Fauci Says China Was 'Extremely Secretive' But 'Didn't Necessarily' Cover-Up Pandemic

 by Michael Washburn via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said that Chinese officials were “extremely secretive” about the possible origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, though he stopped short of accusing Beijing of deliberately covering it up.

The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease was asked on BBC’s “Sunday Morning” program on March 27 what his response was to claims by World Health Organization (WHO) investigators that China prevented them from “seeing key details and from speaking to key people” when they were probing the pandemic origins in Wuhan in early 2021.

“You know, I don’t want to create any or mention any disparaging remarks about that,” Fauci responded.

“But the Chinese are very closed, in a way of being very reluctant, particularly when you have a disease that evolves in their country, they become extremely secretive, even though there’s no reason to be secretive,” he continued.

Fauci then suggested that embarrassment over global reactions may have driven the Chinese regime to be less than totally forthcoming on the origins and spread of COVID-19.

“I think they were very concerned and maybe embarrassed that the virus evolved from their country but there’s nothing wrong with that,” he said.

“So when they see something evolving in their own country, they tend to have a natural reflex of not necessarily covering things up, but not being very open and transparent.”

U.S. officials and others have repeatedly decried Beijing’s denying access to key data and facilities amid ongoing investigations to find out the source of the pandemic.

In addition, the Chinese regime in the early stages of the initial outbreak in Wuhan suppressed information about the severity and spread of the disease, allowing the virus to transmit around the world that was still unaware of the dangers of the new coronavirus.

Many lawmakers and experts have accused the communist regime of covering up both the origins of the pandemic and the initial spread of the outbreak.

At the heart of the debate on the source of the outbreak is whether it leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan or if the virus was transmitted naturally before jumping to humans. While there are proponents for both theories, the Chinese regime’s refusal to allow independent scrutiny of the lab makes it extremely difficult to fully investigate the matter.

Admitting that he was “never certain” in the early days about when and where COVID-19 might have originated, Fauci said that the similarities he observed between Covid-19 and such earlier diseases as SARS CoV-1 in the early years of the millennium suggested a possible origin for the current pandemic.

“I said, as did many other virologists, that the most likely etiology was a jumping species from the animal to the human,” Fauci commented.

Fauci added that he does not see anything suspicious about the existence of a research laboratory in Wuhan and this fact does not influence his view of the Chinese regime’s conduct in the matter.

“It’s not at all surprising that there is a research lab there. The Chinese were trying to figure out, and did figure out, what the original etiology was of SARS CoV-1,” he said, referring to the SARS virus that spread from China from 2002 to 2003. Scientists ultimately traced that virus to horseshoe bats in China’s Yunnan, which jumped to the intermediary of Asian civets before spreading to humans.

“[The SARS outbreak] made it very very clear there would be a possibility we would have another pandemic outbreak from the animal-human interface, so it makes sense that the Chinese would be studying this to find out how you could prevent another outbreak,” Fauci said.

Emails disclosed earlier this year suggested that Fauci not only initiated efforts to cover up evidence pointing to a lab origin of COVID-19 but actively shaped a highly influential academic paper that excluded the possibility of a laboratory leak.

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/fauci-says-china-was-extremely-secretive-didnt-necessarily-cover-pandemic

California auditors outline rampant fraud endangering LA County hospice patients

 Weak oversight and enforcement from state agencies likely enabled a boom of fraudulent hospice agencies within California’s Los Angeles County, according to an audit published to the public Tuesday.

In the report, delivered to Gov. Gavin Newsom and state legislative heads, acting California State Auditor Michael Tilden highlighted a nearly 1,600% increase in Los Angeles County hospice agencies since 2010 while the area’s senior population only increased by an estimated 40% during the same time.

As of 2019, Los Angeles County had roughly 1,600 aged persons living in the area per hospice agency, according to the report. Additionally, the rest of the state excluding Los Angeles County had one hospice agency per 5,900 seniors—still well above that of other states such as New York (one hospice per 72,000 aged persons) and Florida (one hospice per 95,000).

Alongside sheer volume, the audit spotted high concentrations of hospice agencies within a single area, including “a single building in the community of Van Nuys as having more than 150 licensed hospice and home health agencies—a number that exceeds the structure’s apparent physical capacity.”

