Biden Helps Texas as COVID Situation Continues to Improve

On a new week of the #1 quick news podcast, we take a look at a variety of stories from all around the globe. We have COVID updates from the US, the state of US-Iran sanctions and relations, and President Biden accepting a request for additional federal resources from Texas Governor Greg Abbott (who is a Republican, regardless of what Don Jr. thinks). We also have information about an oil spill near Israel, as well as frustrations over the investigation into the start of the COVID pandemic.

 

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Transcript:

 

COVID UPDATES

Starting off, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former leader of the FDA, said he thinks that the decline in COVID infection rates that we’ve been seeing will continue. He also said that the variants will probably be more common in the coming months, but that it won’t be enough to matter. He said, “I think it’s too little, too late in most parts of the country. With rising vaccination rates and also the fact that we've infected about a third of the public, that's enough protective immunity that we're likely to see these trends continue.” I like how he just throws in there “yeah, we’ve been so crappy at containing this thing that it’ll actually help us”.

As of Saturday, there had been about 61.2M vaccines administered, and 75M doses had been delivered.

Another interesting snippet of the interview with Dr. Gottlieb was this quote talking about the WHO’s investigation into how COVID started: “The most likely scenario here is that this came from nature, that this was bouncing back and forth between people and animals for a period of time and finally broke out," he said. "I think the lab leak theory, the fact that this could have been an accident out of that lab is never going to be fully dispelled. And the WHO shouldn't walk away from that so easily.”

In other COVID news, a non-peer-reviewed study of about 300 people in an Indian hospital showed an interesting result regarding people with glasses. Took place over two weeks last summer.

Patients were between 10 and 80 years old, all reported COVID symptoms. Of these people, 19% wore glasses most of the time, meaning that 81% did not (not trying to talk down, just don’t want you to have to do mental math when I’ve had this information for a while).

Researchers found participants touched their face up to 23 times each hour on average and their eyes an average of three times per hour. People with glasses were 2-3x less likely to get COVID. The reasoning: this still works off of the assumption that you can touch something contaminated with COVID, then your mouth, nose, or eyes. We’ve been focusing so much on masks that contaminated surfaces haven’t really been talked about in a while. But, as for why glasses matter, if you wear glasses, it literally just is more work to touch your eyes.

I’m not sure how it would help since COVID is aerosolized, meaning it gets into regular air particles, but I’d have to assume glasses work sort of like a face shield and block particles from talking to people. The CDC even talked about possibly wearing goggles or something for a while there, but I think they chose not to try pushing that because they saw what happened with masks (or Trump ordered them not to).

 

Texas Update (Biden/Abbott)

Check this out, major breaking news… *CNN Breaking News* We have a president that will help all Americans, not just the ones who voted for him! Amazing! What a concept!

I say this because Joe Biden signed a declaration saying that Texas was in a state of a major disaster, meaning that they can get some additional funding.

Before we get to what that covers, let’s do a quick fact check of something you might be hearing from Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who’s a Republican even though Donald Trump Jr. called him a Democrat for some reason. Gov. Abbott might be trying to spin Biden’s order as only “partial assistance”, and he’s partially right. Abbott was trying to get approval for individual and public assistance for all 254 counties in Texas. President Biden approved public assistance for all 254 and individual assistance for 77 counties. So, what’s the difference between these two?

According to this USA Today article, “Individual assistance is given directly to residents who ‘sustained losses due to disasters,’ while public assistance can be used to repair or replace public facilities or infrastructure damaged or destroyed by a disaster, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 

The White House said that the individual assistance is available to regular people in those 77 counties, as well as local governments and some nonprofit organizations. This money is in addition to the supplies that FEMA already gave to Texas to help during the power outage. This was supplies like power generators, diesel fuel, water, and blankets.

Biden also said on Friday that he “directed several federal agencies including Health and Human Services and the departments of Defense and House and Urban Development to ‘"identify other resources that can provide and address the growing needs of the folk in Texas."’

And speaking of being self-aware and not needing the spotlight to feed his fragile ego like someone else would have (who could that be?), Biden said that he wanted to visit the state like presidents normally do during disasters, but he didn’t give an exact date because he doesn’t want to go until he knows his presence won’t create another “burden”. 

Thank god Trump didn’t have to deal with huge snowstorm during the vaccine rollout.

After Abbott convened what his office described as an "emergency meeting" Saturday with lawmakers to discuss the issue, the Public Utility Commission on Sunday met to sign two orders, including one that would direct energy providers to temporarily stop disconnecting customers from power or water because they have not paid.

