Big Time News Blog: 04/04/20

Saturday, April 4, 2020

Airline refutes Mexican authority's account of spring break coronavirus outbreak

College students from Texas who tested positive for the novel coronavirus after spring break in Los Cabos traveled to the Mexican beach resort on Viva Aerobus, the airline said, and were there a week later than reported by the local tourist board. At least part of the Texas group stayed at the luxury Pueblo Bonito Los Cabos hotel, two people familiar with the arrangements told Reuters.

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Trump Sent Them to the Coronavirus Front Line but Denied Them Health Care

Thousands of National Guardsmen around the country are in contact with people who’ve contracted COVID-19. But while the federal government has called on them for frontline assistance in battling the pandemic, it’s not giving them what they need to protect themselves: access to the military’s health insurance.The approximately 20,000 guardsmen who have been called up to help states around the country deal with the spread of the coronavirus are federalized on what’s called Title 32 status, which puts them in command of their various state governors but with the federal government paying costs. But according to the National Guard’s advocates and the U.S. governors’ association, the guardsmen are activated on orders that last 30 days. That puts them one single day shy of the requirement allowing the military health insurance system known as TRICARE—think of it as Medicare For All In Uniform—to cover them. Military Times first reported the eligibility shortfall. It’s an urgent problem for guardsmen now that the pandemic-spurred economic collapse has exposed the folly of the current system of employer-provided health insurance. Some proportion of the guardsmen who may expose themselves to COVID-19 will have lost their jobs, and more surely will in the weeks to come.If their jobs came with health insurance, they would be qualified to shop on the Obamacare exchanges. But that process can be cumbersome and expensive at a moment when they face unemployment. If they never had job-based insurance, then they’ve lost their income right at the moment they are being asked to risk their own health and what remains of their financial security. Similarly, Guardsmen on orders short of 31 days qualify for an aspect of TRICARE called TRICARE Reserve Select. But that's an optional purchase, and while its premiums are lower than civilian health insurance, Guardsmen will still have to pay.‘New York Is in Crisis’: Cuomo Pleads for Help as State Suffers Worst Single-Day Death Toll The lack of TRICARE eligibility puts guardsmen and their families “in a terrible position,” said J. Roy Robinson, a retired one-star general and the president of the National Guard Association of the United States. “These kids are in jeopardy, and it’s wrong.” Robinson, who served for 33 years as an officer in the Mississippi National Guard, continued: “Leadership at the Pentagon, either knowingly or unknowingly, are putting soldiers and airmen, in my opinion, in harm’s way without them having proper medical coverage.”On April 1, Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) asked Trump to ensure federalized guardsmen’s TRICARE eligibility during an “unprecedented situation.” “During this time, we should do all we can to support the men and women being asked to assist our nation’s response to this pandemic and ensure that they are put on orders long enough to make them eligible for TRICARE,” Daines wrote.The first U.S. servicemember to die from coronavirus was 57-year-old New Jersey National Guardsman Douglas Linn Hickok, an Army captain. Hickok had not deployed to respond to COVID-19 when he contracted it, but he was preparing to deploy when he grew sick on March 21. He died on March 28. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment. GOP Plows Forward on Plans to Kill Obamacare, Pandemic Be DamnedAs coronavirus has spread, the Trump administration has faced mounting pressure to expand health insurance coverage options for the broad universe of the uninsured. But it has so far resisted allowing a special enrollment period for Obamacare, claiming that there are other options for those in need to get insurance and that cash assistance from the government could help instead. The issue is more acute with members of the Guard who are being tasked by the government to help combat the spread of the pandemic. A senior administration official told The Daily Beast that the governors were receiving “full federal funding of the state National Guard”—a separate issue from the guardsmen’s TRICARE access. The official, who would not speak for the record, said that every “request granted is set for a full month,” which confirms the activation period falling just short of TRICARE eligibility. “We are working with states and the National Guard by continuously monitoring the situation on the ground to determine any Title 32 extension,” the official said. The official would not address why the current orders fall short of the TRICARE eligibility period. Without TRICARE, warned Robinson, members of the Guard will “have to fall back on their personal health insurance. I hate to say it, but in a lot of those areas, a lot of these guys don't have health insurance.” Robinson lamented that as of Friday, “there is no agreement to fix this.” “We appreciate the administration’s willingness to take steps to address this need, however, we are concerned that the current orders coming down from the Department have been limited to only 30 days,” said James Nash, a spokesman for the National Governors’ Association. “As you note, service members will not have full federal protections for anything under 31 days. We would encourage the administration to look at this and extend orders.”Some 24 states and territories are receiving Title 32 funding for their National Guard operations, with other states continuing to submit funding requests, the senior official said. It’s unclear how many guardsmen are currently operating without health insurance and require TRICARE—let alone how many of their private insurance companies will charge them substantial deductibles for any COVID-19-related treatment they might require as a consequence of their service. On Friday morning, with no agreement in place to extend the Guard’s orders to ensure TRICARE eligibility, President Trump tweeted, “Thank you @USNationalGuard, keep up the great work!”\-- Sam Stein contributed reportingRead more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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'I just don't understand': Anthony Fauci shows support for more state stay-at-home orders

On Wednesday, Trump said, "you have to look at states. You have to give a little bit of flexibility."

