PANDUMBIC

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/01/nyregion/cuomo-harassment-anna-ruch.html

March 1, 2021, 7:43 p.m. ET

Anna Ruch had never met Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo before encountering him at a crowded New York City wedding reception in September 2019. Her first impression was positive enough.

The governor was working the room after toasting the newlyweds, and when he came upon Ms. Ruch, now 33, she thanked him for his kind words about her friends. But what happened next instantly unsettled her: Mr. Cuomo put his hand on Ms. Ruch’s bare lower back, she said in an interview on Monday.

When she removed his hand with her own, Ms. Ruch recalled, the governor remarked that she seemed “aggressive” and placed his hands on her cheeks. He asked if he could kiss her, loudly enough for a friend standing nearby to hear. Ms. Ruch was bewildered by the entreaty, she said, and pulled away as the governor drew closer.

“I was so confused and shocked and embarrassed,” said Ms. Ruch, whose recollection was corroborated by the friend, contemporaneous text messages and photographs from the event. “I turned my head away and didn’t have words in that moment.”

Florida Gov. DeSantis accused of favoritism in distributing Covid vaccine, Congress urged to investigate

PUBLISHED MON, MAR 1 202110:28 AM ESTUPDATED MON, MAR 1 20211:09 PM EST

Florida’s agriculture commissioner on Monday called for a congressional investigation into Gov. Ron DeSantis over “alleged political favoritism” in his state’s distribution of Covid-19 vaccine doses.

Nikki Fried, the state’s Democratic agriculture commissioner, noted that at least three “pop-up” vaccination sites have been “organized in wealthy communities affiliated with donors to the governor’s political campaigns.”

Fried, who’s long been a staunch critic of DeSantis, asked Congress to investigate in a letter sent Monday morning to Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, and Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., its ranking Republican member.

“My office has received frequent complaints regarding the unequal distribution of vaccines,” Fried wrote in the letter, which was obtained by CNBC. She went on to accuse DeSantis of “inept distribution of vaccines at best, and corrupt political patronage at worst.” The letter was first reported on by Yahoo Finance.

DeSantis’ office did not return CNBC’s request for comment on the allegations.

Fried cited news reports of the three so-called pop-up vaccination sites. In the first instance, “DeSantis allowed politically-connected private developers to dole out the life-saving drug to residents of their upscale communities, bypassing systems set up to ensure equitable access to vaccines,” the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported.

Fried cited other reports, too, of pop-up vaccination sites appearing in affluent neighborhoods reportedly connected to DeSantis’ donors.

“Given the numerous serious questions regarding the Governor’s impartiality and potential political corruption in distributing life-saving vaccine, I encourage your committee to initiate a congressional inquiry into Florida’s vaccine distribution procedures, including compelling the production any testimony, records and documents as you see fit,” she wrote.

Fried also sent a letter to DeSantis on Monday morning, asking him to suspend Manatee County Commissioner Vanessa Baugh from public office. Baugh, Fried wrote, is under investigation for allegedly “placing herself, friends and family on a VIP vaccine list.” Baugh also selected her district, two wealthy ZIP codes, to receive additional vaccine doses from the state, Fried wrote.

Baugh has apologized for what she called “a lapse in judgment,” according to a statement obtained by TV station ABC7 WWSB. Baugh did not immediately return CNBC’s request for comment.

It’s the second time a Florida Democrat has called for a federal investigation into DeSantis’ handling of the vaccine rollout. On Feb. 21, Rep. Charlie Crist, D-Fla., sent a letter to the Department of Justice, asking it to investigate reports that DeSantis has established vaccination sites “in select locations to benefit political allies and donors, over the needs of higher risk communities and existing county waitlists.”

Notably, both Fried and Crist have been named in news reports as potential gubernatorial challengers to DeSantis.

“As reported by multiple news outlets, the Governor is setting up ‘pop-up’ vaccination sites to deliver doses to select communities,” Crist, another longtime DeSantis critic, wrote. “The ZIP codes in question have the highest income levels and lowest COVID infection rates in the county.”



https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/01/florida-gov-desantis-accused-of-favoritism-in-distributing-covid-vaccine.html

https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Female-aide-said-Cuomo-aggressively-groped-her-at-16015863.php

ALBANY — A female aide to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo alleges he aggressively groped her in a sexually charged manner after she had been summoned to the Executive Mansion late last year, according to a person with direct knowledge of the woman's claims.

