The Coronavirus - a virus from eating bats, an accident or something sinister gone wrong?

[Muda69]

Red Flags Soar As Big Pharma Will Be Exempt From COVID-19 Vaccine Liability Claims 

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/red-flags-soar-big-pharma-will-be-exempt-covid-19-vaccine-liability-claims

Quote

Last week we warned readers to be cautious about new COVID-19 vaccines, highlighting how key parts of the clinical trials are being skipped as big pharma will not be held accountable for adverse side effects for administering the experimental drugs.

A senior executive from AstraZeneca, Britain's second-largest drugmaker, told Reuters that his company was just granted protection from all legal action if the company's vaccine led to damaging side effects.

 

"This is a unique situation where we as a company simply cannot take the risk if in ... four years the vaccine is showing side effects," said Ruud Dobber, a top exec at AstraZeneca. 

 

"In the contracts we have in place, we are asking for indemnification. For most countries, it is acceptable to take that risk on their shoulders because it is in their national interest," said Dobber, adding that Astra and regulators were making safety and tolerability a top priority.

AstraZeneca is one of the 25 pharmaceutical companies across the world, testing experimental drugs that could be used to combat the deadly virus. And, of course, if testing yields positive results, AstraZeneca could manufacture hundreds of millions of doses, with no legal recourse if side effects are seen.

European officials told Reuters that product liability was a significant discussion to secure new vaccine drugs from Pfizer, Sanofi, and Johnson & Johnson.

As for the US, well, when it comes to the legal framework around vaccines, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) already has a law called the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, which provides immunity to vaccine companies if something goes wrong.

With AstraZeneca, and many US big pharma companies rushing COVID-19 vaccines to market with governments granting them immunity if the vaccine has side effects, all suggest corporate elites and government regulators have very little faith in these drugs.

For more color on leading vaccines in development that produce "severe" side effects, read our latest piece titled "Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine Induced Adverse Reactions In "More Than Half" Of Trial Participants." 

Maybe these rushed vaccines are more for optics, get consumers back into airplanes, hotels, resorts, and malls. 

The major red flag is how governments are allowing big pharma to rush experimental vaccines, with no legal recourse if something goes terribly wrong. 

So I guess if covid-10 doesn't kill us all the vaccine will.

 

[swordfish]

25 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

Red Flags Soar As Big Pharma Will Be Exempt From COVID-19 Vaccine Liability Claims 

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/red-flags-soar-big-pharma-will-be-exempt-covid-19-vaccine-liability-claims

So I guess if covid-10 doesn't kill us all the vaccine will.

 

IF - IF you opt to take the vaccine.....My guess Muda is that's a NO from you......if so, you and I will be safe from the vaccine...

[Howe]

5 hours ago, Muda69 said:

Red Flags Soar As Big Pharma Will Be Exempt From COVID-19 Vaccine Liability Claims 

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/red-flags-soar-big-pharma-will-be-exempt-covid-19-vaccine-liability-claims

So I guess if covid-10 doesn't kill us all the vaccine will.

 

The GID democrats will be the first in line to receive their new COVID-19 vaccines.

[Bobref]

14 hours ago, Muda69 said:

Red Flags Soar As Big Pharma Will Be Exempt From COVID-19 Vaccine Liability Claims 

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/red-flags-soar-big-pharma-will-be-exempt-covid-19-vaccine-liability-claims

So I guess if covid-10 doesn't kill us all the vaccine will.

 

This is the outcome when you try to rush the process of developing a safe and effective vaccine. People have short memories. They did the same thing when they rushed the development of a swine flu vaccine in 2009. Nothing new here. Just Muda stirring the pot.

https://www.cleveland.com/nation/2009/07/legal_immunity_set_for_swine_f.html

Edited August 4, 2020 by Bobref

[Muda69]

1 hour ago, Bobref said:

This is the outcome when you try to rush the process of developing a safe and effective vaccine. People have short memories. They did the same thing when they rushed the development of a swine flu vaccine in 2009. Nothing new here. Just Muda stirring the pot.

https://www.cleveland.com/nation/2009/07/legal_immunity_set_for_swine_f.html

And because it was the same deal with the swine flue vaccine that somehow now justifies it for covid-19?

Btw, who here on the GID has received the swine flu vaccine?

 

 

[Muda69]

16 hours ago, swordfish said:

IF - IF you opt to take the vaccine.....My guess Muda is that's a NO from you

It depends on the results of unbiased, peer reviewed studies on the current efficacy and safety of the vaccine.  Once the studies are available to the general public I will study them and make a determination on whether or not to take the vaccine.   I assume you will go through the same process?  

 

[Bobref]

27 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

And because it was the same deal with the swine flue vaccine that somehow now justifies it for covid-19?

Btw, who here on the GID has received the swine flu vaccine?

My point was simply that there is plenty of historical precedent. But I imagine the anti-Trumpers will probably try to lay this at his doorstep.

As far as whether it’s “right,” it represents a judgment that the society at large will receive a great enough benefit from early snd widespread dissemination of a vaccine, that the hardship a relatively few will endure because of adverse reactions or side effects is justified. Sounds harsh, but in reality these types of judgments are made every day. Again, nothing new here.

[Muda69]

The needs of the many outweigh the deaths of the few.  Got it.

 

[swordfish]

3 hours ago, Muda69 said:

It depends on the results of unbiased, peer reviewed studies on the current efficacy and safety of the vaccine.  Once the studies are available to the general public I will study them and make a determination on whether or not to take the vaccine.   I assume you will go through the same process?  

 

I still haven't had a flu shot after all these years.......Perhaps one day I will say "maybe I should've got that flu shot".......

[Muda69]

The Shame of the Teachers’ Unions: They’ve fought for teachers to get paid for not working, and they’ve placed children’s well-being and education low on their list of priorities.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/teachers-unions-fight-keep-kids-out-of-classrooms-limit-remote-instruction/

Quote

No other group has shown as much contempt for its own work during the coronavirus crisis as teachers.

Their unions are actively fighting to keep kids out of the classroom and also to limit remote instruction, lest it require too much time and attention from people who are supposed to be wholly devoted to educating our children.

This has been a wrenching time in the U.S. labor market, with tens of millions thrown out of work. It’s been an inspiring time. Workers we never would have thought of as essential before — grocery-store employees, delivery guys, meat-packing workers — have kept absolutely necessary parts of the economy operating even while most of their fellow Americans were staying at home.

Not only have doctors and health-care workers put themselves on the line, but cops and firefighters have done the same.

It’s not correct to say that all these people have done their jobs uncomplainingly — many have worried, understandably, about their safety and wanted more protections. But all have shown up. All have been there, during the horrific spring outbreak, during a brief respite, and during the current summer resurgence.

Anyone who doesn’t acknowledge our debt to them is a thoughtless ingrate.

Then, there are the teachers unions.

Their approach has been a diametrically opposed to that of the everyday heroes of America. Their first and last thought has been of their own interests. They have sought to limit their labor while still getting paid — at the ultimate cost of the education of kids who may never fully make up the gaps in their learning during their time away from the classroom.

Obviously, any gathering of people has its risks, and school districts should make every reasonable accommodation to the realities of the pandemic. There are many teachers who are better than their unions — or not members of a union at all — and some are truly at high risk from the virus. All of this is true enough, and yet the unions have represented institutional laziness and selfishness at a time of incredible strain for parents across the country.

The unions have a handy foil in President Trump, who has taken up the cause of school reopening with his usual deftness, which is to say none at all.

But it shouldn’t require wearing a MAGA hat to acknowledge the benefits of in-person instruction. And the experience of other advanced countries suggests it carries low risks.

The American Academy of Pediatricians released a statement in June saying that it “strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school.” (As a rebuke to Trump, it issued a subsequent statement with the biggest teachers’ unions saying that politics should be kept out of reopening decisions.)

