Trump, DeVos and the GOP are doing everything they can to minimize what will be one of the costliest abuses of humanity in the name of political expediency ever perpetrated on American soil. If public schools are forced to open too early under threat of punishment; the physical, psychic, mental, financial and emotional costs will be swift and beyond painful. The Covidiot criminals in Washington would have everyone believe it is in the best interests of the children. That it is for their emotional and mental well-being. They’re young and resilient, they’ll get over it. If anything, it will have just the opposite effect.
It’s not a question of IF the virus will spread among the children, educators, staff and then outward from there to families and the workplace. The questions we refuse to ask and answer are WHEN and HOW MUCH.
We refuse to learn from the mistakes of the past, and the past was only two months ago.
Governors Abbott, DeSantos and Kemp desperately rallied to open their economies first in a 3-way race to kiss Trump’s ring and now our states are among the most contagious and lethal hotbeds of contagion. These same Covidiot criminal politicians STILL REFUSE to allow city leaders to enforce mask wearing. The governor of Georgia is personally suing the mayor of Atlanta for putting the lives of the citizens first by enforcing masks. Our mayors and school superintendents CAN and SHOULD personally reject any political mandate that puts their citizens, students, teachers and staff at risk of contagion and death. Mayor Margo when challenged and criticized for not wearing his mayoral pants during this pandemic (and several other human rights issues that have occurred here on his watch as mayor of El Paso) always falls to his “my hands are tied because I can’t go against what governor Abbott declares.” Toothless leadership and cowardice on display. When the lives of your citizens are on the line, you cross whatever political lines you have to without a second thought and deal with the governor’s wrath later. Nobody, at any leadership level, seems to understand that THE PANDEMIC WRITES THE RULES AND THEY ARE IRONCLAD. Until there is a successful vaccine available, this helter-skelter, every state for itself approach to dealing with the virus is costing tens of thousands of American lives. Our children and students are this nations greatest asset and under this and previous administrations, they have been treated without care and understanding. Treated like pawns good for nothing but political points and steady school loan income for the government. They will be asked or forced to spend hours in schools that will eventually harbor the virus. And waiting a few extra weeks until October to re-open schools assumes we can tell the pandemic what to do. This has to stop now because Covid-19 is raging and won’t abate at any time in the near future. Covid-19 – an invisible enemy that isn’t being taken all too seriously by either side of the political aisle – has exposed the house of cards that America has become and if we don’t rebuild the utterly broken systems of healthcare, education, immigration, civil rights, gun control, national and personal debt, sound government and yes, pandemic response…well then, we’ll get what’s coming in the aftermath.
The government should again impose strict coronavirus-related lockdowns for a month or longer across the U.S.
Neel Kashkari, president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, said the nation needs to control the spread of the virus, which is increasing across much of the country, to get back on a path to economic health.
“That’s the only way we’re really going to have a real robust economic recovery. Otherwise, we’re going to have flare-ups, lockdowns and a very halting recovery with many more job losses and many more bankruptcies for an extended period of time unfortunately,” Kashkari said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
To do so, he suggested strict shutdowns, which is contrary to what President Trump and many of his allies have been pushing in recent months as measures to aid the economy.
“I mean if we were to lock down really hard, I know I hate to even suggest it, people will be frustrated by it, but if we were to lock down hard for a month or six weeks, we could get the case count down so that our testing and our contact tracing was actually enough to control it the way that it’s happening in the Northeast right now,” Kashkari said. “They had a rocky start, but they’re doing a pretty good job right now.”
NEWS: @neelkashkari says if the U.S. were able to lockdown for a month or 6 weeks “we could get the case count down” so testing was adequate to control #covid19 or risk permanent economic scarring and dent the recovery. pic.twitter.com/MAUIisokGG
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) August 2, 2020
He warned the virus will spread throughout the country with flare-ups and local lockdowns for the “the next year or two,” causing more businesses to fail, without such measures.
“We’re going to see many, many more business bankruptcies, small businesses, big businesses, and that’s going to take a lot of time to recover from to rebuild those businesses and then to bring workers back in and re-engage them in the workforce. That’s going to be a much slower recovery for all of us,” Kashkari said.
