Across U.S., officials lock horns over how to ease lockdown
Vegas mayor offers city as control group; Missouri sues China
President Donald Trump claimed Wednesday that he had signed an executive order “temporarily suspending immigration into the United States.” But experts said the order merely will delay the issuance of green cards for a minority of immigrants.
Trump said his move, announced in a Monday tweet, was necessary to help Americans get back to work in an economy ravaged by the coronavirus.
“This will ensure that unemployed Americans of all backgrounds will be first in line for jobs as our economy reopens,” he said.
But the order includes a long list of exemptions, including for those who are currently in the country and those seeking entry to work as physicians and nurses, as well as the spouses and minor children of American citizens. The 60-day pause also leaves untouched the hundreds of thousands of temporary work visas the country issues each year.
Meanwhile, Trump on Wednesday took issue with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s decision to begin reopening businesses such as hair salons and tattoo parlors when the coronavirus continues to spread.
Trump said at a White House briefing that he disagrees “strongly” with the Republican governor’s decision to allow the reopening of businesses like barber shops where social distancing is impossible, saying they stand “in violation of the phase one guidelines” his administration released last week.
While Trump said he wants Kemp to do what he thinks is right, the president said he thinks opening beauty salons and barber shops during phase one ‘is just too soon.”
“They can wait a little bit longer,” Trump said. “Just a little bit not much, because safety had to predominate.”
In Nevada, officials condemned Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn
Goodman after she called for casinos and other nonessential businesses to reopen and suggested the city could serve as a test case to measure the impact during the coronavirus pandemic.
One local official called her comments “reckless and dangerous” and another described them as an “embarrassment.”
Goodman, during a 25minute interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN, said she wants everything back open, including casinos, restaurants and small businesses, and a return of conventions.
The politically independent mayor suggested that “viruses for years have been here” and said that she had suggested that the citizens of Las Vegas become “a control group” to see how relaxing closures and restrictions would affect the city.
“I offered to be a control group and I was told by our statistician you can’t do that because people from all parts of southern Nevada come in to work in the city,” Goodman said. “We would love to be that placebo side so you have something to measure against.“
Goodman for weeks has spoken out against Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak’s orders shuttering casinos and non-essential businesses, calling it “total insanity” that’s “killing Las Vegas.”
Meanwhile, China slammed a lawsuit brought against it by Missouri over the pandemic as “very absurd.”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the legal action had “no factual and legal basis at all,” and repeated defenses of China’s response to the outbreak that largely has subsided in the country where it was first detected.
The ministry and other Chinese government departments have denied accusations that officials delayed reporting on the extent of the outbreak in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year, even as reports pile up that worries over political stability were placed above public health concerns.
Missouri’s top state prosecutor Tuesday announced the lawsuit that alleges Chinese officials are to blame for the pandemic that has sickened around 2.5 million worldwide, thrown tens of millions out of work and devastated local economies, including in China.
The state’s action likely will end up being largely symbolic, however, since lawsuits against other countries typically don’t go anywhere because U.S. law generally prohibits them.
Independent reports say Missouri has reported 215 deaths from the virus.
In New York, two pet cats have tested positive for the coronavirus, marking the first confirmed cases in companion animals in the United States, federal officials said Wednesday.
The cats, which had mild respiratory illnesses and are expected to recover, are thought to have contracted the virus from people in their households or neighborhoods, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The finding, which comes after positive tests in some tigers and lions at the Bronx Zoo, adds to a small number of confirmed cases of the virus in animals worldwide.
U.S. authorities, including the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, say that while it appears some animals can get the virus from people, there’s no indication pets are transmitting it to human beings.
“Now, obviously, is that impossible? I mean, biologically, no, anything is possible,“Fauci said. “But there’s no evidence whatsoever that we’ve seen from an epidemiological standpoint that pets can be transmitters within a household.”