News Release Archive - 2014

THOMAS FERGUSON, thomas.ferguson at umb.edu
Ferguson is professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, senior fellow of the Roosevelt Institute and the author of Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Politics (University of Chicago Press, 1995).

He commented on the election results: “So after blowing through more money than any off year election in history, 2014 leave us with this: A war of all against all — all of the Republican Congress against all of the Democratic Executive Branch. There’s no single-minded wave like 2010: it is obvious that huge numbers of Americans detest both parties, and that one of the keys to the election’s outcome was the failure of the president’s supporters to turn out like they did in 2012.

“There’s nothing mystifying about their disenchantment: After six years in the White House, President Obama rescued the banks, but not most of the American people, whose incomes and job prospects continue to languish. Add to that what will likely prove to be a substantial Republican advantage in total spending, and the impression the White House conveyed of constantly being surprised by world events, and it is hardly surprising that we witnessed another installment of ‘seesaw politics.’ The interesting question for the future is how much longer this can go on, in a world in which both Europe and China are slowing down, the Fed is tapering, and the Republicans’ answers to what ails the economy comes basically out of the playbook of the George W. Bush administration: deregulation, more tax cuts for the wealthy, and further cuts in civilian spending to reduce an already shrunken deficit.” One of Ferguson’s most recent articles is “How Big Money Keeps Populism at Bay.”

ROBERT WEISSMAN, LISA GILBERT, via Barbara Holzer, bholzer at citizen.org, @Public_Citizen
Weissman is president of Public Citizen; Gilbert is director of the group’s Congress Watch division. The group states: “Dark money, as well large amounts of disclosed money from outside groups, unjustly reshape elections in much the same way that a funhouse mirror distorts your reflection. What you see no more resembles the real you than these elections resemble a genuinely democratic voting process.

“Enabled by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, billionaires and corporations have grabbed control of our elections. More money than ever is being spent — an estimated $4 billion for this year’s elections, which is a record for a midterm, though the actual total will surely be higher when the final reports are filed.

“But more significant than the actual amounts are the rising expenditures by outside organizations — super PACs, trade associations and so-called social welfare organizations that do not disclose their donors and are not connected to the candidates. … These organizations concentrate their spending on the close races — often spending far more than the candidates themselves — so their influence is concentrated where it matters most. What’s more, at least 57 outside groups that can accept unlimited contributions have devoted all of their resources to supporting a single congressional candidate this election cycle, as detailed in Public Citizen’s latest analysis on outside spending, ‘SuperConnected 2014.'”

GREG PALAST, leni at gregpalast.com, @Greg_Palast
Palast’s investigation, “Jim Crow Returns: Millions of Minority Voters Threatened by Electoral Purge,” was recently aired on Al-Jazeera America.

WENDY WEISER, MYRNA PÉREZ, via Erik Opsal, erik.opsal at nyu.edu, @BrennanCenter
Weiser is democracy program director of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. She co-wrote the in-depth report “The State of Voting in 2014.” Pérez is deputy director of the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program and leads the group’s Texas voter ID work.

More recent pieces are available on their blog, including “Voter ID Law Turns Away Texans.” The group notes: “This is the first federal election since the U.S. Supreme Court gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, which would have required Texas to get government approval for these changes.” They have pieces that include “stories from actual voters and the difficulties they’ve encountered during early voting. … In many cases, Texas failed these voters twice — first by requiring identification they did not have, and second by not training election officials to help them navigate the rules.”

The Brennan Center adds: “Voters in need of assistance should call 1-866-OUR-VOTE, where trained volunteers are standing by to assist voters and answer any questions they may have.”

Weiser also co-wrote “We Already Know Who Won the 2014 Election” about the Supreme Court. The piece states: “When the Court dismantled our laws regulating money in politics and gutted core voting rights protections, we knew those decisions would have consequences. But only now are we seeing the full scope of their impact: a return to pre-Watergate, pre-Civil Rights era practices. Cash from unknown sources is flooding the most important races, while state politicians have instituted new barriers to the ballot box for millions of Americans. Regardless of who wins, the integrity of our elections has been undermined.”

KARL GROSSMAN, kgrossman at hamptons.com
Professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College of New York, Grossman is author of the book, The Wrong Stuff: The Space’s Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet. He just wrote the piece “Privatizing Space Travel When Spaceships Explode,” which states: “Much of the U.S. space program has become privatized in recent years and now instead of a sometimes bumbling bureaucracy doing dumb things like launching the Challenger shuttle in frigid weather when its O-rings holding in its fuel weren’t flexible, there are corporations seeking to make big bucks.

“The explosions last week of an Antares rocket on Tuesday and the Virgin Galactic SpaceShip2 on Friday were disasters and, considering the death of a SpaceShip2 pilot and serious injury to the other pilot, tragedies. …”

AP reports: “Climate change is happening, it’s almost entirely man’s fault and limiting its impacts may require reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero this century, the U.N.’s panel on climate science said Sunday.” See: “The Time to Act is Now: IPCC Issues ‘Final Word’ on Climate Change.”

DAPHNE WYSHAM, daphne at ips-dc.org, @daphnewysham
Wysham is climate policy fellow at the Center for Sustainable Economy and associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. Her most recent pieces include “Fossil Fuels: The Tide is Turning” and “Is the Democrats’ Talkathon on Climate Change Just Talk?”

KIM FRACZEK, kim at saneenergyproject.org
Fraczek is with the group Sane Energy Project, one of a number of grassroots groups this week protesting the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission under the banner “Beyond Extreme Energy.”

KEVIN ZEESE, kzeese at earthlink.net
Zeese is with Popular Resistance, another group involved in protests in Washington, D.C. this week. The group has recently put out “Open Letter: Democratic Party Failing On The Climate Crisis.”

FireDogLake reports: “Former CIA analyst and activist Ray McGovern was arrested as he attempted to attend an event in New York City featuring former CIA director and retired military general, David Petraeus. He was charged with resisting arrest, criminal trespass and disorderly conduct.

“At 92nd Street Y, which describes itself as a ‘world-class cultural and community center,’ Petraeus was to appear with John Nagl, who recently wrote a book, Knife Fights about being an army tank commander in the Gulf War of 1991. Neoconservative commentator Max Boot was to join them as well.

The piece, by Kevin Gosztola, continues: “Activists from World Can’t Wait, the Granny Peace Brigade, Brooklyn for Peace and a chapter of Veterans for Peace called on people to protest. Some tickets, which cost $45 each, were bought so people could attend the event and potentially participate in a question and answer portion of the event.

“World Can’t Wait activist Stephanie Rugoff said a guard stopped McGovern. ‘Ray, you’re not going in,’ the guard said.

“McGovern, who is 74 years old, told the guards something to the effect that the Bill of Rights gave him the right to go into the event. McGovern had a ticket too. But the guards would not let him pass and soon New York police officers surrounded him.

“Richard Marini, also an activist with World Can’t Wait, approached the entrance to the 92nd Street Y Center and saw McGovern…being apprehended.

“According to Marini, his arms were twisted tightly behind his back and he was in immense pain while they were dragging him to the police car. He was squeezed into the back of a patrol car and taken to the 67th Street station.

“Rugoff heard him screaming. He was shouting about how they were hurting his shoulder. He asked the officers to stop twisting it so they did not aggravate his shoulder and possibly re-injure it.

“‘I had a ticket as well,’ Marini explained. ‘They recognized me as well and called me by my name, my first name. They seemed to know who people were.'”

RAY McGOVERN, rrmcgovern at gmail.com, @raymcgovern
McGovern is a former CIA analyst whose responsibilities included chairing National Intelligence Estimates. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He was released from custody today.

DEBRA SWEET, debrasweet at worldcantwait.net, @DSweetWCW
Sweet is director of World Can’t Wait and organized the protest outside the Petraeus event.

