COVID-19
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Donald Trump’s claims that the COVID-19 pandemic began with “dust” blown over to the country “from China” has left many on social media again questioning his intelligence.
Former President Donald Trump is receiving new blowback due to his comments concerning the rise of COVID-19 in the United States. He sat down for a one-on-one interview with Sheryl Attkisson of the “Full Measure” show on Sunday (September 22) at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. The conversation turned to the pandemic, and Attkisson asked Trump how he felt he handled the situation. “In terms of overall, I think I did an amazing job with COVID,” Trump insisted. “I never got the credit for it. Remember that more people died under Biden-Harris than died under Trump.”
“I never got great credit on the fighting of the China virus, which is COVID, but we call it the China virus because we like to be accurate,” the former president continued. “But if you think of what I’ve done, I took a disaster that came into our shores, that dust flew in from China, and we started making things like the ventilators.” He added that he would “not be given credit” for the “fantastic job” done, remarking to the Heritage Foundation-sponsored host, “Nobody knew what it was. Nobody knew where it came from.” The claim was part of an almost 20-minute interview, where he also declared that if he loses in the November presidential election, he won’t run again in 2028.
The interview is not the first time that Trump has uttered the false claim. He made it as part of a rambling sentence, saying We had that damn dust coming in from China, the China virus…” during his campaign rally held in Wildwood, New Jersey back in May. But his insistence on repeating it brought him ridicule from those who got wind of the statement, with many bemoaning his lack of intelligence.
Check out the reactions to Trump’s “dust claim” below.
1. Dee Denem
2. Daniel Schultz
3. Denver Rose
4. Mary Teresa
5. Jinxie Clark
6. Dr. Liberal
In an unusual ruling that quoted from Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well,” a California appeals court has rejected Metallica’s lawsuit demanding that its insurance company pay for more than $3 million in losses stemming from concerts that were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The decision, issued Monday (March 18) by California’s Court of Appeal, said that six COVID-cancelled 2020 shows in South America were not covered by Metallica’s insurance policy with Lloyd’s of London, thanks to a clear exclusion in the contract for any losses stemming from “communicable diseases.”
The legendary rock band had argued the case should have gone to trial, since a jury could have decided that non-COVID reasons led to the cancellations. But Justice Maria Stratton, improbably citing Swift, said it was “absurd to think that government closures were not the result of Covid-19.”
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“To paraphrase Taylor Swift: ‘We were there. We remember it all too well,’” the justice wrote. “There was no vaccine against Covid-19 in March 2020 and no drugs to treat it. Ventilators were in short supply. N-95 masks were all but non-existent. Patients were being treated in tents in hospital parking lots. The mortality rate of Covid-19 was unknown, but to give just one example of the potential fatality rate, by late March, 2020, New York City was using refrigerated trucks as temporary morgues. People were terrified.”
Metallica’s case is one of many that have been filed by musicians, venues, bars and other businesses seeking insurance coverage for harm caused by the outbreak of COVID-19, which led to months of severe travel restrictions, forced closures and bans on large gatherings.
But like Metallica’s case, the majority of those lawsuits have thus far been won by insurers. Many policies included express carveouts for problems caused by diseases, like the one in the band’s contract; other policies, like many for brick-and-mortar businesses, often required “physical damage” that’s tricky to show with a pandemic shutdown.
The biggest such case in the music industry is a sweeping lawsuit filed by Live Nation, seeking coverage from Factory Mutual Insurance Co. for more than 10,000 shows (encompassing a whopping 15 million tickets) that were canceled or postponed during the pandemic. After a judge refused to dismiss Live Nation’s allegations in 2022, the case remains pending.
Metallica sued Lloyd’s of London in June 2021 after the insurer refused to cover their losses stemming from the South American tour, which had been set to kick off on April 15, 2020, but was postponed when the governments of Argentina, Chile and Brazil imposed strict restrictions amid the worsening pandemic.
Court documents show that in May 2020, the band submitted a loss of $3,234,569 stemming from the cancelled shows, covering things like $184,996 in payroll for retained crew members. But citing the disease exclusion, the insurer quickly denied the claim: “Unfortunately we have to advise that no coverage is afforded for this matter under this Policy,” the company wrote in a June 2020 response letter.
In December 2022, a Los Angeles judge rejected Metallica’s case and the various arguments for why Lloyds should have paid for the concerts — including ruling that the cancellations were caused by travel restrictions that were “a direct response to the burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic.”
Appealing that decision, Metallica argued that a jury might have found a different cause for the concert cancellations. The band’s attorneys pointed to the fact that venues later reopened and the shows were performed in 2022, “despite the ongoing presence of COVID.”
But in her ruling Monday, Justice Stratton said that argument missed the mark. With the advent of vaccines and more information, “much had changed” by the spring of 2022.
“People were in a position to make a more accurate cost-benefit analysis of restrictions versus potential illness,” the justice wrote. “The fact that governments chose to lift restrictions at that point, two years after COVID-19 was first discovered, does not in any way call into question their reasons for imposing travel restrictions early in the pandemic.”
The judge also rejected various other arguments from Metallica, like the claim that the policy did not cover COVID cancellations because it did not specifically use the term “virus”: “The insurance policy definition of communicable disease does not refer to any pathogens nor does it limit the exclusion to only those communicable diseases caused by specific pathogens.”
Attorneys for both sides did not immediately return requests for comment.
Taylor Swift is opening up her emotional state during the pandemic.
Halfway through her Eras Tour stop at Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne, Australia, on Saturday (Feb. 17), the 34-year-old pop superstar paused to reflect on being “lonely” while writing her 2020 album, Folklore, during the COVID-19 lockdown.
“[I was] imagining that, instead of being a lonely millennial woman covered in cat hair drinking my weight in white wine, I was a ghostly Victorian lady wandering through the woods with a candle in a candlestick holder,” Swift said in a fan-captured video before performing her song “Betty.”
“And I wrote only on parchment with a feathered quill,” she continued. “That was in my mind, what I thought I looked like writing Folklore.” The Grammy winner added, “So that’s all that matters — the delusion.”
While writing Folklore, Swift spent her time in quarantine with then-boyfriend Joe Alwyn, 32, who helped the artist pen songs including “Exile” and “Betty. The “Cruel Summer” hitmaker reflected on how she and the British actor passed the time during the pandemic in a December 2020 interview.
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“I wasn’t expecting to make an album. Early on in quarantine, I started watching lots of films. We would watch a different movie every night,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “I’m ashamed to say I hadn’t seen Pan’s Labyrinth before. One night I’d watch that, then I’d watch L.A. Confidential, then we’d watch Rear Window, then we’d watch Jane Eyre.”
She added, “I feel like consuming other people’s art and storytelling sort of opened this portal in my imagination and made me feel like, ‘Well, why have I never done this before? Why have I never created characters and intersecting storylines? And why haven’t I ever sort of freed myself up to do that from a narrative standpoint?’”
Swift and Alwyn split last April after six years of dating.
Swift’s three-night stand at Melbourne Cricket Ground launched Friday (Feb. 16) and wrapped Sunday (Feb. 18). Next, she’s scheduled for back-to-back concerts at Sydney’s Accor Stadium (Feb. 23-25). Other international stops include Singapore, France, Sweden, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Europe and Canada.
Hilary Duff just hit a bump in the road midway through her pregnancy. Just days after announcing that she and Matthew Koma are expecting, the Lizzie McGuire star has now shared that both she and her husband have contracted COVID-19. “We have Covid and our kids don’t so now we wear masks again,” she wrote […]
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As hospitalizations related to COVID-19 are back up in the United States, the government is reviving the program that gave people free at-home test kits.
At an event at a Washington D.C. CVS on Wednesday (September 20th) promoting the updated COVID-19 booster shot, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra announced that every household in the country could request four free at-home COVID test kits beginning on Monday, September 25th. Those seeking tests can request them through COVID.gov, the department’s website.
In addition to restarting the program, the HHS also announced that it would invest $600 million to purchase test kits from a dozen domestic manufacturers. The amount of purchased kits estimated would be 200 million. “These critical investments will strengthen our nation’s production levels of domestic at-home COVID-19 rapid tests and help mitigate the spread of the virus,” Becerra said in a statement afterward.
The revival of the program comes as there has been a noticeable spike in the number of hospital admissions and deaths related to a new variant of COVID-19 known as EG.5 that has been on the rise over the last few weeks. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data that said that admissions rose by 7.7 in the week of September 3rd to the 9th to 20,358. Deaths over that same period increased up to 2.3 percent.
The program had been halted in May as the Biden administration declared an end to the public health emergency that was in place. There was a previous stoppage last summer as the Omicron variant was prevalent, with the government citing a lack of funding at the time. More than 600 million test kits were distributed before the first stoppage.
Tests that citizens will receive once the program starts again will be good for use until the end of 2023. The HHS also has instructed those curious about the expiration dates to check a website detailing which test kits had extended expiration
dates.
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Whoopi Goldberg sent a video message to her co-hosts of The View while recovering from COVID-19, knocking down online conspiracies in the process.
On Wednesday (September 6th), Joy Behar opened up the episode by informing the audience as she did the day before that Goldberg was absent due to COVID before playing a video message from the EGOT winner. “In spite of everything you’ve heard,” said a masked-up Goldberg, “I am not at Burning Man, I am not still in Italy, I am not trying to change the outcome of the election, I just have Covid.”
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She commented that she was still testing positive for Covid, so she would not be on the show for the next few days. Goldberg went on to state that she was “thrilled to see the beautiful new desk” which made its debut on Tuesday for the premiere of the daytime talk show’s 27th season. “And I’m thrilled to see all the beautiful women…I can’t wait to get back and hang out.”
It’s the third time that Goldberg has been infected with COVID-19. Behar took time out to address the mounting conspiracy theories peddled by right-wingers, who claim that high-profile announcements of those who had caught Covid were being created to initiate government crackdowns through mandates. The White House previously announced that First Lady Jill Biden tested positive for Covid on Monday (September 5th).
Behar added her two cents about all of the conspiracy theories on air. “People write she got the vaccine so how come she still gets it?” she said. ” “Because she’s not dead! She’s just a little under the weather. If you don’t get [the vaccine] and you get the disease you might die.” Co-host Ana Navarro joined in to say, “Before we had the vaccines, people did die.” Behar then quipped, “This type of irrational talk drives me nuts.”
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Metallica has postponed night two of the band’s M72 World Tour concert in Arizona after frontman James Hetfield tested positive for COVID-19. The legendary metal group, which played its opening show at Glendale’s State Farm Stadium on Friday (Sept. 1), announced through social media the following afternoon that the foursome is rescheduling its Sunday (Sept. […]
As the world continues to adjust to different types of “new normal” following the generational disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic of the past few years, Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl outlined a new policy for the major label requiring employees to return to the office four times a week, while expanding free lunches and […]
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The rise in COVID-19 cases in the state of Georgia has propelled Morris Brown College to reinstitute masking mandates for its students and employees.
According to NewsOne, the HBCU based in Atlanta, Georgia sent out a letter detailing the guidelines for the mandate to faculty members, incoming students, and staff last Friday (August 18). The letter was then released publicly on the school’s Instagram account on Sunday (August 20).
The mandate, which will be in existence for the next two weeks, requires everyone to wear masks. Physical distancing is also reinstated for students, as well as a ban on large gatherings and parties for students for those two weeks. In addition, students are required to undergo temperature checks upon arrival to campus and to take part in contact tracing efforts by the college. The contact tracing and other care and assistance will be provided by the school through its partnership with St. Joseph Mercy Care.
Morris Brown College made the move in response to the rising rate of COVID-19 cases being reported by the Atlanta University Center (AUC), which consists of Clark Atlanta University, Spelman College, Morehouse College, and Morehouse School of Medicine. Their lead epidemiologist, Kara Garretson, recently released a resource guide for AUC students and employees to follow.
COVID-19 rates in Atlanta have risen since August 5th, according to the data collected by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The rate of hospitalizations rose by 29.5%, with 322 confirmed cases in that time, and while the numbers are lower in comparison to the same time frame last year, there is concern as a new variant has been settling in around the nation. The EG.5 variant has been active for the last couple of months and is believed to be responsible for 17% of cases in the United States thus far.
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Concern is growing as the rate of hospitalizations due to COVID-19 is increasing across the United States as summer winds down.
According to reports, recorded data shows that COVID-19 hospital admissions were at 9,056. That number is an increase of 12% from the week before. However, when compared to data recording peaks from the past—44,000 weekly hospital admissions at the beginning of January, almost 45,000 in late July 2022, and the 150,000 admissions during the Omicron variant surge of January 2022—this surge isn’t worrying some in public health.
One reason is that while the rising amount of COVID-19 found in the wastewater of cities across the U.S. since June has been noticed, especially in the Northeast and the South, the rate is still 2.5 times lower than last summer according to Biobot Analytics epidemiologist Cristin Young, who is working with the Centers For Disease Control (CDC). Levels of the virus are currently being monitored at over 1,300 sewage treatment plants across the nation.
Another factor is the rate of immunity and vaccinations that have already taken place and the preparation of a newly updated COVID-19 vaccine for the fall which will address the Omicron XBB.1.5 strain. This differs from previous vaccines that contained a combination of the original and more common Omicron variants.
There is a newly detected COVID-19 variant, EG.5 which is being unofficially dubbed “Eris”. This variant is believed to be behind 17% of all new COVID-19 cases in the states. The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently called the Eris variant “one of interest”. So far, researchers are noting that it doesn’t seem to be presenting a serious issue. “The virus does not appear to be evolving to become either more transmissible or more lethal at this point,” said Dr. Jay Varma, an epidemiologist at Weill Cornell Medical College.
“It is ticking up a little bit, but it’s not something that we need to raise any alarm bells over,” said Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health infectious disease specialist Dr. David Dowdy. Health officials are again advising people to take precautions, such as masking up and sanitizing thoroughly. “I’m not sure if it’s a surge, per se, or just uptick,” said Dr. David Boulware, a professor of medicine specializing in infectious diseases at the University of Minnesota Medical School before adding that it’s a reminder “that, yes, Covid still exists.”
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