Gov. Schwarzenegger Declares Swine Flu Emergency in California
abcnews.com 04/28/09
By ZOE MAGEE, LAUREN COX, KATE BARRETT and DAN CHILDS
Alarmed by the growing number of swine flu cases and the possibility that a California man may have died from the disease, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency today to help deal with the outbreak.
The swine flu virus outbreak spread to two more states and the total number of cases confirmed in the U.S. jumped to 69, health officials said. That figure is expected to keep rising.
“I do expect more cases and expect more states to be affected,” Rear Admiral Dr. Anne Schuchat, interim deputy director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s science and public health program, told a Senate hearing today. “I think we need to be prepared that even if it starts to look a little better, it may get a little worse.”
California has confirmed 13 cases of swine flu, and today it was investigating whether two deaths occurred as a result of the virus. According to Los Angeles County public health official Jonathan Fielding, one of the deaths has been discounted as resulting from swine flu, but the other is still being investigated. If this case is confirmed, it would be the first death in the U.S. attributed to the illness.
Richard Besser, acting director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, declined to comment on the California investigation, but said, “I fully expect we will see deaths from this infection.”
Florida has reported an incidence of swine flu today, and Indiana health officials confirmed this afternoon that a student at Notre Dame has swine flu. These developments bring to seven the number of states where the infections are being investigated.
In Orlando, Fla., the chief medical officer at Florida Hospital Loran Hauck indicated the flu has spread to a tourist who visiting the crowded Disney World.
“A case was diagnosed here in Orlando today on a tourist from Mexico who came to Disney attractions two days ago to visit,” Hauck wrote in the email. Florida health officials have not confirmed that the tourist was stricken with swine flu.
Indiana joins Ohio, New York, Texas, Kansas and California as states with confirmed cases.
The outbreak is expected to keep growing because the CDC said today the new count includes “a number of hospitalizations.”
New York City Has Big Jump in Swine Flu Cases
The biggest increase occurred in New York City where the number of cases leaped from 28 to 45, the CDC said.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday the cases were confined to a “single cluster,” students of St. Francis Preparatory School and their relatives. Several of the students had spent spring break in Cancun, Mexico, which health officials suspect is the origin of the outbreak.
But Bloomberg said today that it appears to have spread to at least one other school, Public School 177, a school for autistic children. Of PS 177’s 380 students, 82 called in sick today and at least a dozen have fevers. One of those students has two siblings at St. Francis Prep, Bloomberg said. Both of the those schools are located in the borough of Queens.
The mayor also said there are six possible cases of the flu in a Manattan school, Ascension parochial school.
And New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said today that “many hundreds” of students and teachers at St. Francis Preparatory School are sick—though most of those cases appear mild so far.
“It is here and it is spreading,” Frieden said. “We do not know whether it will continue to spread.”
At one point the Ernst and Young corporation said it had confirmed a case at its Manhattan headquarters, but later retracted the statement.
In addition, there were four more cases in Texas and three additional cases in California.
Leaders in Congress raced each other to hold hearings on the outbreak. Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, chairman of the Senate appropriations subcommittee that deals with pandemic preparedness, called an emergency hearing to address funding for states and federal government
Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., called another hearing for Wednesday and Rep. Henry Waxman, D- Calif., the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee called for a hearing on Thursday.
Concern among travelers was so great that Carnival Cruises today suspended its stops at Mexican ports because of its concerns about swine flu.
Concern about swine flu was spreading globally.
Around the world, New Zealand confirmed 11 cases, and Israel confirmed one today. South Korea, Australia and the Czech Republic announced several suspected cases.
A South Korean Catholic nun traveling in Mexico has tested positive for swine flu, according to reporting by ABC’s Joohee Cho. South Korean authorities believe the 51-year-old woman caught the disease from a taxi driver and have requesting the Mexican government look into the matter.
Officials Fighting Swine Flu Learned Lessons From SARS
Korean health authorities are examining 315 other passengers that were on the same flight with the nun and have already injected Tamiflu into eight passengers who sat near her. Spain had one previously confirmed case, the United Kingdom, two and Canada, six. France is still testing some people and some test results in Germany came back negative.
Most of the individuals involved had recently returned from Mexico.
To slow the global spread of the virus, the U.S. State Department and the European Union’s health commissioner recommended avoiding nonessential travel to Mexico.
Russia, Hong Kong and Taiwan said they would quarantine visitors showing symptoms of the virus amid global concern about a possible pandemic, which means a prevalent and rapidly spreading disease over a large region.
