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White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said “we’re not going to control the pandemic” as US sees three consecutive record-setting days of infections; plus Obama’s new memoir and something here.
As new COVID-19 infections are surging across the US and around the world, on Sunday, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said during an interview with CNN, that the US is “not going to control” the coronavirus pandemic, as cases surge across the country, with three record-setting days of new infections and the total number of deaths in America have exceeded 230,000.
Thursday through Saturday, the United States saw the numbers for the highest amount of infections in a single day shattered, the New York Post reported. On Friday, the US reached a new record high of 83,757 people testing positive for COVID-19, topping the previous record set on Thursday of 77,640.
On Saturday, 83,718 Americans tested positive. The number dipped on Sunday to 60,889 cases, not record-setting, but nonetheless, was a concerning number.
Another way to look at the numbers is what’s called the “rolling seven-day average.” On Saturday, the rolling seven-day average rate was 6.1 percent, according to Johns Hopkins University. The average climbed slightly from Friday’s number of 5.8 percent.
However, for now, the good news is that the numbers are still significantly lower than the daily highs the USA experienced in April, which exceeded 22 percent.
El Paso, Texas initiated a curfew beginning on Sunday, which runs from 10 p.m. to 5 AM, for the next two weeks to limit mobility in the community in an effort to reduce the COVID-19 spike. The judge who issued the curfew said that El Paso is experiencing a 300 percent increase in hospitalizations and eight 160 percent increase in positivity rates since October 1.
As of early Monday morning, the total number of deaths in the United States was 230,510 with 8,889,577 total cases overall since the coronavirus pandemic began, according to the latest figures from worldometers.info. But cases of COVID-19 are spiking worldwide.
On Sunday, thousands of new confirmed cases of coronavirus infection were reported in a variety of countries, including: France 52,010, India 45,158, Italy 21,273, the UK 19,790, Belgium 17,709, Russia 16,710, Brazil 12,904, Poland 11,742 and the Netherlands 10,202, according to worldometers.info.
The countries reporting the highest numbers of deaths on Sunday were: India 463, USA 442, Mexico 431, Iran 296, Argentina 283, Brazil 237 and Russia 229, according to worldometers.info.
Pope Francis support of same-sex civil unions, which was voiced in a documentary last week, is drawing divided reactions in the United States among Catholic clergy, the Associated Press reports.
“Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God,” Pope Francis said in the film, which premiered at the Rome Film Festival last Wednesday. “You can’t kick someone out of a family, nor make their life miserable for this. What we have to have is a civil union law; that way they are legally covered.”
There is division among Catholic bishops, with support for and against the same-sex civil unions.
“The Pope’s statement clearly contradicts what has been the long-standing teaching of the Church about same-sex unions,” Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island, said in a statement. “The Church cannot support the acceptance of objectively immoral relationships.”
“It is no overstatement to say that with this statement not only has the Pope protected LGBTQ couples and families, but he also will save many LGBTQ lives,” said Francis DeBernardo of New Ways Ministry, which represents LGBTQ Catholics.
