Tag: COVID-19
The Morrison government’s “take the credit/deflect blame’ shtick is wearing thin. After all, the Commonwealth has ultimate responsibility for Australia’s border security – spelt out in the constitution, Quarantine Act (1908) and Biosecurity Act (2015).
RUBY PRINCESS -PETER DUTTON
A global pandemic ought to have demanded hyper-stringent oversight of returning citizens – especially once COVID became a ‘known event’ – and a far lengthier period of quarantine. Divisive rhetoric aside, Morrison’s political hero, John Howard, was right to assert in 2001 that “we decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”. It begs the question, however: why didn’t this rule apply to infected returnees or stopping that one, all-important boat?
COMMONWEALTH AGED-CARE RESPONSIBILITY
Then there is private aged care – unquestionably the regulatory domain of the Commonwealth. The crisis playing out in the sector is the direct result of operators prioritising profits ahead of health and safety – of elderly residents and staff. Here and across our economy the chickens of insecure employment have come home to roost. Possibly contagious casual workers are going to work because, in the absence of sick leave, they believe there is no other choice for their families. COVID is many things, yet with workplace transmissions accounting for 80 per cent of all cases, this pandemic is a workplace virus, hurting the poor, especially migrants.
WORK PLACE DEREGULATION
Again, this is a Commonwealth responsibility. It is jarring to hear Frydenberg talk up workplace deregulation as “first cab off the rank”, while the health and economic imperative of paid pandemic leave for isolating workers sits in the too hard basket. By contrast, the Victorian government is providing payments to insecurely employed workers forced to self-quarantine after testing positive for COVID or close contacts of a confirmed case, and workers awaiting results without access to paid leave.
via Scott Morrison’s ‘deflect blame, take the credit’ shtick is wearing thin
Hospitals have been instructed to send COVID data to a central database in Washington, bypassing the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The information will no longer be accessible to the public, raising concern that the data is being hidden for political reasons and the lack of transparency will make it easier for the administration to mislead the public.
The administration is also blocking CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield from testifying before Congress about the safety of reopening schools. They are attempting to block GOP senators from allocating billions of dollars to the CDC, Pentagon, and State Department for pandemic response. And the administration even opposes sending billions to states for testing and contact tracing.
via Trump’s Authoritarianism is Ill-Suited to a Pandemic | The Smirking Chimp
The deaths of 80 elderly people are imminent as a result of COVID-19 spreading through private aged care homes. Aged care behemoths were granted an extra $200m to cope with the pandemic but refuse to provide critical paid pandemic leave to an overwhelmingly casualised workforce, claiming it’s the government’s responsibility. The government says the buck stops with aged care operators. Meanwhile, Victoria’s publicly owned homes, with mandated staffing requirements, have few reported cases of COVID-19. Dr Sarah Russell investigates.
Compare this with staffing in privately owned residential aged care homes, where a single registered nurse is often required to look after more than 100 residents.
Not surprisingly, data from the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission indicates outbreaks in Victoria are almost exclusively a private sector aged-care issue. State-owned nursing homes comprise about 200 of the 750 in Victoria, but of the 66 aged care homes that have reported a COVID case since June, just six are state-government run.
Passing the Buck: why Victoria’s Covid is raging in private aged care homes – Michael West
Key points:
From the start of July, a quarter of COVID-19 infections have been in Victorians aged in their 20s
Four children are in hospital and 20 per cent of the state’s coronavirus patients are under the age of 50
A senior ICU nurse manager says there is no doubt that that younger adults with coronavirus will die
Intensive care nurse’s blunt warning over coronavirus risk to younger adults – ABC News
All the data will no longer go to the CDC, or Fauci’s Dept of National Health but the White House to be politically sanitized. Trump is about to disappear COVID-19 from America before November.
via Coronavirus: Trump to resume briefings as US COVID-19 cases surge
via 
“One person involved in the talks said Senate Republicans were seeking to allocate $25 billion for states to conduct testing and contact tracing, but that certain administration officials want to zero out the testing and tracing money entirely,” the Post reported. The relief bill is being written in Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) office and formal negotiations are expected to begin next week, when senators return from recess.
According to the Post, the administration is also aiming to “zero out $10 billion in new funding for the CDC in the upcoming bill” while simultaneously seeking the inclusion of money for a new FBI building.
Despite having months to right-foot the White House’s initial, lackadaisical response to the looming disaster, the country is in many ways in a more dire position than it was in March.
via Kooks, Never-Maskers and our Pandemic Death Toll: The High Cost of Republican Malevolence
We have noted too the disastrous consequences of leaders ignoring expert advice, and substituting their own inexpert, stupid and dangerous solutions. Donald Trump leads the field, and we can see where that has taken the US: almost 2 million cases and over 112,000 deaths so far!
Even Labor supporters acknowledge the success of our government’s program at both federal and local levels, and support it strongly. They too know that most of the success has been listening to the experts and following their advice, based as it is on science and experience.
What a pity it is that politicians ignore expert advice from scientists working in other fields, notably the study of climate change and environmental protection because it conflicts with their ideological position.
If only they would listen to the experts and use their advice!
via Listen to the experts – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The response of socialist Cuba to the global SARS-CoV2 pandemic has been outstanding both domestically and for its international contribution. That a small island nation, subjected to hundreds of years of colonialism and imperialism and, since the Revolution of 1959, six decades of the criminal United States blockade, can play such an exemplary role is due to Cuba’s socialist system. The central plan directs national resources according to a development strategy which prioritises human welfare and community participation, not private profit.
Leading by Example: Cuba in the Covid-19 Pandemic – CounterPunch.org
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Pregnant and jailed for $3.60 of meth, this mother’s baby lived and died behind bars
Cambodia’s little-known war on drugs has led to human rights abuses and severe overcrowding in prisons, sparking fears they could become incubators for COVID‑19.
via Cambodia’s drug war has seen prisoner numbers skyrocket during coronavirus pandemic – ABC News
Medical advice Trump ignores!!
Note: The use of hydroxycloroquine has been exclusively to minimize the effects of Covid-19 by giving patients very high doses of the drug in combination with a Z-Pak. After several studies which show that not only are patients not helped by the drug but actually endangered, the FDA issued a warning against it. But why would Trump believe in science?
Trump Claims He’s Taking Hydroxychloroquine Preventatively | Crooks and Liars
President Donald Trump’s incompetent handling of the Covid-19 pandemic is not only exacerbating the death and destruction caused by the virus in the US. It is also crippling the global response to the crisis, and the costs could be even deadlier.
Now another person close to Trump has tested positive, this time a member of the U.S. Navy who serves as a personal valet to Trump inside the White House and is responsible for serving Donald Trump his meals. (Side note: How weird is it there is an elite Navy unit dedicated to being the president’s butlers?)
CNN reports Trump was “upset” at the news and things were “hitting the fan” inside the White House. Unlike some of the earlier exposures, this member of the U.S. Navy was said to be symptomatic when tested.
White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said both Pence and Trump have since tested negative. The rub is the rapid tests for COVID-19 have 14.8% rate of false negatives. So, a negative test today does not necessarily mean a negative test tomorrow.
via Trump’s Personal Valet Has Tested Positive For COVID-19 | Crooks and Liars
Meanwhile Trump authorised Treasury to stop the $1,200 cheques sent to those that owe the government any money. (ODT)
Canada has become the latest country to refuse pandemic bailout money for tax dodgers. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joins leaders of Denmark, Poland and France in axing financial aid to corporations registered in offshore tax havens. Noel Turnbull reports.
Should tax dodgers get taxpayer-funded COVID-19 bailout? – Michael West
Blame Game
To some people the answer is self-evident: China. Maybe those calling for a “China only” investigation should be looking closer to home?
The world is entitled to know the origins of COVID-19 and exactly how the outbreak began and how it was handled by every major nation, including China, given the pandemic alarm was raised back in September 2019. The World At Risk report by WHO and the World Bank Group contained dire warnings of a possible pandemic. These were largely ignored by most G20 countries including Australia. Is it any wonder most countries were dangerously ill-prepared, resulting in needless deaths? Marcus Reubenstein reports.
Thanks to a virus, transported in droplets just 0.005 millimetres in diameter, life as we know it has changed enormously.
The mortality rate of COVID-19 should see that is does not even come close to the deadliest pandemic in global history. However, as the world is so much more interconnected than at any previous time in history, the global disruption and economic fallout is without precedent.
With the world having sustained so much damage, the inevitable question is: Who is to blame?
Expand China investigation – most G20 countries ignored pandemic warning – Michael West
The act of encouraging members of his base to court death is clearly that of a man without an ounce of empathy, even for those who love and admire him most — and so of a stone-cold killer. You couldn’t ask for more proof that the only sense of empathy he has lies overwhelmingly in his deep and abiding pity for himself (which matches his staggering sense of self-aggrandizement) and perhaps for his children, other billionaires, and fossil-fuel executives. Them, he would save; the rest of us, his base included, are expendable. He’d sacrifice any of us without a second thought if he imagined that it would benefit him or his reelection in any way.
But there’s no point in leaving it at that. After all, as he pushes for a too-swiftly reopened country, he’s declaring open season on Americans of all sorts. And every one of us who will die too soon should be considered another Covidfire missile death and chalked up to a president who, by the time this is over, will truly have given a new meaning to the phrase assassin-in-chief.
Who else can you trust but yourself and those around you, because you certainly can’t trust Morrison and the app. That’s not what rainbows are made of, and just an aside, when the ‘snap back’ comes, when everything goes back to the ‘normal’ settings, back to blind economy and rampant neoliberalism, corruption and lies, how long will it take for Morrison and the Liberals to fuck you up once more, and now they’ve got the app out of you – Because their ideology never worked to get you out of this one. This one required a good dose of reason and humanitarian socialism, which they lovingly and uncharacteristically bestowed on us, and it’s now theirs to take away. But we can wish for a little bit of genuine democracy on the other side, with a dose of truth and reason, that might help. And we can wait for the vaccine, but who will immunise us against these politicians, I don’t recall picking them up in a wet market.
Did I download the app? You’re kidding me, right?
via Somewhere over the rainbow – on the other side – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Roughly 25% of known virus-related deaths have occurred in the United States.
HE’S YOUR PRESIDENT AMERICA
Confirmed Coronavirus Cases In U.S. Double To 1 Million In Less Than 3 Weeks | HuffPost Australia
ALSO: Trump Tries To Wish Coronavirus Away As Death Toll Climbs
The pandemic is putting America’s deepening class divide into stark relief. Four classes are emerging.
The five places in the U.S. with the highest daily growth rate of Covid-19 cases are all linked to meatpacking plants with active outbreaks. Requiring meat plants to stay open would likely not only put workers at risk, but surrounding communities, too.
There’s China the doers and the along came the dumber than (ODT)
“Then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute, and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning?” Trump asked Bryan from Homeland Security.
He then asked Deborah Birx, the physician co-ordinating the White House’s coronavirus taskforce: “I would like you to speak to the medical doctors to see if there’s any way you can apply light and heat to cure. You know? If you could. And maybe you can, maybe you can’t.”
Birx said she had not seen any evidence that heat or UV rays could be used as a treatment for the virus.
Health experts immediately warned that sunlight was not a “miracle cure” for COVID-19 and that people should not try to treat it by tanning – especially given the risks of developing skin cancer.
On Friday, China announced it donated a further $US30 million ($47 million) to the World Health Organisation following Donald Trump’s decision to halt funding, amid concerns the UN agency is too “China-centric”.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the extra funds would help the WHO contain the virus and support developing countries in improving their public health systems.
“At this critical moment, support for WHO helps to strengthen multilateralism and the UN,” Shuang said.
via Coronavirus: Trump reveals Homeland study claiming COVID-19 struggles to survive in sunlight, heat
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