America Didn’t Give Up on Covid-19. Republicans Did.
Partisanship has crippled our response.
By Paul Krugman
Earlier this year much of America went through hell as the nation struggled to deal with Covid-19. More than 120,000 Americans have now died; more than 20 million have lost their jobs.
But it’s looking as if all those sacrifices were in vain. We never really got the coronavirus under control, and now infections, while they have fallen to a quite low level in the New York area, the pandemic’s original epicenter, are surging in much of the rest of the country.
And the bad news isn’t just a result of more testing. In new hot spots like Arizona — where testing capacity is being overwhelmed — and Houston the fraction of tests coming up positive is soaring, which shows that the disease is spreading rapidly.
It didn’t have to be this way. The European Union, a hugely diverse area with a larger population than the U.S., has been far more successful at limiting the spread of Covid-19 than we have. What went wrong?
The immediate answer is that many U.S. states ignored warnings from health experts and rushed to reopen their economies, and far too many people failed to follow basic precautions like wearing face masks and avoiding large groups. But why was there so much foolishness?
Well, I keep seeing statements to the effect that Americans were too impatient to stay the course, too unwilling to act responsibly. But this is deeply misleading, because it avoids confronting the essence of the problem. Americans didn’t fail the Covid-19 test; Republicans did.
After all, the Northeast, with its largely Democratic governors, has been appropriately cautious about reopening, and its numbers look like Europe’s. California and Washington are blue states that are seeing a rise in cases, but it’s from a relatively low base, and their Democratic governors are taking actions like requiring the use of face masks and seem ready to reverse their reopening.
So the really bad news is coming from Republican-controlled states, especially Arizona, Florida and Texas, which rushed to reopen and, while some are now pausing, haven’t reversed course. If the Northeast looks like Europe, the South is starting to look like Brazil.
Nor is it just Republican governors and state legislatures. According to the new New York Times/Siena poll, voters over all strongly favor giving control of the pandemic priority over reopening the economy — but Republican voters, presumably taking their cue from the White House and Fox News, take the opposite position.
And it’s not just about policy decisions. Partisanship seems to be driving individual behavior, too, with self-identified Democrats significantly more likely to wear face masks and engage in social distancing than self-identified Republicans.
The question, then, isn’t why “America” has failed to deal effectively with the pandemic. It’s why the G.O.P. has in effect allied itself with the coronavirus.
Part of the answer is short-term politics. At the beginning of this year Donald Trump’s re-election message was all about economic triumphalism: Unemployment was low, stocks were up, and he was counting on good numbers to carry him through November. He and his officials wasted crucial weeks refusing to acknowledge the viral threat because they didn’t want to hear any bad news.
And they pushed for premature reopening because they wanted things to return to what they seemed to be back in February. Indeed, just a few days ago the same Trump officials who initially assured us that Covid-19 was no big deal were out there dismissing the risks of a second wave.
I’d suggest, however, that the G.O.P.’s coronavirus denial also has roots that go beyond Trump and his electoral prospects. The key point, I’d argue, is that Covid-19 is like climate change: It isn’t the kind of menace the party wants to acknowledge.
It’s not that the right is averse to fearmongering. But it doesn’t want you to fear impersonal threats that require an effective policy response, not to mention inconveniences like wearing face masks; it wants you to be afraid of people you can hate — people of a different race or supercilious liberals.
So instead of dealing with Covid-19, Republican leaders and right-wing media figures have tried to make the pandemic into the kind of threat they want to talk about. It’s “kung flu,” foisted on us by villainous Chinese. Or it’s a hoax perpetrated by the “medical deep state,” which is just looking for a way to hurt Trump.
The good news is that the politics of virus denial don’t seem to be working. Partly that’s because racism doesn’t play the way it used to: The Black Lives Matter protesters have received broad public support, despite the usual suspects’ efforts to portray them as rampaging hordes. Partly it’s because the surge in infections is becoming too obvious to deny; even Republican governors are admitting that there’s a problem, although they still don’t seem willing to act.
The bad news is that partisanship has crippled our Covid-19 response. The virus is winning, and all indications are that the next few months will be a terrifying nightmare of rampant disease and economic disruption.
More Thoughts on the Recession, Stimulus, and Recovery
By Dean Baker
As we get more data in, it seems increasingly likely that we are looking at a horrible and prolonged recession, not a complete economic collapse of Great Depression proportions. The May employment report showed a substantial bounce back in employment, with jobs up by more than 2.5 million from the April level. Retail sales had a huge 17.7 percent jump in May, by far the largest on record, although they are still 6.1 percent below the May 2019 level.
Mortgage applications also show a considerable degree of confidence about the future, with both refinancing and purchase mortgages soaring. Mortgage applications for refinancing are up more than ten-fold from year ago levels, while purchase applications are up 268.6 percent to the highest level in more than 11 years. The latter are far more important for the economy, since they imply people are buying homes, which typically lead to the purchase of new appliances and spending on renovations.
These data, and a variety of surveys of consumers and businesses, do not show an economy in collapse. At the same time, there is little reason to believe that we will see a robust rebound to anything resembling normal. We lost 22 million jobs between February and April. Even if we had seven more months adding jobs back at the May rate, we would still be down by more than 2 million jobs from the pre-pandemic level. And, we are not likely to see seven more months with job growth anything like May’s pace, without some very serious fiscal stimulus.
A new paper * from Raj Chetty and co-authors provides some interesting insights on the problem the economy faces. Using real time data from a number of private sources, it finds that there has been a sharp fall in consumption by people in the top income quartile of households, with relatively little change in consumption from the other three quartiles.
This drop is overwhelmingly associated with a sharp drop in demand for services, like restaurant meals, hair salons, and other personal services. Interestingly, the size of the drop is not affected to any substantial extent by laws on shutdowns. Areas where these services were fully available saw comparable declines in spending as areas where these services were still subject to lockdowns.
There are two major takeaways from these findings. First, the drop in demand that we have seen to date has little to do with declines in income. The top quartile has reduced its spending not because it lacks the income to spend, it has reduced spending because it is scared to spend in the areas where it would ordinarily be spending its money.
An implication is that any further efforts at boosting the economy should be better targeted than the first rounds. For example, giving $1,200 to every adult in the country was not a very effective way to boost the economy. While this payment was phased out for very high-end earners, the phase out only affected the top 2-3 percent of the income distribution, the bulk of the top quartile received their checks even though they were not suffering any income loss as a result of the pandemic.
The other major take away is that if we want people to use restaurants, hair salons, gyms, and other services, the issue of legal shutdowns matters far less important than ensuring their safety. This means actually getting the pandemic under control. While virtually every wealthy country has been able to do this, outside of the Northeast corridor, new infections are higher than ever in the United States. This means that without a vaccine and/or effective treatment, we are likely to see demand for a wide range of services badly depressed for the foreseeable future.
This matters in a big way because these industries provide tens of millions of jobs largely to less-educated workers. These sectors also disproportionately employ women and people of color. If they continue to see demand at far below pre-pandemic levels, it will mean a massive and persistent increase in unemployment for the less-educated segments of the workforce. This will quickly reverse all the gains that lower paid workers were able to make as the labor market tightened in the prior five years.
Shaping the Stimulus
The most immediate need in the next round of a rescue package to come from Congress is for money for state and local governments. Their budgets have been devastated by the loss of tax revenue due to the shutdown and the additional demand for services. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculated that the shortfalls could be as high as $500 billion.
They have already laid off 1.6 million workers and this number will hugely increase if Congress does not provide a large chunk of money to make up for their shortfalls. Some people have pointed out that the laid off workers were largely teachers, who were not paid for the period in which schools were shut down. This is true, but if state and local governments cannot get the money to make up shortfalls, many of these teachers may not be called back in the fall and other workers are likely to be laid off to make up the cost of paying the teachers who are called back. Cutbacks at the state and local level were one of the main reasons that the recovery from the Great Recession was so slow. We should not make an even larger mistake now.
The Post Office will also need substantial funding to stay in business, as it has seen both a sharp decline in revenue and sharp increase in spending due to efforts to keep its workers safe. As with state and local governments, the employees of the Post Office are disproportionately Black. This is due to the fact that Black workers in the public sector have faced less discrimination than Black workers in the private sector. As a result, the public sector has historically been an important source of middle-class jobs for Black workers. This will be threatened if the fallout from the pandemic forces large cutbacks in employment.
There has been a peculiar debate over the extension of the $600 weekly supplements to unemployment benefits that are scheduled to end next month. It is important to remember the reason these were included. We gave people this supplement because we did not want them to work. The point was to keep people whole through a period in which the economy was largely shut down in an effort to contain the virus.
In this context, the question we should be asking in deciding whether to continue the supplement is whether it is safe to work. This depends on our progress on containing the virus. One obvious way to determine the extent to which the pandemic has been contained is the positive rate on new tests. If the positive rate is below some low level, say 3 percent, then it would be reasonable to remove the supplement in that area (this can be county specific), however if we are seeing high positive rates, then as a matter of policy it would make more sense to encourage people to stay at home than to work.
For the areas where the virus is under control it would still be desirable to have some supplement to the standard benefit. Benefits in many states have been eroded in recent decades so that it would be very difficult for unemployed workers to survive on them. In a context where the nationwide unemployment rate is virtually certain to be in double digits through the rest of the year, most of the unemployed are not going to be able to find work. For these reasons, a smaller supplement, perhaps $200 a week, should be left in place until the economy has recovered more.
In addition, we should also increase Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits to protect those at the bottom of the income ladder. Food prices have risen sharply since the pandemic hit. These increases may be reversed in the months ahead, but for now low-income families have to cope with high food prices, with no increase in benefits. It is also important to remember that SNAP spending is a small share of the total budget. At $70 billion a year, it is just 1.6 percent of total spending. It is less than one fifth of the premium we pay each year for prescription drugs because of government-granted patent monopolies.
Longer Term Recovery
At the point where we have developed effective treatments and/or a vaccine, many people will go back to eating at restaurants and flying for vacations. However, there are some changes in spending patterns that are likely to be enduring.
It is likely that much of the increase in telecommuting will be permanent. This means that many fewer people will be going to downturn offices and taking advantage of restaurants, bars, gyms and other services in central cities at lunch and after work. People are also likely to be taking many fewer business trips, as meetings will take place on Zoom. Also, many colleges and universities will likely be downsized, as more instruction takes place on the web, decreasing retail sales in college towns.
While there will be other long-term changes resulting from the pandemic (maybe even some questioning of government-granted patent monopolies for prescription drugs), the basic point is that large numbers of workers are likely to still be displaced even after the immediate impact of the pandemic is over.
This actually presents a great opportunity. If the private sector is not spending enough to fully employ the workforce, then the public sector has to fill the gap. In this case, we don’t need to have make-work jobs, we have enormous unmet needs.
Most obviously we need people to increase our capacity for clean energy and conservation. This can mean millions of jobs for people installing solar panels, insulation, and other energy saving measures. We also need to ramp up our child care capacity. The lack of adequate child care was driven home in the pandemic as many health care and other essential workers had difficulty making arrangements when child care facilities shut down. We also need more health care workers as we move towards establishing a universal Medicare system. This will likely mean many more nurses, nurses’ assistants, and other health care professionals. And we will need social workers or other trained professionals who can be the first responders in many non-violent situations where the police are currently called in.