The commission also signed an order to stop companies from sending invoices or bill estimates to customers “until we work through issues of how we are going to financially manage the situation we are in,” commission Chair DeAnn Walker said.

“Disconnect for non pays cannot occur on a Sunday and that’s why we're acting today at this hour... trying to stop any from occurring tomorrow,” Walker said before the three-member commission approved the orders.

 

Merrick Garland

Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Monday

We’ve heard about what happened during his Supreme Court nomination fiasco, but let’s get a little more information.

By the early 1990s, Garland was prosecuting a violent gang that terrorized people in a public housing project and was helping to advance a case against D.C.'s then-mayor, Marion Barry, on drug charges.

Garland would soon travel to the site of the deadliest domestic terrorism attack in American history. He oversaw the search warrants, protected the chain of evidence and insisted that reporters have access to court proceedings.

Garland played an important role in other confrontations with extremists in those years, including a lengthy 1996 standoff with the heavily armed Montana Freemen. The Justice Department and the FBI were eager to avoid a repeat of deadly incidents in Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge, Idaho, only a few years earlier.

Georgetown University law professor Paul Butler said he thinks Garland will be aware of the times and the message that the Biden Administration is trying to send regarding race.

Garland took an early and important lead to update policies that protect employees from sexual harassment and other workplace misconduct.

 

Iran

Last Thursday, Acting U.S. Ambassador Richard Mills sent a letter to the U.N. Security Council on behalf of President Joe Biden saying the United States “hereby withdraws” the decision by Trump to re-impose U.N. sanctions on Iran.

The nuclear agreement was working, and Iran was starting to get a little more friendly. Then Donald Trump had to come through and cancel it because it was created and negotiated by Obama, and he can’t let Obama have any nice things. So, he backed out of the agreement so he could get those sanctions back on Iran.

For context, a big majority of the members of the European Union Security Council even went so far as to say that Trump’s decision was illegal because the US wasn’t a member of the agreement since he withdrew, so the US couldn’t re-impose sanctions on a country for a deal we weren’t even a part of anymore.

The White House also announced that President Biden is willing to restart talks with Iran about getting back to the 2015 agreement (Iran stopped following the rules when we did, so they’ll have to agree to stop their nuclear program again). National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that Iran’s government hadn’t responded yet.

Another part of this deal that Biden is trying to negotiate the release of dozens of Americans and other dual citizens that Iran has arrested for spying in the past couple of years. Jake Sullivan called these arrests a “complete and utter outrage” and said that it was a “significant priority” to get those hostages back.

Oil Spill

An oil spill happened off the coast of Israel last week and has led to Israel's biggest maritime ecological disaster in years. Authorities have been closing the country's beaches and beginning a massive cleanup effort.

The Israeli government said to avoid going to beaches from the country's northern border with Lebanon all the way to the south near the Gaza Strip. They’re doing this because there’s all this melted tar in the water, and tar exposure can make people sick and irritate the skin.

The Israel Nature and Parks Authority warned that the “consequences will be seen for years to come.”

Israeli environmental minister Gila Gamliel said Saturday that there are no more oil slicks visible off Israel's coast. However, the ministry warned that large waves are forecasted for later this week. The waves could carry chunks of sticky tar from beach to beach, making the cleanup even more difficult.

Israeli and European authorities are investigating what happened. Currently, Israeli officials believe a ship spilled anywhere from tens to hundreds of tons of oil in the Mediterranean, beyond the country's territorial waters.

The spill likely happened about a week ago when stormy weather affected the region. As I alluded to before, they don’t have a suspect yet as for which tanker was responsible. Israeli authorities are working with European officials to review satellite images of ships that passed through the area.

Gamliel said Saturday that the ministry had zeroed in on fewer than a dozen ships, and was attempting to narrow it down further in the coming days, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

 
COVID Origins

Jake Sullivan: "We do not believe that China has made available sufficient original data into how this pandemic began to spread, both in China and then eventually around the world," he said. "And we believe that both the WHO and China should step up on this matter."

The researchers said the outbreak almost certainly did not start in a Chinese lab, but that its path from animals to humans needs further investigation.

And it sounds like there’s some disagreement within the WHO team about whether that’s the right conclusion. One of those team members, Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans, told NPR's Steve Inskeep that said she and her team believe the pandemic did not originate at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan. "The market is not the whole story," she said. "The market has been one of those spreading events but there also was circulation outside of, aside from the market." Very mysterious.