The race was called by the Associated Press minutes after polls closed at 11 p.m. Eastern time. Biden won with roughly 70 percent of the vote with just over 40 percent of precincts reporting.
Sander suspended his presidential campaign last month but is remaining on primary ballots to try to rack up more delegates and influence the Democratic Party’s platform at its convention this summer.
Tuesday’s contest was conducted entirely by mail. Oregon established vote-by-mail as the standard mechanism for voting in the state in 1998 after passing a citizen’s initiative. Other states have pushed for increased mail ballot options this year amid the coronavirus outbreak.
SARASOTA, Fla. — Facing an explosive charge that his administration is manipulating coronavirus data to help make the case for reopening Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis played down the controversy Tuesday as a “nonissue.”
Florida’s COVID-19 death toll topped 2,000 Tuesday, underscoring the serious threat posed by the coronavirus and the potential consequences of not giving people accurate information on the risks involved.
Health experts say the milestone should serve as a sobering reminder to exercise caution as the state reopens, and DeSantis has presented his reopening plan as a “safe” and “step by step” approach. But the accusations levied by Rebekah Jones, a data expert at the Florida Department of Health, could undercut the governor’s reopening push.
“As a word of caution, I would not expect the new team to continue the same level of accessibility and transparency that I made central to the process during the first two months,” Jones wrote. “After all, my commitment to both is largely (arguably entirely) the reason I am no longer managing it.”
But DeSantis said at a Tuesday news conference that Jones sent an email to her supervisor saying the comments were being misinterpreted.
“I don’t know who she is but they gave me an email that she sent to her supervisor, said that, ‘Uh oh, I may have said something that was misrepresented,’” DeSantis said.
He added that Jones went on to write: “I said they’ve got a team working on it now and what I meant when I said don’t expect the same level of accessibility is that they are busy and can’t answer every single email they get right away and that it was ridiculous that I managed to do it in the first place and that I was tired and needed a break from working two months straight.”
Jones told Florida Today that she was fired on Monday. And she said in an email to the CBS12 television station in West Palm Beach that she faced blowback because she refused to “manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen.”
DeSantis spokeswoman Helen Aguirre Ferré, in a separate statement after the news conference, said Jones was fired for “insubordination.” (Her complete statement is also at bottom.)
Jones “exhibited a repeated course of insubordination during her time with the Department, including her unilateral decisions to modify the Department’s COVID-19 dashboard without input or approval from the epidemiological team or her supervisors,” Ferré said.
“The blatant disrespect for the professionals who were working around the clock to provide the important information for the COVID-19 website was harmful to the team,” she added. “Accuracy and transparency are always indispensable, especially during an unprecedented public health emergency such as COVID-19.
“Having someone disruptive cannot be tolerated during this public pandemic, which led the Department to determine that it was best to terminate her employment.”
Asal M. Johnson, an assistant professor of Public Health at Stetson University, told Florida Today that she worried DOH is trying “to undermine evidence-based decision making to prioritize (the) economy.”
Florida Democratic Party Chair Terrie Rizzo called for an independent investigation into the alleged data manipulation.
“Allegations that Florida’s government may have tried to manipulate or alter data to make reopening appear safer is outrageous,” Rizzo said. “These kinds of actions are dangerous and, frankly, should be criminal.”
Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, the only statewide elected Democrat, wrote a letter to DeSantis requesting that members of his administration appear at the state’s next Cabinet meeting to answer questions about the accusations levied by Jones.
“These actions undermine public trust in our government, are extraordinarily dangerous to public health, and are absolutely inconsistent with the transparency and accuracy that Floridians expect and deserve during this pandemic,” Fried wrote.
Meanwhile, the Florida Department of Health reported 55 more COVID-19 deaths Tuesday, bringing the statewide total to 2,052.
“In a rather short period of time we lost over 2,000 people in Florida to COVID-19, a disease we hadn’t even heard of before this year,” said Dr. Marissa Levine, a professor of public health and family medicine at the University of South Florida who leads the school’s Center for Leadership in Public Health Practice.
“As we work to reopen Florida it is critical for us all to remember that we each have a role in controlling this pandemic. Our individual and collective actions will determine the course of this pandemic in our own communities and will be the key as to whether we experience an even greater spike of disease and death in the coming months.”
Florida health officials reported the state’s first COVID-19 death on March 6, meaning it took 74 days to top 2,000 deaths.
The novel coronavirus has become one of the leading causes of death in Florida in just over two months. Based on 2018 death totals, 2,052 deaths would rank 16th among Florida’s top causes of death, above homicides and HIV.
Influenza and pneumonia killed 3,082 people in Florida in 2018. The coronavirus could top that this year.
Florida health officials are reporting a steady stream of new coronavirus cases, and more deaths are sure to follow.
The state’s coronavirus case total rose by 502 Tuesday to 46,944.
Floridians should be careful as they emerge from a month-long lockdown, said Levine, who previously served as Virginia’s state health commissioner.
“We know the virus is still circulating in our communities in Florida as well as around the nation and the globe,” Levine said. “Although we don’t have complete information, our best estimates tell us that many in our communities still remain vulnerable to the virus.
