Nancy Pelosi cancels lavish Capitol dinner for new members after being shamed for flouting COVID restrictions and branded a hypocrite for telling families not to hold Thanksgiving parties
Nancy Pelosi has called off a dinner for new Democratic members of Congress after pictures of the event went viral and sparked anger that political leaders were openly flouting COVID restrictions.
Pelosi, 80, on Friday described coronavirus pandemic as 'an emergency of the highest magnitude'.
On Friday more than 172,000 cases were confirmed, and on Thursday more than 160,000: before November, the country had never added 100,000 cases or more in a day.
In the midwest and west infection rates are drastically rising, and from Chicago to Washington DC to New York City, Americans are being advised to cancel their Thanksgiving plans and stay at home with as few people as possible.
On Friday Leigh Ann Caldwell, NBC News correspondent, reported that Democratic and Republican leaders in the House were holding dinners for new members, and posted a photo of a lavish dining room being prepared in the Capitol.
Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, initially said the dinner was safe
'.@SpeakerPelosi told me it's safe,' she tweeted.
'"It's very spaced," she said and there is enhanced ventilation and the Capitol physician signed off.'
Yet the planned dinner angered many prominent Democrat supporters, upset that their message of respecting CDC guidelines - unlike many Republicans - was being undermined.
Chelsea Clinton tweeted: 'Please cancel these in-person dinners, @SpeakerPelosi & @kevinomccarthy to keep everyone safe from #covid19 - yourselves, your new members, servers, the Capitol police and all of their families and contacts. And, to show public health leadership.'
'Imagine telling families not to hold Thanksgiving (we shouldn't) and then doing this. Come. On,' said Nikole Hannah Jones, a New York Times Magazine reporter.
MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes tweeted: 'Cancel your precious dinner, you maniacs. my god.'
Pelosi's office initially defended the dinner.
'Our office strictly follows the guidance of the Office of Attending Physician, including for this dinner,' said Drew Hammill, Pelosi's deputy chief of staff.
'To be a further model for the nation, this event has been modified to allow Members-elect to pick up their meals to go in a socially-distanced manner.'
Ninety minutes later, he tweeted: 'Members-elect are now picking up their boxed meals and departing the Capitol. There is no group dinner. Members-elect are in DC already for orientation.'
It was not clear whether the Republican event went ahead.
How likely are you to get COVID-19 at a 25-person Thanksgiving dinner or at a wedding with 100 guests? New interactive map shows the risk of contracting coronavirus anywhere in the US
Scientists have developed a new interactive map that shows the risk of contracting coronavirus anywhere in the US in real-time.
The COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool tells Americans their odds of encountering at least one person with the virus in every county at an event with a crowd size ranging from 10 people to 5,000 people.
This means you can assess the risk of one coronavirus-positive individual being at a 10-person dinner party, a Thanksgiving gathering with 25 guests, a 100-person wedding or a concert with 1,000 attendees.
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology says the tool can help individuals understand the potential dangers and help policy makers institute orders, such as mask mandates or occupancy limits, to control the spread of the virus in hard-hit areas.
EVENTS WITH 10 PEOPLE: The COVID-19 Risk Assessment Planning Tool was created by a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology to show users the risk of coronavirus at events in every county. This map shows the risk of interacting with a person infected with COVID-19 at an event with 10 people
EVENTS WITH 25 PEOPLE: Users can pick a crowd size ranging from 10 people to 5,000 people and then hover their cursor over a county to assess their risk. This map shows the risk of interacting with a person infected with COVID-19 at an event with 50 people
EVENTS WITH 100 PEOPLE: Researchers say the tool can be used by individuals thinking of traveling for Thanksgiving or by health officials deciding whether or not institute measures such as occupancy limits. This map shows the risk of interacting with a person infected with COVID-19 at an event with 100 people
'Large events and gatherings, particularly those taking place indoors, have been linked to multi-transmission events that have accelerated the pandemic spread of ,' the team wrote in the journal Nature.
'To provide real-time, geolocalized risk information, we developed an interactive online dashboard that estimates the risk that at least one individual with SARS-CoV-2 is present in gatherings of different sizes in the United States.'
The idea of the map, which has been peer-reviewed, was first conceived in March by Dr Joshua Weitz, a quantitative biologist at Georgia Tech.
He told the Los Angeles Times he wanted to develop a tool that could quantify the risk of going to various events of different sizes in different regions.
The first version was a graph that looked at the number of infections per capita in any county and assessed risk by correlating that figure with the size of any prospective event.
The current version is now overlaid on a map to make it user-friendly.
The map is updated everyday when counties update their daily infection and death totals so users can examine their risk in real-time.
'In a way, it's like a weather map,' Dr Clio Andris, a professor of city and regional planning and interactive computing at Georgia Tech, who helped build the tool, told the Times.
'It can tell you what the risk is that it will rain, but it can't tell you if you'll get wet. That depends on if you carry an umbrella, or if you choose not to go outside at all.'
To use the tool, users move the slider on the bottom left corner of the map to the number of people they expect to attend an event.
Next, they hover their cursor over the county their event will be held in.
Additionally, the map assumes the true number of COVID-19 infections is five or 10 times higher than official counts because not all cases are recorded.
CALIFORNIA: There are also state-wide projections on the website. This chart of California shows a 1.7% risk of coming into contact with someone with COVID-19 at a 10-person dinner party and a 15.77% chance at a 100-person wedding receptio
NORTH DAKOTA: In North Dakota, experiencing the worst outbreak in the US, there is 17.9% of interacting with coronavirus-positive individual at 10-person dinner and 86.1% risk at a 100-person wedding
So, for example, as of Friday, attending a 10-person dinner party held in Los Angeles County has a nine percent risk of interacting with a coronavirus-infected person
But how about other events?
A Thanksgiving gathering with 25 guests in Dallas, Texas, has a 38 percent risk.
Attending a church service with with 50 parishioners in Cook County, Illinois - where Chicago is located - comes with an 85 percent risk.
And going to 100-person wedding in New York City has a 48 percent risk.
There is also a section in which users can analyze the risk of attending gatherings in each state.
In California, for example, the chart shows a 1.7 percent risk of coming into contact with a COVID-19-positive individual at a 10-person dinner party and a 15.77 percent chance at a 100-person wedding reception.
In North Dakota, which is currently experiencing the worst outbreak of any US state, there is a 17.9 percent risk and an 86.1 percent risk, respectively, for the same events.
Researchers told the Times that the tool went live in July and, since then, two million people have visited the website.
In fact, Andris told the Times that she used the tool herself to make a decision on whether or not to go to an election-watching party with four friends last week.
The map indicated that there was four percent risk one of the five people at the party would be infected with COVID-19.
While Andris said she wished the risk was lower, she contemplated that the other four people were - like her -professors who mostly lived alone and so she decided to attend.
She added that she hopes people use the tool so that can decide if attending an event, especially over the upcoming holiday season, is worth the risk.
'I can see a lot of people saying: "It's been a hard year, and we really need to be with friends and family,"' Andris told the newspaper.
'I get that, and I hear that, but it's going to have consequences.'