In Israel, a Time to Pray Amid a Health Crisis

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/world/middleeast/israel-virus-prayer.html

32 Economists From Both Major Parties Sign Letter Urging U.S. Not to Open Country Prematurely

https://www.newsweek.com/32-economists-both-major-parties-sign-letter-urging-us-not-open-country-prematurely-1494352


Members of the bipartisan Economic Strategy Group signed a Wednesday letter which said the U.S. must pull together to combat the coronavirus before opening businesses and attempting to restart the economy.
 

Doctors Condemn Young People Having Parties Amid Coronavirus Outbreak: 'This Is Not the Time to Be Stupid'

https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-parties-young-people-mass-gatherings-1494209

 

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear expressed his outrage and frustration at how a group of people in their 20s threw a party in defiance of the guidelines prohibiting mass gatherings to help stop the spread of the virus. At least one person who was at the party later tested positive for COVID-19.

"This makes me mad, and it should make you mad," Beshear told a press conference in reference to the party. "There is the power of forgiveness and we will move on and forgive, but there should not be any more of these parties—for any reason."

Beshear said those who attended the party despite being told to social distance themselves from others must have thought they were "indestructible" and that contagion was only a danger to the elderly.

"We are battling for the health, and even the lives, of our parents and our grandparents," Beshear said. "Don't be so calloused to intentionally go to something that can potentially kill other people. We ought to be much better than that."

More Trumpian nonsense - the elderly should risk their lives to help Trump get reelected?!

They should stop trying to scare people and stampede them into herd hermitry.
Many mental health professionals like to tell their clients that they suffer from anxiety.
So now doctors are playing up on that implanted anxiety.
"Ooooh, big bad Donald Trump is scary...! He wants you to go to work and school...you could never vote for a man that makes you feel anxious....riiiiiiight???? Hmmm???????"
In time of war, we send young people into harm's way and expect them to die for their country. Well, now it is time for older people to engage in some self sacrifice for the good of keeping Donald Trump electable.

James Dyson designed a new ventilator in 10 days. He's making 15,000 for the pandemic fight

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/26/tech/dyson-ventilators-coronavirus/index.html

"This new device can be manufactured quickly, efficiently and at volume," Dyson added, saying that the new ventilator has been designed to "address the specific needs" of coronavirus patients.

A spokesperson for the company, which is best known for its vacuum cleaners and hand dryers, said the ventilators would be ready by early April. Dyson, who has wealth worth $10 billion according to Bloomberg, wrote in his letter that he would also donate 5,000 units to the international effort to tackle the pandemic.

 

The Coronavirus Pandemic May Be Causing an Anxiety Pandemic

https://time.com/5808278/coronavirus-anxiety/

“The worry becomes, ‘How do I pay my bills? What if I lose my job? What if I lose my car?'” McGrath says. “Anxiety disorders are based on two words: ‘What if,’ followed by the worst scenario your brain can devise.”

Andrew Cuomo Hits Back at False Coronavirus Attack That Trump Launched During Fox News Town Hall: ‘That’s Not the Fact’

https://www.mediaite.com/news/andrew-cuomo-hits-back-at-false-coronavirus-attack-that-trump-launched-during-fox-news-town-hall-thats-not-the-fact/

A false attack that President Donald Trump made during his Fox News town hall made its way to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s latest coronavirus press conference, and Cuomo batted it down by telling the reporter “That’s not the fact, and you know it.”

During Tuesday’s Fox News town hall, Trump read portions of a post from conspiracy blogger Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit that accused Cuomo of rejecting an opportunity to purchase 16,000 ventilators back in 2015, and suggested Cuomo is to blame for his state’s anticipated shortage of the devices.

Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer did not challenge Trump’s attack, and on Wednesday, it was repeated by a reporter at Cuomo’s press conference.

 

Tucker Carlson Roasts the Media for Originally Downplaying the Wuhan Virus After They Try to Blame Fox News

https://www.redstate.com/bonchie/2020/03/25/tucker-carlson-roasts-the-media-for-originally-downplaying-the-wuhan-virus-after-they-try-to-blame-fox-news/

One of the dumber aspects of the mainstream media’s response to the Wuhan virus is their pretending that they’ve been sounding the alarm from the beginning. As I noted last week, The Washington Post tried to essentially rewrite history by sharing anonymous leaks from the intelligence community claiming that the President hadn’t seen the virus as a threat early enough.

 

Here’s the disturbing Fox News clip that appears to have triggered one of Trump’s most dangerous tweets yet

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/03/heres-the-disturbing-fox-news-clip-that-appears-to-have-triggered-one-of-trumps-most-dangerous-tweets-yet/

“[If] you stopped lockdowns, and sent everyone back to work, lots and lots of people would get sick. You’d have workplaces where half the staff were out. And this would roll through all kinds of places, people who maintain the electrical grid and water treatment and sewage systems, etc… Not only that, as the hospitals filled up and horror stories emerged, you’d have tons of deaths from things other than Covid-19 that couldn’t get treated. This would make [people] more scared of getting the bug and lead to further retreat,” he wrote. “Which is to say, even if you care about economic activity as the only value here, it’s really not clear that anything like ‘business as usual’ is even a possibility in the midst of a roaring pandemic, even if you let everything stay open.”