The New York Times has cited research suggesting that the cancellation of classes in the spring cost students a significant portion of their learning for the year, and they might be seven months behind the curve. Online learning, especially for younger kids, is a poor substitute for being in the classroom, and many districts didn’t even offer that.

As states and localities try to avoid a repeat of that debacle, many unions are throwing every obstacle in the way. In California, the unions pushed to delay students coming back to the classroom, and in Los Angeles, the union has been negotiating to limit the time teachers spend on online instruction, too.

Unions around the country have offered endless excuses why they can’t even do a simulacrum of their job. Teachers might be abashed about their appearance teaching by video from home. The privacy of teachers might be violated if video instruction is recorded for use by parents and their kids at a convenient time. Teachers can’t handle simultaneous classroom and video instruction. 

If the teachers’ union get their way, teachers’ letter grade during this crisis will be a shameful “incomplete.”

Spot-on commentary from Mr. Lowry.  And illustrates yet again why public sector unions need to be outlawed.

 

[Coach Nowlin]

2 hours ago, swordfish said:

I still haven't had a flu shot after all these years.......Perhaps one day I will say "maybe I should've got that flu shot".......

Likewise:   I have passed on every single opportunity in my entire adult/professional life going on 18 years.  

So far so good, Flu Free all these years.   

[Bobref]

If you are really interested in the current thinking on the science behind the virus, why comparisons to influenza are dumb, why masking is necessary, the difficulty in creating a vaccine, etc., this is the best article I’ve come across. It’s long, but very, very informative and understandable.

https://www.ucsf.edu/magazine/covid-body

[Muda69]

Why Americans Fear the COVID-19 Vaccine: https://reason.com/video/why-americans-fear-the-covid-19-vaccine/

Quote

Six months into America's COVID-19 pandemic, cases are surging, small businesses are faltering, playgrounds are empty, and unemployment is at 11 percent. Our best hope for ending this nightmare is a vaccine, and there are more than 165 in development.

But when a vaccine becomes available, how many Americans will refuse it?

Vaccines are the greatest health care advance of our time, preventing an estimated 4.5 billion infections since their advent. So what explains the reluctance of so many Americans to vaccinate? 

It's a combination of bad science, the government's long history of misleading the public, and the collapse of confidence in public health authorities because of their catastrophic failures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

But if the government responds by attempting to force Americans to take a COVID-19 vaccine, it will only help the conspiracy theorists. Public health officials can begin to undo the damage of the past six months by rejecting authoritarian and paternalistic approaches in favor of careful persuasion and brutal honesty about the limits of their own knowledge.

Though most Americans surveyed say they'll probably take the vaccine, there's a real possibility that a sizable bloc of refusers could allow this novel coronavirus to continue spreading, based on what's happened with measles, cases of which surged to record levels in America in 2019 largely due to pockets of vaccine refusal, which tends to happen in clusters, according to researcher Tara C. Smith.

"When you have some of these groups of individuals where vaccination rates are low, it just takes one person with measles to get in there and spread it through a community," Smith says. 

Vaccine skeptics often focus on the claim that childhood vaccines cause autism, an idea endorsed by Donald Trump during a 2015 presidential debate.

This claim famously was amplified by a British researcher named Andrew Wakefield, whose 1998 paper linking vaccines and autism was later retracted. The U.K. General Medical Council found Wakefield guilty of multiple ethics violations for lying about his test subjects and failing to disclose a financial link to an anti-vaccine lawsuit.

But concern about vaccines is rising among parents, along with objections to the use of mercury preservatives, which haven't been proven to do harm and haven't been present in childhood vaccines for nearly 20 years. 

An ecosystem of anti-vaccine information has emerged and, according to the American Journal of Public Health, bots and paid Russian trolls participate in online vaccine debates far more than the average social media user. The trolls don't always join the anti-vaccine side of the debate but aim to elevate the visibility to "create false equivalency, eroding public consensus on vaccination," according to the researchers.

"You have some people that really don't know what to think," Smith says. "And they're really just trying to figure out, you know, what is going on? What do I believe? What do I trust? Maybe haven't cemented their ideas about vaccination yet…Those people in the middle are the ones that I try to reach."

