Iowa governor, who disparaged mask mandates as ‘feel-good’ measures, reverses course
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For Maryland and D.C. residents, an endless wait for jobless benefits: ‘It’s a gut-wrenching time’
Tinesha McNeill has not received unemployment benefits since she filed a claim four months ago. If not for her family, and the savings she stashed away while working as a literacy coach for Baltimore City schools, she figures she would be homeless by now.
Carl Duncan, a securities attorney, is five months delinquent on his mortgage payments. While he tries not to think about it, most days his mind wanders to what could happen to his Bethesda home when the moratorium on foreclosures ends.
And ever since Kimberly Phillips’s family dropped from two incomes to one, the Olney resident has been negotiating with the water company to avoid a shut-off.
The Maryland residents — who never envisioned filing for unemployment and never had to until this year — are among tens of thousands of jobless residents in their state and D.C. whose benefits are tangled in red tape.
Outbreak forces Missouri lawmakers to postpone special session on covid-19; cancel mask-free bus tour
Missouri lawmakers postponed plans to hold a special session on the coronavirus crisis on Monday because too many lawmakers and their staffers had contracted the virus themselves.
The announcement came five days after the Missouri state senate’s Republican majority held an in-person retreat at a resort near Branson, a popular vacation destination in the Ozarks, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Attendees included Gov. Mike Parson (R), who posted photos of himself addressing an indoor gathering of more than a dozen people, most of them not wearing masks and seated close together.
“I don’t know that anybody that was there had any symptoms of covid, so, but I would say, you know, there’s potentially somebody that was there that might have it now,” Senate President Pro Tem Dave Schatz told the paper on Saturday.
Missouri’s state senate had planned to meet this week to pass an emergency budget bill, and address legislation that would make some businesses immune to coronavirus-related lawsuits. But Caleb Rowden, the state senate’s majority leader, said Monday that the special session would be postponed until after Thanksgiving due to “a number” of positive coronavirus cases among members and staff. He did not specify how many people were infected and if any of them had attended the retreat.
A spokeswoman for Parson told the Kansas City Star that the governor, who tested positive for the coronavirus in September, “was socially distanced the entire time he was at the event and wore a mask except when he was speaking.” She said there was no reason to believe that Parson was exposed to the virus during the retreat.
Missouri’s House of Representatives, meanwhile, had planned to offer a two-week, masks-optional bus tour around the state for freshman lawmakers at the end of November. That plan has also been put on hold “out of an abundance of caution,” the Post-Dispatch reported.
Biden wants to curb the coronavirus but steers clear of shutdowns
President-elect Joe Biden and his team Monday sent the clearest signal yet that he won’t put the country into another national shutdown, showing deep concern for a fragile economy amid a massive spike in coronavirus infections that is straining hospitals and plunging the nation into a more severe crisis.
The president-elect tiptoed around a question Monday about whether governors should be closing nonessential businesses in hard-hit places.
“Look, it depends on the state,” Biden said, when asked about restrictions. He then picked up his face mask and delivered an extended riff on the importance of wearing masks and noted that he has respect for governors of both parties who have issued mask mandates.
“Does anybody understand why a governor would turn this into a political statement?” he asked, still displaying his paper medical mask. “It’s about patriotism.”
Pelosi’s reversal on Capitol dinner shows perils for Democrats in coronavirus era
The elaborate event seemed like the kind of celebration President Trump might host in the coronavirus era: about a dozen circular tables with purple and pink flowers brimming from gold vases, arranged in a grand but windowless room.
But this was no Trump affair. It was a setup for a dinner to be hosted by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
“It’s very spaced,” she assured reporters, arguing Friday evening that the post-election reception she was about to host for just under 50 incoming and reelected members was socially distanced and approved by the House physician.
It was the latest in a series of moves by the speaker, who has routinely knocked Republicans for acting irresponsibly during the pandemic, that have played into the hands of critics who see a double standard.
Stanford distances itself from White House medical adviser Scott Atlas
Stanford University is distancing itself from Scott Atlas, the Trump administration’s controversial coronavirus adviser who made headlines after encouraging Michigan residents to “rise up” against new shutdown orders this week.
“Stanford’s position on managing the pandemic in our community is clear,” the university said in a statement Monday night. “We support using masks, social distancing, and conducting surveillance and diagnostic testing. We also believe in the importance of strictly following the guidance of local and state health authorities.”
Atlas is a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank, but is currently on leave while he serves on the White House coronavirus task force. Without offering specific examples, the university said that Atlas “has expressed views that are inconsistent with the university’s approach in response to the pandemic,” and that his comments “reflect his personal views, not those of the Hoover Institution or the university.”
