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NY’s Cuomo criticized over Highest Nursing Home Death Toll

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By JIM MUSTIAN, JENNIFER PELTZ and BERNARD CONDON (AP)

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has won bipartisan praise for rallying supplies for his ravaged hospitals and helping slow the coronavirus, is coming under increasing criticism for not bringing that same level of commitment to a problem that has so far stymied him: nursing homes.

In part-lecture, part-cheerleading briefings that have made him a Democratic counter to President Donald Trump, Cuomo has often seemed dismissive and resigned to defeat when asked about his state leading the nation in nursing home deaths.

“We’ve tried everything to keep it out of a nursing home, but it’s virtually impossible,” Cuomo told reporters. “Now is not the best time to put your mother in a nursing home. That is a fact.”

Residents’ relatives, health care watchdogs and lawmakers from both parties cite problems with testing and transparency that have prevented officials — and the public — from grasping the full scale of the catastrophe.

And they are second-guessing a state directive that requires nursing homes take on new patients infected with COVID-19 — an order they say accelerated outbreaks in facilities that are prime breeding grounds for infectious diseases.

“The way this has been handled by the state is totally irresponsible, negligent and stupid,” said Elaine Mazzotta, a nurse whose mother died last month of suspected COVID-19 at a Long Island nursing home. “They knew better. They shouldn’t have sent these people into nursing homes.”

Of the nation’s more than 25,000 coronavirus deaths in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, more than a fifth of them — about 5,300 — are in New York, according to a count by The Associated Press, and the toll has been increasing by an average of 20 to 25 deaths a day for the past few weeks.

“The numbers, the deaths keep ticking up,” said MaryDel Wypych, an advocate for older adults in the Rochester area. “It’s just very frustrating.”

Cuomo faced criticism at a recent briefing for saying that providing masks and gowns to nursing homes is “not our job” because the homes are privately owned.

“It was such an insensitive thing to say,” said state Assemblyman Ron Kim, a Queens Democrat who noted that it wasn’t until just this past week that New York and neighboring states announced a plan to combine forces to buy protective gear and medical supplies for nursing homes.

“If we had focused on that early on,” he said, “we could have saved a lot of lives.”

Cuomo’s administration defended its response to the crisis, saying it has provided more than 10 million pieces of protective equipment to nursing homes and created a database of 95,000 workers who have helped out in hundreds of New York homes.

“This was an overwhelming situation for everyone,” said Jim Malatras, who serves on the governor’s COVID-19 task force. “There were deaths and it’s unfortunate. But it doesn’t mean we weren’t aggressive.”

One key criticism is that New York took weeks after the first known care home outbreaks to begin publicly reporting the number of deaths in individual homes — and still doesn’t report the number of cases. By the time New York began disclosing the deaths in the middle of last month, the state had several major outbreaks with at least 40 deaths each, most of which were a surprise to the surrounding communities and even some family members.

“They should have announced to the public: ‘We have a problem in nursing homes. We’re going to help them, but you need to know where it is,’” said former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey, a Republican who now heads the nonprofit Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. “Instead, they took the opposite tack: They hid it.”

urther, there has been a lack of testing in several recent New York outbreaks, including one that killed 98 residents, many of whom died with COVID-19 symptoms without ever being tested.

Unlike West Virginia, New York has not mandated testing in its more than 1,150 nursing homes and long-term care facilities. Nor has Cuomo followed the lead of such states as Maryland, Florida, Tennessee and Wisconsin in dispatching National Guard teams to homes to conduct testing, triage and some care.

To be sure, it’s difficult to gauge the impact of such actions. While those states reported fewer nursing home deaths than New York, several have a larger share of nursing home deaths out of their state’s totals than New York’s 25 percent.

“No state is doing even close to an adequate job,” said Elaine Ryan, AARP’s vice president for state advocacy.

New York has faced particular scrutiny for a March 25 state health department directive requiring nursing homes to take recovering coronavirus patients.

“A number of nursing homes have felt constrained by the order and admitted hospital discharged patients without knowing what their COVID status was,” said Chris Laxton, executive director of the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine. “This order made an already difficult situation almost impossible.”

The order, similar to one in neighboring New Jersey, was intended to help free up hospital beds for the sickest patients as cases surged. But critics have suggested nursing homes were already overwhelmed and a better solution might have been sending them to the virtually empty Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, which was retrofitted to treat COVID-19 patients, or an even less utilized Navy hospital ship that has since left Manhattan.

As the virus was racing through his nursing home, the head of Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill Health Center frantically emailed state health officials April 9 asking just that.

“Is there a way for us to send our suspected covid cases to the Javitz center or the ship?” Donny Tuchman wrote.

Tuchman said he was denied permission. Eventually, more than 50 residents at his home would die.

Added the lawmaker Kim: “We could have figured out how to isolate these folks. We failed to do that.”

Rich Azzopardi, a senior advisor to Cuomo, said controversy over use of the convention center and the hospital ship is a “red herring” because patients discharged to nursing homes were “outside of what the feds would accept” at those facilities.

A state Health Department spokeswoman added the state is not tracking how many COVID-infected patients were admitted to nursing homes under the directive but homes should not take on new patients if they are “not medically prepared” to meet their needs.

“Throwing in new residents who may or may not have been stable at that point could not possibly have been to the benefit of any facility,” said Dr. Roy Goldberg, medical director of the Kings Harbor Multicare Center, a nursing home in the Bronx that has seen 56 deaths.

US Postal Service Warns it Could Be Next Victim of Coronavirus

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By Marisa Herman (NEWSMAX)

The U.S. Postal Service issued a warning that it may not survive due to the coronavirus pandemic.

On Friday, the mail service said the virus began harming business in late March and the decline has continued.

“It is estimated that the COVID-19 pandemic will substantially increase the Postal Service’s net operating loss over the next eighteen months, threatening the Postal Service’s ability to operate,” a press release states.

Postmaster General Megan Brennan is asking Congress and the Trump administration to send financial aid.

“We anticipate that our business will suffer potentially dire consequences for the remainder of the year,” Postmaster General and CEO Megan Brennan said in Friday’s statement. “At a time when America needs the Postal Service more than ever, the pandemic is starting to have a significant effect on our business with mail volumes plummeting as a result of the pandemic.”

More than 60,000 mail carriers and postal workers have worked through the virus outbreak.

The postal service released its second quarter numbers Friday, which are artificially elevated by mailings tied to the US Census.

“Compared to the same quarter last year, First-Class Mail revenue increased by $89 million, or 1.4%, despite a volume decline of 29 million pieces, or 0.2%. This growth was due to one-time mailings associated with the 2020 U.S. Census, otherwise First-Class Mail revenue and volume would have each declined,” the postal service said.