But Gregory Hartl, a World Health Organization spokesman, told reporters that it did not recommend border closure or travel restrictions as a countermeasure.
He noted that infected people may not show symptoms at the airport or when they reach a border crossing. “Certainly, if you feel that you are ill, you should not travel, in any case, to anywhere,” Hartl said.
Lessons learned from the SARS (a viral respiratory disease) outbreak in Asia in 2003 showed that border closure was economically disruptive and not particularly effective. “In public health terms, it didn’t work, so we don’t want to repeat something that didn’t work” Hartl said.
But governments in Asia were not taking any chances. Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines dusted off thermal scanners used in the SARS crisis as they checked for signs of fever among passengers from North America.
South Korea and Indonesia introduced similar screening. In Malaysia, health workers in face masks took the temperatures of passengers as they arrived on a flight from Los Angeles.
China said anyone experiencing flulike symptoms within two weeks of arrival had to report to authorities.
India will start screening people arriving from Mexico, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Spain, Britain and France for flulike symptoms, said Vineet Chawdhry, a top health ministry official. It also will contact people who have arrived from Mexico and other affected countries in the past 10 days to check for the symptoms, he said.
These measures came after the World Health Organization announced that it had raised its pandemic alert level to Phase 4 from Phase 3, the first time the alert level has been raised above 3 since the system was adopted in 2005.
The Phase 4 designation signifies that the new swine flu virus can cause sustained outbreaks and is adapting itself to spread among humans, significant steps toward a pandemic. But the ranking does not necessarily mean that a pandemic is a foregone conclusion.
“If the virus is an efficient virus, if it spreads easily from human to human, it will probably continue to spread,” Hartl said.
All transmission of the disease so far appears to have been human to human and not from animal or other contact, according to the WHO. “There is no danger from eating pork,” Hartl said. “If you cook pork well, if you cook all meat well, it kills all virus.”
Swine Flu Ground Zero
Outside Mexico, where more than 150 people have died, the United States has been the country worse hit by the swine flu outbreak. Many of the cases appear to be students who recently visited Mexico.
Addressing the National Academy of Sciences Monday, President Obama acknowledged the efforts to keep pace with the spread of the disease within the United States.
“We are closely monitoring the emerging cases of swine flu in the United States,” he said. “And this is obviously a cause for concern and requires a heightened state of alert. But it is not a cause for alarm.”
There is no vaccination for the swine flu strain, which has elements of pig, bird and human strains. But officials said they have ramped up medical surveillance around the country and, as part of the emergency declaration, freed up state and federal resources for prevention. Officials also emphasized the importance of individual care and good hygienic practices.
“Even if this outbreak is a small one, we can’t anticipate we won’t have follow-up outbreaks,” U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said.
A different scenario is unfolding across the border in Mexico. While authorities hunt for the source of the swine flu outbreak, the country is under lock down. Schools, museums, parks and even churches in Mexico City have been shut down by the government.
“I haven’t been out for days,” said one woman, who only left to bring her baby to the doctor for a routine vaccination.
More than a thousand people countrywide have been infected. The government has advised people to stay home and indicated that those infected by the virus could be isolated. In the country’s deserted capital, public events were cancelled for the next week or so. Sales of masks have soared as people try to prevent themselves from the potentially deadly disease.
Mexican officials are hoping the 10-day shut-down will be enough to cover the two-day incubation period and the seven-day recovery of anyone who has the virus.
Mexico’s first suspected case of the swine flu was detected in the southern state of Oaxaca, Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said Monday, according to Reuters. He said it was too early to identify the cause or geographical source of the disease.
“It’s a new virus, new virus combination, it does transmit from person to person and we already know it causes fatalities so we already have all the makings of a possible pandemic,” Irwin Redlener of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health said.
But Dr. Nancy Cox of the CDC has said she believes the earliest onset of swine flu in the United States in this current outbreak happened March 28. Cordova said a sample taken from a 4-year-old boy in Mexico’s Veracruz state in early April tested positive for swine flu. However, it is not known when the boy, who later recovered, became infected.
A quarter of the 50 million doses of Tamiflu stockpiled by the U.S. government has been released and the Obama administration has declared a public health emergency to free up the medicine and federal help to the states who need it.
But pharmacies in several states have been flooded with phone calls from concerned customers.
“Our first phone calls were doctors asking if we had Tamiflu,” New York City pharmacist Yvonne Zampitella said. “They were prescribing it for their patients and family members.”
Symptoms of the swine flu are similar to the regular flu, health officials say, including aching muscles, fever and fatigue. The virus appears to be responsive to medication.