He also said that Congress can afford large sums for coronavirus relief efforts, though Republican lawmakers are looking to lessen the amount of supplemental aid for unemployed Americans as part of the next relief bill. “Right now, the U.S. can fund itself at very, very low rates. Congress should use this opportunity to support the American people and the American economy. I’m not worried about it,” he said. “If we get the economy growing, we will be able to pay off the debt.” Kashkari also said he does not see evidence to support claims made by Republicans and Trump administration officials that the $600 federal increase to unemployment benefits is discouraging Americans from getting back to work. “There’s just so many fewer jobs than there are workers available,” he said. “At some point, it’ll be an issue. When we get the unemployment rate eventually back down to 5 percent, and we want to get it back down to 4 percent or 3 1/2, where it was before, yes, that disincentive to work becomes material. But right now, it’s simply not a factor in the macro-economy that we have in the U.S. because we have so many millions of Americans out of work.”
It’s no accident you’re being told to wear N95 masks that won’t stop the aerosol spread. It’s no accident that you’re not told the virus is spreading like wildfire throughout America. It’s no accident that only 25% of the deaths are being reported. It’s no accident that they’re forcing kids to go back to school so they can infect their parents. It’s no accident that although health care professionals are screaming for a lock down, it’s being denied.
Experts say, the first round of COVID-19 vaccines will likely not eliminate the need for other public health measures, such as masks and social distancing.
Nearly $6 billion has been allocated. Its nothing but a money grab by BigPharama. Clinical trials are entering a crucial third phase, and Operation Warp Speed is getting closer to the goal of delivering 300 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine by January. But when Americans line up for their immunizations, the vaccine they receive might not be what they expect. The popular notion of a vaccine — a shot in the arm that prevents diseases such as measles, polio or shingles for years or a lifetime — may not apply. Under recently released federal guidelines, a COVID-19 vaccine can be authorized for use if it is safe and proves effective in as few as 50% of those who receive it. And “effective” doesn’t necessarily mean stopping people from getting sick from COVID-19. It means minimizing its most serious symptoms, experts say. Dr. Kathleen Neuzil, director of the Center for Vaccine Development at the University of Maryland. “That vaccine may or may not keep people from being infected with the virus”
The vaccine being developed by Moderna and the National Institutes of Health was deemed “promising” in an editorial published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and two studies in the Lancet delivered a similar message for vaccines being developed at Oxford University and by the Chinese company CanSino.
These vaccines have induced an immune response in people participating (less then 100 carefully chosen people) in early tests, but inducing an immune response does not always mean success in fighting a disease.For instance, scientists recently developed a vaccine for another respiratory virus that increased antibodies but failed its Phase 3 clinical trial.
The minimum 50% efficacy recommendation spelled out in late June by the Food and Drug Administration would likely ease the burden on hospitals. And to whatever extent a COVID-19 vaccine prevents infection, it could reduce the spread of the virus and help to create pockets of immunity throughout the country, said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of Baylor College of Medicine’s National School of Tropical Medicine. “Ideally, you want an antiviral vaccine to do two things,” Hotez said. “First, reduce the likelihood you will get severely ill and go to the hospital, and two, prevent infection and therefore interrupt disease transmission.”
Developing a vaccine capable of inducing “sterilizing immunity” — that is, the ability to prevent the virus from causing an infection — takes time and research, which might not be possible as death tolls continue to rise and the recession grows deeper.
Scientists are uncertain how long immunity — from a natural infection or a vaccine — lasts and whether a decline in antibodies in two to three months is cause for concern.
Among the recommendations in the FDA guidelines is a provision for emergency use authorization, allowing for the distribution of a vaccine if “the known and potential benefits of a product … outweigh the known and potential risks of the product.”
Under an emergency use authorization, the vaccine could be administered before the completion of the Phase 3 trials, potentially helping to flatten the curve but giving scientists little time to study side effects or understand how it interacts with other vaccines.
Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, has raised concerns that the FDA would greenlight manufacturing and distribution of vaccines before the necessary reviews have been completed.
Offit worries that a vaccine with limited efficacy delivered prematurely might give people “a false sense of being protected” and “lead to serious outbreaks of the disease.” “We should wait for the completion of Phase 3 trials, no matter how long they take,” he said. “With luck, they could be finished in six to nine months.”
In the months before his county’s morgue neared capacity, before he started wearing his face shield and “moon suit” to answer calls in neighbors’ homes, and before his own coronavirus diagnosis got him admitted to the hospital, Coahoma County, Mississippi, coroner Scotty Meredith knew this summer was going to be the worst in his three decades on the job. On April 3, as COVID-19 deaths in Mississippi hovered in the low double-digits, the state’s chief medical examiner, Mark LeVaughn, fired off a letter to Meredith and the state’s 80 other coroners. State law outlines a simple procedure for investigating deaths outside a hospital: the coroner collects evidence at the scene, then sends the body to a medical examiner in Jackson for autopsy. But the gist of the ME’s letter, obtained by The Daily Beast, was that when it came to deaths from COVID-19, coroners were on their own. For years now, the severely understaffed state medical examiner’s office has struggled to handle all of the deaths in Mississippi. Doing so has often meant shifting more of the burden for handling deaths onto county coroners, who, unlike medical examiners, usually don’t have a medical degree and cannot perform autopsies. The problem with being shut out from the medical examiner’s office, as Meredith explained, “is not just that they’re not taking the cases, but there’s not any guidance” for what to do with a suspected coronavirus case. Several coroners said they’ve begun rationing supplies, like test kits, echoing supply-chain woes in other hard-hit states since the early days of the pandemic that experts generally believe have deflated the COVID-19 death count. But in Mississippi, the bodies are piling up fast. “My morgue was completely full all last week,” Panola County Coroner Gracie Gulledge told The Daily Beast. “It’s bad. We’ve only had our cooler full once or twice in the whole time I’ve been in operation, and it’s been 14 years.” Over the last few weeks, Mississippi has emerged as something of a worst-case scenario in the country’s coronavirus landscape: an already poor, sick, medically under-resourced state where both infections and deaths are rising faster than almost anywhere. Last week, 200 Mississippians died from coronavirus, the second highest rate per capita in the country behind Arizona, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. But infectious disease experts say that the lack of standardization and resources among coroners, combined with Mississippi’s longstanding health disparities, means the death rate there is likely even higher. Although undercounting is a problem nationally, in a state like Mississippi, where resources are scarce and state leaders have been hesitant to impose mask regulations or scale back reopening, it could be a full-blown crisis. “If the coroners don’t have the resources to pursue the diagnosis or the potential diagnosis of COVID-19 in many of these unattended deaths, then that will undoubtedly lead to an undercount of the actual fatal impact of this pandemic virus,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious disease at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. And an accurate picture, he said, is essential for an accurate response. Nick Note: The pandemic is out of control a modern plague. its now so desperate that the deaths are way way unreported. The politicians fear the backlash from the public. they are trying to keep you stupid. The body count will become so overwheming it will be impossible to hide!
Their will be no real election and no real decisive victor. Its the coming chaos Trump has dreamed of to pull a Putin!
This is a long article. Since these events will rush in the American dictatorship i urge you to read it till the end. no need if you arranged your ‘gentleman’s farm” offshore like i have been urging you to do for years now
Several states have expanded vote by mail in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the Washington Post finding that 180 million voters will either have ballots sent to them or can vote by mail without an excuse.
While mail voting is a convenient way to cast a ballot for those concerned about COVID-19, it is unfamiliar to many voters, and ballots cast by mail are more likely to be rejected than those cast in person.
In order to successfully vote by mail, experts recommend requesting your mail ballot as soon as possible, carefully following the instructions to make sure it gets counted, and sending it back well in advance.
