Coronavirus Daily News Brief – May 24: Covid Positive Lady Gaga Risked Health of Crew and Fans, Pandemic Tanked Life Expectancy

Lady Gaga performing during her residency at the Park MGM Hotel in Las Vegas. She was rolling the dice even back then, apparently.

Good afternoon. This is Jonathan Spira, director of research at the Center for Long Covid Research, reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on its 1,535th day.

In news we cover today, The Lede looks at how performer Lady Gaga endangered fans and her crew by performing while Covid positive, RFK Jr. tears into candidate Donald Trump for civil liberties violations, and the WHO confirmed that the pandemic caused life expectancy figures to tank.

THE LEDE

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, who performs under the stage name “Lady Gaga,” may want to consult the title of her hit song “Stupid Love” after revealing that she performed five of her “Chromatica Ball” tour shows while positive for SARS-CoV-2.

Speaking at the launch of her concert film “Chromatica Ball,” Gaga, while saying it was “such a special time” because they were on tour “during a time that people didn’t think you could tour” due to pandemic restrictions. She noted that stadiums were packed and sold out, which meant that people were not social distancing, and then confessed that she violated not only common sense but multiple laws in place at the time that governed whether performances could take place by admitting that she “did five shows with Covid.” In her defense, she stated that she didn’t want to cancel and disappoint tens of thousands of fans and, ostensibly, also be required to refund their ticket prices.

Fans were disappointed, but only about the singer’s poor judgment and apparent belief that Covid rules didn’t apply to her.

Germanotta did say that she told her staff that they could skip work on those days, however, which is unlikely to hold sway when, after she dies, is judged based on what she did during her life given that SARS-CoV-2 was both easily transmissible and far more deadly than it is today.

Wasn’t it just easier when Gaga recorded “Telephone,” an ode to her fear of suffocation or “Born This Way,” a song about self-empowerment in the gay community?

TODAY IN THE FIRST YEAR OF COVID HISTORY

On May 24, 2020, two governors displayed an amount of common sense that four years later seems hard to imagine.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said in an interview with NBC that wearing a face mask was not about politics.DeWine said he agreed with the emotional plea made by fellow Republican Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota earlier in the week.

“This is not about politics,” DeWine said. “This is not about whether you’re liberal or conservative, left or right, republican, democrat. We wear the mask, and it’s been very clear what the studies have shown. You wear the mask not to protect yourself so much as to protect others.”

The commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Stephen Hahn, issued a warning that “the coronavirus is not yet contained,” and urged people to practice social distancing and don face masks during the upcoming Memorial Day weekend.

The 2020 New York International Auto Show, which was slated to take place in early April at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and then postponed until August, has been cancelled, the show’s organizers said.

The Javits Center location is currently an active field hospital that is in stand-by mode for patients and it is closed for expos and conferences, making the August show “unfeasible,” conference organizers said.

The show dates back more than a century and was previously held at the New York Coliseum, the old Madison Square Garden, and the Grand Central Palace.

The Dublin Deck Tiki Bar and Grill in Patchogue, New York, apologized after Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office criticized it for having temporarily eased restrictions on masks and social distancing for its customers because of rainy weather one day earlier. ““That’s stupid – stupid for you, it’s stupid for your surrounding patrons, it’s stupid for the bar,” a spokesman for the governor said.

The reasoning of the bar differed greatly than that of the Backwater Jacks Bar & Grill in Osage Beach, Missouri, which hosted a “Zero Ducks Given Pool Party” at which neither masks  nor social distancing were required. The truly backwater bar did engage in some Covid theater, however: It checked patrons’ body temperatures and made hand sanitizer available

Finally, over 5.3 million cases of the novel coronavirus had been reported worldwide as of this date, as well as at least 343,000 deaths, according to data compiled by the Coronavirus Morning News Brief. The total number of cases in the United States was at least 1.6 million.

UNITED STATES

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is – much to the dismay of other members of the Kennedy clan – running as an independent for president, ramped up his attacks on former President Donald Trum speaking before libertarians Friday afternoon.

Driving home the point that Trump “caved,” Kennedy repeatedly attacked Trump on what he cast as civil liberties violations during the pandemic, a key issue for Libertarians. The son of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy rarely mentioned President Joe Biden, however, and confined his attacks on Trump, saying he blamed the former president for shutting down millions of businesses, mask mandates, travel restrictions and other unspecified attacks on individual liberties during his time in office, which ended in early 2021.

Not that this publication wishes to get on the Kardashian bandwagon, but Kourtney Kardashian said on her family’s television show that she tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 on the morning of her baby shower, following a six-hour make-out session with her husband, Travis Barker, who had at first tested negative for the virus. Her mother, Kris Jenner, visibly teared up at the revelation.

GLOBAL NEWS

A new report published on Friday suggests that the coronavirus pandemic undid a decade of life expectancy gains at birth and healthy life expectancy gains, known as HALE, with global expectancy levels now matching those last seen in 2012.

“Not only has the pandemic set back healthy longevity worldwide by years, it also reversed the previous trends of shifting disease burden to noncommunicable diseases,” the report, entitled “Covid-19 Eliminated a Decade of Progress in Global Level of Life Expectancy,” said.

PANDEMIC STATISTICS

CURRENT U.S. COVID STATISTICS AT A GLANCE

In the United States, in the week ending May 18, 2024, the test positivity rate was, based on data released on May 24 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was 3.4%, and the trend in test positivity is -0.2% in the most recent week. Meanwhile, the percentage of emergency department visits that were diagnosed as SARS-CoV-2 was 0.4%, and the trend in emergency department visits is +7%.

The number of people admitted to hospital in the United States due to SARS-CoV-2 is no longer being reported as of the end of May. Meanwhile, the percentage of deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 was 0.6%, a figure that is unchanged over the past week.

VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT

Some 70.6% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine at press time, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information.  So far, 13.58 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 4,143 doses are now administered each day.

Meanwhile, only 32.8% of people in low-income countries have received one dose, while in countries such as Canada, China, Denmark, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, at least 75% of the population has received at least one dose of vaccine.

Only a handful of the world’s poorest countries – Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia and Nepal – have reached the 70% mark in vaccinations. Many countries, however, are under 20% and, in countries such as Haiti, Senegal, and Tanzania, for example, vaccination rates remain at or below 10%.

In addition, with the beginning of vaccinations in North Korea in late September, 2023, Eritrea remains the only country in the world that has not administered vaccines in any significant number

Finally, as of April 14, 2024, only Turkmenistan in Central Asia is only state that has not reported any cases of SARS-CoV-2 infections whatsoever, although it is strongly suspected that the virus is present there. Meanwhile, the last territory in the world to have its first ever SARS-CoV-2 infection was Tokelau, a dependency of New Zealand that reported its first five cases on December 21, 2022.

Where Has All the Data Gone?

We regret to inform that, as of April 15, 2024, the Global Daily Statistics data in the Coronavirus Daily News Brief are no longer being updated. Over the past 15 months, as more politicians and governments sought to place SARS-CoV-2 in the rear-view mirror, pandemic data reporting sputtered out and we are now at the point where it is simply not feasible to provide statistically valid case data on a global scale.

We are developing potential new and authoritative sources that we will present once they have been properly vetted, so stay tuned to this space. In the meantime, our Long Covid and pandemic coverage will remain much the same.

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Paul Riegler contributed reporting to this issue.

The Coronavirus Daily News Brief is a publication of the Center for Long Covid Research. www.longcov.org

If you have Long Covid and need to talk to someone, call the Long Covid Patient Peer Counseling Phone Line, or HOPELINE.  The HOPELINE is our free, confidential support and information service.

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