A church in suburban Indianapolis, which remains under a statewide stay-at-home order until at least 1 May, has resumed in-person services while adhering to a state order barring gatherings of more than people.
According to the
Indianapolis Star :
Services at iTown were slated for every hour between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. Sunday, and parishioners had to reserve tickets online. Tickets for the first round of in-person services were claimed within a day, and the website is already reporting that tickets for May 2-3 services will be made available on May 1.
In addition to being limited to 18 people, attendees will have access to face masks and hand sanitizer and are expected to practice social distancing. Attendees both with and without masks entered the church Sunday.
What Sumrall called a “professional hospital cleaning company” will clean between each service. People who are considered high risk or who are ill are asked to not attend.
In a Facebook video
posted on Thursday , iTown pastor Dave Sumrall said the church consulted with “local government leaders and our lawyers” before making the decision.
“We are officially in a situation where your religious freedoms have been removed in the interest of public health,” Sumrall said. “Now listen: I agree that we need to follow the data, we need to listen to our doctors, we need to protect those in our community who are the most vulnerable. But I do not agree with our fundamental rights to worship being revoked. So on one hand the church has been deemed essential, but on the other we’re not allowed to gather. I personally believe this is a fundamental attack on the definition of what the church is. ”
With no coronavirus task force briefing on the White House schedule for a second straight day, President Trump broke from his mid-afternoon tweetstorm to take a call with French president Emmanuel Macron.
White House aide Judd Deere passes along this readout from their conversation:
Today, President Donald J. Trump spoke with President Emmanuel Macron of France. President Trump and President Macron discussed positive developments in combating the coronavirus pandemic and progress toward reopening world economies. The two leaders expressed hope to convene the P5 soon and discuss the UN response to the pandemic. President Trump and President Macron agreed on the need to reform the World Health Organization. The two leaders also discussed critical regional and bilateral issues.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis is holding a press briefing and has said he has no firm date for when the state will reopen. “We are going to do everything in a smart way,” DeSantis said. “I am less concerned about the date and more concerned about getting it right.”
He added that he thinks cases from Covid – (are on a downward trend in Florida
As of Sunday morning, 1, People have died from the virus in Florida.
7. (pm) (BST) :
Donald Trump is on his customary Sunday Twitter tear. After saying on Saturday that his coronavirus press briefings are “not worth the time & effort” due to “hostile questions” from journalists, the president said that the “Noble” [sic] Committee should demand its prizes back from journalists who worked on “Russia, Russia, Russia”.
Donald J. Trump (@ realDonaldTrump) When will all of the “reporters” who have received Noble Prizes for their work on Russia, Russia, Russia, only to have been proven totally wrong (and, in fact, it was the other side who committed the crimes), be turning back their cherished “Nobles ”So that they can be given …. April 38,
“When will all of the“ reporters ”who have received Noble [sic] Prizes for their work on Russia, Russia, Russia, only to have been proven totally wrong (and, in fact, it was the other side who committed the crimes), be turning back their cherished “Nobles” so that they can be given …. to the REAL REPORTERS & JOURNALISTS who got it right. I can give the Committee a very comprehensive list. When will the Noble Committee DEMAND the Prizes back, especially since they were gotten under fraud, ”wrote the president.
As is often the case,
Trump may well have meant to criticize the Pulitzer Prizes for journalism . Several winners in
Trump also took time out to wish Melania happy birthday.
Updated at 8. 13 pm BST
The White House’s economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, says
In a sobering interview with ABC’s This Week, Hassett said: “The next couple of months are going to be terrible” for the economy. He added that unemployment could hit %.
“We see an unemployment rate that approaches rates we saw during the Great Depression,” Hassett told ABC. “During the Great Recession we lost 8.7m jobs in the whole thing. Now we’re losing that many every 18 days, so the lift for economic policy makers is an extraordinary one. ”
Elsewhere, despite the fact that GDP is forecast to shrink by 5.6% this year, the Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, told Fox News that he believes the economy will bounce back when the US starts to reopen this summer.
“I think as we begin to reopen the economy in May and June you’re going to see the economy really bounce back in July, August, September … You’re seeing trillions of dollars that’s making its way into the economy and I think this is going to have a significant impact, ”Mnuchin said.
