Day of Broken Glass: Shelter in Place

Posted on by Thor

January 6, 2021 was America’s Day of Broken Glass. When the Capitol was breached by rioters, members of the Senate and Congress had to shelter in place in a secure location. That secure location was a committee hearing space. Several of those lawmakers have tested positive or COVID-19 possibly exposing others in the room to the virus.

The Capitol’s attending physician, Brian Monahan, notified all lawmakers Sunday January 10, 2021 of the virus exposure and urged them to be tested. Lawmakers were huddled together in the room for several hours while the Capitol was under siege.

Face coverings are required in House committee hearings and mask-wearing is a requirement on the House floor. Some lawmakers and staff were furious after video surfaced of Republican lawmakers not wearing their masks in the safe room during lockdown.

The clip showed Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) trying to pass out masks to lawmakers without face coverings. Newly elected QAnon conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.) was one of the offenders. She grinned as the rioters took control of the Capitol outside the conference room. Now that she is a member of the government, she should realize that she is a satanic pedophile elite who is responsible for all the evil in the world.  Markwayne Mullin (R-Ok.) beside her, joked that he didn’t want to get into politics, but he would not accept a mask being offered to him. He wore a varsity football jacket, possibly thinking he could blend in to the crowd of rioting yahoos should the safe room be overrun. Andy Briggs of (R-Az.), Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Michael Cloud (R-Tx.) and, Doug LaMalfa of California all refused masks.

Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.) announced Monday January 11, 2021 that she has tested positive for COVID-19. She believes she was exposed to the virus while sheltering in place with several of her House colleagues, some of whom she said refused to wear masks.  A statement from Watson Coleman’s office indicates she was was in that specific safe room. Coleman is isolating and awaiting the results of PCR testing; she previously received the first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID19 vaccine, which was made available to members of Congress, the Supreme Court, and Executive Branch agencies for the purposes of continuity of government operations. She said, “I received a positive test result for COVID-19, and am home resting at this time. While I am experiencing mild, cold-like symptoms, I remain in good spirits and will continue to work on behalf of my constituents.” Pramila Jayapal, (D-Wash.), said she has also tested positive and criticized Republican members of Congress who declined to wear a mask when it was offered to them.

Also testing positive were, Jake LaTurner of (R-La.) and Charles Fleischmann (R-Tenn.). A spokesmen for both lawmakers told the Post they were not in the lockdown room. The riot was a super-spreader event, said Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. The crowd “wasn’t adhering to what we know are good practices in terms of mask-wearing and other things,” he said on Sunday’s Face the Nation. “I think they deliberately eschewed those things. So, yeah, we’re going to see chains of transmission come out of that kind of a gathering, for sure.”

Eye of the Hurricane

Posted on by Thor

In the eye of a hurricane there is quiet for just a moment. As I painted this, hurricane Isaias was downgraded to a tropical storm as it churns off the coast of Florida. The latest projections show it hitting the coast of Central Florida about 8pm tonight with winds of about 75 miles per hour making it a category one hurricane. Orlando is under a tropical storm warning for now.

With hundreds of people dying every day in the Sunshine State from COVID-19, this hurricane just seems like business as usual, a sign of global warming that is another disaster that can be ignored by those in power.

The latest of the COVID-19 front from Dr. Deborah Birx of the White House coronavirus task force is that we are in a “new phase” in the battle against the virus. She is urging all Americans to wear masks and follow social distancing guidelines. “What we are seeing today is different than from March and April. It is extraordinarily wide spread in both rural and urban areas.” she said in an interview with CNN. FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb warned that the country could see 300,000 deaths by the end of 2020.

When you try to digest these huge numbers, then a category one hurricane seems just like a blip on the map of a far reaching tragedy. The death tolls will depend on how southern and western states respond to the outbreaks in the coming weeks. Birx pointed out that we need to stop super spreading events where the virus can spread like wildfire.

Testing facilities in Florida are being shit down because of the impending hurricane. Florida’s Division of Emergency Management said Wednesday in a news release that its testing sites simply can’t hold up to the threat of a potential tropical cyclone because they include tents and other free-standing structures. Orange county soon followed suit, saying all health department-run testing sites will also be closed into next week. Orange’s Health Department said sites there would be closed at least through Wednesday. So you can expect the case numbers to drop and politicians will use the lull as an excuse to claim all is back to normal. It is not.

Florida Governor Ron Disaterous signed an order Friday declaring “a state of emergency in every coastal county of Florida’s east coast, from Miami-Dade to Nassau counties,” he said. This is business as usual for him as he seems incapable of even admitting Florida is experiencing a health crisis that could surpass what New York went through in April. Floridians are more likely to die from COVID-19 than a tree limb breaking.