The staff member, whose identity is being withheld by the Times Union, had been called to the mansion under the apparent pretext of having her assist the governor with a minor technical issue involving his mobile phone. They were alone in Cuomo's private residence on the second floor when he closed the door and allegedly reached under her blouse and began to fondle her, according to the source.

Andrew Cuomo Wishes He Were Ron DeSantis

The two governors both botched their states’ responses to Covid-19. The Democrat is paying a political price. The Republican is being touted as a 2024 presidential contender.

Not long ago, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was amiably shrugging off speculation that he was the leading candidate for the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential nomination. An August poll found that he was leading in nearly all demographics—the first choice of men, women, voters over 30, and white voters; he led in every region except the West. He was even outpacing Vice President Kamala Harris by two points. The poll, he allowed, was “shocking.” Nevertheless, he pointed to New York’s Covid-19 response and his press briefings, which ran as counter-programming to Donald Trump’s own on television networks throughout the spring and summer of 2020. It was Cuomo, not Joe Biden, who served as Trump’s foil on the pandemic for much of last year; his briefings were consumed by the media as a presentation of seriousness and competence, as well as a trust in science that was missing from the then president’s erratic and frequently insane briefings.

But Cuomo’s political profile has been dented by scandal in 2021. Although controversy over the state’s high number of nursing home Covid-19 deaths has been bubbling under the surface for months, it has boiled over in recent weeks. Last week, Melissa De Rosa, one of the governor’s top aides, admitted that the administration slow-walked an investigation into the number of deaths, which were nearly twice as high as initially reported, out of fear that Trump would use the data to score political points against Cuomo. The governor’s approval rating has subsequently fallen; Cuomo has admitted that his handling of the nursing home data was a “mistake” but has stopped short of apologizing.

Cuomo may very well be wishing he was governor of another state—and not just because New York was hit hard by the pandemic’s first wave, at a time when the virus was still such an unknown quantity. Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, is in many ways Cuomo’s polar opposite: DeSantis has spent the last several months sparring with the media, while doing as little as possible to slow the spread of Covid-19. Perhaps most notably, the Sunshine State’s governor showed absolute fealty to Trump throughout the pandemic’s many waves. And yet, his profile is rising steadily even as Cuomo’s has hit another nadir. The divergent fates of these two governors speak to a considerable difference between Democratic and Republican constituencies.

While Cuomo made a show of doing a great deal in response to the pandemic, DeSantis made a show out of doing nothing. Rather than fight the virus, he fought those who urged a more cogent response to the crisis, often villainizing the media in particular. Florida’s businesses remained defiantly open, even as cases soared. When he was criticized for a policy response that seemed baldly ignorant of the available science, he made himself the victim. “We see people dying—it sucks,” he said. “I had no illusions of ever being treated favorably by the Acela media. This is as hard as I’ve ever worked at anything, and I’ve had to work very hard in my life to get where I’m at.” To DeSantis, the big problem with Covid-19 wasn’t that people were dying—though that does suck, doesn’t it? Rather, the problem was that people dared to question his laissez-faire approach to public health.

Florida is, as ever, a strange case. The state is third in deaths—30,000 have died of Covid-19, which does indeed suck—but twenty-seventh in death rate, a number far lower than in New York and California. The warm weather may deserve more credit for those numbers than DeSantis (as much of the South endures a record cold spell, it is, as ever, 80 degrees in Florida). But his refusal to back the science and his insistence on scrapping with the media have turned him into a cause célèbre on the American right. As other heirs to Trumpism fizzle and stumble, DeSantis is locking in a strong position for the 2024 Republican primary, should Trump refuse to run, that is. “Any serious handicapper would have to put DeSantis in tier one for 2024. And tier one is not big,” said Republican pollster (and serious handicapper) Tony Fabrizio.