Stanford’s disavowal of Atlas’s beliefs came after the neuroradiologist, who has pushed a fringe “herd immunity” strategy, appeared to suggest that people should revolt against Michigan’s public health restrictions. Later on Monday, Atlas again raised eyebrows when he told Fox News that it was tragic that senior citizens were being told not to see their families on what could be their last Thanksgiving.
Speaking to Fox’s Martha MacCallum, Atlas said he agreed that it was important to protect the elderly by reducing large group gatherings, practicing social distancing and holding activities outside or in places with good ventilation. But he said he does not support shutdown measures and made a dubious claim that they have been linked to higher suicide rates.
“This kind of isolation is one of the unspoken tragedies of the elderly who are now being told don’t see your family at Thanksgiving,” Atlas said in comments that were first flagged by the liberal watchdog group Media Matters. “For many people, this is their final Thanksgiving, believe it or not. What are we doing here?”
Many commentators quickly pointed out that it could indeed be the final Thanksgiving for many senior citizens if proper safety precautions are not taken during the holiday.
Businesses race to battle back new coronavirus restrictions as U.S. faces deadly surge
Movie theaters in New York City are demanding the right to reopen. Restaurateurs in Massachusetts are trying to serve more customers at night. And top retailers are targeting store limits across the country, hoping to boost shopping — and profits — as the holidays approach.
Even as the coronavirus ravages the United States, a wide array of tourism, hospitality, restaurant and retail groups have fought to preserve their ability to operate anyway, seeking to stave off shutdowns and some other restrictions that public health experts see as essential for bringing the nation’s deadly contagion under control.
Iowa governor, who belittled mask mandates, announces statewide mask mandate
Iowa has become the latest state to implement a mask mandate after Gov. Kim Reynolds resisted calls to order one amid a surging coronavirus outbreak.
Iowans age 2 or older must wear a mask starting Tuesday in indoor public spaces and if they are within six feet of people who are not members of their households, Reynolds (R) announced Monday in a recorded video message. The order also limits indoor and outdoor gatherings to 15 and 30 attendees, respectively, requires restaurants and bars to close at 10 p.m. and encourages those who are high-risk to stay home.
“This isn’t about mandates, this isn’t about government,” Reynolds said. “There isn’t enough law enforcement in the country to make sure Iowans wear a mask when they should. … If Iowans don’t buy into this, we lose.”
Reynolds has previously belittled mask mandates, calling them “feel-good” actions, and argued that her approach that supported individual freedoms earned President Trump the state in the election. She later ordered a limited requirement last week for face coverings for indoor gatherings with more than 25 people and outdoor gatherings with more than 100 people.
“I think the goal is to do what we can to reduce the spread of the virus,” Reynolds said in September, according to the Associated Press. “I believe that is the end goal and that we can get there without a mask mandate. I believe that and that’s what I’m going to consistently do.”
But on Monday, she said the state’s health-care system has been “pushed to the brink.” Iowa’s total number of reported infections doubled in the past month, and on Monday, the number of patients in the state currently hospitalized with covid-19 reached a high of 1,392.
Reynolds said she was postponing her Thanksgiving celebration and not hosting her children and grandchildren because of the pandemic.
“Now is the time to come together for the greater good,” she said.
WHO tempers prospect of a coronavirus vaccine with warning of a long fight to come
The world welcomed with relief biotechnology firm Moderna’s announcement Monday that initial results suggested its coronavirus vaccine candidate was nearly 95 percent effective at preventing the illness. Markets soared on the promising news.
But experts at the World Health Organization in Geneva weighed the hopes against a long slog they see ahead.
“Last week, we had 60,000 deaths,” Edward Kelly, director of the WHO’s work on service delivery and safety, said during a news briefing. “We had 4 million new cases. We will have more of those weeks before the vaccine is out there.”
Public health officials have long warned that the development of an effective vaccine would be the beginning of a struggle just as steep: an effort to vaccinate the world.
Katherine O’Brien, director of the WHO’s immunization department, said the discovery of a highly effective vaccine was like building a base camp on Mount Everest. “The climb to the peak is really about delivering the vaccines,” she said.
California slams ‘emergency brake’ as states race to halt virus’s spread
Governors and mayors moved rapidly on Monday to slow the galloping spread of the coronavirus, reviving restrictions on businesses and individuals that public health experts say are urgently needed again amid a nationwide viral surge.
The new measures will be felt from coast to coast. In a mirror of the country’s spring shutdown, California took some of the most dramatic steps, with Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announcing he was pulling the state’s “emergency brake” to confront spread that was “simply without precedent in California’s pandemic history.”
New Jersey and Philadelphia also announced new restrictions, following the enactment of tougher measures in recent days in states including Washington, Michigan and Iowa.
The data explain why: The country racked up 1 million new coronavirus cases in a single week, with additions of at least 100,000 cases each day for nearly two weeks running. With the death toll touching 246,000, the grim milestone of a quarter-million dead Americans is likely to be reached by the weekend.
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