We can’t imagine that all the people who lose their jobs in restaurants and hotels will be able to work installing solar panels or train to be nurses, but that is not how the labor market functions. In a normal pre-pandemic month, more than five and a half million workers lost or left their job every month. As jobs are generated in these new areas, many currently employed people will look to fill them. That will create job openings that former restaurant and hotel workers can fill. The story is not as simple as this, as we know there is considerable discrimination in the labor market and many pockets of high unemployment, but we don’t have to imagine that we need to match up displaced workers directly with the newly created jobs in clean energy, child care and health care. The labor market is far more flexible than this story implies.
Anyhow, a full discussion of the post-pandemic economy is a much longer story, but the basic picture is actually a positive one. More telecommuting will mean a more productive and less polluting economy. It will also lead to more dispersion of higher paid jobs, benefiting many of the areas that have been left behind in the last four decades and lowering rents and house prices in places like New York City and San Francisco. If we can get through a very bad stretch for the country and the economy, the future could actually be quite bright.
PK is correct about the Republicans, yet the numbers are staggering.
“Trump Death Clock
76,438
Estimated U.S. COVID-19 Deaths Due To POTUS Inaction
In January 2020, the Trump administration was advised that immediate action was required to stop the spread of COVID-19. According to NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, “there was a lot of pushback” to this advice. President Trump declined to act until March 16th. Epidemiologists now estimate that, had mitigation measures been implemented one week earlier, 60% of American COVID-19 deaths would have been avoided.”
Scientists begin to understand the many health problems caused by COVID-19
Scientists are only starting to grasp the vast array of health problems caused by the novel coronavirus, some of which may have lingering effects on patients and health systems for years to come, according to doctors and infectious disease experts.
Besides the respiratory issues that leave patients gasping for breath, the virus that causes COVID-19 attacks many organ systems, in some cases causing catastrophic damage.
“We thought this was only a respiratory virus. Turns out, it goes after the pancreas. It goes after the heart. It goes after the liver, the brain, the kidney and other organs. We didn’t appreciate that in the beginning,” said Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California.
In addition to respiratory distress, patients with COVID-19 can experience blood clotting disorders that can lead to strokes, and extreme inflammation that attacks multiple organ systems. The virus can also cause neurological complications that range from headache, dizziness and loss of taste or smell to seizures and confusion.
And recovery can be slow, incomplete and costly, with a huge impact on quality of life.
The broad and diverse manifestations of COVID-19 are somewhat unique, said Dr. Sadiya Khan, a cardiologist at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago.
With influenza, people with underlying heart conditions are also at higher risk of complications, Khan said. What is surprising about this virus is the extent of the complications occurring outside the lungs.
Kahn believes there will be a huge healthcare expenditure and burden for individuals who have survived COVID-19.
Lengthy rehab for many
Patients who were in the intensive care unit or on a ventilator for weeks will need to spend extensive time in rehab to regain mobility and strength.
“It can take up to seven days for every one day that you’re hospitalized to recover that type of strength,” Kahn said. “It’s harder the older you are, and you may never get back to the same level of function.”
While much of the focus has been on the minority of patients who experience severe disease, doctors increasingly are looking to the needs of patients who were not sick enough to require hospitalization, but are still suffering months after first becoming infected.
Studies are just getting underway to understand the long-term effects of infection, Jay Butler, deputy director of infectious diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters in a telephone briefing on Thursday.
“We hear anecdotal reports of people who have persistent fatigue, shortness of breath,” Butler said. “How long that will last is hard to say.”
While coronavirus symptoms typically resolve in two or three weeks, an estimated 1 in 10 experience prolonged symptoms, Dr. Helen Salisbury of the University of Oxford wrote in the British Medical Journal on Tuesday.
Salisbury said many of her patients have normal chest X-rays and no sign of inflammation, but they are still not back to normal.
“If you previously ran 5k three times a week and now feel breathless after a single flight of stairs, or if you cough incessantly and are too exhausted to return to work, then the fear that you may never regain your previous health is very real,” she wrote.
Dr. Igor Koralnik, chief of neuro-infectious diseases at Northwestern Medicine, reviewed current scientific literature and found about half of the patients hospitalized with COVID-19 had neurological complications, such as dizziness, decreased alertness, difficulty concentrating, disorders of smell and taste, seizures, strokes, weakness and muscle pain.
Koralnik, whose findings were published in the Annals of Neurology, has started an outpatient clinic for COVID-19 patients to study whether these neurological problems are temporary or permanent.
Kahn sees parallels with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Much of the early focus was on deaths.
“In recent years, we’ve been very focused on the cardiovascular complications of HIV survivorship,” Kahn said.
But IIRIRA limits the review that a federal court may conduct on a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. 8 U. S. C. §1252(e)(2). In particular, courts may not review “the determination” that an applicant lacks a credible fear of persecution. §1252(a)(2)(A)(iii).
…
In 2019, a grant of asylum followed a finding of credible fear just 15% of the time. See EOIR, Asylum Decision Rates in Cases Originating With a Credible Fear Claim (Oct. 2019). Fraudulent asylum claims can also be difficult to detect,10 especially in a screening process that is designed to be expedited and that is currently handling almost 100,000 claims per year.
…
See, e.g., Knauff, 338 U. S., at 544 (“Whatever the procedure authorized by Congress is, it is due process as far as an alien denied entry is concerned”); Mezei, 345 U. S., at 212 (same); Landon v. Plasencia, 459 U. S. 21, 32 (1982) (“This Court has long held that an alien seeking initial admission to the United States requests a privilege and has no constitutional rights regarding his application, for the power to admit or exclude aliens is a sovereign prerogative”).
I have deleted the title at the page breaks and the hyphens in hypenated words at the margins.
If Justice Sotomayor had been in the magority, the decision of the US Court of Appeals For The Ninth Circuit would have been upheld. Two liberal Justices disagreed with her.
Never has it been more apparent that laws passed by the US Congress and signed by the President can be struck down based on an ideological interpretation by US Supreme Court justices. And the pendulum has swung.
Supreme Court Says Rejected Asylum Seekers Have No Right to Object in Court
The case concerned a member of Sri Lanka’s Tamil ethnic minority who said he feared persecution and sought to file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus.
By Adam Liptak
Many Latinos Couldn’t Stay Home. Now Virus Cases Are Soaring in the Community.
Rates of coronavirus infection among Latinos have risen rapidly across the United States.
By Shawn Hubler, Thomas Fuller, Anjali Singhvi and Juliette Love
DINUBA, Calif. — When the coronavirus first spread to the fields and food processing factories of California’s Central Valley, Graciela Ramirez’s boss announced that line workers afraid of infection could stay home without pay.
A machine operator at Ruiz Foods, the nation’s largest manufacturer of frozen burritos, Ms. Ramirez stayed on the job to make sure she didn’t lose her $750-a-week wages.
“I have necessities,” Ms. Ramirez, a 40-year-old mother of four, said in Spanish. “My food, my rent, my bills.”
Soon her co-workers started to get sick, and when Ms. Ramirez became congested and fatigued and could not smell the difference between the rice on her stove and the sopa de fideo in her soup bowl, her test, too, came back positive.
It was a variation on what has become a grim demographic theme, and not just in California. Infections among Latinos have far outpaced the rest of the nation, a testament to the makeup of the nation’s essential work force as the American epidemic has surged yet again in the last couple of weeks.
Latinos in the United States are hardly a cultural monolith, and there is no evidence yet that any ethnic group is inherently more vulnerable to the virus than others. But in the last two weeks, counties across the country where at least a quarter of the population is Latino have recorded an increase of 32 percent in new cases, compared to a 15 percent increase for all other counties, a New York Times analysis shows.
[ Where outbreaks have been worst in the last 14 days ]
The analysis affirms broad national tallies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which show Latinos making up 34 percent of cases nationwide, a much higher proportion than the group’s 18 percent share of the population.
It also underscores a shift from early in the outbreak, especially in areas outside cities, like Tulare County, Calif., which initially had largely avoided the debilitating spikes in infections seen in New York, New Orleans, Chicago and other major metropolitan areas.
The disparity is particularly stark in populous states like California, Florida and Texas. But it also has sprung up elsewhere. In North Carolina, Latinos make up 10 percent of the population, but 46 percent of infections. In Wisconsin, they’re 7 percent of the population and 33 percent of cases. In Yakima County, Wash., the site of the state’s worst outbreak, half the residents are Latino. In Santa Cruz County, which has Arizona’s highest rate of cases, the Hispanic share of the population is 84 percent.
Detailed coronavirus data broken down by ethnicity is incomplete in many places, making it difficult to know why Latinos have been infected at higher rates. Counties with a high proportion of Latinos also tend to have attributes that have made counties vulnerable to the recent surge: crowded households, younger populations and hotter weather that drives people indoors, said Jed Kolko, a researcher and chief economist at Indeed.com, a job search website. Contact tracers in some areas also have associated spikes in infection with large family gatherings.
Possible scenario:
a) virus re-transmission rate above 1:1, pandemic spreads
b) virus re-transmission rate below 1:1, pandemic shrinks
c) if re-transmission rate is borderline 1:1, THEN, mask wear rate can make all the difference about whether the pandemic spreads or shrinks.
Note:
TV reports that in areas where masks are only suggested, the pandemic is growing — in areas where masks are mandatory the pandemic is shrinking.
Also note: wearing a mask puts us in more of a “mood” to social distance because we have socially signaled that we take the virus seriously.
A personal observation that I mean to pay attention to, is that when I have shopped for groceries I have been surprised at how few people are shopping besides me. I use internet shopping often, but I am getting the idea that my friends and neighbors use the internet much more. I wonder if this shopping pattern will persist.
Actually, I rather like shopping in a store for groceries made so easy and I am going to continue but I may use the internet more if groceries stores become crowded again.
More on masks: reports are that countries that have mask culture (mostly due to air pollution problems) do a lot better than similar countries that don’t. I think we find this benfit mostly in modern Asian countries.
* * * * * *
Now then, when is there going to be massive research to produce masks for airline passengers that — really work — and — are comfortable to wear. Comfortable mostly means a mask that evacuates the breath you expel before you inhale your next breath. Sounds to me that this could be as simple as hooking your 95 mask up to a tube build into your seat that draws air away.
Would be very psychologically comfortable knowing that most all the other passengers expelled breaths were being evacuated into the system. Only have to make the pressure in the evacuation system a little bit lower than the cabin pressure I think. Get me Kelly’s Skunkworks. Come on folks, we are talking SELLING $100 million dollar airplanes and SELLING 10 million passenger seats a day (domestically). Don’t let als that be undone by the same little guy who brought down the Martian invasion in the War of the Worlds.
Today’s cabin air is changed 12 times an hour and put through the exact same HEPA filter as used in covid wards. Not exactly a petri dish. I don’t know why the airlines don’t do more to make this widely understood.
How the Coronavirus Short-Circuits the Immune System
In a disturbing parallel to H.I.V., the coronavirus can cause a depletion of important immune cells, recent studies found.
