MSNBC, CNN Anchors Shred Fox’s Geraldo Rivera for Ludicrous Idea to Name Vaccine After Trump

Pilar Melendez
Sat, 21 November 2020

MSNBC, Fox News, CNN

In one of the most bizarre examples of unwavering Trump sycophancy, Fox News correspondent-at-large Geraldo Rivera on Friday suggested naming the COVID-19 vaccine after the president to cheer him up.

And Rivera’s peers from competing networks brutally roasted him for suggesting Trump—notorious for putting his name on everything from buildings to steaks—might need to be coaxed from office with lavish credit for a cure to a virus he repeatedly downplayed.

“You know, Gerald raises a good point there. It’s possible we just don’t give the president enough credit for his FDR-like devotion to tackling this virus,” MSNBC host Brian Williams sarcastically said on Friday next to images of Trump golfing and not wearing a face mask. “His laser-like focus, his daily devotion, the sympathy he’s forever expressing to the families of the quarter million dead.”

“Even the way the president lectures us in that way to please wear a mask and stop the spread. And he’s always advocated injections. Geraldo may be on to something,” he added.

🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/BrWKJubLUi
— Tim O'Brien (@TimOBrien) November 21, 2020

CNN host Don Lemon took a more direct punch at Rivera, laughing at the supposed “Trump whisperer” for suggesting “something that might make this snowflake of a president feel better.”

“It’s pretty pathetic, even [Fox & Friends co-host] Steve Doocy had to laugh out loud at it,” Lemon said.

Rivera argued during Fox & Friends that naming the COVID-19 vaccine “The Trump” would be “a nice gesture to him and years from now it would become kind of a generic name.”

“‘Have you got your Trump yet?’ ‘I got my Trump, I’m fine.’ I wish we could honor him in that way,” Rivera said, noting that the name could help mend divisiveness across the country and smooth the path for Trump to concede the 2020 election.

Fox's Geraldo Rivera says we should honor Trump by naming the COVID-19 vaccine "Trump", and that Trump's name could eventually become a generic term for vaccines. pic.twitter.com/xoO1A37qIZ
— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) November 20, 2020

The suggestion came just days after Trump wrongly claimed full credit for Pfizer’s announcement that its COVID-19 vaccine was effective. In fact, the drug marker didn’t accept government money for the project.

Since then, another drug company has released results indicating a second, more accessible vaccine could be fast-tracked by the FDA by the end of the year. Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday also called the efficacy of Pfizer’s vaccine “extraordinary,” adding it is almost as effective as the measles shot.

On Friday, Trump made the outlandish suggestion that those drug companies deliberately withheld successful results until after the election as a revenge-fueled plot to kick him out of office due to his crusade against prescription drug prices.

Rivera said that he wished the American people could honor Trump by crediting him for the speedy vaccine “because he is definitely the prime architect of this Operation Warp Speed.”

To date, the coronavirus has killed at least 250,000 Americans and infected nearly 12 million—a grim milestone that is only expected to skyrocket as the holiday season and winter loom.

On Friday night, Williams seemed to allude to the tragic reality of the virus surging across the nation, calling out the president for refusing to follow virus mitigation recommendations pushed by his own public health officials, like mask-wearing and social distancing.

“We are all painfully aware life in America will not feel anything close to normal until the coronavirus vaccine has been perfected and really distributed,” he said during his late night show, The 11th Hour.

During his monologue about Trump's “laser focus” on the pandemic, Williams jokingly highlighted the success rate of other products named after the president.

“What Trump Steaks did for the hungry, what Trump Water did for the thirsty in our nation, what Trump University did to lift up the uneducated in our country, well along comes Trump: The Vaccine,” Williams quipped. “Possibilities, I think you’ll agree, are endless.”

Kayleigh McEnany now calls CNN reporters ‘activists’ and takes questions from pro-Trump propagandists. This doesn’t bode well
Fri, 20 November 2020, 
 Andrew BuncombeThe Independent

Kayleigh McEnany was appointed in April (Getty)

Full credit, I suppose, to Kayleigh McEnany.

Six months after being appointed Donald Trump’s White House press secretary, she still has a spring in her step, some vigor in her manner, and a willingness to trade sharp elbows with reporters as she sets about defending the indefensible. All the more credit, given she is now spokesperson for a lame duck administration.

