Local GOP leaders criticize state emergency actions

GOP lawmakers criticize Gov. JB Pritzker’s coronavirus response

Illinois state Sens. Dave Syverson, R-Rockford, and Brian Stewart, R-Freeport, and state Rep. John Cabello, R-Machesney Park, have criticized Gov. JB Pritzker’s response to the coronavirus. [PHOTO PROVIDED]

By Isaac Guerrero
Staff writer

Posted Mar 16, 2020 at 3:52 PMUpdated Mar 16, 2020 at 8:04 PM

Brian Stewart, Dave Syverson and John Cabello say decision to ban diners from restaurants was hasty

ROCKFORD — Three Republican legislators are criticizing Gov. JB Pritzker for his decision to close restaurants and bars for two weeks to slow the spread of the new coronavirus.

“To bureaucrats and billionaires, two weeks without a paycheck is nothing,” said a joint statement issued Monday by Rep. John Cabello, R-Machesney Park, and Sen. Brian Stewart, R-Freeport. “In fact, the bureaucrats’ paychecks are guaranteed by the taxpayers of Illinois, unlike the cooks, the servers, the dishwashers, and the owners of those bars and restaurants.”

Sen. Dave Syverson, R-Rockford, turned to Facebook to mock what he described as government and media “hype” of the coronavirus with a post featuring a Scooby Doo meme.

“Governor and local leaders are making emotional decisions without thinking through consequences of their actions,” Syverson wrote in another Facebook post on Sunday.

When asked on Monday which local leaders he believes are making emotional decisions, Syverson said:

“Any of them. The local leaders that were supporting the idea of closing all the restaurants and bars — it’s not their decision to do it, but supporting it without questioning the governor or stopping to think and ask why are we doing this? I think the governor is sincere. I don’t doubt his sincerity.

″... My only concern is some of that stuff just doesn’t make sense. Why not close grocery stores also? Why only restaurants and bars? I don’t see how closing A and pushing people to B is going to solve the problem. And it will create further problems, especially economic and financial problems, especially for hourly workers.”

Winnebago County Public Health Administrator Sandra Martell said during a news conference on Monday that she was disappointed to hear criticism of the governor’s response to the pandemic — a response crafted by public health experts.

“This puts my community at social determinant risk even more than it was before,” Martell said of the comments from Cabello and Stewart. “When you start talking about economics and school closures and disruption and everything — that is terrible. We’re not making these recommendations with the idea that this is not intended to help.”

County Board Chairman Frank Haney and Rockford Mayor Tom McNamara, who were also at the news conference, said they, too, were disappointed with the statements made by the trio of lawmakers.

“Right now is not the time for politics. ... Right now is the time for leadership,” McNamara said.

“Neither of those two individuals have reached out (to ask) if they could help,” McNamara said of Cabello and Stewart. “That’s what we need leaders to do. We don’t need leaders sitting on the bleachers taking pot shots.

“To my knowledge, I don’t know either of them all that well, but to my knowledge none of them have a medical degree from anywhere. We need to follow the medical professionals’ advice, and that’s what we’re doing.”

Pritzker on Sunday ordered that all Illinois restaurants and bars close — for in-person dining only — at midnight Monday to interrupt the spread of the virus. The governor’s order came after Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on CNN: “I would like to see a dramatic diminution of the personal interaction that we see in restaurants in bars.”

During an appearance on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Fauci said: “I think we should really be overly aggressive and get criticized for overreacting.”

He added: “Americans should be prepared that they’re going to have to hunker down significantly more than we as a country are doing.”

Indiana, the home state of Vice President Mike Pence, on Monday joined at least 17 other states that, as of Monday, have restricted or banned in-person dining at restaurants, bars and other establishments in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention advises that people practice “social distancing” and avoid close contact by maintaining a 6-foot distance from others to prevent the spread of the virus. Among the White House recommendations made Monday by President Trump: Avoid eating and drinking in bars, restaurants and food courts, avoid gatherings of 10 people or more and avoid discretionary travel.

Syverson said he patronized Rascal’s Bar & Grill in Loves Park and at Murphy’s Pub & Grill in Rockford on Sunday “as a last hurrah, and to show my support for local businesses.”