But U.S. public health authorities have sometimes misled the public about vaccines and other public health interventions, which has made the job of convincing skeptics more difficult. 

The Tuskegee experiment sowed deep distrust of the government and public health, particularly in black American communities.

In 1932, government doctors recruited mostly poor black sharecroppers at the Tuskegee Institute for a study of the impact of syphilis.  The participants, the majority of whom had the disease, were told that they were getting an experimental medicine when in fact they were all given a placebo. Scientists running the study were actually interested in the progression of the illness when left untreated. 

The experiment continued until well after penicillin became available in 1947, and many participants died. 

Another incident that damaged trust in public health occurred in 1976, when a novel virus called the swine flu broke out at a U.S. Army base. Scientists believed that it bore a genetic similarity to the 1918 flu that had killed more than 100 million people worldwide. President Gerald Ford authorized $135 million to develop and deploy a vaccine, and the government injected 25 percent of Americans in a 10-month period. But the global pandemic never came. The disease died out. And the rushed version of the vaccine likely resulted in some injuries, though probably not as many as reported by the media at the time.

Smith says more humility is called for in public health communication.

"It's hard, but I think we have to emphasize that uncertainty. And I think that may have been one thing missing with the [protective face] masks, and I was probably guilty of it myself, too," says Smith.

One reason public health officials may face considerable resistance to a nationwide vaccination program is because of their handling of COVID-19. 

After reversing their position on face masks, authorities claimed their earlier message was motivated by a desire to preserve protective gear for medical workers without ever acknowledging that they were wrong to say that masks wouldn't slow the spread of the virus.

Public health authorities also issued contradictory messages on the safety of large gatherings following the Black Lives Matters protests.

The World Health Organization (WHO) failed to properly investigate the original outbreak in China, perhaps leaving the world less prepared than it should've been for the emerging pandemic; the Trump administration repeatedly played down the threat of the virus, and the CDC botched the early rollout of testing. 

If there is any hope of winning back public trust in a vaccination program, which, unlike the 1973 swine flu vaccine, will have been subject to extensive safety testing, public health authorities should acknowledge their past mistakes.

"Right now, in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks," the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci told 60 Minutes on March 8, 2020. "Wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, but it's not providing the perfect protection people think that it is. And often, there are unintended consequences: People keep fiddling with the mask, and they keep touching their face."

The CDC changed its mask guidance on April 3, 2020, to recommend wearing surgical or cloth masks in public settings, and businesses and local governments began mandating masks. When asked before Congress on June 30, 2020, whether he regretted his earlier statements about masks, Fauci failed to acknowledge that he and other public health officials had called masks ineffective and instead focused exclusively on the supply shortage health workers faced at the time.

"I don't regret [not advising mask use] because, let me explain to you what happened: At that time [when public health officials didn't advise wearing masks], there was a paucity of equipment that our health care providers needed," Fauci said.

If warning against face masks was a so-called "noble lie" to preserve supplies for health care workers, public health officials should own up to that rationale, admit that their understanding of the transmissibility of virus was lacking, and stop condescending to the public. 

And if a vaccine becomes available, doctors should acknowledge that vaccines can carry some risk, especially a new vaccine brought to market with record speed, but that it's a risk often worth taking because there are no perfect solutions, only trade-offs. 

The lesson of the last six months is that authoritarian mandates and noble lies tend to backfire.

Fact-based persuasion, which is the basis of good science, is our best hope for stopping COVID-19 and restoring the personal freedom that's been eroded by the governmental and societal response to it. 

lol.  Fact-based persuasion from the government?  

[swordfish]

[Muda69]

Woman claims to find face mask 'cooked' into McDonald's nugget: https://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/woman-claims-face-mask-mcdonalds-nugget-report

Quote

This could be McTrouble.

A woman in England is livid after allegedly finding a piece of a face mask baked into a McDonald’s chicken nugget, claiming her young daughter nearly choked on it while eating.

Laura Arber claims to have found part of the blue PPE in at least two of the 20 nuggets she purchased for her children from a Mickey D’s in the town of Aldershot, in Hampshire, on Tuesday, the Mirror reports.

Arber and three of her four kids were eating the nuggets at home when young Maddie, age 6, began choking.

"My little daughter just started choking and I put my fingers down her throat to loop it out there was just blue with the sick," Arber said, per the outlet. "I thought ‘what on earth is this?!’ I didn't even think it could be the chicken nugget but looked over at the box and all you could see was this blue coming out of another chicken nugget in the box of 20."

"And the mask is cooked into it, like a part of the mixture and it's clearly a mask. You can see the seam and how solid it is in there,” Arber, 32, continued.

....

McDonald’s did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News, but told the Mirror it was "sorry" about Arber's experience.

"We are very sorry to hear about this customer’s experience. Food safety is of the utmost importance to us and we place great emphasis on quality control, following rigorous standards to avoid any imperfections,” a spokesperson said.

"When the matter was brought to the attention of our staff, we apologized, offered a full refund and asked the customer to return the item so we could further investigate the matter and isolate the affected product.”

You deserve a break today...................

[Howe]

2 hours ago, swordfish said:

[Muda69]

'Do you really need to party?' WHO asks world's youth: https://news.trust.org/item/20200805120022-t4ort

Quote

GENEVA, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Young people must curb their party instincts to help prevent new outbreaks of the COVID-19 disease, officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) pleaded on Wednesday.

Tired of lockdowns and eager to enjoy the northern hemisphere summer, young people in some countries have been contributing to resurgences by gathering again for parties, barbecues and holidays.

Even in Geneva, where the global U.N. health body is based, cabarets and clubs were closed last week after evidence that nearly half of new cases were coming from there.

"Younger people also need to take on board that they have a responsibility," said WHO emergencies chief and father-of-three Mike Ryan in an online discussion. "Ask yourself the question: do I really need to go to that party?"

 

[Muda69]

Pool sales skyrocket as consumers splash out on coronavirus cocoons

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-pools/pool-sales-skyrocket-as-consumers-splash-out-on-coronavirus-cocoons-idUSKCN2520HW

Quote

Locked down, hot and desperate for a dip? If you live in Indianapolis and fancy putting a pool in your back yard there’s a three-week wait - but that’s just for an appointment to order one for next year.

Across the United States and Europe, manufacturers and distributors of swimming pools and hot tubs are scrambling to meet a wave of demand as consumers cocoon at home to escape the coronavirus pandemic.

Frustrated by the long lead times and worried about a second wave of infections, some U.S. consumers have even resorted to fashioning home-made pools out of metal livestock tanks despite the health and safety concerns.

“I’ve been in this industry for 35 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Thomas Epple, chief executive of Only Alpha Pool Products in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Epple said orders for its steel and composite pool walls surged 200% in 60 days after a lacklustre March and April and he has now doubled output by taking on more workers, adding shifts and paying lots of overtime.

“The shortage of materials in the industry is great - pumps, heaters, above-ground pools have been sold out for some time.”

The swimming pool boom illustrates how the health crisis has altered consumer habits in favour of stay-at-home businesses as the world struggles to contain new outbreaks and some people avoid beaches, pools and lakes to vacation at home.

In Indianapolis, Tyler Hermon, sales director at Pools of Fun, said his phone hasn’t stopped ringing after an initial lull and sales are now up 43% from a year ago.

“I 100 percent attribute this to people quarantined at home,” he said, adding that customers faced a three-week wait for an appointment just to talk about installations for 2021.

“The race is now on to get on the schedule for next year because everyone’s anticipating there will be another round, another wave.”

About 45% of members of the Pool & Hot Tub Alliance, the main U.S. industry trade group, forecast revenues would rise 10% or more this year.

“We’re hearing from members that have contracts booked out to late 2021 and even into early 2022,” said the alliance’s president Sabeena Hickman.

....

Capitalism is great.

 

[Guest]

On 8/4/2020 at 5:48 AM, Bobref said:

This is the outcome when you try to rush the process of developing a safe and effective vaccine. People have short memories. They did the same thing when they rushed the development of a swine flu vaccine in 2009. Nothing new here. Just Muda stirring the pot.

https://www.cleveland.com/nation/2009/07/legal_immunity_set_for_swine_f.html

What if the 🇺🇸 just stops testing like they did then?  😉 Oh how Barry gets a pass for everything. 

And the world is finally waking up........

The Best is Yet to Come. 

 

[swordfish]

Autopsy shows the young lady that passed away in April that her understandably distraught husband blamed on lack of PPE that caused her to catch COVID, didn't have COVID........

https://cbs12.com/news/local/autopsy-shows-wellington-nurse-died-of-kidney-infection-not-covid-19?fbclid=IwAR0WZAIWAV-GOmN4OKkmBW7xSQXJYMaT8ksv-Uy_EP5DIVezwo03Kr268mY

WELLINGTON, Fla. (CBS12) — A report from the Palm Beach County Medical examiner obtained by CBS12 News shows that a young Wellington nurse

believed to have passed from COVID-19, was never infected with the virus at all.

The report shows that 33-year-old Danielle DiCenso died from "complications of acute pyelonephritis," otherwise known as a kidney infection.

DiCenso was quarantining at home when she died suddenly in her sleep. Before she passed away, DiCenso was tested for COVID-19 after she was reportedly exposed to the virus at work.

Her husband, David DiCenso told CBS12 News that the young nurse was not given proper PPE at her job at Palmetto General in Hialeah. He said she began experiencing coronavirus symptoms in late March, and her test came back inconclusive.

DiCenso was still waiting on official results from the coroner when he spoke to CBS12 News back in April, but he said he had no doubt that she was exposed to COVID-19 at work. He was surprised when his wife, who he believed had no preexisting conditions, died suddenly.

"It looked like the oxygen was just taken out of her," he told CBS12 News in a prior interview.

CBS12 News reached out to DiCenso for comment but has not heard back.

Yeah, SF will assume you probably won't hear back either, nor will the hospital reimburse the Government for the additional funds it got for the COVID death.......

 

 

[Muda69]

Los Angeles Will Shut Off People's Utilities For Hosting Parties, Not For Failing To Pay Their Utility Bills

https://reason.com/2020/08/06/los-angeles-will-shut-off-peoples-utilities-for-hosting-parties-not-for-failing-to-pay-their-utility-bills/

Quote

In Los Angeles, you can have your power turned off for having parties at your house, but not for failing to pay your power bill.

On Wednesday, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that he was authorizing the city-controlled Department of Water and Power (DWP) to shut off utilities to homes and businesses that host unpermitted gatherings in violation of county and city stay-at-home orders.

The order comes in response to reports of large parties being held at residences across Los Angeles, including one on Tuesday night that ended in the shooting death of one attendee.

"The consequences of these large parties ripple far beyond those parties. They ripple throughout our community," Garcetti said in a press briefing Wednesday evening. "While we have already closed nightclubs and bars, these large parties have become nightclubs in the hills. Beyond the noise, traffic, and nuisance, these parties are unsafe and can cost Angelenos their lives."

The mayor said that if Los Angeles Police Department officers discver a property that is hosting a prohibited gathering, they will request that DWP shut off service to said property within the next 48 hours. The order goes into effect this Friday.

Los Angeles County's public health order bans family gatherings and parties of any size. The City of Los Angeles' public health order bans gatherings of any size outside of residences, save for several listed exemptions, including protests.

In his remarks Wednesday evening, Garcetti said that enforcement of this utility shutoff order would be focused on the most egregious violators.

The state of California has barred investor-owned utilities from shutting off service to customers for non-payment until April 16 of next year. This doesn't affect public utilities like DWP, although The Los Angeles Times reports the department has voluntarily agreed to suspend service shutoffs.

Other communities that have experimented with utility shut-off orders during COVID-19 have run into opposition on constitutional grounds.

When Salisbury, Massachusetts, issued an order shutting of publicly provided water to vacation homes in the hopes of preventing out-of-towners from summering there, thus preventing the spread of COVID-19, the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) sent a letter to the town arguing the policy was unconstitutional.

PLF argued that the town's shutoff order violated the U.S. Constitution's protections of due process and equal protection, given that the order only applied to people with seasonal homes in town.

"When a property right, such as the right to receive running water in one's home, is violated, the government needs to follow certain procedures. These include giving fair notice to the affected parties and then providing a fair opportunity for those parties to challenge the order before a neutral judge," wrote PLF attorney Daniel Woislaw in a May blog post. "Thus, when Salisbury passed a law restricting access to water without providing any procedures for individualized notice or hearings, it jumped the gun—and the Constitution."

The town eventually allowed its shutoff order to expire.

The process outlined by Garcetti doesn't give property owners the opportunity to challenge having their utility service shutoff. It instead relies only on police determining someone's guilt before requesting DWP meter out punishment.

Los Angeles' city-owned utility allows Garcetti to use access to basic necessities of life as a tool for enforcing government policy. It's not the first time the city has used utility access as a cudgel. Last year, the city council voted to give DWP the power to shut off utilities to unlicensed cannabis businesses.

Garcetti has presented this utility shutoff measure as a way of cracking down on the most irresponsible violators of the ban on gatherings. Whether it will be enforced that way remains to be seen.

As the mayor noted in his remarks, closing nightclubs and bars didn't eliminate people's desire to socialize. The longer shutdown orders remain in place, the more people will end up violating them by congregating in private residences. To enforce its policies, the city could end up having to shut off electricity and water to a lot of homes.

Given the grave civil liberties concerns at stake, controlling electricity seems like one power the government shouldn't have.

Agreed. Water and electricity are yet still more businesses government needs to get out of.  And this is a perfect example why.

 

[DanteEstonia]

50 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

Los Angeles Will Shut Off People's Utilities For Hosting Parties, Not For Failing To Pay Their Utility Bills

https://reason.com/2020/08/06/los-angeles-will-shut-off-peoples-utilities-for-hosting-parties-not-for-failing-to-pay-their-utility-bills/

Agreed. Water and electricity are yet still more businesses government needs to get out of.  And this is a perfect example why.

 

Thank you for your contribution, Mr. Smithers.

[Muda69]

Just now, DanteEstonia said:

Thank you for your contribution, Mr. Smithers.

? Sorry, I don't recognize the reference.

 

[swordfish]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mike-dewine-ohio-governor-covid-19-negative-test-hours-after-positive/

Ohio governor Mike DeWine announced Thursday morning that he had tested positive for the coronavirus — but on Thursday night, he said a second test came back negative. The reason for the discrepancy between the test results was not immediately clear. 

DeWine's initial test results were reported ahead of a planned meeting with President Trump on the tarmac at Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland. Instead of meeting with Mr. Trump, DeWine returned to Columbus and was ultimately tested for coronavirus a second time. 

The Ohio governor's office said in a statement that the second test was a PCR test, which the office described as "extremely sensitive, as well as specific, for the virus." When DeWine was tested earlier in the day, an antigen test was used. 

The PCR tests for both the governor and his wife were run twice, and came back negative both times, the office said. 

"We feel confident in the results from Wexner Medical Center," the office said of the PCR test. "This is the same PCR test that has been used over 1.6 million times in Ohio by hospitals and labs all over the state."  It did not say how often antigen tests are used in the state.

Officials will be "working with the manufacturer to have a better understanding of how the discrepancy between these two tests could have occurred," according to the statement.

The governor and his wife will take another PCR test on Saturday to further confirm their results.

Crap shoot - Best 2 out of 3?  

 

[Muda69]

43 minutes ago, swordfish said:

Crap shoot - Best 2 out of 3?  

 

Good question.  So in all this counting of coronavirus cases does a positive test count as a "+1"?  And if on a subsequent test on the same individual the test now reports as negative does that mean a "-1" on the number of coronavirus cases?  Something tells me probably not..................