Many states have expanded voting by mail due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with a Washington Post analysis finding that 180 million voters will be able to “easily” cast a mail ballot this November. Nick Bit: Read on.. their is NOTHING EASY about mail in voting… Disaster looms…
While different states use varying definitions of absentee versus mail ballots, they functionally work the same way: a voter receives a ballot from their local elections office and returns it via the postal service, in person, or to a ballot dropbox.
If you live in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington, or the District of Columbia, you’ll most likely have a mail-in ballot automatically sent to you and don’t need to take further action to request one. (California is only sending ballots to active registered voters).
If you live and are registered to vote in Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, or Wisconsin, you’ll automatically receive a mail-in ballot application that you can fill out and send back. And 26 more states are allowing all or most voters to cast a mail-in ballot without a documented excuse beyond the fear of contracting COVID-19.
While mail voting is not inherently fraudulent or corrupt, as President Donald Trump has falsely claimed for months, it is subject to more complications and user error than voting in person.
With many states starting to send out their November mail-in ballots and commence early voting within two months, the election is much closer than you think.
A Washington Post analysis found that nearly 180 million voters live in states that are mailing ballots to voters or allowing them to vote by mail without an excuse beyond COVID-19 fears REUTERS/Jim Bourg
Get familiar with process and requirements in your state:
While most states are now letting all voters vote by mail for any reason, others only allow elderly voters to request a ballot without an excuse and some are still set to require all voters to meet one of the state’s listed conditions to receive a mail ballot.
Some states that don’t require an excuse to vote by mail still impose further requirements in order for voters’ ballots to count, including requiring voters to submit a copy of a photo ID, obtain witness signatures, or get their ballot notarized.
Fewer than half of US states are set to offer an online portal where voters can request their absentee ballots for November. In the remaining states, you must send in a signed paper form to your election office, which you can find either on your state or county election office’s website.
Request your ballot as soon as possible:
Experts say that while it may seem early to even start thinking about the fall, you should request and send in your ballot as soon as possible to reduce the strain on your local election officials. As absentee ballot requests have skyrocketed in recent months, officials in some places with previously low levels of absentee voting have struggled to meet the soaring demand in a short time frame. In addition to the states sending voters a mail-in ballot or mail ballot request form, you can already request your November ballot in 38 states and should do so as soon as you can if you plan to vote by mail.
Carefully follow the instructions:
When you do get your ballot, make sure to closely read the instructions before filling it out and sending it in. States use a number of security protocols to ensure the integrity of the mail ballots, including requiring signatures on the inner and/or outer envelopes and matching a voter’s signature with a signature on file.
Every year, thousands of mail-in ballots are rejected or challenged for being incorrectly completed, not being placed in an inner privacy envelope, being improperly sealed, or missing the required signatures on the inner and/or outer envelopes.
While some states have a cure process for voters to fix problems with their ballots, not all do. Nearly one in five voters who cast mail ballots in New York’s June 23 primary elections had their ballots tossed out often with no notification that their ballot wasn’t counted.
The United States Postal Service is under immense strain from the COVID-19 pandemic, making it essential for voters to mail in their ballots well in advance of election day. Reuters
Send your ballot back through the US Postal Service at least seven days in advance:
The US Postal Service, which processes millions of mail ballots a year, is suffering significant financial troubles caused by the pandemic and is adjusting to new leadership as voters and election officials voters alike contend with the massive demand for mail voting.
While many Americans are used to relatively fast mail delivery, that may not be the case for all election mail this year.
A recent NPR analysis found that at least 65,000 ballots have been rejected for arriving past the state’s arrival deadline this year alone. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that the agency’s new postmaster general has issued guidance instructing mail carriers to prioritize delivery of commercial packages over regular mail and has restricted overtime, policy changes that could severely impede timely delivery of first-class mail, including ballots.
Even though only half of states allow voters to request mail ballots within a week of the election, USPS recommends that voters plan for at least a 14-day round trip for their ballot to arrive at their home and make it back to the elections office by their state’s arrival deadline.
If you’re nervous about sending your ballot through the Postal Service, (as you well should be) you’ll have the option in most states to drop off your ballot in-person at your local elections office (different offices may modify their in-person pick-up and drop-off policies in response to COVID-19), and in some states, return it to a secure ballot drop box.