“These drugs do not kill the virus, they help prevent its replication and therefore help reduce the symptoms, but they have to be taken within 48 hours so people have to recognize they have a serious illness, get to a doctor and start treatment,” ABC News’ Dr. Tim Johnson said on “World News” Monday.
“But we should not be telling people to go out and buy these drugs for use as preventive measure. We need to reserve drug for actual cases and outbreak.”
The Associated Press contributed to the reporting of this story.
Attention Convention Delegates Re Death Penalty Resolution
04/19/09
Dear Convention Delegate
Over the past 20 years, four or five resolutions have passed in favor of eliminating the death penalty in California. The normal progress of issues is from Resolutions, to Platform, to Legislative action. Nonetheless, this specific class of resolutions has consistently died after passage.
For many years we have tried to get opposition to the death penalty into the CDP platform, reflecting the stated position of a long string of conventions, but have been stymied at every turn.
I understand that there are those who still support the death penalty, but it is the opinion of many, including many law enforcement and legal professionals, that the punishment fails on all counts. It does not deter crime. As many relatives of victims oppose the death penalty as support it, putting in question the subject of “closure”, particularly when almost all discussion of :closure” is in terms of revenge. It costs the state and local governments millions of dollars a year that other remedies do not incur. To many it is morally repugnant to have the government kill anyone except as a last resort in defense of everyone.
A poll was taken at the 2007 convention which showed overwhelming support for abolition of the death penalty. A subsequent poll was taken by email to all delegates, which again showed support for abolition by a huge majority.
Most recently a resolution was presented at the November Eboard meeting, but due to a change in the rules, it arrived two days late, and was not scheduled. The discussion of the resolution in committee was stopped by a committee member’s veto. At that meeting the resolution was accepted for discussion at the 2009 convention. A promised vote on the resolution within the Platform Committee at that Eboard meeting was reduced to a ‘discussion” of the issue outside of the formal structure of the committee.
Subsequently, a revised resolution was timely submitted to the committee earlier this year with a partial list of signatories. We have continued to collect signatures and the support of many party organizations around the state. Many of those organizations forwarded our resolution to the committee over their endorsing signature.
On Saturday morning, over two months after the submission of our revised resolution, we were informed that the committee had developed a “consolidated” resolution. Their version mostly questions the costs, but supports only a continuation of a moratorium (there is no real moratorium) and supports as a choice, “the option of retaining the current system”. We were told “there will be no separate discussion or action on your resolution” and gave us three days to respond with our concurrence or we would not be included as “co-sponsors” of the committee’s resolution. We chose not to be included, as this “consolidated” resolution merely “consolidates” the position of the inner circle of the party, and does not reflect the clearly stated wishes of the body of delegates. The entire message from the Resolutions Committee is included at the end of this email.
This “consolidated” resolution does not mention abolition of the death penalty at all, thus it “consolidates” by eliminating the essence of the resolution. It cites as its foundation a 31-year-old survey of all Californians on the death penalty, and ignores the two surveys of California Democratic Party delegates taken in the past 12 months.
We who oppose the death penalty understand the reluctance of professional politicians and their supporters to take on any contentious issue. We believe that in this case they at last have no choice as the will of the party has been expressed time and again. We respectfully disagree with all who support continuation of this penalty.
The committee has stated that our resolution is improper because it calls for a change in the CDP Platform. We believe that we have accommodated that rule properly by calling for inclusion of abolition in the 2010 Platform, not the current one. We accept the rule that the current platform cannot be changed. We wish to mandate, once and for all in this resolution that the stated will of the party rank and file be included in the next platform Unless we include this, this resolution will disappear, passed or not, as have all of the others before it.
It is my intent to take this issue to the Committee, and if necessary, to the floor of the convention. I will need your support and your signature to make this happen. We will be collecting signatures in the lobby of the convention center. The Resolutions committee has been re-scheduled to meet during the Regional Director’s elections. We will try to surmount this obstacle, and request maximum attendance at the Resolutions Committee meeting. We also request maximum attendance at the Sunday General Session to support our original resolution.
Bob Handy
Regional Director, Region 10
Of Black Holes and Radio Silence
Monday 20 April 2009
by: Elizabeth de la Vega, t r u t h o u t
http://www.truthout.org/042009R
A former prosecutor examines the special prosecutor debate
There is no doubt that sometime in 2002 - if not before - Bush administration officials and their lawyers began orchestrating a torture campaign, which they calculatedly attempted to justify through specious legal memos. They continued to abuse prisoners, and to conceal that mistreatment from Congress and the public, through at least 2008. In all of this conduct, they have committed grave crimes for which they must be held accountable. I believe this to be a national imperative of the highest order. I have pored over every available book and report about torture, disturbing as they are, and I have read the lurid facts and twisted legal reasoning laid out in the Office of Legal Counsel torture memos just released by the White House. I am increasingly outraged by the day, disgusted by years of inaction, and impatient for results. Consequently, I would like nothing more than to join with so many friends and associates whom I respect in calling for immediate appointment of a special prosecutor.
