New York Cancels Dem Primary, Cuomo Says More Than 2.5 Million May Already Be Infected In NYC: Live Updates
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Mon, 04/27/2020
Summary:
White House economic advisor says Q2 GDP will be ‘largest negative # since depression’
Global total tops 3 million
NYSBOE cancels Democratic Primary
San Francisco Marathon postponed
White House briefing is back on for Monday
Cuomo starts Monday briefing
New York deaths drop for 3rd straight day
New Zealand to lift lockdown at midnight
Several of Australia’s provinces unveil plans to gradually reopen
PM Abe says Japan will approve remdesivir for coronavirus treatment
Singapore now home to third-worst outbreak in Asia
Dr. Birx says some social distancing measures will likely remain in effect until end of summer
Boris Johnson returns to work
Norway extends ban on gatherings of 500+ until September
Monday WH briefing cancelled
CDC releases 6 new ‘official’ COVID-19 symptoms
India plans to finally repatriate citizens stranded abroad
Trump denies reports about firing Alex Azar
French Grand Prix latest Formula One racing event to be cancelled
Spain records second-lowest daily death toll in a month
Nearly 20 US states begin reopening push
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Update (1340ET): Just in case you still care, China reported yesterday that the number of active coronavirus cases in Wuhan’s hospitals has finally been reduced to zero. And Hu Xijin, the editor of the Global Times, just came up with another twitter ‘burn’ on the US.
A central guiding team led by a vice premier left Wuhan today where COVID-19 patients dropped to ZERO a day earlier. Chinese President and Premier both went to Wuhan. Did American top leaders visit New York City amid pandemic? Oh right, all of the US is the frontline now.
— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) April 27, 2020
President Xi visited Wuhan a month and a half ago for propaganda purposes. Visiting the city any earlier would not have been possible.
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Update (1330ET): Washington reporters might have celebrated too loudly at the news Trump’s Monday briefing would be cancelled. A White House spokesperson just said Trump will hold a briefing to discuss ‘testing guidelines’ – by which we assume he means trying to explain once again that the governors don’t need universal testing to begin unraveling their lockdowns, as Dr. Fauci said.
We expect Trump will also spend a not-insignificant amount of time denying that the shortages of test kits in some US states is his fault.
Those who won a bid to run in the San Francisco Marathon will need to wait until November, the city said Monday.
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Update (1220ET): In an unprecedented move, New York’s state board of elections has decided to cancel its June 23 Democratic Primary. They argued that, since Sanders has stopped campaigning, it would be wiser to cancel the primary rather than have people risk infection to write in Sanders’ name.
The New York state Democratic presidential primary has been canceled. The Democratic commissioners on @NYSBOE just agreed that Sanders has stopped campaigning, so they're striking him from the ballot because they want to minimize folks voting in the pandemic
— Zach Montellaro (@ZachMontellaro) April 27, 2020
The decision was expected, as the board had called Monday’s meeting to discuss whether to cancel the vote. WSJ reported yesterday that Sanders and his supporters had urged the board not to cancel the primary, since Sanders’ locus of support is in Brooklyn, and many people working on his campaign probably often forget that there’s a country outside of their favorite borough.
A state budget provision adopted earlier in April allows the Democratic commissioners on the BOE, Douglas Kellner and Andy Spano, to remove presidential candidates from the ballot who have made public statements suspending their campaigns.
Now, legions of Sanders supporters are about to find themselves in an uncomfortable position: demanding that they have a constitutional right to vote for Bernie in the primary, while continuing to ridicule everybody demanding that they have a constitutional right to leave their homes.
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Update (1200ET): Just before Gov Cuomo’s press conference began, Mayor de Blasio announced that he would close 40 miles of streets to cars over the next few weeks, hoping to achieve a goal of “100 miles of open streets”. He also said the city would hire 1,000 ‘contact tracers’ to try and suppress what is undoubtedly the worst outbreak in the country.
We wouldn’t be surprised to learn that de Blasio made the announcement deliberately to try and confuse the public into thinking his arch-rival Gov. Cuomo was the one who ordered the street closures, which have seriously angered many commuters and New Yorkers with disabilities who rely on cars.
Liberal NYers have been demanding that de Blasio open more streets to pedestrians (and close them to cars) to take more pressure off NYC’s crowded public spaces and subways. Cuomo has urged de Blasio to open up more streets for pedestrian use.
As the state weighs whether to finally start rolling back Cuomo’s “PAUSE” initiative – the “unPAUSE”, as Cuomo is half-seriously calling it – in some counties, Cuomo said that the state would launch its own coronavirus isolation units, using hotels or other places that can house large numbers of the infected with at least some privacy.
He also revealed the results of the state’s second random antibody screening of a few thousand New Yorkers. The data were mostly in line with the first test, though they caused the overall numbers to fluctuate a little bit: The new figures brought the statewide detection rate to 14.9%, up by nearly a full percentage point, while the new data for NYC drove the detection rate to a whopping 25%, up from 21% last week. So far, 7,500 have been tested between the two samples.
One again, there were glaring variations by region, with samples in New York City, the nation’s epicenter, showing much higher positivity rates than upstate samples.
Now, what impact will this have on ‘herd immunity’?
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