 

Let’s Never Forget That Trump and Fox News Started as Coronavirus Truthers

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/trump-republicans-fox-news-coronavirus-truthers-hoax-video.html

President Donald Trump doesn’t tell the truth that often and neither does Fox News. Both, however, seem to have come around to the idea that the coronavirus is not only a bad thing but a real thing. It took each a long time to put aside their own political or financial self-interest in an alternative reality where everything was fine and Trump was to thank, but they more or less got there eventually. We obviously have bigger problems to face at the moment than the damage done nightly by Sean Hannity’s Biff-Tannen-does-the-news routine, though the president lying over and over and over again will never not be a grave threat. It is even more of a problem now, during a pandemic, when people are looking for enlightened leadership and where accuracy and straightforwardness can stave off panic, save lives, and inspire confidence.

 

Fox News anchors fail to challenge Trump as he misleads during coronavirus town hall

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/24/media/fox-news-trump-town-hall/index.html

But neither Hemmer, who is the chief breaking news anchor at Fox News and was broadcasting from the White House, nor Faulkner, who was broadcasting remotely from a studio, effectively pushed back on Trump during the two-hour event -— despite obvious misinformation peddled by the President.

Trump, for instance, repeatedly compared the coronavirus to the seasonal flu. "We've never closed down the country for the flu," the President said.

Hemmer, however, repeatedly failed to note that Covid-19 has a significantly higher mortality rate than the seasonal flu.

 

The World Health Organization has estimated the mortality rate to be 3.4%. And Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the United States, has estimated that it is about 2%. Fauci even previously told Fox News, "The mortality for seasonal flu is 0.1% so even if [Covid-19] goes down to 1% it's still 10 times more fatal."

At another point during the interview, Trump said he would "love" for the country to "open by Easter" on April 12.

Instead of challenging Trump, and noting that his deadline is at odds with what many medical professionals and infectious disease experts have said, Faulkner replied, "Oh wow. OK."

Hemmer added, "That would be a great American resurrection."

After being criticized online for his failure to follow up, Hemmer came back from a commercial break and asked Trump the question again: "You'd like to be back to normal by Easter Sunday. That's 19 days from now. Is that true? Is that possible?"

 

Trump replied to Hemmer, saying he believed it to be possible and once again compared it to the much less serious seasonal flu. Hemmer asked Trump how he could determine it might be safe, and Trump reiterated his belief that the country "has to get back to work."

 

 

Fox Goes Full Dear Leader With Coronavirus Coverage

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/03/fox-news-dear-leader-donald-trump-coronavirus-coverage

In the alternate reality of Fox News, the coronavirus pandemic is an overhyped invention of the mainstream media devised for the specific purpose of taking down Donald Trump. Unfortunately for the American public, the network also happens to be the president’s source for news on the spread of the virus, and where most White House officials have opted to appear while updating the public—in between segments casting it as an anti-Trump “hoax.”

“The chorus of hate being leveled at the president is nearing a crescendo as Democrats blame him, and only him, for a virus that originated halfway around the world,” Fox Business host Trish Regan said on Monday, labeling media coverage “yet another attempt to impeach the president.” The same night, Lou Dobbs, Trump’s favorite Fox Business host, accused “the national left-wing media” of “playing up fears of the coronavirus,” before reporting, without an ounce of self-awareness, that the virus has “now infected 113,000 people…in 111 countries and territories around the world.”

 

Trump tears into media at coronavirus briefing: They want economy to stay closed, 'would like to see me do poorly in the election'

https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-doubles-down-media-attack-coronavirus

President Trump doubled down Wednesday on his assertion that the media wants to keep the country closed in order to prevent his reelection during his daily coronavirus briefing at the White House.

After Trump had earlier slammed the "LameStream Media" on Twitter, CBS News correspondent Paula Reid asked the president if his recently announced goal of reopening the economy by Easter was solely a political strategy.

"Just so that you understand, are you ready? I think that there are certain people who would like it not to open so quickly, I think there are certain people that would like it to do financially poorly because they think that would be very good as far as defeating me at the polls," Trump told Reid. "And I don't know if that's so, but I do think it's so that there are people in your profession that would like that to happen."

Trump’s Boast About U.S., South Korea Coronavirus Testing Misses The Mark

https://khn.org/news/fact-check-trumps-boast-about-u-s-south-korea-coronavirus-testing-misses-the-mark/

Trump claimed that the United States has “done more tests in eight days than South Korea has done in eight weeks.”

The CDC has not put out comprehensive data on this. But independent work on the subject suggests the comparison is flawed. In eight days, the United States performed almost as many tests as South Korea did in eight weeks, but not necessarily more.

In addition, that statistic is relatively less important. The American rate of testing per capita is more than six times lower than South Korea’s. It’s certainly possible to catch up, but that hasn’t happened yet.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/25/donald-trump/trumps-boast-about-us-south-korea-coronavirus-test/

The president’s statement frames the data in a way that is misleading and doesn’t accurately represent the status of the American response to COVID-19. We rate it False.