From c940646d255b370592a1b987c848aa93171ca135 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Navan Chauhan Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2021 12:46:03 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] Added daily report --- archive-covid-19/28 February, 2021.html | 202 +++++++++ archive-daily-dose/28 February, 2021.html | 524 ++++++++++++++++++++++ index.html | 4 +- 3 files changed, 728 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) create mode 100644 archive-covid-19/28 February, 2021.html create mode 100644 archive-daily-dose/28 February, 2021.html diff --git a/archive-covid-19/28 February, 2021.html b/archive-covid-19/28 February, 2021.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fae5c7e --- /dev/null +++ b/archive-covid-19/28 February, 2021.html @@ -0,0 +1,202 @@ + + + + + + 28 February, 2021 + +Covid-19 Sentry + +

Covid-19 Sentry

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Contents

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From Preprints

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From Clinical Trials

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From PubMed

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Daily-Dose

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Contents

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From New Yorker

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From Vox

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+“Listen — we’re gonna continue to do exactly what we did in the last election,” McCarthy said at another point. +

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+The rest of CPAC has been similar in tone. In fact, despite President Joe Biden’s decisive popular vote and Electoral College victory over Trump — and Trump’s shameful efforts to overthrow the election during the transition period to a new administration — CPAC 2021 has served as a cultish celebration of the former president. None of the few remaining prominent anti-Trump Republicans were invited to speak, and no criticism of the former president has been brooked. +

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+Along these lines, perhaps the most revealing remark during McCarthy’s panel discussion came from Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), who, like many of his Republican colleagues, skipped the vote on the Covid-19 relief bill so he could appear at CPAC. +

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+“The most popular Republican figure in Congress today is Kevin McCarthy,” Banks said. “Let me tell you who the least popular Republicans in the party are today — they are those very few Republicans who want to erase Donald Trump and Donald Trump supporters from our party.” +

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+Banks’s observations about anti-Trump Republicans may be technically true, but what he didn’t mention is that Trump has dragged down the popularity of all GOP officials. A recent Forbes piece by Andrew Solender explains: +

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+Republicans have the lowest ratings [of national politicians], with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy down by 20 points, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) down by 30 points and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell suffering a staggering deficit of 44 points, with just 17% favorability and 61% unfavorability. +

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+Nonetheless, there’s a political calculus in McCarthy’s decision to stand behind Trump, even after he criticized him in the days following the insurrection. +

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+Trump may not be popular in general, but he remains overwhelmingly popular with the GOP base — a recent Politico/Morning Consult poll found 79 percent of Republicans viewed Trump favorably, while McCarthy received just 34 percent support among Republicans. And a recent USA Today/Suffolk University study found 46 percent of Republicans said they would leave the GOP should Trump start his own political party. +

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+It is Trump who can decide the fate of the GOP, and of individual lawmakers, and he has made it clear in the past that he values those lawmakers who are loyal to him. But there are also indications that the level of loyalty McCarthy has shown thus far, as fawning as it may be, may not be enough for Trump. +

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+Trump is reportedly thinking about denouncing McCarthy during his CPAC speech on Sunday +

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+McCarthy initially had some doubts about Trump. +

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+During the 2016 presidential campaign, for instance, he was recorded saying he believed Trump was literally on Vladimir Putin’s payroll. But during Trump’s tenure as president, McCarthy — who served as House Majority Leader until Republicans lost the majority in the 2018 midterms, then became House Minority Leader — emerged as one of Trump’s staunchest congressional defenders. +

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+McCarthy concocted far-fetched arguments to defend Trump during his first impeachment, including that there is a precedent against impeaching presidents in their first term, and went as far as to patronize and promote Trump’s private business. He echoed Trump’s lies about the FBI investigation into his relationship with Russia being tantamount to “a modern-day coup” and, while sitting next to Donald Trump Jr. at last year’s CPAC, farcically cited Wikipedia edits as evidence that big tech companies are biased against Republicans. +