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Pandemic pushes U.S. gun sales to all-time high

The FBI conducted 3.7 million background checks last month, the highest total since the national instant check system was launched in 1998.

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Coronavirus: More than 500 die in New York overnight with 100,000 reported cases

New York state has the biggest single-day increase of death toll with 592 people dying from the coronavirus yesterday, the governor said.Governor Andrew Cuomo started his daily press briefing on Friday with the grim news about the death toll increasing in the state.

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A Kentucky resident who was potentially exposed to the coronavirus and refused to self-isolate was forced to wear an ankle monitor

One man who tested positive for the coronavirus was put under house arrest after he went out shopping and violated his quarantine.

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Trump Urges Coronavirus Patients to Take Unproven Drug

By BY DENISE GRADY AND ANDREA KANNAPELL from NYT Health https://ift.tt/2UIa9oJ

Lisbon court seizes NOS shares held by Angola's dos Santos

Sonaecom, sub-holding of Portugal's Sonae, said on Saturday evening a Lisbon court seized shares in telecommunications firm NOS of a holding company it co-owned with former first-daughter and Angolan businesswoman Isabel dos Santos.

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Guatemala bans internal travel for Easter to curb coronavirus spread

Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei has banned travel between the different departments of the Central American country before and during Easter to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.

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Ecuador stores coronavirus victims in giant fridges as morgues fill up

Ecuador's government has begun storing the bodies of victims of the coronavirus in giant refrigerated containers as hundreds of deaths in the city of Guayaquil, the center of the country's outbreak, have already filled morgues and hospitals.

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Suspected cartel shootout kills 19 in northern Mexico

A shootout between suspected drug cartel hitmen has killed 19 people in the northern Mexico state of Chihuahua, the state government said on Saturday, in one of the country's worst outbreaks of gang violence this year.

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‘New York Is in Crisis’: Cuomo Pleads for Help as State Suffers Worst Single-Day Death Toll