None of what she does benefits the American people. But that has never been the job of any of Trump’s press secretaries. Their task is to sip the Kool-Aid, or whatever may be the preferred 2020 version — disinfectant, perhaps — and go and do battle for the president. Oftentimes, they are performing for just one viewer.

Yet McEnany’s appearance on Friday felt striking, even given the remarkable scenes we now witness on a seemingly daily basis: Rudy Giuliani mopping his brow and dabbing at leaking hair dye as he blames Venezuelans for Joe Biden’s victory, Mike Pence’s fantasies about turning the corner on Covid (true only if he means turning the corner signposted “250,000 Deaths”), Trump’s blatant efforts even this late in the day to try and erode the Constitution he and his supporters claim to hold so dear.

First, McEnany spoke of the news that Pfizer was set to seek FDA permission to start using its Covid vaccine, the development of which she claimed was the work of Trump.

“So many American lives will be saved, thanks to President Trump and the great work of Operation Warp Speed,” she said, failing to mention the 11.7 million Americans who have been infected, or the 253,000 who have died.

Many critics of the president say at least some of those lives may have been saved had the president taken the virus more seriously, led a nationwide plan to halt its spread, and done something as simple as to encourage mask-wearing.

Next up, McEnany was asked about Giuliani’s wild press conference in which he and lawyer Sidney Powell claimed “massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba and likely China" interfered with the election.

McEnany — who was previously cirticised for speaking both on behalf of the White House and the Trump campaign — sought to suggest the question was not really for her, but added: “The president’s been very clear — he wants every legal vote to be counted, and to make sure no illegal votes are counted.”

There was time for no more than a half-a-dozen questions in the fifteen minutes McEnany devoted to her first press conference since the beginning of October.

One was from Chanel Rion, a journalist for One America News Network (OANN), a right-wing pro-Trump site that has an affection for paeans to the president and conspiracy theories. (Trump often tweets his support for the channel these days, saying it is fair more fair than Fox News, which he now considers an enemy.)

Rion claimed that “contrary to the court of media opinion”, there was widespread evidence of “vast” irregularity during the election, something officials from both parties say is not true. Why, she wanted to know, had the White House not called in the FBI?

Of surprise to nobody, McEnany was ready with her answer, which quickly segued into a defiant soliloquy about Trump’s own transition and how everyone had been against him from the start.

At the every end, Kaitlan Collins of CNN tried to ask a question, but McEnany snapped at her: “I don’t take questions from activists." Collins’ colleagues were quick to defend on her Twitter, but she did not really need their help, telling McEnany she was not an activist and that “that's not doing your job, your taxpayer-funded job”.

What to make of all this noise and nonsense and dishonesty, as America prepares for a winter in which the Covid death toll is likely to soar even higher? Was this what it was like 50 years ago during the “Five O’Clock Follies”, when generals in Vietnam would lie to journalists about America’s “progress” against the Viet Cong, as the bodycount ticked up and up?

In short, it all felt very desperate, very wretched — the final acts of a widely discredited administration. It is likely something we will not have to listen to for very much longer.

Rudy Giuliani suggests cutting heads of Democrats in Fox interview after disastrous press conference

Justin Vallejo Sat, 21 November 2020

Rudy Giuliani suggests cutting heads of Democrats in Fox interview (Fox News)

Rudy Giuliani followed his hair-raising press conference with an even more peculiar, but less leaky, Fox News interview suggesting the decapitation of the "corrupt Democrat" establishment.

In an interview with Sean Hannity, Mr Giuliani made a throat chopping gesture as he spoke about the Democratic party leadership since the Clinton administration.

He prefaced that he wasn't talking about ordinary Democrats before commenting: "Somehow the Democrat party was hijacked by Clinton and since then has gotten more corrupt and more corrupt and more corrupt. Somebody better cut their head off."

The Clinton reference echoed the core claims from the Trump campaign's earlier "path to victory" press conference where Mr Giuliani spun a web of connections in his theory of a "national conspiracy" behind a communist plot backed by Venezuela's Hugo Chaves, in concert with Cuba and China, tied to Democrat leadership through the Clinton Foundation and George Soros.

Mr Giuliani's suggestion to give them all the chop gave even Mr Hannity a moment's pause as he ignored the comments and changed the subject before either he or someone in the studio's control room gave the interview the chop.

"Alright Mr Mayor thank you… I'm not trying to cut you off. Are you there? Oh, we've lost him. Alright," Mr Hannity said before moving on to the next segment.