By Gina Kolata
Beijing reports 17 new COVID-19 cases, all locally transmitted
The Beijing Health Commission said on Saturday that 17 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases were recorded on Friday, raising total infections to 297 since June 11, when the first case of Beijing’s Xinfadi market cluster was detected.
The 17 cases were reported in two districts in Beijing: 15 in Fengtai, two in Daxing.
Beijing also registered four asymptomatic cases on Friday, the health authority said.
Chinese mainland reports 21 new COVID-19 cases, no new deaths
Chinese health authorities on Saturday said that 21 new COVID-19 cases were reported on the Chinese mainland on Friday, of which 17 were local transmissions and 4 imported, with no additional deaths.
All local transmissions were registered in Beijing, the National Health Commission said in its daily report.
The total number of confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland stands at 83,483 and the cumulative death toll at 4,634, with 106 asymptomatic patients under medical observation.
Meanwhile the nations of Texas, Florida, California, and Arizona are having to back-step and side-step (military lingo for all of you civilians) in their policies of allowing citizens greater freedom. The percentage of positive tests is now higher in the 18 (I am invincible group) to the 49 (time for one last fling before I become decrepit) age group than among older age brackets. CDC (agency for the loose confederation of state – countries associated with the United states or America) data show a departure from earlier patterns which showed Covid had a greater impact on people 50 or older due to other afflictions.
Of Arizona’s more than 66,000 confirmed cases since the pandemic began, nearly 60% had been younger than 45 as of Friday. In California, more than 60% of the nearly 196,000 cases were under age 49. The country of Florida reported new daily cases rose from 1,222 on May 27 to 8,933 on Thursday with a median age of 34. Wasn’t heat supposed to kill this virus off as Pres.trump claimed? Fall appears to be a big opportunity for more population control. Unfortunately, much of it will fall upon people who are the least likely capable of avoiding it due to lack of income or distance from others.
Because younger people are likely to have better Covid-19 outcomes than oldsters. The new surge in cases may not result in as many deaths. There still remains the false narrative as before. Still, “there’s a bit of a false narrative of being young, it is ok to get infected. Younger people in their 20s and 30s have been seen in ICUs gasping for air due to Covid-19.
One young 30 year old Phoenix entrepreneur spent the night of June 6 at a nightclub with friends sharing drinks. Two days later, he felt sick. The next week, he was in a hospital sucking on an oxygen tube trying to catch his breath after after testing positive.
His story? I’m a young, active, healthy foolish person (fool) with no previous health issues. I did not take Covid seriously for myself. I was not practicing the social-distancing guidelines and I did not wear a mask. I thought I was invincible like when I served in the military. He acknowledges he went from not knowing anyone with Covid-19 to knowing 15 victims. After eight days’ hospitalization, he is recovering at home. Hospital time is not fun.
It is hard to avoid dying when in the military and going into conflict. The numbers of my dead friends will attest to such. Practicing social distancing and wearing a mask are not freedom of speech issues as the Rev. Kane look-alike and former governor of Indiana pretending to be a VP of the loose confederation of states claims. Neither is wearing a mask or social distancing a taking of liberty. Indeed, both as well as staying home is a protection of liberties for all. The defiance touted by this fool impinges upon the health of others and threats their liberty to remain safe from Covid. If you wish to practice unsafe health practices sign a release of responsibility so we can push you out of the nation’s teepee and not waste the scarce care needed to save your self-imposed unsafe a** practices when it can be used on the rest of the confederation members.
A spokesman for the country of Arizona, Governor Doug Dummkopf, said the state is making efforts to target young people and encourage mitigation techniques, such as mask wearing. Hey Dummkopf, it is too late. You can pee on that fuse the next few weeks and it will not be extinguished. What is this “encourage” crap? No encourage, demand it. Fine them if not wearing a mask and use the money to help fund hospitals of which nine of 10 hospital ICU beds were full this week. They are losing money because they can not do those tummy tuck and chicken neck operations.
Meanwhile, I am gathering my PPE gear to ascend into one of these hell-holes. I am favoring a larger lot with an area for land mines like Gitmo had near its border separating it from Cuba. Insure my safety from unsafe practices by the natives. One of these countries will come out on top and win the prize for being the most stupid.
Rant over. This article “Coronavirus Surge in South and West Looks Different From North’s fails to tell the true and accurate story of how we are coming to an apocalyptic period in this confederation of countries 244 years of existence. The story is bland. My version is the truer version.
NY Times – Michael D. Shear and Maggie Haberman – June 26
Both President Trump and Vice President Pence seem oblivious to the new chapter in the pandemic.
WASHINGTON — In the past week, President Trump hosted an indoor campaign rally for thousands of cheering, unmasked supporters even as a deadly virus spread throughout the country. He began easing up on restrictions that had been in place at the White House since Washington instituted a stay-at-home order in response to the coronavirus in March, and he invited the president of Poland to a day of meetings. Then, on Thursday, he flew to Wisconsin to brag about an economic recovery that he said was just around the corner.
But by Friday, it was impossible to fully ignore the fact that the pandemic the White House has for weeks insisted was winding down has done just the opposite.
The rising numbers in Texas, Florida and Arizona made that clear, as well as the reality that those are all states where the president and his Republican allies had urged people to return to normal.
In a reflection of a growing sense of anxiety over the new numbers, Vice President Mike Pence and members of the coronavirus task force held a public briefing for the first time in two months. But ever loyal to Mr. Trump’s desire for good news, Mr. Pence tried to tiptoe around the statistics that Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the task force coordinator, pointed to, showing surging cases and hospitalizations in Florida, Texas, Arizona and other states.
“We have made a truly remarkable progress in moving our nation forward,” the vice president said. “We’ve all seen the encouraging news as we open up,” he added, dismissing any suggestion that the outbreaks across the South should prompt a return to the shutdowns that Mr. Trump so badly wants to be over. “The reality is we’re in a much better place.”
Refusing to wear a mask even as the health officials next to him did, Mr. Pence described the recent outbreaks across the country as little more than the product of increased testing among younger, more healthy Americans who should be less likely to get seriously ill from the coronavirus even as they spread it to others.
“Very encouraging news,” he said.
But Mr. Pence’s comments came against the backdrop of a very different message from Dr. Birx and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, who warned of a broken testing system and said the outbreaks could engulf the country.
“If we don’t extinguish the outbreak, sooner or later, even ones that are doing well are going to be vulnerable to the spread,” he warned. “So we need to take that into account because we are all in it together. And the only way we’re going to end it is by ending it together.” …
Vice President Mike Pence defended the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic at a news briefing Friday and sounded notes of optimism, while acknowledging that cases were rising “precipitously” in the South.
Here’s a fact check of some of his claims.
What Was Said
“As we stand here today, all 50 states and territories across this country are opening up safely and responsibly.”
False. While most states are continuing with their reopening plans, several have paused or reversed course this week as the number of new cases nationally surged to new highs and the virus spread at worrisome rates in a number of places.
On Friday, Texas ordered its bars and rafting and tubing businesses to close, limited restaurants with dine-in service to 50% of indoor capacity, and generally required gatherings of at least 100 people to seek approval. Florida has also banned drinking at bars, while Maine postponed reopening indoor bar service.
Louisiana extended its Phase 2 of reopening for an additional 28 days, maintaining occupancy limits and social distancing requirements for most businesses and houses of worship. North Carolina and Nevada also extended Phase 2, while New Mexico delayed entering it.
Idaho announced this week that it would remain in Stage 4, the last phase of its reopening plan, for at least another two weeks.
What Was Said
“We flattened the curve.”
False. This claim, while true in earlier months, is now outdated. Cases are now rising in the United States. While the seven-day average of new cases had declined and held steady from late April to May, the number began to climb in recent weeks. The U.S. reported 36,975 new cases Wednesday and 41,113 new cases Thursday — setting daily records both days.
Flattening the curve generally “refers to avoiding a collapse in the health care system, which we were able to do in March and April,” said Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University. “What we’re seeing now is a new surge in cases and more than just cases, it’s serious illnesses.”
Sharfstein pointed to the announcement this week by the Texas Medical Center in Houston that all of its beds in its intensive care unit were occupied as a sign that “we’re in a very bad situation here in June.”
What was said
“In the midst of all of that, I think it always bears saying that because of the great work of our health care workers and because of American manufacturing, no American who required a ventilator has ever been denied a ventilator in the United States.”
True. The New York Times was unable to find any news reports about any patients who were unable to be treated with a ventilator. As of late April, representatives of 30 states told PolitiFact that they were not aware of any cases. A spokesman with the American Health Association said Friday that Pence’s claim was accurate “to the best of our knowledge.”
What Was Said
“As we reported early on, 34 states across the country though are experiencing a measure of stability that is a credit to all of the people of those states, and when we speak about stability, we are talking about not necessarily states where there are no new cases, but these would be states where there are either no new cases and no rising percentage or no combination of those two things.”
This is exaggerated. Data compiled by The New York Times shows that, as of Friday, the number of new cases are rising in 29 states and Guam, while they are steady in 11 and decreasing in 10 states as well as Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.
What Was Said
“We want the American people to understand it’s almost inarguable that more testing is generating more cases. To one extent or another, the volume of new cases coming in is a reflection of a great success in expanding testing across the country.”
False. Ramped up testing alone does not account for the uptick in cases. Rather, the virus’ spread is generating more cases.
“Several communities are seeing increased cases driven by multiple factors, including increased testing, outbreaks and evidence of community transmission,” Dr. Robert R. Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testified to Congress this week.
If the rise in cases was solely attributable to more testing, the rate of positive test results would decrease or at least hold steady. But while the number of daily tests performed has steadily increased from under 100,000 in March to 460,000 to 640,000 this week, the positive rate had fallen from 10% to 20% in early March to about 4% in early June before climbing back up to 5% to 7% this week.
Increased testing in other countries has not produced the uptick in the positivity rate seen in the U.S. Russia, for example, has ramped up its testing to about 300,000 a day in recent weeks from about 200,000 in May. But its positive rate has continued to hover at around 3% to 5%.
In states with the most severe outbreaks, that trend is starker still. Positive rates in Texas and Florida have increased to 10% to 20% this week from rates that were generally below 10% in May — a reality the Republican governors of both states have acknowledged.
“Clearly you’re seeing this, this is real,” Gov. Rick DeSantis of Florida said during a news conference Tuesday. “Now they are testing more than they were for sure, but they’re also testing positive at a higher rate than they were before. And so that would tell you there’s probably been an escalation and transmission over the last seven to 10 days.”
Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas acknowledged the same point.
“If you look at the growth or even the decline in the number of people who were testing positive as well as the positivity rate all the way through the early part of May, Texas was moving in a very productive position,” he said Monday. “Then around the time of Memorial Day, there was an increase, and that increase has maintained for several weeks now, necessitating that next steps be taken.”
What Was Said
“Fatalities are declining all across the country.”
This is misleading. While official death counts are most likely underreported, Pence is right that nationwide, deaths are continuing to decrease, though fatalities are rising or holding steady in several states such as Arizona, California, Florida, North Carolina and Texas.
