The View hammers Gingrich for agreeing with GOP claim nurses will abandon work to get unemployment checks

NEWT IS A HIGH SCHOOL HISTORY TEACHER, NOT A HISTORIAN
A FAILURE AS SPEAKER,AS A WOULD BE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE 

AND AS A CHRISTIAN HUSBAND (FOUR TIME ADULTERER)

March 26, 2020 By Sarah K. Burris


“The View” hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Sunny Hostin blasted the myth that nurses won’t want to work to help with the coronavirus crisis if the stimulus bill increases the unemployment benefits.

It was revealed Thursday that there have been more than 3 million unemployment claims even before the stimulus bill had passed. Prior to the coronavirus crisis, the unemployment rate was 3.5 percent, so the idea that people will want to be unemployed isn’t holding up to the evidence.

Goldberg called it outright “insulting” to assume that nurses would rather sit at home than fulfill their chosen profession and help people. But Newt Gingrich agreed with the claim

“Sure. As a practical matter, you have to — as I understand it — there’s one part of this where you can actually make more money not working,” said Gingrich. “That’s not a very good incentive.”

“That’s so disrespectful,” Goldberg said.

“I think when you have a problem on the scale, you’re going to have some things that aren’t quite right and you might be able to go back and fix later,” Gingrich rambled on. “They did the right thing to pass it. They did the right thing to pass it 96 to 0. get it to the president. I hope he’ll sign it tomorrow night or Saturday morning because the country needs to have a feeling that we are as a country can move and we can get things done. This is the third bill in a row they have passed now in three or four weeks which is a good sign. I think we have to take a deep breath, evaluate all this.”

“Lindsey Graham should be ashamed of himself,” said Goldberg.

Whoopi Goldberg Confronts Newt Gingrich for Suggesting Nurses Will Abandon Coronavirus Patients

Matt Wilstein,The Daily Beast•March 26, 2020

Newt Gingrich joined The View live from Rome on Thursday morning where he has been quarantined for weeks with his wife, U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Calista Gingrich. And yet despite living in the horror that could be America’s near future, the former Republican Speaker of the House had only mild criticism for the way President Donald Trump has handled the coronavirus crisis.

Gingrich acknowledged that the president and his task force should probably be “social distancing” during their daily press briefings. And he threw some cold water on Trump’s promise to get the economy up and running again by Easter. “I think the president's direction is right, but probably the speed won’t happen as fast as he wants it to,” he said diplomatically.

But the most contentious part of the interview came when co-host Sunny Hostin asked Gingrich to weigh in on the $2 trillion stimulus package passed by the Senate Wednesday night.

Joe Biden Blasts Trump on ‘The View’: We Can’t Just ‘Let People Die’

“Several Republican senators are worried unemployment benefits will be so enticing that people will stop working,” Hostin said. “Senator Graham even implied that the benefits would incentivize well-trained nurses to stay home and collect a check.”

She was citing a joint statement from Senators Lindsey Graham, Ben Sasse, and Tim Scott that read, “If the federal government accidentally incentivizes layoffs, we risk life-threatening shortages in sectors where doctors, nurses, and pharmacists are trying to care for the sick, and where growers and grocers, truckers and cooks are trying to get food to families’ tables.”

“Do you share their concern?” Hostin asked.

“Sure, as a practical matter you have to,” Gingrich replied. “As I understand it, there's one part of this where you can actually make more money not working. That’s not a very good incentive.”

Of course, the unemployment relief in the stimulus package would only benefit workers who are laid off due to the economic crisis—not doctors and nurses who are needed more than ever in this moment.

As he continued talking, Whoopi Goldberg could be heard off-screen saying, “That’s so disrespectful!” She added later, “Lindsey Graham should be ashamed of himself.”

“It just seems to me the suggestion that nurses who are on the front line are not going to work and sacrifice the way that they have because they're going to be making a few hundred dollars more is ludicrous,” Hostin told Gingrich, “but that's just my opinion.”

“It's insulting! It's insulting!” Goldberg added. She repeated, “Lindsey Graham should be ashamed of himself to say something like that in the middle of all of this.”

COUGH FOR JESUS
Here’s what it is like at Liberty University — which has refused to shut down due to coronavirus
March 26, 2020 By Agence France-Presse


by Alec MacGillis

Three Liberty University students, a young man and two women, sat eating lunch on Wednesday afternoon at a small table in the common dining area of the student union on the sprawling campus perched high above Lynchburg, Virginia. They compared notes on the suntans and burns they’d gotten on beaches during spring break last week. They joked about what it would be like to take the college’s gun-range classes remotely. A fourth student with a backpack strolled up to the table to chat with them for a few minutes.

The young man seated at the table mentioned that he was thinking of going to a Starbucks off campus but wasn’t sure it was safe to do so given the coronavirus raging across the country, which has sickened at least 65,000 people nationwide, more than 400 of them in Virginia and a few of them in Lynchburg.

His mention of the risk was striking given the context: There he and more than a dozen other students were, sitting in clusters around the dining area despite stickers scattered haphazardly across tables: “Closed for Social Distancing.”

This is the odd tension on display now in Lynchburg, where Liberty president Jerry Falwell Jr. has caused a stir by keeping the campus of the large evangelical Christian university open to students despite the calls of state officials and public health experts for social distancing to slow the virus’s spread and despite the university’s having recently shifted all instruction online to conform with state orders.

Falwell has minimized the threat of the coronavirus for months — two weeks ago, he compared it to the H1N1 “swine flu,” which experts say is not a comparable case — and he initially vowed not to follow the lead of other colleges in shutting down on-campus instruction, until Gov. Ralph Northam’s March 17 ban on gatherings of more than 10 people gave him no choice.

Falwell’s decision to keep the campus open to students this week after spring break was in keeping with his provocatively contrarian approach, and it buttressed the vows of President Donald Trump, whom Falwell has supported since early in the 2016 campaign, to lift social-distancing strictures as soon as possible. “I think we have a responsibility to our students — who paid to be here, who want to be here, who love it here — to give them the ability to be with their friends, to continue their studies, enjoy the room and board they’ve already paid for and to not interrupt their college life,” Falwell told the Richmond Times-Dispatch this week.