“Given Florida’s demographics and the burden of chronic disease in the population, many of us are at high risk of serious complications and even death.”
DeSantis began lifting Florida’s lockdown earlier this month. He has focused on the fact that the state’s health care system has not been overwhelmed, as some models predicted, and hospitals have plenty of available beds.
DeSantis touted his reopening strategy during a press conference in Orlando Monday. He has branded it the “Safe. Smart. Step by Step.” plan as he seeks to avoid criticism that he is moving too fast, something public health officials are warning against.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said during a U.S. Senate hearing last week that “the consequences could be really serious” if states reopen “prematurely.”
“I’m just looking forward to helping bring us back,” DeSantis said Monday. “Obviously we still have issues with public health; that’s not going to go away, but I think we have a pathway to get Florida moving again.”
DeSantis is pushing a phased reopening that accelerated this week when gyms, libraries and museums were allowed to welcome people at 50% capacity. Restaurants and other retail establishments were allowed to increase from 25% to 50% occupancy.
The governor also allowed barbershops and hair salons to reopen last week, and many municipalities have reopened beaches.
Public health experts worry that the number of new cases and deaths could spike if the state reopens and people don’t continue to practice social distancing and take other precautions.
“Our only tools to deal with this have remained the same: Physical distancing (including cloth face coverings) and aggressive hygienic practices,“ Levine said. ”Our ability to adapt and incorporate those practices into our everyday lives will determine the success of our reopening.
“I am hopeful that we will not interpret reopening as a return to the normal we once knew, but rather to a new normal that incorporates the adaptations we need to implement to protect one another.”
Governor Ron DeSantis’ office full statement on Rebekah Jones
Rebekah Jones’ duties were to display data obtained by the Department’s epidemiological staff. The team that created the graphics on the dashboard, which was made up by multiple people, received data that was provided by subject matter experts, including Senior Epidemiologists, Surveillance Epidemiologists, and a Senior Database Analyst.
Jones exhibited a repeated course of insubordination during her time with the Department, including her unilateral decisions to modify the Department’s COVID-19 dashboard without input or approval from the epidemiological team or her supervisors. The blatant disrespect for the professionals who were working around the clock to provide the important information for the COVID-19 website was harmful to the team.
Accuracy and transparency are always indispensable, especially during an unprecedented public health emergency such as COVID-19. Having someone disruptive cannot be tolerated during this public pandemic, which led the Department to determine that it was best to terminate her employment.
Before he was fired Friday, the State Department’s inspector general, Steve A. Linick, was examining, among other issues, the potential misuse of an aide to do personal errands for both Pompeos, according to congressional Democrats. On Monday, President Trump said he had “never heard of” Mr. Linick but fired him after “I was asked by the State Department, by Mike.”
The United States largely supported an international COVID-19 response resolution but took issue with the inclusion of language about sexual and reproductive health.
A draft resolution on the COVID-19 response put forth during the 73rd World Health Assembly on Tuesday called on member states to engage in a number of behaviors in the context of the pandemic. Among those actions were to maintain the uninterrupted and safe services for “mother and child health and sexual and reproductive health” and provide assistance to other countries.
The U.S. disassociated itself from the language in paragraphs 7.5 and 9.4 of the resolution, saying that they “do not accept references to ‘sexual and reproductive health'” or language that may suggest “access to abortion is part of population and individual level health services.”
“There is no international right to abortion, nor is there any duty on the part of States to finance or facilitate abortion,” the U.S. said. “As President [Donald] Trump has stated, ‘Americans will never tire of defending innocent life.'”
The statement stated unequivocally that the country “believes in legal protections for the unborn” and rejected that a state should be required to provide abortion access. It also does not recognize abortion as a method of family planning or “support abortion in our global health assistance.”
Trump’s campaign and supporters have championed him as being the “most pro-life” president in history. He’s also spoken at the March for Life on numerous occasions, earning him praise from anti-abortion activists but ire from pro-abortion rights supporters.
Although America broke with the resolution on the subject of sexual and reproductive health, it largely supported the resolution and on Tuesday, the assembly adopted it. Along with implementing plans for their own countries to curb the outbreak, such as providing testing, treatment and care and ensuring access to safe water, it also made requests of WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The requests include asking Ghebreyesus to continue to work on a coordinated response across the United Nations system and assist countries in their fight against the new coronavirus that’s claimed more than 319,000 lives worldwide. He also must initiate at the “earliest moment” an impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation to review the “experience gained and lessons learned” from WHO’s response to the outbreak. On Monday, Ghebreyesus agreed to the evaluation the Member States sought.
“We applaud the call for an impartial, independent and comprehensive review of the WHO’s response, to be undertaken in consultation with Member States, and we urge that work to begin now,” the U.S. said. “This will help ensure we have a complete and transparent understanding of the source of the virus, timeline of events, early discussions, and the decision making process for the WHO’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Trump’s been one of the loudest critics of the WHO’s handling of the outbreak and hours earlier shared a four-page letter he sent to the director-general. He charged WHO of ignoring reports the new coronavirus spread in the Chinese city of Wuhan earlier than December, as China claimed, and failing to investigate credible claims. He also criticized Ghebreyesus for praising China’s “strict travel restrictions” while being against America’s border closures.
