Author: Penny Starr

“The donations went to approximately 80 homebound veterans and their families who are members of the Hopi Tribe and the Arizona Tewa people,” the American Legion article reported. “Sixteen American Legion posts across Northern Arizona helped provide the donated goods.”

In Newhall-Saugus American Legion Post 507 in California, Santa Clarita Grocery and other local organizations provided free lunches as a way to recognize National Military Appreciation Month.

“The effort resulted in 200 hot dogs provided to veterans and their families while observing social distancing,” the article reported. 

“The American Legion is a local organization … dedicated to welfare of veterans, community service and patriotism, and this event pretty much melds all of those together,” Sons of The American Legion Squadron 507 Commander Mike Merlo told KHTS.

In addition to serving weekly curbside meals, members of Post 37’s American Legion Family in Ames, Iowa, heard that vending machines at the Iowa Veterans Homes were out of snacks because vendors currently are not allowed to restock them.

Jennifer Blatus, a political strategist who interned with Diaz Jr., said in the Newsweek report:

He has always had a great constituent service mechanism. He’s really good at connecting with the community, he knows who his base is, he knows how to reach them, his son is wildly popular, they have the same name and half the people that vote for him might think they’re voting for Rubencito.

But “insiders” told Newsweek that Diaz senior is popular, stands out in a field of ten, and would probably win the seat if the election were held today.

One of his opponents calls that possibility a “cruel irony.”

”There’s a cruel irony that a Trump Republican could represent the most Democratic district in America,” Ritchie Torres said.

Newsweek reported:

The state with the least restrictions is South Dakota (Republican Gov. Kristi Noem).

Jill Gonzalez, WalletHub analyst, said of its report:

Two major reasons why South Dakota ranks as the state with the fewest coronavirus restrictions are that it is one of only seven states that never had a mandate for all schools to close during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is the only state that never required a statewide closure of bars and restaurants. South Dakota has already lifted some of the restrictions it did implement, such as its ban on large gatherings, and it only recommends wearing a mask in public rather than requiring it like most states do.

The state rated second in returning freedom to its residents is Wisconsin where Democrat Tony Evers is governor. The state’s restrictions have changed drastically since the first WalletHub survey on coronavirus restrictions:

Wisconsin moved from 34 to 2, up 32 positions. This is due in part to the fact that the state has lifted all restrictions on large gatherings, had closed but fully re-opened restaurants and bars, has child care programs open and has fully reopened all non-essential businesses.

The other eight states in the Top 10 with the least restrictions are, in order, Idaho (Republican Gov. Brad Little), Missouri (Republican Gov. Mike Parson), Utah (Republican Gov. Gary Herbert), Wyoming (Republican Gov. Mark Gordon), Montana (Democrat Gov. Steve Bullock) Arizona (Republican Gov. Doug Ducey), North Dakota (Republican Gov. Doug Burgum) and Iowa (Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds).

“Arizona moved from 32 to 8, up 24 positions,” WalletHub reported. “This is due in part to the fact that the state has lifted all restrictions on large gatherings and has lifted all stay-at-home mandatory restrictions.”

Georgia fell from 11th to 28th in this latest survey:

Georgia moved from 11 to 28, down 17 positions. This is due in part to the fact that the state requires wearing a face mask in public and that the state still has its legislative sessions postponed.

The most restrictive states, from 41 to 51 in order, are: Michigan (Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer), New York (Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo), New Mexico (Democrat Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham), Washington (Democrat Gov. Jay Inslee), Hawaii (Democrat Gov. David Ige), Vermont (Republican Gov. Phil Scott) , Massachusetts (Republican Gov. Charlie Baker), District of Columbia (Democrat Mayor Muriel Bowser), Rhode Island (Democrat Gov. Gina Raimondo) and Illinois (Democrat Gov. J.B. Pritzker).

“Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the fewest restrictions,” WalletHub said of its survey methodology.

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In fact, many egg farmers are keeping their birds “cage free,” and in Michigan and Oregon chicken cages will be illegal in 2025 and 2024, respectively, media outlets reported.

Many businesses that use eggs are only using cage-free suppliers, including Walmart, McDonalds, Starbucks, Burger King, Hyatt Hotels, and Unilever.