At the same time, Liberty’s decision to keep the campus open has met with such criticism — from a faculty member worried about her colleagues’ safety since they are still required to hold office hours, and from city leaders and the governor’s office— that the university is clearly feeling pressure to show that it is trying to minimize any public health risks. This has produced an odd dissonance between earnestly worded safety signs and notices on campus and Falwell’s ongoing ridiculing of coronavirus worries as alarmist, which make it hard for students to take the safety exhortations seriously.

Calum Best, a senior business and finance major from Alexandria, Virginia, and a member of the student government, has seen the effect of that dissonance since returning from break. He sees Falwell and other university officials calling the safety worries overblown in the national media, and then he sees classmates hugging and taking pictures of each other on the student center steps, or a group of at least a half dozen huddled together for a study session, or a professor of his standing in close conversation with another student and a campus security officer, or classmates heading off to game nights or group dinners at off-campus apartments. In an unusual turn, a university known for its strict “Liberty Way” — no premarital sex, alcohol, smoking or cussing — is now in a sense the most permissive. There aren’t even any more curfews in the dorms, since many residential advisers are gone.

“The real problem is just providing students a capacity and a venue to come back and do stupid things,” Best said in an interview. “Consistently, consistently, leadership is overemphasizing the effectiveness of the measures they’ve actually taken and downplaying the significance of this virus.”

Best added that there is a case to be made for keeping campus open — for foreign students, or students who really rely on the campus meal plan, or students like him whose parents are worried about having him at home and possibly infecting them — but it would need to be executed much better than what he has observed.

“It is a genuinely tough decision to close a university,” he said. “We can imagine a world in which they actually did everything they could to encourage sanitary measures and social isolation on campus. It wouldn’t necessarily be a terrible thing to keep campus open if you could be ensured of the reliability of safety measures. But they’re not.”

Students have received scant information from administrators about how to keep themselves safe from the virus, Best said. As damaging, he said, is the general message from the top, which has included Falwell spinning conspiracy theories about COVID-19 being a North Korean or “elite liberal” plot. “They could also just not be misleading and deceptive in their communications about the virus, and they’re deliberately choosing to do that,” Best said. He has been scolded for his outspokenness already: this week, Liberty’s senior vice president of university communications, Scott Lamb, called him at night to take him to task for a nonpublic Facebook post criticizing Falwell for hypocrisy for not yet issuing refunds to students who now have to settle for online classes. (Lamb did not respond to a question about the call.)

University officials estimate that about 1,900 students have returned to campus so far — a fraction of the 15,500 who normally attend classes there, about half of whom live in campus housing — but they say they expect that number could grow as high as 5,000. The feel on campus is of a college during summer break, when a small minority of students hang around for jobs or summer-term classes. As sparsely populated as the campus is, though, it’s startling to see students congregating in ways that are not happening at the countless colleges that have shut down.

At the student center, students dutifully stand 6 feet apart in line for their pita wraps and salads. But then they sit together to eat in the communal dining area, in ways that are no longer allowed at any restaurant in Virginia.

In the Jerry Falwell Library, named for the college’s famous founder, the father of the current president, social-distancing signs abound and some of the couches are piled on each other and strung in police tape. But some of the small glassed-in study rooms have at least four students grouped around the table, putting them much closer than six feet from each other. On Wednesday, a “Closed for Social Distancing” sign on a table didn’t stop one student from spreading her books and notes out across it for a study session. A librarian came through the periodical room, where The New York Times is conspicuously unavailable, and chided two students for sitting too close to each other. “You need to be 6 feet apart,” she said. “If one of you can’t lie down in between you, you’re too close.” As she walked away, they traded eyerolls.

In Green Hall, a large building on the north end of campus that includes a food court, students disregarded the distancing marks in the lines for the Dunkin Donuts and Chick-fil-A until food service workers reminded them.

Near Green Hall, a graduate student from Pennsylvania was leaving his job serving as an assistant to professors, which he said was what had required him and many other graduate assistants to return to campus after break. He questioned the decision to reopen the campus, even with the purported distancing measures. “They could have avoided all that if they just didn’t have anyone here,” he said.

Nearby, Ingrid Lindevaldsen, an undergraduate fashion major, was getting in her car to head back to her off-campus housing. She said that the university could have done a better job of limiting the students on campus to foreign students and those who truly had no other option. She herself had to come to campus to use the sewing machines for one of her classes, but she said she tried to leave as soon as possible once that was done. “I try to stay away, because there are so many kids here,” she said.

Adding irony to Falwell’s insistence on keeping the campus open is that Liberty is better positioned than most other universities to weather enforced distance learning. It has developed a hugely profitable separate operation called Liberty University Online, with as many as 95,000 people around the country taking courses in a given year. Many traditional undergraduates at the college already take some of their courses online. (The online classes have a reputation for being much less demanding.) If the coronavirus scare carries into the fall, colleges with a heavy online presence like Liberty would seem well poised to capitalize.

So far, though, the crisis has caused only turbulence for the online operation, due to the university’s insistence that the several hundred people who work for LUO — manning call centers, processing course registrations — continue reporting to work at the former insurance building where LUO is housed, according to several Liberty employees. A few employees with health conditions have been allowed to work from home, but on Wednesday, the LUO parking lot was still full of dozens of vehicles. “I’m just a worker,” shrugged one employee who was taking a break in his car when asked about the requirement to report to the office. “I come to work here.”

A similar scenario has played out at the Guillerman Financial Center, where about 250 people handle all of the university’s tuition and financial aid in an open office divided into two large spaces. One employee told me that workers have been growing increasingly anxious about infection and wondering how the office can be allowed to continue operating, given that it contains far more than the 10-person maximum and is hardly “essential.” “There are a lot of people coughing in that building,” the employee said. “I know it’s scaring a lot of people. Every time people cough, someone would say, ‘my God.’”