Unfortunately, however, I can’t do it. Not yet. We must have a prosecution eventually, but we are not legally required to publicly initiate it now and we should not, as justifiable as it is. I’m not concerned about political fallout. What’s good or bad for either party has no legitimate place in this calculus. My sole consideration is litigation strategy: I want us to succeed. And our best hope of doing that is to unflinchingly assess - just as any lawyer would do when contemplating choices of action in a case - what we would have tomorrow if we got what we think we want today. We should obviously think twice about pursuing an intermediate goal, however satisfying it may appear, if it would be counterproductive in the long term. There are times when it’s smarter to wait before taking a prosecutive step and this is one of them.
I know that what I have to say may not be popular, but the stakes here are too high to ignore “bad facts” - i.e., those that might run counter to our position or the course we’ve decided to take. So, it’s better, I think, for me to tell you what I know to be true about grand jury investigations and the requisites of preparing a criminal case for indictment and trial - even though you might not like to hear it. Then you can make this assessment yourselves.
First, the bottom line: From the perspective of anyone who wants Bush and Cheney and their top aides to be held accountable for their crimes, the designation of some sort of independent prosecutor right now would be the worst possible eventuality. It’s a move that has so many downsides - and holds so few real benefits - that I would be more inclined to question President Obama’s motives if he appointed a special prosecutor than if he did not. There is a reason why former prosecutor Arlen Specter - a Republican senator from Pennsylvania - has voiced support for a special prosecutor, while former prosecutors Patrick Leahy and Sheldon Whitehouse - Democratic senators from Vermont and Rhode Island, respectively - would prefer a public inquiry.
What is it? Well, for starters, there is - under currently available US law - no such thing as a truly independent prosecutor. There has not been since 1999, when the independent counsel statute expired. Accordingly, regardless of the title given this individual - and whether she were tapped from inside or outside the Justice Department - this appointee would, at a minimum, be required to follow internal DOJ policies and her delegated authority could be revoked at any time. (The regulations that authorize appointing a non-DOJ attorney as “special counsel” - found at 28 C.F.R. Part 600 et. seq - actually make possible substantially more attorney general oversight into prosecutorial decisions.)
Under existing federal law, in other words, the notion of a special prosecutor who would be entirely free from political and institutional influence is illusory. Given that fact - and that it is ordinarily an extremely dumb, not to mention unethical, idea to announce investigations - when an administration does announce that it is naming a “special counsel” of any sort, it is largely a public-relations maneuver. The president thereby appears to be committed to the rule of law, but is, in fact, parking an extremely inconvenient problem in a remote and inaccessible lot.
Once this happens, all who wish to avoid the issue have a ready excuse. The president can refuse to comment because there is an ongoing criminal investigation. (Remember Bush’s press person, Scott McClennan?) And members of Congress from either party can look the other way, because - again - there is an ongoing criminal investigation. It’s a perfect dodge.
Certainly, an official initiation of an investigation by the Obama administration now that these latest horrifying torture memos have been released would not be devoid of real benefit. It would constitute a powerful statement to the world and I don’t minimize the importance of that. But once the press conference ended, would we all give each other high-fives and move on? Of course not: It is not what we ultimately want at all. What is it we do want? There is rich disagreement about particulars, but - in broad terms, at least - I think it’s fair to say that the goals are: (1) a cohesive and irrefutable public narrative of the criminal activity; (2) an opportunity for victims to be heard in an open forum; (3) and accountability for the perpetrators of these crimes, from Bush and Cheney on down.
The naming of a special prosecutor is widely seen and often touted as a quick and almost sure-fire way to achieve these ends - as if merely by setting this train in motion, we will all arrive at the courthouse in no time, ready for trial, where the entire story will be laid out for the public to hear. Unfortunately, however, nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is that, if fulfilled, this wish would result in a painfully short-lived victory.
