De Blasio breaks up funeral of a rabbi
Mayor Bill de Blasio lashed out at Hasidic residents of the Williamsburg section in Brooklyn late Tuesday after personally overseeing the dispersal of a crowd of hundreds of mourners who had gathered for the funeral of Rabbi Chaim Mertz, who died of the coronavirus.
In a series of tweets, de Blasio denounced the gathering, which the police broke up, and warned “the Jewish community, and all communities” that any violation of the socialdistancing guidelines in place to stop the spread of the virus could lead to a summons or an arrest.
“What I saw WILL NOT be tolerated so long as we are fighting the Coronavirus,” the mayor said in one post.
The pandemic has hit Hasidic residents of New York with devastating force, sickening and killing people at a rate that local leaders and public health data suggest may exceed that of other ethnic and religious groups.
52 infected after primary election
There are no plans to postpone or otherwise alter a special congressional election in Wisconsin that is less than two weeks away, even though more than 50 people who voted in person or worked the polls during the state’s presidential primary this month have tested positive for COVID19. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers tried to change the April 7 election so that it would be conducted entirely by mail, but he was blocked by the Republicanled Legislature and conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Ill after drinking disinfectants
Two Georgia men were hospitalized after drinking cleaning products. Georgia Poison Control Director Gaylord Lopez said he doesn’t know if the men ingested the cleaning solutions because of President Trump’s musings on whether injecting disinfectants could treat the virus during a White House briefing on Thursday. Lopez says the first man, in his 50s in Atlanta, drank about 16 ounces of bleach on Saturday. He was treated in a hospital and has since been discharged from a psychiatric ward. A second man in his 30s was discharged after guzzling a mixture of PineSol, pain medications and other liquids on Sunday. According to the CDC, calls to poison centers about disinfectants have increased 20% in the first three months of this year.
Suit over denial of relief payments
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund has sued the federal government over its denial of coronavirus relief payments to U.S. citizens who are married to immigrants without Social Security numbers. The lawsuit was filed in Maryland this week on behalf of six American citizens who were denied coronavirus relief checks because they filed and paid taxes with a spouse who has what’s known as an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, or a way for immigrants without legal status to still pay federal taxes, which millions do. MALDEF says the Treasury Department is violating Americans’ First and Fifth Amendment rights by denying them payment simply because of who they are married to. It’s estimated that 2 million U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents are married to people without Social Security numbers, although it’s unclear how many of them file jointly.
‘Operation Warp Speed’ launched
The Trump administration is quietly organizing a Manhattan Projectstyle effort to drastically cut the time needed to develop a coronavirus vaccine, with a goal to have 100 million doses ready by year’s end, according to two people familiar with the matter. Called “Operation Warp Speed,” the program will pull together private pharmaceutical companies, government agencies and the military to try to cut the development time for a vaccine by as much as eight months, one of the people said.
First case of dog testing positive
A pug named Winston has tested positive for the coronavirus in what is apparently the first known case in which the virus was detected in a dog in the United States, researchers at Duke University said this week. The dog belongs to a Chapel Hill family participating in a research study at the university, in which researchers were trying to understand how humans respond to different types of infection. Three of the family members were also infected by the virus.
Chronicle News Services