Fogbow

Trump appointees in the Health and Human Services department last year privately touted their efforts to block or alter scientists’ reports on the coronavirus to more closely align with then-President Donald Trump’s more optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to newly released documents from congressional investigators.

The documents provide further insight into how senior Trump officials approached last year’s explosion of coronavirus cases in the United States. Even as career government scientists worked to combat the virus, a cadre of Trump appointees were attempting to blunt the scientists’ messages, edit their findings and equip the president with an alternate set of talking points.

Then-science adviser Paul Alexander wrote to then-HHS public affairs chief Michael Caputo on Sept. 9, 2020, touting two examples of where he said officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had bowed to his pressure and changed language in their reports, according to an email obtained by the House’s select subcommittee on the coronavirus outbreak.

"I've yet to see any expression or significant expression on her regret on the impact it had on the victim in this case." Duval County Circuit Court Judge James Ruth

Before giving his sentence, Ruth said he was concerned with the suspect's lack of remorse for the victim.

Ryan J. Reilly
@ryanjreilly
When setting Rachel Powell’s conditions of release, Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said Powell “must wear a mask whenever she leaves her residence.”

So Powell, who was an anti-masker before she stormed the Capitol, is wearing a mesh mask to her workplace. #bullhornlady

Dave from down under wrote: ↑Fri Apr 09, 2021 8:29 pm I do not support punching someone in the mouth..

But that smirk of hers...

'Oh my!' | Duval judge watches video for first time of Debra Hunter coughing on Pier 1 customer before handing down jail sentence
"I've yet to see any expression or significant expression on her regret on the impact it had on the victim in this case." Duval County Circuit Court Judge James Ruth

Published: 12:08 PM EDT April 9, 2021
Updated: 12:28 PM EDT April 9, 2021

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Duval County Circuit Court Judge James Ruth spent the last few days listening to testimony in the case of an irate Jacksonville woman who intentionally coughed in the face of a customer at a St. Johns Town Center store. Before handing down his sentence Thursday on Debra Hunter for what she did that day in June 2020, Ruth said he is not on social media and never saw the full viral video of Hunter coughing in Heather Sprague's face. Prior to viewing the video for the first time and sentencing Hunter to 30 days in Duval County jail, Ruth listened to about a handful of family and friends of Hunter, including her husband, who testified that her actions in the store were an aberration.

An emotional Hunter also read a letter to the court about how her mistake negatively impacted her life and the lives of her family and friends. Ruth was clearly shocked when her heard testimony from Sprague, a brain tumor patient at the time of the assault, in her words about what Hunter did to her. "She said 'I think I'll get real close to you and cough on you, how about that?'" Sprague told the judge. "She said those words?" Ruth asked. "Yes, your honor," Sprague said then describing Hunter's hand gestures to her before the assault.

"I believe the kids call it 'flipping me off' or the 'double bird'," she said to Ruth who seemed surprised. "OK, excuse me, a double bird?" he asked. After Sprague finished her statements, Ruth said, "I want to see the video." The prosecution then played First Coast News' YouTube video of Hunter's assault. "Oh my!" Ruth said. "So that's what you said? A double flip?" "I believe that's what they call it your honor," Sprague said. Before giving his sentence, Ruth said he was concerned with the suspect's lack of remorse for the victim. "We heard how it changed her life ... she's getting nasty grams on Facebook and things of that nature and can't go to the country club or where ever ... but I've yet to see any expression or significant expression on her regret on the impact it had on the victim in this case," Ruth said.

scirreeve wrote: ↑Thu Apr 08, 2021 12:21 am Bryan, the Ammo videographer, was denied dental care cuz he is an asshole and won't wear a mask (he is also not right in the head).

In another late-night ruling, the Supreme Court on Friday blocked another California coronavirus restriction on religious gatherings, saying the state’s limits on home-based Bible study and prayer sessions violated constitutional rights.

The 5-to-4 order on an emergency petition illustrates how a new majority on the court — with Justice Amy Coney Barrett playing a decisive role — is now in control when the court considers if pandemic-related restrictions cross the line to endanger religious rights.

Constitutional protections are implicated any time a state treats “any comparable secular activity more favorably than religious exercise,” the majority wrote. “It is no answer that a state treats some comparable secular businesses or other activities as poorly as or even less favorably than the religious exercise at issue."

