Why President Trump Wants to Frame COVID-19 as a 'Foreign Virus'

https://time.com/5801628/donald-trump-coronavirus-foreign/

 Facing criticism for his handling of the spread of COVID-19 inside the U.S., President Donald Trump has repeatedly resorted to a familiar reflex: blame foreigners.

The country is confronting a “foreign virus,” Trump told the nation from behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office on Wednesday. Travelers from Europe, he said, had “seeded” clusters of the virus in the U.S. and, as a result, his Administration is blocking travel between the U.S. and most of Europe for 30 days starting Friday at midnight.

On Tuesday, in response to a tweet about the “China Virus,” Trump wrote that the wall is “Going up fast. We need the Wall more than ever!” Within hours, Rep. Katherine Clark, a Democrat from Massachusetts, asked the director of the CDC, Robert Redfield, during a Congressional hearing whether there were any agency recommendations that border barriers would be “of any use in mitigation” the outbreak of COVID-19. “Not that I’ve seen,” Redfield said. (To say nothing of the fact that there are just 12 confirmed cases in Mexico.)

Cecilia Muñoz, who was the director of President Barack Obama’s domestic policy council from 2012 to 2017, says Trump’s repeated comments about the wall and closing the borders is “a clear signal that he’s focused on the wrong things.” The virus is already in the United States, says Muñoz. “The problem at the border is obviously a political imperative for him. That’s fine we can have that conversation, but it has nothing to with the spread of this virus,” Muñoz says.

 

Exclusive: The Strongest Evidence Yet That America Is Botching Coronavirus Testing

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-many-americans-have-been-tested-coronavirus/607597/

 It’s one of the most urgent questions in the United States right now: How many people have actually been tested for the coronavirus?

This number would give a sense of how widespread the disease is, and how forceful a response to it the United States is mustering. But for days, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has refused to publish such a count, despite public anxiety and criticism from Congress. On Monday, Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, estimated that “by the end of this week, close to a million tests will be able to be performed” in the United States. On Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence promised that “roughly 1.5 million tests” would be available this week.

But the number of tests performed across the country has fallen far short of those projections, despite extraordinarily high demand, The Atlantic has found.

A tweet can't knock over a pandemic': has Trump met his match in coronavirus?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/09/donald-trump-coronavirus-response

It has killed thousands, sown widespread fear and disruption and caused the worst day for Wall Street since the 2008 financial crisis. One man, however, is not panicking about the coronavirus. Donald Trump just spent two successive days on the golf course.
Even for a US president who has made a habit of denialism – from global heating to the size of Barack Obama’s inauguration crowd – the current crisis is raising the bar. One headline on Monday described it as “Trump’s Chernobyl”, a reference to the Soviet nuclear disaster that authorities could not censor away.
The commander-in-chief’s past attempts to bend reality to his will have often been met with derision or mirth. But this time it is hardly an exaggeration to say thousands of lives are at stake. The international crisis that many feared would test his norm-busting presidency has arrived.
“Denial, accusation, distraction, lies – these are his four principal responses to any rival,” said Gwenda Blair, a Trump biographer. “Only this time it’s not a person. When you think of that model, it doesn’t work with germs. A tweet doesn’t knock over a potential global pandemic.”

Locations with Confirmed COVID-19 Cases

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/locations-confirmed-cases.html

Locations with Confirmed COVID-19 Cases, by WHO Region

Africa

• Algeria
• Burkina Faso
• Cameroon
• Democratic Republic of Congo
• Nigeria
• Senegal
• South Africa
• Togo

Americas

• Argentina
• Bolivia
• Brazil
• Canada
• Chile
• Colombia
• Costa Rica
• Dominican Republic
• Ecuador
• French Guiana
• Guadalupe
• Honduras
• Jamaica
• Martinique
• Mexico
• Panama
• Paraguay
• Peru
• United States

Eastern Mediterranean

• Afghanistan
• Bahrain
• Egypt
• Iran
• Iraq
• Jordan
• Kuwait
• Lebanon
• Morocco
• Oman
• Pakistan
• Qatar
• Saudi Arabia
• Tunisia
• United Arab Emirates

Europe

• Albania
• Andorra
• Armenia
• Austria
• Azerbaijan
• Belarus
• Belgium
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Bulgaria
• Croatia
• Cyprus
• Czechia
• Denmark
• Estonia
• Finland
• France
• Georgia
• Germany
• Gibraltar
• Greece
• Holy See (Vatican City)
• Hungary
• Iceland
• Ireland
• Israel
• Italy
• Latvia
• Liechtenstein
• Lithuania
• Luxembourg
• Malta
• Moldova
• Monaco
• Netherlands
• North Macedonia
• Norway
• Poland
• Portugal
• Romania
• Russia
• San Marino
• Serbia
• Slovakia
• Slovenia
• Spain

• Sweden
• Switzerland
• Turkey
• Ukraine
• United Kingdom

South-East Asia

• Bangladesh
• Bhutan
• India
• Indonesia
• Maldives
• Nepal
• Sri Lanka
• Thailand

Western Pacific

• Australia
• Brunei Darussalam
• Cambodia
• China
• Hong Kong
• Japan
• Macau
• Malaysia
• New Zealand
• Philippines
• Republic of Korea
• Singapore
• Taiwan
• Vietnam

 

World Health Organization Declares COVID-19 a 'Pandemic.' Here's What That Means

https://time.com/5791661/who-coronavirus-pandemic-declaration/

“This is not just a public health crisis, it is a crisis that will touch every sector,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, at a media briefing. “So every sector and every individual must be involved in the fights.”