Last month, Brennan warned Congress the agency would run out of cash by the end of September if lawmakers don’t step in with financial assistance. USPS requested $75 billion in funding from Congress.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said that a $10 billion dollar loan for USPS was authorized in the CARES Act stimulus package late last month. The terms of the loan are still being discussed, USPS spokesperson David Partenheimer told CNN on Friday.

President Donald Trump said he wouldn’t approve a loan unless the USPS raises its prices for Amazon and other big shippers to four to five times current rates.

Brennan pleaded to Congress and the Trump administration for more help.

“As Congress and the Administration take steps to support businesses and industries around the country, it is imperative that they also take action to shore up the finances of the Postal Service, and enable us to continue to fulfill our indispensable role during the pandemic, and to play an effective role in the nation’s economic recovery,” she said Friday.

When Governments Switched Their Story from “Flatten the Curve” to “Lockdown until Vaccine”

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(Mises Institute)

In the early days of the COVID-19 panic—back in mid-March—articles began to appear pushing the idea of “flattening the curve” (the Washington Post ran an article called “Flatten the Curve” on March 14). This idea was premised on spreading out the total number of COVID-19 infections over time, so as to not overburden the healthcare infrastructure. A March 11 article for Statnews, summed it up:

“I think the whole notion of flattening the curve is to slow things down so that this doesn’t hit us like a brick wall,” said Michael Mina, associate medical director of clinical microbiology at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “It’s really all borne out of the risk of our health care infrastructure pulling apart at the seams if the virus spreads too quickly and too many people start showing up at the emergency room at any given time.”

In those days, it was still considered madness to suggest outlawing jobs for millions of Americans or “shutting down” entire national economies in an effort to flatten the curve. Thus, the article lists far more moderate mitigation strategies:

By taking certain steps—canceling large public gatherings, for instance, and encouraging some people to restrict their contact with others—governments have a shot at stamping out new chains of transmission, while also trying to mitigate the damage of the spread that isn’t under control.

What we got, of course, was something much more far reaching, radical, and disastrous for both the economy and for long-term health problems.

For the next two weeks or so, governments mostly sold the idea of forced social distancing as a measure to flatten the curve and the phrase began appearing everywhere in social media, media publications and government announcements.

Many people found this message reasonable enough, especially when coupled with claims that hospitals and governments would seek to buy up large numbers of ventilators and expand capacity with temporary hospitals. This flatten-the-curve narrative persisted for two weeks or so, but at some point in late March and early April, the narrative switched to something new.

April 2: Fauci Says Nation Can only “Relax” Social Distancing Measures After There are Zero New Cases.

The new narrative was this: the death toll will simply be too gruesome and unbearable to allow people to continue on with some semblance of an ordinary life. So, we must keep society locked down indefinitely until a vaccine is found or until there can be enough testing and tracking of infections among the entire population. Until then, only minimal “essential” activities will be allowed. This could last eighteen months, or two years, or more. And even then, there will need to be “COVID passports” and official freedom-to-work documents issued by governments. The future is one in which every move must be controlled and monitored to prevent the spread of this disease.

Thus, on April 2, Anthony Fauci, one of the lead bureaucrats on the White House’s COVID-19 advisory commission insisted that mandatory social distancing could not be eased until further notice:

“If we get to the part of the curve where it goes down to essentially no new cases, no deaths for a period of time, I think it makes sense that you have to relax social distancing,” [Fauci] added. “The one thing we hope to have in place, and I believe we will have in place, is a much more robust system to be able to identify someone who is infected, isolate them, and then do contact tracing.” [emphasis added.]

Similarly, former presidential advisor and physician Ezekiel Emmanuel flatly stated that there is “no choice” but to stay locked down indefinitely:

Realistically, COVID-19 will be here for the next 18 months or more. We will not be able to return to normalcy until we find a vaccine or effective medications. I know that’s dreadful news to hear. How are people supposed to find work if this goes on in some form for a year and a half? Is all that economic pain worth trying to stop COVID-19? The truth is we have no choice. [emphasis added.]

This messaging was used at the state level as well. On April 9, the Hawaii Department of Education, echoing Fauci, announced that all “public schools are expected to stay shut until COVID-19 is no longer spreading in the community, defined as four weeks with no new cases.”

Needless to say, such a situation is unlikely to happen any time that’s soon enough to save Hawaii from an economic implosion.

Similarly, in Colorado, during an April 1 briefing, Governor Jared Polis stated that when it comes to COVID-19 his policy is “stamping this out,” and claimed that mandatory social distancing could not be eased until total cases were falling.

This switcheroo on the reason for the lockdowns was a great victory for the World Health Organization (WHO) and advocates for widespread state controls on the economy and daily life. Already by early March, some WHO officials had come out in favor of the Chinese approach of draconian lockdowns imposed by the Chinese police state and surveillance state. As noted by Statnews, Mike Ryan, the head of the WHO’s health emergencies program, embraced the Chinese “containment” strategy and denounced flatten-the-curve style “mitigation” strategies as “counterproductive.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, by early April we had leading national figures in the US insisting that China-style lockdowns were the only way to deal with the disease. “Flatten the curve” was still used as a slogan, but its meaning had changed.

Another Switch in Early May:  Back to the Old Idea of “Flatten the Curve”

By early May, it was clear that the “containment” strategy was failing, since, in the United States at least, few elected officials were prepared to stomach the idea of keeping their economies locked down until a vaccine appeared or until new cases disappeared completely. After all, as unemployment numbers skyrocketed and state and local government budgets cratered, “lockdown until vaccine” didn’t seem like such a viable strategy anymore.

Indeed, two weeks earlier, the Hawaii Department of Education had already abandoned its declaration about the need for no new cases, with the department director backpedaling furiously and stating:

“We would expect to be living with COVID-19 for a long time, and to have to wait for the last case to have occurred and another 28 days probably is not going to happen, so I believe that was really a placeholder.”

By late April, numerous states’ governors and municipal officials were discussing ways to scale back their lockdowns. Many governors and mayors nonetheless continued to claim that they would not allow any easing of the lockdowns until cases began to decline, or until testing became widespread. Neither of those things has happened, yet governments have already begun to significantly loosen lockdowns. In many states, total deaths have plateaued but show no sign of disappearing.

The Sweden Model Is the Future

“Flatten the curve” remains a popular goal among policymakers, but now we’re back to the old definition: fear remains that hospitals and healthcare personnel will be overwhelmed. The preferred political solution lies in both continuing to encourage social distancing and in prohibiting larger gatherings. But the idea that everyone will sit at home until a vaccine is found has at the moment fallen out of favor except in the most dogmatically leftist areas.1 Hard-left activist Matthew Yglesias, for example, complained this week that flattening the curve “isn’t good enough.”

Indeed, the Chinese-style containment strategy has failed so completely that even the WHO has abandoned it. The WHO now endorses the Swedish model, which is based on increasing healthcare capacity while relying primarily on voluntary social distancing. The Financial Times reported on April 29:

The World Health Organization has defended Sweden’s approach to tackling Covid-19, saying it has implemented “strong measures” to tackle the virus….

