Month: August 2020

This piece in the National Review about why Trump is losing is interesting considering how much they’ve done to help him. They recap all the recent polling, which is terrible. And then this:

Trump was in a notably perilous position for a president presiding over peace and prosperity. The fault is not in his stars but in his tweets, erratic behavior, scattershot belligerence, and denials of reality, which had already made him radioactive before what he sometimes calls the “Wuhan flu” ever emerged. 

Trump is thin-skinned, self-obsessed, small-minded, intellectually lazy, and ill-disciplined. These never seemed to be great qualities in a chief executive, but they have caught up with Trump over the last six months in particular. They have played into his poor handling of the coronavirus crisis and the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd. When times became more serious, he remained as unserious as ever.

COVID has been the main factor worsening his political condition. The damage didn’t register in the polls at first. At the end of March and beginning of April, polling had his handling of the crisis in positive territory, a kind of rally-around-the-flag effect. But the effect was smaller and shorter-lived for him than it was for other officials, in the states and abroad. As of early August, the average of the polling at the website FiveThirtyEight has his rating on the crisis at 58 percent disapprove and 38 percent approve. This is a flashing red light given that COVID is the most important issue to voters at the moment, a rare instance when the economy isn’t the top issue in a presidential election. 

Of course, none of Trump’s critics predicted that a deadly and economy-flattening contagion would kneecap him in an election year. But his inability to respond adequately to the crisis is the kind of thing that they had in mind when they warned that his character traits were unsuited to the presidency.

Particularly in the circumstances of a novel pandemic, the president needs a process that brings him relevant information, structures his deliberation, allows him to adapt to new developments and correct mistakes, and guides the rest of the government in executing his decisions. And he must act in concert with Congress, governors, public-health experts, business leaders, and others, all of whom have their own roles to play. Nobody could perform this job perfectly.

What we have under Trump is very nearly the mirror image of this ideal. He relies on gut instinct and gets his information from what he happens to see on television or hears from friends. He is extremely disinclined to acknowledge mistakes, process bad news, or think beyond the news cycle. The structure his staff has built around him is designed more to manage his ego and shield him from bad news than to yield wise decisions. His understanding of the relationship between the president and other political actors is rudimentary, causing him to alternate between passivity and assertions of total control.

Even where his administration has acted adroitly — it did work assiduously to bootstrap the initially anemic testing effort to a different level — Trump hasn’t been willing or able to explain it convincingly. He has even complained, in varying tones, that testing should be slowed down because it makes the infection rate look higher.

Trump hasn’t conveyed steadiness, resolve, empathy, and seriousness of purpose to the public — the sort of thing that other political figures, whatever their ideologies and even competence levels, have done to their own benefit — because he does not possess them. He does not give much sign of even recognizing that the public would appreciate them. Reassurance is not his brand. “Fighting” is, and Trump especially enjoys taking public shots at people who, by virtue of their position, cannot fight back. His most successful recent such campaign has targeted Dr. Anthony Fauci — if it counts as success for Trump to persuade many of his supporters to distrust one of his own advisers.

Presidential incumbency is a powerful political asset, especially during a crisis, because a president can speak and act for the country rather than just for his party. But Trump rarely attempts to conform to expectations of presidential behavior, even when it would be useful to him. He often seems interested in the presidency chiefly as a platform to express himself. Although most Americans dislike the personality he puts on display, this tendency was more tolerable when times were good, as they were during the first three years of his presidency. 

Trump has always had an ability to direct attention where he wants in a way that other political figures can only covet. These days, he uses that power to elevate issues that obsess him but are well down the list of Americans’ concerns, from the injustice allegedly done to Roger Stone to the unfairness of specific cable-news hosts to him.

Some well-wishers urge Trump to talk about a second-term agenda, but he cannot do it credibly when he has done so little to advance a first-term one. Immigration and health-care plans are always just about to be unveiled, but never are. “Infrastructure week” has been deferred so often as to become a running gag. What he is really offering is four more years of enraging liberals. That promise, at least, is something he can deliver on.

Other than that, he’s an excellent choice for a second term!

Oh, and here’s the list of the accomplishments of the alleged greatest presidency in history:

While policy hasn’t been his focus, Trump has done some good and important things with his presidency. He has been much better than conservatives initially expected on abortion and religious liberty, judges, and deregulation. If nothing else, he has represented a reprieve from Hillary Clinton, who, even if she had been a weak president checked by a Republican Congress, inevitably would have scored some progressive victories difficult or impossible to reverse, especially on the Supreme Court. 