The Fox News interview on Thursday night came just hours after Mr Giuliani held a 1.5-hour press conference that made more headlines for his impression of the movie My Cousin Vinny and leaking hair dye than the evidence provided to support the Trump campaign's claims of election impropriety.

Between the viral clips, the so-called "Kraken" of evidence released by the campaign's lawyers was made up of hundreds of affidavits in key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin where they hope to overturn the results.

Their star witness, via affidavit, was City of Detroit employee Jessie Jacob, who Mr Giuliani quoted as swearing under penalty of perjury that she was instructed by supervisors to backdate ballots to make them valid.

The US cybersecurity official fired by Donald Trump, Chris Krebs, said it was the "most dangerous" 1 hour and 45 minutes in the history of American television.

"And possibly the craziest. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re lucky," Mr Krebes said in a tweet.

Mr Krebs, who as the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), released a statement last week saying the 3 November election was the most secure in American history.

“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised," said the statement from CISA, which is part of the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security.

#TRUMPTV

The future of Fox News is hanging in the balance

James Moore
Sat, 21 November 2020
The Independent

Fox host Tucker Carlson has maintained his support for Donald Trump (Getty)

In a recent column I looked at the rise of rivals like One America News (OAN) and Newsmax that seek to outflank the network on the right, which would be tougher with the possible launch of Trump TV (or maybe the soon-to-be-former president will partner with one of them).

I wonder how Fox responds. It’s a fascinating question given the pushback it’s facing from its audience and the central role it plays in Rupert Murdoch’s empire.

CNN’s Brian Stelter has made the point that Fox’s much smaller, but suddenly fast-growing rivals, are driven by their Donald Trump loyalist viewers’ demand for a fictional universe in which their god-emperor won the election.

Fox caters to this with its prime time “opinion” hosts; people like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, who have gleefully followed their viewers down the rabbit hole.

But some of its anchors, in particular its news anchors, and analysts have taken a different path, one guided by the facts.

Trump’s most passionate fans find it very uncomfortable when they’re confronted with those because they’re clear: Joe Biden won the election. He won the popular vote. He won the electoral college. The claims of widespread voter fraud emanating from the White House are fictional.

The network’s number crunchers triggered Trump and his fans with their early (and correct) call of Arizona for Biden. But there was more.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said host Neil Cavuto, as the network cut away from coverage of White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. “She’s charging the other side as welcoming fraud and welcoming illegal voting. Unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue to show you this.” And he didn’t, to the ire of Carlson.

Then on Sunday anchor Eric Shawn aired a series of interviews with election officials and experts, including one with Republican Philadelphia city commissioner Al Schmidt, decked out in a stars and stripes mask. They denied the baseless allegations tabled by Donald Trump. He also screened a statement from Dominion Voting Systems saying: “Vote deletion/switching assertions are completely false.” The company flatly refuted any ties to political parties or Venezuela (also screened).

Shawn then served up a monologue in which he asserted: “Election officials across the country insist, as of today, there is not evidence of any widespread fraud affecting the presidential election, that our precious democracy was not tampered with and that such baseless and false claims are an insult to the thousands of elections officials and workers across the country who we have seen dedicating themselves 24/7 to ensure a fair and free election for all of us.”

Fox has always denied that it is the propaganda arm of the Republican Party, insisting rather that it is a news network, albeit one set up as a counterweight to its supposedly liberal-leaning rivals which dominated before its emergence (whether they really were liberal is open to debate).

There are some at the network who appear to believe the hype, who buy into the idea of a fact-based news operation that is distinct from the opinion hosts with their alternative facts.

Fox is still awful. The impact it has had on journalism is awful. The stuff it pumps out is awful. Some of the stories it has whipped up and obsessively followed are scarcely stories at all. The alleged “war on Christmas”, Benghazi, the Clintons as puppet masters behind the deep state responsible for all the world’s ills. Check out the coverage and weep.

But despite the ubiquity of that toxic sludge, in having hosts who view themselves as news anchors guided by facts Fox does differ from the other parts of the conservative media ecosystem it inhabits. They don’t have anything like that. They have displayed no interest in offering any pushback against Trump’s baseless claims. They are a safe space for their audience. Fox sometimes isn’t.

This resistance to Trump’s narrative from certain quarters at Fox has clearly created tension between it and a part of its audience, the part which is, as Stelter rightly pointed out, fully immersed in Trump’s fictional alternate universe. A universe that the channel ultimately helped to create.

