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AUSTIN, Texas (KWTX) Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's dramatically expanded order that requires travelers who arrive in the state to self-quarantine for 14 days went into effect Monday. The order now includes not only travelers from New Orleans and the New York Tri-State area, but also the states of California, Louisiana and Washington and the cities of Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit and Miami. The requirement went into effect at noon on Monday and remains in effect until further notice. The restrictions are part of the state’s growing effort to curb the spread of the new coronavirus in Texas. On Sunday Abbott said...

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” — Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) One of my Fox colleagues recently sent me an email attachment of a painting of the framers signing the Constitution of the United States. Except in this version, George Washington — who presided at the Constitutional Convention — looks at James Madison — who was the scrivener at the Convention — and says, “None of this counts if people get sick, right?” In these days of state governors issuing daily decrees purporting to criminalize the exercise of our...

It’s no secret that airliner passengers and crews are at an increased risk of infection with the novel coronavirus that causes the COVID-19 disease, but how many pilots and flight attendants have come down with the virus? It’s impossible to say right now for two reasons. There’s not enough testing capacity in the U.S. health care system to get tests for all who are symptomatic, let alone for all flight crewmembers, and a substantial percentage of people who acquire the novel coronavirus never experience symptoms or have only mild symptoms they might not associate with COVID-19. The subject has come...

The Center for Disease Control posted a job listing for a Public Health Advisor in the Quarantine Program in all major U.S. cities in November of 2019, at least a month before the novel coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak. The job listing is for positions in Dallas, El Paso, Houston, Seattle, Anchorage, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Miami, Atlanta, Honolulu, Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Minneapolis, Newark, New York, Philadelphia, and San Juan. The job description reads, “Serves as a project representative for a program responsible for preventing the importation and spread of communicable diseases.” All cities currently dealing with coronavirus fears in...

Fox News host Tucker Carlson said insiders in the Joe Biden presidential campaign believe he will not be mentally fit to be president come Election Day. While appearing on the Charlie LeDuff podcast, Carlson claimed that Biden insiders told him they don't believe the former vice president has the mental fortitude to last until the 2020 election in November, speculating that the Democratic Party may revoke his potential nomination.

Amid rising coronavirus cases in India, the national task force for COVID-19 constituted by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) has recommended hydroxy-chloroquine as a preventive medication for high-risk populations. According to this advisory distributed from New Delhi on March 22, 2020, hydroxy-chloroquine should be given to high-risk population -- asymptomatic healthcare workers involved in the care of suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19 disease and asymptomatic household contacts of laboratory-confirmed cases. The hydroxy-chloroquine protocol recommended by the National Task Force has been approved by the Drug Controller General of India (DGCI) for restricted use in emergency situations. "Hydroxy-chloroquine...

Add routine pet checkups to the list of things that will have to wait until the COVID-19 pandemic subsides. On Monday, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed an executive order prohibiting in-person veterinary services that aren’t essential and encouraging a shift towards telemedicine through the duration of the coronavirus pandemic. The order takes effect 5 p.m. March 31. The prohibition doesn’t apply to lifesaving procedures, treating serious pain, necessary euthanizations or necessary treatment of infectious diseases that can be transmitted between animals and human beings. A licensed veterinarian would make the call on whether a service is essential. The Centers for Disease...

Pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson is partnering with the U.S. government to produce up to 1 billion doses of a coronavirus vaccine for use around the world by the end of next year. Asked on NBC’s “Today” on Monday how quickly the first vaccines could be available, CEO Alex Gorsky replied, “This is like a moonshot for us.” “What would usually take five to seven years, we expect to be able to accomplish in five to seven months,” he said. ------------ SNIP ------------ SEE BELOW FOR IMPORTANT RELATED INFORMATION

It started with an unsubstantiated rumor. “You can laugh now,” Johnny Carson said on The Tonight Show on December 19, 1973, “but there is an acute shortage of toilet paper.” There wasn’t—but it didn’t matter. The broadcast sent America into a mass panic. Millions of shoppers swarmed into grocery stores and began hoarding toilet paper. Ex nihilo, a shortage was born. The Scott Paper Company urged people to stop panic-buying the product. Nevertheless, for four months, toilet paper—absent from shelves—was bartered for, traded, and even sold on the black market....Some experts regard the toilet-paper shortage of ’73 as a...

Macomb County patient was recently given a drug typically used for malaria that is showing positive results for beating COVID-19. Jim Santilli said it helped him and he believes it could help others, too. "I was struggling to breathe. I felt like I was slowly drowning and I was sitting there thinking I'm not going to make it until midnight," he said. Santilli says the experimental drugs Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin brought him back from the brink. The 38-year old was prescribed the drugs a little more than a week ago at Henry Ford Macomb where he was hospitalized for COVID-19....