The county’s hospice agencies also had “unusually long durations of patient care and high rates of patients being discharged alive,” a red flag for what are supposedly end-of-life care agencies, and multiple cases where medical professionals were affiliated with Los Angeles hospice agencies “without their knowledge or consent, thereby obtaining hospice licenses under false pretenses,” according to the report.

“These indicators strongly suggest that a network or networks of individual perpetrators in Los Angeles County are engaging in a large and organized effort to defraud the Medicare and Medi-Cal [the state’s federal Medicaid program],” Tilden wrote to state leaders. “Such fraud places at risk the extremely vulnerable population of hospice patients.”

The audit laid blame on the state’s Department of Public Health, the primary agency responsible for hospice licensing and oversight.

Auditors found that the department has not issued regulations around its licensing processes, did not deny licenses in cases where it was aware of possible fraud, has not promptly comprehensively investigated complaints of patient abuse and, since 2015, “has never suspended a hospice license and has revoked a hospice license only once.”

Further, the Department of Public Health, the Department of Health Care Services and the Department of Justice in California have each failed to coordinate fraud investigations and other regulatory efforts surrounding hospice agencies, leading to “gaps in the system” protecting against patient harm and fraud, per the report.

“For example, Health Care Services and Public Health do not coordinate with each other to comprehensively assess fraud risks, such as those we found in Los Angeles County,” auditors wrote in the report. “These siloed and disjointed efforts by state agencies are not sufficient to address the large‑scale fraud that is likely occurring in the hospice industry.”

Auditors noted that fraudulent hospice care “can be lucrative,” as agencies billing Medicare and Medi-Cal “at the most common rate” can bring in about $122,000 each month.

To clamp down on these trends and protect patients, auditors advised California legislators to require the public health department to “immediately” develop emergency hospice licensing regulations. Lawmakers could also revise state law so that the agency can levy monetary fines and other sanctions against hospice agencies that do not comply with licensing requirements, they wrote.

All three state departments should also convene a task force to spot and prosecute hospice agency fraud as well as establish a working group for statewide annual hospice program risk assessments, according to the report.

“We acknowledge that there are several opportunities for improvement in the oversight of hospice agencies,” Director and State Public Health Officer Tomás J. Aragón, M.D., wrote in a March 11 response to Tilden. “Public health has already begun or will soon begin to operationalize several of the recommendations made in the audit in advance of regulations and/or legislative initiatives. These include shoring up referrals made to other state departments where possible fraud may exist, training public health staff to better detect fraudulent activities, and adjusting our public website to improve reporting of ownership information for hospice agencies, among other things.

https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/providers/california-hospice-fraud-los-angeles-county-audit-auditors-outline-rampant-fraud

State-based ACA exchanges make backup plans in case Congress fails to act on enhanced ACA subsidies

 The Biden administration and states across the country celebrated record-breaking enrollment gains for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) this year.

But state-run exchanges are eyeing backup plans for outreach and marketing in case Congress doesn’t extend beyond this year a major driver for those enrollment gains: enhanced income-based subsidies. Some officials have warned that people could drop off coverage—and consumers may shift to less-generous plans—if Congress doesn't act in time.

“If we are still in this stage of uncertainty, we will have to anticipate either outcome and ramp up planning efforts … with both scenarios in mind,” said Zachary Sherman, executive director of the exchange called Pennie, in an interview with Fierce Healthcare.

Sherman said Pennsylvania’s exchange signed up more than 110,000 new customers compared to the last open enrollment, and 35,000 of those customers are getting subsidies that they typically would not be eligible for. 

The American Rescue Plan's (ARP's) enhanced subsidies ensured that anyone making more than 400% above the federal poverty level wouldn’t pay more than 8.5% of their income on healthcare. Previously, that was the cutoff for eligibility for income-based subsidies. The enhancements also ensured that some consumers qualified for zero premiums or $10 a month premiums. 

According to a recent Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation report, an estimated 3.4 million Americans currently insured in the individual market would lose coverage and become uninsured if the ARP’s premium tax credit provisions are not extended beyond 2022. Kaiser Family Foundation determined premiums would more than double for many. 

Pennie isn’t the only exchange that saw massive gains thanks to the subsidies. 