An epidemic refers to an uptick in the spread of a disease within a specific community. By contrast, the WHO defines a pandemic as global spread of a new disease, though the specific threshold for meeting that criteria is fuzzy. The term is most often applied to new influenza strains, and the CDC says it’s used when viruses “are able to infect people easily and spread from person to person in an efficient and sustained way” in multiple regions. The declaration refers to the spread of a disease, rather than the severity of the illness it causes.

Netanyahu: No gatherings of above 100 people

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/277145

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced Wednesday evening that no public gatherings of over 100 people would be allowed as Israel tightens restrictions to contain the novel coronavirus.

"We are dealing with a global epidemic, which is affecting all countries. I have spoken with world officials who have praised Israel's preparedness. Israel is entering this crisis in excellent economic condition," Netanyahu said at a press conference.

 

Dr. Robert Siegel: Coronavirus response requires several hundred million test kits – a massive increase

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/dr-robert-siegel-coronavirus-response-requires-several-hundred-million-test-kits-a-massive-increase
 

America needs to distribute hundreds of millions of test kits to identify people infected with the coronavirus now spreading around the world – a massive amount that far exceeds the number of test kits now available.

Vice President Mike Pence and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Tuesday that over 1.1 million coronavirus test kits have been distributed across the U.S. and over 4 million more will be distributed by the end of the week. Unfortunately, that number is woefully inadequate for the task at hand.

 

Demand For Action From The White House As Coronavirus Fear Spreads | Deadline | MSNBC

Commonsense morality - Why is this missing from many frum people?

I decided to make this comment into a guest post because it clearly addresses the problem. One young woman I recently talked to about this said that in her Beis Yaakov days (10 years ago) the teachers made an effort to teach midos and sensitivity. She said from what she has heard about the current generation there is much more emphasis in grades and academic issues and the concern for midos development has been pushed to the side.

guest post Allan Katz [This was a comment to Commonsense Morality]

I haven't been following the discussions closely, but I wonder – why is there a problem with the lack of common sense morality among frum people. Imho , part of the problem is the educational system which does not really focus on the moral development and moral thinking of the child. Kids are never asked – what do you think about the story, or reflect about moral dilemmas. When it comes to discipline or behavior kids are taught to ask – what will be done to me if I do this, What will I get if I do this , in other words – what's in it for me. Consequences are important – not what will happen to me , but how my actions impact on others and how I can engage in the moral act of restitution to help make amends and do teshuvah. Moral thinking and internalization of values is not important. As long as we can get a ' behavior ' and ignoring the child himself = his feelings and motives , who cares , does it not say m'toch she'lo lishmah ba lishmah.

This reminds me of kids who made a bonfire directly opposite a home , in my neighborhood here in Israel. I told them it was a problem as the smoke and ashes were going in the direction of the home and doing damage. The kids said there is no problem as she is a ' goya'.( She is not frum , but Jewish ). When I began to put out the fire , the older yeshivah bochurim accused me of taking away or preventing people from doing the mitzvah of tashbi'tu . I then covered the
bonfire with sand.

It is one thing not to do something because God said so , but we need to be moral people who would not act so, even if God did not command us to do/do not do - we should act in a moral way. Because, as R' Nissim Ga'on says, we were given the power of logic and an understanding heart to act in a moral way.

China’s bioweapon spy story that never was

 https://asiatimes.com/2020/02/chinas-bioweapon-spy-story-that-never-was/

As the story goes, in wintry Winnipeg, Canada, at a nondescript laboratory hidden on Arlington St., Chinese scientists working at the facility managed to secure and steal a sample of the deadly novel coronavirus.

The contagion was allegedly smuggled out of Canada, and taken to a lab in Wuhan, China, where scientists there studied it carefully and worked toward creating a biological weapon.

Alas, somehow, the virus escaped … spreading slowly at first. Unleashed on the public, it would infect thousands and kill many people, sparking a worldwide panic and spread to 30 countries.

That is roughly a storyline that has spread online.

Unfortunately, there is a big problem with this story – it didn’t happen. Let me repeat that, it didn’t happen.

Did a Chinese Intelligence Officer Reveal the ‘Truth About the Coronavirus Outbreak’?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chinese-intelligence-coronavirus/
 

Misinformation related to the 2019–20 coronavirus outbreak

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation_related_to_the_2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_outbreak

In January 2020, the BBC published an article about coronavirus misinformation, citing two 24 January articles from the The Washington Times which claimed the virus was part of a Chinese biological weapons program, based at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).^[1][13] The Washington Post later published an article debunking the conspiracy theory, citing U.S. experts who explained why the Institute was not suitable for bioweapon research, that most countries had abandoned bioweapons as fruitless, and that there was no evidence that the virus was genetically engineered.^[14]

 

Joe Biden's Win in Michigan Gives Him a Clear Path to the Democratic Nomination

https://time.com/5800597/joe-biden-democratic-primary-michigan/

 

Joe Biden is looking more and more like the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, adding to his delegate lead on Tuesday with another set of primary victories that further deflated Bernie Sanders’ campaign.

draining the swamp? Jared Kushner sells stake in real estate company after value skyrockets thanks to Trump tax cuts

https://www.salon.com/2020/03/05/jared-kushner-sells-stake-in-real-estate-company-after-value-skyrockets-thanks-to-trump-tax-cuts/

 Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of President Donald Trump who also serves as a senior White House adviser, sold his stake in a real estate company more than three years after he said he would be stepping back from his businesses.

However, Kushner did not do so before the company benefited from tax cuts that he lobbied for as a member of the Trump administration.