It makes little sense for Illinois to keep restaurants and taverns open for carryout purchases only, Syverson said.

“So you’re going to force all these people who are ordering carryout to go into this little 8-feet-by-8-feet carryout room, where they’re going to pick up and pay for their food and be a lot closer than 6 feet?” Syverson said.

Furthermore, Syverson said, Wisconsin has not banned dining inside its restaurants and bars. So Rockford residents can simply drive a few miles to a restaurant in the Badger State, where they could be exposed to the coronavirus and then drive home and potentially expose others.

Haney said Syverson’s criticism is out of line with guidance given Monday by Trump and other federal and state health experts.

“Everyone is concerned about economic disruption but I just heard the U.S. president, the Illinois governor and more importantly, health experts at all levels of government express serious concern over crowd size and social distancing,” Haney said. “The senator needs to listen or perhaps people need to stop to listening to Dave Syverson and his Facebook memes.”

The trajectory that Pritzker is on “could lead to some permanent damage to the Illinois economy and the confidence of the people of Illinois,” the news release from Cabello and Stewart said. “We urge the governor to proceed with the same caution that all of us have been advised to do when dealing with the coronavirus. Gov. Pritzker, please don’t kill the patient.”

Isaac Guerrero: 815-987-1361; iguerrero@rrstar.com; @isaac_rrs

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Nordstrom to shutter all its stores to limit virus spread

ANNE D'INNOCENZIO

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Associated Press•March 16, 2020

NEW YORK (AP) — Nordstrom Inc. says it will temporarily close all of its stores for two weeks starting Tuesday as it tries to limit the spread of the new virus.

The Seattle-based upscale chain, which operates 380 stores including 116 department stores, is the latest retailer to announce temporary closures. It joins Nike, Everlane, Apple and Abercrombie & Fitch, among others, in closing its doors. Like many of the other chains, Nordstrom says it will be providing pay for its employees during the period.

The company said Monday that it is also withdrawing its annual financial guidance, noting a slowdown in consumer demand, particularly in markets affected by the coronavirus. It also said that it will be making further cuts to its expenses and capital-expenditure plans.

“The health and safety of our customers and employees remain our top priority as we continue to make decisions during this rapidly evolving situation,” Nordstrom CEO Erik Nordstrom said in a statement.

Above is from:  https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nordstrom-shutter-stores-limit-virus-011615298.html

March 16: 3,487 confirmed cases of COVID 19

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the U.S.

As of March 16, 2020

In the United States, there have been 3,487 confirmed cases of COVID-19 detected through U.S. public health surveillance systems in 49 states and the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and US Virgin Islands.

CDC provides updated U.S. case information online on Mondays through Fridays.

Open Meeting Act changes for length of the Illinois State of Emergency

Client Alert:  Governor Suspends In-Person 

Attendance Requirement for Public Meetings

The Open Meetings Act requires members of a public body to be physically present at the location of an open meeting, and only allows remote participation by video or audio conference in limited circumstances, such as personal illness, work, or a family emergency.

In order to promote the social distancing required in response to the COVID-19, Governor Pritzker signed Executive Order No. 2020-07 on March 16, 2020, relieving local governments and public bodies of Open Meeting Act requirements relating to in-person attendance at public meetings. Section 6 of the order specifically allows public bodies to conduct meetings electronically without having to comply with the physical quorum requirement or the conditions for participating electronically in a meeting. Public bodies are encouraged to provide video, audio, and/or telephonic access to meetings to ensure members of the public can monitor the meeting and to update their websites and social media to keep the public apprised of change to their meetings.