But on Wednesday morning, the staff was suddenly instructed to spread out more through the building, into training rooms, into supervisors’ offices, according to the employee. And in the early afternoon, they were told to disperse even further: go work from home for the next couple days. Their understanding, the employee said, was that a state inspector was headed to the building that afternoon.

Asked about the continued use of the two office buildings for hundreds of employees, Lamb, the university spokesman, pointed to an official statement from Falwell on Monday arguing that that the governor’s ban on gatherings of more than 10 did not apply to Liberty’s offices, because they were exempted the way any business workplace would be. “To the extent possible, in our workplace, we are adhering to social distancing recommendations, enhancing sanitation practices on common surfaces, and acting on appropriate workplace guidance from government officials,” Falwell said in the statement.

All this commotion, both in the office buildings and in pockets of the campus, stands in contrast to the handsome, historic downtown of Lynchburg, where there was barely a soul in sight on Wednesday afternoon. In one of the few businesses that were still open, a small gift store, owner Ron Schoultz was making protective face masks out of patterned cotton fabric to sell for $15 each. He flared immediately when asked about the decision by the big college on the hill to welcome hundreds of carefree students back to campus.

“It’s terrible,” he said. “It’s awful. It’s putting everyone else at risk.”

Will Young contributed reporting.

Liberty University is staying open because Jerry Falwell Jr. wants to own the libs
Bonnie Kristian

Illustrated | Getty Images, AP Images, iStock
March 24, 2020

Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr.'s allegiance isn't faltering.

President Trump spent the first few weeks of COVID-19's spread downplaying the seriousness of the risk and Falwell has taken up the charge. But the difference between Falwell and your average pandemic skeptic is he runs the largest Christian university in the country, and he has decided to use that position to make a potentially deadly political point.

While other universities, including private, Christian schools, have closed their campuses and emptied their dorms of all but the few students who truly have nowhere else to go, Falwell has taken Liberty in a different direction. Virginia's prohibition on gatherings of more than 10 people prevents most classes at the Lynchburg school from meeting in person, so the bulk of Liberty's instruction has moved online. But the dorms, normally housing about 16,000 students, remain open and ready to welcome residents back from spring break.

"Most of the students, from what we can tell, are coming back, and they're gonna live in the dorms, and they're gonna do their classes online," Falwell said in a radio interview on March 18. "They don't want to sit at home in the basement and have to do their own laundry," he added, laughing with his host. In the same conversation, Falwell referred to the novel coronavirus as "this flu," said he's "not worried about it," and declared the media response to be "just politics," an effort to "destroy the American economy just to hurt Trump."

Falwell's estimate that "most" students would return isn't quite accurate — the school actually anticipates around 5,000, a third of the residential student body — but that number is still far higher than those housed by comparable schools. In Lynchburg, for example, other universities' remaining on-campus population is in the double or even single digits. Liberty is also keeping its fitness center open, operating dining halls on a take-out or limited seating basis, and requiring faculty without a health exemption to hold in-person office hours and teach online courses from campus instead of in their homes. (In an unfortunate slip of the tongue, Falwell initially resisted moving to online instruction because, he said, the school's extant online classes, which instruct about 85 percent of Liberty's student body under normal conditions, are "really not the same quality of education" as residential courses.)

Falwell has never been coy about his politics and priorities, and here he has mostly stayed true to form. Though in his official capacity Falwell cast his decision as a way to let students "enjoy the room and board they've already paid for and to not interrupt their college life," he has elsewhere made his political rationale inescapably clear: Liberty's dorms are open because Falwell wants to own the libs.

Thus recent posts on his personal Twitter account, which models Trump's feed in its intemperance if not its pace, see Falwell repeatedly using the pandemic as an occasion to praise the president, critique former President Barack Obama, and accuse the media and Democratic politicians of making the "corona flu" an excuse to "destroy the U.S. economy."

Liberty University professors outside of the law school do not have tenure, a fact Falwell has touted as a "sound business decision" to suppress dissent from administration decisions. It is rare for current faculty to disagree with Falwell publicly, as doing so puts their livelihoods at stake. Thus it is not surprising that Marybeth Davis Baggett, the faculty member who spoke out against Falwell's coronavirus policy, first on Facebook and then in a Religion News Service article picked up by The Washington Post, has already secured employment elsewhere for the fall semester.

"Falwell cavalierly assumes no responsibility for at least an enabling and at most an incentivizing the students' decision to return," Baggett wrote. "Rather than provide the steady leadership needed at this sober time, Falwell has chosen to indulge and endanger the students." On her Facebook post, she shared dozens of private messages from Liberty faculty, staff, students, and alumni expressing dismay that the campus is open and that work which could be completed remotely is required to be done on campus. (I've received an unsolicited off-record message from a Liberty employee to similar effect.) Baggett concluded her article with a call for the decision to close Liberty's campus to be taken out of Falwell's hands by Liberty's board of trustees. Falwell responded by calling her "the 'Baggett' lady" on Twitter, linking to a new statement reiterating his plan for the school that often seems to function as his personal fiefdom.

As classes resume at Liberty this week, Falwell shows no sign of backing down, evincing a pointedly lackadaisical attitude about the risks of continuing campus life. He told the Lynchburg News & Advance he wants to "to give [students] the ability to be with their friends." And in the statement Liberty published Monday, Falwell described himself walking around campus, meeting and joking with returning students (a bid to be Liberty's own Typhoid Jerry, perhaps). A petition for the university board to fire Falwell will almost certainly go unheeded unless, as Baggett warns, his plan leads to a "disaster for which he would be primarily to blame."

Like Baggett, my hope and prayer is that the risk Falwell's choice courts will never come, that the campus will not become a grim experiment in what happens when the intemperate right's pandemic imprudence is allowed to set policy for thousands. Firing may be the comeuppance Falwell is due for his politically motivated recklessness, but it would be a comeuppance bought at a tragic price.