The idea that Fox is a news network, as opposed to a propaganda outfit for Republican shills, is an important part of how it sees and markets itself. And it has benefited the channel in the past. When the Obama administration, for example, tried to cut it off, the other networks ignored its constant sniping at them and pushed back on its behalf.

Does that change if it abandons the pretence, and muzzles or kicks out the anchors that have pushed back against Trump? How does Fox handle the competition going forward?

This is no small question for the Murdochs. Fox News Channel has been a moneymaking machine for them, one that has benefited from an effective monopoly position on the right.

If it follows OAN, and Newsmax and dedicates itself solely to the alternative universe they inhabit and some of the viewers want, its attempt to portray itself as a news network will become that much harder. If the Biden administration shows some claws and attempts to replicate what the Obama administration tried it may find it easier to succeed.

On the other hand, if Fox stays the course, the competition from its scrappy rivals on its right flank may become more serious, especially if, as I suggested in my previous column, one or the other of them manages to add Trump to their roster.

Read More

Trump-friendly Newsmax a sudden competitor to Fox News

Fox News hosts lash out at Democrats telling Trump to concede

Trump adviser clashes with Fox News host in fiery exchange

COVID-19: University of Manchester students occupy building in protest over 'lack of support'

Sat, 21 November 2020


The students straining their necks out of a first-floor tower block window are desperate to see the sky again, but first they want to make sure their voices are heard.

For a week they have occupied the decommissioned Owens Park Tower on the Fallowfield campus of the University of Manchester in protest over rent, tuition fees and what they perceive as inadequate support for mental health.

It's Manchester University but it could be any number of campuses around the country. Out of the window, they speak for a generation for whom the university experience has been a let down from the start.

"Almost everyone on campus caught COVID within the first two weeks simply because we were all in close proximity, it was inevitable," says Lotte Marley, a first-year student from Sussex.

"Isolating for two weeks is really tough for anyone but particularly in a tiny flat with people you don't know."

Ben McGowan, another first year student, joins in.

"The fact is that we were told there would be face-to-face teaching and that promise was broken in the first week by university management," he tells me.

"The university has prioritised profits over student wellbeing."

Meanwhile, the death of a 19-year-old student on this site last month has left many shaken.

"We are being pushed to the brink," says Izzy Smitheman. "Especially us first years, none of us have ever really lived away from home before."

She added: "No one wants history to repeat itself, the death on campus was tragic but the lack of support from the university has been completely atrocious and terrifying."

The University of Manchester has found itself at the centre of student ire over the current situation.

Many students feel they were brought here under false pretences, effectively imprisoned on campus as the virus spread like wildfire and, all the time, blamed for a second wave.

Maya Moodley is a first-year politics and philosophy student and has received some support from the university counselling service, although she believes it has been inadequate.

"All my lessons from the start have been online and my counselling has been Zoom calls," she says.

"I feel like I'm not part of the university at all, I never go to campus. A big part of why I chose this uni was the vibrant city and I feel like I haven't had that experience."

The erection of a fence around the Fallowfield campus this month only inflamed tensions between students and the university management.

It was pulled down by those who live on the site almost straight away.

"The fence definitely made us feel even more trapped," says Amy Charlton, a first-year law student. "It's felt very lonely and very isolating being here, I've almost been robotic."

Sarah Littlejohn, the head of campus life at the University of Manchester, accepted that the university had made mistakes.

She said: "When we get feedback, and that was clearly difficult feedback, we really listen to it.

"We're trying to be in a conversation with our students and to learn what works and what doesn't."

But Ms Littlejohn and her colleagues have their work cut out in convincing students, many of whom feel betrayed, that they are all on the same side.

Layoffs and bankrupt schools: headteachers in England warn of Covid consequences

Liz Lightfoot THE GUARDIAN
Sat, 21 November 2020

Photograph: Richard Saker/The Guardian

Covid-19’s legacy on education in England will be thousands of schools going broke, staff laid off and bigger class sizes unless the government steps in to help, say the two headteacher associations, as they count the cost of keeping classrooms safe.

In one small education area alone, Stockport, in north-west England, more than half of schools fear their budgets will be in deficit this year, says the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT). Across England, many schools have used up their year’s allowance for cover staff in just half a term because of the number of teachers and classroom assistants having to isolate at home. One secondary school (see profile below) has produced accounts anonymously showing a spend of £339,000 since April 2020 on cover and keeping its premises safe.

