About Gary Carnivele

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FDA Eases Ban on Gay Blood Donations amid Coronavirus Crisis

Faced with tremendous pressure during the coronavirus crisis to lift its policy barring gay men from donating blood, the Food & Drug Administration announced on Thursday it has eased the restrictions. While the previous policy, established in 2015, barred men who have had sex with men in the 12 months from making a donation, the new policy would shorten the deferral period, requiring abstinence for only three months. The FDA indicated it would make a change in a notice to stakeholders on Thursday, indicating the decision was based on “evaluation of the totality of the scientific evidence available.” “To help […]

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Top HIV Scientist Dies from Coronavirus in ‘Huge Blow’ to the Global Fight

Professor Gita Ramjee, a highly acclaimed scientist who dedicated her life to fighting and preventing HIV, has sadly died of coronavirus. Ramjee, 64, was a South African researcher internationally renowned for her work expanding disadvantaged women’s access to HIV treatment. On March 31 she tragically passed away from coronavirus complications, having just returned from a symposium in the UK. She was working on trials for a gel that could potentially reduce HIV infection. “The passing of professor Ramjee comes as a huge blow to the entirety of the healthcare sector and the global fight against HIV/AIDS,” the deputy president of South Africa, […]

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Uganda Exploits Coronavirus To Arrest 20 LGBT Persons

ABC News reports: A gay rights leader in Uganda says 20 members of the local LGBT community have been detained after police raided their shelter and accused them of violating coronavirus-related social distancing measures. “It is evident that they were arrested because of their homosexuality,” Frank Mugisha [photo] said Wednesday, expressing concern for their safety as “some of them are on AIDS medication.” Gay sex is criminalized in Uganda. Mugisha said the 20 were among 23 people accused of violating the president’s orders during a police raid on Sunday. Three were freed because of ill health, he said. Mugisha said the […]

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A Second Gay Man has Died from Coronavirus after Attending Miami Winter Party

A second queer man has died after contracting coronavirus at the annual LGBT+ fundraiser Winter Party Festival, in Miami, Florida. The event took place from March 4 to 10, packed with more than 10,000 queer attendees. Shortly after the event, organisers took to Instagram to confirm that an attendee was diagnosed with COVID-19. Multiple people who had been at the party later posted on social media confirming that they, or someone they knew who had also attended, had been diagnosed. The first death from coronavirus of a Miami Winter Party attendee was confirmed last week when Israel Carreras, 40, who had no […]

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States Won’t Collect LGBTQ Data on COVID-19 — and Advocates Aren’t Happy

Amid the coronavirus crisis, state health officials responsible for gathering data on COVID-19 are declining to collect and report whether or not patients identify as LGBTQ — a practice that angers LGBTQ advocates who say those answers could yield important information to combat the disease. The lack of data, advocates say, will essentially blind the public to the coronavirus’ impact on LGBTQ people — a population that may be particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 — as the epidemic continues to rise and health officials warn the death toll in the United States will hit its peak in the coming weeks.  An […]

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Attack on Gay Man enough for Asylum Claim, U.S. Appeals Court Rules

An asylum seeker from Ghana who said he was attacked by a mob led by his father because of his sexuality has shown a valid fear of persecution, a U.S. appeals case said in a case argued by two law students. The petitioner, a gay man in his late 20s from Accra, said he had a secret relationship with a friend from his Muslim school days when his father found out in 2016 and flew into a rage. He said he was beaten, doused with kerosene and threatened with being beheaded before escaping, naked and bleeding. Related NBC OUT Group […]

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Shelter-at-Home Extends to May 3 and New Restrictions Take Effect for SoCo; Marin Co.

Sonoma County residents and businesses must continue to follow a shelter-at-home order through at least May 3, with new provisions that allow rebuilding efforts from wildfires to continue but otherwise bar all but the most essential construction work while shutting down short-term vacation rentals and strengthening social distancing requirements on businesses allowed to remain open. The new, extended order, issued late Tuesday by the county’s health officer, Dr. Sundari Mase, came in the wake of an announcement that schools statewide were unlikely to reopen classrooms this instructional year, forestalling a return to campus for nearly 70,000 local K-12 students. The […]

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An Update from Marin’s Spahr Center

All of us at The Spahr Center hope you are taking good care of yourselves and loved ones, and that you remain healthy! If there is anything we can do to help you get through this, please be in touch at info@thespahrcenter.org or call me at 415.886.8551. Let me begin by acknowledging our mighty team, my deep respect and appreciation go out to the entire staff of The Spahr Center. I shouldn’t be surprised at the way in which they have risen to the occasion with creativity, commitment and even more hard work. But I am sure grateful.We want all of you to know that our […]

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Cell Phone Data Reveals which California Counties are Socially Distancing

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Want to know which California counties are evidently not doing a very good job of obeying the statewide shelter-in-place order that has been in effect for over a week now? The data company Unacast, a firm that collects cell phone location data for private companies, created an interactive map that shows which counties in California and beyond are correctly “socially distancing” by staying at home. Each county and state is graded on an A-F basis on the “change in average mobility,” or the decline in distance traveled since quarantine measures were first put in place. “To calculate the actual underlying social indexing […]

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Anti-LGBTQ Hate Groups on the Rise in U.S., Report Warns

The number of anti-LGBTQ hate groups soared 43 percent last year, rising from 49 groups in 2018 to 70 in 2019, according to a recent report from the Southern Poverty Law Center. “Groups that vilify the LGBTQ community, in fact, represented the fastest-growing sector among hate groups in 2019,” the report states. The SPLC found the surge in anti-LGBTQ groups occurred amid an overall decrease in hate groups last year, which dropped to 940 from an all-time high of 1,020 in 2018. The report said the surge was “possibly fueled by continued anti-LGBTQ sentiment and policy emanating from government officials,” largely attributing […]

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