DAVID SWANSON, davidcnswanson at gmail.com, @davidcnswanson
Author of When the World Outlawed War, War Is A Lie and Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union, Swanson said today: “Like sex for virginity, war for freedom turns out to have a fatal flaw. With each new war for freedom, we see more of our freedoms stripped away in the name of the war — above all our right to assemble and speak nonviolently against war and to petition those in power for a redress of grievances. As the weaponry makes its way to the local police and school boards, the abuses first imposed on foreigners make their way to the population supposedly being defended. When Ray McGovern was assaulted last time, by Hillary Clinton’s guards, he wasn’t even speaking but just silently turning his back.”

See: “Clinton Talks Freedom as Dissident Bloodied and Dragged Off.”

RORY FANNING, walkforpat at gmail.com, @RTFanning
Fanning is a former Army Ranger and author of the book Worth Fighting For, which will be released on Veterans Day, Nov. 11. In his most recent article “ Thank You for Your Valor, Thank You for Your Service, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You… ,” he states: “Last week, in a quiet indie bookstore on the north side of Chicago, I saw the latest issue of Rolling Stone resting on a chrome-colored plastic table a few feet from a barista brewing a vanilla latte. A cold October rain fell outside. A friend of mine grabbed the issue and began flipping through it. Knowing that I was a veteran, he said, ‘Hey, did you see this?’ pointing to a news story that seemed more like an ad. It read in part:

“This Veterans Day, Bruce Springsteen, Eminem, Rihanna, Dave Grohl, and Metallica will be among numerous artists who will head to the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on November 11th for ‘The Concert For Valor,’ an all-star event that will pay tribute to armed services.

“‘Concert For Valor? That sounds like something the North Korean government would organize,’ I said as I typed Concertforvalor.com into my MacBook Pro looking for more information… As I read, my heart sank, my shoulders slumped.

“Special guests at the Concert for Valor were to include: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, and Steven Spielberg. The mission of the concert, according to a press release, was to ‘raise awareness’ of veterans issues and ‘provide a national stage for ensuring that veterans and their families know that their fellow Americans’ gratitude is genuine.’

“Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Michael Mullen were to serve in an advisory capacity, and Starbucks, HBO, and JP Morgan Chase were to pay for it all. ‘We are honored to play a small role to help raise awareness and support for our service men and women,’ said HBO chairman Richard Plepler.

“Will the ‘Concert for Valor’ mention the trillions of dollars rung up terrorizing Muslim countries for oil, the ratcheting up of the police and surveillance state in this country since 9/11, the hundreds of thousands of lives lost thanks to the wars of George W. Bush and Barack Obama? Is anyone going to dedicate a song to Chelsea Manning, or John Kiriakou, or Edward Snowden — two of them languishing in prison and one in exile — for their service to the American people? Will the Concert for Valor raise anyone’s awareness when it comes to the fact that, to this day, veterans lack proper medical attention, particularly for mental health issues, or that there is a veteran suicide every 80 minutes in this country? Let’s hope they find time in between drum solos, but myself, I’m not counting on it.”

AP is reporting: “The company behind the dramatic launch explosion of a space station supply mission promises to find the cause of the failure and is warning residents to avoid any potentially hazardous wreckage.

“Orbital Sciences Corp.’s unmanned Antares rocket blew up just moments after liftoff Tuesday evening from the Virginia coast.”

KARL GROSSMAN, kgrossman at hamptons.com
A veteran investigative reporter, Grossman has been a recipient of the George Polk Award and other honors for his journalism. He is a professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury.

He said today: “This event underlines again the folly of using nuclear power in space — something the United States and Russia are again actively planning. An explosion on launch is not unusual — indeed, one out of 100 rockets fail on launch. But, consider if radioactive materials were on board — as will be the situation for the proposed U.S. and Russian nuclear space shots (this rocket was equipped with a Russian engine).” Grossman is author of The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet and for the last nearly 30 years, has been challenging the use of nuclear power in space. He he broke the story in The Nation magazine about how the next mission of the ill-fated Challenger shuttle involved it lofting a space probe with a plutonium-powered electrical generating system on board. Among Grossman’s articles is, from CounterPunch: “Obama and the Nuclear Rocket.” His documentaries include “Nukes in Space: The Nuclearization and Weaponization of the Heavens.”

