sent it to a $176 million loss. Spending volume on the bank’s credit cards fell 23 percent."
It isn't a promising prediction of the future of the American economy.
A school district in Missouri is requiring parents to sign a waiver in case children who participate in sports or other activities become infected with COVID-19 and die.
The "waiver of liability" from Hazelwood School District was shared on Tuesday by attorney Natasha Scruggs.
"I feel sick reading it," Scruggs said.
The document asks parents to acknowledge that COVID-19 is a public health crisis and to relinquish their rights to hold the district responsible even if a student's death is "caused by the negligence of carelessness" of school staff.
The waiver states:
The undersigned agrees to release, discharge, hold harmless and indemnify the Hazelwood School District, it's agents, employees, officers, Board of Education members, insurers and others acting on the District's behalf (the Releasees) of and from any and all claims, demands, causes of action and/or legal liabilities for injuries to or death of my child occurring during, or resulting from, or participation in the above-mentioned program or activity and related in any way to COVID-19, even if the cause, damages or injuries are alleged to be the fault of or alleged to be caused by the negligence of carelessness of the Releasees.
In a statement to Raw Story, Hazelwood School District noted that the waiver is only required for students who want to participate in sports and other special activities.
"HSD doesn't have a COVID-19 waiver for students to attend school in-person," the district said. "Like all districts, we have a sports waiver that we issue to parents who want their kids to play sports."
Read the document below.
Editor's note: This report has been updated with a statement from Hazelwood School District.
Lt. Gen. Russel Honore' (retired) on Tuesday blasted President Donald Trump for his claim that testing for the coronavirus has "created" new cases.
"Jesus Christ, will someone maybe @seanhannity explain to #45 stop say ignorant shit like more testing creating more #COVID19 cases," Honore' wrote on Twitter. "[T]his is F ing embarrassing for man with the nuclear code saying stupid shit like this. Sad thing we have few #Governors believe the same shit."
Honore' was responding to remarks Trump made on Monday after a reporter asked him if COVID-19 was "actually spreading."
"We test more than anybody by far," Trump said. "And when you test, you create cases. So, we've created cases."
Republican Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey is accusing the media of launching a "smear attack" against him after a photographer caught him at a party in which seemingly no attendees either wore masks or adhered to social distancing guidelines.
The Arizona Republic reports that the photo, which was posted on Twitter Sunday night, "shows Ducey standing by several other people at what appears to be a backyard event, chatting near a pool and cocktail tables decorated with red and white runners."
The governor's office says that the photo is part of a "smear attack," and notes that it was taken at a June 6th graduation party, which occurred before COVID-19 cases had really erupted in the state.
However, the Arizona Republic writes that the state at that time "had roughly 23,000 confirmed cases and was fast approaching 1,000 known deaths."
Additionally, the newspaper writes that "many graduates and their families canceled or postponed celebrations" for graduations this year to prevent the spread of the virus. What's more, the local Peoria Times newspaper reported last month that Ducey himself warned that going to graduation parties had become prime spots for the spread of the disease.
Although Ducey has not instituted a statewide face mask requirement, he has encouraged Arizona residents to wear masks when they're outside of their homes and social distancing is not possible.
A member of President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force on Tuesday shot down a conspiracy theory promoted by the president that claims medical professionals are deliberately "lying" about the COVID-19 pandemic.
Appearing on NBC's "Today," Adm. Brett Giroir, the federal official tapped by President Donald Trump to oversee efforts to increase COVID-19 testing capacity, pushed back on Trump's promotion of a tweet by former game show host Chuck Woolery that claimed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were "lying" about the novel coronavirus to hurt the president.
"We may occasionally make mistakes based on the info we have, but none of us lie," he said. "Nobody lies to the American people. We are completely transparent."
Giroir also said that keeping bars closed was vitally important to keeping the spread of the virus under control.
"You've got to close the bars," he said. "Bars are great, but not during coronavirus.
Despite the record numbers of new infections and the increasing numbers of deaths from the novel coronavirus, Giroir told Guthrie that "we are not there yet, but we are seeing some early light at the end of this tunnel."