Jerry Falwell Jr. says he’s ‘protecting‘ students by calling them back to Liberty University amid pandemic

March 24, 2020 By Shawn Langlois

Jerry Falwell Jr. serves as the president of Liberty University,

founded by his father in 1971. Getty

‘I think we have a responsibility to our students — who paid to be here, who want to be here, who love it here — to give them the ability to be with their friends, to continue their studies, enjoy the room and board they’ve already paid for and to not interrupt their college life.’

That’s Liberty University President and fierce Donald Trump supporter Jerry Falwell Jr. telling the News & Advance that school’s back in session for up to 5,000 students who will be allowed to return from their spring break to the Lynchburg, Va., campus.

This while, according to the Virginia Department of Health, there are at least 290 cases of COVID-19 in Virginia, including 45 people who have been hospitalized and six who have died.

Classes will resume online for the semester in order to comply with a state ban on gatherings of more than 10 people. Campus buildings, like the library and residence halls, will, however, remain open, and instructors are expected to hold office hours. Dining halls will be takeout-only operations.

“I think we, in a way, are protecting the students by having them on campus together,” said Falwell, who has been downplaying the pandemic in recent weeks. “Ninety-nine percent of them are not at the age to be at risk, and they don’t have conditions that put them at risk.”

Earlier this month, Falwell went on Fox News to suggest coronavirus concerns were overblown and the media was using the pandemic as a tool to take down President Trump.

“It’s just strange to me how so many are overreacting,” he said. “The H1N1 virus in 2009 killed 17,000 people, it was the flu also I think, and there was not the same level of hype. You just didn’t see it on the news 24/7 and it makes you wonder if there’s a political reason for that.”

COVID-19, the coronavirus-borne disease that has killed more than 18,000 since being identified in December, is not an influenza subtype. H1N1 was.

Not everybody at the school is on board. Longtime English professor Marybeth Davis Baggett called on Liberty’s trustees to overrule Falwell’s decision to keep campus open.

“Lives are at stake,” Baggett told the News & Advance. “I think this decision is a recipe for disaster, and I have been trying to push that as much as I have been able to internally.”

SEE
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/03/from-jerry-falwell-jr.html


https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/03/jerry-falwell-jr.html

White House called off General Motors deal to build ventilators after haggling over cost: report

March 27, 2020 By Travis Gettys

The White House has reportedly pulled out of an agreement to build life-saving ventilators because officials decided they were too expensive.

They had been prepared to reveal a joint venture Wednesday between General Motors and Ventec Life Systems to produce up to 80,000 badly needed ventilators when the announcement was suddenly called off, reported the New York Times.

The decision came after the the Federal Emergency Management Agency asked for more time to evaluate the estimated cost of more than $1 billion, with several hundred million paid up front to General Motors to change over an auto parts plant in Kokomo, Indiana, to build the ventilators.

The deal isn’t dead, but government officials said they’re considering at least a dozen other proposals.

They’re also concerned that the initial promise to quickly build 20,000 ventilators has since dwindled to just 7,500, and even that number isn’t certain.

“Longtime emergency managers at FEMA are working with military officials to sort through the competing offers and federal procurement rules while under pressure to give President Trump something to announce,” the Times reported.

Those FEMA efforts are being overseen by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a White House adviser, who has said Vice President Mike Pence tasked him two weeks ago with producing more test kits, but has now focused on ventilators.

Two officials told the Times that the decision to pause the General Motors deal came from Col. Patrick Work, who is working at FEMA, and some government officials were concerned about building too many ventilators.

---30---

#KAKISTOCRACY

Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner is now in charge of the effort to manufacture ventilators: report

March 26, 2020 By Bob Brigham


President Donald Trump’s son-in-law has taken it upon himself to lead the federal government’s efforts to manufacture new ventilators after months of inaction, The New York Times reported Thursday.

“The shortage of ventilators has emerged as one of the major criticism of the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus. The need to quickly equip hospitals across the country with tens of thousands more of the devices to treat those most seriously ill with the virus was not anticipated despite the Trump administration’s own projection in a simulation last year that millions of people could be hospitalized,” the newspaper reported. “And even now, the effort to produce them has been confused and disorganized.”

“At the center of the discussion about how to ramp up the production of ventilators is Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a senior White House aide, who has told people that he was called in two weeks ago by Vice President Mike Pence to produce more coronavirus test kits and who has now turned his attention to ventilators,” The Times reported.

The newspaper noted that the White House had been preparing to announce on Wednesday a joint venture between General Motors and Ventec Life Systems to manufacture up to 80,000 ventilators. The Federal Emergency Management Agency canceled the announcement.

The newspaper noted Kushner “has been directing officials at FEMA in the effort. Two officials said the suggestion to wait on the General Motors offer came from Col. Patrick Work, who is working at FEMA.”

After you read this, feel free to scream — as I just did: https://t.co/VepuEqhvtF. pic.twitter.com/SIxcJsi35w
— David Gura (@davidgura) March 27, 2020



"At the center of the discussion about how to ramp up the production of ventilators is Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a senior White House aide…" https://t.co/m7RxHw7YLg
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) March 27, 2020

Trump flops after being asked what he’s doing to protect Asian-Americans from hate crimes: ‘I don’t know’

March 26, 2020 By Matthew Chapman

At Thursday’s coronavirus press conference, President Donald Trump reiterated his commitment to fighting the rise of hate crimes against Asian-Americans spurred by the outbreak, but choked the instant a reporter asked him what he was specifically prepared to do about it.

“What are the concrete measures that you are taking to combat the hate crimes against Asians?” asked the reporter.

“Well, I don’t know,” said Trump. “All I know is this: Asian-Americans in our country are doing fantastically well. I’m very close to them, as you know. And they’re doing fantastically well, and I think they appreciate the job we’re doing. But I did want to put that statement out, the social media statement, because, to me, Asian-Americans are a great part of our country.”

Watch below:
“I don’t know” — Trump on what he’s actually doing to prevent anti-Asian American hate crimes pic.twitter.com/lNYRJL3dF7
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 26, 2020

CAN I GET AN AMEN
Nearly 3 dozen who attended church event test positive for coronavirus
AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM IS AMERICAN PROTESTANTISM
Janelle Griffith, NBC News•March 26, 2020

Nearly three dozen people who attended a recent children's event at a church in Arkansas have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to church officials.

