Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Undoing the Covid ‘Taxpayer Heist’: Scammers stole billions in pandemic aid. The GOP has a plan to crack down; Kids infected with more viruses after lockdown weakened immune systems, and other C-Virus related stories

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Undoing the Covid ‘Taxpayer Heist’:
Scammers stole billions in pandemic aid. The GOP has a plan to crack down
When the pandemic and lockdowns first arrived, lawmakers sent checks out the door without worrying much about who was cashing them. The result was no surprise: Fraudsters claimed a bigger-than-ever share of benefit payments over the past two years. Now with the emergency long past, House Republicans plan to recoup as much misspent cash as possible.
GOP members of the House Ways and Means Committee introduced a bill this month to track the flow of wasted funds and fix the practices that enabled leakage. Citing the Labor Department, they say at least $163 billion of the $873 billion spent on unemployment insurance was spent in error, including “a significant portion attributable to fraud.” Only about $4 billion has been recovered.
This isn’t the result of careless error. Since summer 2021 federal investigators have identified large operations that mounted unemployment fraud schemes, including criminal groups in China, Nigeria and Russia. These groups, along with millions of individuals, claimed funds by lying about their employment status or filing under false identities.
Rep. James Comer, a co-sponsor of the antifraud bill, calls this “the greatest heist of American taxpayer dollars in history.” Yet the state governments that disburse funds have done little to make taxpayers whole.
The bill gives states an incentive to uncover fraud by letting them keep up to 25% of the federal funds they recover... --->READ MORE HERE
Kids infected with more viruses after lockdown weakened immune systems:
Children are becoming infected with up to three different viruses at the same time after widespread COVID-19 lockdowns eviscerated their immune systems, doctors have warned.
Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital in Connecticut has reported staggering numbers of young patients with cases of the adenovirus, rhinovirus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), human metapneumovirus, influenza, and parainfluenza — in addition to COVID-19, the Washington Post reported.
Some children were admitted with two viruses and a few with three simultaneously, according to Thomas Murray, an infection control expert and associate professor of pediatrics at Yale.
“That’s not typical for any time of year and certainly not typical in May and June,” Murray told the Washington Post.
An uptick in cases of the flu and severe colds throughout the winter months is expected, but experts say the warm summer months aren’t seeing the same downturn in illnesses as previous years. --->READ MORE HERE
Follow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:

Moderna to Study Its Covid-19 Vaccine in Babies as Young as 3 Months

Can We Develop a Covid-19 Vaccine That Lasts?

USA TODAY: Coronavirus Updates

WSJ: Coronavirus Live Updates

YAHOO NEWS: Coronavirus Live Updates

NEW YORK POST: Coronavirus The Latest

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