The director of the WHO’s health emergencies programme said on Wednesday there was a perception that Sweden had not done enough to contain coronavirus, but “nothing could be further from the truth”. Sweden has put in place a “very strong public health policy”, Mike Ryan said, but unlike many other countries has chosen to rely on its “relationship with its citizenry” and trust them to self-regulate.

Its healthcare system has not been overwhelmed, he said, adding that its approach could be a “model” for other countries when lockdowns begin to relax.

In other words, the containment strategy favored by Fauci and Emanuel is dead (for now).  Although it has not happened by design, the US is moving toward a Sweden model.

Nonetheless, one is still likely to encounter rabid “COVID warriors” on social media, who think that interminable lockdowns will (somehow) significantly reduce the overall total deaths from COVID-19. But it increasingly seems that such a scenario is wishful thinking.

In a new article posted at The Lancet on Tuesday, Swedish infectious disease clinician Johan Giesecke writes on how lockdowns don’t really reduce overall total deaths, and says that when it’s all over, nonlockdown jurisdictions are likely to have similar death rates to lockdown areas:

It has become clear that a hard lockdown does not protect old and frail people living in care homes—a population the lockdown was designed to protect.

Neither does it decrease mortality from COVID-19, which is evident when comparing the UK’s experience with that of other European countries.

PCR testing and some straightforward assumptions indicate that, as of April 29, 2020, more than half a million people in Stockholm county, Sweden, which is about 20–25% of the population, have been infected (Hansson D, Swedish Public Health Agency, personal communication). 98–99% of these people are probably unaware or uncertain of having had the infection; they either had symptoms that were severe, but not severe enough for them to go to a hospital and get tested, or no symptoms at all. Serology testing is now supporting these assumptions.

These facts have led me to the following conclusions. Everyone will be exposed to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus, and most people will become infected. COVID-19 is spreading like wildfire in all countries, but we do not see it—it almost always spreads from younger people with no or weak symptoms to other people who will also have mild symptoms. This is the real pandemic, but it goes on beneath the surface, and is probably at its peak now in many European countries. There is very little we can do to prevent this spread: a lockdown might delay severe cases for a while, but once restrictions are eased, cases will reappear. I expect that when we count the number of deaths from COVID-19 in each country in 1 year from now, the figures will be similar, regardless of measures taken.

Will Giesecke be proven correct? We’ll find out.

1.In Illinois, for example, the state’s Democratic governor J.B. Pritzker on May 7 issued a plan for “reopening,” stating that the state’s economy cannot be “fully reopened” until there is “a vaccine or highly effective treatment widely available or the elimination of any new cases over a sustained period.” This is the languge used earlier by Fauci and Emanuel. Pritzker continues to insist that he will rule by decree “until COVID-19 is defeated.” Bill Gates has made similar comments: “One of the questions I get asked the most these days is when the world will be able to go back to the way things were in December before the coronavirus pandemic. My answer is always the same: when we have an almost perfect drug to treat COVID-19, or when almost every person on the planet has been vaccinated against coronavirus.” (https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/What-you-need-to-know-about-the-COVID-19-vaccine)

Author:

Contact Ryan McMaken

Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is a senior editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and The Austrian, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has degrees in economics and political science from the University of Colorado and was the economist for the Colorado Division of Housing from 2009 to 2014. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

 

 

U.S. News Stocks Rise on Hopes that Awful Jobs Report Marks the Bottom

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By STAN CHOE and DAMIAN J. TROISE (A.P)

Wall Street brushed off a record-breaking report of job losses and pushed higher Friday as investors reckoned that the very worst of the economic pain caused by the coronavirus pandemic may be passing. The S&P 500 climbed 1.7% and posted its first weekly gain in the last three. Employers cut 20.5 million jobs last month as businesses and travel shut down, a record high but still less bad than markets had braced for. In other encouraging signs that pessimism was easing, oil prices closed the week with solid gains just weeks after hitting record lows, and bond yields rose.

Wall Street rallied again on Friday after a terrible, unprecedented report on the U.S. jobs market wasn’t quite as horrific as economists had forecast.

The S&P 500 climbed 1.4% in afternoon trading after the government said employers cut a record-busting 20.5 million jobs last month. While the number is a nightmare, it was slightly below the 21 million that economists told markets to brace for. More importantly, investors are betting they won’t see another report that bad again because the number of workers filing for unemployment benefits has been slowly declining the last five weeks.

Stocks around the world were already heading higher before the U.S. jobs report came out, in part on hopes that U.S. and China won’t restart their trade war. After the release of the report, stocks climbed even more. In another sign of receding pessimism, Treasury yields tentatively rose.

“In some aspects, investors are starting to look at it as the worst is behind us,” said. Charlie Ripley, senior investment strategist for Allianz Investment Management. “Obviously we have time to wait here and reassess as things go, as they reopen, but there’s some comfort that we’re passing through the trough.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 370 points, or 1.5%, at 24,245, as of 3:10 p.m. Eastern time. The Nasdaq was up 1.3%. The S&P 500 is heading toward its first winning week in the last three.

After losing a third of its value in a little more than a month on worries about a severe recession, the S&P 500 has since charged higher to recover more than half its loss. The rally started after the Federal Reserve and Capitol Hill pledged trillions of dollars to prop up the economy through the downturn.

More recently, even as horrific data confirmed the recession fears were correct, investors have pushed stocks higher as they looked ahead to growth potentially resuming later this year. Countries around the world and many U.S. states have laid out plans to relax restrictions on business, meant to slow the spread of the coronavirus outbreak. which could set the stage for many of those vanished jobs to reappear.

“Investors have chosen to look beyond the current trauma and focus on the reopening of the economy, though the trajectory of the recovery is unlikely to be a straight line,“ Mark Hackett, Nationwide’s chief of investment research, said in a report.

Many analysts are skeptical of the rally, though, saying the economy likely won’t recover nearly as vigorously and quickly as the stock market has. Friday’s jobs report showed that the unemployment rate climbed to its highest level since the Great Depression. And if reopening economies lead to a renewed surge in infections, businesses shutdowns could sweep the world quickly again.

“As we move forward, we’ll have to see what consumers are doing and how willing they are to spend,” said Ripley of Allianz.

Stocks got off to a strong start earlier on Friday after a Chinese state media report said top U.S. and Chinese trade negotiators talked on the phone and are working to implement a trade deal. That helped calm building concerns that tensions between the world’s largest economies may flare up again.

The last thing investors want is another round of punishing tit-for-tat tariffs dragging even more on an economy already sliding into a severe recession.

Companies whose profits are usually most closely tied to the strength of the economy led the market higher. Energy producers in the S&P 500 jumped 3.8% for the biggest gain of the 11 sectors that make up the S&P 500. Industrial companies and financial stocks were also stronger than the rest of the market.

The trio were the hardest-hit sectors earlier in the year on worries about the coming recession, which would cause demand for their products to vanish and saddle banks with bad loans.

Smaller stocks also rose more than the rest of the market, an indication of the market’s expectation for stronger growth ahead. Small-cap stocks have historically sunk more than their bigger rivals heading into downturns, in part because of their more limited financial strength, but rebounded harder in anticipation of recoveries. Friday’s 3.4% gain for the Russell 2000 was more than double those for big-stock indexes.

In Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 1%, and stocks in Shanghai rose 0.8%. South Korea’s Kospi gained 0.9%. In Europe, France’s CAC 40 rose 1.1%, and Germany’s DAX returned 1.3%.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 0.66% shortly after the job report’s release, up from 0.63% late Thursday. That yield tends to move with investors’ expectations for the economy and inflation. It then wobbled through the morning, at one point giving up its gains, before rising back to 0.67%.

Benchmark U.S. crude oil rose $1.19, or 5.1%, to settle at $24.74 a barrel, continuing its strong week and recovering some more of its record-setting losses from earlier in the year.. Brent crude oil, the international standard, rose $1.51, or 5.1% to $30.97 a barrel.

NYC Nurse Accused of Swiping Dying COVID-19 Patient’s Amex Card

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A worker at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, April 2, 2020. Photo by Nati Shohat/Flash90

By Cathy Burke (NEWSMAX)

A New York City nurse was arrested Thursday after allegedly stealing a credit card from a patient dying of COVID-19, and then using it to buy gas and groceries.

According to NBC News, Danielle Conti, 43, is facing charges of grand larceny, petit larceny and criminal possession of stolen property. She allegedly swiped the card while her Staten Island University Hospital patient was being treated.

Anthony Catapano, 70, died of COVID-19 on April 12 after a week of treatment at the SIUH, according to a Facebook post by his daughter, Tara Catapano.

She told the news outlet she was shocked when her dad’s American Express statement included gas and grocery charges made during his hospitalization.

“From the very beginning, I knew it was a hospital employee. It would have to be,” she told the news outlet. “But I even told someone, ‘It couldn’t be a doctor or nurse.’ Those words actually left my mouth.”

“This was someone who was supposed to care for my father,” she said. “She went in there and gave him his medicine and then, what, went for his wallet? I can’t even wrap my head around it.”

“I wanted the story to be out there because I wanted people to be aware that this was happening to people,” she told NBC News. “This could be happening to your mother or your father, and I don’t want that.”

The hospital said Conti has been temporarily suspended and faces termination.

Israel Astounds the World with Potent Coronavirus Response

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By Lieba Nesis

As coronavirus sweeps the globe, with nearly 4 million cases and 270,000 deaths worldwide, the question arises as to why Israel has been mostly spared from its lethal effects.  There is undoubtedly a degree of divine intervention accounting for Israel’s paltry 245 deaths and 17,000 cases in a closely knit population of 9 million.  Other European countries such as Spain, Italy, England, France, and Belgium experienced 26,000, 29,000, 31,000, 26,000, and 8,500 deaths respectively.  New York City, with close to 9 million people, has reported over 20,000 deaths and 186,000 cases with daily numbers growing exponentially.

Contrastingly, Israel’s more than 16,000 cases peaked on April 2nd when the country had 765 new cases in 24 hours-with a steady decline that has resulted in more than two thirds recovering.  This auspicious news prompted the government to declare a “return to action” on May 5th: limiting restrictions on movement, allowing 20 people to gather in outdoor spaces, and opening libraries, gyms, malls, zoos, hotels, guest houses, kindergartens,  and national parks.  Incoming flights are theoretically permitted for citizens, permanent residents and “non-nationals whose lives are based in Israel”; however, most flights are cancelled through the beginning to end of June.

Israel’s astoundingly successful results can be predominantly explained by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s unparalleled leadership.  Many criticized his draconian lockdowns declaring that it was a bid to deflect from his own political problems.  However, he was undeterred- recognizing the gravity of the situation in its incipient stages and taking immediate action despite widespread opposition. Israel knew there was no margin for error: with its underfunded single health care payer insurance program, its shortage of hospital beds which were 100 percent occupied at the beginning of the pandemic, and its smaller number of nurses and doctors per capita than most developed countries-this was its do-or-die moment. Akin to the United States, Israel stopped all flights from China on January 30th and extended the ban to include Thailand, Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore on February 17th.  These aggressive moves were initiated early enough to abate the viruses’ rapid spread.

Israel’s first case of COVID-19 was confirmed on February 21st 2020 after a female citizen returned from quarantine on the Diamond Princess cruise in Japan.  Immediately thereafter, a 14-day home isolation rule was placed on anyone who had visited South Korea or Japan.  On March 9th,  Israel took the bold step of declaring a mandatory 14-day quarantine for all entrants to the country-effectively barring tourists from leisure trips.  On March 11th Israel began enforcing social distancing and limiting gatherings to no more than 100 people.

On March 15th gatherings were further restricted to 10 people and attendees advised to keep 2 meters apart.  Furthermore, despite large public protests on March 17th, the government went ahead with a controversial phone tracking program that allowed the Shin Bet security services to follow the movements of people diagnosed with the virus, dispatching messages to those they had contact with to immediately self quarantine.  On March 19th Netanyahu declared a national state of emergency prohibiting Israelis from leaving their homes unless absolutely necessary- subject to legal enforcement.  On March 23rd all public transportation was closed, as well as stores besides pharmacies and supermarkets.  Citizens were required to stay within 150 meters of their home for non-work related activities.  As coronavirus cases spiked in Bnei Brak, reaching nearly 1,000 at the beginning of April, the cabinet declared the city a “restricted zone” limiting entry and exit for one week.  On April 8th, the night of the first Passover seder, lawmakers ordered a three-day lockdown mandating the army and police to require Israelis to stay within 100 meters of their home.

While many countries such as the United States and Europe were simultaneously instituting similar restrictions in mid-March, Israel’s efficiency at ensuring they were adhered to most closely mirrors China which had similarly effective outcomes.   Israel’s other advantages as compared to New York, include its lack of a subway system which is a driver of transmission,it’s warmer climate,  its spread out locales and villages and its ability to more closely account for its citizens.  Moreover, being that Israel is surrounded by enemies on all sides, it is in a constant state of emergency preparedness allowing it to seal borders, activate soldiers and enforce rulings on a swift basis.

Israel has also benefited from its homogeneity with 74% of the population being Jewish it has a more  monolithic population; whereas melting pots such as New York and Italy have thousands of Asians and foreigners endemic to the region.  Furthermore, Israel is relatively isolated from the outside world with Ben Gurion being its sole major international airport. Carefully monitoring and limiting flights from one location was easily effectuated and limited Israel’s vulnerability to incoming infections from hotspots such as New York, and Spain.  New York has three major international airports making it harder to control incoming and outgoing travelers.  Undoubtedly, New York made some tragic errors as well, as when Governor Cuomo forced vulnerable nursing homes to accept recovering COVID-19 patients; with one fourth of New York State deaths attributed to these elderly residents exposure-a fatal blunder Israel would never commit.

Some other explanations for Israel’s victory, include its maintenance of one of the most advanced universal health care systems in the world.  The easy access to patient data as well as the employ of the world’s top doctors makes it the envy of the world.  With 80 percent of coronavirus deaths in the US occurring in those 65 and older,
Israel‘s younger population with a median age of 30.2, as compared to North America (39) and Europe (43), is helpful in reducing fatalities.  Hong Kong venture fund, Deep Knowledge Ventures, recently named Israel the safest place to be during the pandemic because of its competence and efficiency in medicine and technology.  However, it failed to realize the real secret behind Israel’s success is the value it places on the lives of each and every one of its more than 9 million citizens.

Death Tolls Jump As COVID Fears Lead People To Forgo Hospital Visits: CDC Data

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by Chris White (DCNF)

Total deaths are nearly 50% higher in states slammed by the coronavirus pandemic, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The data came as reports show people with treatable health conditions are forgoing hospital visits.

The data appears to illustrate how the pandemic is causing an increase in deaths, perhaps as a result of people forgoing hospital visits for what would otherwise be treatable conditions. The New York Times initially reported on the data Tuesday, suggesting that the CDC’s findings show that coronavirus death tolls are likely higher than official counts.

Death counts in New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Massachusetts, Illinois, Colorado and Maryland have jumped much higher than their normal levels for dates between March 8 and April 11. The number of deaths during this month period is more than three times the normal number for New York, where COVID-19 has killed thousands.

Research shows that the virus, which has killed more than 60,000 people in the United States, is placing pressure on the health care system. Hospital admissions for a serious type of heart attack fell 38% in nine U.S. hospitals in March amid the pandemic, according to TheNYT, which cited an April 7 draft paper from the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Measuring the death toll in areas clobbered by coronavirus is a handy way of determining the government and virus’s overall impact on society.

“It gives you an overall sense of how big things are,” Samuel Clark, a professor of sociology at Ohio State University, told TheNYT. “For now, you can basically attribute the excess mortality to Covid-19. But you also grab all the things that are not Covid at all, but are probably created by the situation.”

The CDC data came shortly after New York City added on April 14 nearly 4,000 people who never tested positive for coronavirus to its death toll. Officials made the adjustment because the people who died shared similar symptoms as those with the virus. The revised number brought the coronavirus-caused deaths at the time to 10,000 people. The number has since increased.

Arrests Made in Shooting Death of Black Man After Outcry

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In this Tuesday, May 5, 2020, Keith Smith speak to a crowd as they march through a neighborhood in Brunswick, Ga. They were demanding answers in the death of Ahmoud Arbery. An outcry over the Feb. 23 shooting of Arbery has intensified after cellphone video that lawyers for Arbery's family say shows him being shot to death by two white men. (Bobby Haven/The Brunswick News via AP)

(NEWSMAX) Georgia authorities arrested a white father and son Thursday and charged them with murder in the February shooting death of a black man they had pursued in a truck after spotting him running in their neighborhood.

The charges came more than two months after Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was killed on a residential street just outside the port city of Brunswick. National outrage over the case swelled this week after a cellphone video that appeared to show the shooting.

Gregory McMichael told police after the February shooting that he and his son chased after Arbery because they suspected him of being a burglar. Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper Jones, has said she believes her son, a former football player, was just jogging in the Satilla Shores neighborhood before he was killed on a Sunday afternoon.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced the arrests the day after it began its own investigation at the request of an outside prosecutor. The agency said in a news release that Gregory McMichael, 64, and his 34-year-old son, Travis McMichael, had both been jailed on charges of murder and aggravated assault.

The GBI news release said the McMichaels “confronted Arbery with two firearms. During the encounter, Travis McMichael shot and killed Arbery.” No other details were immediately released.

It was not immediately known if either of the McMichaels had an attorney who could comment on the charges.

Gregory McMichael served as an investigator for Glynn County District Attorney Jackie Johnson. He retired last year. The connection caused Johnson to recuse herself from the case.

At a news conference before the arrests were announced Thursday, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp told reporters he was confident state investigators would “find the truth.”

Earlier this week, I watched the video depicting Mr. Arbery’s last moments alive,” Kemp told a news conference in Atlanta. “I can tell you it’s absolutely horrific, and Georgians deserve answers.”

Gregory McMichael told police he suspected the runner was the same man filmed by a security camera committing a break-in. He and his grown son, Travis McMichael, grabbed guns and began a pursuit in the truck.

The video shows a black man running at a jogging pace on the left side of a road. A truck is parked in the road ahead of him. One of the white men is inside the pickup’s bed. The other is standing beside the open driver’s side door.

The runner crosses the road to pass the pickup on the passenger side, then crosses back in front of the truck. A gunshot sounds, and the video shows the runner grappling with a man in the street over what appears to be a shotgun or rifle. A second shot can be heard, and the runner can be seen punching the man. A third shot is fired at point-blank range. The runner staggers a few feet and falls face down.

Brunswick defense attorney Alan Tucker identified himself Thursday as the person who shared the video with the radio station. In a statement, Tucker said he was not representing anyone involved in the case. He said he released the video “because my community was being ripped apart by erroneous accusations and assumptions.”

Tucker did not say how he obtained the video. He did not immediately respond to a phone message or an email.

The outcry over the killing reached the White House, where President Donald Trump offered condolences Thursday to Arbery’s family.

“It’s a very sad thing,” Trump said in the Oval Office, “but I will be given a full report this evening.”

Presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden has called Arbery’s death a “murder.” During an online roundtable Thursday, Biden compared the video to seeing Arbery “lynched before our very eyes.”

The outside prosecutor overseeing the case, Tom Durden, had said Monday that he wanted a grand jury to decide whether charges are warranted. With Georgia courts still largely closed because of the coronavirus, the soonest that could happen is mid-June.

FaceBook’s New Content Advisory Board Includes Muslim Brotherhood Supporter

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Facebook formed an independent board, which will be able to overturn Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s decisions on whether individual pieces of content should be allowed on Facebook and Instagram. This board was formed as a result of criticism of how Facebook handles “problematic content”

The “oversight board” will include none other than Nobel Laureate Tawakkol Karman, the Yemeni woman who became one of the faces of the Arab Spring uprising in 2011, Paul Joseph Watson pointed out.

The Islah party, regarded as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is viewed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE as a terrorist organization,  distanced itself from Karman and  suspended her  from its ranks after she criticized  Saudi Arabia and the UAE in 2011, Reuters reported

Karman previously denounced arrests of Muslim Brotherhood members and opposed the move to bar the Muslim Brotherhood from participating in Egyptian politics.

