Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) pushed back on a suggestion by Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that the U.S. government had funded the creation of the Covid-19 virus.
"I want to get your thoughts on the headlines this morning about China and this continued funding from the NIH to the EcoHealth Alliance and [President] Peter Daszak," Bartiromo told Turner. "Apparently, the NIH is giving more money through EcoHealth to study bat coronavirus!"
"We've been there before," she continued. "And there was no accountability. Joe Biden has yet to bring up the origins of Covid with Xi Jinping and he's going to meet with him in November. What are you going to do about this? Should we be funding from the NIH bat coronavirus through the EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszak? Didn't he just fund Covid-19?"
"Well, you know, I wouldn't go that far," Turner replied, shooting down the theory. "But I would say this. This is certainly irresponsible. And this administration clearly doesn't understand that these types of research projects can result in a threat directly to the United States."
Forty-seven people in the northern US state of Minnesota have been charged in connection with a $240 million COVID relief fraud scheme, officials said Tuesday.
"Today's indictments describe an egregious plot to steal public funds meant to care for children in need in what amounts to the largest pandemic relief fraud scheme yet," FBI Director Christopher Wray said.
The Justice Department alleged that the defendants diverted tens of millions of dollars disbursed under the Federal Child Nutrition Program to feed needy children during the Covid pandemic.
Among those charged is Aimee Bock, 41, the founder and executive director of Feeding Our Future, a non-profit organization that was a sponsor of the Federal Child Nutrition Program.
"Feeding Our Future employees recruited individuals and entities to open Federal Child Nutrition Program sites throughout the state of Minnesota," the Justice Department said in a statement.
"These sites, created and operated by the defendants and others, fraudulently claimed to be serving meals to thousands of children a day," it said.
Instead, they submitted false invoices and fraudulent meal count sheets using fake names of children.
According to the Justice Department, Feeding Our Future claimed to have opened more than 250 sites throughout the state of Minnesota during the pandemic.
"The defendants used the proceeds of their fraudulent scheme to purchase luxury vehicles, residential and commercial real estate in Minnesota as well as property in Ohio and Kentucky, real estate in Kenya and Turkey, and to fund international travel," the department said.
The defendants face an array of charges ranging from wire fraud to federal programs bribery to money laundering.
Not so fast, Mr. President. Outgoing presidential COVID adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monday walked back President Joe Biden’s assertion that the coronavirus pandemic was “over.” A lot depends on how we respond to current variables and future virus variants, the nation’s top infectious disease expert said during a fireside chat with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. And much of that is up to the American people. “How we respond and how we’re prepared for the evolution of these variants is going to depend on us,” Fauci said. “And that gets to the other conflicting aspect of thi...
The Dude hasn’t just beaten cancer and COVID — but death. Jeff Bridges said in an interview out Thursday that it was his battle with lymphoma that left him vulnerable to COVID-19 — prior to when people could get vaccinated against the virus — nearly costing the “Big Lebowski” star his life. “The chemo wipes out your immune system and when COVID hit me, I had nothing to fight it,” the 72-year-old Oscar winner, who was hospitalized for more than four months, told E! News. “I was just really at death’s door a couple of times there.” Bridges told the outlet that he was “in surrender mode” and worr...
In the early stage of the then-novel COVID-pandemic, Gov. Ron DeSantis and his administration made an urgent decision at a fearful time: He ordered public schools across the state to shut down — first for an extended spring break in March 2020 and then for the rest of the school year.
But viewers watching DeSantis’ new statewide TV-and-digital campaign ad may not know that schools were initially locked down. The political ad simply showed a young school-aged kid looking into the camera to thank DeSantis.
“You let me go to school,” the child said, with no other context. The ad also shows other student-aged characters and someone who appears to be a teacher, along with some other DeSantis supporters.
The current political dialogue for the governor is to highlight how much he has pushed to open schools, but that didn’t happen until at least the summer of 2020, and some districts were still allowing remote learning even after schools were required to open.
So while the ad is not necessarily a lie, it does not tell the whole story of DeSantis’ education policy over the course of the pandemic — leading to questions as to when campaign ads cross over from highlighting attributes of a political candidate into potentially misleading constituents.
