Last year, California Governor Gavin Newsom pushed vaccinations against covid eagerly and insinuated those who did not get the shot were like those who drive drunk.
“You can’t choose to drive drunk,” Newsom stated. “You put your life at risk. You put other lives at risk. We don’t want to go back to where we were this fall. We don’t want to wait until we’re overwhelmed in our ICUs. We don’t want to wait until thousands and thousands of more Californians die of a virus where they simply can save their lives by getting a simple vaccine shot.”
Newsom recently toured New Zealand and returned with a case of covid.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom tested positive for COVID-19 on Saturday, a day after a high-profile meeting with the visiting prime minister of New Zealand.Newsom has mild symptoms and will remain in isolation at least through Thursday and until he tests negative, his office said in a statement. The Democratic governor plans to work remotely during that time.His office said Newsom, 54, will begin a five-day regimen of the Paxlovid antiviral.
Newsom may not be out of the woods yet. Doctors are reconsidering Paxlovid for lower-risk patients after a U.S. public health agency warned that symptoms can recur after people complete a course of the drug and that they need to isolate a second time.
More quarantine time “is not a crowd-pleaser,” Dr. Sandra Kemmerly, an infectious disease specialist at Ochsner Health in New Orleans, told Reuters. “For those people who really aren’t at risk … I would recommend that they not take it.”Use of Pfizer’s Paxlovid, authorized to treat newly infected, at-risk people in order to prevent severe illness, has soared as infections have risen. More than 162,000 courses were dispensed last week – compared with an average of 33,000 a week since the drug was launched late last year, according to government data. Biden administration officials have pushed for wide use of Paxlovid, which the government purchased and provides free.
Few who followed the history of covid worldwide could forget the strict rules and moralistic assertions of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, whose restrictions stifled the burgeoning “Lord of the Rings” industry with Nazgul-like compassion.
She is infected with covid, too.
Jacinda Ardern’s office said in a statement Saturday that she has mild symptoms and has been in isolation since Sunday, when her partner, Clarke Gayford, tested positive.Ardern is required to be in isolation until May 21, preventing her from being in Parliament for the release of the Government’s Emissions Reduction Plan on Monday and the country’s budget on Thursday.“This is a milestone week for the government, and I’m gutted I can’t be there for it,” Ardern said.
We wish Newsom and Ardern speedy recoveries and hope they have learned valuable lessons about tying personal medical decisions to morality.
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