Coronavirus: The Hill and the Headlines, November 17 2020

In Washington:

• Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said on Tuesday that he would quarantine after exposure to COVID-19. Grassley added that he was "feeling well" and asymptomatic but that "it’s important we all follow public health guidelines to keep each other healthy.” Grassley, 87, is the latest GOP senator to announce he would quarantine after exposure to an individual with the coronavirus. Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) announced over the weekend that he would quarantine. 

• While Congressional leaders are no closer to a COVID relief bill, several provisions are set to expire at the end of the year, including:  The Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation which provides an extra 13 weeks of unemployment insurance; Pandemic Unemployment Assistance; the eviction moratorium; state and local funding; 2020 rebate checks; student loan forgiveness; charitable deduction limits, the exclusion of employer payments of student loans; the refundable tax credit for required paid sick leave; the credit for family and sick leave for self-employed individuals; payment delay for employer payroll taxes ends; changes on net operating losses; and another 33 tax provisions are listed here by Politico.

• Operation Warp Speed Chief Scientific Advisor Moncef Slaoui says that if the Pfizer and Moderna coronavirus vaccines are authorized, they will have enough vaccine doses to immunize about 20 million people during the month of December.” Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alexander Azar said, “Our goal would be by the second quarter to have enough vaccines for every American that would like to get vaccinated.”  Meanwhile, Slaoui also said vaccines from Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca could be approved “in the February-March timeframe,” while vaccines from Novavax and from Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline “could be approved ‘in the April-May timeframe.’” 

• Dr. Scott Atlas, one of President Trump's top COVID-19 advisers, raised concerns on Monday about excluding older family members from Thanksgiving celebrations, citing the risks of isolation. Atlas told Fox News that it's important to protect "vulnerable, high-risk, senior family members," but suggested it may be worth including them in holiday gatherings. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) urges Americans to avoid holding Thanksgiving gatherings with people who do not live in their immediate households, including older Americans who are acutely vulnerable to COVID-19. Stanford University, where Atlas works as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, distanced itself from his comments, saying in a statement that it supports “strictly following the guidance of local and state health authorities.”

• Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) announced that he will participate in a phase 3 vaccine trial being managed in Cincinnati. 

• FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn pledged that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would make more data and why it is authorizing certain COVID-19 vaccines and drugs more available.   “To the extent appropriate and permitted by law,” the agency’s drug and biologic centers will “publicly post their reviews of the scientific data and information supporting the issuance, revision or revocation of EUAs [emergency use authorizations] for all drug and biological products, including vaccines, as part of our COVID-19 response,” he said in a statement.

• The IRS is expected to resume knocking on the doors of high-income people suspected of avoiding taxes after the coronavirus pandemic is over, Bloomberg News reports. IRS officials in February announced that they were increasing efforts to follow up on individuals making at least $100,000 who have not filed income tax returns. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration earlier this year found that almost 900,000 high-income non-filers in tax years 2014 through 2016 had $45.7 billion in unpaid taxes. James Robnett, deputy chief of IRS Criminal Investigation, told a conference, “we will be knocking on doors in the coming months to make sure these high-income nonfilers comply.”

In the News:

• Thirty-five states and territories now have statewide public mask mandates.  Utah and North Dakota joined the list in recent days, and Maine, Ohio and West Virginia strengthened their mandates last week. To see a complete list and description of each state’s mandate click here.

• North Dakota has the world’s highest coronavirus mortality rate by one measure, according to an analysis from the Federation of American Scientists. Its mortality rate now exceeds all other U.S. states and every foreign country. The analysis shows that North Dakota has a rate of 18.2 deaths per 1 million people. South Dakota, meanwhile, has 17.4 deaths per million, the third-worst rate in the world. The states have a total population of under 2 million.

• Jodi Doering, an emergency room nurse in South Dakota, is making headlines after a tweet she wrote described how overwhelmed she was over the weekend as her patients were dying of COVID-19 yet were still in denial about the pandemic’s existence.  

• U.S. stocks closed at record highs Monday on news that a second COVID-19 vaccine candidate showed promise, bolstering hopes of an economic recovery even as new infections surged around the world. The Dow jumped by 1.6 percent. The S&P 500 rose by 1.2 percent, adding to gains that lifted it to a record close on Friday. The tech-heavy Nasdaq closed up by 0.8 percent. The three main U.S. indexes were mixed early Tuesday, with the Dow slipping by 0.3 percent.

Authored by Ivan Zapien