Moreover, public health experts have urged caution that this will continue to be the case. Asked whether still declining fatalities were because of younger, healthier people contracting the disease, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, told Congress this week that it was “too early to make that kind of link.”
“Deaths always lag considerably behind cases,” he said. “You might remember that at the time that New York was in their worst situation where the deaths were going up and yet the cases were starting to go down, the deaths only came down multiple weeks later.”
The fallout from record numbers of cases and hospitalizations in some states continued Friday with Texas and Florida taking bigger steps to mitigate the spread of the disease. Texas reversed reopening plans, closing bars and capping restaurant capacity at 50%. Florida, which shattered its daily record for new cases once again, banned drinking at bars. …
The number of coronavirus infections in many parts of the United States is more than 10 times higher than the reported rate, according to data released on Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The analysis is part of a wide-ranging set of surveys started by the C.D.C. to estimate how widely the virus has spread. Similar studies, sponsored by universities, national governments and the World Health Organization, are continuing all over the world.
The C.D.C. study found, for instance, that in South Florida, just under 2 percent of the population had been exposed to the virus as of April 10, but the proportion is likely to be higher now given the surge of infections in the state. The prevalence was highest in New York City at nearly 7 percent as of April 1.
The numbers indicate that even in areas hit hard by the virus, an overwhelming majority of people have not yet been infected, said Scott Hensley, a viral immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved in the research.
“Many of us are sitting ducks who are still susceptible to second waves,” he said.
The difference between recorded infections and the actual prevalence in the data was highest in Missouri, where about 2.65 percent of the population was infected with the virus as of April 26, although many people might not have felt sick. This number is about 24 times the reported rate: nearly 162,000 compared with the 6,800 thought to have been infected by then.
The results confirm what some scientists have warned about for months: that without wider testing, scores of infected people go undetected and circulate the virus. …
Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the C.D.C., hinted at this trend on Thursday during a call with reporters.
“Our best estimate right now is for every case reported there were actually 10 other infections,” Dr. Redfield said.
The source for his claim was unclear at that time. The C.D.C. later posted the data on its website and on MedRxiv, a repository for scientific results that have not yet been vetted by peer review. …
“The results confirm what some scientists have warned about for months: that without wider testing, scores of infected people go undetected and circulate the virus.” …
[ There is a reason China tested every resident of Wuhan’s 11 million in May and just since June 11 China has tested 2.3 million residents of Beijing to get control of a cluster:
WASHINGTON — For a long time, Republicans have brandished the same old narrative to try to scare their way into the White House.
Their candidates were presented as the patriarchs, protecting the house from invaders with dark skin. …
For re-election, Trump is sifting through the embers of the Civil War, promising to protect America from “troublemakers” and “agitators” and “anarchists” rioting, looting and pulling down statues that they find racially offensive. “They said, ‘We want to get Jesus,’” Trump ominously told Sean Hannity Thursday night.
But Trump is badly out of step with the national psyche. The actual narrative gripping America is, at long last, about white men in uniforms targeting black and brown people.
In the last election, Trump milked white aggrievement to catapult himself into the White House. But even Republicans today recognize that we have to grapple with systemic racism and force some changes in police conduct — except for our president, who hailed stop-and-frisk in the Hannity interview.
The other scary narrative is about our “protean” enemy, as Tony Fauci calls Covid-19, which Trump pretends has disappeared, with lethal consequences. With no plan, he is reduced to more race-baiting, calling the virus “the China plague” and the “Kung Flu.” Nasty nicknames don’t work on diseases.
The pathogen is roaring back in the South and the West in places that buoyed Trump in 2016. Texas, Florida and Arizona are turning into Covid Calamity Land after many residents emulated their president and scorned masks and social distancing as a Commie hoax.
Is Trump’s perverse Southern Strategy to send the older men and women who are a large part of his base to the I.C.U.?
The president showed off his sociopathic flair by demanding the repeal of Obamacare — just because he can’t stand that it was done by Barack Obama. Millions losing their jobs and insurance during a plague and he wants to eliminate their alternative? Willful maliciousness.
And this at the same time he has been ensuring more infections by lowballing the virus, resisting more testing because the numbers would not be flattering to him, sidelining Dr. Fauci and setting a terrible example.
The Dow fell 700 points on the news that Texas and Florida are ordering a Covid-driven last call, closing their bars again, and the virus is revivifying in 30 states. …
But Trump has taken that solipsism to the stratosphere, asking rallygoers in Tulsa to choose him over their health, possibly their lives, recklessly turning a medical necessity into a tribal signifier. I wasn’t surprised that so many seats there were empty, but that so many were filled.
In a rare moment of self-awareness, Trump whinged to Hannity about Biden: “The man can’t speak and he’s going to be your president ’cause some people don’t love me, maybe.”
It’s not only the virus that Trump is willfully blind about. A Times story that broke Friday evening was extremely disturbing about Trump’s love of Vladimir Putin. American intelligence briefed the president about a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offering bounties to Taliban-linked insurgents for killing coalition troops in Afghanistan, including Americans. Yet Trump has still been lobbying for Putin to rejoin the G7.
Trump had a chance, with twin existential crises, to be better after his abominable performance in his first three years. But then, we’ve known all along that he is not interested in science, racial harmony or leading the basest elements of his base out of Dixie and into the 21st century. Yes, the kid from Queens enjoys his newfound status as a son of the Confederacy.
A Wall Street Journal editorial Thursday warned that he could be defeated because he has no message beyond personal grievances and “four more years of himself.” …
President Trump may soon need a new nickname for “Sleepy Joe” Biden. How does President-elect sound? On present trend that’s exactly what Mr. Biden will be on Nov. 4, as Mr. Trump heads for what could be an historic repudiation that would take the Republican Senate down with him.
Mr. Trump refuses to acknowledge what every poll now says is true: His approval rating has fallen to the 40% or below that is George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter territory. They’re the last two Presidents to be denied a second term. This isn’t 2017… (The reset is behind a paywall.)
It could be a key to the secret of the universe. Or just annoying background noise, another item to be calibrated in future experiments.
A team of scientists hunting dark matter has recorded suspicious pings coming from a vat of liquid xenon underneath a mountain in Italy. They are not claiming to have discovered dark matter — or anything, for that matter — yet. But these pings, they say, could be tapping out a new view of the universe.
If the signal is real and persists, the scientists say, it may be evidence of a species of subatomic particles called axions — long theorized to play a crucial role in keeping nature symmetrical but never seen — streaming from the sun.
“It’s not dark matter but discovering a new particle would be phenomenal,” said Elena Aprile of Columbia University, who leads the Xenon Collaboration, the project that made the detection.
In a statement, the collaboration said that detecting the axion would have “a large impact on our understanding of fundamental physics, but also on astrophysical phenomena.”
But there are other explanations for the finding. Instead of axions, the scientists may have detected a new, unexpected property of the slippery ghostly particles called neutrinos. Yet another equally likely explanation is that their detector has been contaminated by vanishingly tiny amounts of tritium, a rare radioactive form of hydrogen.
The collaboration posted a paper describing the results to its website on Wednesday.
Or it could all just be a statistical fluctuation that will go away with more data. Members of Dr. Aprile’s team conceded that the best explanation they had right now — that axions were to blame — has two chances in 10,000 of being a fluke, a far cry from the “5-sigma” criterion of less than one chance in a million needed in particle physics to certify a “discovery.”
“We want to be very clear that all we are reporting is observation of an excess (a fairly significant one) and not a discovery of any kind,” said Evan Shockley of the University of Chicago in an email.
Frank Wilczek, a Nobel laureate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was one of the first physicists to propose the axion, noted the collaboration’s own caveats in the paper. But he said it was “certainly intriguing, and the physics community will be eagerly awaiting further developments.”
Physicists have long hypothesized the existence of a minuscule particle called the axion that could single-handedly solve two mysteries. It could account for a puzzling property of quarks, the elementary particles inside protons and neutrons, and it could comprise the dark matter that fills the cosmos. …
The idea for this particle came from the work of physicists Roberto Peccei and Helen Quinn, who in 1977 envisioned a field of energy permeating all space. They showed that this energy field would solve the “strong CP problem” — arguably the biggest mystery of nature that no one knows about. The problem asks why the strong nuclear force affects quarks in exactly the same way that it affects antiquarks reflected in a mirror; that is, why the force respects charge-parity (or CP) symmetry. The question reduces to asking why a certain angle in the equations describing the strong force has a value of zero. The angle — θ, or theta — could have ranged anywhere from zero to 360 degrees, representing degrees of difference between quarks and mirror-image antiquarks. A similar angle related to the weak nuclear force has a value of about 43.5 degrees. But θ has been measured to be less than 0.000000001 degrees.
Peccei and Quinn’s field allowed θ to naturally fall to zero at the birth of the universe. The Nobel Prize-winning physicists Frank Wilczek and Steven Weinberg studied the field’s associated particle, which Wilczek named the axion after a brand of laundry detergent. Researchers later realized that invisible axion particles could have properties suitable for dark matter, the missing five-sixths of the cosmos. The axion is now one of the leading candidates for dark matter, and it remains the best-known solution to the strong CP problem. …
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/opinion/coronavirus-republicans.html
June 25, 2020
America Didn’t Give Up on Covid-19. Republicans Did.
Partisanship has crippled our response.
By Paul Krugman
Earlier this year much of America went through hell as the nation struggled to deal with Covid-19. More than 120,000 Americans have now died; more than 20 million have lost their jobs.
But it’s looking as if all those sacrifices were in vain. We never really got the coronavirus under control, and now infections, while they have fallen to a quite low level in the New York area, the pandemic’s original epicenter, are surging in much of the rest of the country.
And the bad news isn’t just a result of more testing. In new hot spots like Arizona — where testing capacity is being overwhelmed — and Houston the fraction of tests coming up positive is soaring, which shows that the disease is spreading rapidly.
It didn’t have to be this way. The European Union, a hugely diverse area with a larger population than the U.S., has been far more successful at limiting the spread of Covid-19 than we have. What went wrong?
The immediate answer is that many U.S. states ignored warnings from health experts and rushed to reopen their economies, and far too many people failed to follow basic precautions like wearing face masks and avoiding large groups. But why was there so much foolishness?
Well, I keep seeing statements to the effect that Americans were too impatient to stay the course, too unwilling to act responsibly. But this is deeply misleading, because it avoids confronting the essence of the problem. Americans didn’t fail the Covid-19 test; Republicans did.
After all, the Northeast, with its largely Democratic governors, has been appropriately cautious about reopening, and its numbers look like Europe’s. California and Washington are blue states that are seeing a rise in cases, but it’s from a relatively low base, and their Democratic governors are taking actions like requiring the use of face masks and seem ready to reverse their reopening.
So the really bad news is coming from Republican-controlled states, especially Arizona, Florida and Texas, which rushed to reopen and, while some are now pausing, haven’t reversed course. If the Northeast looks like Europe, the South is starting to look like Brazil.
Nor is it just Republican governors and state legislatures. According to the new New York Times/Siena poll, voters over all strongly favor giving control of the pandemic priority over reopening the economy — but Republican voters, presumably taking their cue from the White House and Fox News, take the opposite position.