If the WHO does not “commit to major substantive improvements” within the next 30 days, Trump said he would permanently freeze U.S. funding to WHO and “reconsider our membership.”
India and Bangladesh evacuated millions of people from the path of the most powerful storm in 20 years, which is expected to hit on Wednesday evening and has raised fears of extensive damage to houses and crops.
The authorities’ move to save lives was complicated by continuing efforts to curb the coronavirus pandemic and enforce social distancing.
Approaching from the Bay of Bengal, super cyclone Amphan was expected to hit the coast of eastern India and southern Bangladesh with winds gusting up to 185 kilometres per hour (115 miles per hour) – weakening from the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane.
Al Jazeera’s Tanvir Chowdhury, reporting from Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, said the cyclone was expected to land on the South Asian nation’s southeastern coastal belt about 6pm local time.
He said 1.4 million people have been evacuated and put into shelter but at least 46,000 people remained in the clear line of danger on some of the islands in the coastal areas.
“There is accommodation for at least five million people and there is medical team, rescue operation team, coastguard and the navy have been put on alert and standby in the coastal areas,” he said.
“This would be one of the biggest cyclones so they are taking it very seriously.”
The Indian weather department forecast a storm surge of 10 to 16-foot (3-4 metre) waves – as high as a two-storey house – that could swamp mud dwellings along the coast, uproot communication towers and inundate roads and railway tracks.
There will be extensive damage to standing crops and plantations in the states of West Bengal and Odisha, the weather service said in a bulletin late on Tuesday.
Authorities were hastily repurposing quarantine facilities for the looming cyclone soon after easing the world’s biggest lockdown against the coronavirus. India has reported more than 100,000 cases with 3,163 deaths.
About 300,000 people had been moved to storm shelters, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said. The state capital Kolkata lies near the cyclone’s path and there was concern about people living in about 1,500 old, dilapidated buildings.
Kolkata was battered by heavy rain and the muddy Hooghly River was rising under dark skies, while in the coastal resort of Digha, large waves were pounding the shore.
Rohingya refugees vulnerable
In neighbouring Bangladesh, officials said the cyclone could set off tidal waves and heavy rainfall, unleashing floods.
It was expected to hit land between the districts of Chittagong and Khulna, just 150 km (93 miles) from refugee camps housing more than a million Rohingya in flimsy shelters.
The UN said food, tarpaulins and water purification tablets had been stockpiled, while authorities said the refugees would be moved to sturdier buildings if needed.
“We are fully prepared. But right now, there is no need to take them to cyclone shelters,” said Mahbub Alam Talukder, Bangladesh’s refugee commissioner.
Authorities in Bangladesh have also moved hundreds of Rohingya refugees living on a flood-prone island in the Bay of Bengal to storm shelters as the super cyclone barrels down.
The eastern edge of the storm headed for Bangladesh and neighbouring India is expected to batter Bhasan Char island, where 306 Rohingya, members of a persecuted minority from Myanmar, were sent this month after being rescued from boats.
“Each block has a cyclone centre and they have been moved to the centre,” said Bimal Chakma, a senior official of the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission.
The United Nations has called for the refugees to be moved to the mainland to join more than a million more who live in sprawling camps outside the town of Cox’s Bazar.
Bangladesh’s low-lying coast, home to 30 million people, and India’s east are regularly battered by cyclones that have claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in recent decades.
The eastern Indian state of Odisha was hit by a super cyclone that left nearly 10,000 dead in 1999, eight years after a typhoon, tornadoes and flooding killed 139,000 in Bangladesh. In 1970, Cyclone Bhola killed half a million people.
Democrats request Mueller probe grand jury material; reaction and analysis on ‘The Five.’
Judge Jeanine Pirro said Tuesday on “The Five” that a now-declassified email sent by former National Security Adviser Susan Rice regarding the investigation into her successor, Michael Flynn, shows “consciousness of guilt.”
The email Rice sent to herself on Jan. 20, 2017 — the day of President Trump’s inauguration — documented a Jan. 5 Oval Office meeting in which then-FBI Director James Comey suggested that the National Security Council might not want to pass “sensitive information related to Russia” to Flynn amid concerns about his contacts with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Parts of Rice’s email were released previously, but the section on Comey’s response had been classified as “TOP SECRET” until Tuesday, when it was made public by Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis.
“It is building a defense for Barack Obama,” Pirro said of the email, which she also described as “fascinating” and “self-serving.”
“It’s like the police come to your house and you say ‘I didn’t shoot my wife but she’s upstairs and she’s dead of a gunshot wound,'” she said. “Why are you even phrasing it like that?”
“The other part of this is — when you read what they say — she says the president is not initiating or instructing anything and that law enforcement needs to do what it does ‘by the book,’ and be mindful that we cannot entertain or share information possibly about Russia with the Trump Administration, the “Justice with Judge Jeanine host added. “That’s basically saying that Obama said ‘consider not giving this information to Trump’. She could only say it more clearly if she left out one word.”
Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that taking hydroxychloroquine is “ultimately” a choice between patients and their health-care providers, appearing to soften its earlier advisory against taking the anti-malaria drug outside of a hospital.
“The decision to take any drug is ultimately a decision between a patient and their doctor,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn said in a statement to CNBC. “Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are already FDA-approved for treating malaria, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis.”
The comments came a day after President Donald Trump said he has been taking hydroxychloroquine daily for over a week to prevent infection from the coronavirus. He said he asked his White House physician about the drug. “I asked him, ‘What do you think?’ He said, ‘Well, if you’d like it.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’d like it. I’d like to take it.'”
However, in a warning issued last month, the FDA advised consumers against taking drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19 outside a hospital or formal clinical trial due to the risk of “serious heart rhythm problems.”
“Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine can cause abnormal heart rhythms such as QT interval prolongation and a dangerously rapid heart rate called ventricular tachycardia,” the agency wrote in the notice. “We will continue to investigate risks associated with the use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine for COVID-19 and communicate publicly when we have more information.”
If a health-care professional is considering use of hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19, they should check for a suitable clinical trial and consider enrolling the patient, the FDA said at the time.
Hydroxychloroquine, which has been repeatedly touted by Trump as a potential game-changer in fighting the coronavirus, is also often used by doctors to treat rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. Numerous clinical trials are looking to see if it’s effective in fighting the coronavirus, but it has not been formally approved for Covid-19.
Even though it hasn’t been approved to treat coronavirus, doctors can give the drug to patients in a common and legal practice known as “off-label” prescribing. “Off label” means the drug is being used for an ailment not yet approved by the FDA.
White House physician Dr. Sean Conley released a memo Monday evening, which said that after discussing evidence for and against hydroxychloroquine with Trump, they concluded “the potential benefit from treatment outweighed the relative risks.”
Trump said that he is also taking zinc, and that he has taken an initial dose of azithromycin, or Z-Pak.
He said that if the drug wasn’t good he’d “tell you.” He said he’s gotten “a lot of tremendously positive news on the hydroxy, and I say hey — you know the expression I’ve used, John? What do you have to lose?”
“I’m not going to get hurt by it. It’s been around for 40 years,” he said. “For malaria, for lupus, for other things. I take it. Front-line workers take it. A lot of doctors take it … I take it.”
Florida’s COVID-19 dashboard, here in a snapshot Tuesday, has won praise from researchers for its accessibility and details.
Florida GIS/Screenshot by NPR
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Florida GIS/Screenshot by NPR
Florida’s COVID-19 dashboard, here in a snapshot Tuesday, has won praise from researchers for its accessibility and details.
Florida GIS/Screenshot by NPR
Update at 8:51 p.m. ET
A scientist who created a dashboard for monitoring Florida’s rising number of COVID-19 cases said she’s been fired for refusing to manipulate the data.
Rebekah Jones was the manager of the Geographic Information System team at Florida’s Department of Health. She helped created a data portal that for months has provided easily accessible and detailed information on COVID-19 cases broken down by ZIP code. The Florida COVID-19 dashboard has been praised by researchers in the state and by Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator.
Last week, Jones notified public health researchers in an email that she’d been removed from the project. “As a word of caution,” she wrote, “I would not expect the new team to continue the same level of accessibility and transparency that I made central to the process during the first two months. After all, my commitment to both is largely (arguably entirely) the reason I am no longer managing it.”
Jones now says she’s been fired from the state Department of Health. In a statement to CBS12 News in West Palm Beach, Fla., Jones said her dismissal came after she refused to “manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen.”
All of Florida entered the first phase of recovery this week when the two largest counties joined the rest of the state in opening restaurants, retail stores and barber shops.
At a news conference in Tallahassee, Gov. Ron DeSantis called Jones’ departure from the Health Department a “nonissue.” He said he’d seen an email she sent her supervisor saying she never intended to suggest the information on the dashboard might be less reliable going forward. DeSantis said he believes from the email that “she was tired and needed a break.”
In a statement later to The Miami Herald, DeSantis’ communications director, Helen Aguirre Ferré, said, “Rebekah Jones exhibited a repeated course of insubordination during her time with the department, including her unilateral decisions to modify the Department’s COVID-19 dashboard without input or approval from the epidemiological team or her supervisors.
“The blatant disrespect for the professionals who were working around the clock to provide the important information for the COVID-19 website was harmful to the team. Accuracy and transparency are always indispensable, especially during an unprecedented public health emergency such as COVID-19. Having someone disruptive cannot be tolerated during this public pandemic, which led the department to determine that it was best to terminate her employment.”
Jones’ removal from the project and her subsequent dismissal have raised questions about the impartiality and transparency of Florida’s COVID-19 dashboard.
Ben Sawyer, director of LabX at the University of Central Florida, which is investigating how local health systems are coping with COVID-19 cases, said her ouster is “quite disturbing to me as a scientist and as a citizen.”
