Impeachment of Attorney General Ravnsborg – The mask mandate extended – The public health emergency extended nationally and internationally – Evening statistics
Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg is the first official to be impeached in South Dakota history. It may be recalled that he ran over a pedestrian over during the course of driving one night in 2020, initially believing, as he claimed, to have struck a deer. In which case, Ravnsborg must believe that deer habitually wear eyeglasses, since those of Joseph Boever, whom Ravnsborg struck while the latter was walking along the side of the road (and incidentally carrying a flashlight at the time), were found on the passenger seat of Ravnborg’s car during the investigation of the episode. Ravnsborg was traveling 60 MPH on the road’s right shoulder, crossing the rumble strip that separated the shoulder from the main road at the time of the collision. He still appears to think of his victim as a deer at some level, as he has shown since that time as little remorse as a hunter might display for shooting an elk or a buck. He pleaded no contest last year to the charges leveled against him on account of the accident; but since the charges were simply a pair of traffic misdemeanors with trifling fines attached to them, he underwent no great penalty for his negligence. It isn’t as if Ravnsborg has enjoyed a reputation for flawless driving before the crash occurred. On July 23, 2020, and September 6, 2020, Ravnsborg nearly crashed his car into two different police vehicles, getting off with warnings on both occasions.
The CDC has extended the mask mandate on public transportation and airplanes for another two weeks. It was expected to lift this mandate on the 18th, but the removal of the mandate has now been set to May 3rd. Airlines and the hospitality industry have been lobbying the White House to overturn both the mask rule and the requirement to test before returning to the United States from abroad. The CDC, however, claims that the recent spike in cases would make such a measure imprudent just at present. Personally I believe that it would do well not to specify a date for removal, since there is no way of guaranteeing that such a deadline can be met; an increase in cases or the emergence of a new variant could occur at any time. The virus, as many have pointed out, is simply not predictable at this point.
Similarly, the declaration of COVID as a public health emergency, which had been initially declared in early 2020 and then was renewed every subsequent quarter, has been renewed yet again for another three months. This means that Americans will be able to receive free tests, vaccines, and treatments, which certainly sounds generous – but who is to pay for it?
Along the same lines, the WHO has declared that COVID remains a global public health emergency even though COVID deaths have fallen to the lowest level since March 2020. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the decline of itself is good news, but added that some countries are still experiencing a spike in cases. The WHO has called for world leaders to ensure that 70% of their countries’ population is vaccinated, but at this point 75 nations still have a vaccination rate of less than 40% and 21 have a vaccination rate of under 10%. As Dr. Didier Houssin, chairman of the WHO’s international health regulations emergency committee, has said: “It’s always easier to declare a pandemic than undeclare one.”
Yesterday’s statistics as of 9:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 500,838,107; # of deaths worldwide: 6,209,173; # of cases U.S.: 82,133,342; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,013,044.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 501,850,634; # of deaths worldwide: 6,213,412; # of cases U.S.: 82,186,366; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,014,056.