ansible
ansible's JournalProtesters are clashing with police in Montreal, Canada
https://twitter.com/PMBreakingNews/status/1267251493016604672Truck just plowed through protesters in Minneapolis
https://twitter.com/jadaaford/status/1267230001239175168oh jeez, it just keeps getting worse and worse
Joe Rogan is now apparently the new Walther Cronkite of today's generation
What are your thoughts on him, and how his influence is now even more pervasive than mainstream news media?
https://twitter.com/Chris_arnade/status/1264951369145954313
WTF is wrong with California, why are so many so nonchalant about the virus here??
Every time I go out it's like only 1/3 at best of the people at stores are wearing masks. The rest simply don't care at all!
China's ambassador to Israel found dead in Tel Aviv home: police
Source: reuters
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - China’s ambassador to Israel was found dead in his home in a Tel Aviv suburb on Sunday, an Israeli police spokesman said.
He did not comment on the cause of death of ambassador Du Wei, who was 57 years old and became ambassador to Israel in February, according to the embassy’s website.
“As part of the regular procedure, police units are at the scene,” the spokesman said.
Israel’s Channel 12 TV, quoting unidentified emergency medical officials, said initial indications were that Du died in his sleep of natural causes.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-israel-diplomacy-idUSKBN22T06Y
Dutch official advice to single people: find a sex buddy for lockdown
Single men and women in the Netherlands are being advised to organise a seksbuddy (sex buddy) after criticism of rules dictating that home visitors maintain a 1.5-metre distance from their hosts during the coronavirus lockdown.
In a typically open-minded intervention, official guidance from the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) has been amended to suggest those without a permanent sexual partner come to mutually satisfactory agreements with like-minded individuals.
On the advice of scientists at the RIVM, the Netherlands has been on what the government describes as an “intelligent lockdown” since 23 March, allowing up to three visitors into homes on the strict condition that they keep their distance.
But the RIVM now concedes that “it makes sense that as a single [person] you also want to have physical contact” while warning that the risks of such intimacy should be managed.
“Discuss how best to do this together,” the RIVM suggests. “For example, meet with the same person to have physical or sexual contact (for example, a cuddle buddy or ‘sex buddy’), provided you are free of illness. Make good arrangements with this person about how many other people you both see. The more people you see, the greater the chance of (spreading) the coronavirus.”
The RVIM also has advice for those in a relationship with someone infected by coronavirus or in quarantine with suspected symptoms of the disease. “Don’t have sex with your partner if they have been isolated because of (suspected) coronavirus infection,” the RVIM says. “Sex with yourself or with others at a distance is possible (think of telling erotic stories, masturbating together).”
In the UK, the government warned at the start of its lockdown that couples who do not cohabit must either not meet at all, or else rapidly move in together. Jenny Harries, the deputy chief medical officer, told reporters that dating couples “should test the strength of their relationship and decide whether one wishes to be permanently resident in another household”.
The Dutch institute’s change of mind on the fate of singletons follows the expression of immense frustration in some quarters at the rules for single people. In an opinion piece written in the Het Parool newspaper, Linda Duits, a journalist specialising in gender issues, squarely criticised the RIVM, arguing that sex was a human right.
“Proximity and physical contact are not a luxury, they are basic needs,” Duits wrote. “If we have learned anything from the Aids epidemic, it is that not having sex is not an option.”
The Dutch government has been easing its lockdown in recent weeks. Hairdressers, nail salons and beauty parlours started work again on Monday and restaurants, bars and cinemas are due to reopen on 1 June.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/15/dutch-official-advice-to-single-people-find-a-sex-buddy-for-lockdown-coronavirus
As China hoarded medical supplies, the CIA believes it tried to stop the WHO from sounding alarm
The CIA believes China tried to prevent the World Health Organization from sounding the alarm on the coronavirus outbreak in January—a time when Beijing was stockpiling medical supplies from around the world. A CIA report, the contents of which were confirmed to Newsweek by two U.S. intelligence officials, said China threatened the WHO that the country would stop cooperating with the agency's coronavirus investigation if the organization declared a global health emergency.
It was the second such report from a Western intelligence service and is likely to further inflame tensions between the United States and China over a pandemic that has killed 280,000 people worldwide—more than a quarter of them American.
The first report, a German intelligence assessment published by Der Spiegel last week, accused Chinese President Xi Jinping of personally applying pressure on WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on January 21.
The WHO dismissed the notion that Xi himself intervened, but declined to address specifically the question of whether Chinese officials made any effort to delay or change the announcement of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).
"We don't comment on specific discussions with member states but we can say that at all times during the pandemic WHO has acted in accordance with its mandate as an evidence-based technical organization focusing on protecting all people, everywhere," WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier told Newsweek. "WHO bases its recommendations on science, public health best practices, evidence, data, and the advice of independent experts.
"Dr Tedros did not communicate with President Xi on Jan 20, 21 or 22. Dr Tedros and his senior team met with President Xi in Beijing on Jan. 28," Lindmeier said. "The issue of PHEIC did not come up in that meeting."