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+Even after Trump lost the election last November, McCarthy went on Fox News and held up his disastrous coronavirus response as an example of “remarkable” governance. He defended a recorded phone call of Trump trying to bully the Georgia secretary of state into throwing out his loss there as evidence that he’s “always been concerned about the integrity of the election.” +

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+For a brief moment after the deadly January 6 insurrection Trump encouraged, however, McCarthy’s tune changed a bit. While McCarthy joined 146 other Republicans in voting to overthrow the election results, on January 13 he gave a speech on the House floor saying Trump “bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress.” +

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+But as it became clear that the Republican base was sticking with Trump, McCarthy quickly fell back in line. Just eight days after he said Trump “bears responsibility” for the insurrection, McCarthy said basically the exact opposite thing during a news conference. +

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+“I don’t believe he provoked it,” McCarthy said, referring to the January 6 insurrection. +

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+But that remarkable flip-flop apparently wasn’t enough to keep McCarthy in Trump’s good graces. Trump is now reportedly steamed that McCarthy stood by House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) even after Cheney voted for Trump’s second impeachment. +

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+The GOP split between the large MAGA faction McCarthy represents and the much smaller anti-Trump faction led by Cheney was illustrated in a scene on Wednesday, when, during a news conference, McCarthy told a reporter that he thinks Trump should be speaking at CPAC. He was immediately contradicted by Cheney, who was standing behind him and said, “I don’t believe [Trump] should be playing a role in the future of the party.” +

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+“On that high note, thank you all very much,” McCarthy quipped, before walking away from reporters. +

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+Trump is reportedly bothered that instead of purging Cheney from the party, McCarthy supported her in retaining her leadership position in the House Republican caucus — leading to awkward scenes like the one from Wednesday. Tara Palmeri provided the full context in the Saturday installment of Politico Playbook: +

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+Three people close to Trump tell me that he’s stewing anew over KEVIN MCCARTHY. It’s become so frequent that his advisers think the House minority leader may be in for a public reprimand. That’s even after the powwow at Mar-a-Lago where McCarthy tried to patch things up after he denounced Trump for the violence on Jan. 6. +

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+The reason for Trump’s displeasure: an emboldened Cheney. +

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+Each time Cheney criticizes Trump from her leadership post as the No. 3 House Republican, he’s reminded that it was McCarthy who pleaded with his conference to keep her on as chair — despite her vote to impeach Trump. The latest trigger came Wednesday, when Cheney said at a press conference that Trump should not lead the party going forward while McCarthy awkwardly stood by. +

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+McCarthy in particular, and CPAC speakers in general, have sided against Cheney in this dispute. On Friday, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) claimed during his speech that Cheney would be booed if she showed up at CPAC, and he’s not wrong. But that Trump is even considering publicly castigating McCarthy just because he won’t work to purge the handful of House Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment reflects the extent to which the party has devolved into a personality cult — one that’s endured even after the leader was defeated. +

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+Sign up for The Weeds newsletter. Every Friday, you’ll get an explainer of a big policy story from the week, a look at important research that recently came out, and answers to reader questions — to guide you through the first 100 days of President Joe Biden’s administration. +

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+People could be excused for experiencing some cognitive dissonance. The speakers who came before and after that incident demonstrated that enduring a year-long pandemic hasn’t motivated conservatives to take basic public health practices more seriously. +

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+This was perhaps most evident on Saturday, when South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, gave the headlining speech. Despite the fact that more than 1 in 500 South Dakotans has died from Covid-19 — a mortality rate that places the state among the 10 hardest-hit — Noem took a victory lap and portrayed public health responses to the pandemic as largely unnecessary. +

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+“Let me be clear — Covid didn’t crush the economy, government crushed the economy,” she said, before taking a direct shot at trusted public health experts. +

