COVID-19 Outbreak Information Updates (Reboot) [over 150.000,000 US cases (est.), 6,422,520 US hospitilizations, 1,148,691 US deaths.] (2 Viewers)

[HoustonSaint68]

Wait until she finds out how the European Union works.

It's always funny when center-of-the-universe Americans come to understand that other countries don't have to abide by the U.S. Bill of Rights.

 

[Optimus Prime]

does anyone remember if we talked about this when it happened?

Don't recall this story

Interesting that this was in Louisiana

At the crossroads of misinformation, free speech and 'just joking'

an arrest is way overkill though EDIT: the dozen SWAT officers is the overkill, not the arrest
=======================================
Waylon Bailey woke up Friday morning with the same anxiety that had consumed him for more than three years.

Since Bailey was arrested in March 2020 for a coronavirus joke he posted on Facebook, he has struggled to clear his mind. The felony terrorism charge he faced ruined his life, he said, prompting him to sue two employees from a Louisiana parish’s sheriff’s office. A district court judge later dismissed Bailey’s claims, but Bailey appealed.

On Friday, Bailey was still awaiting a decision. When he checked his phone that afternoon, his angst began to diminish.
His attorney had messaged him the decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Three judges ruled that Bailey’s Facebook post — which joked that the sheriff’s office had issued an order to shoot people infected with the coronavirus — was protected speech under the First Amendment and that he shouldn’t have been arrested.

Bailey can continue pursuing legal action against the sheriff’s office employees, the court ruled.

There “were no facts that would lead a reasonable person to believe that Bailey’s post caused sustained fear,” the judges wrote. “No members of the public expressed any type of concern. Even if the post were taken seriously, it is too general and contingent to be a specific threat.”

Bailey, 30, told The Washington Post that the ruling “was a huge weight off my shoulders.”

“It was a really good feeling knowing that the superior judges thought it was silly, too,” he said. “It just [reassured me about] all of the thoughts and stuff I had these past three years about if I’m overreacting, if it’s even worth it.”

A spokesman for the Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office declined to comment.

On March 20, 2020 — soon after the coronavirus began spreading across the U.S. — Bailey said he was trying to find a moment of levity amid the national emergency. He compared the pandemic to the zombie apocalypse from “World War Z,” a 2013 movie starring Brad Pitt.

“SHARE SHARE SHARE ! ! ! !” Bailey wrote in an emoji-filled post. “JUST IN: RAPIDES PARISH SHERIFFS OFFICE HAVE ISSUED THE ORDER, IF DEPUTIES COME INTO CONTACT WITH ‘THE INFECTED’ SHOOT ON SIGHT….Lord have mercy on us all. #Covid9teen #weneedyoubradpitt.”

A few hours later, Bailey said he was confused when about a dozen SWAT team members from the Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office arrived at his Alexandria, La., home with weapons and bulletproof vests. Officials arrested Bailey without a warrant, according to court documents. They later argued that Bailey’s post was a terroristic threat.

Bailey was released on a $1,200 bond later that day, and the district attorney decided not to prosecute him. Still, Bailey said he lost lifelong friends when local news stations reported on his arrest. He said he deleted his social media accounts and barely left his house for months.

In September 2020, Bailey filed a lawsuit alleging Detective Randell Iles and Sheriff Mark Wood violated his First and Fourth amendment rights..............

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/08/30/covid-joke-terrorism-court-ruling/

 

[bigdaddysaints]

that was a very dangerous post. How would he have felt if someone shot and killed a police officer because they thought the officer was coming to shoot them? IMO he got what he deserved, hopefully he learned an expensive lesson. There were too many crazies out there that probably really believed what he said.

 

[Optimus Prime]

that was a very dangerous post. How would he have felt if someone shot and killed a police officer because they thought the officer was coming to shoot them? IMO he got what he deserved, hopefully he learned an expensive lesson. There were too many crazies out there that probably really believed what he said.

very valid point that hard to argue against, other than the usual cries of "free speech!!"

I meant that the SWAT response was overkill not the arrest

I seem to remember people getting arrested for coughing on the produce in grocery stores, in the early weeks of the pandemic

 

[bigdaddysaints]

very valid point that hard to argue against, other than the usual cries of "free speech!!"

I meant that the SWAT response was overkill not the arrest

I seem to remember people getting arrested for coughing on the produce in grocery stores, in the early weeks of the pandemic

Agree the SWAT was overkill.
A delivery driver from one of our vendors got fired because when we were doing the 6 foot thing at the beginning, and making delivery drivers hand their paper work through a window instead of letting them come in the office, he was purposely coughing on the paperwork and coughing out loud in general pretending to be sick, being dramatic that he couldn't come in the office. the next day, he came and looked like death, the following day we found out from his coworker who had to make his deliveries, that he had Covid. One of my coworkers who is older and not the best health called his company and threw a fit about what he had done a couple days before. needless to say, he got fired over that.

 

[Sailorsaint]

that was a very dangerous post. How would he have felt if someone shot and killed a police officer because they thought the officer was coming to shoot them? IMO he got what he deserved, hopefully he learned an expensive lesson. There were too many crazies out there that probably really believed what he said.