“Ads are designed by political candidates to serve their political agenda; they are not always based on facts or complete pictures,” Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, told the Phoenix.
For Robin Taub Williams, a former educator and president of the Democratic Public Education Caucus of Manasota, the ad is “misleading,” and that DeSantis did initially close schools.
“But then I guess he decided, politically, it was best for him to open everything up and throw science out the window — throw caution out the window,” she told the Phoenix.
On March 23, 2020, then-Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran issued an emergency order under the Department of Education that recommended school districts should “keep their facilities closed except to staff and teachers” through April 14, 2020, and instructed schools to continue educating students while at home “through non-classroom-based methods.” Many Florida public schools shifted to virtual instruction during this time.
On April 18, 2020, DeSantis announced in a press conference that schools would “continue with distance learning for the duration of the school year,” with public school students out for the tail end of the 2019-20 school year.
But the recent ad does not reflect that reality.
Suzanne Robbins, an assistant instructional professor at University of Florida’s Department of Political Science, told the Phoenix that leaving out certain details in a campaign ad will occur.
“While the ads will be fact checked by various organizations… leaving information out is not uncommon; it’s an old tactic,” she said in an email to the Phoenix.
“It doesn’t matter if it is a half-truth, because the audience for the ad will likely empathize with the message,” she added.
On July 6, 2020, then-Commissioner Corcoran issued a new executive order that called for the reopening of brick-and-mortar schools. The order required all school districts to reopen, but permitted flexibility so that school districts could continue to offer remote learning options as the early days of the COVID pandemic raged on, the Phoenix previously reported.
The new order, supported by DeSantis, led to the FEA suing the governor and state education officials, alleging that the move overstepped the authority of local school boards granted by the Florida Constitution to operate schools.
And at the time, some districts like Miami-Dade County were interested in keeping schools closed for longer to protect their students, the Phoenix reported at the time.
Ultimately, all school districts did open by October, 2020, and the lawsuit fizzled out. A November 2020 order from Commissioner Corcoran ensured that schools would stay open through the remainder of the 2020-21 school year, though parents could still choose remote learning at the time.
Since then, DeSantis has done little to remind the public that he had shut down schools during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, the governor has expressed regret at some press conferences and media appearances over the shutdown of schools early on. And he’s vowed to keep schools open now and in the future.
The ad also raises questions about who gets featured in political campaigns and how are they chosen.
For example, the young boy says that DeSantis let him go to school, and the boy stands with a women who says “You (DeSantis) gave me a voice.”
The assumption is that the woman represents the mother of that child, but it is not clear if they are actually related or have connection to Florida schools at all.
Later in the ad, someone representing a Florida teacher saying, “you raised our pay.”
“Is the person a teacher? I don’t know,” Spar said, noting that there are teachers in Florida who do support DeSantis.
“I would imagine he’s not going to put someone out there who’s not a teacher — I’d be surprised. But the question I would also put out is ‘are they a public school teacher?’” he asked.
That’s not clear in the ad either. The Florida Phoenix reached out to the DeSantis campaign and the Republican Party of Florida for clarity on who is featured in the ad and has not yet received a response.
“They’re definitely made to depict certain kinds of people, but we have no way of knowing,” said Kobie Christian, spokesman with the Florida Democratic Party.
“I don’t think that DeSantis or the Republican Party of Florida have very high standards when it comes to honesty in their ads,” he said.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and Twitter.
According to a report from KTVQ, the owner of Holly's Road Kill Saloon in tiny McLeod, Montana is facing a furious backlash after unapologetically referring to Covid-19 the "Ch*nk flu" in social media posts that have continued unabated.
In an interview with the station, Holly Tinch said she didn't care if people are offended by her posts about her place of business that sports a "Warning: Does not play well with liberals" sign out front.
According to Chris Girardot of Billings, who was adopted from South Korea, he was personally offended and decided to call the owner out.
“You can see that I’m of Asian descent. And I’ve been in fights in high school because I was the only brown kid. So, yes, I took offense to that," he told KTVQ.