Donald Shipp, a deacon at First Assembly of God church in Greers Ferry, about 75 miles north of Little Rock, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that 34 people who attended the event in early March at the Cleburne County church had tested positive for the coronavirus, and that an unknown number of others were awaiting test results.

Danyelle McNeill, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Health, said a number of coronavirus cases have been associated with a church in Cleburne County, which she did not identify.

"We are still investigating newly reported cases and can’t definitively say they are all connected to one church," McNeill told NBC News on Thursday. "This is a cluster within a larger outbreak in that area of the state."

There were at least 310 reported coronavirus cases and two deaths in Arkansas as of Thursday morning.

Mark Palenske, a pastor at the church, said in a lengthy Facebook post late last week that he and his wife, Dena, were among those to test positive for COVID-19.

He said that when such a virus spreads on the other side of the world, "your first inclination is to assume that time and distance are on your side."

But "that false assumption" recently caught up with him and his wife, he said.

The couple and dozens of others from their church initially could not get tested, according to Palenske.

"One local doctor had a very small number of commercial tests and the rest is history, I suppose," he wrote.

He said that before even receiving positive test results, the church had followed medical advice and canceled services.

The couple's symptoms began with headaches followed by intense body aches and lethargy, as well as waves of chills, sweating and nausea, Palenske wrote in his post.

"Dena had a very scary morning a few days ago, which included a seizure of sorts and required hospitalization," he said.

His wife's condition has since improved and they are both back home, he said. Palenske said he could not pinpoint "where the virus came from."

"Even though we were the original positives, there are people who have been sick longer than we have," he said. "It clearly made its way through a special weekend of children’s ministry at our church."

He requested that people pray for health care workers, and he advised that people "take this medical threat more seriously."

"Maybe you assumed that it couldn’t happen to you, just like I did," he wrote. "Please adhere to the social instructions that you are receiving locally and nationally."


Christian pastor who thought COVID-19 is just ‘mass hysteria’ among the first in Virginia to die from virus

March 26, 2020 By Sky Palma


One of the first deaths in Virginia from coronavirus was a 66-year-old Christian “musical evangelist” who fell ill while on a trip to New Orleans with his wife. As the Friendly Atheist’s Bo Gardiner points out, Landon Spradlin had previously shared opinions that the pandemic was the result of “mass hysteria” from the media.

On March 13, Spradlin shared a misleading meme that compared coronavirus deaths to swine flu deaths and suggested the media is using the pandemic to hurt Trump. In the comments, Spradlin acknowledged that the outbreak is a “real issue,” but added that he believes “the media is pumping out fear and doing more harm than good”

“It will come and it will go,” he wrote.

That same day, he shared a post from another pastor that told the story of a missionary in South Africa who “protected” himself from the bubonic plague with the “Spirit of God.”

“As long as I walk in the light of that law [of the Spirit of life], no germ will attach itself to me,” read a quote from the post.

---30---

Custodian with coronavirus symptoms accuses Harvard of neglect

Wilson Wong 3/26/2020

When Harvard University students were told to pack their bags, essential workers like Doris Reina-Landaverde remained on campus to disinfect dormitories. Now, she says, she has the symptoms of the coronavirus

Harvard closed its doors March 10 to slow the virus' spread and switched to online classes. In the meantime, custodian Reina-Landaverde continued to show up to work every day with a pair of latex gloves and a mask.

But when the supply ran out and she asked her supervisor for more masks, Reina-Landaverde was told there weren't any left.

"Students were the ones who donated my mask," she said.

Reina-Landaverde, like all Harvard custodians, is provided personal protective equipment consistent with guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said university spokesman Jason Newton.

"We remain committed to providing all of our essential workers with the appropriate tools and training they need to stay safe on campus," he said.

Reina-Landaverde, 41, has worked at Harvard for almost 15 years after she arrived from El Salvador 20 years ago with temporary protected status granted by the Department of Homeland Security, which allows recipients to legally live and work in the U.S. She quickly became a leader in labor activism on campus.
She got involved in contract negotiations for janitors in 2016 as shop steward for her local affiliated with the Service Employees International Union. Reina-Landaverde, who is married and has three daughters, later organized with the Harvard TPS Coalition, which advocates for a path toward permanent residence for families like hers.

Reina-Landaverde said Wednesday that she experienced coronavirus symptoms, including a sore throat, chills and coughing, and contacted her doctor, who advised her to stay home and self-quarantine.

"Any employee who is ill, who needs to self-isolate or who needs to care for dependents can immediately begin using their paid time-off benefits, including use of up to 14 days of paid sick time they have not yet earned," Newton said.

"the wealthiest university in the nation can't supply basic protective wear" 

Massachusetts has nearly 2,500 cases related to the coronavirus, including 25 deaths. To authorize testing, health providers determine whether patients meet the state Public Health Department's definition of "person under investigation."

Reina-Landaverde's doctor told her she had to wait to be tested because she didn't meet the criteria. She is self-isolating from her husband and daughters while she recovers.

In a campuswide email Tuesday, university President Lawrence S. Bacow and his wife announced that they had tested positive for COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Both were tested the day after they presented symptoms, the email said.

Reina-Landaverde called it a "shame" that the wealthiest university in the nation can't supply basic protective wear, relying on student donations, instead.

"I feel like the university doesn't care about me or my co-workers," she said. "We are human beings. I feel like a vacuum or a broom that you only use when you need it."

FORMER DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT, SENATOR AMY KLOBACHUER WHOSE HUSBAND HAS CORONAVIRUS, TO HER CREDIT ALWAYS MENTIONS JANITORS WHEN TALKING ABOUT  HEALTHCARE WORKERS WHO NEED PROTECTION.