There has to be a cutoff point between free speech and breaking the law. Yelling “fire” in a crowded theater or “bomb” in an airport, for instance, are not free speech. Yelling “police are going to shoot you” should fall into the same category, IMO.

 

[bigdaddysaints]

There has to be a cutoff point between free speech and breaking the law. Yelling “fire” in a crowded theater or “bomb” in an airport, for instance, are not free speech. Yelling “police are going to shoot you” should fall into the same category, IMO.

Thats the same ballpark i was thinking.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Jesus. What is wrong with people?
==========================
A man who was left permanently blinded in one eye by an attack last month for wearing a Covid-19 face mask now has a booming GoFundMe page in support of him and his recovery.

In the wake of the incident, a friend of Will Keenan, the former actor who was attacked, created a GoFundMe page, with a goal of raising $10,000. By Wednesday afternoon, that fundraiser had earned more than $15,000.

Mr Keenan was reportedly assaulted on 27 August at a townhouse in Jersey Cape, New Jersey. He explained the incident to Newsweek. He was at a townhouse in New Jersey, where a man had often remarked on Mr Keenan’s mask-wearing habits during the pandemic. Mr Keenan told the outlet that he was a big mask wearer, largely to protect his young daughter from contracting the virus.

While sitting at a dining room table at a townhouse last month, the former Tromeo and Juliet actor suddenly felt something around his neck. He told Newsweek: “At first I thought it was a joke but it kept getting tighter and yanked me off the chair.”

It was a nylon rope, he later discovered, which he said he was eventually able to remove from his neck.

When Mr Keenan asked the assailant what was going on, he recounted to the outlet: “He screamed at me and said, ‘I told you never to wear a mask in this house,’ and I replied immediately back, even louder, ‘What the Fork* are you talking about? I’ve been here five or six times with a mask every time, you’ve never even seen my face.’”

In the days following the attack, Mr Keenan reportedly noticed that his vision was getting fuzzy — with vision in his left eye eventually going completely dark.

The former actor told Newsweek that a doctor informed him that he was suffering from a detached retina, caused by the strangulation.…..

GoFundMe for actor blinded in attack over Covid mask tops $15,000

A doctor informed Will Keenan that he was suffering from a detached retina, caused by the strangulation

www.independent.co.uk

 

[bigdaddysaints]

How long before a Fox News host sets up a gofundme to pay for this butt creaves defense fund?

 

[Optimus Prime]

Couldn’t decide whether to put this here or the conspiracy theory thread
==============================

IN THE FALL OF 1918, as influenza spread across the globe and the world clamored for a cure, the price of lemons skyrocketed. From Rome to Rio to Boston, residents desperate for any small measure of protection hoarded the yellow fruit, which was said—by whom it was, even then, unclear—to be both a prophylactic and a remedy for the deadly virus.

Newspaper articles promised the citrus was a “flu foe,” and advised, “If you are not a flu victim deny yourself that glass of lemonade.” In New York, the Federal Food Board stepped in to prevent price gouging.

Hot lemonade was an old folk remedy for the grippe, and even though doctors knew it would not stop the Spanish flu, the soothing sugary liquid could at least keep the afflicted hydrated. The newer fad of sucking the bracing juice straight from the fruit was harder to justify, but that did nothing to stop its spread.

There was pretty Chamber of Commerce spokesperson Marie Cooney on the front page of the October 23 Los Angeles Herald, between an accounting of influenza deaths and an accounting of war casualties, demonstrating the technique with a smile. “Lemon sucking now hailed by science as influenza cure,” the headline announced. It wasn’t true, of course, but the story was still good news for one segment of the population: California’s lemon farmers…….

Within an hour of the telegram’s arrival, Sunkist’s long-planned marketing campaign was tossed aside in favor of an unusual ad, wired to 149 newspapers. “A direct appeal to use lemons might have aroused resentment and disapproval,” the cooperative’s newsletter, edited by Francisco, explained. Instead, the austere advertisement offered “precautions against colds and the grippe”: “Avoid crowds,” “take adequate exercises,” “get plenty of sleep,” “keep your feet dry and warm,” and, oh yes, “drink one or two glasses of hot lemonade.”

The public-service announcement, which never mentioned the Sunkist brand, reached an estimated 22 million people in October. Entrepreneurial grocers were more direct. “Nature’s cure for Spanish influenza,” promised one in Norwich, Connecticut, which sold Sunkist Lemons for an outlandish 35 cents a dozen. That month total sales of the individually tissue-wrapped, logo-stamped California fruits rose 80 percent……

How the Influenza Pandemic Popularized Lemons

When it reached America, Sunkist marketers recommended hot lemonade.

www.atlasobscura.com

 

[Buickman]

Well, I just tested positive...again.

 

[DaveXA]

Well, I just tested positive...again.

Hope it's not serious. Take care man.

 

[Eeyore]

Well, I just tested positive...again.

 

[DaveXA]

Or this. .

 

[faceman]

Well, I just tested positive...again.

Mt Niece has caught it 5 times. Some people just have bad genetic cards dealt to them. None of her cases
have been life threatening and I hope and pray it's the same for you. Take care.