“The path of the economy will depend significantly on the course of the virus,” the central bank’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) said.
Reported CasesWashington | The surge in US coronavirus cases and the restrictions aimed at containing it have begun to weigh on the economic recovery, the head of the Federal Reserve said, pointing to an apparent pullback by consumers and a slowdown in the rehiring of furloughed workers, particularly by small businesses. “We have seen some signs in recent weeks that the increase in virus cases and the renewed measures to control it are starting to weigh on economic activity,” Fed chairman Jerome Powell said in a news conference following release of the US central bank’s latest policy statement. The United States “has entered a new phase in containing the virus, which is essential to protect both our health and our economy”. Powell’s comments, made via videoconference, confirmed what many economists and other analysts have maintained in recent weeks as coronavirus infections exploded in a number of southern and southwestern states, dimming hopes for a quick economic rebound.
The Fed’s policy statement on Wednesday (Thursday AEST) directly tied the economic recovery to resolution of a health crisis whose direction remains much in doubt.
More than 150,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus. Fed policymakers repeated a pledge to use their “full range of tools” to support the economy and keep interest rates near zero for as long as it takes to recover from the fallout from the epidemic, saying the economic path will depend significantly on the course of the virus.
“Following sharp declines, economic activity and employment have picked up somewhat in recent months but remain well below their levels at the beginning of the year,” the Fed said after the end of its latest two-day policy meeting.
All FOMC members voted to leave the target range for short-term interest rates at between 0 per cent and 0.25 per cent, where it has been since March 15 when the virus was beginning to hit the nation. “The Committee expects to maintain this target range until it is confident that the economy has weathered recent events and is on track to achieve its maximum employment and price stability goals,” the statement said. Fed officials had been expected to spend some of their meeting debating whether and how to strengthen their so-called forward guidance, perhaps by promising there would be no changes to interest rates until the unemployment and inflation rates meet explicit benchmarks. The statement on Wednesday gave no hint of such a change, which many Fed analysts expect won’t come until the September policy meeting. The Fed also said it will continue to buy at least $US120 billion ($166 billion) in US Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities each month to steady financial markets. It renewed its low-rate vow a day ahead of a government report expected to show a record 34 per cent drop in annualised economic output last quarter, when authorities imposed lockdowns that closed businesses and kept people home in a bid to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Fed policymakers had hoped those measures would help contain the virus, allowing the economy to bounce back quickly, even as they fretted over the possibility that infections could resurge and blunt the economic recovery. The US central bank has rolled out nearly a dozen new lending and credit programs to fight the economic fallout from the epidemic. But the immediate outlook hinges largely on where infections go from here and how much more fiscal support lawmakers deliver in the meantime.
Since their last policy meeting in June, the epidemic has intensified, with an average of around 65,000 new cases detected each day, about three times the pace of new infections in mid-June. Deaths from COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus, are also on the rise. That’s prompted governors from California to Florida to impose new economic restrictions.
Job growth, which had been unexpectedly strong in May and June, now appears to be slowing. Consumer confidence has taken a hit.
Meanwhile, government aid that kept millions of unemployed Americans spending will drop sharply at the end of this week unless Congress agrees on a new relief package. Republicans are split over whether to support $US1 trillion in new spending, and Democrats want a figure closer to the $US3 trillion Congress has already committed to fight the crisis. Small businesses, a mainstay of the world’s largest economy, are also increasingly facing a breaking point as government grants run dry and payments come due.