The U.S. intelligence officials who spoke to Newsweek could not say whether President Xi played a role in pressuring the WHO.
https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-cia-believes-china-tried-stop-who-alarm-pandemic-1503565
Cuomo Reverses Nursing Home Directive to Take COVID-19 Patients, Requires More Staff Testing
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued a series of new rules for nursing homes in hopes of curbing the spread of the coronavirus and protecting the health and safety of the state’s most vulnerable population.
Since the start of the pandemic, more than 5,300 New Yorkers living in nursing homes have died from the virus, that's according to a tally from the Associated Press.
Hospitals cannot release patients to nursing homes in New York unless the patient tests negative for the virus, Cuomo said Sunday. The governor's announcement is a reversal of sorts from a March order by the state's health department requiring nursing home to accept recovering patients.
Previously, the health department's order stated "[nursing homes] are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission."
"We're just not going to send a person who is positive to a nursing home after hospital visit. Period. If there's any issue, the resident must be referred to the department of health which will find alternative care," Cuomo said Sunday.
Last week, New York state reported more than 1,700 previously undisclosed deaths at nursing homes and adult care facilities in a tally that included for the first time people believed to have been killed by the coronavirus before their diagnoses could be confirmed.
The tally, released late Monday, emerged as state officials faced scrutiny over how they have protected vulnerable residents from the coronavirus.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/cuomo-reverses-nursing-home-directive-to-take-covid-19-patients-requires-more-staff-testing/2410533/
Anti-lockdown protests threaten Germany's coronavirus battle: politicians
BERLIN (Reuters) - German politicians expressed alarm on Monday over anti-lockdown protests held in major cities at the weekend, warning that conspiracy theorists and others with an agenda were exploiting frustration with measures to contain the coronavirus pandemic.
While protests held in Berlin, Munich and Stuttgart were relatively modest in size, several resulted in violent clashes with police as densely packed crowds violated social distancing requirements designed to prevent the virus from spreading.
The protests, mounted in part by proponents of conspiracy theories blaming everyone from vaccine makers to billionaire software tycoon and philanthropist Bill Gates for the disease, came as the virus's reproduction rate in Germany ticked back above the critical threshold of 1.
"Germany has a free media landscape that informs about all aspects of the pandemic," government spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Monday. "Abstruse claims and hate-filled assertions, theories about evils machinating globally are something quite different."
Germany has been successful in using social distancing to reduce the spread of the virus. But Sunday's "R" number, which implied that each carrier is now infecting just over one other person on average, highlights the dilemma facing authorities as they plot a slow reopening of Europe's largest economy.
"The idea that the pandemic was deliberately introduced to control the people, and that Bill Gates or other dark forces are behind it, reaches deep into the middle of society," Georg Maier, interior minister of the Thuringia region, told Der Spiegel magazine.
An employee of the Federal Interior Ministry was relieved of his duties at the weekend after writing and widely distributing an 80-page document on ministry notepaper in which he described the coronavirus as no worse than normal 'flu. The ministry described the paper as the civil servant's personal view.
Large gatherings such as the weekend's protests risk becoming infection hot spots even as German authorities rush to prepare expanded medical facilities to deal with the possibility of new outbreaks or a broader second wave.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/anti-lockdown-protests-threaten-germanys-coronavirus-battle-politicians/ar-BB13UjVj?OCID=bingcoronaviruslinks
NYC nurse arrested for gassing up car with credit card stolen from dying coronavirus patient
A ghoulish Staten Island nurse swiped a credit card from a dying coronavirus patient in a hospital ventilator unit, using the pilfered plastic to callously purchase groceries and gas as he wasted away, authorities charged Thursday.
Danielle Conti, 43, used the pandemic as her personal piggy bank after allegedly stealing the charge card from 70-year-old widower Anthony Catapano while making her daily rounds at hard-hit Staten Island University Hospital North sometime in early April, authorities charge.
The Staten Island grandfather of a 12-year-old girl died on April 12 from COVID-19 complications.
“I can’t believe a person could do something like that to someone fighting for his life," said Tara Catapano, the dead man’s devastated daughter, as she choked up with emotion. "This is a nurse who took an oath to treat, protect and save patients. It’s disgusting ... Never in a million years did I expect any of this to happen.”
On April 9, when the nursing veteran allegedly rang up charges of $60.23, Staten Island hit its coronavirus peak with nearly 1,200 cases in a single day.
Cops said the card was used at a gas station. The victim’s daughter says another charge was made the same day at a ShopRite store.
“She is a despicable human being,” an outraged Tara Catapano told the Daily News. “How would she feel if somebody did this to her parents when they were gravely ill? I hope she gets what she deserves, and loses her license and her job."
Conti was charged with grand larceny and ordered to appear in Staten Island Criminal Court at a later date. She started working at Staten Island University Hospital in 2007, and a hospital spokesman said she was immediately suspended and faced possible termination over the charges.
https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-coronavirus-nurse-steals-credit-card-dying-coronavirus-patient-20200507-2p3ihwwe7nfv5hddioyrlioau4-story.html
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