(7.) (pm) BST () :
Donald Trump’s suggestion that injecting disinfectant could be used as a treatment for Covid – 29 were so outlandish that they’re easy to dismiss as the ramblings of a leader
However, on Sunday Maryland’s Republican governor, Larry Hogan, CBS told’s Face the Nation that his state’s Covid – (hotline) had received “hundreds of calls” following Trump’s comments . “[It’s] hard to imagine that people thought that [Trump’s comment] was serious,” Hogan said. “” But what people actually were thinking about this was this something you could do to protect yourself? ”
The president has since said that he was being “sarcastic”, although TV footage does not bear that out. The president has repeatedly given false or misleading information about the coronavirus during his press briefings, and has often found himself at odds with advice given by his own medical experts.
Hogan said that he had raised concerns about “mixed messaging” coming from the White House during the pandemic, and said that the president needed to stick to facts during his briefings.
“It’s critical that the president of the United States, when people are really scared and in the middle of this worldwide pandemic, in these press conferences that we really get the facts out there, and unfortunately some of the messaging has not been great, the mixed messaging, ”said Hogan.
Hogan is far from the only person with concerns about Trump’s handling of the pandemic. His own advisers are reported to be worried that his press briefings were harming his presidential campaign. He made only a short appearance at Friday’s briefing and did not take any any questions from reporters. On Saturday, there was no briefing at all and Trump instead wrote on Twitter that they are “not worth the time & effort”.
“What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurate,” he wrote. “They get record ratings, & the American people get nothing but Fake News. Not worth the time & effort! ”
Updated (at 7.) (PM BST)
A Louisiana pastor held services at his church today in defiance of house arrest orders following an assault charge stemming from his decision to hold mass gatherings that flouted public health orders.
The Associated Press reports:
A livestream from Life Tabernacle Church on Sunday showed Tony Spell walking among more than congregants, often repeating the phrase, “I’ve just got to get to Jesus. … Come on America, let’s get back to Jesus. ” Nearly all parishioners were not wearing face masks, and social distancing was not being practiced.
The police department in Central, a suburb Baton Rouge, says on their Facebook page that Spell turned himself into the department last week on charges of aggravated assault and improper backing.
Trey Bennett has kept up a one-man demonstration in front of the church since Easter Sunday, when he noticed hundreds of parishioners still attending services in defiance of the state’s stay-at-home mandate, which bans gatherings of more than 19 people. Houses of worship across Louisiana have turned to online services instead.
Last Sunday, Spell drove a church bus in reverse in the direction of the sign-holding protester. Spell already faces misdemeanor charges for holding in-person church services despite the ban on gatherings.
Dozens of Spell’s parishioners met him at the East Baton Rouge Parish prison, dressed in their Sunday best, arrived in church buses to show support. In a livestream from the church, images including photos from Spell’s arrest, as well as information for a GoFundMe account to help with his legal costs, played over music being performed at the church.
Updated (at 6.) (PM BST
“I don’t want to just reopen,” Cuomo says. “We learned a lot of lessons here. Painfully, but we learned a lot of lessons. And that’s what reimagine means to me. How do we take the lessons we learned, take this pause in life and say, ‘When we reopen we’re going to be better for it, and we’re going to reimagine what our life is, and we’re going to improve for this pause. ‘Even on an individual level. You had time to decompress a little bit. I think everybody when through a period where they analyzed their life and when somebody all of sudden pulls the rug out from under you and you wind up in a different place, you just see life differently. And I think that’s true for most people.
“After that reflection … what have we learned, how do we improve and how do we build back better? Because it’s not about return to yesterday. There is no return to yesterday in life. It’s about moving forward. it’s about taking your experience and what you Learned and bringing it to a positive effect. ”
Updated (at 7.) (pm BST)
(5). (pm) (BST) : 32
Cuomo begins to outline his vision for reopening the state. Phase one will focus on “low-risk” construction and manufacturing, while phase two will be more essential businesses that are considered low risk. He says businesses must present a plan to demonstrate how they can reopen safely: “We need them to be creative and think outside the box,” he says.
There will be two weeks between phases to carefully monitor the effects.
Cuomo adds a major caveat: “You can’t do anything in any region that would increase the number of visitors to that region. You have a whole multi-state region in lockdown here. It’s possible that you open something in Syracuse or you open something in the North Country where you now see license plates coming in from Connecticut, New Jersey, people from downstate, all coming to that area because they’ve been locked down and they’re looking for an activity. ”
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