“Regardless of what you think about reopening Florida, you would like to know what’s going on,” Sawyer said. “This data is our ability to see what’s happening. I think there are enormous questions that arise when you don’t know if what you see [is] fair or accurate.”
Jones’ dismissal also drew immediate criticism from Democratic members of Congress, including Kathy Castor, who represents the Tampa area. Castor is asking the governor to provide immediate answers as to why Jones was fired.
“Amidst pressure to ‘reopen’ the state regardless of data and science,” Castor wrote, “transparency is vital to keeping our neighbors safe and ensuring that they have confidence that our government is reporting honestly.”
The Republican chairman of a Senate committee asked the Trump administration to fully declassify an email that President Barack Obama’s national security adviser sent to herself about Michael Flynn shortly before she left office, according to a report.
Sen. Ron Johnson is seeking the email sent by Susan Rice about a Jan. 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting in which Obama and other top administration officials discussed the case against Flynn, who went on to become Trump’s national security adviser.
“I understand your office is currently reviewing a January 20, 2017, email from former national security advisor Susan Rice,” Johnson wrote in the letter to Attorney General William Barr that was viewed by Politico.
“In that email, Ambassador Rice summarized an Oval Office meeting with President Obama and other administration officials that occurred on January 5, 2017. A majority of Ambassador Rice’s email was declassified but a portion of the email remains classified,” wrote Johnson, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Johnson, of Wisconsin, said that as more information about the meeting becomes declassified, “it is essential that Congress and the American people understand what occurred” and noted that declassifying Rice’s email “will assist these efforts.”
In a portion of Rice’s email that had been declassified, she said Obama, after a briefing on Russian interference in the 2016 election, had a follow-up conversation with Rice, then-FBI Director James Comey, then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and former Vice President Joe Biden.
“President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities ‘by the book,’” Rice wrote. “The president stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.”
Rice noted that there might be information related to Russia that should be held from the incoming Trump administration, writing, “we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.”
Trump has accused Biden and Obama of trying to sabotage his administration through the Russia investigation.
The president has pointed to documents that show Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was among Obama White House officials who asked for Flynn to be unmasked after his conversations with a Russian ambassador were picked up by the intelligence community.
“This was all Obama. This was all Biden,” Trump told Fox Business. “These people were corrupt. The whole thing was corrupt. And we caught them. We caught them.”
Rice and other Obama officials have denied they did anything wrong and said “unmasking” is routine.
Michael Flynn and Susan Rice in 2017Mark Wilson/Getty Images
The Justice Department has moved to drop the case against Flynn, who was one of the first prosecutions carried out by then-special counsel Robert Mueller, saying the new information released raises questions about the FBI’s interview with Flynn.
It said the interview was “untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn” and was “conducted without any legitimate investigation.”
Flynn pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Rebekah Jones, an official at the Florida Department of Health who oversaw the state’s public COVID-19 “dashboard,” has been removed from managing the data and cautioned that the decision could negatively impact transparency about infections.
In an email to users of Florida’s novel coronavirus data portal, Jones, the geographic information system manager for the Florida Health Department’s Division of Disease Control and Health Protection, said that she had been removed from overseeing the dashboard. Jones noted that this decision had been made for “reasons beyond my division’s control.” The email was first reported by Florida Today on Monday.
“I understand, appreciate, and even share your concern about all the dramatic changes that have occurred and those that are yet to come,” Jones, who holds a Ph.D. in geography, wrote.
“As a word of caution, I would not expect the new team to continue the same level of accessibility and transparency that I made central to the process during the first two months,” the official wrote in the email. “After all, my commitment to both is largely (arguably entirely) the reason I am no longer managing it.”
Newsweek has reached out to the Florida Department of Health and the office of Governor Ron DeSantis for comment.
Helen Aguirre Ferré, a spokesperson for Florida’s governor, shared a statement with The Miami Herald about Jones’ remarks.
“The Florida COVID-19 Dashboard was created by the Geographic Information System (GIS) team in the Division of Disease Control and Health Protection at the Florida Department of Health. Although Rebekah Jones is no longer involved, the GIS team continues to manage and update the Dashboard providing accurate and important information that is publicly accessible,” Ferré said.
As The Herald reported, DeSantis had praised his administration’s transparency with COVID-19 data. However, his government has faced criticism in regards to transparency about the number of infections in nursing homes and prisons. Questions have also circulated about testing backlogs and how early the novel coronavirus first emerged in the state.
Jones’ email and her concerns about transparency come as Florida moves quickly to reopen its economy. The state was initially slow to implement a statewide lockdown, despite the urging of local leaders in hard-hit municipalities. Now the southeastern state aims to reopen rapidly as new coronavirus infections appear to be increasing.
After recording 502 new infections on May 15, the state saw 1,189 new confirmed cases on Sunday and then 1,541 new cases on Monday. Since the start of the pandemic, Florida has recorded more than 45,000 cases of the novel virus. Of those infected, 1,973 have died.
The first such reports published by the journal, the statement continued, were on Jan. 24, where two studies described the first 41 coronavirus patients from Wuhan, the inland Chinese city where the outbreak began, and detailed the first scientific evidence confirming person-to-person transmission of the new virus.