Washington’s exchange saw nearly 60,000 residents sign up for coverage for 2022, and 73% of all customers were eligible for subsidies, up from 61% in 2021, the exchange told Fierce Healthcare. 

It added that over 100,000 of the exchange customers (42% of total enrollment) pay $100 or less a month, compared to 29% before the ARP was signed into law.

Customers signing up on state-run exchanges saw average premium savings of 7% to 47% for 2022, according to a report from the National Association for State Health Policy. The report added that at least eight exchanges had 20% or more of their customers paying less than $25 a month for coverage. 

Overall, there were 14.5 million people who signed up for coverage for 2022 when considering both the state-run exchanges and the federally run HealthCare.gov, a record number.

Now, though, states are grappling with how many people could lose coverage if the extra subsidies go away.

Plans likely will start finalizing rates this summer and open enrollment will start in the fall, creating even greater pressure on Congress to act.

Minnesota’s exchange, MNSure, told Fierce Healthcare it expects 70,000 enrollees will lose some benefits and 10,000 would lose all of it. 

“Most of them will still get some subsidy. All of them will see a reduced subsidy,” said Libby Caulum, senior director of public affairs for MNSure.

Sherman said 90% of customers get financial assistance and will also see some adjustment, requiring key outreach if the subsidies don’t get extended. 

“We will have to do a considerable amount of planning and communication to those populations to help them understand what that means,” he said. 

This includes helping consumers understand the automatic renewal process and how to make plan adjustments. 

Sherman said that customers took the opportunity to buy more expensive plans than they otherwise would. A consumer that normally would buy a bronze or silver tier plan would instead buy a gold plan. 

“If the subsidies go away and the purchasing power of the subsidies is less going into 2023, we will want to make sure people understand that,” he said. 

Some of the people who were earning too much to qualify for subsidies before could drop out. 

“We will do a lot of education around the value and importance of staying covered about the options available to consumers,” Sherman said. “Maybe you are not in a gold plan but there are other options for you and the implications of buying a less expensive plan.”

Caulum added that predicting consumer behavior could be tricky, and it is difficult to pin down how many enrollees could drop off. 

“Once people get coverage it could be sticky for them. They realize the benefit and they don’t want to drop It,” she said.

It isn’t just consumers, however, that could be forced to rethink their available benefits. 

Massachusetts Health Connector Authority, for example, applied state funds otherwise allocated for premium assistance to help “reduce cost-sharing for critical services including primary care, mental health visits and prescription drugs,” said Executive Director Louis Gutierrez in a release from the National Association for State Health Policy.

The Biden administration, meanwhile, has been relatively mum on its plans on what happens if the enhanced subsidies aren’t extended. 

Administration officials said they believe Congress will extend the subsidies. However, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure recently told reporters the agency can move quickly to implement rules and change outreach efforts in case Congress doesn’t act. 

It remains unclear whether lawmakers will extend the subsidies. The $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act, which extended the subsidies through 2025, was nixed in the Senate after objections from Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia. But Biden had said late last year the goal is to pass the social spending package in chunks. 

However, so far none of those chunks have made significant progress through Congress, despite widespread support from Democrats. 

https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payers/state-based-aca-exchanges-make-backup-plans-case-congress-fails-act-enhanced-aca-subsidies

Meta says employees no longer need Covid boosters to come to U.S. offices

 Facebook parent Meta Platforms will stop insisting that employees have Covid booster shots in order to come to its facilities in the U.S., a spokesperson confirmed to CNBC on Friday.

Technology companies have begun the process of luring their workers back to their corporate campuses. Meta, as well as Microsoft, held broad U.S. office reopenings on Monday.

“We updated our requirements in early March to align with CDC guidance, and now Covid-19 boosters are no longer required for entry, though strongly recommended,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “The primary vaccination requirement (one or two-shot series) remains in place.”

The about-face comes less than three months after the social network operator announced rules for a return to the office.

The Meta spokesperson did not provide an explanation for the change.

In California, where Meta has its headquarters, 71% of the population is fully vaccinated, while 35% has received a booster shot, according to New York Times data. Case counts have fallen since January, the newspaper’s data shows.