And it’s not just about policy decisions. Partisanship seems to be driving individual behavior, too, with self-identified Democrats significantly more likely to wear face masks and engage in social distancing than self-identified Republicans.
The question, then, isn’t why “America” has failed to deal effectively with the pandemic. It’s why the G.O.P. has in effect allied itself with the coronavirus.
Part of the answer is short-term politics. At the beginning of this year Donald Trump’s re-election message was all about economic triumphalism: Unemployment was low, stocks were up, and he was counting on good numbers to carry him through November. He and his officials wasted crucial weeks refusing to acknowledge the viral threat because they didn’t want to hear any bad news.
And they pushed for premature reopening because they wanted things to return to what they seemed to be back in February. Indeed, just a few days ago the same Trump officials who initially assured us that Covid-19 was no big deal were out there dismissing the risks of a second wave.
I’d suggest, however, that the G.O.P.’s coronavirus denial also has roots that go beyond Trump and his electoral prospects. The key point, I’d argue, is that Covid-19 is like climate change: It isn’t the kind of menace the party wants to acknowledge.
It’s not that the right is averse to fearmongering. But it doesn’t want you to fear impersonal threats that require an effective policy response, not to mention inconveniences like wearing face masks; it wants you to be afraid of people you can hate — people of a different race or supercilious liberals.
So instead of dealing with Covid-19, Republican leaders and right-wing media figures have tried to make the pandemic into the kind of threat they want to talk about. It’s “kung flu,” foisted on us by villainous Chinese. Or it’s a hoax perpetrated by the “medical deep state,” which is just looking for a way to hurt Trump.
The good news is that the politics of virus denial don’t seem to be working. Partly that’s because racism doesn’t play the way it used to: The Black Lives Matter protesters have received broad public support, despite the usual suspects’ efforts to portray them as rampaging hordes. Partly it’s because the surge in infections is becoming too obvious to deny; even Republican governors are admitting that there’s a problem, although they still don’t seem willing to act.
The bad news is that partisanship has crippled our Covid-19 response. The virus is winning, and all indications are that the next few months will be a terrifying nightmare of rampant disease and economic disruption.
https://cepr.net/more-thoughts-on-the-recession-stimulus-and-recovery/
June 24, 2020
More Thoughts on the Recession, Stimulus, and Recovery
By Dean Baker
As we get more data in, it seems increasingly likely that we are looking at a horrible and prolonged recession, not a complete economic collapse of Great Depression proportions. The May employment report showed a substantial bounce back in employment, with jobs up by more than 2.5 million from the April level. Retail sales had a huge 17.7 percent jump in May, by far the largest on record, although they are still 6.1 percent below the May 2019 level.
Mortgage applications also show a considerable degree of confidence about the future, with both refinancing and purchase mortgages soaring. Mortgage applications for refinancing are up more than ten-fold from year ago levels, while purchase applications are up 268.6 percent to the highest level in more than 11 years. The latter are far more important for the economy, since they imply people are buying homes, which typically lead to the purchase of new appliances and spending on renovations.
These data, and a variety of surveys of consumers and businesses, do not show an economy in collapse. At the same time, there is little reason to believe that we will see a robust rebound to anything resembling normal. We lost 22 million jobs between February and April. Even if we had seven more months adding jobs back at the May rate, we would still be down by more than 2 million jobs from the pre-pandemic level. And, we are not likely to see seven more months with job growth anything like May’s pace, without some very serious fiscal stimulus.
A new paper * from Raj Chetty and co-authors provides some interesting insights on the problem the economy faces. Using real time data from a number of private sources, it finds that there has been a sharp fall in consumption by people in the top income quartile of households, with relatively little change in consumption from the other three quartiles.
This drop is overwhelmingly associated with a sharp drop in demand for services, like restaurant meals, hair salons, and other personal services. Interestingly, the size of the drop is not affected to any substantial extent by laws on shutdowns. Areas where these services were fully available saw comparable declines in spending as areas where these services were still subject to lockdowns.
There are two major takeaways from these findings. First, the drop in demand that we have seen to date has little to do with declines in income. The top quartile has reduced its spending not because it lacks the income to spend, it has reduced spending because it is scared to spend in the areas where it would ordinarily be spending its money.
An implication is that any further efforts at boosting the economy should be better targeted than the first rounds. For example, giving $1,200 to every adult in the country was not a very effective way to boost the economy. While this payment was phased out for very high-end earners, the phase out only affected the top 2-3 percent of the income distribution, the bulk of the top quartile received their checks even though they were not suffering any income loss as a result of the pandemic.
The other major take away is that if we want people to use restaurants, hair salons, gyms, and other services, the issue of legal shutdowns matters far less important than ensuring their safety. This means actually getting the pandemic under control. While virtually every wealthy country has been able to do this, outside of the Northeast corridor, new infections are higher than ever in the United States. This means that without a vaccine and/or effective treatment, we are likely to see demand for a wide range of services badly depressed for the foreseeable future.
This matters in a big way because these industries provide tens of millions of jobs largely to less-educated workers. These sectors also disproportionately employ women and people of color. If they continue to see demand at far below pre-pandemic levels, it will mean a massive and persistent increase in unemployment for the less-educated segments of the workforce. This will quickly reverse all the gains that lower paid workers were able to make as the labor market tightened in the prior five years.
Shaping the Stimulus
The most immediate need in the next round of a rescue package to come from Congress is for money for state and local governments. Their budgets have been devastated by the loss of tax revenue due to the shutdown and the additional demand for services. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculated that the shortfalls could be as high as $500 billion.
They have already laid off 1.6 million workers and this number will hugely increase if Congress does not provide a large chunk of money to make up for their shortfalls. Some people have pointed out that the laid off workers were largely teachers, who were not paid for the period in which schools were shut down. This is true, but if state and local governments cannot get the money to make up shortfalls, many of these teachers may not be called back in the fall and other workers are likely to be laid off to make up the cost of paying the teachers who are called back. Cutbacks at the state and local level were one of the main reasons that the recovery from the Great Recession was so slow. We should not make an even larger mistake now.
The Post Office will also need substantial funding to stay in business, as it has seen both a sharp decline in revenue and sharp increase in spending due to efforts to keep its workers safe. As with state and local governments, the employees of the Post Office are disproportionately Black. This is due to the fact that Black workers in the public sector have faced less discrimination than Black workers in the private sector. As a result, the public sector has historically been an important source of middle-class jobs for Black workers. This will be threatened if the fallout from the pandemic forces large cutbacks in employment.
There has been a peculiar debate over the extension of the $600 weekly supplements to unemployment benefits that are scheduled to end next month. It is important to remember the reason these were included. We gave people this supplement because we did not want them to work. The point was to keep people whole through a period in which the economy was largely shut down in an effort to contain the virus.
In this context, the question we should be asking in deciding whether to continue the supplement is whether it is safe to work. This depends on our progress on containing the virus. One obvious way to determine the extent to which the pandemic has been contained is the positive rate on new tests. If the positive rate is below some low level, say 3 percent, then it would be reasonable to remove the supplement in that area (this can be county specific), however if we are seeing high positive rates, then as a matter of policy it would make more sense to encourage people to stay at home than to work.
For the areas where the virus is under control it would still be desirable to have some supplement to the standard benefit. Benefits in many states have been eroded in recent decades so that it would be very difficult for unemployed workers to survive on them. In a context where the nationwide unemployment rate is virtually certain to be in double digits through the rest of the year, most of the unemployed are not going to be able to find work. For these reasons, a smaller supplement, perhaps $200 a week, should be left in place until the economy has recovered more.
In addition, we should also increase Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits to protect those at the bottom of the income ladder. Food prices have risen sharply since the pandemic hit. These increases may be reversed in the months ahead, but for now low-income families have to cope with high food prices, with no increase in benefits. It is also important to remember that SNAP spending is a small share of the total budget. At $70 billion a year, it is just 1.6 percent of total spending. It is less than one fifth of the premium we pay each year for prescription drugs because of government-granted patent monopolies.
Longer Term Recovery
At the point where we have developed effective treatments and/or a vaccine, many people will go back to eating at restaurants and flying for vacations. However, there are some changes in spending patterns that are likely to be enduring.
It is likely that much of the increase in telecommuting will be permanent. This means that many fewer people will be going to downturn offices and taking advantage of restaurants, bars, gyms and other services in central cities at lunch and after work. People are also likely to be taking many fewer business trips, as meetings will take place on Zoom. Also, many colleges and universities will likely be downsized, as more instruction takes place on the web, decreasing retail sales in college towns.
While there will be other long-term changes resulting from the pandemic (maybe even some questioning of government-granted patent monopolies for prescription drugs), the basic point is that large numbers of workers are likely to still be displaced even after the immediate impact of the pandemic is over.
This actually presents a great opportunity. If the private sector is not spending enough to fully employ the workforce, then the public sector has to fill the gap. In this case, we don’t need to have make-work jobs, we have enormous unmet needs.
Most obviously we need people to increase our capacity for clean energy and conservation. This can mean millions of jobs for people installing solar panels, insulation, and other energy saving measures. We also need to ramp up our child care capacity. The lack of adequate child care was driven home in the pandemic as many health care and other essential workers had difficulty making arrangements when child care facilities shut down. We also need more health care workers as we move towards establishing a universal Medicare system. This will likely mean many more nurses, nurses’ assistants, and other health care professionals. And we will need social workers or other trained professionals who can be the first responders in many non-violent situations where the police are currently called in.
We can’t imagine that all the people who lose their jobs in restaurants and hotels will be able to work installing solar panels or train to be nurses, but that is not how the labor market functions. In a normal pre-pandemic month, more than five and a half million workers lost or left their job every month. As jobs are generated in these new areas, many currently employed people will look to fill them. That will create job openings that former restaurant and hotel workers can fill. The story is not as simple as this, as we know there is considerable discrimination in the labor market and many pockets of high unemployment, but we don’t have to imagine that we need to match up displaced workers directly with the newly created jobs in clean energy, child care and health care. The labor market is far more flexible than this story implies.
Anyhow, a full discussion of the post-pandemic economy is a much longer story, but the basic picture is actually a positive one. More telecommuting will mean a more productive and less polluting economy. It will also lead to more dispersion of higher paid jobs, benefiting many of the areas that have been left behind in the last four decades and lowering rents and house prices in places like New York City and San Francisco. If we can get through a very bad stretch for the country and the economy, the future could actually be quite bright.
* https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/tracker_paper.pdf
PK is correct about the Republicans, yet the numbers are staggering.
“Trump Death Clock
76,438
Estimated U.S. COVID-19 Deaths Due To POTUS Inaction
In January 2020, the Trump administration was advised that immediate action was required to stop the spread of COVID-19. According to NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, “there was a lot of pushback” to this advice. President Trump declined to act until March 16th. Epidemiologists now estimate that, had mitigation measures been implemented one week earlier, 60% of American COVID-19 deaths would have been avoided.”
https://trumpdeathclock.com/
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-06-26/Scientists-begin-to-understand-the-health-problems-caused-by-COVID-19-RDMIeKikpi/index.html
June 26, 2020
Scientists begin to understand the many health problems caused by COVID-19
Scientists are only starting to grasp the vast array of health problems caused by the novel coronavirus, some of which may have lingering effects on patients and health systems for years to come, according to doctors and infectious disease experts.