I guess that’s not nothing but it sure isn’t Roosevelt’s first hundred days. It’s basically holding the status quo on guns, god and abortion letting mitch pick a bunch of judges his Senate majority can rubber stamp and blindly reverse any regulation they can find.

Anyway:

His vices have taken a toll. There are periodic hopes that he will reset and adopt a more disciplined approach, always dashed. In 2016, he did show he could tone it down for brief periods, but he can’t help himself for long. So it is probably only events that can save him now: a waning of the pandemic, a clear economic rebound, a Biden stumble, some other exogenous event. None of this is unimaginable, but obviously none of it is certain — and none of it is in his control, or in the control of the many other Republicans whose political fates are tied to his. Trump won an upset as the de facto challenger four years ago and will have to win a bigger one as the incumbent.

They forgot to mention all the fluffing done by the right-wing media like themselves and the endless enabling by Republican officials. And, needless to say, they will all vote for him anyway.

Recall that National Review put out an issue in 2016 called “Never Trump” and then became Trump enablers the minute he won. This article just shows that they have avery clear-eyed view of what a disaster he is. They just don’t care.

And, by the way, his policies aren’t popular either…

The New York Times takes a deep look at America’s failure to control the pandemic and concludes that it comes down to two things: Trump and radical individualism:

When it comes to the virus, the United States has come to resemble not the wealthy and powerful countries to which it is often compared but instead to far poorer countries, like Brazil, Peru and South Africa, or those with large migrant populations, like Bahrain and Oman.

As in several of those other countries, the toll of the virus in the United States has fallen disproportionately on poorer people and groups that have long suffered discrimination. Black and Latino residents of the United States have contracted the virus at roughly three times as high of a rate as white residents.

How did this happen? The New York Times set out to reconstruct the unique failure of the United States, through numerous interviews with scientists and public health experts around the world. The reporting points to two central themes.

First, the United States faced longstanding challenges in confronting a major pandemic. It is a large country at the nexus of the global economy, with a tradition of prioritizing individualism over government restrictions. That tradition is one reason the United States suffers from an unequal health care system that has long produced worse medical outcomes — including higher infant mortality and diabetes rates and lower life expectancy — than in most other rich countries.

“As an American, I think there is a lot of good to be said about our libertarian tradition,” Dr. Jared Baeten, an epidemiologist and vice dean at the University of Washington School of Public Health, said. “But this is the consequence — we don’t succeed as well as a collective.”

The second major theme is one that public health experts often find uncomfortable to discuss because many try to steer clear of partisan politics. But many agree that the poor results in the United States stem in substantial measure from the performance of the Trump administration.

In no other high-income country — and in only a few countries, period — have political leaders departed from expert advice as frequently and significantly as the Trump administration. President Trump has said the virus was not serious; predicted it would disappear; spent weeks questioning the need for masks; encouraged states to reopen even with large and growing caseloads; and promoted medical disinformation.

In recent days, Mr. Trump has continued the theme, offering a torrent of misleading statistics in his public appearances that make the situation sound less dire than it is.

Some Republican governors have followed his lead and also played down the virus, while others have largely followed the science. Democratic governors have more reliably heeded scientific advice, but their performance in containing the virus has been uneven.

“In many of the countries that have been very successful they had a much crisper strategic direction and really had a vision,” said Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, who wrote a guide to reopening safely for the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research group. “I’m not sure we ever really had a plan or a strategy — or at least it wasn’t public.”

Together, the national skepticism toward collective action and the Trump administration’s scattered response to the virus have contributed to several specific failures and missed opportunities, Times reporting shows:

• a lack of effective travel restrictions;
• repeated breakdowns in testing;
• confusing advice about masks;
• a misunderstanding of the relationship between the virus and the economy;
• and inconsistent messages from public officials.

Already, the American death toll is of a different order of magnitude than in most other countries. With only 4 percent of the world’s population, the United States has accounted for 22 percent of coronavirus deaths. Canada, a rich country that neighbors the United States, has a per capita death rate about half as large. And these gaps may worsen in coming weeks, given the lag between new cases and deaths.

For many Americans who survive the virus or do not contract it, the future will bring other problems. Many schools will struggle to open. And the normal activities of life — family visits, social gatherings, restaurant meals, sporting events — may be more difficult in the United States than in any other affluent country.

