Tag: pandemic

Andrew Cuomo’s Emmy Award for His COVID-19 Briefings Is a Disgusting Prioritization of Style Over Substance

He’s presided over the second most deadly COVID-19 outbreak in the country. He’s implemented draconian lockdown restrictions that have devastated small businesses. He’s fought with and mocked reporters trying to get basic answers to simple questions. Now, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) will get an Emmy.

On Friday, the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced that Cuomo would be receiving the organization’s International Emmy Founders Award, which “celebrates the accomplishments of an individual or organization, whose work is recognized throughout the world” and which crosses “cultural boundaries to touch our common humanity.”

Past recipients include Oprah Winfrey, Al Gore, and Steven Spielberg. Cuomo will join this illustrious group because of the daily news briefings he’s given during COVID-19 in which the governor describes how terribly the pandemic is going in his state and what new restrictions on businesses and individuals his administration will impose.

“The Governor’s 111 daily briefings worked so well because he effectively created television shows, with characters, plot lines, and stories of success and failure,” said International Academy President & CEO Bruce L. Paisner in a press release announcing the award. “People around the world tuned in to find out what was going on, and New York tough became a symbol of the determination to fight back.”

As of Thursday, New York state has reported 34,206 confirmed deaths from COVID-19. That’s the most of any state in the union, and the second most per capita, behind only neighboring New Jersey.

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Manitoba bans in-store sales of non-essential items, visitors to homes with some exceptions

Manitoba is clamping down harder on private gatherings and businesses selling non-essential items in an effort to slow the alarming rise in new coronavirus infections in the province.

New COVID-19 public health orders will forbid people from having anyone inside their home who doesn’t live there, with few exceptions, and prohibit businesses from selling non-essential items in stores.

Previous orders that came into effect last week allowed gatherings at private residences of up to five people beyond those who normally live there, although Chief Provincial Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin and others pleaded with Manitobans to stay home and only go out for essential items.

“Despite that, we saw people gathering at rallies, we saw crowded parking lots at big box stores, we saw people continue to go out for non-essential items,” Roussin said at a news conference Thursday.

“So we’re left with no choice but to announced further measures to protect Manitobans, to limit the spread of this virus.”

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Virginia AG Blocks Gun Show: ‘Selling Guns Is Just Not Worth It’

Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring (D) boasted Thursday about restricting a Fairfax County gun show, citing Coronavirus concerns and tweeting that “selling guns is just not worth it.”

WTOP reported that organizers of the Nation’s Gun Show sought an injunction against Virginia Coronavirus restrictions that would cap show attendance at 250 at one time. The show organizers expected to draw up to 25,000 attendees throughout the weekend of November 20-22.

But Herring argued for the restrictions, claiming the show organizers are “brazenly misinformed” regarding the danger posed by the virus.

Herring used a brief to contend, “The ongoing pandemic has infected more than 200,000 Virginians since March and has killed nearly 4,000 — more than four times the number of automobile fatalities that occurred in all of 2019.”

Virginia Business reports that Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Brett A. Kassabian sided with Herring, rejecting the call for an injunction to block the restrictions.

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