In this case, the majority said, gatherings of more than three households were banned at prayer meetings in homes even though California permits “hair salons, retail stores, personal care services, movie theaters, private suites at sporting events and concerts, and indoor restaurants to bring together more than three households at a time.”

Dave from down under wrote: ↑Sat Apr 10, 2021 10:56 pm Ammon’s ally, an anti masker, Ada commissioner, might get burnt.. serves him right

https://www.ktvb.com/mobile/article/new ... ac81125f30

Nearly 40% of Marines decline COVID-19 vaccine, prompting some Democrats to urge Biden to set mandate for military

bob wrote: ↑Sun Apr 11, 2021 1:47 pm
As always with Gallups, "if" is doing all the work.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Sunday encouraged evangelical Christians who are reluctant to get vaccinated against COVID-19 to consider that the shots might be a “part of God’s plan.”

“State of the Union” host Jake Tapper asked Buttigieg, an Episcopalian, about the large portion of white evangelicals who say they won’t get a COVID-19 vaccine. About 40% of white evangelical Protestants said they likely would not get vaccinated, according to a poll conducted last month, compared to about 25% of all Americans, 28% of white mainline Protestants and 27% of Protestants who are not white.

“I’ve heard people I care about saying, you know, ‘If I’m faithful, God’s going to take care of me,’” Buttigieg said. “And I guess what I would hope that they might consider is that maybe a vaccine is part of God’s plan for how you’re going to take care of yourself.”

Uninformed wrote: ↑Sun Apr 11, 2021 6:50 pm I’m not sure what that “survival rate“ is based on but the percentage of fatalities based on Worldometer’s “total cases” and “total deaths” for the USA is just over 1.8%, and has been for some time.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

ETA. Whilst extremely unlikely, if this percentage were applied to the entire population it would equate to just under 6 million dead.

“We are not waiting for any authorization from any bureaucratic entity to say, ‘you can go ahead and tour now.’ You know, this year’s tour is canceled again. Are you kidding me? The production companies won’t let us tour again this year,” said Nugent. “Dirty, bastards, lying, scam, smoke and mirrors, COVID-19 freaks.”

And at the 2:20 mark, the 72-year-old asked his viewers the following:

You know, I guess I would ask you — because I’m addicted to truth, logic and common sense — and my common-sense meter would demand the answer to why weren’t we shut down for COVID one through 18?

COVID-1 — and there was a COVID 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 — COVID one through 18 didn’t shut anything down but woah, COVID-19!

The Atlantic: Vaccine Refusal Will Come at a Cost—For All of Us
People who refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccine will have higher health-care costs. The rest of us will foot the bill.

Imagine it’s 2026. A man shows up in an emergency room, wheezing. He’s got pneumonia, and it’s hitting him hard. He tells one of the doctors that he had COVID-19 a few years earlier, in late 2021. He had refused to get vaccinated, and ended up contracting the coronavirus months after most people got their shots. Why did he refuse? Something about politics, or pushing back on government control, or a post he saw on Facebook. He doesn’t really remember. His lungs do, though: By the end of the day, he’s on a ventilator.

You’ll pay for that man’s decisions. So will I. We all will—in insurance premiums, if he has a plan with your provider, or in tax dollars, if the emergency room he goes to is in a public hospital. The vaccine refusers could cost us billions. Maybe more, over the next few decades, with all the complications they could develop. And we can’t do anything about it except hope that more people get their shots than those who say they will right now.

If the 30 percent of Americans who are telling pollsters they won’t get vaccinated follow through, the costs of their decisions will pile up. The economy could take longer to get back to full speed, and once it does, it could get shut down again by outbreaks. Variants will continue to spread, and more people will die. Each COVID-19 case requires weeks of costly rehabilitation. Even after the pandemic fades, millions of vaccine refusers could turn into hundreds of thousands of patients who need extra care, should they come down with the disease. Their bet that they’ve outsmarted the coronavirus or their insistence that Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates were trying to trick them will not stop them from going to the doctor when they’re having trouble breathing, dealing with extreme fatigue, or struggling with other lasting effects of COVID-19. (A new study found that 34 percent of COVID-19 survivors are diagnosed with a neurological or psychological condition within six months of recovering from the initial illness.)

Uninformed wrote: ↑Mon Apr 12, 2021 10:08 am

“Poll shows vast majority of Republicans trust Trump for medical advice over CDC, Biden and Fauci”:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 29784.html

Volkonski wrote: ↑Mon Apr 12, 2021 10:16 am
America is doomed.