March 31 2020 Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Lent Reading 1 Nm 21:4-9 From Mount Hor the children of Israel set out on the Red Sea road, to bypass the land of Edom. But with their patience worn out by the journey, the people complained against God and Moses, “Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert, where there is no food or water? We are disgusted with this wretched food!”In punishment the LORD sent among the people saraph serpents, which bit the people so that many of them died. Then the people...

Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Vigil/Easter Day are all important, even essential, to the Christian faith. The church encourages all Christians to participate in all the liturgies of this weekend, because only then do we hear the whole story; only then do we remember and reconnect [“re-member”] emotionally, mentally, and spiritually to the fullness of God’s love for humanity through Jesus Christ.A focal point of our liturgical journey through the weekend is when the presider proclaims at the Easter liturgies, “Alleluia. Christ is risen.” and the people respond, “The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.” To make that joyful proclamation even more joyful,...

The Chinese government now is deep into a disinformation campaign denying that this all started in Wuhan. A key component of that campaign is controlling the language used to describe the pandemic, stripping it of its connection to Wuhan and China, mandating that only generic terminology is used. Meanwhile, Chinese diplomats and media spread claims that the virus either started in the U.S. or was planted in Wuhan by the U.S. So if you claim that calling it Wuhan coronavirus is racist, you are part of the cover-up. Speaking the truth is not the problem, covering up the truth is...

"The longest chronology in the world stretches back 12,000 years. But in the Mediterranean, the problem is that we don't have a full, continuous record going back to the time of Thera," Pearson said. "We have recorded the last 2,000 years very well, but then there's a gap. We have tree rings from earlier periods, but we don't know exactly which dates the rings correspond to. This is what's called a 'floating chronology.'" Filling this gap could help pin down the Thera eruption date and paint a climatic backdrop for the various civilizations that rose and fell during the Bronze...

A Moorestown man is on a ventilator in Cooper ICU. His family is searching for a potential plasma donor. MOORESTOWN, NJ — A Moorestown family is seeking help for a man who is currently hospitalized on a ventilator in the Cooper Hospital ICU with new coronavirus. John Pratsinakis is fighting for his life against the virus, his daughter said on Monday. She is asking if anyone who has already fully recovered from their battle with the virus might be a potential blood donor. “We don’t know where this journey will lead us, but we must be prepared,” said Katerina Pratsinakis,...

Baruch Feldheim, 43, is facing charges of assault and making false statements to the feds on Sunday outside his Borough Park home where he allegedly peddled and stored massive amounts of N95 respirator masks, federal officials said. Feldheim is also accused of price-gouging. On March 18, he’s suspected of selling a New Jersey doctor about 1,000 of the masks for $12,000, a markup of roughly 700 percent, authorities said. [cut] The arrest comes after President Trump claimed that some medical supplies were being swiped from New York City hospitals, which Mayor Bill de Blasio dismissed as insulting.

On the last Sunday in March a year ago, The Washington Post Magazine published a goopy cover story titled "Pelosi's Moment." On the last Sunday in March this year, The Post published an "Opinion Essay" in the A section that went on for three pages (with eight photographs) celebrating Pelosi as "A troublemaker with a gavel." Reporter-turned-columnist Karen Tumulty wrote what sounded like a very long, saccharine Hallmark greeting card for Pelosi's 80th birthday. She has been the target of thousands of Republican campaign ads, though that assault failed spectacularly in 2018, when Democrats swept the midterm elections and regained...

Conservative Twitter was outraged on Friday by a New York Times op-ed viciously titled "The Road to Coronavirus Hell Was Paved by Evangelicals." Later in the day, it was revised to a gentler meanness (the subtitle's the same): The Religious Right’s Hostility to Science Is Crippling Our Coronavirus Response Trump’s response to the pandemic has been haunted by the science denialism of his ultraconservative religious allies. The author is Katherine Stewart, author of a book called The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. On Friday night, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins appeared on Fox News at...

Several of my most recent posts have focused on how abortion providers and activist groups are using the coronavirus crisis to promote at-home chemical abortions and demanding special treatment so that they may keep their doors open while other businesses are shuttered across the country. (And this isn’t for the sake of helping to manage the spread of COVID-19. Planned Parenthood in Pennsylvania, for instance, has closed all of its health centers that don’t perform abortions.) The latest group to take up the refrain is the New York Times editorial board, which never misses an opportunity to proclaim from on...

Rose Garden5:12 P.M. EDTTHE PRESIDENT:  Okay, thank you very much.  Thank you.  Very comfortable here.  A lot of room.  And we appreciate you being here.Yesterday I announced that we would be extending our social distance guidelines through the end of April.  This is based on modeling that shows the peak in fatalities will not arrive for another two weeks.  The same modeling also shows that, by very vigorously following these guidelines, we could save more than 1 million American lives.  Think of that: 1 million American lives.Our future is in our own hands, and the choices and sacrifices we...