“What we showed in Florida is you need to lead. I got a lot of blowback. A lot of that was BS, quite frankly,” DeSantis told Politico after a recent event in Miami. “We led on schools. We led on putting people back to work. We would not have had a Super Bowl [in Tampa] if it was not for me.”

DeSantis scratches an itch for Republicans: He disdains expert opinion and spars with the press; at every turn, he has privileged the short-term future of Florida’s economy over the long-term future of its residents. Owning the libs is more important than, well, doing anything at all.

Contrast that with Cuomo. He was, for a time, the darling of liberals because he made a point of appearing to do everything. Where the Trump administration flippantly dismissed the crisis, he was somber and reflective. He put stock in science and always listened to the experts. Where Trump only seemed to offer shrugging, haphazard leadership, Cuomo made the point of turning his regular addresses into pep talks for those left isolated by the pandemic. And yet he, too, mismanaged the crisis, failed to protect some of his state’s most vulnerable residents, and covered up the extent of that failure. Unlike DeSantis, he is paying a political price for these failures.

Perhaps Cuomo might resolve his political problems with a geographic solution and leave New York for a climate that’s seemingly more hospitable to public health failures. Call it the Snowbird Solution: If he were to switch his party ID and move south, as many New York residents do, he may very well have a bright future, after all. There’s still plenty of time: Florida’s GOP gubernatorial primary isn’t for another year and a half.


https://newrepublic.com/article/161392/ron-desantis-cuomo-pandemic-2024-election

This goes out to idiot scum who downplayed the virus -- you know who you are, and so do we.

Is this the beginning of a Florida bitch fight?

FL Sen. Rick Scott implores states 'reject and return' stimulus money. Gov. Ron DeSantis wants more

PALM BEACH, Florida - U.S. Sen. Rick Scott has a message for states and cities poised to receive a collective $360 billion from the American Rescue Act stimulus package: Send it back.

Scott's call to reject money that polls show is popular nationally, even among Republicans, has flared tension between Scott and another Florida GOP leader, Gov. Ron DeSantis.

In an open letter to governors and mayors, sent moments after the U.S. House on Wednesday approved the $1.9 trillion bill, Scott called it “massive, wasteful and non-targeted," urging states to follow his lead and send a message to Congress to “quit recklessly spending other people’s money.”

"By rejecting and returning any unneeded funds, as well as funds unrelated to COVID-19, you would be taking responsible action to avoid wasting scarce tax dollars,” he wrote. “After all, every dollar in this package is borrowed.”

Scott, a former governor of Florida, called his request “simple and common sense,” adding that money slated for state and local governments is “wholly unrelated to responding to the pandemic.”

Scott has a history of bucking federal funds. As governor, he refused to allow Florida to accept Obamacare-related money to expand Medicaid health care coverage.

His letter comes as polls show the legislation is extremely popular. A Morning Consult/Politico poll found 69% of U.S. voters said the "package is the right amount" or "doesn’t go far enough," including 54% of Republicans.

The latter includes, apparently, Scott's successor, DeSantis, who complained Florida should be getting a bigger piece of the pie.

While Scott was calling for rejection of the assistance, DeSantis announced he has big plans for the stimulus money. And he may well be blaming Scott, at least partly, for not getting Florida more of it.

“The Senate didn’t correct the fact that Florida is getting a lot less than what we would be entitled to on a per capita basis,” DeSantis, in an apparent jab at Scott and Sen. Marco Rubio, said Monday at a press conference.

The polarization on spending comes amid rumors that both DeSantis and Scott have eyes on the White House in 2024. At odds on numerous issues, DeSantis has for almost a year blamed Scott for the massive failures of the state's unemployment system, which was developed and implemented when Scott served as governor.

More:Scrap or salvage? State lawmakers weigh future of Florida’s unemployment system

Still, at Monday's press conference, DeSantis did not mention a word about using the stimulus money to help jobless individuals or small businesses devastated by the pandemic.

Instead, DeSantis said he would like to see some of the money go toward his Resilient Florida Plan to fight flooding and sea level rise.

“I think that will be a game changer,” he said. “It’s infrastructure we would have needed to have done anyways.”