Giradot also claimed Tinch posted online what she thought was his phone number in an effort to get her fans to harass him. She had the wrong number, he added.
Since that time, Tinch has doubled down with another post that read, in part: "So yesterday a bunch of 20/30 somethngs (sic), (who have never been here before) decided to call the bar, write sh*t on Billings Service Group (FB) because I said Ch*nk flu. I call it how it is. Just an FYI, I have removed them from my page but I'm not going to spend anymore time with this."
Speaking with KTVQ, she blithely dismissed the criticism, saying, "I’m not a racist person at all. And if you think that I am, that’s your problem, not mine,” while adding, "You want to call me an Irish name, have at it. Ask me if I care, I don’t.”
She also insisted, "I’m going to stand by my First Amendment and my Second Amendment and the rest of them."
Since the controversy began, the Yelp page for Holly's Road Kill Saloon has been inundated with bad reviews including one person who claimed, "It's a bar in a cool spot that serves whatever beers and mixed drinks you might need after a day enjoying the area. Owner was very friendly (to us) but the liberal use of a certain word that starts with N which I believe was meant to be heard by everyone (including strangers) was pretty awkward, but moreso despicable. Won't be back. She is unfortunately the exact stereotype that adds fuel to fires that divide us all."
Life expectancy for Americans dropped in 2021 for the second straight year -- the biggest two-year decline in a century -- notably due to the Covid-19 pandemic, US health officials announced Wednesday.
US life expectancy at birth dipped by nearly a full year from 2020 to 2021, to 76.1 years, the lowest average since 1996, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
By comparison, Americans in 2020 were expected to live 77 years, a sharp drop from the 78.8 years in 2019.
"The declines in life expectancy since 2019 are largely driven by the pandemic," said the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics.
Coronavirus-related deaths accounted for three quarters of the drop in 2020, and about half of the decline in 2021, it said.
Some 15 percent of the 2021 slide could be attributed to deaths from accidents or unintentional injuries, notably drug overdoses.
The sharpest decline in life expectancy last year occurred among Native Americans and Alaska Natives, at 1.9 years, followed by white Americans (1.0) and Black Americans (0.7), according to the CDC.
Life expectancy for Native Americans was estimated at a mere 65.2 years in 2021, compared to 70.8 years for Black Americans and 76.4 years for white Americans.
Health officials also noted the growing gap in life expectancy between men and women, a difference which widened from 5.7 years in 2020 to 5.9 in 2021 -- the largest gap since 1996.
American women in 2021 had a life expectancy of 79.1 years, compared to 73.2 years for men.
Covid-19 was the third-leading cause of death in the United States last year, just as it was in 2020, after heart disease and cancer, according to a previous CDC report.
More than 1.04 million people with Covid-19 have died in the United States since early 2020.
After a peak in early 2022, Covid-related US deaths have dropped, although the country still records about 400 such deaths per day.
White House officials during the tenure of former President Donald Trump "deliberately and repeatedly" pressured the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to authorize unproven and potentially dangerous Covid-19 treatments, while working to derail the agency's vaccine guidance ahead of the 2020 presidential election, a congressional report published Wednesday revealed.
"Senior Trump administration officials undermined public health experts because they believed doing so would benefit the former president politically."
The report, published by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, is the second installment in a series documenting what the panel calls the Trump administration's "rampant political interference with the federal public health response" to a pandemic that has now killed more than 1,040,000 people in the United States.
The publication states that "the Trump administration's nearly yearlong crusade against FDA resulted in damaging consequences for the coronavirus response: Morale inside the agency cratered, and public confidence in FDA's scientific integrity was shaken in the midst of a once-in-a-century pandemic."
Former FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn told the committee that Peter Navarro, who headed the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, "exerted inappropriate pressure" on the FDA to renew the emergency use authorization for the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a Covid-19 treatment, even after it was shown to be ineffective and possibly dangerous.
Additionally, Trump officials "sought to generate outside support for hydroxychloroquine by engaging known extremists and prolific conspiracists like former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, Dr. Jerome Corsi, and the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons."