Apple, also based in California’s San Francisco Bay Area, requires employees to show proof they have received a booster shot, technology news website the Verge reported in January.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday authorized a second Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna booster shot for people who are 50 or older at least four months after receiving an initial booster.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/01/meta-says-employees-wont-need-covid-boosters-to-come-to-us-offices.html

Judge Ousts Five School Board Members After Pennsylvania Parent Petition

 by Beth Brelje via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A Pennsylvania judge on Tuesday ordered five elected school directors be immediately kicked off the nine-member West Chester Area School board.

On Wednesday the same judge, William P. Mahon in the Chester County Court of Common Pleas, vacated Tuesday’s order and scheduled an argument for Friday.

It is all in response to a February petition filed by West Chester Area School District parent Beth Ann Rosica. In the petition, Rosica calls for the removal of five school board members, Sue Tiernan, Joyce Chester, Karen Herman, Kate Shaw, and Daryl Durnell.

Students returning to in-person classes after two years of remote learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic were required to wear masks over their mouth and nose. When Pennsylvania ended mandatory school masking, the West Chester Area School District was among a handful of schools that kept masking in place.

“When that was lifted, all of us parents started emailing, calling, showing up at school board meetings, asking our school board to amend their health and safety plan and allow for optional masking,” Rosica told The Epoch Times.

“They didn’t lift it for the West Chester School District, so we began to work on a petition to remove school board members because we believed that their actions were illegal and unconstitutional.”

Eventually, the district did lift the mask mandate, but the petition request remained relevant because, in August, the board passed a new health and safety plan which allows the board to impose future mandatory masking at various levels of COVID-19 transmission.

“For high levels of transmission, our current approved health and safety plan still requires masking, and we believe that that is illegal. We want this answered because we don’t want them to impose it come next fall, or any point in time when cases start growing up again,” Rosica said.

The petition was based on a seldom-used Pennsylvania education statute that allows for the removal of school directors for “failure to organize or neglect of duty.”

The statute says any ten resident taxpayers in the district may present a petition to the court to have them removed. But that argument was not addressed in Tuesday’s decision.

The court favored for Rosica, citing West Chester Area School District’s failure to respond. It also ordered Rosica and the four remaining board members to each submit a list of five proposed replacements for the board, to be appointed by the court to fill out the exiting board members’ terms.

Attorney Kenneth Roos of the Wisler Pearlstine law firm in Bule Bell, Penn. represents the school board. He told The Epoch Times in a phone call that he filed a motion for reconsideration of Tuesday’s decision, late Tuesday night. He had no other comment on behalf of the school board.

The motion disputes the time frame that the school had to respond, arguing it should have had until April 4 to answer. The judge agreed and allowed the board members to stay in place while the petition is argued on Friday.

Rosica is more than a mother of two students in the district. She is executive director of Back to School PA, a political action committee that advocated for reopening schools closed by COVID-19 mitigation measures. It aims to get pro-parent and pro-student candidates elected to school boards.

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/judge-ousts-five-school-board-members-after-pennsylvania-parent-petition

Manchin: Biden’s repeal of Title 42 order ‘a frightening decision’

 Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Friday slammed President Biden’s decision to rescind Title 42, a Trump-era health order used to rapidly deport people who cross the border without authorization, as “a frightening decision” that would likely increase the volume of migrants at the southern border.  

“Today’s announcement by the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and the Biden Administration is a frightening decision,” Manchin said in a statement after Biden’s announcement.   

“Title 42 has been an essential tool in combatting the spread of COVID-19 and controlling the influx of migrants at our southern border. We are already facing an unprecedented increase in migrants this year, and that will only get worse if the Administration ends the Title 42 policy,” Manchin warned. 

His office noted that U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced a record 1.7 million migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2021, a number four times higher than what was reported in 2020.  

Border officials expect to break that record in 2022 — Border Patrol officers had 838,000 migrant encounters at the southern border during the first three months of the year.  

“We are nowhere near prepared to deal with that influx. Until we have comprehensive, bipartisan immigration reform that commits to securing our borders and providing a pathway to citizenship for qualified immigrants, Title 42 must stay in place,” he said.  

Fellow centrist Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) joined Manchin in pushing back against the administration, warning it would “risk the health and safety” of her constituents.  