DeSantis also lamented the fact that stimulus money will be disseminated to states based on things like unemployment rates instead of population, meaning Florida will be penalized for having a stronger economy than some other states, he said.



https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/03/11/rick-scott-says-florida-should-reject-covid-stimulus-money/6953461002/

https://apnews.com/article/public-health-health-florida-coronavirus-pandemic-ron-desantis-889df3826d4da96447b329f524c33047

Facts... not feeeeelings. There will hopefully be an objective scientific measure of this entire debacle.

Assessing mandatory stay-at-home and business closure effects on the spread of COVID-19

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33400268/

Results: Implementing any NPIs was associated with significant reductions in case growth in 9 out of 10 study countries, including South Korea and Sweden that implemented only lrNPIs (Spain had a nonsignificant effect). After subtracting the epidemic and lrNPI effects, we find no clear, significant beneficial effect of mrNPIs on case growth in any country. In France, for example, the effect of mrNPIs was +7% (95% CI: -5%-19%) when compared with Sweden and + 13% (-12%-38%) when compared with South Korea (positive means pro-contagion). The 95% confidence intervals excluded 30% declines in all 16 comparisons and 15% declines in 11/16 comparisons.

Conclusions: While small benefits cannot be excluded, we do not find significant benefits on case growth of more restrictive NPIs. Similar reductions in case growth may be achievable with less-restrictive interventions.

Telstar wrote:

Not even a photo of a Florida beach........

gatorfan wrote:Not even a photo of a Florida beach........

Good catch, gator. Still, the message is clear.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-astrazeneca-idUSKBN2B81AX

PkrBum wrote:https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Female-aide-said-Cuomo-aggressively-groped-her-at-16015863.php

ALBANY —  A female aide to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo alleges he aggressively groped her in a sexually charged manner after she had been summoned to the Executive Mansion late last year, according to a person with direct knowledge of the woman's claims.

The staff member, whose identity is being withheld by the Times Union, had been called to the mansion under the apparent pretext of having her assist the governor with a minor technical issue involving his mobile phone. They were alone in Cuomo's private residence on the second floor when he closed the door and allegedly reached under her blouse and began to fondle her, according to the source.

Wrong thread, moosebreath.

He's your shining beacon covid creep. Congratulations comrade... you own him.

PkrBum wrote:He's your shining beacon covid creep. Congratulations comrade... you own him.

Like you own your pain killers, Michigan drug fiend boy.

More on Racist Ron and the blood on his hands.

Will America Hold Trump & His Enablers Accountable for 400,000 Unnecessary Deaths?

Is this manslaughter, now that Trump brags that he actively ignored the scientific advice?

Thom Hartmann
Mar 29

Dr. Deborah Birx is trying to clean up her reputation by telling the story of how Trump was ignoring the science and pressuring her to instead promote his “open the country” policy that killed so many Americans.

But we don’t have to listen to her; Trump, himself, bragged on Fox News that when Dr. Fauci gave him advice on how to save American lives, he “was doing the opposite of what he [Fauci] was saying.”

The scientific research is in, and at a conference convened by the Brookings Institution it’s being reported that Donald Trump’s criminally incompetent bungling of the coronavirus pandemic killed 400,000 Americans who didn’t have to die. Oh, and we could have saved billions of dollars had it been done right.

Reuters summed it up in the first paragraph of their story: “The United States squandered both money and lives in its response to the coronavirus pandemic, and it could have avoided nearly 400,000 deaths with a more effective health strategy and trimmed federal spending by hundreds of billions of dollars while still supporting those who needed it.”

One researcher presenting at the conference, an economist with UCLA, noted, as Reuters reported, that “if by last May the country had adopted widespread mask, social distancing, and testing protocols while awaiting a vaccine” we could have saved 400,000 Americans from death. And that doesn’t begin to count the serious illness, damage to families and businesses, and long-term disabilities.

When is this man going to be held accountable?

After Pearl Harbor Republicans were all in a froth, suggesting that FDR knew the Japanese planes were on their way and let it happen anyway so he could get us into a war to help his reelection prospects. It was a widely held article of faith among Republicans of a certain age; my dad believed it to the day he died.

