New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday provided his daily coronavirus update from the Javits Convention Center, which opened today as an emergency field hospital.
The governor said both the Javits Center and the USNS Comfort hospital ship, which docked in the city this morning, will serve patients dealing with non-coronavirus medical needs. That should leave New York City hospitals to serve as the frontline of the coronavirus outbreak.
While expressing gratitude for federal support the state has received, Cuomo stressed that the city is not an "anomaly" but rather a "canary in the coal mine" for what the rest of the state and country will soon experience.
"What you see us going through here, you will see happening all across this country," he said.
"Anyone who says this situation is a New York City-only situation is in a state of denial."
All but one county in the state of New York has a confirmed COVID-19 case, he added.
Collaboration has been complicated, however, by the fact that states are competing for the same stock of limited supplies.
"We're competing amongst ourselves. We're driving the prices up. When we started buying ventilators, they were under $20,000. The ventilators are now over $50,000 if you can find them," Cuomo said.
The governor echoed a message from Mayor Bill de Blasio earlier today emphasizing that New York would provide guidance and direct assistance to other areas once they, too, become hot zones.
The state's latest death toll from the virus now stands at 1,218, a jump of about 300 from Sunday. Cuomo said the jump correlates with an increasing number of patients who have died after prolonged periods of ventilators use, suggesting that patients with more serious cases are beginning to succumb to the disease.
In a bit of positive news, Cuomo reported that cases are now doubling at a slower rate than that had been, down from doubling every two days to every six days.
"While the overall number of cases is going up, the rate of doubling is actually down," Cuomo said.
Young Americans face a double burden from crushing student debt and the ballooned federal deficit that is the result of President Trump's tax cut, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Cheddar's J.D. Durkin in an interview that aired Wednesday. Pelosi called the economic position many millennials find themselves in, even as the economy remains strong, "unconscionable." "Republicans foisted onto future generations [an] economy that is unfair, that is not really lending itself to growth in a strong, predictable, confident, certain way," Pelosi said.
The newly appointed vice chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.), said he is "absolutely" concerned that Chinese telecommunication giant Huawei poses a threat to national security in an interview on Cheddar Tuesday.
Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon is pushing forward for marijuana reform, introducing the aptly named House Resolution 420 to regulate marijuana much like alcohol was regulated post-Prohibition. "Ultimately we're going to be moving in that direction, allowing the states to be able to set up a regulatory system that meets their needs ー have their own approach in terms of taxation and distribution, just like alcohol," Blumenauer told Cheddar Tuesday. "
The cannabis business is budding across the United States, and one company is hoping to take hemp mainstream. Socati just announced a new $33 million round of funding. The company's CEO Josh Epstein talked to Cheddar about how that investment will help Socati expand is business.
President Trump's "Make America Great Again" cap is more than just a hat, it's a "symbol of us vs. them," Washington Post fashion editor Robin Givhan told Cheddar. Givhan penned a column last week about what the hat has come to mean in the years since it burst on the scene as a campaign accessory for Trump's 2016 presidential bid. The hat, she wrote, has become "a symbol of us vs. them, of exclusion and suspicion, of garrulous narcissism, of white male privilege, of violence and hate."
Between changes in the tax code and the government shutdown, H&R Block knows this year's tax season is likely to be stressful for many. That's why the company's introducing a slate of tools, some artificial intelligence-enabled, to help make it easier and more transparent to file. "This year we are introducing upfront, transparent pricing, so every single consumer will know what's it going to cost before I start," H&R Block CEO Jeff Jones told Cheddar.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2019.
The battle of the billionaires may be heating up ahead of the 2020 presidential race, as former mayor and media mogul Michael Bloomberg took a swipe at ex-Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz after he announced a potential run for president as an independent during an interview on "60 Minutes" Sunday. The two billionaires are looking in part to capitalize on their corporate success to gain an edge against President Trump, who leveraged his business career to gain the presidency. "Anything is really possible at this point, and you don't want to ignore a white billionaire announcing a candidacy for president," Julia Manchester, reporter at The Hill, told Cheddar Monday. "We saw it happen in 2015 and \[Trump]\ won."
The U.S. Treasury on Monday announced sanctions against Venezuela's state-owned oil firm in an effort to undermine incumbent president Nicolás Maduro and reinforce support for interim president Juan Guaidó. Brett Bruen, a former diplomat and director of global engagement under President Obama, called the administration's decision a "rare bright spot" in Trump's foreign policy. "The Trump administration is holding firm to defend democracy, they are standing up for human rights, they are standing up for the rule of law," Bruen told Cheddar Monday.
Trump's political calculus to appeal to his base ー an older, whiter, more conservative demographic ー is coming at the expense of his popularity among millennials, said Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster and author of "The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America." That poses a problem for the GOP as it seeks to broaden its tent in anticipation of a future when Donald Trump is not on the ballot.