Why you need to leave your shoes OUTSIDE your house: 

Infectious disease specialists warn COVID-19 can survive on soles for up to five days - and reveal how to clean them properly

Georgine Nanos is a general practitioner from San Diego, California

She said shoes are potential carriers of coronavirus and should be left outside

The sole of a shoe is the main breeding ground for bacteria, fungi and viruses

Her claims have been backed by infectious disease specialist Mary E. Schmidt

Dr Schmidt warns COVID-19 can live on shoes and synthetic fabrics for five days

Shoes worn in supermarkets and on public transport are most likely to carry it

DO NOT PUT SHOE TO FACE

By ALICE MURPHY FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA PUBLISHED: 26 March 2020

Infectious disease specialists have warned that COVID-19 can live on the soles of shoes for up to five days, with footwear more likely to carry coronavirus if it has been worn in busy areas like supermarkets, airports or on public transport.

The sole of a shoe is the main breeding ground for bacteria, fungi and viruses, but respiratory droplets carried in the air from a person infected with coronavirus can still land anywhere on the upper part of a shoe like the laces or the heel.

Soles are typically made from durable, synthetic materials like rubber, PVC or leather lined with plastic, all of which carry high levels of bacteria because they are non-porous, meaning they do not allow air, liquid or moisture to pass through.

Australians are becoming increasingly mindful of what is brought inside their homes as the country recorded a spike of 190 cases overnight in New South Wales alone, bringing nationwide infections to 2,793 and the death toll to 12.

Shoes are more likely to carry COVID-19 if they've been worn in busy areas like supermarkets or on public transport (pictured, customers carry bags outside a supermarket in Sydney on March 4, 2020)

HOW LONG CAN COVID-19 SURVIVE ON SURFACES?

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed coronavirus can live on cardboard for 24 hours and on stainless steel and plastic for up to to three days.

Studies have shown the virus can remain on synthetic materials used in shoes for as long as five days.

Frequently touched surfaces like taps, phone cases, door handles, computer keyboards and toilets should be cleaned using bleach or alcohol solutions of at least 70 percent alcohol.


Australian paramedic shaves beard to prevent spread of COVID-19

San Diego family doctor Georgine Nanos told Huffington Post Australia the likelihood of footwear carrying COVID-19 increases if it has been worn in heavily populated areas, like offices, shopping centres, trains, buses and airports.

CORONAVIRUS CASES IN AUSTRALIA: 3,050

New South Wales: 1,405

Victoria: 574

Queensland: 493

Western Australia: 231

South Australia: 235

Australian Capital Territory: 53

Tasmania: 47

Northern Territory: 12

TOTAL CASES: 3,050

DEAD: 13

Missouri health advisor Dr Mary E. Schmidt agreed, saying the coronavirus has been shown to live on synthetic surfaces for 'five days or more' by studies on materials closely related to shoe fabrics at room temperature.

These claims have been supported by Kansas City public health specialist Carole Winner, who said shoes made with plastic and other synthetic materials can carry active viruses for days.

Ms Winner said shoes should be left in garages or directly inside the front door.

'The idea is to just not to track them throughout the house,' she told HuffPost.

People who are not working from home and continuing to commute, like healthcare workers and shop assistants, are advised to use one pair of shoes for any time spent out of the house.

Shoes made from canvas, soft fabrics or faux leather should be cleaned in the washing machine on a low temperature cycle. Leather shoes or heavy duty work boots should be cleaned by hand with disinfectant wipes.


MOSCOW/TASS
Shoes should be left outside or directly inside the front door to avoid trekking germs and bacteria collected on trains or buses through the house (stock image)

WHY YOU NEED TO WASH FRUIT AND VEGETABLES WITH SOAP


University of Sydney Associate Professor Timothy Newsome

University of Sydney Associate Professor Timothy Newsome specialises in infection, vaccines and virology, and has been watching closely as coronavirus restrictions heighten across Australia.

Mr Newsome confirmed that 'every surface is a hazard' when it comes to COVID-19, including fresh produce on supermarket shelves.

Mr Newsome told Daily Mail Australia that while the virus can live on most surfaces, people doing their weekly grocery shop should be particularly wary of the fruit and veg aisle as customers are constantly picking up and placing back down items.

While it would be 'poor practice' to test 'every avocado for coronavirus', Mr Newsome said people must treat everything they touch as potential sources of contamination.

The best course of action is to wash fruit and vegetables with soap as soon as you bring them home, instead of simply relying on the high heat of cooking them to 'kill' the virus.

'Wash them with warm soapy water, just as you do your hands,' Mr Newsome said.

Melbourne environmental scientist Nicole Bijlsma previously warned Daily Mail Australia about the dust and allergens shoes can carry into the home.

She said it's best to leave footwear outside or directly inside the door rather than traipsing them through the house.


Nicole Bijlsma is a qualified building biologist based in Melbourne

But when it comes to virus-proofing your home against COVID-19, Ms Bijlsma said it's important to draw the line between keeping things clean and over sanitising surfaces.

'The conundrum is that bacteria are critical for humans - the more bacteria we are exposed to, the stronger out immune response will be,' she said on Thursday.

'It's absolutely justified to disinfect everything in hospital settings and in places where you have high risk individuals, but for most households clinical sanitising will actually reduce bacterial diversity which is counterproductive.'

Regularly washing hands, avoiding touching your face and coughing and sneezing into the crook of your elbow instead of your hand are the best defences we have against the rapid spread of coronavirus, Ms Bijlsma said.

DIAMONDS ON THE SOLES OF HER SHOES

Mardi Gras is blamed for New Orleans coronavirus spread amid fears city with world's highest growth rate in cases will be next U.S. epicenter and hospitals could collapse in a week

New Orleans is experiencing the highest growth in coronavirus cases seen anywhere in the world

827 infections have been reported in the city as of Thursday morning 

Mardi Gras festivities last month are being blamed for the city's rapid outbreak
The New Orleans metro area accounts for about 70 percent of Louisiana's nearly 1,800 cases and 65 deaths

400 new cases were reported in 24 hours over Tuesday and Wednesday
State officials have warned that hospitals could collapse by April 4
Fears are mounting that the Louisiana outbreak may extend across the South

By FRANCES MULRANEY and MEGAN SHEETS FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and WIRES
PUBLISHED: 26 March 2020

New Orleans is on track to become the next coronavirus epicenter in the United States with one of the highest growth in cases seen anywhere in the world.