But they also held President Franklin Roosevelt to account. Republican uber-conservative and Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts headed up the Roberts Commission to investigate who was responsible for the intelligence failures on that terrible day. They ultimately cleared FDR, instead laying the blame with Navy Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Army General Walter Short, the two men on command at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

When they think a Democrat might be to blame, Republicans are all about accountability.

Although the George W. Bush administration used private servers to conduct government business for eight years, and then deleted over 22 million emails as they were leaving office, when it was discovered that Hillary Clinton had a private email server for her personal email use when she was President Obama’s Secretary of State, the Republicans went insane. The investigations into her “missing” 30,000 personal emails covered three years, and cost our country tens of millions of dollars. In the end, she was cleared of all the charges.

But, the GOP had already decided, Hillary had to be accountability for something!

So when four Americans died at Benghazi, in the years after the State Department’s requests for extra funds to harden that station and others like it were turned down by Republicans in Congress who said it would represent too much “big government spending,” the GOP decided that Hillary Clinton was at fault.

It was accountability time!

Clinton was the subject of multiple Congressional hearings, examined by private investigators and federal prosecutors, endured hours of testimony before Congress, and a thorough raking over the coals in conservative media for years.

Again, Hillary was found not culpable for any part of that tragedy, although she took responsibility for it happening on her watch, but the Republicans sure portrayed themselves as the ultimate American champions of accountability.

Republicans were even serious about holding Richard Nixon accountable, once there was clear evidence of his crimes. It wasn’t a group of Democratic senators who walked over to the White House one afternoon to inform Richard Nixon that his time was up and he would have to leave office: it was a group of Republicans, led by Senator Barry Goldwater.

Accountability.

Now we have a Republican former president who independent and impartial scientists say made decisions (I would argue politically motivated decisions) that cost the lives of 400,000 Americans. While New Zealand, Taiwan and South Korea (among dozens of others) only suffered minor fatalities, America, with 4% of the worlds population, has about 20% of all the deaths from Covid in the world.

And, the researchers say, it’s all because Trump ignored the science. Instead, he chose to do what he thought would get him reelected while pandering to his fat-cat corporate buddies who wanted their front-line workers to show up and keep the money flowing, no matter what.

So when is somebody going to seriously investigate what happened during the Trump presidency?

When is somebody going to look into why his administration was actually planning to do something about Covid prior to April 7th, but in the week following that day – the day the news broke in all the major media that Covid was disproportionately killing Black people and was then only widespread in Democratic-run states – they turned on a dime and decided to do nothing?

Why did Trump, after April 7th, start lying about how serious Covid was and pushing to reopen the country?

Why did Trump lean on Republican politicians and governors to keep their states’ open, producing super-spreader events like the motorcycle rally in South Dakota that GOP Governor Kristi Noem encouraged that led to 260,000 new Covid cases, and deaths across America?

Over a half-million Americans have died, and the science indicates that 400,000 of them died because Donald Trump was a blustering, incompetent, racist, narcissistic, greedy, politically motivated ass.

America is grieving the loss of these people. Friends, family, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, grandparents, even some children.

But, as any prosecutor will tell you in any routine murder case, grieving requires closure, and closure requires accountability.

This is, at the very least, manslaughter, particularly when you consider how he now brags that he actively ignored the scientific evidence and advice.

When will America hold Donald Trump and the people who surrounded and enabled him accountable?

https://hartmannreport.com/p/will-america-hold-trump-and-his-enablers?=&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share

***************

This is interesting. Josh Rogin (WaPo & CNN) on Joe Rogan discussing inside information on the origin of covid. He and Rogan are taking heat for it... even misinformation by misdirecting the relevant podcast. There seems to be a vested interest to shutdown any talk outside of the govt narrative.

https://www.bitchute.com/video/r5oNXdO85JSU/

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/04/19/josh_rogin_it_boggles_my_mind_why_media_is_uninterested_in_covid_origins_dont_want_to_admit_they_were_wrong.html#!

Floridatexan wrote:
Will America Hold Trump & His Enablers Accountable for 400,000 Unnecessary Deaths?

