In its guidance, the FDA said that hydroxychloroquine has “not been shown to be safe and effective for treating or preventing COVID-19.” – Source: Business Insider
“Here’s what’s crazy: We don’t know whether the President of the United States is self-prescribing hydroxychloriquine against all medical advice, or is lying that he is so that OTHERS will take it against all medical advice. The fact that each seems plausible is totally insane.” – Joshua A. Geltzer, Former White House, DOJ
Science Magazine / Jon Cohen
I know, but what do you want me to do? I mean, seriously Jon, let’s get real, what do you want me to do?
Anthony Fauci, who to many watching the now-regular White House press briefings on the pandemic has become the scientific voice of reason about how to respond to the new coronavirus, runs from place to place in normal times and works long hours. Now, the director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has even less time to sleep and travels at warp speed, typically racing daily from his office north of Washington, D.C., to his home in the capital, and then to the White House to gather with the Coronavirus Task Force in the Situation Room. He then usually flanks President Donald Trump addressing the media—and when he isn’t there, concerned tweets begin immediately. Shortly before he planned to head to the White House for a task force meeting today, he phoned ScienceInsider for a speedy chat. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: The first question everyone has is how are you?
A: Well, I’m sort of exhausted. But other than that, I’m good. I mean, I’m not, to my knowledge, coronavirus infected. To my knowledge, I haven’t been fired [laughs]. Continue reading “The interview that nearly got Fauci fired “
Days after tweeting about ‘Obamagate’ and accusing his predecessor, Barack Obama, of committing crimes, US president Donald Trump was asked to specify what those exactly were. He replied: ‘Obamagate, it’s been going on for a long time, it’s being going on from even before I got elected and it’s a disgrace that it’s gone on.’ He continued: ‘some terrible things happened and it should never be allowed to happen in our country again.’ When he is again asked what the crime is, Trump says: ‘You know what the crime is.’
Harvard’s Global Health Institute proposes that the U.S. should be doing more than 900,000 tests per day as a country. This projection, released Thursday, is a big jump from its earlier projection of testing need, which had been between 500,000 and 600,000 daily.
France 24
I wonder whether the U.S. Catholic bishops have crossed a sort of Rubicon recently.
When their Roman predecessor, the general Julius Caesar, brought his army illegally over the Rubicon River, he set in motion the events that ended the Republic and saw him presented with a crown. “The die is cast,” he is reputed to have said as he marched his army toward Rome: there was no going back. What he had done could not be undone and it would change the shape of history.
I do not think that New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan is in any danger of being crowned emperor (or, anything else). But I do believe that his public flattery of President Donald Trump from the pulpit of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and on Fox News may prove to be a moment from which American Catholicism cannot turn back.
Smart analysts have interpreted the cardinal’s blandishments as a savvy effort to smooth-talk the president into devoting stimulus funds to help Catholic schools that, no doubt, will struggle in the post-pandemic environment. Maybe that is what the cardinal thinks he is doing. Maybe it even looks smart from one point-of-view. But it seems to me that we have to overlook a lot to see how smart the cardinal is being.
Dolan praised Trump’s sensitivity to the “feelings of the religious community” on Fox News. Think about that.
Then, think about this. “I think Islam hates us,” or, “The children of Muslim American parents, they’re responsible for a growing number for whatever reason a growing number of terrorist attacks,” or think about what Trump said after the Supreme Court struck down his first travel ban that fulfilled his campaign promise of a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the U.S.” — “Put a commission together. Show me the right way to do it legally.”
Continue reading “Cardinal Dolan’s public flattery of Trump forgets a few things”
Pas De Merde 