 

So in other words, someone who supports radical Islam will be one of the people to  decide what you get to read on Facebook.

How does that make you feel ?

 

House Intelligence Russia Probe Transcripts Released

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House Intelligence Committee Chairman, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., speaks before Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testifies before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 26, 2019. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

By Eric Mack (NEWSMAX)

The House Intelligence Committee released 53 transcripts and other documents (6,000 pages) related to its investigation into Russia’s 2016 election meddling attempts, a release long delayed.

There is a rift between House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and the White House on the nature of the delay, Schiff wrote in a letter to Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, calling it “troubling” and “political interference.”

The White House argued it had authority to review the classification and redactions of the documents releated to “White House equities,” while Schiff’s committee contended the transcripts were its property, blocking the Office of Director of National Intelligence from sharing it with the White House.

“Despite the many barriers put in our way by the then-Republican Majority, and attempts by some key witnesses to lie to us and obstruct our investigation, the transcripts that we are releasing [Thursday] show precisely what special counsel Robert Mueller also revealed: That the Trump campaign, and Donald Trump himself, invited illicit Russian help, made full use of that help, and then lied and obstructed the investigations in order to cover up this misconduct,” Schiff wrote in a statement.

The transcripts were sought by House Republicans this week after the panel had voted unanimously in September 2018 to declassify them and make them public. Republicans were leading the panel at that time, but Schiff took over as chairman after the midterm elections flipped the control of the House to Democratic leadership.

Schiff’s statement claimed the White House had instructed the ODNI to share the documents to review potential redaction of nonclassified “White House equities.”

“In March of 2019, the committee was informed that ODNI intended to share the committee transcripts with the White House because the White House claimed the transcripts implicated ‘White House equities,'” context labeled “background” in the statement read.

In response, the committee directed that the ODNI refrain from sharing the transcripts, which remain committee property and were shared with the intelligence community only for the purpose of declassification. We urged that ODNI complete the classification review as requested and without any further delay.”

The White House lifted its hold on the documents this week, according to Acting DNI  Grenell, the statement claimed.

“The committee, after a review of the 53 transcripts which totaled tens of thousands of pages and to avoid any further delays, has allowed all of the redactions proposed by ODNI despite our concerns that the ODNI excessively over-redacted information that has since been declassified,” it concluded.

“Redactions applied to the classified and sensitive transcripts released today were the work of the ODNI, not the committee, and the committee has accepted all IC-proposed redactions for now.”

Among the most notable transcripts were those of interviews with former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice – individuals which had begun the investigation into the Trump campaign, ostensibly the political opposition of the outgoing administration.

The only transcript interview still masked in the release, due to revealing of sources and methods, is the FBI special agent testifying to the unverified nature of the dossier written by British spy Christopher Steele and paid for by Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on then-candidate Trump.

Question: “So if I can ask, you said, you mentioned just a second ago, when you read it at that point, in early July, the information had been totally unverified?”

Answer: “Yeah.”

Q: “ls that something he, Christopher Steele, told you about the information?”

A: “Well, my first – one of the first questions I had to him was, do you have any corroboration of this? ls there any independent corroboration, information that you have? ls there a videotape? ls there an audiotape? Do you have anything else? And the answer was no.”

Among the Trump campaign officials in the transcripts were: Donald Trump Jr., Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner, Hope Hicks, Corey Lewandowski, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, Roger Stone, Brad Parscale, Michael Caputo, and Rick Dearborn.

Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, is Trump’s DNI nominee to succeed Grenell, and his confirmation hearing got underway this week in the Senate.

Texas Salon Owner Who Violated Lockdown Ordered Released From Jail

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Amid concerns of the spread of COVID-19, salon owner Shelley Luther, left, holds the door open a Dallas police officer to leave the business after city officials cited her for reopening her Salon A la Mode in Dallas, Friday, April 24, 2020. Hair salons have not been cleared for reopening in Texas. Luther was asked to close and was issued a citation when she refused. Luther said she will remain open for business. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

By Jeffrey Rodack (NEWSMAX)

Texas salon owner Shelley Luther, who had been jailed for opening her business in violation of state coronavirus restrictions, has been ordered released by the Texas Supreme Court, Fox News is reporting.

The order came as Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order retroactively eliminating jail time for those found violating the state’s restrictions.

Abbott tweeted on Thursday: “Throwing Texans in jail whose biz’s shut down through no fault of their own is wrong. I am eliminating jail for violating an order, retroactive to April 2, superseding local orders. Criminals shouldn’t be released to prevent COVID-19 just to put business owners in their place.”

Luther is the owner of Salon A la Mode in Dallas.

She was sentenced to seven days in jail and a $7,000 fine by Judge Eric Moyé, after she refused to admit that her motivation in keeping her salon open was “selfish.”

Moyé said Luther had violated Texas stay-at-home orders when she reopened her salon.

The governor’s decision was hailed by the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton.

“I applaud Gov. Abbott’s decision to ensure that penalties for violating public health orders are reasonable and not excessive,” Paxton said. “All Texans are trying to get through this crisis together and no one should be put in jail unnecessarily.”

Justice Dept dropping Flynn’s criminal case

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By MICHAEL BALSAMO and ERIC TUCKE (AP)

The Justice Department on Thursday said it is dropping the criminal case against President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, abandoning a prosecution that became a rallying cry for the president and his supporters in attacking the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation.

The move is a stunning reversal for one of the signature cases brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. It comes even though prosecutors for the past three years have maintained that Flynn lied to the FBI in a January 2017 interview about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

Flynn himself admitted as much, pleading guilty before asking to withdraw the plea, and became a key cooperator for Mueller the special counel investigated ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.

In court documents being filed Thursday, the Justice Department said it is dropping the case “after a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly discovered and disclosed information.” The documents were obtained by The Associated Press.

The JDepartment said it had concluded that Flynn’s interview by the FBI was “untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn” and that the interview was “conducted without any legitimate investigative basis.”

The U.S. attorney reviewing the Flynn case, Jeff Jensen, recommended dropping the case to Attorney General William Barr last week and formalized the recommendation in a document this week.

“Through the course of my review of General Flynn’s case, I concluded the proper and just course was to dismiss the case,” Jensen said in a statement. “I briefed Attorney General Barr on my findings, advised him on these conclusions, and he agreed.”

The decision is certain to be embraced by Trump, who has relentlessly tweeted about the case and last week pronounced Flynn “exonerated,” and to energize supporters who have taken up the retired Army lieutenant general as a cause. But it will also add to Democratic complaints that Attorney General William Barr is excessively loyal to the president, and could be a distraction for a Justice Department that for months has sought to focus on crimes arising from the coronavirus.

