Biden’s CDC Director: If You’re Not Scared Shitless About COVID-19, You Should Be

With more and more of the country opening up a year into the pandemic, it might seem as though life is returning to normal, and that COVID-19 will soon be in the rearview. Obviously, that would be a welcome development after 12-plus months of lockdowns and death. Yet according to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. is rapidly moving in the wrong direction on COVID-19 and, in her professional opinion, people should be shitting themselves in fear over what will come next if the country doesn’t get a handle on cases.

During a press briefing on Monday, Walensky told reporters: “When I first started at CDC about two months ago I made a promise to you: I would tell you the truth even if it was not the news we wanted to hear. Now is one of those times when I have to share the truth, and I have to hope and trust you will listen.” Warning of what she sees happening down the line based on the surge in new coronavirus cases, a visibly shaken Walensky said, “I’m going to pause here, I’m going to lose the script, and I’m going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom. We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are and so much reason for hope, but right now I’m scared. I know what it’s like as a physician to stand in that patient room, gowned, gloved, masked, shielded, and to be the last person to touch someone else’s loved one because their loved one couldn’t be there. I know what it’s like when you’re the physician, when you’re the health care provider, and you’re worried that you don’t have the resources to take care of that patient in front of you. I know that feeling of nausea when you read the crisis standards of care and you wonder whether there are going to be enough ventilators and who’s going to make that choice. And I know what it’s like to pull up to your hospital every day and see the extra morgue sitting outside.”

The U.S. is currently recording a weekly average of 63,239 new coronavirus cases per day, a 16% increase from a week ago, according a CNBC analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University, while the U.S. is seeing a 4.2% increase from last week in hospitalizations, up to a seven-day average of 4,816 coronavirus admissions as of Friday. Per CNBC:

Leading public health experts have warned since late February that infections could pick back up again amid the rise of virus variants threatening to sweep across the U.S. much like they did in Europe. One of those variants first identified in the U.K., known as B.1.1.7, has now been detected in every state except Oklahoma, according to the CDC’s most recent data. The agency is also carefully watching another variant found in New York City, known as B.1.526, which is also thought to be more transmissible compared with previous strains, Walensky said last week.

The White House’s chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said Sunday, however, that the troublesome virus mutations aren’t the only reason cases are on the rise. More Americans, tired of pandemic restrictions and reassured by the lifesaving vaccines, are traveling for spring break. Some state leaders are pulling back on restrictions, including mask mandates, intended to slow the virus’s spread. “Variants we take seriously and are concerned, but it is not only the variants that are doing that,” Fauci told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday.

Also on Sunday, CNN aired a special in which top doctors in the Trump administration slammed the federal government’s response to the pandemic last year, on the off chance it was unclear that the 45th president’s handling of the crisis was disastrous at best. According to former CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar allegedly personally intervened to try to change reports that political officials didn’t like. (Azar denied this accusation, which Redfield predicted he would. Other former CDC officials have similarly claimed that their reports were edited by the White House, with “requests and dictates” coming from budget director Russell Vought and senior adviser Kellyanne Conway and suggestions on guidance from famed public health expert Ivanka Trump.) According to Dr. Deborah Birx, the majority of the deaths that occurred in the spring, after the first 100,000, could have been prevented by a stronger response from the government.

The terrifying warning from Walensky followed a positive update on the nation’s vaccine rollout; Andy Slavitt, White House senior adviser for COVID response, said Monday that the U.S. is administering an average of 2.7 million shots per day, making it highly likely that Biden will hit his new goal of 200 million shots in his first 100 days in office. “This is good news. We’re headed in the right direction, but we can’t slow down. Millions remain unvaccinated and at risk,” Slavitt said.

In her briefing, Walensky pleaded with Americans to not only get vaccinated when they are eligible but to continue to follow guidelines on masks and social distancing. “I’m speaking today not necessarily as your CDC director and not only as your CDC director, but as a wife, as a mother, as a daughter, to ask you to just please hold on a little while longer,” she said, adding: “When we see that uptick in cases, what we have seen before is that things really have a tendency to surge, and surge big.” 

