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Small business owners are getting obliterated The first truck transporting Pfizer-BioNTech's coronavirus vaccine pulled out of a Michigan manufacturing plant on Sunday, and are expected to reach their destination on Monday so that health workers could administer the vaccine. Despite the overall optimism in the COVID-19 vaccine on its way to the American people, Bill Gates warns that the coronavirus pandemic is not even close to being over. "This vaccine work is phenomenal," Gates said last week at Singapore's FinTech Festival that was held virtually. "You know, we've been working with these pharma companies, they've been doing their best, you...

Hundreds of people on Wednesday night — including members of the right-wing group Proud Boys — protested the closure of a Staten Island bar that ignored COVID-19 restrictions. “Proud Boys in the house,” a handful of people chanted outside Mac’s Public House — the defiant pub that was shut down by authorities Tuesday night after operating without a license and in violation of health orders. One speaker led the crowd through the Proud Boy credo — “I am a proud Western Chauvinist” — before segueing into Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” The entrance of the pub was blocked on Wednesday...

Maryland is ramping up enforcement of coronavirus restrictions ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday as the pandemic surges just as people usually gather with family and socialize in bars, Gov. Larry Hogan announced Monday. In addition to family gatherings on the holiday itself, the night before Thanksgiving has become one of the biggest bar-hopping nights of the year as people return to their hometowns and catch up with old friends over drinks. “I cannot emphasize how reckless that behavior would be this year,” the Republican governor said during a news conference in the State House rotunda in Annapolis. Health officials already...

NEW YORK (AP) — Restaurants, bars and gyms will have to close at 10 p.m. across New York state in the latest effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday. The governor said people will also be barred from hosting private gatherings with more than 10 people.

Diners in Michigan will be required to give their name and phone number to restaurants and bars starting Monday in an effort to contain a recent coronavirus surge, according to reports. The new rule was put in place by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday and also includes limiting indoor gatherings without fixed seating -- like in restaurants -- to 50 people and individual tables to six people, The Detroit News reported. The state set a record for new cases Thursday with 3,675, according to FOX 17 of Grand Rapids. Restaurants in the state currently operate...

The Biden campaign is taking flack for a recent television ad featuring a struggling Michigan bar owner that the ad neglects to mention is actually an affluent veteran tech investor who donated to the Democratic presidential nominee’s campaign. Joe Malcoun, who is introduced in the ad as the “co-owner” of The Blind Pig in Ann Arbor, Mich., backed Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stringent lockdown orders that kept businesses shuttered for months but says he blames President Trump’s administration for his business’s pandemic woes. the ad does not mention Malcoun’s other business ventures, including being an “angel investor” in several...

A Wisconsin judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked an order from Gov. Tony Evers’ administration limiting the number of people who can gather in bars, restaurants and other indoor places ... The Democrat governor's order, issued by the Evers-appointed state health secretary Andrea Palm last week, limited the number of customers in many indoor establishments to 25% of capacity. Gatherings in indoor spaces without an occupancy limit were limited to 10 people. The order does not apply to colleges, schools, churches, polling locations, political rallies and outdoor venues. The Tavern League of Wisconsin, the powerful lobbying group for the state’s 5,000...

CORONAVIRUS IN NY Teachers union chief threatens legal action if de Blasio shuts down schools Coronavirus clusters in these NYC neighborhoods growing at an alarming rate It's past time to pull the plug on Andrew Cuomo's dictatorial pandemic powers State Liquor Authority's unjust enforcement deadly to lockdown-strained bars, eateries As many as half of all New York City bars and restaurants could shutter permanently within the next six months due to the coronavirus, according to a stunning new audit released Thursday by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. The report lays bare the extent of the pandemic’s fiscal impact on one of...

ST. PETERSBURG — Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday said bars and restaurants in Florida can open at full capacity as the state moved into the last phase of its reopening plan, which lifts all the state’s remaining coronavirus-related restrictions on businesses.

Legislation won state Senate approval on Tuesday that would relax some of the restrictions imposed on Pennsylvania’s restaurants and bars that have forced some of these establishments to close for good. House Bill 2513 would set minimum capacity for restaurants and taverns at a minimum of 50% and would allow them to go beyond that if their premises allows while complying with social distancing, masks and other safety precautions recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state Department of Health. Further, it would remove Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration’s ban on bar services, allowing patrons to once again...

Throughout the COVID pandemic, it's become increasingly clear that certain types of businesses in particular can pose a serious COVID risk: those that are indoors with poor ventilation where people tend to gather close together. And while most states have now reopened the majority of businesses, Anthony Fauci, MD, the nation's leading immunologist, is warning that three specific businesses should stay closed amid COVID.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT/WTVF) - Nashville Mayor John Cooper announced the city will move forward with Phase Three of reopening starting Oct. 1, CBS affiliate WTVF reported. Bars and limited service restaurants increased their capacity starting Friday, Sept. 17. Cooper made the announcement during Thursday’s COVID-19 Metro weekly meeting saying, “we will learn from this phase to prepare for the next.” Bars and restaurants can resume service at 50% capacity, that is up to 50 people inside and 50 people outside, WTVF reported. Businesses can remain open until 11 p.m. “The markers of this next phase will be public school teaching...

Leaked emails between the senior adviser to Nashville's Mayor and a health department official reveal a disturbing effort to conceal extremely low coronavirus cases emanating from bars and restaurants, while the lion's share of infections occurred in nursing homes and construction workers, according to WZTV Nashville. On June 30th, contact tracing was giving a small view of coronavirus clusters. Construction and nursing homes causing problems more than a thousand cases traced to each category, but bars and restaurants reported just 22 cases. Leslie Waller from the health department asks “This isn’t going to be publicly released, right? Just info...

RALEIGH - Governor Roy Cooper announced Tuesday, North Carolina will be moving into a “Safer-at-Home” Phase 2.5 beginning Friday at 5 p.m. In this new phase gyms and indoor exercise facilities will be able to open again at 30 percent capacity, but bars, nightclubs, movie theaters, indoor entertainment and amusement parks will remain closed. Face coverings will be required when working out at gyms in “Safer-at-Home” Phase 2.5. They will also be required for any individuals when in public over the age of 5. Additionally, playgrounds will be allowed to open while museums and aquariums will be able to open...

Gov. Tom Wolf Tuesday presented a fall legislative agenda that included a push for legalizing marijuana for recreational use by adults. Harrisburg, PA – August 25, 2020Commonwealth Media Services By Greg Pickel | gpickel@pennlive.com A successful return to both K-12 schools and colleges could lead to an easing of the targeted bar and restaurant restrictions in Pennsylvania. Gov. Tom Wolf said as much on Monday, more than a month after he and Health Department Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine signed orders that limit indoor and outdoor occupancy, forbid bar service, and require prepared food to be purchased if a customer wants...

My wife & I went to Mass yesterday for the first time in over a month of the churches being shut down. While it was joyful to be back in church, I was initially angry at the procedures and spacing. I noted the bleached out backs and sides of the pews from the repeated wiping. It was distressing to see our priest speaking the word of God through a mask. It was like nothing I have ever seen when he squirted his hands with sanitizer before offering us the Host. Then I thought of Christians around the world, in Iraq,...

School districts developing their plans for reopening for the new academic year should find ways to offer as many outdoor activities as possible, from classes to recess and lunchtime, the nation's top infectious disease expert recommended in an online discussion Thursday. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, also suggested in his Facebook Live chat with Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo that, on school buses, windows should remain open and students wear their masks as much as possible. "Get as much outdoors as you can. If you look at the superspreader events that have...

Speaking with Brown University’s Dr. Ashish K. Jha, the incoming dean at the School of Public Health, Dr. Anthony Fauci said the country needs to do one thing to avoid a catastrophe in the fall or winter. Addressing Arizona’s ability to flatten the curve of the massive outbreak that started in July, Fauci said that the same five or six “fundamental principles” of prevention apply everywhere. These are “universal wearing of a mask, physical distancing, avoid crowds, outdoor is better than indoors, wash your hands,” the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said. “Stay away from...

Young Russians are partying again, seeking a return to normal life and willing to risk a coronavirus surge. “We are people, not robots, and want to have a life,” said a bar patron (and doctor).

TALLAHASSEE — Florida’s top business regulator plans to start meeting with bar operators and craft brewers, amid concerns about establishments closing permanently if a state ban on serving drinks for on-site consumption remains in place. In a tweet Saturday, Department of Business and Professional Regulation Secretary Halsey Beshears said he will begin setting aside time Friday to discuss his June 26 order that banned on-site consumption at bars to try to help stem the spread of COVID-19. “Next week starting Friday, I’m going to set meetings throughout Florida with breweries and bars to discuss ideas on how to reopen,” Beshears...