Furthermore, the report contains extensive new evidence that Trump officials, including Navarro, conducted government business using private email accounts—a potential violation of the Presidential Records Act.
"The select subcommittee's findings that Trump White House officials deliberately and repeatedly sought to bend FDA's scientific work on coronavirus treatments and vaccines to the White House's political will are yet another example of how the prior administration prioritized politics over public health," Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who heads the panel, said in a statement.
"As today's report makes clear, senior Trump administration officials undermined public health experts because they believed doing so would benefit the former president politically—plotting covertly with known conspiracy theorists to dangerously push a disproven coronavirus treatment, bullying FDA to change its vaccine guidance, and advocating for federal investigations into those who stood in their way," he continued.
According to the new report, Trump officials:
Orchestrated coordinated pressure campaigns to reauthorize and expand use of hydroxychloroquine;
Pushed to authorize use of convalescent plasma—which used blood from people who have recovered from Covid-19—ahead of the 2020 Republican National Convention, while "grossly misrepresenting the data" on the therapy; and
Attempted to derail the FDA's Covid-19 vaccine guidance ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
"These assaults on our nation's public health institutions undermined the nation's coronavirus response," said Clyburn, "and are precisely why we must never again settle for leaders who prioritize politics over keeping Americans safe."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. first lady Jill Biden has tested positive in a rebound case of COVID-19 but is not experiencing any symptoms, while President Joe Biden continues to test negative for the virus, officials said on Wednesday.
Jill Biden tested positive on Wednesday by antigen testing, following a negative test the previous day, and the White House's medical unit has notified close contacts, her deputy communications director said.
"The First Lady has experienced no reemergence of symptoms, and will remain in Delaware where she has reinitiated isolation procedures," her deputy communications director, Kelsey Donohue, said in a statement.
Jill Biden, 71, first tested positive for COVID-19 on Aug. 16. She had ended her first isolation on Aug. 21 after a course of Paxlovid, an antiviral medication.
President Biden tested negative for COVID on Wednesday morning in antigen testing, the White House said.
A White House official said the president would wear a mask for 10 days when indoors and near others. The White House will also maintain President Biden's increased cadence of testing and report those results, the official said.
(Reporting by Chris Gallagher; editing by Paul Grant and Leslie Adler)
A Republican C-SPAN caller on Tuesday cited Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) to falsely claim that Dr. Anthony Fauci had "killed more people than Hitler."
During C-SPAN's Washington Journal program, a caller from Washington named John said that Fauci was a "fraud."
"He's retiring so we can get some other fake and fraud in there," John grumbled. "That's why he's retiring so he can cover up his messy little details."
"When you say that he's a fake and a fraud, what do you base that on?" C-SPAN host Pedro Echevarria wondered.
"He's a psychopath," the caller replied. "He actually invented Covid. He invented Covid."
"What makes you believe that?" Echevarria pressed.
"Just all the stuff I hear," John explained. "Ask Rand Paul. You know? You don't want to listen to Rand Paul but you want to listen to this clown. You know?"
"He's killed more people than Hitler," the caller added. "So, you know, what can I say? He's an a--hole."
Dr. Anthony Fauci announced on Monday that he is stepping down from his role as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases after decades of service.
The New York Times reports that the 81-year-old Fauci, who was the public face of health advocacy during the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than a million Americans, will "pursue the next chapter" at the end of the year.
Although Fauci often served as a steady voice of expertise during the Trump administration's early response the deadly pandemic in 2020, he quickly became a lightning rod among Trump allies over his promotion of restrictions aimed at slowing the virus's spread.
In an interview with the Times, Fauci said that he wanted to do more public health advocacy outside of the government role where he has worked for nearly 40 years.
“So long as I’m healthy, which I am, and I’m energetic, which I am, and I’m passionate, which I am, I want to do some things outside of the realm of the federal government," he said.
President Joe Biden gave Fauci praise after he announced his coming retirement from government.
"Because of Dr. Fauci’s many contributions to public health, lives here in the United States and around the world have been saved," Biden said.
First Lady Dr. Jill Biden has tested positive for COVID-19 and is experiencing mild symptoms, her office announced Tuesday morning. She is being treated with Paxlovid.
