Tag: covid

Posted on

NYC’s Largest Police Union Says They Will Sue if COVID Vaccines Are Mandated

The vaccine against COVID-19 has been readily available for a number of months. Unfortunately, not enough people are taking the shot and the Delta variant is now plaguing the country.

States and business are now starting to take steps to insure that their employees are vaccinated. And there has been significant pushback in many cases.

New York City recently announced that by September, all school educators must get the shot in order to continue working. Other regulations are expected to come.

On Tuesday, PBA President Pat Lynch railed against forced vaccinations, threatening to sue if the are required.

Lynch wrote in an email, “If the City attempts to impose a vaccine mandate on PBA members, we will take legal action to defend our members’ right to make such personal medical decisions.”

The PBA President continued, “As of this writing, the City has not indicated whether it will attempt to impose vaccine mandates on other city workers, including police officers.”

NEW: NYC's largest police union plans to sue if COVID vaccine is mandated for NYPD.

"If the City attempts to impose a vaccine mandate on PBA members, we will take legal action to defend our members' right to make such personal medical decisions." https://t.co/r6SKTDPazc read more

Posted on

How Do We Get to a New, Better Normal on Covid?

Covid-19 has now been a defining part of our lives for a year and a half.  And we are now entering a new phase: trying to transition this disease from a society-crashing pandemic to a more manageable endemic disease.

On the Great Ideas Podcast, Matt Robison interviewed leading researcher Dr. Jodie Guest –  Professor and Vice-Chair in the Department of Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health and School of Medicine at Emory University – to understand what we now know about Covid, and what is it going to take to get ourselves to a new and better normal.

She shared some eye-popping numbers (like how one Delta variant infection can quickly become 60 million) and outlined the pathway to a Covid future that we can live with.

Listen to the full conversation here:

 This conversation has been condensed and edited.

What do we now know about how people transmit Covid-19?

We are much more clear that it is transmitted through respiratory droplets. That is one of the reasons why masking still remains a critical way to prevent transmission. Some things that we originally thought have changed. Fomite transmission – i.e., touching something – is really not as big of a risk as we originally thought. Everyone washing their groceries and leaving their mail out in their garage is really not necessary.

How has transmission changed under the Delta variant?

The original strain of COVID-19 had an R0 [“R-naught”] of around 2.5. That means for every one person who was infected, an average of 2.5 people would get it from them.  And then those 2.5 people would each infect an average of 2.5 people. So if you go through 10 cycles of transmission like that, you end up with about 10,000 people infected from that one original case. Delta has a much higher R0 somewhere between five and eight.  So after 10 cycles, instead of 10,000 people, one person will have infected 60 million people.

Is the way we’re spreading Covid different too now? read more

Posted on

“No Shirt, No Shoes, No Vaccine, No Service” Fox’s Geraldo Calls for Unvaccinated People to be Banned From Restaurants, Businesses and Colleges

One doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand why the Delta variant is surging in certain parts of the country. The outbreaks are happening in red states where vaccination rates are lowest.

The hosts of Fox News, though, don’t want to tell their viewers that they are the ones responsible for potential new COVID restrictions. So they picked a regular target to blame, immigrants. That led to a furious response by Geraldo Rivera.

Jesse Watters called blaming immigrants common sense, saying, “You don’t think it’s a coincidence that all of these variants are popping up in the very places on the border that Biden has opened?”

Rivera blasted Watters for “bending over backwards” to blame immigrants for everything. He then continued:

“If you are unvaccinated then you should at least get tested every week, on your own or understand why you are banned from the VA, why you are banned from restaurants, why you are banned from other businesses and colleges increasingly, and they should be. Because it’s selfish. If you are unvaccinated and you are going around without being tested, you are an arrogant, selfish SOB.”

Geraldo Rivera Says it's time to start banning unvaccinated people from restaurants, businesses and colleges. pic.twitter.com/o4ZFCjGkAb

— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) July 27, 2021 read more

Posted on

Nicolle Wallace Isn’t Letting Chris Christie Off the Hook For Trump Support

For a few weeks during the 2016 presidential primary, Chris Christie was willing to say that Donald Trump wasn’t qualified to be president. After the former New Jersey governor dropped out of the Republican nomination race, though, he quickly fell behind Trump.

And he has essentially been there every step of the way over the last 4 years. Christie has acted as a surrogate on cable news. He’s appeared at campaign events. He even prepared Trump for his debates against Joe Biden.

Something has snapped in the last few weeks, however, and Christie has been willing to attack Trump. It could be that he is angry about catching COVID. But is also may be that he wants to run for president in 2024.

And during an appearance on MSNBC, Christie was lambasted by host Nicolle Wallace for his long-time support of the president. Wallace told the former governor:

“It is my sense, and I know you said in an interview with Hugh Hewitt, you haven’t ruled out a run in 2024. I don’t remember you coming out and forcefully pushing back against Donald Trump’s comments on the ‘Access Hollywood‘ tape … I didn’t hear you, after he called African nations bleep-hole nations. I didn’t hear you distance yourself from this president at any point until the target for his ire and lawlessness was the democracy you haven’t ruled out leading in four years. Are you simply making a political calculation that you could clean the Trump stink off you faster than Marco Rubio or some of the other competitors?” read more