BREAKING—Beijing officials are recommending all residents of Chaoyang (mega district of 4+ million) to stay home on Monday—do not go indoors publicly, and do not leave the area. #BF7 variant suspected. China had its first death from #COVID19 since May. 🧵reuters.com/world/china/be…twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
2) Beijing is also recommending wearing the public to wear masks in public. And they mentioned the “highly contagious” #BF7 variant of Omicron being a potential factor.
3) crazy how @Twitter put a warning label on my original post about CCTV website even though the Reuters version has the exact same info. reuters.com/world/china/be…
4) here is what Beijing is doing—“Strict community (village) bayonet management, all entering personnel to implement epidemic prevention measures such as scanning code temperature measurement, checking nucleic acid negative certificates, etc.”
5) “the same time, we will make every effort to ensure residents' livelihood services such as living and medical treatment. Focus on ensuring the needs of quarantined residents for medical treatment and drug purchase, & require all medical institutions to open as much as possible
6) “Focus on ensuring the supply of materials in high-risk areas, timely provide vegetable packs, epidemic prevention kits, etc., and ensure smooth logistics by opening a "white list".”
7) “Focus on residents' epidemic-related demands, respond to solutions in a timely manner, and care for key groups such as the elderly, pregnant women, and patients with underlying diseases.”
8) folks—why is this significant? Chaoyang district of Beijing is the most populace district and is home to almost all the foreign Embassies and is a major economic center. Thus it’s a huge move to do this in its capitol city. reuters.com/world/china/ch…
9) Meanwhile, the #BF7 is ~8% of total variants. #BQ1 and #BQ11 are more prevalent and rising, while “older” #BA5 is in rapid decline. #BF7 is holding steady at ~8% for 3 weeks, but not really declining. covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tra…
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It’s a trap: CATCH 22—if you register, ICE will deport you. If you don’t register, you’ve now committed a crime for the first time, and ICE will deport you. Trump doesn’t care if you’ve paid all taxes and followed all laws—ICE will deport you.
2) The Department of Homeland Security announced that it was mandating that all people in the United States illegally register with the federal government, and said those who didn’t self-report could face fines or prosecution. ***Failure to register is considered a crime***
3) Registration will be mandatory for everyone 14 and older without legal status. People registering have to provide their fingerprints and address, and parents and guardians of anyone under age 14 must ensure they registered. The registration process also applies to Canadians who are in the U.S. for more than 30 days, such as so-called snowbirds who spend winter months in places like Florida.
3) “Kennedy is set to announce Thursday the planned changes, which include axing 10,000 full-time employees spread across departments tasked with responding to disease outbreaks, approving new drugs, providing insurance for the poorest Americans and more”.
SICKENING—Trump’s DHS just deported a surgeon from Brown University Medical School—who is here legally on an H1B visa that doesn’t expire until 2027, and has committed no crimes. Trained in the U.S. at Ohio State, University of Washington, and Yale as a **transplant surgeon** (one of the most difficult surgical fields in all of medicine!!!), she is a highly trained doctor on kidney transplants, which cannot be easily replaced. Her phone was seized at the border. A federal judge handed down an injunction against her deportation—but she was already deported on a plane en route to Paris. Brown’s kidney transplant clinic is now strained by her deportation.
2) Full text:
PROVIDENCE — A Rhode Island doctor who had traveled to Lebanon to see her parents was prevented from re-entering the United States at Boston’s Logan International Airport on Thursday evening, her lawyer and a colleague said.
Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, who lives in Providence, has been working at Brown Medicine’s Division of Kidney Disease & Hypertension since last July, and she [has] been part of the transplant service at Rhode Island Hospital, according to Dr. George Bayliss, the organ transplant division’s medical director. She has been studying and working in the United States for about six years, he said Friday.
The US consulate in Lebanon had issued her an H-1B visa, which is given to people in specialty occupations requiring expertise. The visa was valid through mid-2027, said Thomas S. Brown, an attorney representing her and Brown Medicine.
Alawieh was detained when she returned to Logan airport, and family members are afraid that she is about to be deported to Lebanon, he said.
“We are at a loss as to why this happened,” Brown said. “I don’t know if it’s a byproduct of the Trump crackdown on immigration. I don’t know if it’s a travel ban or some other issue.”
He said her phone has been seized and he has not been able to contact Alawieh.
Bayliss said a lawyer filed a petition with the US District Court in Massachusetts, and Judge Leo T. Sorokin issued an order saying Alawieh should not be moved outside of Massachusetts without 48 hours notice. But he said that message apparently did not reach immigration officials in time, and a plane carrying Alawieh left for Paris.
“This is outrageous,” Bayliss said in an interview. “This is a person who is legally entitled to be in the U.S., who is stopped from re-entering the country for reasons no one knows. It’s depriving her patients of a good physician.”
A US Customs and Border Patrol spokesperson, Ryan Brissette, was not able to immediately answer questions about Alawieh on Friday evening.
Bayliss said Alawieh graduated from the American University of Beirut medical school and came to the United States for a nephrology fellowship at Ohio State University. She then landed a transplant fellowship at University of Washington and had a residency in the Yale hospital system before starting at Brown Medicine last July, he said.
“She’s really a very humble and able person,” Bayliss said. “She takes care of her patients. She is talented and thoughtful and a great addition to our division.”
Bayliss said Alawieh went to Lebanon to visit parents and planned to be gone for two weeks. He said she texted a colleague at 6:30 p.m. Thursday saying she was back in Boston, but then her family heard from immigration officials.
Dr. Paul Morrissey, surgical director of the organ transplant division at Brown University Health, said Alawieh works on getting people in Rhode Island on the list for a kidney transplants, and that’s a crucial job at a time when there has been a lot of focus on the need for kidneys and their equitable distribution.
He said Alawieh should not have had any problem traveling out of the country with an H-1B visa.
“It’s an unfortunate set of circumstances,” Morrissey said. “It’s putting a strain on our office. Her work has been exceptional.”
3) There is a new Trump ban against many countries, including tourist visa bans against all countries in the red and orange lists. This list is still tentative. And it shouldn’t have affected people with existing visas, such and the Brown kidney transplant surgeon
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again… once upon a time, liberals did have our own “Leftist Joe Rogan”… his name was Joe Rogan…
Here he is advocating for socialized medicine, healthcare for all, and supporting labor unions to protect workers.
2) Recall, Rogan was once pro Obama and pro Bernie Sanders, and pro Yang Gang, and anti Trump. It’s sad he has since failed to the dark side. But like Vader… maybe he can be redeemed someday and come back to the light.
Joe Rogan was also pro gay rights and pro DACA and pro helping inner city communities that suffer economic and social injustices. It’s sad what he has become. I feel we should try to pull & welcome him back someday. Everyone can be redeemed.