Besides the respiratory issues that leave patients gasping for breath, the virus that causes COVID-19 attacks many organ systems, in some cases causing catastrophic damage.
“We thought this was only a respiratory virus. Turns out, it goes after the pancreas. It goes after the heart. It goes after the liver, the brain, the kidney and other organs. We didn’t appreciate that in the beginning,” said Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California.
In addition to respiratory distress, patients with COVID-19 can experience blood clotting disorders that can lead to strokes, and extreme inflammation that attacks multiple organ systems. The virus can also cause neurological complications that range from headache, dizziness and loss of taste or smell to seizures and confusion.
And recovery can be slow, incomplete and costly, with a huge impact on quality of life.
The broad and diverse manifestations of COVID-19 are somewhat unique, said Dr. Sadiya Khan, a cardiologist at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago.
With influenza, people with underlying heart conditions are also at higher risk of complications, Khan said. What is surprising about this virus is the extent of the complications occurring outside the lungs.
Kahn believes there will be a huge healthcare expenditure and burden for individuals who have survived COVID-19.
Lengthy rehab for many
Patients who were in the intensive care unit or on a ventilator for weeks will need to spend extensive time in rehab to regain mobility and strength.
“It can take up to seven days for every one day that you’re hospitalized to recover that type of strength,” Kahn said. “It’s harder the older you are, and you may never get back to the same level of function.”
While much of the focus has been on the minority of patients who experience severe disease, doctors increasingly are looking to the needs of patients who were not sick enough to require hospitalization, but are still suffering months after first becoming infected.
Studies are just getting underway to understand the long-term effects of infection, Jay Butler, deputy director of infectious diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters in a telephone briefing on Thursday.
“We hear anecdotal reports of people who have persistent fatigue, shortness of breath,” Butler said. “How long that will last is hard to say.”
While coronavirus symptoms typically resolve in two or three weeks, an estimated 1 in 10 experience prolonged symptoms, Dr. Helen Salisbury of the University of Oxford wrote in the British Medical Journal on Tuesday.
Salisbury said many of her patients have normal chest X-rays and no sign of inflammation, but they are still not back to normal.
“If you previously ran 5k three times a week and now feel breathless after a single flight of stairs, or if you cough incessantly and are too exhausted to return to work, then the fear that you may never regain your previous health is very real,” she wrote.
Dr. Igor Koralnik, chief of neuro-infectious diseases at Northwestern Medicine, reviewed current scientific literature and found about half of the patients hospitalized with COVID-19 had neurological complications, such as dizziness, decreased alertness, difficulty concentrating, disorders of smell and taste, seizures, strokes, weakness and muscle pain.
Koralnik, whose findings were published in the Annals of Neurology, has started an outpatient clinic for COVID-19 patients to study whether these neurological problems are temporary or permanent.
Kahn sees parallels with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Much of the early focus was on deaths.
“In recent years, we’ve been very focused on the cardiovascular complications of HIV survivorship,” Kahn said.
Yesterday another immigration case from the US Court Of Appeals For The Ninth Circuit was reversed by a 7 to 2 decision.
From the decision: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/19-161_g314.pdf
But IIRIRA limits the review that a federal court may conduct on a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. 8 U. S. C. §1252(e)(2). In particular, courts may not review “the determination” that an applicant lacks a credible fear of persecution. §1252(a)(2)(A)(iii).
…
In 2019, a grant of asylum followed a finding of credible fear just 15% of the time. See EOIR, Asylum Decision Rates in Cases Originating With a Credible Fear Claim (Oct. 2019). Fraudulent asylum claims can also be difficult to detect,10 especially in a screening process that is designed to be expedited and that is currently handling almost 100,000 claims per year.
…
See, e.g., Knauff, 338 U. S., at 544 (“Whatever the procedure authorized by Congress is, it is due process as far as an alien denied entry is concerned”); Mezei, 345 U. S., at 212 (same); Landon v. Plasencia, 459 U. S. 21, 32 (1982) (“This Court has long held that an alien seeking initial admission to the United States requests a privilege and has no constitutional rights regarding his application, for the power to admit or exclude aliens is a sovereign prerogative”).
I have deleted the title at the page breaks and the hyphens in hypenated words at the margins.
If Justice Sotomayor had been in the magority, the decision of the US Court of Appeals For The Ninth Circuit would have been upheld. Two liberal Justices disagreed with her.
Never has it been more apparent that laws passed by the US Congress and signed by the President can be struck down based on an ideological interpretation by US Supreme Court justices. And the pendulum has swung.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/us/supreme-court-asylum-habeas.html
June 25, 2020
Supreme Court Says Rejected Asylum Seekers Have No Right to Object in Court
The case concerned a member of Sri Lanka’s Tamil ethnic minority who said he feared persecution and sought to file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus.
By Adam Liptak
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/us/corona-virus-latinos.html
June 26, 2020
Many Latinos Couldn’t Stay Home. Now Virus Cases Are Soaring in the Community.
Rates of coronavirus infection among Latinos have risen rapidly across the United States.
By Shawn Hubler, Thomas Fuller, Anjali Singhvi and Juliette Love
DINUBA, Calif. — When the coronavirus first spread to the fields and food processing factories of California’s Central Valley, Graciela Ramirez’s boss announced that line workers afraid of infection could stay home without pay.
A machine operator at Ruiz Foods, the nation’s largest manufacturer of frozen burritos, Ms. Ramirez stayed on the job to make sure she didn’t lose her $750-a-week wages.
“I have necessities,” Ms. Ramirez, a 40-year-old mother of four, said in Spanish. “My food, my rent, my bills.”
Soon her co-workers started to get sick, and when Ms. Ramirez became congested and fatigued and could not smell the difference between the rice on her stove and the sopa de fideo in her soup bowl, her test, too, came back positive.
It was a variation on what has become a grim demographic theme, and not just in California. Infections among Latinos have far outpaced the rest of the nation, a testament to the makeup of the nation’s essential work force as the American epidemic has surged yet again in the last couple of weeks.
Latinos in the United States are hardly a cultural monolith, and there is no evidence yet that any ethnic group is inherently more vulnerable to the virus than others. But in the last two weeks, counties across the country where at least a quarter of the population is Latino have recorded an increase of 32 percent in new cases, compared to a 15 percent increase for all other counties, a New York Times analysis shows.
[ Where outbreaks have been worst in the last 14 days ]
The analysis affirms broad national tallies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which show Latinos making up 34 percent of cases nationwide, a much higher proportion than the group’s 18 percent share of the population.
It also underscores a shift from early in the outbreak, especially in areas outside cities, like Tulare County, Calif., which initially had largely avoided the debilitating spikes in infections seen in New York, New Orleans, Chicago and other major metropolitan areas.
The disparity is particularly stark in populous states like California, Florida and Texas. But it also has sprung up elsewhere. In North Carolina, Latinos make up 10 percent of the population, but 46 percent of infections. In Wisconsin, they’re 7 percent of the population and 33 percent of cases. In Yakima County, Wash., the site of the state’s worst outbreak, half the residents are Latino. In Santa Cruz County, which has Arizona’s highest rate of cases, the Hispanic share of the population is 84 percent.
Detailed coronavirus data broken down by ethnicity is incomplete in many places, making it difficult to know why Latinos have been infected at higher rates. Counties with a high proportion of Latinos also tend to have attributes that have made counties vulnerable to the recent surge: crowded households, younger populations and hotter weather that drives people indoors, said Jed Kolko, a researcher and chief economist at Indeed.com, a job search website. Contact tracers in some areas also have associated spikes in infection with large family gatherings.
[ How new cases have changed over time ] ….
Possible scenario:
a) virus re-transmission rate above 1:1, pandemic spreads
b) virus re-transmission rate below 1:1, pandemic shrinks
c) if re-transmission rate is borderline 1:1, THEN, mask wear rate can make all the difference about whether the pandemic spreads or shrinks.
Note:
TV reports that in areas where masks are only suggested, the pandemic is growing — in areas where masks are mandatory the pandemic is shrinking.
Also note: wearing a mask puts us in more of a “mood” to social distance because we have socially signaled that we take the virus seriously.
A personal observation that I mean to pay attention to, is that when I have shopped for groceries I have been surprised at how few people are shopping besides me. I use internet shopping often, but I am getting the idea that my friends and neighbors use the internet much more. I wonder if this shopping pattern will persist.
Actually, I rather like shopping in a store for groceries made so easy and I am going to continue but I may use the internet more if groceries stores become crowded again.
June 26, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 2,535,012)
Deaths ( 127,169)
UK
Cases ( 309,360)
Deaths ( 43,414)
Germany
Cases ( 194,042)
Deaths ( 9,017)
Canada
Cases ( 102,733)
Deaths ( 8,507)
Sweden
Cases ( 65,137)
Deaths ( 5,280)
China
Cases ( 83,462)
Deaths ( 4,634)
More on masks: reports are that countries that have mask culture (mostly due to air pollution problems) do a lot better than similar countries that don’t. I think we find this benfit mostly in modern Asian countries.
* * * * * *
Now then, when is there going to be massive research to produce masks for airline passengers that — really work — and — are comfortable to wear. Comfortable mostly means a mask that evacuates the breath you expel before you inhale your next breath. Sounds to me that this could be as simple as hooking your 95 mask up to a tube build into your seat that draws air away.
Would be very psychologically comfortable knowing that most all the other passengers expelled breaths were being evacuated into the system. Only have to make the pressure in the evacuation system a little bit lower than the cabin pressure I think. Get me Kelly’s Skunkworks. Come on folks, we are talking SELLING $100 million dollar airplanes and SELLING 10 million passenger seats a day (domestically). Don’t let als that be undone by the same little guy who brought down the Martian invasion in the War of the Worlds.
Today’s cabin air is changed 12 times an hour and put through the exact same HEPA filter as used in covid wards. Not exactly a petri dish. I don’t know why the airlines don’t do more to make this widely understood.
June 26, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 2,547,359)
Deaths ( 127,361)
See; imagine what Boeing’s and American Airlines could do.
https://www.cnet.com/news/this-smart-face-mask-can-talk-to-your-phone-and-amplify-your-voice/
Beyond tragedy:
June 26, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 2,552,708)
Deaths ( 127,634)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/health/coronavirus-immune-system.html
June 26, 2020
How the Coronavirus Short-Circuits the Immune System
In a disturbing parallel to H.I.V., the coronavirus can cause a depletion of important immune cells, recent studies found.
By Gina Kolata
June 27, 2020
Coronavirus
Mexico
Cases ( 208,392)
Deaths ( 25,779)
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-06-27/Beijing-reports-17-new-COVID-19-cases-all-locally-transmitted-REJujFSwRG/index.html
June 17, 2020
Beijing reports 17 new COVID-19 cases, all locally transmitted
The Beijing Health Commission said on Saturday that 17 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases were recorded on Friday, raising total infections to 297 since June 11, when the first case of Beijing’s Xinfadi market cluster was detected.
The 17 cases were reported in two districts in Beijing: 15 in Fengtai, two in Daxing.