Many people who are vegetarian or vegan reject eating eggs because they believe it to be consuming a potential chicken when, in fact, only chicken eggs that have been fertilized contain a chicken embryo. 

“The lucky 1,000 will be nursed back to health and then adopted into backyard flocks throughout California,” the press release said. “Any hens who are too ill to be adopted will remain at the sanctuary and receive lifelong care.”

“To celebrate 1,000 lives saved, Animal Place is serving 1,000 vegan lunches to local farmworkers and their families,” the press release said.

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“It’s time to do the right thing and listen to the people who put us here,” Mayor Paul Creighton said in the Chronicle report. “We want you guys to survive and thrive. It’s really critical that the elected in this country and especially this state start listening to you.”

“Creighton later told the Merced Sun-Star that while the city would take no action against anyone who reopened outside the state’s guidelines, local businesses were taking their own risks by reopening,” the Chronicle reported.

“If you do have a state (business) license, that’s between you and the state of California,” Creighton said.

Atwater is in Merced County, California, and has recorded 200 coronavirus cases and six COVID-19 deaths, according to the county website. 

On Saturday, County Sheriff Vernon Warnke said on Facebook that he “will not be taking any enforcement action in this county for any of the COVID-19 ‘violations,’” the Chronicle reported.

“The citizens themselves can make informed decisions on how to proceed and protect their lives and livelihood and not the governor of a state,” the Facebook post said.

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The decision to close schools was among the first action that many states took to stave the impending pandemic and was based on a strong theoretical foundation. Children are typically at greatest risk of infectious diseases, and they transmit them to each other and their families with considerable speed. Many drew parallels to the 100-year-old influenza epidemic, in which it was true that children played a central role in transmission. But in the 6 to 8 weeks since most schools in the U.S. have closed, we have gathered new evidence about both children’s risks from the virus and their likelihood of transmitting it, as noted by Esposito and Principi in this issue of JAMA Pediatrics. We know only what we know today about the benefits and harms associated with school closure.

However imperfect these data are, they must inform a critical decision that many states and school districts will be making in the very near future. Notably, even as states provisionally plan on opening workplaces, most are giving no consideration to opening schools. Many have already canceled the rest of the year, and all are now considering what to do in the fall. The risks posed by delaying school openings are real and sizeable, particularly for students from low-income families.

The phenomenon of summer learning loss has been well established, with children losing a mean of 1 to 3 months in varying subjects. Some estimate that there will be a 9-month to 12-month loss when children return to school in the fall, and this will only be compounded if distance learning continues. No credible scientist, learning expert, teacher, or parent believes that children aged 5 to 10 years can meaningfully engage in online learning without considerable parental involvement, which many families with low incomes are unable to provide because parents must work outside the home.

Christakis said that in addition to a coronavirus task force, the government should be “convene immediately” a school closure task force and include “epidemiologists, infectious disease experts, educational scientists, and child psychologists, among others.”

“They should review the state of the evidence regarding horizontal transmission among children and their families, as well as what is known about the feasibility of distance learning and the psychological implications of children continuing to stay at home,” Christakis wrote.

He added that the decisions should be “developmentally framed” because “kindergarten is not the same as high school or college.” 

“Using all existing and emerging data—however incomplete—they should make their best-informed recommendations to help states make this crucial decision, based on science and not politics, as soon as possible,” Christakis wrote. “We owe this to our children. Years from now, when they reflect on the pandemic, they will hold us accountable.”

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The findings suggest childhood vaccination efforts nearly ground to a halt between March 13 — when the national emergency was declared — and April 19.

There was a 2.5 million-dose decline in orders of regular childhood vaccines — not counting influenza vaccines — and a 250,000-dose decline in vaccines containing measles protection in that period, the authors reported.

Doctors and public health experts have worried that a vast number of regular health care needs — including preventive care interventions like vaccinations — have gone unmet in the past few months as people shy away from interacting with a health system that has, at least in some places, been overwhelmed by caring for Covid-19 patients. Pediatricians in particular have been concerned that children may be missing critical vaccinations, which the new data confirm has happened.