Authorities are warning that hospitals could collapse by April 4 and that the state will run out of ventilators by the first week of next month if the growth rate continues.

Nearly 1,800 people in Louisiana have tested positive for coronavirus and 65 have died in the two weeks since the first patient was reported on March 9 - an average daily growth rate of 65 percent.

The number of cases increased by 400 - or 30 percent - in the span of 24 hours between Tuesday and Wednesday.

The New Orleans metro area accounts for about 70 percent of Louisiana's infections - with 827 reported in the city to date, more than the total number in all but 15 states.

Orleans Parish, which borders the city, has suffered the highest number of deaths per capita of any county in the US with 37. Eleven of those deaths were reported at a nursing home, where dozens more residents tested positive for COVID-19.

As concerns grow that Louisiana could spark a larger spread across the southern states, experts say the crisis in New Orleans was likely accelerated by Mardi Gras, the iconic celebration that unfolds across the city over a period of several weeks, culminating on February 25 this year.

Scroll down for video

A group of revelers on a balcony toss beads to the crowd below on Bourbon Street on Mardi Gras day in New Orleans which a month later is set to become a new coronavirus epicenter

A reveler makes their way through the French Quarter during Fat Tuesday celebrations on February 25. The city has now come to a halt as it registers the highest growth in coronavirus cases than has been seen anywhere else in the world amid fears the hospitals will collapse

Gov. John Bel Edwards holds a media briefing about Louisiana's response to COVID-19 on Wednesday in which he reveals that the state's largest problem is extreme lack of ventilators

New Orleans shuts down during coronavirus outbreak

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump issued a major federal disaster declaration for the state, freeing federal funds and resources. Only five states have been issued the declaration so far.

The escalating crisis in the state has dashed hopes that less densely populated and warmer-climate cities would not be hit as hard by the pandemic, and that summer months could see it wane.

The plight of New Orleans also raises fears it may be a powerful catalyst in speedily spreading the virus across neighboring southern states.

New Orleans is the biggest city in Louisiana, the state with the third-highest case load of coronavirus per capita in the US after the major epicenters of New York and Washington.

The ranking is particularly alarming given Louisiana's relatively small population of 4.6million. In contrast, Texas has a population of 29.4million but only 826 cases.

Governor John Bel Edwards warned in a press conference on Wednesday that people in the state need to 'make sure you’re doing what we ask'.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards is holding daily press conference's as the state of Louisiana sees one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the United States and cases skyrocket

A man walks his dog past a boarded up business on Frenchmen Street Wednesday following the severe outbreak of the coronavirus disease in New Orleans in the past few days

Boarded up businesses are pictured on Frenchmen Street as the public are told to stay inside

New Orleans is next coronavirus epicenter as Carnival blamed

'This has spread across the state of Louisiana. One of the consequences of this is ventilator capacity,' he said.

'If our growth continues we could run out of ventilators in first week in April and that depends on whether the curve gets flattened and our ability to pursue and allocate additional ventilators.'

The governor expects to receive 100 further ventilators on Thursday and 100 more at the beginning of next week but warns that even if they are received it is still 600 short of what is needed in the New Orleans area alone.

'Quite frankly, it is not enough,' he concluded.

The growth rate in Louisiana tops all others, according to a University of Louisiana at Lafayette analysis of global data.

The culprit for the coronavirus in the Big Easy? Some blame Carnival.

'Mardi Gras was the perfect storm, it provided the perfect conditions for the spread of this virus,' said Dr. Rebekah Gee, who until January was the Health Secretary for Louisiana and now heads up Louisiana State University's health care services division.






She noted that Fat Tuesday fell on February 25, when the virus was already in the United States but before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and national leaders had raised the alarm with the American public.

At this point, there were still less than 100 cases around the country.

'So New Orleans had its normal level of celebration, which involved people congregating in large crowds and some 1.4 million tourists,' Gee said.

'We shared drink cups. We shared each other's space in the crowds. We shared floats where we were throwing not just beads but probably coronavirus off Carnival floats to people who caught it and took it with them to where they came from.'

Gee said that the explosive growth rate of the coronavirus in the Mississippi River port city means 'it's on the trajectory to become the epicenter for the outbreak in the United States'.

Louisiana Senator John Kennedy also declared that people drinking during Mardi Gras caused coronavirus to spread in the state as they had weaker immune systems when they contracted the virus.

Kennedy then blamed the lack of information as to why people were so willing to travel to New Orleans to take part in the boisterous activities towards the end of February.

'We're a hot spot,' the conservative politician said in a segment with Fox News. 'It started in New Orleans. It's moving into the rest of the state.'

He continued: 'I think it has a lot to do with Mardi Gras. I think our friends in China were worried about their image more than the world's health and sat on the news about this virus for longer than they should have.

'We held Mardi Gras. People flew in from all over the world. We were in close quarters. One or two had too much to drink and lowered their immune system. They diminished their immune systems and we got a problem.'


'I think it has a lot to do with Mardi Gras,' claimed Louisiana Senator John Kennedy

Louisiana issues stay at home order after cases increase

Dr. Peter Hotez is the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College, a renowned vaccine scientist and an expert on the coronavirus pandemic.

He said that the rapid grip the virus is gaining on New Orleans was deeply worrying and a possible harbinger for worse to come across the south and for less densely populated and warmer cities across America.

'There has been some research and data suggesting that warmer, more humid weather could slow this epidemic,' he said.

'The fact that this occurred on the Gulf Coast, which has some of the higher humidity and temperatures in the U.S., is a serious concern.'

Hotez noted that more research into how climate does or does not play a role in the spread of this coronavirus needs to happen, but acknowledged that experts hoped that warm weather and the coming summer months in the northern hemisphere would be natural buffers against it.