If a special prosecutor were appointed today, what we would have tomorrow would be the very public initiation of a federal grand jury investigation. But that is all we would have. At the same time, however, we will have likely ensured that there will be no public congressional hearings for years to come. Potential targets or subjects who might previously have felt comfortable enough to speak publicly and further incriminate themselves will clam up. Because of the stringent secrecy rules that govern grand jury proceedings - and prosecutors’ justifiable concern about violating them - information that was previously public may be transformed into secret grand jury material. (It sounds crazy, but it’s true.) Victims and witnesses will be interviewed behind closed doors. And most will gladly heed the prosecution’s suggestion that, while they have no obligation to keep their testimony secret, there are very good reasons to do so. So there will be no public narrative, no official opportunity for victims to describe what was done to them by the US government.
Nor would the investigation be the shortest in the world, as has been suggested. Yes, there is overwhelming evidence in the public arena. But, ironically, that is more of a problem than a help. A sprawling investigation of any kind into multiple crimes committed by dozens of people - as this is even without the CIA agents - takes a very long time. Prosecutors must bring specific charges against named individuals, and be ready to prove those charges through admissible evidence as soon as indictments are returned. (This is in stark contrast to a civil case, where a complaint is filed and then discovery ensues.) Generally, the prosecutor can not introduce hearsay, anonymous information, speculation, non-expert opinions or unsourced documents. Evidence must be relevant to a charge and presented in an orderly fashion through live witnesses and/or documents. A prosecutor cannot just plop thousands of documents and dozens of reports and books on the counsel table, and tell the jury to have at it.
So what would a prosecutor have to do before presenting the case for indictment? Here is a sampling of tasks that would be necessary: comb through and organize all relevant government memos, reports, emails and the like; litigate issues of classification and privilege; follow up on leads from information obtained; interview hundreds of witnesses and victims; identify each and every memorialized - or reported - statement made by witnesses or defendants; and interview those to whom the statements were made. During this process, the prosecutor would be deciding which, if any, defendants to charge and communicating extensively with attorneys. Only when all of this preliminary work is done would witnesses be called to the grand jury, which could well entail additional time-consuming litigation. This massive effort would take years and there is no guarantee that indictments against anyone - particularly higher-level defendants - would ever be returned.
Well, if not now, then, when? Wouldn’t the same interminable process just happen later? Not necessarily. Notwithstanding the public statements that the president and attorney general made in connection with the release of the memos, I find cause for optimism in their actions. No smart lawyer who secretly wanted this entire issue to disappear would have released those torture memos. From a prosecutor’s point of view, the release of those memos with their authors’ names in full view was pretty much the same as releasing their photographs with bloody knives in hand. The president and the attorney general may not have said much, but what they did was quietly flip the switch on a searing bright light.
Yes, Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel, has now said flatly that there will be no prosecutions of Bush officials, but the reality is that this story is far from over. As former CIA head Michael Hayden said on April 19, more by way of complaint than promise: “There will be more revelations. There will be more commissions. There will be more investigations,” he said.
This statement may be one of the few Hayden has ever made that I can agree with. The truth is that - frustrating and appalling as it is - given the amount of damning information that’s been revealed, we are just starting this process. If we are to have any hope of achieving some form of justice for these criminals and their victims, we must let the horror of the conduct and the extent of culpability reveal themselves in public view. And we must facilitate a narrowing of the focus so that specific defendants and charges can be clearly identified in the minds of not just the general public, but decision-makers at the Justice Department.
What we continue to need, in sum, are unwavering spotlights, even more civic education, and, most importantly, an irrefutable and cohesive factual narrative - comprised of direct and circumstantial evidence - that links the highest-level officials and advisers of the Bush administration, ineluctably, to specific instances and victims of torture. What we will surely have, however, if a special prosecutor is named, will be precisely the opposite: The initiation of a federal grand jury investigation right now would be roughly the equivalent of ceremoniously dumping the entire issue of torture into a black hole. There will be nothing to see and we will be listening intently to radio silence, trying to make sense of intermittent static in the form of the occasional unreliable leak. For years. There may never be any charges and we will almost certainly never have the unimpeachable historical narrative that we need.
Caution and complexity don’t sell very well on cable, I know. So you might not hear it there, but we can wait a while for a prosecutor and - if we want to succeed - we should: I don’t think any of these guys presents a flight risk and we need to keep this road to accountability well-lit and noisy.
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Elizabeth de la Vega is a former federal prosecutor with more than 20 years of experience. During her tenure, she was a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force and chief of the San Jose Branch of the US attorney’s office for the Northern District of California. Her pieces have appeared in a variety of print and online publications including Truthout, TomDispatch.com, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times, Salon, Mother Jones and The Christian Science Monitor. The author of “United States v. George W. Bush et al,” she may be contacted at ElizabethdelaVega@Verizon.net or through Speakers Clearinghouse.
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