Grossman added: “Meanwhile, enormous advances have been made in the use of safe solar power to generate electricity on spacecraft. Even way out in space, the European Space Agency’s solar-powered Rosetta spacecraft recently successfully rendezvoused with a comet and NASA’s Juno’s solar-powered space probe is now on its way to Jupiter.”

A billboard challenging Amazon to fully disclose the terms of its $600 million contract to provide cloud computing services for the Central Intelligence Agency has been unveiled at a busy intersection near Amazon’s Seattle headquarters.

The billboard’s launch — asking “the $600 million question: What’s the CIA Doing on Amazon’s Cloud?” — marks the escalation of a campaign by the online activist organizations RootsAction.org and ExposeFacts.org. The groups are calling for accountability from Amazon in an effort to inform the public of serious privacy implications of the Amazon-CIA collaboration. (ExposeFacts.org is a project of the Institute for Public Accuracy.)

The positioning of the 48-foot-wide billboard on Amazon’s doorstep at Fairview Avenue and Valley Street in Seattle follows a RootsAction petition calling for Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos to make a legally binding commitment to Amazon’s commercial customers that it will not provide customer data to the CIA.

Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer. “The same company that stores vast quantities of customer records and even provides cloud storage services also stores the CIA’s surveillance data — yet the actual terms of the Amazon-CIA agreement are secret,” said Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and a co-founder of RootsAction.org.

To see the billboard, click here.

“Amazon now averages 162 million unique visitors to its sites every month,” Solomon said. “The firm’s business model depends on accumulating and analyzing huge quantities of personal data. Meanwhile, the CIA depends on gathering and analyzing data to assist with surveillance as well as U.S. military interventions overseas. The circumstances are ominous.”

In hosting a huge computing cloud for the CIA’s secrets, Amazon now has “a digital place where data for mass surveillance and perpetual war are converging,” he added. The CIA is responsible for numerous war-related programs including drone strikes.

Marcy Wheeler — who writes widely on the legal aspects of the “war on terror” and its effects on civil liberties including her “Right to Know” column for ExposeFacts.org — said Wednesday that Amazon should answer a number of key questions before its customers and the general public can be assured that personal information from the company’s commercial operations is not finding its way into the CIA’s hands.

For instance, she said, Bezos and Amazon should answer the question: “Will there be any overlap between the physical hardware serving Amazon’s commercial cloud service and what is provided to the CIA?”

Referring to the CIA’s machinations over the still-unreleased Senate torture report, she added that Bezos should also be asked: “The CIA has admitted accessing documents made available to the Senate Intelligence Committee on shared space — what provisions have you made to prevent similar spying on Amazon’s commercial customers?”

Wheeler also noted that according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Amazon is “one of the only major cloud providers that doesn’t provide a transparency report of government requests.” In light of Amazon’s CIA contract, Bezos should be asked: “Do you believe your cloud customers should have some visibility of how you respond to government requests?”

Amazon’s current “Privacy Notice” to customers reads: “We release account and other personal information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law; enforce or apply our Conditions of Use and other agreements; or protect the rights, property, or safety of Amazon.com, our users, or others.”

Solomon said this notice “has loopholes big enough to fly a drone through.”

After Amazon Web Services was awarded the $600 million cloud contract last year, Amazon declared: “We look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA.” Industry experts have said this contract will likely open the door for Amazon to get more cloud contracts from other government spy and military agencies — hardly a reassuring prospect for the privacy of Amazon’s customers.

MARCY WHEELER, emptywheel at gmail.com, @emptywheel
Wheeler writes widely about the legal aspects of the “war on terror” and its effects on civil liberties. She blogs at emptywheel.net and writes the “Right to Know” column for ExposeFacts.org.

NORMAN SOLOMON, solomonprogressive at gmail.com, @normansolomon
Solomon is the author of many books including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He is the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and a co-founder of RootsAction.org.

Background: Government Executive: “Daring Deal”

MERYL NASS, M.D., merylnass at gmail.com, @NassMeryl
Nass writes at the Anthrax Vaccine blog. She said today: “After months of loudly claiming that Ebola can’t spread through the air [eg, ‘Ebola is not spread through the air or by water‘], late Friday the CDC finally put out an infographic somewhat forthrightly acknowledging air droplet transmission of the disease [PDF].