Is this manslaughter, now that Trump brags that he actively ignored the scientific advice?

Thom Hartmann
Mar 29

Dr. Deborah Birx is trying to clean up her reputation by telling the story of how Trump was ignoring the science and pressuring her to instead promote his “open the country” policy that killed so many Americans.

But we don’t have to listen to her; Trump, himself, bragged on Fox News that when Dr. Fauci gave him advice on how to save American lives, he “was doing the opposite of what he [Fauci] was saying.”

The scientific research is in, and at a conference convened by the Brookings Institution it’s being reported that Donald Trump’s criminally incompetent bungling of the coronavirus pandemic killed 400,000 Americans who didn’t have to die. Oh, and we could have saved billions of dollars had it been done right.

Reuters summed it up in the first paragraph of their story: “The United States squandered both money and lives in its response to the coronavirus pandemic, and it could have avoided nearly 400,000 deaths with a more effective health strategy and trimmed federal spending by hundreds of billions of dollars while still supporting those who needed it.”

One researcher presenting at the conference, an economist with UCLA, noted, as Reuters reported, that “if by last May the country had adopted widespread mask, social distancing, and testing protocols while awaiting a vaccine” we could have saved 400,000 Americans from death. And that doesn’t begin to count the serious illness, damage to families and businesses, and long-term disabilities.

When is this man going to be held accountable?

After Pearl Harbor Republicans were all in a froth, suggesting that FDR knew the Japanese planes were on their way and let it happen anyway so he could get us into a war to help his reelection prospects. It was a widely held article of faith among Republicans of a certain age; my dad believed it to the day he died.

But they also held President Franklin Roosevelt to account. Republican uber-conservative and Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts headed up the Roberts Commission to investigate who was responsible for the intelligence failures on that terrible day. They ultimately cleared FDR, instead laying the blame with Navy Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Army General Walter Short, the two men on command at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

When they think a Democrat might be to blame, Republicans are all about accountability.

Although the George W. Bush administration used private servers to conduct government business for eight years, and then deleted over 22 million emails as they were leaving office, when it was discovered that Hillary Clinton had a private email server for her personal email use when she was President Obama’s Secretary of State, the Republicans went insane. The investigations into her “missing” 30,000 personal emails covered three years, and cost our country tens of millions of dollars. In the end, she was cleared of all the charges.

But, the GOP had already decided, Hillary had to be accountability for something!

So when four Americans died at Benghazi, in the years after the State Department’s requests for extra funds to harden that station and others like it were turned down by Republicans in Congress who said it would represent too much “big government spending,” the GOP decided that Hillary Clinton was at fault.

It was accountability time!

Clinton was the subject of multiple Congressional hearings, examined by private investigators and federal prosecutors, endured hours of testimony before Congress, and a thorough raking over the coals in conservative media for years.

Again, Hillary was found not culpable for any part of that tragedy, although she took responsibility for it happening on her watch, but the Republicans sure portrayed themselves as the ultimate American champions of accountability.

Republicans were even serious about holding Richard Nixon accountable, once there was clear evidence of his crimes. It wasn’t a group of Democratic senators who walked over to the White House one afternoon to inform Richard Nixon that his time was up and he would have to leave office: it was a group of Republicans, led by Senator Barry Goldwater.

Accountability.

Now we have a Republican former president who independent and impartial scientists say made decisions (I would argue politically motivated decisions) that cost the lives of 400,000 Americans. While New Zealand, Taiwan and South Korea (among dozens of others) only suffered minor fatalities, America, with 4% of the worlds population, has about 20% of all the deaths from Covid in the world.

And, the researchers say, it’s all because Trump ignored the science. Instead, he chose to do what he thought would get him reelected while pandering to his fat-cat corporate buddies who wanted their front-line workers to show up and keep the money flowing, no matter what.

So when is somebody going to seriously investigate what happened during the Trump presidency?

When is somebody going to look into why his administration was actually planning to do something about Covid prior to April 7th, but in the week following that day – the day the news broke in all the major media that Covid was disproportionately killing Black people and was then only widespread in Democratic-run states – they turned on a dime and decided to do nothing?

