Day: April 20, 2020

I always enjoy the good twitter folks who say, “Why doesn’t the media ask Trump about so and so?” It doesn’t really matter. He just ignores any question he doesn’t like and chooses a random answer from his racist bag of retorts. Trump has no shame and doesn’t care what he looks like to anybody by his base. For some reason Trump gets away with it while anybody else would have been laughed out of the room back in 2015.

I wish the media would just stop going to these altogether. These pressers are completely useless.

Yamiche: Are you concerned that downplaying the virus got people sick?
Trump: And a lot of people love Trump right? A lot of people love me… I guess I’m here for a reason… pic.twitter.com/DhoPq90MZI

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) April 20, 2020

Wow. Just wow. This is not going to end well folks.

In a Monday afternoon press conference, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp laid out his plan to reopen Georgia businesses, beginning Friday, April 24. That includes allowing movie theaters to reopen and restaurants to resume dine-in service on Monday, April 27, with stricter sanitation and health and safety protocols in place.

Businesses like gyms, hair salons and barbers, nail salons, and bowling alleys can resume business on Friday. For now, bars, nightclubs, sports stadiums, and entertainment venues across the state must remain closed.

Kemp says new health and safety guidelines for the state’s restaurants and businesses should be released later this week. They will likely include “minimum basic operations, social distancing and regular sanitation” measures, like screening workers for fevers and COVID-19 symptoms, requiring employees to wear gloves and masks when appropriate, staggering shifts, and allowing a distance of six feet or more between workstations.

“I see the terrible impact of COVID-19 on public health, as well as the pocketbook,” he says of why he’s choosing to ease off some of the restrictions on businesses earlier than expected. “I can tell you I don’t give a damn about politics right now, we’re talking about somebody that has put their whole life into building a business.”

In a tweet during the press conference, House District 89 representative Bee Nguyen didn’t mince words on Kemp’s intention to ease off statewide COVID-19 restrictions, “Did I miss the memo that Georgia has COVID under control? There are outbreaks at our poultry plant, Plant Vogtle, and churches. Yet, we are re-opening gyms, restaurants, and in-service churches? And pre-empting local control? What did I miss here?”

That this is even a question in anybody’s mind, let along the president of the US, is just so fucked up that I can’t even comprehend that this is real life any longer.

Amid growing unrest in several states about the ongoing lockdown, Dr. Anthony Fauci is urging protesters not to demonstrate, and arguing that a premature reopening would “backfire.

Appearing on Good Morning America Monday, George Stephanopoulos asked the infectious disease expert what his message is for those who have been protesting.

“I think the message is that, clearly, this is something that is hurting from the standpoint of economics, from the standpoint of things that have nothing to do with the virus,” Fauci said. “But unless we get the virus under control, the real recovery, economically, is not going to happen.”

Earlier in the interview, Fauci said that there are currently enough coronavirus tests for most states to reach phase one of the White House’s reopening protocol — despite protests from some governors to the contrary. Nonetheless, Fauci warned against a haphazard reopening.

“If you jump the gun and go into a situation where you have a big spike, you’re going to set yourself back,” he said. “So as painful as it is to go by the careful guidelines of gradually phasing into a reopening, it’s going to backfire [if you reopen prematurely]. That’s the problem.”

This makes so much sense that I’m pretty sure Trump is looking to kick Fauci off the pandemic team as soon as possible.

This is an understatement.

For the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew Cuomo called on Congress to include funding for hazard pay for “front line workers,” as part of its new round of emergency funding. He made the announcement at a press conference on Monday asking that essential workers — which includes grocery store employees — be paid a 50 percent bonus on top of their existing paycheck during the pandemic.

Staffers at some of the biggest grocery store chains in the country, including Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, have been calling for hazard pay for weeks now. While the management at several of these chains have come through with safety equipment for their staff including masks and gloves, calls for hazard pay have been largely overlooked.

Cuomo isn’t the first elected official to call for hazard pay. Senate Democrats led by minority leader Chuck Schumer have been asking that essential workers including doctors, nurses, and grocery store workers get up to $25,000 — or $13 per hour — in the next phase of coronavirus emergency relief from the federal government.

Cuomo’s plea on Monday is possibly a nod to the growing emergency for essential workers right now. In recent weeks, several grocery store workers across the country have died from the novel coronavirus, including a staffer at a Scarsdale outpost of Trader Joe’s. With the shutdown on dining-in in New York, people have been visiting grocery stores in greater numbers, making it all the more urgent for workers to have added protections and benefits.

Crazy woman who is protesting the governors trying to save people from an extremely communicable and deadly pathogen is just yelling at healthworkers (who were counter-demonstrating) and if there was ever a picture that encapsulated the US in 2020, this is it.

Ok, it’s probably unfair to look at this picture and blame the surly face of the woman in the truck who is not abiding the lockdown. Maybe she was just trying to thank the valiant health care workers for doing an amazing job. She’s a Trump supporter so how bad could she be?

Two nurses, who have witnessed first hand the toll Covid is taking in Colorado, stood up and peacefully counter protested. Here is how they were treated. I had join them. pic.twitter.com/iJnNcqZxSv

— Marc Zenn (@MarcZenn) April 19, 2020

Oh……..