Almost 600 Theodore Roosevelt sailors have COVID-19, 4 hospitalized, Navy says
SAN DIEGO — Four sailors on the San-Diego based aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt are in the hospital with COVID-19, the Navy said Tuesday. One is in intensive care.
The hospital admissions come the day after a member of the crew died of complications of the virus after four days in the ICU. The Defense Department has not released the name of the sailor.
The Navy also said Tuesday that 589 of the Roosevelt’s crew have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. More than 4,000 of the crew have moved off the ship into housing on Guam, either in private homes or hotels.
The San Diego-based carrier has a total crew of roughly 4,845 service members, including its embarked air wing and command staff.
The Roosevelt pulled into Guam on March 26 after several sailors on board tested positive for COVID-19.
A letter written by the ship’s commanding officer, Capt. Brett Crozier, asking the Navy for more assistance for its sailors was leaked and broadly publicized, resulting in Crozier’s firing on April 2.
Days later, then-acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly flew to the western Pacific island and, in a profanity-laced speech over the Roosevelt’s public address system, said Crozier was naive and stupid if he believed his letter wouldn’t be leaked.
Modly resigned April 7, a day after audio of that speech also leaked and was broadly publicized.
The situation on the Roosevelt is indicative of the challenges of containing the virus on Navy ships, where crews work, eat and sleep in extremely close quarters.
—The San Diego Union-Tribune
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Senator proposes bill to make sure Trump can’t #FireFauci
WASHINGTON — Sen. Edward J. Markey wants to make sure President Donald Trump cannot fire National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci without a good reason.
Trump retweeted a social media post over the weekend with the hashtag “#FireFauci,” leading some to express concerns that the president is so unhappy with Fauci he would fire him in the middle of a global pandemic. The law allows the president to fire directors of the national research institutes for any reason, and the Massachusetts Democrat is proposing a new bill to change that.
Fauci has come under fire by Trump’s allies and the conservative media in recent days for public statements that appeared to contradict the president and how he has handled the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a CNN interview, Fauci appeared to say that efforts to mitigate the coronavirus pandemic as it began spreading in the United States could have saved American lives, but clarified at a Monday press conference. Fauci said he was answering a “hypothetical” question, but it “was taken as a way that maybe somehow something was at fault here.”
“Now more than ever, we must listen to our public health, medical, and scientific experts,” Markey said in a statement. “If Donald Trump doesn’t like science-based evidence because it doesn’t support his partisan, fact-free view of the world, he cannot be permitted to silence the truth-tellers.”
At least 582,634 people have contracted the virus and 23,649 people have died in the U.S., according to information from Johns Hopkins University.
Markey’s bill would make sure the 26 directors of the national research institutes and national centers that are parts of the National Institutes of Health could only be fired for malfeasance, neglect of office, or incapacity. Other independent agency heads, like the Federal Trade Commission and Social Security Administration, already have protections against retaliatory firings, a release from his office said.
—CQ-Roll Call
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Chris Cuomo just wants his COVID-19 battle to be over: ‘It is in my head’
CNN anchor Chris Cuomo is still battling symptoms — and his own psyche — in his ongoing fight with COVID-19.
In conversation with Dr. Sanjay Gupta on Monday’s edition of “Prime Time,” a frustrated Cuomo offered another update on his health, which has yet to fully recover from his “freaky” bout with the novel coronavirus two weeks after his diagnosis.
“I’m scared by this. I’m scared by the potential of this, and it frustrates me because I can’t get out of this basement,” he said. “I still have this low-grade fever. I can’t shake it. And I know everybody tells me it’s gradual. It takes time. It’s anywhere between two to three and a half weeks — but it is maddening to have this little, stupid fever.”
Though his body aches have subsided and his breathing has improved, the veteran broadcast journalist said the respiratory illness is continuing to take a toll on his mental health. Earlier this month, Cuomo detailed some of the mind tricks the disease has played on him in the form of late-night hallucinations.
“People are afraid to talk about it, and I’m not: This virus creates emotional illness and creates psychological illness,” he said Monday. “I’m telling you, it is in my head. Not just figuratively, in terms of messing with you because you’re sick for a long time — it is causing people depression and it’s creating brain fog and it’s creating edginess in people. … I am experiencing that.”
The “Prime Time” host also compared his cabin fever to the whole of the United States, most of which continues to remain on indefinite lockdown as healthcare workers around the world race to slow the spread of the virus.
“I am a metaphor, Sanjay, for the country,” Cuomo said. “I’m ready to get out of the basement. I’m sick of being sick. I’ve had it, I want to get back to work. But I’m not ready. And I don’t have a plan to be ready. That’s where we are right now.”
—Los Angeles Times
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