Why did Trump, after April 7th, start lying about how serious Covid was and pushing to reopen the country?

Why did Trump lean on Republican politicians and governors to keep their states’ open, producing super-spreader events like the motorcycle rally in South Dakota that GOP Governor Kristi Noem encouraged that led to 260,000 new Covid cases, and deaths across America?

Over a half-million Americans have died, and the science indicates that 400,000 of them died because Donald Trump was a blustering, incompetent, racist, narcissistic, greedy, politically motivated ass.

America is grieving the loss of these people. Friends, family, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, grandparents, even some children.

But, as any prosecutor will tell you in any routine murder case, grieving requires closure, and closure requires accountability.

This is, at the very least, manslaughter, particularly when you consider how he now brags that he actively ignored the scientific evidence and advice.

When will America hold Donald Trump and the people who surrounded and enabled him accountable?

https://hartmannreport.com/p/will-america-hold-trump-and-his-enablers?=&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share

***************

He should thank God that this isn't one of those shithole countries, like Russia where the peasants might decide to rip every bit of skin off such a tyrant's body and feed what's left to wild dogs. Then again they might decide to load the corrupt tyrant into an empty cannon and fire it in the direction of his home. Jus' sayin' .

CDC Admits the Coronavirus Is Airborne, Can Be Transmitted More Than 6 Feet Away

https://www.google.com/amp/s/slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/05/cdc-coronavirus-airborne-infection-six-feet.amp

Stay tuned for the elementary science that cloth and surgical masks are ineffective. A middle school science class could demonstrate aerosols passing through the mesh.

Florida reports more than 10,000 COVID-19 variant cases, surge after spring break

243 have been hospitalized with variants and 67 have died.

Variant COVID-19 infections skyrocketed following spring break in Florida and there have been more than 10,000 variant cases reported throughout the state, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported based on data from the Florida Department of Health.

A total of 753 variant cases from three strains -- the B.1.1.7, the P.1, and the B. 1.3.5.1. -- were reported on March 14, according to variant infection data shared with ABC News. The Florida Department of Health does not disclose variant cases on its public dashboard.

That number swelled to 5,177 cases from five types of variants on April 15. Just two weeks later, the number of variant infections exploded to 9,248 on April 27, according to local ABC affiliate , WFTV.

The surge falls in line with mid-March into April spring break celebrations, when college students and vacationers flock to the sunshine state.

Florida is home to the most variant COVID-19 cases in the country. State health officials reported more than 11,800 cases of COVID-19 variants on Wednesday, according to the Sun Sentinel.

In total, variants have led to the hospitalization of 243 residents and the death of 67 people in Florida, the Sun Sentinel reported.

Only 1% of all COVID-19 cases in Florida undergo testing to study their genetic coding, meaning the number of variant infections is likely much higher than reported.

The data regarding variants was first released Monday hours after Gov. Ron DeSantis announced the lift of all local COVID-19 restrictions.

The Florida Department of Health released the data as a part of a legal settlement with the Orlando Sentinel after the paper sued in March to obtain a county breakdown of variant cases. A judge ended up agreeing with the paper’s claim that the data was vital “to understand how the virus continues to spread and affect Floridians.”

As vaccinations across the country slow, there are concerns over the threat of highly transmissible variants. In Florida, the B.1.1.7. variant, which first emerged in the United Kingdom in December, makes up the highest number of variant cases. There are also several reports of the South African and Brazilian variants.

As of May 1, Miami-Dade County led the state with 2,279 variant cases, followed by Broward County with 1,950 variant cases, the Sun Sentinel reported.

While variants seem to be gaining traction, overall COVID-19 cases in the Sunshine State are slowing. Health officials reported a 4.67% COVID-19 positivity rate on Friday -- the second day in a row that it has dipped below 5%, per state data.

Now doctors are warning the public to stay vigilant and get vaccinated to prevent cases from going back up.

Dr. Bernard Ashby, a Miami-based cardiologist who has worked in the front lines of the pandemic, is warning of the dangers of the variants, especially in populous areas.