Beijing also registered four asymptomatic cases on Friday, the health authority said.
[ https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbewRgmU8AA2O2N?format=jpg&name=large ]
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-06-27/Chinese-mainland-reports-21-new-COVID-19-cases-17-in-Beijing-REHqrJDzSE/index.html
June 27, 2020
Chinese mainland reports 21 new COVID-19 cases, no new deaths
Chinese health authorities on Saturday said that 21 new COVID-19 cases were reported on the Chinese mainland on Friday, of which 17 were local transmissions and 4 imported, with no additional deaths.
All local transmissions were registered in Beijing, the National Health Commission said in its daily report.
The total number of confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland stands at 83,483 and the cumulative death toll at 4,634, with 106 asymptomatic patients under medical observation.
Chinese mainland new locally transmitted cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-06-27/Chinese-mainland-reports-21-new-COVID-19-cases-17-in-Beijing-REHqrJDzSE/img/3e41a111328947b087dea81b1f98601b/3e41a111328947b087dea81b1f98601b.jpeg
Chinese mainland new imported cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-06-27/Chinese-mainland-reports-21-new-COVID-19-cases-17-in-Beijing-REHqrJDzSE/img/4c3b4c869a08485783752c389bfc784d/4c3b4c869a08485783752c389bfc784d.jpeg
Chinese mainland new asymptotic cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-06-27/Chinese-mainland-reports-21-new-COVID-19-cases-17-in-Beijing-REHqrJDzSE/img/057c50ff5f8643eb9cb49e73a5821ceb/057c50ff5f8643eb9cb49e73a5821ceb.jpeg
Meanwhile the nations of Texas, Florida, California, and Arizona are having to back-step and side-step (military lingo for all of you civilians) in their policies of allowing citizens greater freedom. The percentage of positive tests is now higher in the 18 (I am invincible group) to the 49 (time for one last fling before I become decrepit) age group than among older age brackets. CDC (agency for the loose confederation of state – countries associated with the United states or America) data show a departure from earlier patterns which showed Covid had a greater impact on people 50 or older due to other afflictions.
Of Arizona’s more than 66,000 confirmed cases since the pandemic began, nearly 60% had been younger than 45 as of Friday. In California, more than 60% of the nearly 196,000 cases were under age 49. The country of Florida reported new daily cases rose from 1,222 on May 27 to 8,933 on Thursday with a median age of 34. Wasn’t heat supposed to kill this virus off as Pres.trump claimed? Fall appears to be a big opportunity for more population control. Unfortunately, much of it will fall upon people who are the least likely capable of avoiding it due to lack of income or distance from others.
Because younger people are likely to have better Covid-19 outcomes than oldsters. The new surge in cases may not result in as many deaths. There still remains the false narrative as before. Still, “there’s a bit of a false narrative of being young, it is ok to get infected. Younger people in their 20s and 30s have been seen in ICUs gasping for air due to Covid-19.
One young 30 year old Phoenix entrepreneur spent the night of June 6 at a nightclub with friends sharing drinks. Two days later, he felt sick. The next week, he was in a hospital sucking on an oxygen tube trying to catch his breath after after testing positive.
His story? I’m a young, active, healthy foolish person (fool) with no previous health issues. I did not take Covid seriously for myself. I was not practicing the social-distancing guidelines and I did not wear a mask. I thought I was invincible like when I served in the military. He acknowledges he went from not knowing anyone with Covid-19 to knowing 15 victims. After eight days’ hospitalization, he is recovering at home. Hospital time is not fun.
It is hard to avoid dying when in the military and going into conflict. The numbers of my dead friends will attest to such. Practicing social distancing and wearing a mask are not freedom of speech issues as the Rev. Kane look-alike and former governor of Indiana pretending to be a VP of the loose confederation of states claims. Neither is wearing a mask or social distancing a taking of liberty. Indeed, both as well as staying home is a protection of liberties for all. The defiance touted by this fool impinges upon the health of others and threats their liberty to remain safe from Covid. If you wish to practice unsafe health practices sign a release of responsibility so we can push you out of the nation’s teepee and not waste the scarce care needed to save your self-imposed unsafe a** practices when it can be used on the rest of the confederation members.
A spokesman for the country of Arizona, Governor Doug Dummkopf, said the state is making efforts to target young people and encourage mitigation techniques, such as mask wearing. Hey Dummkopf, it is too late. You can pee on that fuse the next few weeks and it will not be extinguished. What is this “encourage” crap? No encourage, demand it. Fine them if not wearing a mask and use the money to help fund hospitals of which nine of 10 hospital ICU beds were full this week. They are losing money because they can not do those tummy tuck and chicken neck operations.
Meanwhile, I am gathering my PPE gear to ascend into one of these hell-holes. I am favoring a larger lot with an area for land mines like Gitmo had near its border separating it from Cuba. Insure my safety from unsafe practices by the natives. One of these countries will come out on top and win the prize for being the most stupid.
Rant over. This article “Coronavirus Surge in South and West Looks Different From North’s fails to tell the true and accurate story of how we are coming to an apocalyptic period in this confederation of countries 244 years of existence. The story is bland. My version is the truer version.
New Numbers Showing Coronavirus Spread Intrude on a White House in Denial
New Numbers Showing Coronavirus Spread Intrude on a White House in Denial
NY Times – Michael D. Shear and Maggie Haberman – June 26
Both President Trump and Vice President Pence seem oblivious to the new chapter in the pandemic.
WASHINGTON — In the past week, President Trump hosted an indoor campaign rally for thousands of cheering, unmasked supporters even as a deadly virus spread throughout the country. He began easing up on restrictions that had been in place at the White House since Washington instituted a stay-at-home order in response to the coronavirus in March, and he invited the president of Poland to a day of meetings. Then, on Thursday, he flew to Wisconsin to brag about an economic recovery that he said was just around the corner.
But by Friday, it was impossible to fully ignore the fact that the pandemic the White House has for weeks insisted was winding down has done just the opposite.
The rising numbers in Texas, Florida and Arizona made that clear, as well as the reality that those are all states where the president and his Republican allies had urged people to return to normal.
In a reflection of a growing sense of anxiety over the new numbers, Vice President Mike Pence and members of the coronavirus task force held a public briefing for the first time in two months. But ever loyal to Mr. Trump’s desire for good news, Mr. Pence tried to tiptoe around the statistics that Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the task force coordinator, pointed to, showing surging cases and hospitalizations in Florida, Texas, Arizona and other states.
“We have made a truly remarkable progress in moving our nation forward,” the vice president said. “We’ve all seen the encouraging news as we open up,” he added, dismissing any suggestion that the outbreaks across the South should prompt a return to the shutdowns that Mr. Trump so badly wants to be over. “The reality is we’re in a much better place.”
Refusing to wear a mask even as the health officials next to him did, Mr. Pence described the recent outbreaks across the country as little more than the product of increased testing among younger, more healthy Americans who should be less likely to get seriously ill from the coronavirus even as they spread it to others.
“Very encouraging news,” he said.
But Mr. Pence’s comments came against the backdrop of a very different message from Dr. Birx and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, who warned of a broken testing system and said the outbreaks could engulf the country.
“If we don’t extinguish the outbreak, sooner or later, even ones that are doing well are going to be vulnerable to the spread,” he warned. “So we need to take that into account because we are all in it together. And the only way we’re going to end it is by ending it together.” …
Hi Fred
Welcome to AB
As cases surge, Vice President Pence misleads on coronavirus pandemic
Linda Qiu – June 26 – NY Times via @BostonGlobe
Vice President Mike Pence defended the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic at a news briefing Friday and sounded notes of optimism, while acknowledging that cases were rising “precipitously” in the South.
Here’s a fact check of some of his claims.
What Was Said
“As we stand here today, all 50 states and territories across this country are opening up safely and responsibly.”
False. While most states are continuing with their reopening plans, several have paused or reversed course this week as the number of new cases nationally surged to new highs and the virus spread at worrisome rates in a number of places.
On Friday, Texas ordered its bars and rafting and tubing businesses to close, limited restaurants with dine-in service to 50% of indoor capacity, and generally required gatherings of at least 100 people to seek approval. Florida has also banned drinking at bars, while Maine postponed reopening indoor bar service.
Louisiana extended its Phase 2 of reopening for an additional 28 days, maintaining occupancy limits and social distancing requirements for most businesses and houses of worship. North Carolina and Nevada also extended Phase 2, while New Mexico delayed entering it.
Idaho announced this week that it would remain in Stage 4, the last phase of its reopening plan, for at least another two weeks.
What Was Said
“We flattened the curve.”
False. This claim, while true in earlier months, is now outdated. Cases are now rising in the United States. While the seven-day average of new cases had declined and held steady from late April to May, the number began to climb in recent weeks. The U.S. reported 36,975 new cases Wednesday and 41,113 new cases Thursday — setting daily records both days.
Flattening the curve generally “refers to avoiding a collapse in the health care system, which we were able to do in March and April,” said Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University. “What we’re seeing now is a new surge in cases and more than just cases, it’s serious illnesses.”
Sharfstein pointed to the announcement this week by the Texas Medical Center in Houston that all of its beds in its intensive care unit were occupied as a sign that “we’re in a very bad situation here in June.”
What was said
“In the midst of all of that, I think it always bears saying that because of the great work of our health care workers and because of American manufacturing, no American who required a ventilator has ever been denied a ventilator in the United States.”
True. The New York Times was unable to find any news reports about any patients who were unable to be treated with a ventilator. As of late April, representatives of 30 states told PolitiFact that they were not aware of any cases. A spokesman with the American Health Association said Friday that Pence’s claim was accurate “to the best of our knowledge.”
What Was Said
“As we reported early on, 34 states across the country though are experiencing a measure of stability that is a credit to all of the people of those states, and when we speak about stability, we are talking about not necessarily states where there are no new cases, but these would be states where there are either no new cases and no rising percentage or no combination of those two things.”
This is exaggerated. Data compiled by The New York Times shows that, as of Friday, the number of new cases are rising in 29 states and Guam, while they are steady in 11 and decreasing in 10 states as well as Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.
What Was Said
“We want the American people to understand it’s almost inarguable that more testing is generating more cases. To one extent or another, the volume of new cases coming in is a reflection of a great success in expanding testing across the country.”
False. Ramped up testing alone does not account for the uptick in cases. Rather, the virus’ spread is generating more cases.
“Several communities are seeing increased cases driven by multiple factors, including increased testing, outbreaks and evidence of community transmission,” Dr. Robert R. Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testified to Congress this week.
If the rise in cases was solely attributable to more testing, the rate of positive test results would decrease or at least hold steady. But while the number of daily tests performed has steadily increased from under 100,000 in March to 460,000 to 640,000 this week, the positive rate had fallen from 10% to 20% in early March to about 4% in early June before climbing back up to 5% to 7% this week.
Increased testing in other countries has not produced the uptick in the positivity rate seen in the U.S. Russia, for example, has ramped up its testing to about 300,000 a day in recent weeks from about 200,000 in May. But its positive rate has continued to hover at around 3% to 5%.