“Routine immunizations in young children are critical to maintain during the pandemic,” Kathryn Edwards, a pediatrician and scientific director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program in Nashville, Tennessee, said in the Stat report. “The usual childhood diseases are still around and we need to protect our children from them.”

“I think that didn’t happen,” Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccines expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said in the Stat report. “I think there were a number of practices that didn’t do that because they were too scared. And so this is the result. You have this dramatic decline.”

Neither Edwards nor Offit was involved in this study, the Stat report said.

“The identified declines in routine pediatric vaccine ordering and doses administered might indicate that U.S. children and their communities face increased risks for outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases,” the study authors wrote.

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• Americans living in the Northeastern U.S. (55 percent), college graduates (52 percent), and those living in cities (55 percent) are more likely than their counterparts to say the use of face masks is very important.

• 73 percent of college graduates, 72 percent of city residents, and 70 percent of adults under 45 say the availability of widespread testing to identify and monitor those exposed to the virus is very important to them — significantly higher rates than their counterparts.

Gallup reported:

As some Americans around the country have begun to protest COVID-19 stay-at-home orders and the president is anxious to restart the economy, many governors are moving to lift restrictions in their states. Yet, governors in some of the areas hardest hit by COVID-19 are not yet ready to do so, and although Trump has outlined a graduated plan for reopening, some governors are being criticized for lifting restrictions before their state meets all of the criteria.

Gallup noted that views on how to get back to normal are “sharply polarized politically.”

The Gallup poll is based on self-administered web surveys conducted April 27-May 3, 2020, with a random sample of 4,553 U.S. adults, aged 18 and older who are members of the Gallup Panel. 

“Gallup weighted the obtained samples to correct for nonresponse,” the report on methodology for the poll said. “Nonresponse adjustments were made by adjusting the sample to match the national demographics of gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education and region.”

Based on any individual sample, the poll has a margin of sampling error or plus or minus three percentage points.

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“Precisely. Mistress carries both sexist and moral assumptions,” Poynter pontificated. “There is no true male equivalent.”

AP admitted it had broken its own rule twice, referring to Sanchez as a mistress.

“That just goes to show how entrenched we are in reducing women to their sexual relationships with men,” Poynter wrote.

Poynter advised that the style guide should go even farther to stop using words that are “unnecessarily gendered,” including blonde, actress, heroine, hostess and waitress.

As for using mistress, Poynter sides with people who chose to be in a relationship with a married man — including a call to shame anyone who dares use the word.

“It’s time to call out those who use the word in journalistic copy,” Poynter reported. “At the very least it’s inaccurate, most of the time, according to AP style. More importantly, it’s sexist and demeaning.”

And if the word creeps into someone’s reporting “call it out and ask that the word be swapped out for something neutral and less judgmental.”

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Murphy said flattening the curve was the right goal not only to save lives, but, moreover, to allow the medical establishment to get ready for a potential surge of coronavirus patients.

“We’ve accomplished that goal, and we stand ready to get a surge that I pray, and I don’t think, is going to happen,” Murphy said.

“But now, it’s turned into what I believe is more of a control freak kind of thing,” Murphy said. “They want to manipulate and make sure that they are in control with every step of this process and the data. The objective science does not warrant that.”

Marlow also noted that the divide between those who want to open up their states and those who want to continue lockdowns has turned into a political issue, with conservatives wanting to loosen restriction and Democrats in favor of more government control.

“I did not want this to turn political,” Murphy said.”Unfortunately, I believe the Democrats have made it political, which is just nonsense. I actually believed that this would be a great thing to bring our country together rather than tear it apart.”

The two governments have raised tariffs on billions of dollars of each other’s imports since 2018 in a fight over Beijing’s trade surplus and technology ambitions. Under the January agreement, Washington agreed to reduce some tariff hikes and postpone others in exchange for what Trump said was a Chinese commitment to buy American farm goods and other exports worth $200 billion. Beijing has resumed purchases of American soybeans but has yet to confirm the size of any commitment.

On Sunday, Trump told Fox News, “If they don’t buy, we’ll terminate the deal. Very simple.”