The Department’s action comes amid an internal review into the handling he case and an aggressive effort by Flynn’s lawyers to challenge the basis for the prosecution. The lawyers cited newly disclosed FBI emails and notes last week to allege that Flynn was improperly trapped into lying when agents interviewed him at the White House days after Trump’s inauguration. Though none of the documents appeared to undercut the central allegation that Flynn had lied to the FBI, Trump last week pronounced him “exonerated”

The decision is the latest dramatic development in a years-old case full of twists and turns. In recent months, Flynn’s attorneys have leveled a series of allegations about the FBI’s actions and asked to withdraw his guilty plea. A judge has rejected most of the claims and not ruled on others, including the bid to revoke the plea.

The decision comes as Barr has increasingly challenged the Russia investigation, saying in a television interview last month that it was started “without any basis.” In February, he overruled a decision by prosecutors in the case of Roger Stone, another former Trump adviser, in favor of a more lenient sentence for the longtime Trump friend.

Earlier this year, Barr appointed U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen of St. Louis to investigate the handling of Flynn’s case. As part of that process, the Justice Department gave Flynn’s attorneys a series of emails and notes, including one handwritten note from a senior FBI official that mapped out internal deliberations about the purpose of the Flynn interview: “What’s our goal? Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?” the official wrote.

Other documents show that the FBI had been prepared weeks before its interview of Flynn to drop its investigation into whether he was acting at the direction of Russia. Later that month, though, as the White House insisted that Flynn had never discussed sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, FBI officials grew more concerned by Flynn’s conversations with the diplomat and what he had communicated to the White House. The investigation remained open, and agents went to visit him in the White House on Jan. 24, 2017.

Justice Department officials visited the White House two days later to warn officials that they feared that Flynn was compromised and vulnerable to blackmail by Russia because of his account of what was said on the call. White House officials waited several weeks to oust him from the job, saying they’d concluded that Flynn had lied to them.

Flynn pleaded guilty that December, among the first of the president’s aides to admit guilt in Mueller’s investigation. He acknowledged that he lied about his conversations with Kislyak, in which he encouraged Russia not to retaliate against the U.S. for sanctions imposed by the Obama administration over election interference.

He provided such extensive cooperation that prosecutors said he was entitled to a sentence of probation instead of prison.

As it turned out, that sentencing hearing was abruptly cut short after Flynn, facing a stern rebuke from U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, asked to be able to continue cooperating and earn credit toward a more lenient sentence.

Flynn’s misgivings about the case were already on display when his then-attorneys pointedly noted in their sentencing memo that the FBI had not warned him that it was against the law to lie when they interviewed him at the White House in January 2017.

Since then, he has hired new attorneys — including Sidney Powell, a conservative commentator and outspoken critic of Mueller’s investigation — who have taken a far more confrontational stance to the government. The lawyers have accused prosecutors of withholding documents and evidence they said was favorable to the case and have repeatedly noted that one of the two agents who interviewed Flynn was fired from the FBI for having sent derogatory text messages about Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Cuomo Announces Moratorium on COVID-Related Evictions Will Be Extended Until August 20th

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Governor Andrew Cuomo delivers daily briefing on the ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic.

Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the state’s moratorium on COVID-related residential or commercial evictions will be extended for an additional 60 days until August 20th. The Governor also announced the state is banning late payments or fees for missed rent payments during the eviction moratorium, and allowing renters facing financial hardship due to COVID-19 to use their security deposit as payment and repay their security deposit over time.

Governor Cuomo also announced the state’s $25 million Nourish New York Initiative has purchased food and products from more than 2,100 New York farms and provided support to nearly 50 food banks, soup kitchens and food pantries to date. Within the next week, more than 20,000 households across the state will receive Nourish New York products. First announced by the Governor on April 27th, the Nourish New York Initiative provides relief by purchasing food and products from Upstate farms and directs them to the populations who need them most through New York’s network of food banks. The state is also asking any philanthropies or foundations that would like to help the state’s food banks to contact

The Governor also announced the results of state’s antibody testing survey of health care workers. The survey tested approximately 27,000 employees from 25 downstate health care facilities and found that the infection rate among health care workers is about the same or lower than the infection rate of the general population.

  • 6.8 percent of health care workers in Westchester County tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, compared to 13.8 percent of the general population in Westchester County
  • 12.2 percent of health care workers in New York City tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, compared to 19.9 percent of the general population in New York City
  • 11.1 percent of health care workers on Long Island tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, compared to 11.4 percent of the general population on Long Island

“During these incredibly difficult and stressful times we must protect New Yorkers who are facing financial hardships due to COVID-19,” Governor Cuomo said. “The majority of people in the state live paycheck to paycheck, and all of a sudden the paychecks have stopped for these individuals but the rent bill keeps coming in. In March we issued a moratorium on all residential and commercial evictions, and we are going to extend that moratorium until August 20th to provide some relief to those New Yorkers who are struggling.”

33 million have Sought US Unemployment Aid Since Virus Hit

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By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER (AP)

Nearly 3.2 million laid-off workers applied for unemployment benefits last week as the business shutdowns caused by the viral outbreak deepened the worst U.S. economic catastrophe in decades.

Roughly 33.5 million people have now filed for jobless aid in the seven weeks since the coronavirus began forcing millions of companies to close their doors and slash their workforces. That is the equivalent of one in five Americans who had been employed back in February, when the unemployment rate had reached a 50-year low of just 3.5%.

The Labor Department’s report Thursday suggests that layoffs, while still breathtakingly high, are steadily declining after sharp spikes in late March and early April. Initial claims for unemployment aid have now fallen for five straight weeks, from a peak of nearly 6.9 million during the week that ended March 28.

Applications for jobless aid rose in just six states last week, including Maine, New Jersey, and Oklahoma, and declined in the 44 others.

The report showed that 22.7 million people are now receiving unemployment aid — a rough measure of job losses since the shutdowns began. That figure lags a week behind the figures for first-time unemployment applications. And not everyone who applies for jobless aid is approved. The number of laid-off workers receiving aid is now equal to 15.5% of the workforce that’s eligible for unemployment benefits.

Those figures are a rough proxy for the job losses and for the unemployment rate that will be released Friday, which will likely to be the worst since modern record-keeping began after World War II. The unemployment rate is forecast to reach 16%, the highest rate since the Great Depression, and economists estimate that 21 million jobs were lost last month. If so, it would mean that nearly all the job growth in the 11 years since the Great Recession ended has vanished in a single month.

Even those stunning figures won’t fully capture the magnitude of the damage the coronavirus has inflicted on the job market. Many people who are still employed have had their hours reduced. Others have suffered pay cuts. Some who lost jobs in April and didn’t look for a new one in light of their bleak prospects won’t even be counted as unemployed. A broader measure — the proportion of adults with jobs — could hit a record low.

The impact has fallen unevenly on the U.S. population, with Hispanics much more likely to suffer an economic hit. According to a survey in mid-April by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 61% of Hispanics said their household has lost income because of the coronavirus, whether through a layoff, reduced hours or pay cuts. That compares with 46% of blacks and 43% of whites who said so.

Layoffs have also been more concentrated among the less-educated. Twenty-eight percent of Americans without college degrees say they’ve endured a layoff in their household, compared with 19% of people with college degrees.

The official figures for jobless claims may also be under-counting layoffs. Surveys by academic economists and think tanks suggest that as many as 12 million workers who were laid off by mid-April did not file for unemployment benefits by then, either because they couldn’t navigate their state’s overwhelmed systems or they felt too discouraged to try.

On Thursday, the government also reported how many self-employed, contractors and gig workers, who are newly eligible for jobless benefits, applied for them last week. Nearly 584,000 people did so. The government reported that figure separately because it isn’t adjusted for seasonal patterns, as the 3.2 million figure is.

Economists are projecting that the gross domestic product — the broadest gauge of economic growth — is contracting in the current April-June quarter by a shocking 40% annual rate. As it does, more layoffs appear to be spreading beyond front-line industries like restaurants, hotels and retail stores.

GE Aviation, for example, has said it is cutting up to 13,000 jobs. Uber will shed 3,700 positions. MGM Resorts International has announced that the furloughs of more than 60,000 employees could turn into layoffs.

But the job cuts have hammered workers at restaurants, hotels and retail firms particularly hard. According to the payroll processor ADP, about half the total jobs in the hotel and restaurant industry — 8.6 million — disappeared in April, based on data from its corporate clients. A category that includes retail and shipping shed 3.4 million workers.

The difference between the 30 million-plus unemployment claims that have been filed in the past several weeks and the expected April job loss of slightly more than 20 million reflects differences in how the figures are compiled.

The government calculates job losses by surveying businesses and households. It’s a net figure that also counts the hiring that some companies, like Amazon and many grocery stores, have done. By contrast, the total jobless claims are a cumulative figure; they include applications for unemployment aid that began in mid-March.

In addition, the government conducts its surveys for the monthly jobs reports in the middle of each month. So layoffs from the final two weeks of April won’t show up in Friday’s jobs report. They will instead be included in the May jobs report to be released in early June.

After problems with state computer systems had slowed the distribution of federal benefits for many laid-off workers, all 50 states are now paying the $600 extra weekly benefit that the federal government included in a relief package enacted in late March. That represents a significant help to millions of laid-off workers, many of whom still remain anxious and uncertain.

Jamie Stewart is renting out a spare bedroom in her home to try to make ends meets after losing her job at a southwest Florida resort. Having applied for unemployment benefits in late March, she finally received her first payment of $1,200 this week. Stewart, a 37-year-old resident of Bonita Springs, works as a concierge in the off-season and as a shift manager and bartender in the resort’s restaurants.

After her layoff, she deferred her car payment for two months and cancelled non-necessities like Zoom, Pandora and Netflix. She recently signed up for food stamps, which cover about half her monthly grocery bill.

“My mental health has deteriorated to a point that I don’t recognize myself anymore,” she said. “My eyes are swollen and bloodshot all the time now from regular moments of weakness that leave me completely inconsolable.

“It looks like I have aged 10 years since the lockdown started.”

___

Green light for Netanyahu-Gantz government

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(WIN)The judges of the Supreme Court on Wednesday evening unanimously ruled that there is no reason to interfere with imposing the task of forming the government on Binyamin Netanyahu, nor is there reason to intervene in the Likud-Blue and White coalition agreement.

They stated that “we have not found any legal grounds to intervene in imposing the task of forming the government on MK Netanyahu.”

“That is why we unanimously decided to dismiss the petitions on this issue,” the judges wrote.

The ruling was published by the judges after they heard the petitions against Netanyahu and the unity agreement in hearings that were held on Sunday and Monday of this week.

Regarding the coalition agreement, the judges noted that “the coalition agreement before us is an exceptional agreement, even in comparison with coalition agreements that we have seen in the past and which have been brought before this court due to difficulties that arose from them.”

However, the judges unanimously stated that despite the legal difficulties in the agreement, there is no room at this time to intervene in any of its clauses, among other things given the amendments and clarifications provided by the Prime Minister and the Likud and Blue and White factions.

Dallas salon owner who refused to close business jailed for defying order

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By JAKE BLEIBERG (AP)

Texas’ Republican governor and top law enforcement officer on Wednesday came to the defense of a Dallas hair salon owner who was jailed for keeping her business open in defiance of the governor’s restrictions meant to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Shelley Luther was booked in the Dallas County jail on Tuesday following a video hearing during which she refused to apologize for repeatedly flouting the order, leading the judge to find her in contempt of court and sentence her to a week behind bars.

Luther was cited last month for keeping her salon open despite state and local directives that kept nonessential businesses closed, but she continued to defy the order and tore up a cease and desist letter in front of TV cameras.

I couldn’t feed my family, and my stylists couldn’t feed their families,” Luther testified Tuesday, saying she had applied for a federal loan but didn’t receive it until Sunday.

Dallas County Judge Eric Moye said during the hearing that he would consider levying a fine instead of jail time if Luther would apologize and not reopen until she was allowed to do so, but Luther refused.

“Feeding my kids is not selfish,” she told Moye. “If you think the law is more important than kids getting fed, then please go ahead with your decision, but I am not going to shut the salon.”

Moye wrote in his judgment of contempt: “The defiance of the court’s order was open, flagrant and intentional.” He noted that despite being given the opportunity to apologize, Luther “expressed no contrition, remorse or regret” for her actions.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sent a letter to the judge Wednesday asking him to release Luther from jail. U.S. Senator Ted Cruz also expressed support for her. Both are Republicans.

“I find it outrageous and out of touch that during this national pandemic, a judge, in a county that actually released hardened criminals for fear of contracting COVID-19, would jail a mother for operating her hair salon in an attempt to put food on her family’s table,” Paxton said.

Abbott called the salon owner’s punishment “excessive.”

“Compliance with executive orders during this pandemic is important to ensure public safety; however, surely there are less restrictive means to achieving that goal than jailing a Texas mother,” Abbott said in a Wednesday statement.

Moye’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

The governor coming to the defense of someone violating his own executive order reflects the increasing pressure he faces to reboot the state at a much quicker pace than what he has outlined.

As Luther appeared in court Tuesday, Abbott gave permission for hair salons and barbershops in Texas to reopen by Friday, accelerating his own timeline.

Although Abbott last week allowed restaurants and retailers to begin reopening under limited capacity, he said at the time that mid-May was his goal to get hair salons and gyms back up and running.

But some Texans haven’t been willing to wait, including two GOP state lawmakers who let reporters film them getting haircuts outside Houston on Tuesday in defiance of Abbott’s rules.

Mark Jones, a professor of political science at Rice University, said Abbott has to balance opening up too slowly and alienating the right wing of his party, and moving too quickly in a way that risks a resurgence of COVID-19 and the loss of moderate Republicans and swing voters.

“Gov. Abbott has been forced to follow a very narrow path,” Jones said.