More people in New York State have died in the last 24 hours than in most of March, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Friday—but the Empire State, the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S., is still struggling to find enough medical equipment to combat the pandemic.“The curve continues to go up,” Cuomo said at a Friday briefing in Albany, adding that, in the last day, the state saw its “highest single increase in the number of deaths since we started.” “New York is in crisis," he said. "Help New York.”More than 2,935 people have died and 102,863 people have been infected with the virus in New York State, marking 562 deaths in a single day on Thursday. The state’s death toll has almost doubled in just three days, Cuomo said. In the 27 days after the state's first coronavirus case was confirmed on March 1, 366 New Yorkers died. NYC Is on the Brink as Patients Flood Hospitals Already ‘Under Siege’New York accounts for almost 50 percent of 6,069 virus-related deaths nationwide. At least 245,658 individuals across the country have been infected with COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University’s tracker. The daily surge speaks to a nationwide problem: while state governments are working to get ahead of the virus, hospitals across the nation are overwhelmed, understaffed, and short on supplies necessary to combat the flu-like virus. The shortage has caused several states to bid against each other for purchase supplies from China. In New York, projections state that the apex of infections could come anytime between one week and a month from now. Those same projections suggest the virus could continue to plague New York until August, Cuomo said. “No state can get the supplies they need. No state can get the PPE they need. No state can get the ventilators they need,” Cuomo said. “The market has literally collapsed.”Cuomo begged on Friday for New York manufacturers to start making gowns, gloves, and N95 masks. In an attempt to combat the shortage, Cuomo said Friday he will authorize the National Guard to borrow and redistribute ventilators and other personal protective equipment (PPE) from hospitals across the state—an attempt to put a band-aid on medical facilities hemorrhaging with too many patients. The equipment, which Cuomo said he would pay for as well, will be eventually given back to the hospitals. Hospital Suppliers Take to the Skies to Combat Dire Shortages of COVID-19 GearThe executive order comes one day after Cuomo said the state stockpile of supplies only had enough ventilators to last six days at the “current burn rate.” Over the last 24 hours, the trajectory of daily hospitalizations hit a new record, with 1,427 more people admitted and 335 new ICU patients. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio also said Friday the city is expected to run out of ventilators by Tuesday. “I’m not going to let people die,” Cuomo said. “I’m not going to get into a situation where I know we are running out of ventilators and we could have people dying because there are no ventilators, but there are hospitals in other parts of the state that have ventilators that they’re not using.”Cuomo said he’d asked the federal government for help in obtaining more ventilators, stating that it was unacceptable for doctors to be forced to split one ventilator between two patients or use other machines as short-term fixes. So far, state officials have already taken extraordinary steps to combat the pandemic. The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, originally converted into a makeshift, 3,000-bed overflow hospital facility to alleviate overcrowding, will now be fully dedicated to COVID-19 patients, Cuomo said. The USNS Comfort—a naval ship with 1,000 beds, 12 operating rooms, a medical laboratory, and over 1,000 officers—docked in Manhattan on Monday and is now the only facility meant to relieve hospitals of non-coronavirus patients. As of Thursday, Cuomo said the converted supertank once used after 9/11 has only treated 20 patients.“I’m going to speak to the secretary of defense,” Cuomo said when asked about the ship’s low admission rate. “I know they’re not taking COVID-positive patients. But they said that from day one, to be fair.”Central Park has also been transformed into a field hospital to help house COVID-19 patients, and construction has begun on a 350-bed facility at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens for patients without the virus. City officials have also increased the number of mobile morgues. As of Thursday, 45 refrigerated trucks have been set up across the five boroughs, some of which are already full, as morgues and funeral homes struggle to find space and time to keep up with the mounting bodies. New York doctors and nurses on the frontlines of the pandemic have previously told The Daily Beast they are “constantly stressed” about working for an overwhelmed hospital system without the proper supplies to protect themselves and those around them. At least three nurses in city hospitals have died after contracting the coronavirus during their shifts and dozens more have tested positive.On Friday, several terrified city nurses protested outside Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan to demand more supplies to help them combat the daily surge of cases. “Here we are, against the worst enemy, because this one we can’t see,” Diana Torres, a nurse, told the New York Daily News. “We can’t touch it. It’s killing us all. And we have nothing to fight with.” Sasha Winslow, a 9-year nursing veteran, stood next to Torres outside the entrance with a sign states: “We won’t be your bodybags.”And New Yorkers may still be confused about what precautionary steps to take against the coronavirus on Friday after New York Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker said no data suggests that wearing masks, scarves, or bandanas while outside will protect people against infection. The statement directly contradicts guidance from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio—and expected guidance from President Donald Trump—that all residents should wear masks to prevent contracting and spreading the highly contagious virus.“The masks couldn’t hurt unless they gave a wearer a false sense of security,” Cuomo said. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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FISA court orders FBI to review if wiretaps are invalid after errors found during investigation

The directive comes just days after an internal Justice Department review found new problems with the FBI's management of wiretap applications.

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Tokyo area sees daily coronavirus cases topping 100 for first time: NHK

Some 118 people were newly infected with the novel coronavirus in the Japanese capital of Tokyo, NHK public broadcaster reported on Saturday, citing metropolitan government officials. It marked the first time that daily confirmed cases exceeded 100 in the Tokyo area, bringing the number of confirmed cases there to 891, NHK said. Tokyo's metropolitan government has strongly urged people to stay at home at the weekend as the mega-city faces a rising number of cases and as speculation simmers that Japan may declare a state of emergency, leading to lockdown.

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Medical stockpile seized from alleged hoarder to be distributed

U.S. officials have seized a stockpile of personal protective equipment from an alleged hoarder.

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Bernie Sanders calls for guaranteed paid medical leave, $2,000 monthly checks in new coronavirus relief proposal

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is looking ahead to the next few steps in the coronavirus pandemic response.On Friday, Sanders unveiled his "Priorities for the Next Coronavirus Relief Package," proposing a number of relief measures from guaranteeing paid medical and sick leave to all workers to expanding food programs like Meals on Wheels.The proposal unsurprisingly includes a major expansion of Medicare. "We were facing a catastrophic health care crisis before the pandemic, and now that crisis has become much, much worse," writes Sanders. The legislation would use Medicare to cover all health care expenses, notably including anyone who is sick, "regardless of immigration status." In addition to further invoking the Defense Production Act, Sanders says payment on all rent, mortgage payments, and forms of debt should be suspended entirely, not just deferred during the pandemic only to cause "financial ruin" once they become due. Building on the one-time $1,200 payments, Sanders calls for monthly $2,000 payments.The entire plan fits alongside policy ideas Sanders has touted throughout his presidential bid, but are ramped up in both scale and urgency now that the COVID-19 pandemic has quickly exploded to affect millions of Americans both medically and economically. This week's jobs reports showed that likely 3.5 million Americans have lost employer-provided health insurance since the pandemic began.Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal noted the similarities between Sanders' presidential platform and his latest proposal to Congress, but argued the ideas now sound remarkably "un-radical." The suggestions are "obviously on par with the scale of this crisis," says Weisenthal, and in line with the $2.2 trillion relief package Congress previously passed, "except on a sufficient scale to really counteract the damage." "To prevent the collapse of the economy is far more humane and cost effective than rebuilding the economy after it collapses," Sanders told MSNBC. See Sanders' proposal, which does not yet have a budget estimate, here.More stories from theweek.com Social distancing is going to get darker The noble lie about masks and coronavirus should never have been told 5 brutally funny cartoons about Trump's TV ratings boast

