Trump still seems to not understand how bad the coronavirus crisis is

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/29/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-politics-pence/index.html


 Any normal President who made a prediction that a miracle would sweep a pandemic away, only to see it infect a million Americans over a couple of months, would be politically shattered. President George W. Bush's failures over Hurricane Katrina look trivial by comparison. Yet Trump is protected in his bubble of unknowingness by a conservative media machine that attacks anyone who contradicts his comments.

Anti-vaxxer groups sow doubt about coronavirus vaccine before one even exists

https://www.timesofisrael.com/anti-vaxxer-groups-sow-doubt-about-coronavirus-vaccine-before-one-even-exists/

 Activists peddle conspiracy theories, then alter them as scope of pandemic changes; Bill Gates falsely accused of wanting to inject microchips into people
 

‘I love Diamond & Silk’: Trump backs Fox News personalities who spread coronavirus conspiracies

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/28/trump-support-fox-news-coronavirus-214517

 

President Donald Trump on Tuesday voiced his support for conservative video-bloggers Diamond and Silk, the pro-Trump duo who have promoted coronavirus conspiracy theories and been absent from their usual Fox News appearances.

Diamond and Silk, who have spoken at Trump rallies and are regulars on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” morning show, have propagated various baseless coronavirus claims over the past month as the outbreak ravaged the United States. A Fox News spokeswoman did not immediately return a request for comment on their status with the company.

Although Fox News retains a stable of pro-Trump commentators, the president has grown increasingly frustrated with the network, despite its opinion hosts’ almost unflinchingly positive coverage of his administration.

New Report Raises The Question Of Whether Trump Didn’t Believe His Intel, Or He Lied To The People

Pentagon pulls money from overseas projects to pay for border wall

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/28/pentagon-money-border-wall-216156

 

Defense Secretary Mark Esper is restoring more than half a billion dollars in funding for military construction projects in the U.S. that were put on hold to help fund President Donald Trump's border wall, and instead will take money from projects that are primarily overseas.

The move, which is laid out in a memo dated Monday and obtained by POLITICO, drew an angry response from Democrats, who say the administration is "trampling" on Congress' power of the purse.

London Orthodox school redacted books to hide monarchs’ immodest behavior

https://www.jpost.com/omg/london-orthodox-school-redacted-books-to-hide-monarchs-immodest-behavior-626268

A haredi Orthodox girls high school in London redacted history books to cover up what it considers the immodest behavior of British monarchs.

Bill de Blasio, Chirlane McCray get roasted for park stroll during coronavirus

https://nypost.com/2020/04/27/bill-de-blasio-chirlane-mccray-stroll-through-prospect-park/

Mayor Bill de Blasio and wife Chirlane McCray didn’t let coronavirus stop them from traveling 11 miles from Manhattan to Brooklyn’s Prospect Park for a leisurely stroll — eliciting outrage from New Yorkers, online video shows.

De Blasio Breaks Up Rabbi’s Funeral and Lashes Out Over Virus Distancing

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/nyregion/hasidic-funeral-coronavirus-de-blasio.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

In a series of tweets, Mr. de Blasio denounced the gathering, which was broken up by the police, and warned that any violation of the social-distancing guidelines in place to stop the virus’s spread could result in a summons or an arrest.

“Something absolutely unacceptable happened in Williamsburg tonite: a large funeral gathering in the middle of this pandemic,” the mayor said in one post. “When I heard, I went there myself to ensure the crowd was dispersed. And what I saw WILL NOT be tolerated so long as we are fighting the Coronavirus.”

 Chaim Deutsch, a City Council member who represents a section of Brooklyn with a large Orthodox Jewish population, reacted with anger and disbelief on Twitter, writing, “This has to be a joke.”

Mr. Deutsch wrote: “Did the Mayor of NYC really just single out one specific ethnic community (a community that has been the target of increasing hate crimes in HIS city) as being noncompliant?? Has he been to a park lately? (What am I saying - of course he has!)”

“But singling out one community is ridiculous,” he added in another post. “Every neighborhood has people who are being non-compliant. To speak to an entire ethnic group as though we are all flagrantly violating precautions is offensive, it’s stereotyping, and it’s inviting antisemitism. I’m truly stunned.”

Others pointed to the crowds that gathered across the region earlier in the day to watch a military flyover by pilots from the Navy’s Blue Angels and the Air Force’s Thunderbirds that was meant to honor essential workers.

 

Coronavirus antibody tests have "really terrible" accuracy, researcher says

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/28/health/coronavirus-antibody-tests-terrible/index.html

Of the 12 antibody tests that were studied by the COVID-19 Testing Project, one of the tests gave false positives more than 15% of the time, or in about one out of seven samples. Three other tests gave false positives more than 10% of the time.

 

She said while it's unrealistic to think all tests will be 100% accurate all the time, their false positive rates should be 5% or lower, or ideally 2% or lower. 