The first study, the Lancet noted, was led by scientists and physicians who were all from “Chinese institutions” and who “worked with us to quickly make information about this new epidemic outbreak and the disease it caused fully and freely available to an international audience.”
The second report “included scientists and physicians from Hong Kong and mainland China,” the Lancet statement said.
The president has repeatedly railed against the WHO and its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, throughout the coronavirus crisis, accusing the organization of being too conciliatory toward China.
Trump’s complaints culminated in Monday evening’s letter, which threatened the WHO with a permanent cutoff of U.S. aid unless the global health body agrees to “commit to major substantive improvements within the next 30 days.” Trump also said the U.S. would “reconsider our membership in the organization.”
The four-page missive laid out a number of points where the president found fault with the organization’s early handling of the crisis, which has infected more than 4 million around the globe and killed more than 300,000 worldwide.
But his sparring with a global health organization has drawn protests from critics who say it’s unwise to push away an ally in the midst of an international public health crisis, and could end up backfiring on the U.S.
“The allegations levelled against WHO in President Trump’s letter are serious and damaging to efforts to strengthen international cooperation to control this pandemic,” the Lancet said in its statement Tuesday. “It is essential that any review of the global response is based on a factually accurate account of what took place in December and January.”
The journal has not been shy about criticizing Trump. Its editor, Richard Horton, previously called Trump’s WHO “a crime against humanity” and urged others to “resist Rand rebel against this appalling betrayal of global solidarity.” Last week, the Lancet published an unsigned editorial op-ed blasting Trump’s early handling of the virus and calling for him to be ousted by voters this fall.
Horton fired back at Trump on Twitter on Monday night, referring to his letter to the WHO. “Pr Trump claims we published reports in Dec 2019 claiming a virus was spreading in Wuhan,” Horton wrote. “Untrue. The first paper describing 41 patients with COVID-19 was published on Jan 24. That paper identified symptom onset of the first Wuhan patient as Dec 1. No cover up. Full transparency.”
WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 19: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in the Roosevelt Room at the White … [+] House May 19, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times-Pool/Getty Images)
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An early proposal for a student debt relief plan called for cancelling $30,000 dollars worth of debt. The current version of the student debt relief plan calls for cancelling $10,000, but only for those in dire financial trouble. $30,000 to $10,000 is a healthy drop, and it’s widely understood that this version of the proposal won’t pass.
It’s very likely that the House proposed HEROES Act won’t pass through the Senate in its current form. The Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appeared on Fox News and called the act a “liberal wish list….it mentions the word cannabis of all things 68 times more than the word jobs or hire are mentioned in the entire bill.” The Trump administration similarly released a statement opposing the HEROES Act, and Trump has called the act ‘Dead on Arrival’.
It’s not uncommon for a party to tack on amendments in favor of their political agenda as an act passes through the branches of government. But, as McConnell puts it; “… it still reads like the Speaker of the House pasted together random ideas from her most liberal members and slapped the word ‘coronavirus’ on top of it.”
The act wasn’t expected to land favorably with the current administration. “The HEROES Act was never going to go to President Trump’s desk in anything close to the same form as it left the House. These starting bids are always vision documents” writes Nick Martin in an article explaining the dim future of student debt relief.
Rather than creating a guided and focused relief bill, the House has put forward a piece of partisan legislation that is unlikely to make efficient progress through the Republican-majority Senate. Many people face unemployment and financial crises. This is not a time for partisanship.
As Martin explains, “This harsh, inequitable reality is compounded by the fact that, parallel to the widespread higher education disinvestment, the economy that students are expected to seek employment in—so that they can slowly pay off said loans—has now been subject to two of the most drastic downturns in American financial history: first the Great Recession and now the global coronavirus pandemic.”
Failing to provide financial relief in a time of crisis will only worsen the student debt crisis in the long run, and when bright young minds opt out of an education for fear of severe financial burden, the whole country suffers economically.
The wave of lockdowns and shuttered economies caused by the coronavirus pandemic fueled a momentous decline in global greenhouse gas emissions, although one unlikely to last, a group of scientists reported Tuesday.
As covid-19 infections surged in March and April, nations around the globe experienced an abrupt reduction in driving, flying and industrial output, leading to a startling decline of more than a billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions. That includes a peak decline in daily emissions of 17 percent in early April, according to the study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. For some nations, the drop was much steeper.
Carbon emissions decline by region
0%
CHINA
INDIA
EUROPE &
BRTAIN
−5%
UNITED
STATES
−10% change from
2019 daily average
OTHER
COUNTRIES
−15%
Jan.
March
May
Carbon emissions decline by region
0%
CHINA
INDIA
EUROPE &
BRITAIN
−5%
UNITED
STATES
−10% change from 2019 daily average
OTHER
COUNTRIES
−15%
Jan.
Feb.
March
April
May
Carbon emissions decline by region
0%
CHINA
INDIA
EUROPE &
BRITAIN
−5%
UNITED
STATES
−10% change from 2019 daily average
OTHER
COUNTRIES
−15%
Jan.