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+“Dr. Fauci is wrong a lot,” she added. +

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+Noem’s comments encapsulated the tone with which the coronavirus is being talked about at CPAC. Though America’s disastrous response to the pandemic was the responsibility of a Republican president, Noem and other speakers have pointed at the fact that blue states like New York and Massachusetts are among the highest in per capita deaths to discredit public health science and make it seem as though Trump’s bungling was actually a success story. Unfortunately, contrary to what Noem claims, it was not. +

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+“This is just dumb” +

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+Notably, a trio of Republican senators was among the worst offenders when it came to spreading Covid-19 misinformation on Friday. +

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+Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) got the morning going by bragging not only about going to church “during a time of Covid” but also about singing during the service. +

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+“I even dared to sing in church, contrary to California doctrine,” he said. +

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+But it has nothing to do with “California doctrine,” whatever that is. Singing in church was linked with superspreader events in the early days of the pandemic last spring, so public health experts recommended against it, and some states banned it (until a Supreme Court ruling in November found such bans to be unconstitutional). It’s not safe, unless you’ve already been vaccinated — which Lankford has been, but most Americans still have not. +

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+Lankford’s comment set the tone. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) began his speech by cracking a joke about his decision to travel to Mexico for a family vacation last week while millions of his constituents languished without power. He then pretended to not understand why it’s important to wear masks during a pandemic, describing it as “strange” that restaurant-goers are required to wear masks in many states unless they are eating or drinking. +

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+“You walk in, you gotta put your mask on — sadly, I’ve got two — you walk in, you gotta put your mask on. You sit down, you can take your mask off. See, apparently, the virus is actually connected to elevation,” Cruz quipped, adding later: “This is just dumb.” +

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+Later, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) mocked Maryland officials for state public health guidelines that ended up prohibiting CPAC from having the conference in its usual location just outside Washington, DC. +

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+“Even though cases are plummeting and vaccination rates are surging, we are still banned from getting anywhere near our nation’s capital,” Cotton said, as if the fact that daily new cases and deaths are down from where they were two months ago is a good reason to immediately drop all public health guidelines. +

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+In hindsight, CPAC 2020 was one of the earliest indicators that Republicans would politicize public health responses to the coronavirus pandemic by framing any measure that closed businesses or schools as an impingement on their personal freedoms. That mentality went on to infuse a reelection campaign in which Trump spread disease and misinformation across the country at rallies that made a mockery of basic public health measures. +

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+But even after Trump’s defeat, conservatives’ approach to the coronavirus pandemic remains unchanged. +

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+It’s still Trump’s party in more ways than one +

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+Beyond making a mockery of the coronavirus, another big theme from Friday was speakers pushing the same lies about the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection. +

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+Wayne Dupree, a conspiracy theorist who once claimed the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting was a false flag, used a panel discussion to try to blame antifa and Black Lives Matter for an insurrection that was perpetrated by Trump supporters. Later, a panel discussion devoted to “How Judges & Media Refused to Look at the Evidence” of election fraud had to be interrupted on Right Side Broadcasting’s CPAC stream so hosts could distance themselves from the panelists’ claims. (Voting machine companies have filed and threatened billion-dollar lawsuits against individuals and media organizations that have falsely claimed machines were rigged against Trump.) +

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+And, of course, the day was infused with lots of culture war grievances about everything from social media companies having the temerity to fact-check Trump to Mr. Potato Head’s genitalia. +

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+The big takeaway from all this is that conservatives haven’t even tried to learn lessons or make adjustments following an election cycle in which they lost control of the White House and the Senate. +

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+Like it was last year, CPAC 2021 is a cultish celebration of Donald Trump that will be headlined Sunday with a speech by the former president — an embodiment of a movement that stands for little more than owning the libs. +

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From The Hindu: Sports

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From The Hindu: National News

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From BBC: Europe

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From Ars Technica

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From Jokes Subreddit

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