CHICAGO — First, the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast were hit hardest as the coronavirus tore through the nation. Then it surged across the South. Now the virus is again picking up dangerous speed in much of the Midwest — and in cities from Mississippi to Florida to California that thought they had already seen the worst of it. As the United States rides what amounts to a second wave of cases, with daily new infections leveling off at an alarming higher mark, there is a deepening national sense that the progress made in fighting the pandemic is coming undone and no patch of America is safe. In Missouri, Wisconsin and Illinois, distressed government officials are retightening restrictions on residents and businesses, and sounding warnings about a surge in coronavirus-related hospitalizations. In the South and the West, several states are reporting their highest levels of new coronavirus cases, with outbreaks overwhelming urban and rural areas alike. Across the country, communities including Snohomish County, Wash., Jackson, Miss., and Baton Rouge, La., have seen coronavirus numbers fall and then shoot back up — not unlike the two ends of a seesaw. In Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker sounded an unusually somber note this past week as he delivered a warning that reverberated across the state: Even though Illinoisans had battled an early flood of coronavirus infections and then managed to reduce the virus’s spread, their successes were fleeting. As of Thursday, the state was averaging more than 1,400 cases a day, up from about 800 at the start of July. “We’re at a danger point,” Mr. Pritzker said in Peoria County, where the total number of cases has doubled in the last month. Gone is any sense that the country may soon get a hold of the pandemic. Instead, the United States is riding a second wave of cases, with the seven-day average for new infections hovering around 65,000 for two weeks. Progress in some states has been mostly offset by growing outbreaks in parts of the South and the Midwest. “There’s a sort of collective tiredness and frustration, and of course I feel it, too — we all feel it,” said County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the top elected official in Harris County, which includes Houston. “So it’s difficult to know that there’s no real end in sight.” On Friday, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, told Congress he was cautiously optimistic that a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine would be available by the end of the year or early 2021, though the federal government’s ability to speedily immunize most Americans was unclear.
Even finding out who has the virus is a challenge, as testing programs have frustrated many Americans with lengthy delays in providing results.
The picture is similarly depressing overseas, where even governments that would seem well suited to combating the virus are seeing resurgences. New daily infections in Japan, a country with a long tradition of wearing face masks, rose more than 50 percent in July. Australia, which can cut itself off from the rest of the world more easily than most, is battling a wave of infections in and around Melbourne. Hong Kong, Israel and Spain are also fighting second waves.
None of those places has an infection rate as high as the United States, which has the most cases and deaths in the world, more than the next two hardest-hit countries — Brazil and England — combined.
In American communities that saw improvement in June, such as Milwaukee County in Wisconsin, there was a widespread feeling of relief, said Dr. Ben Weston, the director of medical services for the Milwaukee County Office of Emergency Management.
But then mask-wearing and social distancing began to relax.
We have done COOL for the millennial’s here is our punk rock version. Please observe the googles match the hair
Berlin (AFP) – Loudly chanting their opposition to face masks and vaccines, thousands of people gathered in Berlin on Saturday to protest against coronavirus restrictions before being dispersed by police. Police put turnout at around 20,000 — well below the 500,000 organisers had announced as they urged a “day of freedom” from months of virus curbs. Despite Germany’s comparatively low toll, authorities are concerned at a rise in infections over recent weeks and politicians took to social media to criticise the rally as irresponsible. “We are the second wave,” shouted the crowd, a mixture of hard left and right and conspiracy theorists as they converged on the Brandenburg Gate, demanding “resistance” and dubbing the pandemic “the biggest conspiracy theory”.
Few protesters wore a mask or respected the 1.5-metre (five-foot) social distancing requirement, an AFP journalist reported, despite police repeatedly calling on them via megaphone to do so.
After several warnings, Berlin police ordered demonstrators to leave the area at the end of the afternoon.Police tweeted they had launched legal proceedings against organisers for not respecting virus hygiene rules. A handful of people held a counter demonstration. Dubbing themselves “grandmothers against the extreme right”, they hurled insults against “Nazi” protesters. The protest’s “Day of Freedom” slogan echoes the title of a 1935 documentary by Nazi-era film-maker Leni Riefenstahl on a party conference by Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Several politicians condemned the demonstration as Germany seeks to minimise transmission of a virus which had claimed just over 9,000 deaths as of Saturday — a far lower toll than its neighbours. Saskia Esken of the Social Democrats, a junior coalition partner in Angela Merkel’s government, blasted the demonstrators as “Covidiots”. In a tweet Esken railed: “No distancing, no mask. They are not only putting at risk our health but also our success against the pandemic as well as economic recovery, education and society. Irresponsible!”