"Section 6. During the duration of the Gubernatorial Disaster Proclamation, the provisions of the Open Meetings Act, 5 ILCS 120, requiring or relating to in-person attendance by members of a public body are suspended. Specifically, (1) the requirement in 5 ILCS 120/2.01 that 'members of a public body must be physically present' is suspended; and (2) the conditions in 5 ILCS 120/7 limiting when remote participation is permitted are suspended. Public bodies are encouraged to postpone consideration of public business where possible. When a meeting is necessary, public bodies are encouraged to provide video, audio, and/or telephonic access to meetings to ensure members of the public may monitor the meeting, and to update their websites and social media feeds to keep the public fully apprised of any modifications to their meeting schedules or the format of their meetings due to COVID-19, as well their activities relating to COVID-19."
The order does not relieve local governments of the requirements that

• the member seeking remote attendance must notify the recording secretary or clerk of the public body before the meeting, unless impractical;
• remote attendance by a member must be allowed by a majority of the public body; and
• remote attendance must be in accordance with and to the extent allowed by rules adopted by the public body.

Local governments should consider reviewing or adopting remote attendance rules to facilitate the remote participation allowed under the Governor's order.
The new order also includes a number of new restrictions, including the following:

• The order requires all restaurants and bars to suspend on-premises consumption (delivery and pick-up is still allowed). Restaurants in airports, hospitals, dining halls are exempt and hotel restaurants can still provide room service and carry-out.
• The order also prohibits any gathering, public or private, of 50 or more people. This includes fitness centers, bowling alleys, and theaters. Grocery stores, hospitals, pharmacies, gas stations, banks, and shelters are exempt.
• The order also suspends the one-week waiting period for unemployment claims.

Trump disbanded NSC pandemic unit that experts had praised

Trump disbanded NSC pandemic unit that experts had praised

By DEB RIECHMANNMarch 14, 2020

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President Donald Trump takes questions during a news conference about the coronavirus in the Rose Garden of the White House, Friday, March 13, 2020, in Washington. Vice President Mike Pence, left, and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, right listen. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Public health and national security experts shake their heads when President Donald Trump says the coronavirus “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.”

They’ve been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump administration’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House charged with preparing for when, not if, another pandemic would hit the nation.

“It would be nice if the office was still there,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institute of Health, told Congress this week. “I wouldn’t necessarily characterize it as a mistake (to eliminate the unit). I would say we worked very well with that office.”

The NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense survived the transition from President Barack Obama to Trump in 2017.

Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see the threat of pandemics in the same way that many experts in the field did.

“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed Friday in The Washington Post.

She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”

It’s impossible to assess the impact of the 2018 decision to disband the unit, she said. Cameron noted that biological experts remain at the White House, but she says it’s clear that eliminating the office contributed to what she called a “sluggish domestic response.” She said that shortly before Trump took office, the unit was watching a rising number of cases in China of a deadly strain of the flu and a yellow fever outbreak in Angola.

“It’s unclear whether the decision to disband the directorate, which was made in May 2018, after John Bolton became national security adviser, was a tactical move to downgrade the issue or whether it was part of the White House’s interest in simplifying and shrinking the National Security Council staff,” Cameron says.

The NSC during the Obama administration grew to about 250 professionals, according to Trump’s current national security adviser, Robert O’Brien. The staff has been cut to about 110 or 115 staffers, he said.

When Trump was asked on Friday whether closing the NSC global health unit slowed the U.S. response, the president called it a “nasty” question because his administration had acted quickly and saved lives.

“I don’t know anything about it,” Trump said.

Earlier, when asked about it, he said: “This is something that you can never really think is going to happen.”

On Saturday, John Bolton, a former Trump national security adviser, dismissed claims that “streamlining NSC structures impaired our nation’s bio defense are false.″ In a tweet, he said global health “remained a top NSC priority, and its expert team was critical to effectively handling the 2018-19 Africa Ebola crisis. The angry Left just can’t stop attacking, even in a crisis.″

For many years, the national intelligence director’s worldwide threat assessment has warned that a flu pandemic or other large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease could lead to massive rates of death and disability that would severely affect the world economy. Public health experts have been blowing whistles too.

Back in mid-2018, Fauci told Congress: “When you have a respiratory virus that can be spread by droplets and aerosol and ... there’s a degree of morbidity associated with that, you can have a catastrophe. ... The one that we always talk about is the 1918 pandemic, which killed between 50 and 100 million people. ... Influenza first, or something like influenza, is the one that keeps me up at night.”