“Prematurely ending Title 42 without a comprehensive, workable plan would put at risk the health and safety of Arizona communities and migrants. Today’s decision to announce an end to Title 42 despite not yet having a comprehensive plan ready shows a lack of understanding about the crisis at our border,” she said in a statement.  

She was supported by Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a top GOP target in November’s midterm elections.   

“This is the wrong decision. It’s unacceptable to end Title 42 without a plan and coordination in place to ensure a secure, orderly, and humane process at the border,” Kelly said in a joint statement with Sinema.  

“From my numerous visits to the southern border and conversations with Arizona’s law enforcement, community leaders, mayors, and non-profits, it’s clear that this administration’s lack of a plan to deal with this crisis will further strain our border communities,” he added. 

Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), who is facing a competitive reelection race this fall, also criticized the administration’s decision.  

“Ending Title 42 prematurely will likely lead to a migrant surge that the administration does not appear to be ready for,” she tweeted on Friday.  

“I’ll keep pushing the administration to strengthen border security & look forward to hearing directly from border agents during my upcoming trip to the border,” she said.  

Biden’s decision to repeal Title 42 comes after more than a year of pressure from immigrant advocate groups that argued it improperly used health concerns about the spread of COVID-19 to deny migrants due process and asylum rights.  

The CDC implemented the health order at the start of the pandemic under former President Trump. 

The CDC said Friday that the order to suspend migrant entry into the country is “no longer necessary” because public health conditions have improved due to the availability of vaccines and therapeutic drugs.

Republicans on Capitol Hill immediately criticized the decision.  

“The Biden Administration’s messaging on the status of and response to COVID-19 continues to be a contradictory mess,” said Sen. Richard Burr (N.C.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. 

“On the one hand, the Administration is clamoring for additional emergency funding and costing taxpayers $5 billion per month by delaying student loan repayments, citing the continued threat of COVID-19,” he noted. “On the other hand, they’re rescinding safeguards in place to prevent new, potentially undetected variants from entering the country and encouraging Americans to return to normal life.” 

“They cannot have it both ways. The inconsistencies, particularly from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, do not inspire confidence that these decisions are being made based on science instead of politics,” he added.  

https://thehill.com/news/senate/3256527-manchin-bidens-repeal-of-title-42-order-a-frightening-decision/

More Americans support than oppose 15-week abortion bans: WSJ poll

 As the fight around abortion prepares for new decisions this summer at the Supreme Court, a new poll from The Wall Street Journal found more Americans support a ban on abortions 15 weeks or more into a pregnancy than oppose it.

In the poll, 48 percent said they strongly or somewhat favored a 15-week abortion ban with the exception of protecting the health of the mother, while 43 percent were opposed to such a ban. 

The poll found 31 percent strongly supported the ban, and 17 percent somewhat supported it. On the opposite side, about 34 percent strongly opposed the measure, while around 10 percent somewhat opposed it. 

The results come as multiple Republican-led states have passed bills that ban abortions after the pregnant person is 15 weeks into the pregnancy. 

The Supreme Court, now with a 6-3 conservative majority after former President Trump made three appointments confirmed by a GOP Senate, is set to consider a Mississippi law banning abortions 15 weeks into a pregnancy.

The state law is one of several that have been moved through GOP legislatures to limit abortion rights.

President Biden’s nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson would not change the makeup of the court, which would retain the 6-3 conservative majority if she is confirmed by the Senate, as expected.

Although more respondents supported than opposed the 15-week ban, a majority of voters said abortions should be legal in all or most cases. 

Fifty-five percent supported the legality of abortion in most cases, 30 percent said it should only be legal in cases of rape, incest or health of the mother, and 11 percent said it should be illegal in all cases.

The results underscore the complexity of abortion opinions in America.

“A majority opposes overturning Roe v. Wade but most would support moving the viability threshold to 15 weeks instead of 24 weeks,” Mark Penn, the co-director of a Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey, said back in December.

The new poll was conducted between March 2 and March 7 among 1,500 registered voters. The margin of error regarding the support for 15-week abortion bans was 3.6 percentage points, while the margin of error for whether abortion should be legal was 2.5 percentage points.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/3256814-more-americans-support-than-oppose-15-week-abortion-banswsj-poll/