Related: Near breaking point: headteachers worn down by 'non-stop Covid crisis'

It is a desperate situation, because the costs are falling on budgets already stretched to the limit through years of underfunding, says Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL). “Most of a school’s budget is spent on staffing, so the inevitable conclusion of having less money is that they have to cut staffing. This increases class sizes, and reduces the capacity to deliver pastoral care and provide additional classroom support for pupils who benefit from that. Unless the government acts, one of the legacies of Covid will be yet another funding crisis in education,” he says.

Jim Nicholson, head of Mellor primary in Stockport, and the NAHT’s north-west president, has launched a petition calling on the government to “fully fund schools for Covid-19 costs and provide relief for loss of income”. Since April, his 225-pupil primary has lost £29,000 it would have received through providing before- and after-school care and outreach work, on top of the £9,500 he has spent on supply staff in the first half of the autumn term alone. In addition to the expense of adapting the premises to separate class “bubbles” (£1,386), and the cost of cleaning and hygiene for the half-term (£2,738), the school has spent an extra £484 on information technology for remote learning, and £2,000 on providing individual curriculum items, pens and pencils so children do not have to share.

“Then there are the hidden costs, such as our metered water bill. On average, children are washing their hands five times more times a day, which will have a significant impact on our bill – which was £3,047 last year,” he says. Schools will also incur higher heating costs this winter through keeping windows open for ventilation, he adds.

The cost of Covid – one school’s story

School X is a medium-sized 11-18 school in the north-west of England with a total budget of £3.7m a year. Its headteacher has opened up the books to demonstrate how serious the problem is. Already, halfway through the accounting year (April 2020 to April 2021), it has spent £339,219, or 9% of its budget, on Covid-related costs.


1. Supply costs: £78,000 over the first half year, which is 150% of its usual full-year
2. Extra staff contracts eg cleaner: £63,000
3. Free school meal vouchers, free school meals during lockdown, postage for vouchers, postage for work sent to pupils at home: £46,537
4. Subscriptions for remote learning: £3,885
5. Purchase of headsets and visualisers for remote learning: £8,200
6. Remote communication with parents: £5,716
7. Additional CCTV for social distancing: £2,248
8. Sanitising dispensers and products: £10,572
9. Classroom anti-bacterial sprays: £3,381
10. Disposable paper towels: £3,860
11. Replacing thumbprint biometrics with swipecard: £1,158
12. Steam cleaners: £398
13. Two-way radios: £640
14. Face coverings: £2,742
15. Fogging machines and liquid: £1,167
16. New external taps for handwashing: £1,693
17. Floor signs: £424
18. Canopy coverings for outdoor queues: £820
19. Screens and dividers: £35,227
20. Building work to allow social distancing: £45,606
21. Work to provide external access and shutters to toilets: £5,770
22. Updating or replacing sinks and taps: £3,635
23. Refurbishment of walls and floors so easier to clean: £7,390
24. New food service electricity supply: £750
25. Changing stockrooms to office spaces: £2,650
26. New, larger space for pupil support in maths and reading: £3,750

TOTAL: £339,219

In Kiveton, south Yorkshire, the headteacher of Wales high school, Giuseppe Di’Iasio, spent his summer supervising building work to cover outside areas, in order to provide room for the seven year groups to separate into “bubbles”. “We spent our reserves to fund the building work, which has used up in advance all the capital fund money we will get over the next three years, so other improvements will be put on hold,” he says.

“It cost £6,000 to re-design the school and put in one-way systems and distancing, and we had to spend £19,000 on catering facilities so we could serve lunch at seven different venues,” he says. “We had to spend £2,000 on webcams for staff at home to facilitate remote learning, toilet refurbishment cost £3,500, and hygiene costs have been £13,000. We’re looking at spending at least a third of a million pounds out of our £10m budget, but as 80% of our spending is on staff costs, it is actually a sixth of the £2m other spend.”