“The graphic states that ‘Ebola is spread through droplets’ and ‘droplets can contaminate objects like doorknobs.’ CDC attempts to split hairs by the way it contrasts such transmission with ‘airborne’ transmission, and the CDC is insisting that such transmission occurs no further than three feet from the affected patient — while there’s good evidence small droplets may travel much further, and remain viable (infectious) on surfaces for hours or sometimes days.

“The CDC’s stance on droplets was part of a pattern: saying Ebola could be ‘stopped in its tracks’ in the U.S., and that U.S. hospitals are ready.

“Unfortunately, U.S. hospitals are not ready. Anthony Fauci of the NIH recently said: ‘We need to have more than just the four [biocontainment units] in which you have people who are pre-trained…’ It’s certainly true we need more than the current four Biosafety Level 4 centers for the entire U.S., but it’s not just a matter of training. They have facilities other hospitals — including Bellevue — just don’t have. Both Dr. Craig Spencer and patient Thomas Eric Duncan have been treated in emptied, isolation wards. What happens when there are too many Ebola patients to be treated in otherwise empty ICUs, by armies of healthcare professionals?

“The way Bellevue is responding to Ebola is just not sustainable for a large epidemic. The isolation rooms cost $3-4 million each to create.” See: Wall Street Journal: “Bellevue, Home to Ebola Unit, Moves Patients to NYU.” The Daily News reports: “Dozens of specially trained staff are required to man Bellevue’s Ebola ward, which is on the seventh floor and has four beds. And with some 20 nurses and ancillary staff rolling through during a 24-hour shift, that meant pulling staff from the 10th floor ICU.”

Nass adds: “There are a host of huge issues we should be dealing with, including: The slowness and sheer paltriness of the international response in Africa; the $60 plus billion that was supposed to be spent (since the anthrax letters in 2001) to get vaccines and drugs for ‘Category A’ threats including Ebola; the accidental release of viruses from labs and the intentional creation of more dangerous viruses at U.S. bioweapons labs, aka ‘gain of function’ research.”

See IPA news release from Oct. 21: “Ebola: Are U.S. Bioweapons Labs the Solution, or the Problem?” New York Times from Oct. 17: “White House to Cut Funding for Risky Biological Study” and USA Today from Aug. 17: “Hundreds of Bioterror Lab Mishaps Cloaked in Secrecy.”

See past posts by Nass:

“CDC now admits Ebola can float through the air, and land on doorknobs.”

“5 Ebola patients in Kikwit outbreak had no physical contact to explain transmission, and scientists suggest other mechanisms.”

“Look, CDC is simply lying. Its own publications acknowledge that Ebola may aerosolize, and must be contained in BSL-4 facilities (that are not currently available in any ordinary hospitals).”

“Ebola Causes Chronic Illnesses in Those Who Manage to Recover/ CBS and USAMRIID.”

“Indemnifying Pharma for Ebola Vaccines: Recipe for Problems?”

“Airborne Spread of Ebola from Pigs to Macaques / Nature.”

“CDC defined infectious respiratory droplet transmission as different than airborne.”

“Is This A New, More Virulent Ebola?“

GILBERT DOCTOROW, [in Brussels] gdoctorow at yahoo.com
Doctorow recently wrote the piece “Twilight of the Gods: George Soros in Brussels,” which states: “George Soros’s press conference in Brussels on Thursday, 23 October, had one unifying theme, his loathing of Russia.

“Nominally it was to publicize his latest essay, ‘Wake Up, Europe‘ released several days ago on the online edition of the New York Review of Books and already republished in various world newspapers of record in local languages. …

“The setting for the event was a two-day Global Briefing seminar of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group which otherwise was taking place behind closed doors for the benefit of participants sponsored by their companies, embassies and NGO employers.

“But when you put up more than $50,000 a year in sponsorship contributions, as Soros does for the ICG, you get perks like the 45 minutes of on-record prime time just after lunch with journalists invited in as Soros did on Thursday. The moderator was of appropriate stature, ICG co-chair Lord Malloch-Brown….