The White House says the NSC remains involved in responding to the coronavirus pandemic.

A senior administration official said Friday that the NSC’s global health security directorate was absorbed into another division where similar responsibilities still exist, but under different titles. The work of coordinating policy and making sure that decisions made by Trump’s coronavirus task force are implemented is still the job of the NSC.

Some lawmakers aren’t convinced.

Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., and Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, have introduced a bill that would require future administrations to have experts always in place to prepare for new pandemics.

“Two years ago, the administration dismantled the apparatus that had been put in place five years before in the face of the Ebola crisis,” Connolly said. “I think, in retrospect, that was an unwise move. This bill would restore that and institutionalize it.”

Connolly said the bill is not meant to be critical of the Trump administration. He said it’s a recognition that Trump had to name a coronavirus responder just like Obama had to name one for Ebola in 2014. “We can’t go from pandemic to pandemic,” Connolly said.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 4 passed the measure, which is co-sponsored by 37 Democrats and five Republicans. The full House has not yet voted on the bill.

Chabot said one of the bill’s main goals is to would require personnel to be permanently in place preparing for pandemics.

“Specifically, we need someone, preferable at the NSC, to quarterback the U.S. government’s response since that response inevitably involves several agencies across the government,” Chabot said. “Our bill would make this position permanent.”

Former Obama administration officials insist that the Trump White House would have been able to act more quickly had the office still been intact.

“I think if we’d had a unit and dedicated professionals looking at this issue, gaming out scenarios well before ... we might have identified some of these testing issues,” says Lisa Monaco, President Obama’s homeland security adviser, said at a recent forum on coronavirus. “There would have been folks sounding the alarm in December when we saw this coming out of China, saying ’Hey, what do we need to be doing here in this country to address it?”

Ron Klain, who managed the government response to contain and mitigate the spread of Ebola in 2014, agreed.

“If I were back in my old job at the White House ... I’d be pushing to have us do 30 million tests — to test people in nursing homes, to test people with unexplained respiratory ailments, to test the people who regularly visit nursing homes, to test healthcare workers,” Klain said recently at the event hosted by the Center for American Progress in Washington.

Above is from:  https://apnews.com/ce014d94b64e98b7203b873e56f80e9a

Government official: Coronavirus vaccine trial starts Monday

Government official: Coronavirus vaccine trial starts MondayAP NEWS

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By ZEKE MILLERan hour ago

A gun store customer that gave his name only at John waits in line, Sunday, March 15, 2020, in Burbank, Calif. As consumers are buying all kinds of goods in large quantities amid coronavirus concerns, putting pressure on inventories, John stated that he was there to buy ammunition because most other stores were out and he wanted to stock up. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The first participant in a clinical trial for a vaccine to protect against the new coronavirus will receive an experimental dose on Monday, according to a government official.

The National Institutes of Health is funding the trial, which is taking place at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle. The official who disclosed plans for the first participant spoke on condition of anonymity because the move has not been publicly announced.

Public health officials say it will take a year to 18 months to fully validate any potential vaccine.

Testing will begin with 45 young, healthy volunteers with different doses of shots co-developed by NIH and Moderna Inc. There’s no chance participants could get infected from the shots, because they don’t contain the virus itself. The goal is purely to check that the vaccines show no worrisome side effects, setting the stage for larger tests.

Dozens of research groups around the world are racing to create a vaccine as COVID-19 cases continue to grow. Importantly, they’re pursuing different types of vaccines — shots developed from new technologies that not only are faster to produce than traditional inoculations but might prove more potent. Some researchers even aim for temporary vaccines, such as shots that might guard people’s health a month or two at a time while longer-lasting protection is developed.

Also in the works: Inovio Pharmaceuticals aims to begin safety tests of its vaccine candidate next month in a few dozen volunteers at the University of Pennsylvania and a testing center in Kansas City, Missouri, followed by a similar study in China and South Korea.

Even if initial safety tests go well, “you’re talking about a year to a year and a half” before any vaccine could be ready for widespread use, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

That still would be a record-setting pace. But manufacturers know the wait — required because it takes additional studies of thousands of people to tell if a vaccine truly protects and does no harm — is hard for a frightened public.