'If you look at this epidemic, we've not seen much in the hotter parts of the country. Texas has not had a lot. Arizona has not had a lot. Then all of a sudden - bam! - it appears in strength in New Orleans,' he said.

'We have to follow this trend closely.'

Police urge revelers to clear Bourbon Street on March 15th

Having an entirely new coronavirus epicenter kick off means that the United States may soon be dealing with multiple hot spots all at once, Hotez said, a worst-case scenario that could cripple healthcare systems.

If predictions were correct, the hospitals in New Orleans would struggle to manage past next week, Edwards told a news conference on Tuesday.

New Orleans could well be the first major domino to fall in the south, starting a chain reaction in other metro areas in the region, said Hotez.

That is a serious concern for Houston, the fourth-largest city in the country and a major center for the oil industry.

The two cities have historically strong links made even more so by an influx of New Orleans residents into Houston following hurricanes Katrina and Harvey.

On the ground in New Orleans' famed French Quarter, residents said they were definitely concerned, but that the virus was an entirely different threat from the natural disasters that routinely befall the city.

Jonathan Sanders, a 35-year-old general manager of the French Quarter brasserie Justine, said the city was calm and residents largely heeding authorities orders to stay inside.

'There is always something going on at all hours of the day or night. Now, without it all, it's very peaceful,' he said.

'You can park anywhere in the French Quarter.'

The virus, Sanders said, was so far easier to deal with than the death and destruction Hurricane Katrina unleashed in 2005, when over 1,800 people died along the Gulf Coast.

'When you think of the total destruction of Katrina... that was gut wrenching,' he said.

'We're fairly more resilient than other places that haven't had so many tragic things happen to their city.'

---30---

Trump administration 'ignored' advice of National Security Council's 2016 pandemic 'playbook', a color-coded step-by-step plan which urged buying masks early on

The 69 page guide used a color-coded step-by-step plan, Politico reports

A series of missteps at the nation’s top public health agency caused a critical shortage of reliable laboratory tests for the coronavirus, investigations found

Medics are now so desperate for personal protective equipment amid the viral pandemic that they’ve turned to the public for help in making them 

And the president has spent the last week going against the advice of medical experts and suggesting the lockdown could be lifted as soon as Easter

A spokesman for the NSC told Politico the document is 'quite dated'

The president has said: 'Nobody ever expected a thing like this'

By LAUREN FRUEN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM 26 March 2020

Donald Trump and his administration are said to have 'ignored' the advice of the National Security Council's 2016 pandemic 'playbook'.

The 69 page guide used a color-coded step-by-step plan to urge buying masks early on, told government to adopt a 'unified message' and instructed them to question testing capabilities, Politico reports.

A series of missteps at the nation’s top public health agency caused a critical shortage of reliable laboratory tests for the coronavirus, hobbling the federal response, an Associated Press review found.

Doctors and nurses are now so desperate for personal protective equipment amid the viral pandemic that they’ve turned to the public for help in making them, saying do-it-yourself face masks are better than nothing.

And the president has spent the last week going against the advice of medical experts and suggesting the lockdown could be lifted as soon as Easter.

Trump told Fox News: 'Nobody ever expected a thing like this.'


Donald Trump, pictured Wednesday, and his administration are said to have 'ignored' the advice of the National Security Council's 2016 pandemic 'playbook'

The 69 page guide used a color-coded step-by-step plan to urge buying masks early on, told government to adopt a 'unified message' and instructed them to question testing capabilities

A spokesman for the NSC told Politico: 'We are aware of the document, although it’s quite dated and has been superseded by strategic and operational biodefense policies published since.

'The plan we are executing now is a better fit, more detailed, and applies the relevant lessons learned from the playbook and the most recent Ebola epidemic in the [Democratic Republic of the Congo] to COVID-19.'

A health department spokesperson said the current strategy is dictated by more recent guides. 

But the handbook asks early one: 'Is there sufficient personal protective equipment for healthcare workers who are providing medical care?'

It adds: 'Early coordination of risk communications through a single federal spokesperson is critical.

'We recommend early budget and financial analysis of various response scenarios and an early decision to request supplemental funding from Congress, if needed.

'What is our level of confidence on the case detection rate? Is diagnostic capacity keeping up?'




It emerged earlier this month that President Trump ignored warnings from US intelligence agencies about the threat of a coronavirus pandemic, according to a report in The Washington Post.

One intelligence official and several Trump Administration officials spoke to the publication on the condition of anonymity, claiming the President downplayed the COVID-19 threat in spite of growing anxiety from aides and members of his own cabinet throughout January and February.

'Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were — they just couldn't get him to do anything about it,' one official stated, adding: 'The system was blinking red.'

Officials were first alerted to reports about cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China on January 3, after a director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spoke with Chinese colleagues.

'Ominous, classified warnings' purportedly put together by the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence began to increase over the course of the month.

'There was obviously a lot of chatter in January,' one of the officials told The Post.


Despite this, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar had trouble contacting Trump until January 18.

Two officials told The Post that when Azar finally got a hold of Trump over the phone and attempted to discuss the coronavirus, 'the President interjected to ask about vaping and when flavored vaping products would be back on the market'.

On January 27, several aides are reported to have gone to office of White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney to urge that senior officials do more about the threat of coronavirus.

Mulvaney soon began setting up regular meetings about COVID-19, but Trump was allegedly 'dismissive' in the initial phases 'because he did not believe that the virus had spread widely throughout the United States.'

As coronavirus continued to spread in February, and US agencies tracked its spread around the globe, Trump continued to publicly downplay the threat.

A spokesperson for White House spokesperson told The Post in a statement: 'President Trump has taken historic, aggressive measures to protect the health, wealth and safety of the American people — and did so, while the media and Democrats chose to only focus on the stupid politics of a sham illegitimate impeachment.

'It’s more than disgusting, despicable and disgraceful for cowardly unnamed sources to attempt to rewrite history — it’s a clear threat to this great country.'

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Trump team failed to follow NSC¿s pandemic playbook - POLITICO