When I say I need £14,000 to pay for marquees to keep children dry, I should not be made to feel I'm being unreasonable

Julia Maunder, head of Thomas Keble school, Eastcombe

Some schools are afraid to publish the full cost of Covid in case it affects their reputation. One school, a medium-sized secondary in the north-west of England that does not want to be identified, has recorded £339,000 Covid-related expenditure, including more than £10,000 on hand sanitisers and products this term, £3,381 on anti-bacterial sprays, and nearly £4,000 on disposable paper towels. Under the complicated rules, schools that can prove they cannot afford the extra expenditure or need to dig deep into their reserves are able to reclaim money for some pandemic-related costs, but only up to July 2020. The school’s headteacher says: “I have put in a claim to the Department for Education, but as yet have received diddly squat.”

Crofton school, an 11-16 secondary in Stubbington, Hants, has spent £10,000 on sanitiser products this term and will spend a further £8,000 a year on a sophisticated anti-bacterial spray product. But the real challenge facing schools as the virus spreads will be the cost of staff cover, says Jon Hickey, its operations director. “We have 170 members of full and part-time staff and however safe we keep the school – and we haven’t had any reported cases so far – staff can be told to stay home and isolate by a text message from track and trace, or they can’t come in because their child has been sent home to isolate,” he says.

A spokeswoman for the DfE says: “We continue to keep the costs of making a school Covid-secure under review.” However, she adds, schools are receiving “a £2.6bn boost in funding this year, as part of £14.4bn investment in total over the three-year period through to 2022-23, compared with 2019-20 – giving every school more money for every child”.

That is little consolation to Julia Maunder, head of Thomas Keble school in Eastcombe, Gloucestershire, whose budgets are balancing on a knife-edge. With three times the average number of children with special educational needs, the school has to subsidise their additional support from the core budget. This was one of the main factors that led, in January 2019, to Thomas Keble being served a financial “notice to improve” by the Education and Skills Funding Agency. By borrowing money from the agency, reluctantly asking parents for voluntary contributions to replace essential equipment, and making cuts in staffing, the school now has a balanced budget, but Maunder fears Covid costs will plunge it back into the red.

“The government claims to be putting an extra £14.5bn into schools over three years, and we received an extra 3.2% funding in real terms or £203,000 for 2020/21. However, the money has just gone on catching up with the historical underfunding – £190,000 went towards the unfunded pay increases for teachers and support staff. A further £11,000 went on inflationary increases for non-staff expenditure, leaving just £2,000. However, we had to spend £95,000 on the needs of 19 students who arrived during 2020 but won’t attract funding until next year,” she says.

“All the measures we have taken to make the school secure and to help staff feel confident standing in a classroom of 30 children have taken a great deal of time and a great deal of effort, and I would do it again. But when I say I need £14,000 to pay for two marquees to keep the children dry, I really don’t feel I should be questioned about it or made to feel that I am being unreasonable,” she says.

“It’s a kick in the teeth for school leaders, trust boards and governors who are trying to do their bit for their communities, when the government appears to be telling us that everyone else is ahead for financial support, and we can manage with what we have. The truth is that we can’t, and children’s education will suffer.”

Texas prisoners ‘paid $2 an hour to move bodies of coronavirus victims’


Louise Hall
Fri, 20 November 2020

An El Paso County detention inmate pushes a trolley while helping to move bodies to refrigerated trailers outside the Medical Examiner’s Office in El Paso, Texas (REUTERS)

Prison inmates in Texas are being paid two dollars an hour to move coronavirus bodies in Texas, reports have said.

Nine inmates are working to move the bodies of coronavirus victims at the medical examiner's office, Chris Acosta, public affairs director at the El Paso County Sheriff's Office told CNN.

The inmates recruited to do the work are said to be "low-level offenders", are provided full personal protective equipment (PPE) to work in, and are being paid two dollars an hour, reports said.

"The work is 100 per cent voluntary," Ms Acosta told CBS News. "It's great that these individuals are stepping up and volunteering to assist a community in dire need of help right now."

Refrigerated trucks for the bodies of victims were set up in the area as Texas continues to see a spike in cases and deaths, which has led to overcrowding in local morgues.

Prison labour is common practice across the US, but activists have questioned the ethics of allowing inmates to complete such “risky” work for such low wages.

"We think it's OK to put [inmates] in these risky situations, while at the same time denying them access to testing and medical care and free phone calls with their families," Krish Gundu, the co-founder and executive director of the Texas Jail Project, told KGTV.

"Is this what you would pay an essential worker who would be doing the job if you didn't have an inmate to do the job, right?" Ms Gundu said. "I mean, why the difference?"

Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists posted on Twitter: “They've been doing this tough work since Monday, before El Paso increased to 10 mobile morgues. I cry for El Paso.”

The average pay for inmates across the US varies from $0.14 an hour to $1.41 an hour depending on the work, according to the prison policy initiative.



📍NEW: Chilling video of El Paso jail inmates hired to move bodies of #COVID19 deceased patients into mobile overflow morgues. Inmates wear full PPEs & paid $2/hour. They’ve been doing this tough work since Monday, before El Paso increased to 10 mobile morgues. I cry for El Paso. pic.twitter.com/KgQBpzD1mZ

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) November 15, 2020

The inmates have been working at the medical examiner's office for a week now, Ms Acosta told CNN.

El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniegon told an affiliate of the broadcaster that over 100 bodies are being housed in the permanent morgue and mobile morgues at the medical examiner’s office.

Ms Acosta stipulated to media outlets that the county has requested help from the National Guard to move the bodies and If that happens the inmates will stop providing assistance.

The broadcaster reported that the inmates are also being housed together throughout the duration of the work and for two weeks after to prevent the spread of the virus in the prison.

Texas surpassed 20,000 confirmed coronavirus deaths on Monday, recording the second-highest death count overall in the US behind New York, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins University.

El Paso has become one of the hardest-hit areas in the state with the county having surpassed 70,000 coronavirus cases, leading to the deaths of 867 people.

AOC and squad members lobby for Biden to accept Green New Deal outside DNC

Louise Hall
Fri, 20 November 2020

Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, center, arrives for an event with Rep.-elect Cori Bush, right on Thursday, 19 November 2020, outside the Democratic National Committee (AP)

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive members of “the squad” have rallied outside the Democratic National Committee headquarters demanding president-elect Joe Biden embrace the Green New Deal.

During the rally on Thursday outside the Washington headquarters, Rep Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic New York congresswoman, urged Mr Biden to take bold action on climate change and racial justice.

“We are all here today because of the movement ... because at the end of the day, dollars don’t vote, people do,” Rep Ocasio-Cortez said.

The rally was broadcast online with the hashtag #BidenBeBrave by the Sunrise Movement, an American youth-led political movement.

“@JoeBiden must act on his mandate & deliver for those who delivered for him. #BidenBeBrave,” the movement said on Twitter.

AOC is part of a group of progressive first-term Democratic congresswomen, known as the “squad,” alongside Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

This year, the progressive Democrats expanded their ranks with the election of three more candidates who replaced longtime Democratic incumbents: Mondaire Jones, Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush.

At the rally, Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar said: “This is a movement built out of the urgency people feel to protect our planet”

“Some of the leaders of the Democratic Party, or even some of our colleagues who are freshmen, talk about us getting back to basics,” she said, Bloomberg reported.

“We are all here today because of the movement... because at the end of the day, dollars don’t vote, people do” - @AOC

We are going to win a #GreenNewDeal through the power of the people and the power of movements. #BidenBeBrave pic.twitter.com/rYK0lk0yUO
— Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) November 19, 2020

“I was confused because what is more basic than fighting for clean water? What is more basic than fighting for a breathable planet?”

Rep Bush, the first Black woman elected to Congress from Missouri, urged the US to confront how climate change disproportionately affects minority communities.

“When we don’t act, people that look like me die,” Rep Bush said.

The Green New Deal is an ambitious environmental plan to combat climate change that AOC originally co-sponsored in 2019 and seeks to fight the climate crisis and tackle inequality simultaneously.

Mr Biden has previously said he “will work with Congress to implement a bold agenda that addresses the climate emergency, achieves environmental justice and creates good-paying jobs.″

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Development of polio vaccine has useful parallels for COVID-19: historian

UVic historian Mitchell Hammond studies epidemics and the development of various vaccines

CBC News · Posted: Nov 21, 2020 

Medical researcher Dr. Jonas Salk studies slides in his laboratory, following the invention of his pioneering polio vaccine, circa 1957. 

(Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

As hopes rise for a COVID-19 vaccine, this isn't the first time millions of people have watched and waited for scientists and medical experts to develop such protection.

Historian Mitchell Hammond studies epidemics and the development of various vaccines at the University of Victoria and says there are parallels between today and the research done to develop a vaccine for polio.

"This was a disease that was feared in the first half of the 20th century. It's actually interesting that sort of like COVID today, polio was more severe in more developed countries," Hammond said on CBC's On The Island.

Polio is a viral disease that largely affected children under five years of age. In severe cases, the disease caused paralysis, trouble breathing and sometimes, death.

Developing the vaccine was something that researchers started on very early in the 1910s, Hammond said, even before the microbe had been isolated.

"They were experimenting with monkeys which was the closest analog that they could find as an animal model. But there wasn't much success with vaccine research until the late 1940s," he said.

Watch | New developments on the COVID-19 vaccine from Moderna:

9:11Minister of Public Services and Procurement Anita Anand says the government is putting in place contracts to boost refrigeration capacity to store millions of vaccine doses. 9:11

Eventually, a team led by Jonas Salk had a breakthrough with a vaccine in the mid 1950s. Another team led by Albert Sabin developed another successful vaccine in the early 1960s.

What are the side effects of Pfizer's, Moderna's vaccines? Your questions answered

However, there were setbacks.

The Cutter Incident — where the vaccine was prepared incorrectly by the Cutter pharmaceutical company and ended up infecting 40,000 children with polio and killing 10 — slowed down vaccination efforts.

Eventually, however, vaccination led to a point where polio is no longer a major danger in Canada. According to the Canadian Medical Association Journal, the last recorded case of wild poliovirus infection in Canada was in 1977.

"The combination of these two vaccines together really almost completely eradicated polio, certainly eliminated it from developed countries to the situation that we're in now where it just exists in a few pockets around the world," said Hammond.

A staff member sets up an antibody production line at the Ibex building of Lonza, where the Moderna mRNA coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine will be produced, in Visp, Switzerland, Sept. 29, 2020. (Denis Balibouse/Reuters)

Hammond says the world of 2020 is very different from the mid-century. For one, scientists are able to work with the latest technologies at a much more rapid pace.

So far, there have been promising results from Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, as well as Moderna. Russia's Sputnik V is also moving to advanced trials.There are at least 50 different vaccines at the human clinical trial stage around the world.

This crowded field of research brings its own challenges, says Hammond.

"Now, we face a situation where trust in scientists and scientific institutions is not quite the same as it was in the 50s and 60s and just hearing about competition and having vaccine development cast in a kind of race for prestige and profit, this is something that is certainly amplified when you have so many different corporate entities and governments that are pursuing this for different reasons," he said.

In addition, he says, the real test with the vaccine will come down to distribution to the most vulnerable members of the population.

"We've got to imagine rolling up our sleeves, not just for the vaccine but the team effort required."

Pfizer says COVID-19 shot 95% effective, seeking clearance soon

Listen to the interview with Professor Mitchelle Hammond on CBC's On The Island:

 A historical take on COVID and the race for a vaccine - Hear from a UVic History professor about polio, smallpox, and other past responses to medical emergency Gregor Craigie spoke with Mitchell Hammond, an assistant professor of History at University of Victoria who's studies epidemics and the development of various vaccines. 9:23 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/history-of-vaccines-1.5807401?cmp=rss

END TIMES PREACHER

Prominent pastor says 'Jesus' is the vaccine after recovering from Covid-19

CHRISTIAN KOOK

Sat 21 Nov 2020


A popular US pastor has returned to the pulpit after recovering from coronavirus. Speaking on Sunday, Pastor John Hagee, 80, said he'd spent 15 days in the hospital with double pneumonia, and that he was "still supposed to be home gasping for air". His miraculous recovery, he declared, was a testament "to the healing power of Jesus Christ".

“We have a vaccine,” pastor Hagee went on, “the name is Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God".

Hagee, was diagnosed with Covid-19 last month, as per an announcement by his son, pastor Matt Hagee. Despite some concern for his father's wellbeing considering his old age the younger Hagee quipped at the time that his dad was "feeling well enough to be frustrated with everybody in a white coat and a stethoscope".

In July, Hagee's ministry-run schools, Cornerstone Christian Schools, filed a lawsuit in a bid to be granted permission to hold in-person classes. The suit proved successful after Texas Governor Greg Abbott stepped in to remind local officials that they did not have the authority to delay reopening schools until after Labor Day as they had planned.

Earlier this year, Hagee, a well-known preacher on the End Times, said Covid-19 was a "dress rehearsal for the New World Order".

“Our economy sunk to the worst since the Great Depression, as we watched power-hungry dictators trample our freedoms in an extended crisis intended to crush the hope of the people," he said. "Make no mistake … the Great Tribulation is coming, and it will be worse.