World:
US:
The only reason the U.S. has reported one million cases of CoronaVirus is that our Testing is sooo much better than any other country in the World. Other countries are way behind us in Testing, and therefore show far fewer cases!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 29, 2020
The only reason the U.S. has reported one million cases of CoronaVirus is that our Testing is sooo much better than any other country in the World. Other countries are way behind us in Testing, and therefore show far fewer cases!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 29, 2020
NC and local:
The war on workers now includes biological weapons. Deliberately exposing enemy prisoners to COVID-19 would be a war crime. Deliberately exposing workers at meat processing plants is … a Donald Trump executive order.
While one group of Republicans cooked up fake protests as a means of papering over their overt cruelty to workers, and outright gifts to corporations, Trump hasn’t been that subtle. He’s ordered plants to stay open, and workers to get back on the job. Or else. It may seem like there would be some issue between Trump deliberately telling workers to lay down their lives for his ham salad and safety regulations. But the CDC has a solution for that: take all the rules and turn them into guidelines. Soft guidelines.
As Rachael Maddow reported on Tuesday evening, this isn’t the first time that the U.S. has faced an issue of disease in the workplace. In past situations, such as a problem just two years ago in which lettuce from several farms was contaminated by E. coli, or situations where water supplies were contaminated, both the FDA and CDC have stepped in to issue strict orders and provide detailed instructions on what needs to be done in order to address the issue.
Only this time … not so much. Now that Trump has made working in a stew of viral danger a job requirement, regulatory agencies can’t exactly close down the company for safety violations. The alternative? There are no safety violations. The FDA and CDC aren’t ordering companies to do anything. They’re suggesting.
That said, as the push comes to open up the country, we still have a testing problem. We’re doing more of it, but not nearly enough. We also have a variety of tests. In fact, we have three major TYPES of tests.
HERE’S a picture for the ages:
Yup. Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday refused to wear a mask during his visit to Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic, which requires all staff, patients, and visitors to wear a face covering while at the medical center. In a since-deleted tweet, the Mayo Clinic called out the veep, saying it “had informed @VP of the masking policy prior to his arrival today.” But that apparently didn’t stop Pence from visiting with staff and even a patient in a crowded hospital room without wearing a mask. “Part of our protocol for ensuring your safety is to require all patients, visitors and staff to wear a face covering or mask while at Mayo Clinic to guard against transmission of COVID-19,” the hospital’s website reads.