“This New Ukraine, in Soros’ view, is the embodiment of democratic principles: of rule of law, fighting corruption, structural reform. It is on the front line against an imperialist minded, aggressive Russia. Therefore, it is in Europe’s interest to provide this New Ukraine with military assistance and financial aid, which immediately equates to 19-20 billion dollars. …

“When asked about the just released Human Rights Watch condemnation of use of cluster bombs by the Kiev government, Soros agreed this was very regrettable and he said he himself flagged the issue in a tiny box that is part of his essay.

“Of course, neither he nor anyone else in the room bothered to mention one nasty detail: the alleged use of cluster bombs by Government forces was directed against residential districts and schools, aimed almost exclusively at the civilian population.

“Soros has never been bashful about leveraging his philanthropic/cultural activities to serve his speculative ventures as financier. And so he used the press conference to appeal to Europe to supervise a debt exchange program that would effectively bail out bond holders of Ukrainian sovereign debt, to the tune of the $19 billion falling due in the coming year, and not to accede to a Cyprus or Greek type ‘bail-in’ or ‘haircut’ for the investors that would amount to default and cut off Ukraine from international financing of its private industrial recovery.

“This sounds nice, but as of the start of 2014, $7 billion of that sovereign debt was held by one U.S. company, Franklin Templeton. Turning those short term bonds into a modern day equivalent of Brady bonds with EU and US guarantees would clearly serve the interests of Soros’s friends in the investment community; and who knows, since Soros did not volunteer full disclosure and was asked by no one for transparency, how much of that debt he and companies he controls hold. …

“Press coverage of Soros’s appearance in Brussels has followed the master script of his handouts. Bloomberg.com was typically obsequious to the billionaire.”

Doctorow is a noted “Russia watcher,” a Brussels-based journalists and founder of the European office of the Committee on East-West Accord. For 25 years he worked for U.S. and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. Now Doctorow regularly publishes analytical articles about international affairs on the portal of the Belgian daily La Libre Belgique and has recently been a contributor of op-ed articles on U.S.-Russian relations to the English-language Moscow Times. He is a research fellow of the American University in Moscow.

MERYL NASS, M.D., merylnass at gmail.com, @NassMeryl
Nass writes at the Anthrax Vaccine blog. She has debunked government claims from early on in the Ebola crisis, including the slowness of the response in Africa and the notion that U.S. hospitals were prepared before the events in Dallas. She said today: “Officials continue to claim that Ebola is only transmitted through direct contact with bodily fluids. We don’t know this. There is ample evidence from animal experiments that Ebola can be transmitted through aerosol droplets that are expelled when we cough, sneeze and speak. Furthermore, CDC has tacitly acknowledged this, by enhancing their personal protective equipment [PPE] recommendation to cover droplets, on Oct. 20.

“However, hospitals in the U.S. are still unprepared for Ebola. You need a BSL-4 lab (like at the U.S.’s four biocontainment facilities) to safely test Ebola victims’ blood, and avoid contaminating the laboratory. There are no such hospital labs in New York, though Bellevue seems to have made some preparedness efforts, and is in the process of building such a lab …

“Furthermore, patients who recover from Ebola tend to have persisting medical problems. And recovery is not assured. Fifty-six percent of doctors and nurses in Africa who developed Ebola have died.

“For all these reasons, the United States will not be able to easily manage an Ebola epidemic. Therefore, it MUST be confronted and ended in Africa. It’s scandalous that the richer nations and WHO failed to respond last spring, before thousands died. The international community, with the notable exception of Cuba, has totally failed in its responsibilities.”

Some of Nass’ recent posts: “MSF [Doctors Without Borders] discusses treatment approaches and its role in therapeutic drug trials.”

“Airborne Spread of Ebola from Pigs to Macaques / Nature.”

“Indemnifying Pharma for Ebola Vaccines: Recipe for Problems?”

“Is This A New, More Virulent Ebola?”

“CDC defined infectious respiratory droplet transmission as different than airborne.”