Archive for 2020
March 28, 2020
I KNEW THOSE RACIST, FASCISTIC RED-STATE GOVERNORS WOULD START THIS SORT OF — OH, WAIT: Rhode Island police, troops stopping incoming New Yorkers to force quarantine.
Rhode Island’s National Guard and state police are stopping motorists with New York license plates and going door-to-door to find people who may have traveled recently from the state.
The enforcement actions come after Gov. Gina Raimondo ordered that anyone who has moved from New York state to Rhode Island in the past two weeks must self-quarantine for 14 days, part of her state’s effort to slow the spread of coronavirus.
Troops from the National Guard have been posted at train stations and bus depots to inform New Yorkers of the order, and on Saturday they began going door-to-door to tell any recent travelers from New York that they must follow the quarantine to stop the spread of the coronavirus. State police began stopping cars with New York plates on Friday.
Florida probably wishes it had done this last week.
UPDATE: Trump May Quarantine Parts of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut.
President Donald Trump said he’s considering an enforced quarantine for parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to curb the U.S. coronavirus outbreak.
Trump told reporters he’d spoken with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Florida Governor Ron Desantis Saturday morning before departing the White House to send off a Navy hospital ship bound for New York City from Norfolk, Virginia.
The president said “some people” would like him to impose a quarantine on the region, which accounts for more than half the U.S. infections. “It will be for a short period of time if we do it at all,” he said.
Trump followed his comments with a tweet, saying “a decision will be made, one way or another, shortly.”
If you’re going to do it, sooner is better than later. Later will have all the same bad effects, but not the good ones.
NEVER LET A PANDEMIC GO TO WASTE: ACLU push to free illegal immigrants due to coronavirus called ‘public relations stunt.’
TRIBUTE TO A GREAT MAN AMERICA WILL MISS: I covered Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) for years and I grieve his passing.
HE HAS A LOT OF TRICKS: For His Next Trick, Elon Musk Will Revolutionize HVAC Systems.
KEEP ROCKIN’! “California once had mobile hospitals and a ventilator stockpile. But it dismantled them,” this L.A. Times headline notes, without naming names until six paragraphs in:
In 2006, citing the threat of avian flu, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced the state would invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a powerful set of medical weapons to deploy in the case of large-scale emergencies and natural disasters such as earthquakes, fires and pandemics.
“In light of the pandemic flu risk, it is absolutely a critical investment,” he told a news conference. “I’m not willing to gamble with the people’s safety.”
The state, flush with tax revenue, soon sank more than $200 million into the mobile hospital program and a related Health Surge Capacity Initiative to stockpile medicines and medical gear for use in outbreaks of infectious disease, according to former emergency management officials and state budget records.
But the ambitious effort, which would have been vital as the state confronts the new coronavirus today, hit a wall: a brutal recession, a free fall in state revenues — and in 2011, the administration of a fiscally minded Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, who came into office facing a $26-billion deficit.
“Fiscally minded Democratic governor, Jerry Brown.” Hey, whatever gets you through the night.
(Classical reference in headline.)
I DON’T WANT TO LIVE IN MUTANT 59, WE’RE ALREADY LIVING IN A DYSTOPIAN SF NOVEL: Scientists discover plastic-eating microbe.
DID HILLARY CLINTON JUST CELEBRATE THE SPREAD OF CORONAVIRUS TO ‘OWN’ TRUMP? SURE LOOKS THAT WAY.
As Molly Hemingway tweeted yesterday:
In her attempt to dunk on Trump, Hillary’s is also tacitly admitting that she’s morally empty enough to take the CCP at the word when it comes to their Wuhan Coronavirus stats, a reminder of the bullet America dodged in 2016. Matt Margolis wrote yesterday at PJM that, “China’s confirmed cases topped out at around 80,000, but, as PJM’s Victoria Taft noted, China reportedly stopped conducting tests in order to show the world they’ve contained the spread of the virus. So, comparing any country to China at this point is useless.”
CHICK-FIL-A TEMPORARILY CHANGES SLOGAN TO ‘EAT FEWER BATS.’
From America’s Newspaper of Record, not surprisingly.
FOX NEWS POLL: Biden Clobbers Trump By 9 Percent. “It should be noted that this poll was finished just before the sexual assault allegations against Joe Biden were revealed.”
Related: Kerry, Edwards both top Bush in poll.
—CNN, February 18, 2004.
More: Poll shows McCain in 5-point lead over Obama.
—Reuters, August 20, 2008.
JOHN HINDERAKER: Andrew Cuomo is no hero. “The fact that New York is the epicenter of the COVID crisis in the U.S. is no coincidence. It flows from the policies of Governor Cuomo and New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio, as well as New York City’s nature as an international hub and a closely-packed city.?
WHO REPRESENTATIVE REFUSES TO ACKNOWLEDGE TAIWAN, SHUTS DOWN INTERVIEW (Video):
Bruce Alyward, senior advisor to the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), was busted by a RTHK interviewer who asked about reconsidering Taiwan’s membership to their organization.
Taiwan is an intriguing case when it comes to coronavirus treatment. Despite being geographically close to China, the sovereign island has been relatively unscathed by the deadly outbreak. Their methods of containment have been largely successful. With border control and enhanced screenings of travellers, the number of coronavirus cases in that nation have been kept to under 100.
In the clip below, Alyward pretends to not hear the question by Yvonne Tong from RTHK when asked if WHO would reconsider Taiwan’s membership. The interviewer persists and Alyward shuts down the interview.
Bruce Alyward, senior advisor to the Director General of the World Health Organisation, pretends to not hear the question when asked if WHO would reconsider Taiwan’s membership. Interviewer asks again and he shuts down meeting. pic.twitter.com/2s3i35dxl1
— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) March 28, 2020
“Alyward previously made headlines in February for discouraging the notion of a travel ban to prevent coronavirus spread.”
UPDATE: Aylward’s bio is now missing from the WHO’s Website. (You can see it on the Wayback machine.) It will be interesting to hear what happened, now that’s he’s been unpersoned by the WHO.