Biden says deal close on new coronavirus relief bill as he hails latest pick for diverse cabinet – live

The availability of intensive care unit beds in the San Francisco Bay Area fell below 15% on Tuesday, the threshold that triggers a regional stay-at-home order.

Much of the Bay Area had preemptively enacted the stay-at-home order earlier in the month, but three counties did not. They will now have to enact the stricter rules by midnight Thursday.

At 12.9%, ICU bed availability in the Bay Area is still better than in Southern California (0.5%), the San Joaquin Valley (0%) and greater Sacramento (14.1%). The only region that will not be under stay-at-home orders as of Friday will be rural Northern California, where just 1.7% of the state’s approximately 40m people live, according to the state’s health department.

The remaining 39.4m Californians are barred from holding private gatherings of any size and required to wear a mask. Almost all of California is also under a curfew requiring residents to stay home between 10pm and 5am.

A major winter storm heading for the eastern seaboard could delay shipments of the coronavirus vaccine, Alexandra Villarreal reports for the Guardian US:

Treacherous weather could bury parts of the eastern US in snow, ice or flooding and cause power outages, hazardous travel conditions, or even tornadoes on Wednesday and Thursday, according to the National Weather Service, threatening all forms of transportation being used by the vaccine manufacturing facilities, centered in Michigan, as they fly and truck vials around the country.

It is set to be a record storm for December. Meanwhile the first Covid-19 vaccinations got underway at nursing homes, where the virus has killed more than 110,000 people in the US. Elderly and infirm people in long-term care have been among the most vulnerable and residents in nursing homes in Florida and Virginia have been among the first people being inoculated in the US this week.

Read the full report here:

An investigation into allegations that managers at a Tyson Foods pork processing plant in Waterloo, Iowa, placed bets on how many of their workers would contract Covid-19 “found sufficient evidence” to fire seven managers on Wednesday, the Des Moines Register reports.

The allegations of the betting pool emerged in a wrongful death lawsuit filed in November by the family of Isidro Fernandez, a Tyson Foods employee who died in April after contracting the coronavirus.

More than 1,000 workers out of about 2,800 tested positive for Covid-19 before the plant closed down in early May to implement new safety measures. At least six employees died during the pandemic.

Tyson Foods enlisted the former US attorney general Eric Holder to investigate the allegations of a “cash buy-in, winner-take-all betting pool” among managers and supervisors.

“We can tell you that Mr Holder and his team looked specifically at the gaming allegations and found sufficient evidence for us to terminate those involved,” a company spokesman, Gary Mickelson, told the Des Moines Register.

Hello everyone, this is Julia Carrie Wong in Oakland, California, picking up the liveblog for the next few hours.

A bit of catharsis for the end of the year: the mayor of Atlantic City plans to auction off the chance to blow up the former Trump Plaza casino as a fundraiser for the local Boys & Girls Club, the AP reports.

The former casino opened in 1984 and closed in 2014, one of three casinos that Donald Trump owned in the New Jersey resort town, alongside the Taj Mahal and the Trump Marina. The building has stood vacant for years and become a public safety hazard. It is slated for implosion on 29 January.

“Some of Atlantic City’s iconic moments happened there, but on his way out, Donald Trump openly mocked Atlantic City, saying he made a lot of money and then got out,” mayor Marty Small told the AP. “I wanted to use the demolition of this place to raise money for charity.”

Details of the auction will be announced at a press conference tomorrow, according to the Press of Atlantic City. If you have $1m and a burning desire to press a button and make something that used to belong to Trump go boom, you can tune in here at 11am EST Thursday.

A top Trump appointee in the health and human services department urged top health officials in July to take on a “herd immunity” approach to combating the Covid-19 pandemic, saying in emails describing young Americans: “we want them infected.

Paul Alexander, a former aide to the health department official Michael Caputo and a known “herd immunity” advocate, wrote in an email to Caputo that “there is no other way, we need to establish herd, and it only comes about allowing the non-high risk groups expose themselves to the virus. PERIOD.”

The emails were released as part of a House investigation, led by Democratic Representative James Clyburn, into the White House’s attempts to interfere with the work of career scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Infant, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions, etc have zero to little risk … so we use them to develop herd … we want them infected,” Alexander wrote in an email.

Politico reported that Alexander had the support of the White House when making his recommendations, though Trump officials have denied that they wanted to embrace the herd immunity strategy.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi released a statement this afternoon affirming her support in Joe Biden selecting US Representative Deb Haaland of New Mexico to lead the Interior Department.

Previous reports have said Pelosi and her second-in-command, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, warned the Biden-Harris team against picking another sitting Congressional Democrat as Haaland was rumored to be Biden’s top pick for interior secretary.

“Congresswoman Deb Haaland is one of the most respected and one of the best Members of Congress I have served with,” Pelosi said in a statement. “Congresswoman Haaland knows the territory, and if she is the President-elect’s choice for Interior Secretary, then he will have made an excellent choice.

Haaland, who is a member of the Laguna Pueblo people, was one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress, along with Sharice Davids, who was also elected in 2018. The interior department is responsible for preserving federal lands and resources and is home to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which works with the country’s recognized Native American tribes.

A top Trump appointee repeatedly urged top health officials to adopt a “herd immunity” approach to Covid-19 and allow millions of Americans to be infected by the virus, according to a new report by Politico today, which cited internal emails obtained by the House Oversight committee and shared with the news outlet.

Politico reports that:

“There is no other way, we need to establish herd, and it only comes about allowing the non-high risk groups expose themselves to the virus. PERIOD,” then-science adviser Paul Alexander wrote on July 4 to his boss, Health and Human Services assistant secretary for public affairs Michael Caputo, and six other senior officials.

“Infants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions etc. have zero to little risk….so we use them to develop herd…we want them infected…” Alexander added.

“[I]t may be that it will be best if we open up and flood the zone and let the kids and young folk get infected” in order to get “natural immunity…natural exposure,” Alexander wrote on July 24 to Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn, Caputo and eight other senior officials. Caputo subsequently asked Alexander to research the idea, according to emails obtained by the House Oversight Committee’s select subcommittee on coronavirus.

Senior Trump officials have repeatedly denied that herd immunity — a concept advocated by some conservatives as a tactic to control Covid-19 by deliberately exposing less vulnerable populations in hopes of re-opening the economy — was under consideration or shaped the White House’s approach to the pandemic. “Herd immunity is not the strategy of the U.S. government with regard to coronavirus,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar testified in a House Oversight hearing on October 2.

In his emails, Alexander also spent months attacking government scientists and pushing to shape official statements to be more favorable to Donald Trump.

You can read more here.