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3 Russian doctors, one with virus, ‘fall out’ of hospital windows in 2 weeks: Live corona updates

Live updates on the coronavirus crisis and how it relates to pro-life issues, faith, and freedom.
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Scene from an empty Moscow, Russia on April 3, 2020shutterstock.com

Claire
Chretien
Claire Chretien

LifeSite’s previous (and future) live updates on the coronavirus crisis and how it relates to issues our readers care about can be viewed HERE.

Three doctors “have mysteriously fallen out of hospital windows in Russia over the past two weeks,” CNN reports, and only one is still alive. The physicians are Alexander Shulepov, an ambulance doctor in Voronezh and the only one to survive the fall; Elena Nepomnyashchaya, acting head doctor of a hospital in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia; and Natalya Lebedeva, head of the emergency medical service at Star City, which CNN notes is “the main training base for Russia's cosmonauts.”

Dr. Shulepov tested positive for the coronavirus and said in a now-retracted video that he was being forced to continue working anyway.

CNN noted that a Siberian TV station reported Dr. Nepomnyashchaya, who is now dead, “allegedly fell out of a window during a meeting with regional health officials, during which they discussed turning the clinic into a coronavirus facility” (emphasis added).

May 6, 2020, 8:08 p.m. EST: Ken Paxton, the Attorney General of Texas, has called for “immediate release” of the salon owner jailed for keeping her business open.

Paxton said:

“I find it outrageous and out of touch that during this national pandemic, a judge, in a county that actually released hardened criminals for fear of contracting COVID-19, would jail a mother for operating her hair salon in an attempt to put food on her family’s table. The trial judge did not need to lock up Shelley Luther. His order is a shameful abuse of judicial discretion, which seems like another political stunt in Dallas. He should release Ms. Luther immediately.”

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, whose lockdown order bans Catholic priests from going within six feet of parishioners and thus makes it impossible to administer the sacraments, suggested that soon, the “state may begin to relax some restrictions due to a decrease in coronavirus cases and prepare for reopening,” FOX News reported (emphasis added).

In a stinging rebuke of Catholic bishops in most of the world, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has said no bishop has the right to ban public Masses. 

He said:

It is one thing to take precautionary measures to minimise the risks of contagion, it’s another to ban the liturgy. The Church is not a client of the state, and no bishop has the right to ban the Eucharist in this way. Moreover, we have witnessed priests being punished by their bishops for celebrating mass for only a few persons, this means they conceive themselves as state officials. But our supreme pastor is Jesus Christ, not Giuseppe Conte or any other head of state. The state has its task, but the church has its own.

The White House coronavirus task force will begin winding down, Vice President Mike Pence said.

The Chinese Communist government, under worldwide scrutiny for its mishandling and apparent cover-up of the pandemic, called Hong Kong freedom protestors a “virus” that “must be eliminated.”

Breitbart reports:

The UK scientist whose doomsday predictions triggered a massive lockdown on both sides of the Atlantic has resigned his government advisory position, amid claims he broke the strict lockdown rules he pushed to meet his married lover.

National Review explained:

 

Neil Ferguson is the British academic who created the infamous Imperial College model that warned Boris Johnson that, without an immediate lockdown, the coronavirus would cause 500,000 deaths and swamp the National Health Service.

 

 

 

Johnson’s government promptly abandoned its Sweden-like “social distancing” approach, and Ferguson’s model also influenced the U.S. to make lockdown moves with its shocking prediction of over two million Americans dead.

Johan Giesecke, the former chief scientist for the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention, has called Ferguson’s model “the most influential scientific paper” in memory. He also says it was, sadly, “one of the most wrong.”

With all of his influence, it’s not surprising British media are making a great deal about Ferguson being forced to resign from the government’s virus advisory board yesterday after revelations he had violated lockdown rules he had championed in order to conduct an affair with a married woman.

A May 4 report says Ferguson was bankrolled by “Big Pharma,” noting his connections to vaccine manufacturers.

Recent LifeSiteNews coverage of the coronavirus crisis includes:

May 6, 2020, 9:47 a.m. EST: A Dallas, Texas salon owner will spend a week in jail and be fined $7,000 for keeping her business open. 

“I couldn’t feed my family, and my stylists couldn’t feed their families,” she explained. 248 inmates at the jail where Shelley Luther, the salon owner, will go have the coronavirus.

Bishop Robert Baker of the Diocese of Birmingham, Alabama, has permitted his priests to begin offering outdoor Masses and Communion services in accordance with tight government regulations. Baker previously encouraged his priests to distribute Holy Communion to the faithful on Holy Thursday, and then reversed after being criticized. 

May 5, 2020, 4:26 p.m. EST: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has defended fining Canadians $5.8 million over alleged violations of so-called social distancing.

“It’s extremely important that Canadians continue to behave as we have, largely, in social distancing and staying home in keeping ourselves… safe from rapid spread of COVID-19,” said Trudeau.

The pastors of Romanian-American churches in Chicago sent a letter to Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker advising him that “beginning on May 10, 2020, our congregations will resume in-person church gatherings, and we will no longer adhere to the 10-person limit or the other unconstitutional restrictions comprised within your orders.”

You “unlawfully required that our churches shut their doors to our congregants, irrespective of any social distancing and health precautions that we are willing and able to implement, while allowing many other non-religious businesses and organization to remain open,” they wrote. The pastors outlined a long list of health precautions their congregations will be taking when they re-open on May 10.

“We respectfully ask you to reverse the orders that discriminate against our churches and trample on our constitutional freedoms,” they concluded. “In the meantime, and until you reverse course, we have authorized our legal counsel to immediately challenge your unconstitutional orders in federal court” (emphasis in original). Liberty Counsel represents the six pastors, who lead Romanian Baptist, Romanian Pentecostal, and Romanian Church of God churches.

May 5, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Coronavirus numbers are rising in Russia and the United Kingdom, the Associated Press reported.

A new poll shows that roughly two-thirds of Americans doubt official coronavirus death counts, with Republicans “lead[ing] the pack among those who instead think the deaths are being over-reported.” 

“A majority of Democrats, around half of independents and one in four Republicans say they think virus-related deaths are being undercounted.”

France apparently had a coronavirus patient on December 27, 2019. The Guardian reports, “A French hospital that retested old samples from pneumonia patients has discovered that it treated a man with the coronavirus as early as 27 December, nearly a month before the French government confirmed its first cases.”

At The Federalist, Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins has written an article on how “this crisis has uncovered problems with rationing policies: Economic considerations are often replacing the goal of life-affirming care.” Hawkins has two children with cystic fibrosis. 

Recent LifeSiteNews coverage of the coronavirus crisis includes: