Author: BigGuy

WASHINGTON — After a month of political conventions, fresh controversies, more protests and additional deaths from the coronavirus, the 2020 presidential race remains where’s it’s been for months — with Joe Biden leading President Trump nationally by nearly double digits, and with a majority of voters opposing the president. Those are the results of a new national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, which finds Biden ahead by 8 points among registered voters, 51 percent to 43 percent, with more than 50 percent of voters disapproving of Trump’s job performance and with Trump holding the advantage on the economy and Biden holding the edge on the coronavirus.

What’s more, the poll shows that close to 90 percent of voters have firmly made up their minds, and that seven-in-10 believe the upcoming debates aren’t that important in deciding their vote.

“So far, despite major upheavals in the country, little has changed,” said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt, whose firm conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff. “In 2020, the fundamentals of our country have been shaken to our core, while the fundamentals of the election have not,” Horwitt added. Still, the poll finds that 11 percent of all voters are up for grabs, which is greater than Biden’s ballot advantage over Trump. And Trump’s numbers have inched up in the poll since the summer, while Biden’s favorability rating has also improved in the past month. “Trump’s summer swoon is over,” said McInturff, the GOP pollster. The NBC News/WSJ poll — conducted Sept. 13-16 — comes after a turbulent and eventful month of news, including the Democratic and Republican conventions, the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin, some 30,000 more deaths from the coronavirus, the Atlantic report alleging the president disparaged fallen military service members and the coverage of Bob Woodward’s new book on Trump. But the poll was conducted before the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Sept. 18. According to the survey, Biden leads Trump, 51 percent to 43 percent, among registered voters — essentially unchanged from Biden’s 9-point lead last month, 50 percent to 41 percent. Six percent in the current poll say they’re undecided or supporting another candidate. Biden’s biggest advantages in the poll are among Black voters (he gets support from 90 percent of them to 5 percent for Trump), voters ages 18-34 (60 percent to 31 percent), women (57 percent to 37 percent), whites with college degrees (54 percent to 41 percent), independents (45 percent to 39 percent) and seniors (50 percent to 46 percent). Trump, meanwhile, has the edge among all white voters (52 percent to 43 percent), men (50 percent to 45 percent) and whites without college degrees (59 percent to 36 percent). (A separate NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo oversample of Latino voters will be released on Sunday at 6:30 p.m. ET to gauge where the Latino vote stands in the presidential race.) And in the combined 12 swing states — Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — Biden is ahead of Trump by 6 points, 51 percent to 45 percent.

Continue reading “Biden maintains national lead over Trump”

DUESSELDORF, Germany — Hundreds of people demonstrated in downtown Duesseldorf Sunday against government coronavirus restrictions and in support of a host of other causes. People waved signs with slogans like “end to panic, corona pandemic is a lie” and “corona rebels” as songs decrying coronavirus restrictions were played. They chanted “free Julian Assange” along with one speaker, and formed a “W” — symbolizing “we all” — with their hands, which they raised over their heads as the theme to Chariots of Fire played. No masks were to be seen, aside from on journalists covering the rally, and a few children mingled among the crowd. Before breaking away to walk along a route through the western city, the crowd swayed to Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” and a man in a Superman costume sang along. Police reported no incidents.

In France, Health Minister Olivier Veran pointed to what he called a worrying increase in the number of Covid-19 patients in intensive care. More infections among the oldest people means there will probably be even more hospitalizations and deaths in coming weeks, French authorities said. Because people who are sick usually take a few weeks to get worse, there’s a time lag before new infections begin to cause a shift in mortality rate. Veran appealed directly to French seniors, asking them to better protect themselves by cutting back on the number of people they see every day because they are “the most fragile in the face of Covid.”

The top official at the Health Ministry said Friday the potential reimposition of a nationwide lockdown was still on the table, after ministers agreed to tighten restrictions in area with high COVID-19 infection rates. “I don’t rule out the possibility that a full lockdown will be decided on, but again, a full lockdown is something that all of us want to avoid,” Health Ministry Director-General Chezy Levy told Kan public radio. “If there’s no choice, we’ll be there.” He cautioned, however, that while a total lockdown may be the quickest way to curb the coronavirus’s spread, there is “no magic wand” that can swiftly bring the infection rate down. “Therefore we’re trying to find a way in which we’ll do restrictions in a differential manner in cities that have the most extensive morbidity,” he said, pledging assistance to residents of these areas. Levy’s comments came as the Health Ministry reported 2,766 new coronavirus cases were confirmed on Thursday, a day after Israel recorded over 3,000 cases in a new single day record. According to the latest Health Ministry figures, there have been 125,755 infections since the pandemic began, with 25,277 active cases as of Friday morning. With six fatalities overnight, the death toll rose to 991. Of those currently infected, 416 people were in serious condition, with 123 Israelis on ventilators. Another 131 people were in moderate condition and the rest had mild or no symptoms. The Health Ministry said 34,586 tests for coronavirus were administered Thursday. In the interview, Levy was also asked about the ongoing mass protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his indictment on corruption charges and handling of the pandemic.

Some of Netanyahu’s political allies have said the demonstrations are a serious health risk and called for them to be restricted, but no data has signalled they are a major source of infection and US researchers have indicated protests outdoors may be relatively safe. “There is no data in the [epidemiological] investigations that someone was infected in the gathering itself because you are questioning people who have done a lot of activities, but the protests are a gathering that spurs infection,” Levy said. Levy’s boss, Health Minister Yuli Edelstein, signaled support Thursday for restricting the protests. “The coronavirus doesn’t have political views. When a religious person is restricted at prayer or at synagogues, which is a fundamental right, it wouldn’t hurt to restrict political gatherings,” he told Channel 12 news. Just because there is no law limiting protests, Edelstein said there’s no “obligation” for thousands of people to gather for demonstrations. Edelstein also said he fully backs coronavirus czar Ronni Gamzu, who has faced criticism from some members of Netanyahu’s Likud party and ultra-Orthodox lawmakers, including calls for his resignation. On Friday, Gamzu clarified that the sweeping new restrictions approved Thursday by the so-called coronavirus cabinet in “red” localities with high infection rates would not include full lockdown measures in all these areas. “The proposal yesterday in the cabinet was for the imposition of a lockdown in eight cities with particularly high morbidity and the imposition of restrictions on movement in the rest of the red cities,” he said in a statement quoted by Channel l2 news. However, he stressed the lockdown measures could be expanded to other areas and said a final decision would be made over the weekend and approved by ministers on Sunday. The new restrictions are set to take effect on Monday.

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he did not want another national lockdown but that new restrictions may be needed because the country was facing an “inevitable” second wave of COVID-19. Ministers were on Friday reported to be considering a second national lockdown, after new COVID-19 cases almost doubled to 6,000 per day, hospital admissions rose and infection rates soared across parts of northern England and London. That rise in cases was part of a second wave that was now unstoppable, the prime minister said. “We are now seeing a second wave coming in…It is absolutely, I’m afraid, inevitable, that we will see it in this country,” Johnson told UK media. Asked about whether the whole of the country should brace for a new lockdown, rather than just local restrictions, he said: “I don’t want to get into a second national lockdown at all.” But he did not rule out further national restrictions being brought in. “When you look at what is happening, you’ve got to wonder whether we need to go further than the rule of six that we brought in on Monday,” he said, referring to the ban on gatherings of more than six people. The United Kingdom has reported the fifth largest number of deaths from COVID-19 in the world, after the United States, Brazil, India and Mexico, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University of Medicine. The UK’s official number of new positive cases shot up by nearly a thousand on Friday to 4,322, the highest since May 8, after a separate ONS model pointed to about 6,000 new cases a day in England in the week to Sept. 10.

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The first reported death in the U.S. from Covid-19 was on February 29th. Now, 7 months later, it’s hard to fathom that we have more than 200,000 reported deaths and over 6 million cases.

But the harsh reality is this: as the U.S. marks the passing of 200,000 lives based on reporting earlier today by NBC News, Covid-19 continues to kill hundreds of Americans daily— 937 yesterday, based on data from Johns Hopkins.

In fact, when Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, made a prediction on the White House lawn on March 30th, SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for Covid-19, had killed less than 3,000 people. “If we do things together, well almost perfectly, we can get in the range of 100,000-2000,000 fatalities,” Birx offered, as she explained to Savannah Guthrie on the Today Show. “We don’t even want to see that,”, she added. But her prediction came true today as the number of deaths from Covid-19 exceeded 200,000. “It’s not surprising that the U.S. has crossed the 200,000 death mark as, over six months into the pandemic and nine months since the emergence of the virus, many parts of the U.S. are still incapable of testing, tracing, and isolating, said Amesh Adalja, M.D., an infectious disease physician, and Senior Scholar, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “The inability for individuals to rapidly test, know their status, and make informed decisions about their activities will continue to lead to undetected chains of transmission that eventually land on vulnerable people, so I expect the death count to continue to increase.” What’s abundantly clear is that this could have gone much differently, as Adalja clearly explains. And a robust national plan that focuses on rapid tests, contact tracing and isolation is still not in place. What’s even more concerning is that tens of thousands of people could have been saved if we had a cohesive national strategy, an earlier national lockdown, and a unified strategy that took the lives of all Americans into consideration. This could have even included a nationwide universal masking policy along with a national strategy for distribution of PPE, instead of individual states “going it alone”. Maybe part of the plan could also have included distributing 650 million masks nationwide—five reusable face masks for every American household—that were supposed to be delivered through the United States Postal Service (USPS) back in April, according to a Washington Post report yesterday, but unfortunately never happened. The documents even included a draft of a press release from the USPS to distribute the 650 million masks throughout the country. But thanks to the watchdog, American Oversight, which obtained close to 10,000 pages of federal emails and documents via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), we now know that Americans never received the masks because the plan was never implemented. It turns out that the White House Domestic Policy Council and the Office of the Vice President thought that sending masks to households might create “concern or panic.” Rather than creating “concern”, shipping masks could have provided protection and security for a high percentage of Americans for a virus that may be transmitted asymptomatically and is airborne, based on current research. What’s clear is this: the U.S. is the current global leader in total cases and total deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins CSSE. Yet close to 3 million people will “most likely” die of Covid-19 globally by the end of the year if countries don’t place a greater focus on wearing masks and tightening restrictions on social distancing, according to data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. But a second wave or surge in the number of new cases in the coming fall and winter, along with progressive fatigue with social distancing and wearing masks could lead to more than 415,000 deaths in the U.S. by January 1, the IHME has projected. Certainly there has been concern about the accuracy of IHME modeling early in the pandemic, with underestimation of the number of deaths nationwide, as well as an inaccurate projected death toll made in April for August (60, 415). These projections are just that—projections. But changes in adherence to social distancing and wearing masks can make a significant difference in modeling and estimates of death. That said, we are still on the wrong trajectory. According to data from Johns Hopkins CSSE, there were 49,522 new cases and 937 deaths in the U.S yesterday. Until a viable and thoroughly tested vaccine is available, we must adhere to other public health approaches that are currently available: universal masking along with strict adherence to social distancing.

London’s police on Saturday tried to break up a protest by more than a thousand people opposed to lockdown measures aimed at slowing the spread of coronavirus.

Demonstrators had gathered in Trafalgar Square in central London carrying banners saying “Freedom Not Fear” and “Scam” and chanting at police: “Choose your side”.

Shortly before 1400 GMT police ordered protesters to leave, saying the demonstration was putting other members of the public at risk. “This, coupled with pockets of hostility and outbreaks of violence towards officers, means we will now be taking enforcement action to disperse those who remain in the area,” London’s Metropolitan Police said in a statement. A Reuters witness said several hundred people remained in the square at 1500 GMT as police tried to clear the area. A police spokesman had no immediate information on whether there had been any arrests. Under laws to slow the spread of COVID-19, people in England are not allowed to gather in groups of more than six. There are exemptions for political protests, but only if organizers follow guidelines to reduce the risk of the disease spreading. Organizers of previous anti-lockdown protests have been fined up to 10,000 pounds ($12,914).

Britain has suffered Europe’s highest death toll from COVID-19, with more than 41,000 deaths on the government’s preferred measure, and tests for the disease have not kept up with demand since English schools reopened this month.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is currently considering whether to reimpose some lockdown restrictions across England. Rising case numbers in parts of northern England have already led to local restrictions on people inviting friends to their homes, and reduced pub and restaurant opening hours.