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.
With less than two weeks until election day, a California Democrat, Harley Rouda, has gotten a $4.3 million boost from Michael Bloomberg in his bid to take down 30-year incumbent Republican Congressman Rohrabacher. Bloomberg's Independence USA PAC disclosed the spending last week, which went to advertising targeting the Republican. Rouda said Bloomberg's ad campaign will help bring the issue of climate change to the forefront of voters' minds in the coastal Orange County district.
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Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti mulled a 2020 presidential run in an interview on Cheddar Monday, saying the cure to America's "odious" political sickness may be found in city hall. "I hope that even if I don't run, that mayors will think about jumping in," Garcetti said, "because I think we could cut through a lot of that partisanship right now."
Attending a Trump rally can be daunting for any self-proclaimed liberal ー even more so if your last name is Pelosi. But an experience with her political opposites left Alexandra Pelosi, the documentarian and youngest daughter of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, feeling hopeful. "We all need to burst out of our own bubbles and see what the other people are thinking," Pelosi said Monday in an interview on Cheddar.
Gab, an online haven for white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the alt-right, is facing an increasingly uncertain future. Over the weekend, Gab was linked to Robert Bowers, who is accused of open-firing in a Pittsburgh, Pa., synagogue, killing 11 people and wounding six others. Bowers had a verified account on Gab and used the social network to post hateful, anti-Semitic messages up until the morning of the shooting.
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After a week of political finger-pointing and frayed national nerves ahead of a major election, a Florida man is in custody on federal charges that he sent at least 13 live explosive devices to prominent former and current Democratic officials, a news organization, a Hollywood actor, and liberal donors.
Megyn Kelly's exit negotiations with NBC were underway on Friday, as the network announced that the third hour of valuable morning show real estate she anchored is canceled. "Essentially and effectively she is out," Tony Maglio, TV editor at TheWrap, said Friday in an interview with Cheddar. "It's just a matter of all the legalese and what she'll walk away with."
The multi-year Women in the Workplace report, produced by Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In organization with McKinsey & Company, reveals a stubborn problem of gender diversity in corporate America. As Rachel Thomas, the president of Lean In, explained to ChedHER on Friday, that companies are clearly interested in closing the gender gap ー but they haven't done enough to make it happen yet.
Federal authorities have arrested Cesar Sayoc, Jr. in connection with a dozen packages containing likely explosives. Sayoc has a Florida address and has a criminal record, according to the Broward County Sheriff.
Two additional suspicious packages sent to prominent Democrats were intercepted earlier Friday, only hours before the manhunt appeared to close in on a suspect for the attempted mail bombings now being described as a domestic terrorism.