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Suspected cartel shootout kills 19 in northern Mexico

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Coronavirus: Nearly 1,500 Americans killed in 24 hours, the worst single-day death surge in the world

The United States recorded nearly 1,500 deaths from the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, the worst 24-hour death toll globally since the pandemic began. According to figures from Johns Hopkins University, 1,480 deaths were counted between Thursday morning and Friday morning, and the total number of people who have died since the start of the pandemic in the US is now 7,406. It tops the record set by the US on the previous day with 1,169 deaths. The US also far has more cases than any other country in the world with more than 275,000, at least double that of Italy which has the second highest number. It comes as Donald Trump advised all Americans to wear masks in public to protect against the virus over fears that the illness that has infected more than one million people worldwide may be spreading by normal breathing. Mr Trump said the government recommendation for all 330 million Americans to wear non-medical masks in places such as grocery stores would last "for a period of time", though he said that he would not wear one.

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Watch sailors cheer Navy captain relieved of command after raising alarm on coronavirus

One Twitter user who uploaded a video captioned it, in part: "Wrongfully relieved of command but did right by the sailors."

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Dr. Fauci Shuts Down ‘Fox & Friends’ on Coronavirus Cure: ‘We Don’t Operate on How You Feel’

Top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci left the hosts of Fox & Friends disappointed and frustrated Friday when he threw cold water on their insistence that the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine is a game-changing cure for the coronavirus.Citing a recent poll showing that 37 percent of doctors around the world feel the drug is currently the most effective treatment of COVID-19, co-host Steve Doocy added that frequent Fox News guest Dr. Mehmet Oz recently touted a small Chinese study that found the drug had some efficacy in treating the virus.Doocy went on to play a clip of Dr. Oz wondering whether Fauci was impressed with the results of that study. The Fox host asked the top physician to respond to the TV doctor.“That was not a very robust study,” replied Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force. He also pointed out that while there’s still a possibility of a “beneficial effect,” the scale and strength of the evidence is not “overwhelmingly strong.”“But getting back to what you said just a moment ago that ‘X percent’—I think you said 37 percent—of doctors feel that it’s beneficial. We don’t operate on how you feel. We operate on what evidence is, and data is,” he continued. “So although there is some suggestion with the study that was just mentioned by Dr. Oz—granted that there is a suggestion that there is a benefit there—I think we’ve got to be careful that we don’t make that majestic leap to assume that this is a knockout drug.”Co-host Brian Kilmeade, meanwhile, pushed back against the disease expert, claiming a large percentage of doctors in other countries are now prescribing the drug to treat coronavirus. He then speculated as to whether those taking the drug for other conditions were prevented from infection of COVID-19.Seth Meyers Exposes Fox News’ Sean Hannity Over Huge Coronavirus ‘Hoax’ Lie“I would be very curious, doctor, to see if anyone who was taking this for lupus or arthritis has gotten the coronavirus, that would be one way to go the other way to see about this study,” Kilmeade wondered aloud.“I mean, obviously this is a good drug in many respects for some of the diseases you mentioned, and the one thing we don’t want to happen is that individuals who really need a drug with a proven indication don’t have it available,” Fauci responded, adding that it doesn’t matter if a large percentage of doctors “think that it works.”Co-host Ainsley Earhardt then jumped in, suggesting that “Democratic leaders” are preventing patients from receiving hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the disease and asking Fauci what could be done to make sure we’re giving it to everyone in need.“Well first of all, this is an approved drug for another indication, and doctors can, and the FDA has made it very clear that doctors can prescribe it on what we call off label,” he explained. “There’s no inhibition for that. So a considerable amount of drug was made available, as you remember, just a few days ago. But the FDA was very clear that they’re not going to be inhibiting anyone from doing an off label prescription of the drug. So they’re free to do that if they want to.”While President Donald Trump and many Fox News personalities have been bullish on the possibility that the drug is a miracle cure for the virus, Fauci has repeatedly attempted to temper expectations, noting that the benefits have largely been anecdotal and that there are other studies showing no noticeable effects at all.This isn’t the first time that pro-Trump Fox News hosts have tried to get Fauci to boost hydroxychloroquine. Laura Ingraham, who has been at the forefront of touting the drug, asked the doc last week if he would take it if he were stricken with the virus. Fauci, for his part, said only if it were part of a clinical trial.Dr. Anthony Fauci: I Don’t Want to ‘Embarrass’ TrumpRead more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.