Feb.
March
April
May
Carbon emissions declines by region
0%
CHINA
INDIA
EUROPE &
BRITAIN
−5%
UNITED
STATES
−10% change from 2019 daily average
OTHER
COUNTRIES
−15%
April
Jan.
Feb.
March
May
Scientists have long insisted that the world must drastically scale back carbon pollution — and quickly — to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change over coming decades, although none have suggested that a deadly global pandemic is the way to accomplish it.
Tuesday’s study projects that total emissions for 2020 will likely fall between 4 and 7 percent compared to the prior year — an unheard-of drop in normal times, but considerably less dramatic than the decline during the first few months of the year when economies screeched to a halt. The final 2020 figure will depend on how rapidly, or cautiously, people around the world resume ordinary life.
The unprecedented situation produced by covid-19 has offered a glimpse into the massive scale required to cut global emissions, year after year, in order to meet the most ambitious goals set by world leaders when they forged the 2015 Paris climate accord. Last fall, a United Nations report estimated that global greenhouse gas emissions must begin falling by 7.6 percent each year beginning in 2020 to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
Tuesday’s study underscores how far the world remains from that long-term aspiration. The forced plunge in greenhouse gas emissions in recent months, while extraordinary, returned carbon pollution levels only to those last seen in 2006. And the recent changes are unlikely to last.
“History suggests this will be a blip,” said Rob Jackson, a Stanford professor and one of the authors of the peer-reviewed study, which attempts to assess the virus’s impact by nation and economic sector. “The 2008 [financial] crisis decreased global emissions 1.5 percent for one year, and they shot back up 5 percent in 2010. It was like it never happened.”
An aerial view shows light traffic on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles on April 15 during what would normally be the evening rush hour. Federal data from March showed that Los Angeles had its longest stretch of air quality rated as “good” since 1995. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
While the decline in emissions during the pandemic may have been unprecedented, it was relatively small when it comes to combating global warming. The peak 17 percent decline in global emissions — which occurred in early April — meant nations continued to generate more than 80 percent of carbon pollution.
Researchers say the experience demonstrates how broad structural changes to the energy system are critical if the world is to slash emissions in a meaningful, sustainable way.
“We can see now that behavior change alone is not going to do it,” said Corinne Le Quéré, lead author of the study and director of Britain’s Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research.
Le Quéré said she expected to find even larger reductions in the power and industrial sectors during the pandemic. Instead, she said, many sources of carbon dioxide and other pollutants have continued steadily, almost on autopilot, even as much of the world has ground to a halt.
Appliances continue to run, office buildings must be maintained, and some factories continue to hum.
“There’s a lot of inertia in the infrastructure, in the built environment,” she said. “It seems like many things are able to function on their own, at least for a short time.”
Emissions have fallen before — during world wars and economic recessions, for instance, and markedly during the Great Depression. But experts do not think the modern world has seen a plunge so sudden and sharp as in recent months.
“In absolute terms, it will be the biggest,” said Glen Peters, one of the study’s authors and an expert at the Center for International Climate Research in Norway. “In relative terms, you will have to go back quite some [time] to find big changes like that.”
Most researchers agree that emissions are all but certain to bounce back once countries reopen. Already, demand for energy is resuming as people return to the roads and many U.S. states begin easing stay-at-home orders that helped drive the price per gallon of gasoline to less than $1 at some pumps.
Governments also are expected begin trying to boost their economies with stimulus spending in the coming months. But how leaders decide to spend that money could make a fundamental difference.
“Where they put this stimulus is really critical,” Le Quéré said. “It’s 2020, and there’s not much time to tackle climate change.”
Some world leaders have pledged to push for a shift toward greener economies in the wake of the pandemic.
Last week, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said his country’s push to slash its emissions remains “undiminished” by covid-19 and the economic turmoil it has caused. He singled out airlines during remarks in Parliament last week, saying the sector must limit its carbon emissions even when normal flights resume.
“Inadvertently, the planet this year will [have] greatly reduced its CO2 emissions.… We need to entrench those gains,” Johnson told lawmakers. “I don’t want to see us going back to an era of the same type of emissions as we’ve had in the past. Aviation like every other sector must keep its carbon lower.”
A weather balloon of Airparif, which is responsible for monitoring the air quality in the Ile de France region, flies near the Eiffel Tower in Paris, on May 7, 2020. (Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images)
Last month, German Chancellor Angela Merkel also indicated she would support green investments as her nation seeks to restore its economy.
“It will be all the more important that if we set up economic stimulus programs, we must always keep a close eye on climate protection,” Merkel told a gathering of leaders focused on climate change.
The new research was conducted by Le Quéré, Jackson, Peters, and 10 other colleagues affiliated with the Global Carbon Project.
Normally, global emissions are calculated on an annual basis; doing so more rapidly, nearly in real time, presented a scientific challenge. Tuesday’s study used a combination of energy data across multiple sectors, as well as data on the strenuousness of lockdowns across 69 countries that account for 97 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, in order to estimate the reductions.