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Florida Republicans are taking a page from Georgia’s playbook

The Florida GOP would like to enact its own wildly antidemocratic voting law too, please. Per NBC News:

Florida Republicans are considering a bill that would effectively make it a crime to give voters food or drink, including water, within 150 feet of polling places. State law currently prohibits campaigning within 100 feet of polling locations, but an elections bill introduced last week, H.B. 7041, expands that zone to 150 feet and includes a prohibition on giving “any item” to voters or “interacting or attempting to interact” with voters within that zone. State Rep. Blaise Ingoglia, a Republican from Spring Hill, said in a committee meeting last Monday that the ban would include “food or beverages.”

The proposal is similar to a measure in Georgia’s sweeping new election law that bans giving water, food, or gifts to voters waiting in line, among many other restrictions. President Joe Biden, in condemning Georgia’s law as “outrageous” and “Jim Crow in the 21st Century,” singled out that provision as evidence of suppressive intent in a state he flipped blue for the first time in decades.

“It’s an atrocity,” Biden told reporters on Friday. “They passed a law saying you can’t provide water for people standing in line while they’re waiting to vote. You don’t need anything else to know this is nothing but punitive, designed to keep people from voting.”

Lindsey Graham: I need an assault weapon in case South Carolina is hit by a hurricane and an imaginary gang comes looking for me

Apparently it was Jeff Bezos‘s idea to get in a Twitter war with Democratic lawmakers

Remember last week, when Amazon’s corporate Twitter account started lashing out at various politicians like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in an extremely misguided attempt to defend itself over, among other things, attempting to block employees in an Alabama warehouse from forming a union? According to a report from Vox, the idea came straight from the top:

Amazon has long been at odds with Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) over their criticisms of the company’s labor and business practices. But the discord reached new heights last week when Amazon aggressively went after both senators on Twitter in an unusual attack for a large corporation. With each new snarky tweet from an Amazon executive or the company’s official Twitter account, insiders and observers alike asked a version of the same question: “What the hell is going on?”

It turns out that Amazon leaders were following a broad mandate from the very top of the company: Fight back. Recode has learned that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos expressed dissatisfaction in recent weeks that company officials weren’t more aggressive in how they pushed back against criticisms of the company that he and other leaders deem inaccurate or misleading. What followed was a series of snarky and aggressive tweets that ended up fueling their own media cycles.

Among other unintended consequences of the social media strategy, a story about Amazon contractors being forced to pee in bottles and defecate in bags in order to meet their quotas returned to the news cycle. “You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us,” @amazonnews snarkily wrote to Rep. Mark Pocan, who referenced the story, leading The Intercept to reveal that not only is it true, Amazon managers had acknowledged it in internal memos.

Last month, Bezos announced that he was stepping down as CEO of the company he founded to focus his “energies and attention on new products and early initiatives.” He did not say if that meant crafting terribly ill-advised social media policies but apparently it did!

Elsewhere!

Biden to Say 90% of Adults Eligible for Shot in Three Weeks (Bloomberg)

Fraudsters are laundering millions in Covid relief funds through online investment platforms (CNBC)

A 911 operator said officers pinned down George Floyd for so long she thought the camera feed “had frozen.” (NYT)

“I Don’t Understand How He Goes to Work Every Day”: Rep. Grace Meng on Asian Hate, Gun Violence, and Mitch McConnell’s Obstructionist Ways (Hive)

Ship Stuck in the Suez Canal Is Freed (WSJ)

Visa allows paying off credit card bill with cryptocurrency (NYP)

Joe Biden’s coming infrastructure push, explained (Vox)

Biden Has First Shot at Judicial Vacancies (WSJ)

Nike denies involvement with Lil Nas X “Satan Shoes” containing human blood (NBC News)

Mafia fugitive reportedly busted after being seen in YouTube cooking videos (NYP)

Alaska Costco Shoppers Say Ravens Steal Their Groceries (AP)

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