"After testing negative for COVID-19 on Monday during her regular testing cadence, the First Lady began to develop cold-like symptoms late in the evening," Dr. Biden's Communications Director Elizabeth Alexander said in a statement.
"She tested negative again on a rapid antigen test, but a PC test came back positive. The First Lady is double-vaccinated, twice boosted, and only experiencing mild symptoms. She has been prescribed a course of Paxlovid and, following CDC guidance, will isolate from others for at least five days. Close contacts of the First Lady have been notified. She is currently staying at a private residence in South Carolina and will return home after she receives two consecutive negative COVID tests."
President Joe Biden tested positive for COVID on July 21, and was also prescribed Paxlovid. He has repeatedly tested negative in recent weeks.
The White House adds Tuesday: “The President tested negative for COVID this morning on an antigen test. Consistent with CDC guidance because he is a close contact of the First Lady, he will mask for 10 days when indoors and in close proximity to others. We will also increase the President's testing cadence and report those results.”
Austrians expressed shock and anger this week over the suicide of a doctor who had been the target of a torrent of abuse and threats from anti-vaccination protesters.
The bells of Vienna's St. Stephen's Cathedral rang out in memory of Lisa-Maria Kellermayr on Monday, and hundreds of people held a candle vigil outside, after the 36-year-old doctor was found dead at her practice on July 29.
She had long been the target of death threats because of her criticism of the widespread anti-lockdown protests of 2021.
An autopsy later confirmed that Kellermayr had taken her own life.
Austria has found itself deeply polarized over coronavirus restrictions and in particular a government policy -- subsequently dropped -- of making vaccination against the coronavirus compulsory.
Kellermayr -- whose practice was in the region of Upper Austria where immunization rates are particularly low -- had frequently complained of the menace.
"For more than seven months, we have been receiving... death threats from those opposed to coronavirus measures and vaccinations," she wrote at the time, sharing a message from one internet user who said they would pose as a patient in order to attack her and her staff.
She described how she had "invested more than 100,000 euros" ($102,000) in measures to ensure her patients' safety and was on the brink of bankruptcy.
Then, at the end of June, Kellermayr announced on her professional website that she would not be seeing patients until further notice.
Daniel Landau, who organized a memorial vigil for her in Vienna, said that Kellermayr had become a virtual recluse for several weeks.
"She didn't dare to leave" her office, Landau told AFP.
Fanning the aggression
On Saturday, the head of Austria's doctors' association, Johannes Steinhart, said that while aggressive behavior towards medical staff was not new, it had been "fired up and noticeably aggravated" by the debate over Covid-19 and vaccines.
The police, who had previously suggested Kellermayr was exploiting the situation for attention, insist they did everything to protect her.
The local prosecutor's office also rejected suggestions it could have done more.
"As soon as we received the police report (identifying one of the suspects), we sent it over to the relevant authorities in Germany," spokesman Christoph Weber said.
On Friday, prosecutors in the neighboring German state of Bavaria said a 59-year-old suspect was being investigated by a specialist hate speech unit.
At the beginning of the week, Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen visited the small town of Seewalchen where Kellermayr lived to lay flowers in her memory.
After news of her death broke, he had appealed to Austrians to "put an end to intimidation and fear".
'They're gagging us'
But on some Telegram groups, the hateful messages continue.
"Some people are celebrating her death; others believe the vaccine killed her," said Ingrid Brodnig, a journalist and author who investigates online disinformation.
"Strict laws exist" already against online hate, but not enough is done to implement them, Brodnig said.
One government minister has floated the idea of a separate prosecutor's office to target such cases.
Doctors and researchers have also been targeted elsewhere.
French infectious disease specialist, Karine Lacombe, described how she had been vilified for her work as part of a collective of doctors combatting coronavirus-related disinformation.
She, too, complained that the response from the authorities in the face of threats was not robust enough, and has scaled down her public appearances this year.
"You end up thinking that the risk isn't worth it," she told AFP.
"In that sense (the aggressors) have won, they are gagging us," she said.