The results varied greatly across different sectors. Airplane emissions plunged by as much as 60 percent — but airlines represent a relatively small fraction of global emissions. Emissions from surface transportation, one of the largest sources, fell 36 percent at the peak of the lockdowns.
Change in emissions by sector
Surface transport
Power
-36% change from 2019 as of April 7
-7%
0
-5 million
metric tons
of carbon
dioxide
per day
-10
Jan.
April 7
Aviation
Industry
-19%
-60%
Public buildings
and commerce
Residential
-21%
+3%
Change in emissions by sector
Surface transport
Power
Industry
-36% change from 2019 as of April 7
-7%
-19%
0
-5 million
metric tons
of carbon
dioxide
per day
-10
Jan.
April 7
Public buildings
and commerce
Residential
Aviation
-60%
-21%
+3%
Change in emissions by sector
Industry
Surface transport
Power
-36% change from 2019 as of April 7
-7%
-19%
0
-5 million metric
tons of carbon
dioxide per day
-10
Jan.
April 7
Public buildings
and commerce
Aviation
Residential
-60%
-21%
+3%
Change in emissions by sector
Power
Industry
Surface transport
-36% change from 2019 as of April 7
-7%
-19%
0
-5 million metric
tons of carbon
dioxide per day
-10
Jan.
April 7
Public buildings
and commerce
Residential
Aviation
-60%
-21%
+3%
-31%change from 2019 as of April 30
Change in emissions by sector
Public buildings
and commerce
Surface transport
Power
Industry
Aviation
Residential
-36% change from 2019 as of April 7
-7%
-19%
-60%
-21%
+3%
0
-5 million metric
tons of carbon
dioxide per day
-10
Jan.
April 7
“Passenger vehicles are down a bit more,” Jackson said. “Commercial vehicles and long-haul trucking are down much less. I’m staying at home, but the Amazon delivery vehicle is still driving around.”
Emissions tied to home energy use actually increased about 3 percent, not surprising during a time when people are confined to their homes, using more appliances, lighting, heating and cooling. But industrial electricity demand plummeted, leading to net electricity declines overall.
While some aspects of life might change in the wake of the pandemic — more people working remotely, fewer people commuting and taking frequent plane trips — individual changes are unlikely to make much of a long-term mark on emissions, said Zeke Hausfather, a scientist and director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute.
“Unless anything structurally changes, we can expect emissions to go back to where they were before this whole thing happened,” Hausfather said.
Hausfather also said that one year of sharp reductions in emissions will do little to stave off the warming that scientists have said will continue unless the world drastically cuts emissions for good.
“I don’t think there’s much of a silver lining to covid-19 for the climate,” he said, “unless we use the recovery as a chance to both stimulate the economy and build the type of infrastructure to support a clean-energy future.”
WASHINGTON — Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., chastised President Donald Trump on Monday for his decision to take hydroxychloroquine, saying that health experts have warned about its effects and that it could be harmful to the president because he’s “morbidly obese.”
“As far as the president is concerned, he’s our president and I would rather he not be taking something that has not been approved by the scientists, especially in his age group and in his, shall we say, weight group, morbidly obese, they say. So, I think it’s not a good idea,” Pelosi said in an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN.
Pelosi’s comment came after Trump said at the White House a few hours earlier that he had started taking the drug after consulting with the White House physician.
“A lot of good things have come out about the hydroxy. A lot of good things have come out. You’d be surprised at how many people are taking it, especially the front-line workers — before you catch it,” Trump said at the White House. “I happen to be taking it. … I’m taking it — hydroxychloroquine — right now.”
The FDA issued a warning last month that cautioned against the use of the medicine outside of a hospital setting or a clinical trial due to risk of heart rhythm problems.
In 2018, the White House physician at the time, Dr. Ronny Jackson, said that Trump had an LDL cholesterol level of 143, well above the desired level of 100 or less. CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta said at the time that the information indicated that Trump has a common form of heart disease. Last year, the White House said that based on Trump’s annual physical, he weighed 243 pounds, gaining four pounds from the previous year. At Trump’s height of 6 foot 3, his weight last year was considered obese on the body mass index scale.
In a statement late Monday, White House physician Sean P. Conley said that he had discussed the drug with Trump. “After numerous discussions he and I had for and against the use of hydroxychloroquine, we concluded the potential benefit from treatment outweighed the relative risks,” Conley wrote.
Conley noted that one of Trump’s staffers, a valet, tested positive for COVID-19 recently, though the president is tested daily and they have all been negative.
In an interview with Steve Kornacki on MSNBC, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., suggested that the president may not be telling the truth about his use of hydroxychloroquine.
“Who knows if it’s true? He may not have been taking it for all we know. He just likes to make a splash,” Schumer said on Monday. “And I want to make a comment on that, Steve. What the president did with hydroxychloroquine was reckless, simply reckless.”
Schumer repeated the criticism Tuesday on the Senate floor, saying Trump has “taken an unproven treatment for a disease he doesn’t have.”
“Please, citizens of America, don’t take hydroxychloroquine as a prevention for COVID,” Schumer said. “It is not, medical experts have said it is not. Remember, it is risky. The FDA. has said it has risks.”
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