 

 

Bern said one of the reasons for the high false-positive rates is relaxed requirements from the US Food and Drug Administration.

In mid-March, when it became clear that Covid-19 was starting to whirl out of control, the FDA loosened its approval standards in order to get more antibody tests out on the market quickly.

The agency started to allow companies to sell tests without first providing evidence that they worked. Some 175 test developers have taken advantage of these new rules and can legally market their antibody tests without first having their validation data evaluated by the FDA.

‘Life Has to Go On’: How Sweden Has Faced the Virus Without a Lockdown

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/world/europe/sweden-coronavirus-herd-immunity.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

The Swedish Public Health Authority has admitted that the country’s seniors have been hit hard, with the virus spreading through 75 percent of the 101 care homes in Stockholm. Employees of the homes complain of shortages of personal protective equipment.

When responses are assessed after the crisis, Mr. Tegnell acknowledges, Sweden will have to face its broad failing with people over the age of 70, who have accounted for a staggering 86 percent of the country’s 2,194 fatalities to date.

That percentage is roughly on par with most other countries, but some critics here say the mortality rate among seniors could have been far lower with adequate preparation. In a letter to one of Sweden’s most prominent newspapers, Dagens Nyheter, 22 scientists accused the Public Health Authority of negligence.

“They tell people, stay home, but they also keep the restaurants open,” said Lena Einhorn, a virologist and one of the signatories of the letter. “They are advising people working in elderly homes only to wear masks when a patient is sick. Their policies are both ambiguous and rigid.”

Approval for Trump's Handling of Coronavirus Outbreak Sinks to Record Low

 https://www.newsweek.com/approval-trumps-handling-coronavirus-outbreak-sinks-record-low-1500651

President Donald Trump has received his lowest marks yet for his handling of the coronavirus outbreak, with net approval of his leadership on combating the pandemic down 22 points, according to a new Morning Consult poll.

Of 1,984 registered voters surveyed between April 24 and 26, 51 percent said they did not approve of Trump's handling of the outbreak, compared with 43 percent who said they did approve.

As a result, the net approval for Trump's performance, which is determined by deducting the share of those who disapprove from the share who do approve, sat 8 percentage points "underwater," Morning Consult said in a breakdown of its findings.

Republicans, Who Do You Think Is Bailing Out Your State?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/27/opinion/coronavirus-state-budgets.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

As negotiations over the next coronavirus relief package heat up, a key point of contention — perhaps the key point — is whether Congress will provide meaningful aid to struggling state and local governments.

Boiling down the politics: Democratic lawmakers favor the move. Many Republicans, including the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, do not. Some in the Trump administration have suggested that withholding aid is a great way to pressure states to reopen sooner rather than later. This is both cynical and destructive. Denying states a financial lifeline, even as Washington is showering trillions of dollars on the private sector, will only exacerbate the economic devastation that Congress is trying to mitigate.

 The idea of thrifty, self-sufficient red states propping up blue states has long been a Republican canard. In 2017, Paul Ryan, who was the House speaker, trotted out this line while pushing to repeal the exemption for state and local taxes as part of the tax package. (Ultimately, the deduction was merely capped.) “States that got their act together are paying for states that didn’t,” he claimed, and promised that his desired repeal would put an end to the rest of the country “propping up profligate, big-government states.”

 This claim was wrong then, and it is wrong now. To the contrary, a 2017 Associated Press analysis noted that “High-tax, traditionally Democratic states (blue), subsidize low-tax, traditionally Republican states (red) — in a big way.”

 In other words, Mr. McConnell’s state is effectively subsidized by blue states like New York and New Jersey. Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York reminded Mr. McConnell of this during his Thursday news briefing. “Senator McConnell, who’s getting bailed out here?” the governor demanded. “It’s your state that is living on the money that we generate.”

World can’t agree on how to count COVID-19 deaths, muddying toll

https://www.timesofisrael.com/world-cant-agree-on-how-to-count-covid-19-deaths-muddying-toll/

Some countries list only those who die in hospitals, others include victims suspected of carrying the virus who were never tested

 

In the United States, which has the highest death toll in the world at more than 50,000, the counting method varies from one state to another: while New York counts deaths in care homes, California does not.

In the United States, there are an increasing number of complaints from people whose relatives have died, officially of pneumonia, before COVID-19 tests became available.

 

 

Hasidim clash with police in quarantined Beit Shemesh neighborhood

https://www.timesofisrael.com/hasidim-clash-with-police-in-quarantined-beit-shemesh-neighborhood/

A large crowd of Hasidim clashed with police in Beit Shemesh on Tuesday, three days into a government-mandated closure of two of the city’s ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods.

Dozens of black-clad men screamed “Nazis” as law enforcement officers attempted to shut down Ateret Yehoshua Talmud Torah, an Orthodox elementary school in the Hasidic enclave of Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet, which had remained open in violation of Health Ministry directives intended to stop the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.