AP reported that Chinese and U.S. officials spoke by phone on Friday, according to the Chinese news outlet Xinhua.

Chief Chinese envoy, Vice Premier Liu He, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin agreed to “create a favorable atmosphere and conditions” for implementing the “phase one” agreement signed in January. The Reuters analysis said:

The U.S. meat shortage and the Phase 1 goals of increasing exports to China seem to be opposing forces, raising the question of whether sales and shipments will or should be limited. Some restrictions would not be surprising given U.S. President Donald Trump’s more combative tone in his recent comments on trade with China. Trump also last week ordered meat-processing plants to stay open to protect U.S. meat supply, but this has sparked some backlash from unions and lawmakers over the safety of workers, and it is not clear if the mandate will have the desired effect on production.

The Reuters piece said the preliminary U.S. export data for April “suggests that pork exports to China were comparable with March while beef shipments were likely higher” and that most of the sales and exports to China accumulated before the U.S. meat shortage spiked.

“The value of all U.S. pork, beef, poultry and products exported to China in the first three months of 2020 totaled $781 million,” the Reuters analysis reported.

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“I don’t know that he has a philosophy,” Biden said. “I think he just decides that he’s going to appeal to people from white supremacists to homophobic people who think he can easily rile them up and get their support,” Biden said. “I don’t know. I can’t get in another man or woman’s mind but I know it’s wrong.”

Biden said he supports transgenderism because “we are all God’s children.”

The article included a statement from Reggie Greer, identified as the LGBTQ+ vote director for the Biden campaign:

“On behalf of Vice President Biden, our campaign is deeply honored to have the National Center for Transgender Equality Action Fund’s endorsement and partnership in this election,” Greer said. 

“In 2012, the same year he boldly declared his support for marriage equality, Vice President Biden made clear that ‘transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time.’ He understands what’s at stake, and has built an unmatched record of ensuring our nation’s laws and discourse value, reflect, and see the lives, dignity, and worth of all transgender people.” 

“To the contrary, Donald Trump and Mike Pence have done nearly everything in their power to endanger the lives of transgender people or ignore the issues disproportionately impacting them,” Greer said. “That’s why it’s all the more reason we are grateful for today’s announcement.”

According to Williams Institute at U.C.L.A, 0.6 percent of U.S. adults identify as transgender. GLADD has reported that three percent of the U.S population across different age groups consider themselves as transgender.

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According to the leftist website Vice, the current health crisis is an opportunity to put leftwing agendas in place:

Coronavirus is bringing a strike wave to America, if it hasn’t already, and there is the feeling that it is snowballing into something more, which the U.S. hasn’t seen for 75 years: a general strike that encompasses everyone, not just workers at one company or industry. As Instacart strike organizer Vanessa Bain told us: “Bosses and CEOs across sectors and industries have failed to act, so workers are taking matters into their own hands. The time for a general strike is now.”

“The concept of a general strike emerged from early-20th-century leftist thought,” the Vox owned The Cut reported. “In 1906, Rosa Luxembourg wrote in The Mass Strike, her seminal text on the subject, ‘It is absurd to think of the mass strike as one act, one isolated action. The mass strike is rather the indication, the rallying idea, of a whole period of the class struggle lasting for years, perhaps for decades.’ The general strike can take different forms. It might be one large action — like Seattle’s weeklong general strike of 1919 — or it might be a series of continuous actions, like France’s recent nationwide strikes over the government’s plan to reform the country’s pension fund system.”

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Murdock later explained that he added a week’s vacation to his time away from his hospital job so that he and his family could decide whether or not he will return to that job.

The Times reported that “a segment of the United States has turned informant, calling the police, public health authorities and the employers of people they believe are violating social-distancing decrees or stay-at-home orders.”

The Times describes snitching on your neighbor as “citizen action” and contrasted that to the freedom rallies taking place around the country.

But Murdock has a very different perspective about his experience than what the Times reported.

In the lengthy post on Facebook, which includes his 33-year career as a research cardiologist, Murdock explained how he was in favor of the state’s first stay-at-home order, but then circumstances changed and he felt extending the April 24 expiration of the stay-at-home order in many parts of the state was unnecessary and even harmful: