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      in US Politics

      Rudy Giuliani has coronavirus, Donald Trump says

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      Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has tested positive for Covid-19, the president tweeted on Sunday.
      Giuliani, 76 and a former mayor of New York City, has been leading Trump’s attempt to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden, through lawsuits in battleground states.
      Trump did not specify when Giuliani tested positive or if he was experiencing symptoms. Giuliani did not immediately comment. Citing an anonymous source, the New York Times reported that Giuliani was being treated at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington DC.
      “Rudy Giuliani, by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, and who has been working tirelessly exposing the most corrupt election (by far!) in the history of the USA, has tested positive for the China Virus,” Trump tweeted, using a racist term for the coronavirus.
      “Get better soon Rudy, we will carry on!!!”
      Hours before Trump made the announcement, Giuliani was interviewed on Fox News. He appeared in good spirits while sharing baseless claims of election fraud during the 10-minute interview.
      Though Giuliani is at high risk of complications from the virus because of his age, he has been traveling frequently in the aftermath of the election, often appearing in public without a mask.
      Last week, he appeared maskless before state lawmakers in Michigan, to challenge votes in the state. On Thursday, he spoke at the Georgia capitol building in a crowded legislative session, again without a mask.
      In the Michigan session, Giuliani asked one witness to remove her mask so the audience could hear her better, though she declined.
      Giuliani has repeatedly been exposed to be others who tested positive, including after his son, Andrew.
      A White House staffer, Andrew Giuliani said on 20 November he had tested positive for the virus and was in quarantine with mild symptoms.
      Trump himself contracted Covid-19 in October, spending three days in hospital near Washington DC.
      At least 40 people in the president’s orbit have tested positive since late September, including first lady Melania Trump, her son Barron, Donald Trump Jr, and senior aides and Republican politicians.
      Vaccines are on the brink of approval for use but the pandemic has surged in recent months, as Trump has faced criticism for apparently giving up the fight for control.
      Johns Hopkins University recorded 213,875 new cases in the US on Saturday. Amid figures worsened by Thanksgiving travel and gatherings whose full impact experts say is not yet apparent, there were 2,254 new deaths, making the full US death toll 280,979 from nearly 14.6m cases. The seven-day average for deaths from Covid-19 has climbed over 2,000.
      Trump has repeatedly downplayed the coronavirus and resisted public health guidance meant to prevent the spread of the illness.
      As Christmas approaches, the White House is hosting a string of holiday parties featuring large crowds indoors. Photos from a party on Tuesday showed people without masks engaging in the festivities.
      On Sunday, a member of the White House coronavirus taskforce, Deborah Birx, was questioned about the contradictions between Trump’s actions and comments and public health guidance.
      “I hear community members parroting back those situations, parroting back that masks don’t work, parroting back that we should work towards herd immunity, parroting back that gatherings don’t result in super-spreading events,” Birx told NBC’s Meet the Press.
      “And I think our job is to constantly say those are myths.” More

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      in US Politics

      US health secretary insists Trump has detailed vaccine rollout plan

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      US health secretary Alex Azar has insisted the Trump administration does have a plan to distribute coronavirus vaccines, after President-elect Joe Biden said he had not seen a detailed blueprint.“With all respect, that’s just nonsense,” Azar told Fox News Sunday.Azar and other officials were pressed on the Covid-19 response as the US experiences its worst outbreak since the spring while preparing to distribute a vaccine.There were 2,254 new Covid deaths in the US on Saturday, according to Johns Hopkins University, making the full death toll 280,979 from nearly 14.6m cases. For the first time since the early days of the pandemic, the seven-day rolling average of deaths has passed 2,000.Healthcare systems are under increasing strain. From Sunday night, large parts of the most populous state, California, will enter a lockdown that will last past Christmas.On Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will consider whether to to provide emergency use authorization for a vaccine developed by Pfizer. If it does, the first round is expected to be distributed in the following 24 hours.In the first phase of distribution, vaccines will be allocated to 21 million healthcare workers and 3 million residents and staff of long-term care facilities, following guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week. Health officials estimate 40 million doses of vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna will be distributed by the end of December.On Friday, Biden said his team had been in touch with the Trump administration about the vaccine rollout.“There is no detailed plan, that we’ve seen anyway, as to how you get the vaccine out of a container, into an injection syringe, into somebody’s arm,” Biden said.Azar said the distribution plan was being run by the military and private sector and would use retail pharmacies, public health departments and community health centers.Dr Moncef Slaoui, chief scientific officer of the administration’s Operation Warp Speed vaccine program, told CBS’s Face the Nation he would meet Biden this week.“We really look forward to it, because actually things have been really very appropriately planned,” Slaoui said, adding that “confusion” may have arisen because the government’s plan relies on state health agencies.“I think the plans are there, and I feel confident that once we will explain it, everything in detail, I hope the new transition team will understand,” he said.Asked if Trump’s skepticism about masks and repeated downplaying of the pandemic had exacerbated its effects, Azar said the spike in cases was about behavior.“We need people to renew their commitment,” he said.On ABC’s This Week, Azar insisted the Trump administration supports masks – even after the president held a rally on Saturday night in Georgia where people mostly did not wear them. Host George Stephanopoulos also asked about the White House planning large holiday parties with up to 900 guests.“Our advice remains the same in any context, which is wash your hands, watch your distance, wear face coverings when you can’t watch your distance and be careful of those indoor settings,” Azar said.On NBC’s Meet the Press, another member of the White House coronavirus taskforce, Deborah Birx, was questioned about the contradictions between Trump’s actions and comments and public health guidance.“I hear community members parroting back those situations, parroting back that masks don’t work, parroting back that we should work towards herd immunity, parroting back that gatherings don’t result in super-spreading events,” Birx said. “And I think our job is to constantly say those are myths.”Asked about the holiday parties, Birx underlined that being indoors without a mask presents an opportunity to spread the virus.“You cannot gather without masks in any indoor or close outdoor situation,” she said.Birx warned that Americans must follow Covid-19 guidelines to prevent hospital overcrowding and to limit the spread of the virus, even with a vaccine on the way.“The vaccine is critical, but it’s not going to save us from this current surge,” Birx said. “Only we can save us from this current surge.”Slaoui said the most susceptible populations should see the effect of the vaccine in January or February. “But on a population basis, for our lives to start getting back to normal, we’re talking about April or May,” he told CBS.In an interview with CNN’s State of the Union, Slaoui endorsed Biden’s plan to require Americans to wear a mask for the first 100 days after he is inaugurated on 20 January.“I think it’s a good idea – it’s never too late,” Slaoui said. “This pandemic is ravaging the country.” More

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      in US Politics

      How the 'great reset' of capitalism became an anti-lockdown conspiracy | Quinn Slobodian

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      At a recent anti-lockdown protest in London, thousands of people gathered to oppose what they saw as a clandestine power grab taking place under the cover of a pandemic. Some protesters carried cardboard signs bearing the name of the alleged takeover: “The great reset”. “They thought they could easily get their great reset,” one man shouted. “Little did they know! The pandemic’s a hoax!”The great reset, both the title of an airport book by the creative economy guru Richard Florida and a slogan favoured by corporate do-gooders, is also the term for a web of ideas that has become increasingly popular among the anti-lockdown right. In its most implausible version, this conspiracy imagines that a global elite is using Covid-19 as an opportunity to roll out radical policies such as forced vaccinations, digital ID cards and the renunciation of private property.Though a poor diagnosis of the causes of global events, the great reset offers a grim insight into the public mood. An unlikely source provided its initial spark. On 3 June, as the UK’s Covid death toll reached 50,000, the royal family’s YouTube account posted a video about a new sustainability drive headed by the Prince of Wales’s Sustainable Markets Initiative, in partnership with the World Economic Forum (WEF). Titled #TheGreatReset, the initiative called for “fairer outcomes” and the redirection of investment towards a more “sustainable future”. It had all the slick branding one has come to expect from the WEF, with a cinematic video of ice floes and beached whales, and a sonorous monologue by Prince Charles.The initiative joined a line of similar proclamations riffing on Karl Polanyi’s 1944 urtext, The Great Transformation. In the past decade, authors and politicians have talked of the “great financialization”, the “great regression”, the “great reversal”, the “great acceleration”, the “great unraveling” and the “great uncoupling”, to name just a few. The WEF’s great reset went largely unnoticed at first, arriving at the same time as George Floyd’s death spurred Black Lives Matter protests across the world. But the idea later caught on – in a way that organisers most likely didn’t expect.Weeks after the WEF’s announcement, Justin Haskins, the editorial director of the libertarian thinktank, the Heartland Institute, sounded klaxons about the great reset on Fox Business, Fox News and Glenn Beck’s network, TheBlaze. “The rough outline of the plan is clear,” he said. “Completely destroy the global capitalist economy and reform the western world.” Yet, apart from a few isolated yelps in the rightwing echo chamber, the great reset failed to catch on as a fully fledged conspiracy theory until Joe Biden’s victory in early November, when Google Trends shows that searches for the term surged online.The most obvious spark for this growing interest was a segment on Laura Ingraham’s television show on Fox News, which averaged 3.5 million viewers in 2020. “You know the idea, ‘never let a crisis go to waste’,” said Ingraham on 13 November. “Well, with the coronavirus, that idea went global. And since last spring, powerful people began to use this pandemic as a way to force radical social and economic change across the continents.”Years after the journalist Naomi Klein first identified the “shock doctrine” of radical policies that conservatives rolled out during disasters, the right was now appropriating this narrative for its own ends.A few days later, Ingraham returned to the theme. In a clip viewed some 2.4m times, she said Biden’s “handlers” believe in “the great reset of capitalism. It’s a plan to force a more equitable distribution of global resources.” The same day, another conservative commentator, Candace Owens, tweeted: “They are using Covid to crash western economies and implement communist policies. That’s what’s going on.” And in Australia, the Spectator columnist James Delingpole was interviewed on Sky News Australia (which, like Fox News, is owned by Rupert Murdoch). “Anyone who doesn’t realise that the great reset is the biggest threat to our form of life right now hasn’t been paying attention,” he said.The great reset theory is nonsense, and will probably become a prime target for the many new research centres and initiatives studying “disinformation” that have mushroomed on university campuses since 2016. But although we may scorn the ideas of anti-lockdown protesters, we ignore the unequal reality of the pandemic at our peril. Many of the world’s tech companies and CEOs have done well from this crisis. Indeed, in the same week that many Americans lost their jobs, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, added $13bn to his fortune in just a day. With surreal realities like these, where prominent members of the 1% really do appear to have gained from the pandemic, how much of a leap is it to persuade someone that the crisis has been orchestrated deliberately so that elites can amass power?The genius of Murdoch’s hosts was giving people a place to direct their anger. With his thick German accent and outpost in the Swiss Alps, the WEF’s founder, Klaus Schwab, labelled a “charismatic German” and “dangerous Marxist leader” by Sky News Australia, was the perfect villain for this conspiracy. For rightwing pundits, the great reset was also a welcome distraction from their own complicity with power and wealth, having spent four years cheerleading a president whose major legislative achievement was a mammoth tax cut that disproportionately benefited the rich.That the WEF has inspired a conspiracy about elites is unsurprising; the organisation is best known for its annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland, when top corporate executives arrive in fleets of private jets to pay lip service to climate change. While Schwab has pronounced that “neoliberalism has had its day”, it is left to his critics to remind the WEF of its record, such as its publication of an annual “global competitiveness index” that has, since the 1970s, flogged national governments into a race to the bottom to adopt lower taxes and slash regulations.If the great reset tells us anything about political reality, it’s that corporate elites can’t win legitimacy through vacuous initiatives. People recoil, it turns out, at being treated like buggy hard drives that can be reset from above. Changing the conditions of people’s lives and the causes of political alienation will take far more than the WEF’s tone-deaf video about the opportunities of a pandemic, fronted by the royal family. It’s social movements such as Black Lives Matter and the climate strikers, not boardroom initiatives, that offer a better lesson in how to gather popular support for the transformations we need.• Quinn Slobodian is an associate professor of history at Wellesley College, Massachusetts• This article was amended on 4 December 2020 to reflect the fact that Candace Owens is not a Fox News host More

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      in Elections

      Biden plans to urge all Americans to wear masks for 100 days after inauguration

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      President-elect and vice-president-elect Kamala Harris pledge to receive Covid vaccines as soon as possibleJoe Biden intends to call for all Americans to wear masks for 100 days after he becomes president in an attempt to bring down infection rates, as the coronavirus crisis continues to rage out of control in the US.The president-elect and vice-president-elect, Kamala Harris, have also committed to receiving coronavirus vaccinations as soon as possible when, as expected, the first vaccines are approved by US regulators. Continue reading… More

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      in Elections

      Donald Trump stays silent as US sees record 2,804 coronavirus deaths in a day

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      President fails to address national crisis, instead remaining focused on false voter fraud claimsA day after 2,804 Americans died in a single day from the coronavirus pandemic – almost as many as in the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks – Donald Trump said nothing about the harrowing national crisis.The US president’s silence broke from the tradition of predecessors who have sought to play the role of “consoler-in-chief” to the American public after deadly bombings, school shootings and other tragedies. Continue reading… More

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      in US Politics

      US logs a record 3,157 coronavirus deaths in one day

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      The US recorded its highest daily number of coronavirus deaths on Wednesday, as the number of people admitted to hospital with Covid exceeded 100,000 for the first time since the pandemic began.
      According to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, 3,157 new deaths were recorded on Wednesday, more than the number of people killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The previous high was the 2,607 deaths recorded on 15 April, at the beginning of the pandemic.

      There were 200,070 new cases on Wednesday, only the second time that new cases had exceeded 200,000. With the total caseload now standing at 13,911,728, the US is expected to record its 14-millionth case on Thursday, and experts predict the death toll could reach nearly 450,000 by the end of February.
      The deaths, cases and hospitalizations showed a country slipping deeper into crisis, with perhaps the worst yet to come, in part because of the delayed effects from Thanksgiving last week, when millions of Americans disregarded warnings to stay home and celebrate only with members of their household.
      Across the US, the surge has swamped hospitals and left nurses and other healthcare workers shorthanded and burned out.
      “The reality is December and January and February are going to be rough times. I actually believe they are going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation,” Dr Robert Redfield, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Wednesday.
      Redfield said that about 90% of hospitals in the country were at stretched capacity.
      “We are at a very critical time right now about being able to maintain the resilience of our healthcare system,” he said.
      The grave total came as Joe Biden, the president-elect, threw his weight behind a bipartisan $908bn coronavirus relief effort in Congress which would provide $300 a week in federal unemployment benefits and direct $160bn to states and cities.
      Chart
      Hospital admissions grew over the course of November, setting new records nearly every day. The American Ambulance Association referred to a 911 emergency call system “at a breaking point”.
      Governor Laura Kelly of Kansas said there were no staffed ICU beds in the south-west of the state, while in New Mexico, coronavirus patients were using 27% of hospital beds, which has left the state with just 16 intensive care beds left to spare.
      In California alone, more than 8,000 people were being treated for coronavirus on Wednesday, after the state saw a record number of hospitalizations for the fourth day in a row.
      Health authorities had warned that the numbers could fluctuate strongly before and after Thanksgiving, as they often do around holidays and weekends, when because of reporting delays, figures often drop, then rise sharply a few days later as state and local agencies catch up with the backlog.
      The White House coronavirus taskforce coordinator, Dr Deborah Birx, urged Americans who had travelled over the recent holiday weekend to behave as though they had the virus.
      “If you are under 40, you need to assume you became infected during the Thanksgiving period if you gathered beyond your immediate household. Most likely, you will not have symptoms; however, you are dangerous to others.”
      April’s peak of cases and deaths was concentrated mostly in New York and New England, but the current spread of the virus is across the whole country, and shows no sign of slowing down. Over 1.1m new cases have been recorded in the last seven days alone, and 273,621 people have died in total.
      Donald Trump’s few public appearances recently have been dedicated to efforts to overturn the results of the election rather than deal with coronavirus. Before the election, Trump said that the country was rounding the corner, and the media would no longer talk about Covid after the election.
      Chart
      The mayor of Los Angeles, the second largest city in the US, with a population of 3.9 million, warned it was nearing a “devastating tipping point” this week, as officials introduced new guidance prohibiting mingling of households.
      “It’s time to hunker down,” Eric Garcetti said. “It’s time to cancel everything. And if it isn’t essential, don’t do it.”
      Los Angeles’s restrictions are far from a blanket ban on activity, however, with retail businesses allowed to remain open if they implement a set of protocols, and golf courses, tennis courts and outdoor gyms allowed to remain open. Film and TV production are also allowed to continue.
      Los Angeles county, which includes Los Angeles and surrounding areas, is home to 10 million people and has recorded 414,185 infections so far. So far 7,740 people have died.
      Some coronavirus relief programs passed by Congress are due to expire at the end of the year. Twelve million people are due to lose unemployment benefits as Democrats and Republicans remain at an impasse over the size of a new relief package.
      The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed a stimulus bill worth $3tn in May and has pushed for a more than $2tn measure in recent weeks, but have dropped their demands to a $908bn bill, which Biden said on Wednesday he would support.
      Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the Senate, supported a $1tn bill in the summer but abandoned that after criticism from conservatives. McConnell has since been fixed on a $550bn bill, which has twice failed in the Senate.
      The vice-president, Mike Pence, who has been leading the Trump administration response to the pandemic, will participate in a coronavirus response roundtable in Memphis on Thursday. More

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      Obama, Clinton and Bush pledge to take Covid vaccine on TV to show its safety

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      Former US presidents Barack Obama, George W Bush and Bill Clinton have pledged to get vaccinated for coronavirus on television to promote the safety of the vaccine.The trio’s effort comes as the Food and Drug Administration prepares to meet next week to decide whether to authorize a Covid-19 vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech.More than 3,100 people died from the coronavirus in America on Wednesday, a record single-day high and more than the number of people killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.Obama, Bush and Clinton’s willingness to address the seriousness of the pandemic is markedly different from the attitude of Donald Trump, who remained silent as the US passed 250,000 coronavirus deaths in November.In an interview with SiriusXM host Joe Madison, Obama said that he would trust Anthony Fauci if the infectious disease expert declares a coronavirus vaccine to be safe.“People like Anthony Fauci, who I know, and I’ve worked with, I trust completely,” Obama said. “So, if Anthony Fauci tells me this vaccine is safe, and can vaccinate, you know, immunize you from getting Covid, absolutely, I’m going to take it.”Many Americans say they will not agree to be vaccinated against Covid-19. A poll by Gallup, released in mid-November, showed that 42% of the country would not take the vaccine even if it was “available right now at no cost”.Obama said he would take the vaccine once it was available for people “who are less at risk”. The 44th president is 59 and is not known to suffer from any serious health problems.“I may end up taking it on TV or having it filmed, just so that people know that I trust this science, and what I don’t trust is getting Covid,” he added.Freddy Ford, Bush’s chief of staff, told CNN the former president is also willing to receive the vaccine on camera.“A few weeks ago, President Bush asked me to let Dr Fauci and Dr Birx know that, when the time is right, he wants to do what he can to help encourage his fellow citizens to get vaccinated,” Ford told CNN.“First, the vaccines need to be deemed safe and administered to the priority populations. Then, President Bush will get in line for his, and will gladly do so on camera.”Clinton’s press secretary told CNN that he too is prepared to be filmed as he takes the vaccine.“President Clinton will definitely take a vaccine as soon as available to him, based on the priorities determined by public health officials,” Angel Urena said. “And he will do it in a public setting if it will help urge all Americans to do the same.”The three presidents, along with Jimmy Carter and George H Bush, who died in 2018, previously teamed up to raise money for relief efforts for Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. More