Health Minister Jens Spahn agreed: “Yes, demonstrations should also be possible in times of coronavirus, but not like this. Distance, hygiene rules and masks serve to protect us all, so we treat each other with respect.” Jan Redmann, regional head of Merkel’s Christian Democrats in the eastern state of Brandenburg, also took aim at the marchers. “A thousand new infections a day still and in Berlin there are protests against anti-virus measures? We can no longer allow ourselves these dangerous absurdities,” Redmann complained. Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who hails from Merkel’s traditional right ally the Christian Social Union, showed a measure of understanding, however. “Of course there are always different opinions regarding infringements of basic rights and restrictions of freedom — first, it’s normal and, in my view, it’s not the majority,” Seehofer told Bavarian daily Passauer Neue Presse. Saturday saw 955 new infections — a level which the country had not seen since May 9, according to the Robert Koch health institute. But marchers insist the risk of catching the virus is being much overblown. “It’s pure scare tactics. I don’t see any danger with the virus,” one marcher, Iris Bitzenmeier, told AFP. “I don’t know any other sick people. I knew many in March — skiers, holidaymakers. Something was really afoot in February — but now there are no longer any sick people,” she insisted. Another demonstrator, Anna-Maria Wetzel, who had come to the capital after attending similar rallies in Baden-Wuerttemberg in the southwest, shared that view. “People who don’t inform themselves — unlike ourselves — remain ignorant and believe what the government tells them. They get caught up in the fear the government puts in our heads — and that fear weakens the immune system,” she said.
Disney’s parks in Florida and California are reopening and tens of thousands of workers returning as cases in the states surge
Walt Disney World, along with the company’s other US theme parks, has reopened, with the disclaimer that tourists assume all risks of contracting Covid-19.
Disney World fully reopened all four of its theme parks within its Florida resort last week, even as cases of coronavirus surged, making it one of the world’s hotspots for daily increases.
Undaunted guests who choose to visit Disney are greeted with a disclaimer on its website: “By visiting Walt Disney World Resort you voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to Covid-19.”
There are about 75,000 employees at Disney World in Florida, and about 30,000 at Disneyland in California, and they are returning as cases are increasing in both states. Parts of Disneyland in Anaheim, California, have begun a phased reopening, while awaiting approval from local and state officials to reopen the parks and hotels.
Union pushing for on-site testing
Unite Here local 11 is currently in negotiations with Disney on safety protocols and protections for workers when the parks reopen. Austin Lynch, an organizer involved in negotiating with Disney, said the union had pushed Disney to agree to perform daily temperature checks for workers before they start shifts, and agreed on providing as much personal protective equipment to workers as they need. But the union is still pressuring Disney to provide on-site coronavirus testing for workers, commit to ensuring staffing levels will be provided to conduct extra cleaning and disinfecting, and to extend temperature checks to guests staying at Disney hotels. “They haven’t covered some of the critical safety areas. Until they do, we don’t think it’s safe to reopen,” said Lynch. “You have to either cover all the bases and go all out to prevent transmission or operate unsafely. Operating and only covering some of the bases just means people are going to get coronavirus.” A representative for Disney told the Guardian the opening of Disneyland was pending guidance from state officials, while worker training, a range of health and safety measures, cleaning, disinfecting and technological solutions have been implemented ahead of Disney World’s reopening. “As we continue the phased reopening of our parks and resorts across the world, promoting health and safety for our guests, cast members and the larger community is a responsibility we take seriously. From increased cleaning and disinfecting across our parks and resorts, to updated health and safety policies, we have reimagined the Disney experience so we can all enjoy the magic responsibly,” said the representative in an email.
America is at a crossroads …
… in the coming months, and the results will define the country for a generation. These are perilous times. Over the last three years, much of what the Guardian holds dear has been threatened – democracy, civility, truth. The country is at a crossroads. Science is in a battle with conjecture and instinct to determine policy in the middle of a pandemic. At the same time, the US is reckoning with centuries of racial injustice – as the White House stokes division along racial lines.