President Donald Trump has been pushing for swift action on a vaccine, saying in recent days that the work is “moving along very quickly” and he hopes to see a vaccine “relatively soon.”

Today, there are no proven treatments. In China, scientists have been testing a combination of HIV drugs against the new coronavirus, as well as an experimental drug named remdesivir that was in development to fight Ebola. In the U.S., the University of Nebraska Medical Center also began testing remdesivir in some Americans who were found to have COVID-19 after being evacuated from a cruise ship in Japan.

For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia. The worldwide outbreak has sickened more than 156,000 people and left more than 5,800 dead. The death toll in the United States is more than 50, while infections neared 3,000 across 49 states and the District of Columbia.

The vast majority of people recover. According to the World Health Organization, people with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three weeks to six weeks to recover.

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The Associated Press receives support for health and science coverage from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Above is from:  https://apnews.com/8089a3d0ec8f9fde971bddd7b3aa2ba1

500,000 Americans have COVID-19

'Don't believe the numbers you see': Johns Hopkins professor says up to 500,000 Americans have coronavirus

Adriana Belmonte

Associate Editor

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Yahoo Finance•March 13, 2020

Ad: 1s

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19, also known as the new coronavirus, to be a pandemic on March 11.

The virus has killed thousands of people worldwide, with over 135,000 confirmed cases and over 5,000 deaths. Public reaction has been mixed — many people have been rushing to grocery stores to stock up for a potential quarantine, while others have called the responses to be an overreaction.

According to Dr. Marty Makary, a medical professor at Johns Hopkins University, the coronavirus is something that “people need to take seriously.”

“I’m concerned when I hear a neighbor or a friend say that they’re planning to go to a kid’s swim meet in three weeks or going on vacation next week,” Makary said on Yahoo Finance’s “On the Move” (video above) on Friday. “No — we’re about to experience the worst public health epidemic since polio.”

Over 4,000 people have died from coronavirus so far. (Graphic: David Foster/Yahoo Finance)

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‘Don’t believe the numbers you see’

In the U.S. there are over 1,600 confirmed cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with 41 deaths. Makary said that the number of cases, though, is likely much higher.

“Don’t believe the numbers when you see, even on our Johns Hopkins website, that 1,600 Americans have the virus,” he said. “No, that means 1,600 got the test, tested positive. There are probably 25 to 50 people who have the virus for every one person who is confirmed.”

He added: “I think we have between 50,000 and half a million cases right now walking around in the United States.”

Part of the reason the number of cases might be higher without people realizing it is because of the shortage of coronavirus testing kits from the CDC. Between Jan. 18 and March 12, there were 13,624 tests for COVID-19 conducted in the U.S. Meanwhile, South Korea has conducted over 100,000 tests, and the U.K. has tested nearly 25,000 people.

The U.S. has conducted over 13,000 tests for coronavirus since Jan. 18. (Chart: CDC)

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“The CDC did admit to a mistake in the rollout of the testing and let’s face it — they went with the wrong testing system,” Makary said. “It was an early decision. It lived deep within the CDC and they have acknowledged that mistake.”

Despite issues with having enough testing kits for coronavirus, Makary said this didn’t change how he and other health professionals have been treating their patients.

“If we see you with coronavirus, we treat you the same regardless of that test result,” he said. “If it’s influenza or coronavirus, we give you respiratory support when it is needed. We recommend the same precautions. It’s helpful to mitigate the spread but that’s where the testing situation stands now.”

‘We could see 200,000 new patients ... up to 2 million’

There are other ways to slow down the contagion that don’t involve a medical background, like regularly washing your hands, avoiding touching your face, and practicing social distancing. This can help ease the burden on health care workers and try to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed with patients.

“Our American hospitals have had very little room to take on increased capacity,” Makary said. “Most ICUs function at full capacity or near full capacity. We only have 100,000 ICU beds in the United States. We could see 200,000 new patients that need critical care up to 2 million.”

Above is from:  https://finance.yahoo.com/news/marty-makary-on-coronavirus-in-the-us-183558545.html