"If you look at the county breakdown, Miami-Dade leads the state in the variants followed by Broward County. And we've led in infections rates in general," Ashby told ABC News. "What's interesting is the degree to much the counties dominated ... [those counties] essentially account for almost 40% of the variants in the state that's out there."

"It's hard to ignore that we are essentially open for business," he said noting DeSantis' lift of COVID-19 restrictions this week. "Now we're seeing this little explosion."



https://abcnews.go.com/Health/florida-reports-10000-covid-19-variant-cases-surge/story?id=77553100

https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/

PkrBum wrote:https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/

The author is Nicholas Wade.



A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History is a 2014 book by British writer and journalist Nicholas Wade, a retired science reporter for The New York Times. Wade argues that "human evolution has been recent, copious and regional" and that this has important implications for the social sciences. The book has been widely denounced by scientists

Wade writes about racial differences in economic success between whites, blacks, and East Asians, and offers the argument that racial differences come from genetic differences amplified by culture. In the first part of the book, Wade provides an account of human genetics research. In the second part of his book, Wade proposes that regional differences in evolution of social behavior explain many differences among different human societies around the world.

Critical reviewers state that Wade goes beyond scientific consensus. Evolutionary biologist H. Allen Orr wrote in his review in The New York Review of Books that "Wade's survey of human population genomics is lively and generally serviceable. It is not, however, without error. He exaggerates, for example, the percentage of the human genome that shows evidence of recent natural selection." Orr comments that, in its second part, "the book resembles a heavily biological version of Francis Fukuyama's claims about the effect of social institutions on the fates of states in his The Origins of Political Order (2011)."

Orr further comments that:

Wade also thinks that "evolutionary differences between societies on the various continents may underlie major and otherwise imperfectly explained turning points in history such as the rise of the West and the decline of the Islamic world and China." Here, and especially in his treatment of why the industrial revolution flourished in England, his book leans heavily on Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms (2007).

Orr criticizes Wade for failing to provide sufficient evidence for his claims, though according to Orr, Wade concedes that evidence for his thesis is "nearly nonexistent."

The book has not been well received by much of the scientific community, including many of the scientists upon whose work the book was based. On 8 August 2014, The New York Times Book Review published an open letter signed by 139 faculty members in population genetics and evolutionary biology. After publication, the letter was signed by 4 more faculty members. The letter read:

As discussed by Dobbs and many others, Wade juxtaposes an incomplete and inaccurate account of our research on human genetic differences with speculation that recent natural selection has led to worldwide differences in I.Q. test results, political institutions and economic development. We reject Wade's implication that our findings substantiate his guesswork. They do not.

We are in full agreement that there is no support from the field of population genetics for Wade's conjectures.

Mark Jobling, one of the signatories to the letter, subsequently wrote an opinion piece in the peer-reviewed journal Investigative Genetics explaining why the book had "aroused the ire of this dusty community of academics".

The book was further criticized in a series of five reviews by Agustín Fuentes, Jonathan M. Marks, Jennifer Raff, Charles C. Roseman and Laura R. Stein which were published together in the scientific journal Human Biology. The publishers made all the reviews accessible on open access in order to facilitate discussions on the subject.

Political scientist Charles Murray, coauthor of The Bell Curve, wrote a more favorable review in The Wall Street Journal. According to Murray opposition to the book would be motivated by "political correctness".

In an open letter to The New York Times, the book was denounced by over 139 professors of biology and genetics. In reply to the open letter published in The New York Times Book Review, Wade wrote, "This letter is driven by politics, not science. I am confident that most of the signatories have not read my book and are responding to a slanted summary devised by the organizers." Wade added that he had asked the letter's authors (Graham Coop and Michael Eisen) for a list of errors so that he could correct future editions of the book. On 19 August 2014, Stanford University Professor Marcus Feldman, one of the signatories to the letter, critiqued Wade's book, linking the book's controversial intellectual heritage to the claims of Arthur Jensen, Richard Herrnstein, and Charles Murray.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Troublesome_Inheritance

https://reason.com/2021/05/12/did-covid-19-leak-from-a-wuhan-lab/