In states with the most severe outbreaks, that trend is starker still. Positive rates in Texas and Florida have increased to 10% to 20% this week from rates that were generally below 10% in May — a reality the Republican governors of both states have acknowledged.
“Clearly you’re seeing this, this is real,” Gov. Rick DeSantis of Florida said during a news conference Tuesday. “Now they are testing more than they were for sure, but they’re also testing positive at a higher rate than they were before. And so that would tell you there’s probably been an escalation and transmission over the last seven to 10 days.”
Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas acknowledged the same point.
“If you look at the growth or even the decline in the number of people who were testing positive as well as the positivity rate all the way through the early part of May, Texas was moving in a very productive position,” he said Monday. “Then around the time of Memorial Day, there was an increase, and that increase has maintained for several weeks now, necessitating that next steps be taken.”
What Was Said
“Fatalities are declining all across the country.”
This is misleading. While official death counts are most likely underreported, Pence is right that nationwide, deaths are continuing to decrease, though fatalities are rising or holding steady in several states such as Arizona, California, Florida, North Carolina and Texas.
Moreover, public health experts have urged caution that this will continue to be the case. Asked whether still declining fatalities were because of younger, healthier people contracting the disease, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, told Congress this week that it was “too early to make that kind of link.”
“Deaths always lag considerably behind cases,” he said. “You might remember that at the time that New York was in their worst situation where the deaths were going up and yet the cases were starting to go down, the deaths only came down multiple weeks later.”
Texas and Florida roll back reopening plans
CNBC – June 26
The fallout from record numbers of cases and hospitalizations in some states continued Friday with Texas and Florida taking bigger steps to mitigate the spread of the disease. Texas reversed reopening plans, closing bars and capping restaurant capacity at 50%. Florida, which shattered its daily record for new cases once again, banned drinking at bars. …
Why wearing masks is important…
CDC: Actual Coronavirus Infections Vastly Undercounted Data Shows
The number of coronavirus infections in many parts of the United States is more than 10 times higher than the reported rate, according to data released on Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The analysis is part of a wide-ranging set of surveys started by the C.D.C. to estimate how widely the virus has spread. Similar studies, sponsored by universities, national governments and the World Health Organization, are continuing all over the world.
The C.D.C. study found, for instance, that in South Florida, just under 2 percent of the population had been exposed to the virus as of April 10, but the proportion is likely to be higher now given the surge of infections in the state. The prevalence was highest in New York City at nearly 7 percent as of April 1.
The numbers indicate that even in areas hit hard by the virus, an overwhelming majority of people have not yet been infected, said Scott Hensley, a viral immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved in the research.
“Many of us are sitting ducks who are still susceptible to second waves,” he said.
The difference between recorded infections and the actual prevalence in the data was highest in Missouri, where about 2.65 percent of the population was infected with the virus as of April 26, although many people might not have felt sick. This number is about 24 times the reported rate: nearly 162,000 compared with the 6,800 thought to have been infected by then.
The results confirm what some scientists have warned about for months: that without wider testing, scores of infected people go undetected and circulate the virus. …
Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the C.D.C., hinted at this trend on Thursday during a call with reporters.
“Our best estimate right now is for every case reported there were actually 10 other infections,” Dr. Redfield said.
The source for his claim was unclear at that time. The C.D.C. later posted the data on its website and on MedRxiv, a repository for scientific results that have not yet been vetted by peer review. …
“The results confirm what some scientists have warned about for months: that without wider testing, scores of infected people go undetected and circulate the virus.” …
[ There is a reason China tested every resident of Wuhan’s 11 million in May and just since June 11 China has tested 2.3 million residents of Beijing to get control of a cluster:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbewRgmU8AA2O2N?format=jpg&name=large ]
Trump, Not So Statuesque
Things are looking down for the Donald.
NY Times – Maureen Dowd – June 27, 2020
WASHINGTON — For a long time, Republicans have brandished the same old narrative to try to scare their way into the White House.
Their candidates were presented as the patriarchs, protecting the house from invaders with dark skin. …
For re-election, Trump is sifting through the embers of the Civil War, promising to protect America from “troublemakers” and “agitators” and “anarchists” rioting, looting and pulling down statues that they find racially offensive. “They said, ‘We want to get Jesus,’” Trump ominously told Sean Hannity Thursday night.
But Trump is badly out of step with the national psyche. The actual narrative gripping America is, at long last, about white men in uniforms targeting black and brown people.
In the last election, Trump milked white aggrievement to catapult himself into the White House. But even Republicans today recognize that we have to grapple with systemic racism and force some changes in police conduct — except for our president, who hailed stop-and-frisk in the Hannity interview.
The other scary narrative is about our “protean” enemy, as Tony Fauci calls Covid-19, which Trump pretends has disappeared, with lethal consequences. With no plan, he is reduced to more race-baiting, calling the virus “the China plague” and the “Kung Flu.” Nasty nicknames don’t work on diseases.
The pathogen is roaring back in the South and the West in places that buoyed Trump in 2016. Texas, Florida and Arizona are turning into Covid Calamity Land after many residents emulated their president and scorned masks and social distancing as a Commie hoax.
Is Trump’s perverse Southern Strategy to send the older men and women who are a large part of his base to the I.C.U.?
The president showed off his sociopathic flair by demanding the repeal of Obamacare — just because he can’t stand that it was done by Barack Obama. Millions losing their jobs and insurance during a plague and he wants to eliminate their alternative? Willful maliciousness.
And this at the same time he has been ensuring more infections by lowballing the virus, resisting more testing because the numbers would not be flattering to him, sidelining Dr. Fauci and setting a terrible example.
The Dow fell 700 points on the news that Texas and Florida are ordering a Covid-driven last call, closing their bars again, and the virus is revivifying in 30 states. …
But Trump has taken that solipsism to the stratosphere, asking rallygoers in Tulsa to choose him over their health, possibly their lives, recklessly turning a medical necessity into a tribal signifier. I wasn’t surprised that so many seats there were empty, but that so many were filled.
In a rare moment of self-awareness, Trump whinged to Hannity about Biden: “The man can’t speak and he’s going to be your president ’cause some people don’t love me, maybe.”
It’s not only the virus that Trump is willfully blind about. A Times story that broke Friday evening was extremely disturbing about Trump’s love of Vladimir Putin. American intelligence briefed the president about a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offering bounties to Taliban-linked insurgents for killing coalition troops in Afghanistan, including Americans. Yet Trump has still been lobbying for Putin to rejoin the G7.
Trump had a chance, with twin existential crises, to be better after his abominable performance in his first three years. But then, we’ve known all along that he is not interested in science, racial harmony or leading the basest elements of his base out of Dixie and into the 21st century. Yes, the kid from Queens enjoys his newfound status as a son of the Confederacy.
A Wall Street Journal editorial Thursday warned that he could be defeated because he has no message beyond personal grievances and “four more years of himself.” …
President Trump still has no second term message beyond his own grievances
President Trump may soon need a new nickname for “Sleepy Joe” Biden. How does President-elect sound? On present trend that’s exactly what Mr. Biden will be on Nov. 4, as Mr. Trump heads for what could be an historic repudiation that would take the Republican Senate down with him.
Mr. Trump refuses to acknowledge what every poll now says is true: His approval rating has fallen to the 40% or below that is George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter territory. They’re the last two Presidents to be denied a second term. This isn’t 2017… (The reset is behind a paywall.)
In the week after the November election,
one of two things must happen if Trump
is not reelected:
Trump will declare the election null & void,
due to ‘fraud & irregularities’, and declare
himself reelected for another term.
– or –
Trump will resign, and immediately be
pardoned by now-President Pence.
05-05-20
This science-backed face mask made by an MIT-founded fashion brand is the best we’ve found yet
https://www.fastcompany.com/90501044/this-science-backed-face-mask-made-by-an-mit-founded-fashion-brand-is-the-best-weve-found-yet
Seeking Dark Matter, They Detected Another Mystery
NY Times – Dennis Overbye – June 17, 2020
It could be a key to the secret of the universe. Or just annoying background noise, another item to be calibrated in future experiments.
A team of scientists hunting dark matter has recorded suspicious pings coming from a vat of liquid xenon underneath a mountain in Italy. They are not claiming to have discovered dark matter — or anything, for that matter — yet. But these pings, they say, could be tapping out a new view of the universe.
If the signal is real and persists, the scientists say, it may be evidence of a species of subatomic particles called axions — long theorized to play a crucial role in keeping nature symmetrical but never seen — streaming from the sun.
“It’s not dark matter but discovering a new particle would be phenomenal,” said Elena Aprile of Columbia University, who leads the Xenon Collaboration, the project that made the detection.
In a statement, the collaboration said that detecting the axion would have “a large impact on our understanding of fundamental physics, but also on astrophysical phenomena.”
But there are other explanations for the finding. Instead of axions, the scientists may have detected a new, unexpected property of the slippery ghostly particles called neutrinos. Yet another equally likely explanation is that their detector has been contaminated by vanishingly tiny amounts of tritium, a rare radioactive form of hydrogen.
The collaboration posted a paper describing the results to its website on Wednesday.
Or it could all just be a statistical fluctuation that will go away with more data. Members of Dr. Aprile’s team conceded that the best explanation they had right now — that axions were to blame — has two chances in 10,000 of being a fluke, a far cry from the “5-sigma” criterion of less than one chance in a million needed in particle physics to certify a “discovery.”
“We want to be very clear that all we are reporting is observation of an excess (a fairly significant one) and not a discovery of any kind,” said Evan Shockley of the University of Chicago in an email.
Frank Wilczek, a Nobel laureate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was one of the first physicists to propose the axion, noted the collaboration’s own caveats in the paper. But he said it was “certainly intriguing, and the physics community will be eagerly awaiting further developments.”
” particles called axions”
Axions Would Solve Another Major Problem in Physics
Quanta – March 17
Physicists have long hypothesized the existence of a minuscule particle called the axion that could single-handedly solve two mysteries. It could account for a puzzling property of quarks, the elementary particles inside protons and neutrons, and it could comprise the dark matter that fills the cosmos. …
The idea for this particle came from the work of physicists Roberto Peccei and Helen Quinn, who in 1977 envisioned a field of energy permeating all space. They showed that this energy field would solve the “strong CP problem” — arguably the biggest mystery of nature that no one knows about. The problem asks why the strong nuclear force affects quarks in exactly the same way that it affects antiquarks reflected in a mirror; that is, why the force respects charge-parity (or CP) symmetry. The question reduces to asking why a certain angle in the equations describing the strong force has a value of zero. The angle — θ, or theta — could have ranged anywhere from zero to 360 degrees, representing degrees of difference between quarks and mirror-image antiquarks. A similar angle related to the weak nuclear force has a value of about 43.5 degrees. But θ has been measured to be less than 0.000000001 degrees.
Peccei and Quinn’s field allowed θ to naturally fall to zero at the birth of the universe. The Nobel Prize-winning physicists Frank Wilczek and Steven Weinberg studied the field’s associated particle, which Wilczek named the axion after a brand of laundry detergent. Researchers later realized that invisible axion particles could have properties suitable for dark matter, the missing five-sixths of the cosmos. The axion is now one of the leading candidates for dark matter, and it remains the best-known solution to the strong CP problem. …