After 9/11, the American people adjusted to the restrictions we were forced to endure with stoicism, even those who were opposed on principle to many of the draconian steps that were taken by the government. There were op-eds and lawsuits and plenty of political opposition but there wasn’t a wholesale rebellion by half the people. I’m not saying that was right or wrong but I use it to demonstrate that the idea that “radical individualism” is the reason people are spreading COVID-19 all over the country because “freedom” isn’t really the case.

This rejection of the mitigation strategies should also fall under the category of Trump. It’s mostly his people who are refusing to do it and if he had told them to follow the guidelines, they would have. It is anything but radical individualism. It’s lock-step cult behavior.

As for the young people who insist on partying, it’s got nothing to do with individualism with them either. It’s the message that it’s only old and sick people who get hit and their sense of immortality. I’m honestly not sure what to do about that. It’s true that the odd are they won’t get very ill or die from this disease but it’s also true that they’re spreading it around to people who will. I don’t know how you can make people care about their fellow humans. These people obviously don’t.

I don’t know what to make of this but it doesn’t sound good. This purge and turnover of Inspectors General is just astonishing and it obvious that there is something very rotten in all the agencies and departments that are doing it.

The State Department seems to be especially tainted:

Asked about his departure at a press briefing Wednesday, Pompeo said, “He left to go back home. This happens. I don’t have anything more to add to that.”Akard, an ally of Vice President Mike Pence, was picked to replace Steve Linick who was fired late on a Friday evening in May. He worked under then-Indiana Gov. Pence as the head of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation.

His ties to Pence and the fact that he maintained his role as the head of the State Department’s Office of Foreign Missions when he went over to lead the State IG’s office rankled diplomats and Democratic lawmakers, who saw him as a part of the politicization of the State Department.

The State Department and the State OIG are in their final negotiations over the release of their report into Pompeo declaring an emergency last year that allowed the administration to fast-track an $8 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for their war in Yemen over congressional objections, the source said.

The OIG was also investigating potential misuse of taxpayer resources by Pompeo and his wife at the time of Linick’s firing. Pompeo has denied that his recommendation to remove Linick was retaliatory, and also denied he knew about the ongoing probes into his office.

NFL owner and Trump ambassador to UK sparks watchdog inquiry over allegations of racist and sexist remarks and push to promote Trump businessAkard told officials at State OIG and at the State Department that he would be recusing himself from the ongoing investigations into Pompeo and his wife due to the fact that he was maintaining his State Department post.

In early June, he also told Democratic lawmakers investigating the circumstances of Linick’s ouster that he had stepped away from his role as Director of the Office of Foreign Missions, but had not resigned.On Monday, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Robert Menendez, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel, and House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney issued subpoenas for the depositions of four senior State Department officials.

They subpoenaed Undersecretary for Management Brian Bulatao, Acting Legal Advisor Marik String, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Michael Miller, and Senior Advisor Toni Porter.

“The Administration continues to cover up the real reasons for Mr. Linick’s firing by stonewalling the Committees’ investigation and refusing to engage in good faith. That stonewalling has made today’s subpoenas necessary, and the Committees will continue to pursue this investigation to uncover the truth that the American people deserves,” the lawmakers said in a statement Monday. An additional State Department official — Executive Secretary Lisa Kenna — committed to a transcribed interview with the committees.

A State Department spokesperson called the claims of “stonewalling” “egregiously inaccurate” and claimed they had offered “good faith proposals to satisfy their oversight inquiry since May 28, 2020.” Linick told lawmakers that his office was looking into five matters of potential wrongdoing at the State Department, including the emergency arms sales and potential misuse of taxpayer resources.”I can tell you that I don’t believe there’s any valid reason that would justify my removal,” Linick told the lawmakers in a June 3 video interview that lasted almost seven hours. He would not speculate on Pompeo’s reasons for moving against him. He added that he was “shocked” to learn he had been fired.

The OIG was also investigating potential misconduct by US Ambassador to the United Kingdom Robert Wood “Woody” Johnson. The Trump political appointee and billionaire NFL owner was investigated by the State Department watchdog after allegations that he made racist and sexist comments to staff and sought to use his government position to benefit the President’s personal business in the UK, multiple sources told CNN. A public report on that has not been released.

Obviously, the department has been infected with massive corruption and malfeasance of some scale. Mike Pompeo is a real piece of work.

Lindsey Graham held a little show hearing yesterday in order to allow some TrumpieSenators the ability to beat up on a woman who Trump doesn’t like. It really didn’t go well although if you read the right-wing media, they really accomplished … something.

This is one of those cases that requires snark to properly convey and I think Dana Milbank did the best job of it:

Nearly 5 million covid-19 cases in the United States. One-hundred fifty-seven thousand dead. Thirty-two million out of work. Tens of millions facing eviction, foreclosure and hunger.

What do we do now?

Simple: We talk about Hillary Clinton’s emails!

“During the investigation of Hillary Clinton over her email server, James Comey, the FBI director, had a press conference, as you know, on July 5 where he . . . said ‘no reasonable prosecutor’ would prosecute that case,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said at Wednesday’s hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Did you know before July 5, 2016, that he was going to do that?” Cornyn asked.

The witness, Sally Yates, a former Obama administration deputy attorney general called before the panel to testify, told Cornyn she had not known.

Cornyn pressed on. “When he reopened the case after Anthony Weiner’s computer was looked at, did you know he was going to reopen the case beforehand?”

“That was more than four years ago now,” Yates replied, “and I didn’t go back and try to review any of that.”

But Cornyn was not to be disturbed from his time warp. He went on about Comey’s conduct, Loretta Lynch’s tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton, and Rod Rosenstein’s memo justifying Comey’s firing. “Director Comey was out of control,” the senator concluded.

Maybe so. But you know who’s out of control now? Cornyn — and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and all the others trying to change the subject from the crises now gripping the nation to their greatest hits from 2016. As the Trump administration drifts and millions lose their unemployment benefits, the Senate Judiciary Committee staged yet another hearing Wednesday about the Steele dossier, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, Bruce Ohr, Fusion GPS and other golden oldies.

Graham, the committee chairman, seemed defensive about his choice of hearing topic, for he kept posing and answering rhetorical questions: “So what’s the purpose of this hearing? . . . And to the public, why does this matter to you? . . . Why are we having these hearings? . . . And again, why does it matter?” And those were just the ones from his opening statement.

Maybe Graham perceives the yawning gap between where the country is right now and where Republicans are. It isn’t just about Weiner’s laptop. As Americans grapple with public health, economic and racial-justice crises, Trump and his allies are talking about antifa, illegal immigrants and “Obamagate.”

[…]

“BIG NEWS!” Trump tweeted in response to Wednesday’s hearing. “The Political Crime of the Century is unfolding. ObamaBiden illegally spied on the Trump Campaign, both before and after the election. Treason!”

In reality, Yates testified that President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden “did not in any way attempt to direct or influence any kind of investigation” and she repeatedly asserted that a genuine “counterintelligence threat,” not politics, was behind the Trump-Russia investigation.

Not that it mattered. “What I want to let the American people know,” Graham said after three hours of questioning Yates, “is I don’t buy for a minute that there were only two people at the FBI who knew the dossier was garbage.”

The American people don’t give a damn whether Lindsey Graham thinks only two people at the FBI knew the dossier was garbage. We’re dying out here. And his Dear Leader has blood on his hands.

Let’s take a walk.

Dana Milbank watched the Senate Judiciary Committee’s questioning Wednesday of former Obama administration deputy attorney general, Sally Yates, and marveled:

Nearly 5 million covid-19 cases in the United States. One-hundred fifty-seven thousand dead. Thirty-two million out of work. Tens of millions facing eviction, foreclosure and hunger.

What do we do now?

Simple: We talk about Hillary Clinton’s emails!

With the people they represent in crisis and facing hunger, homelessness and worse, Senate Republicans are spinning golden oldies from 2016: James Comey, Anthony Weiner’s laptop, the Steele dossier, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, Bruce Ohr, Fusion GPS, etc. Milbank calls out the GOP’s DJs: Sens. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).

“As Americans grapple with public health, economic and racial-justice crises,” Milbank writes, “Trump and his allies are talking about antifa, illegal immigrants and ‘Obamagate.’”

They sure as hell don’t want to talk about their party’s sinking electoral prospects this fall; about Donald Trump expecting everyone in the White House “from the chief of staff to the groundskeepers and event planners” to break the law for him; about his call for executive branch janissaries to police political speech that displeases him; etc.

They certainly don’t want to talk publicly about what they, their president, and their party might do to stay in power should Trump lose his reelection bid. That is, after purging voter rolls, suppressing voting by mail, hamstringing the U.S. Postal Service, and after sending 50,000 volunteers to “15 key states to monitor polling places and challenge ballots and voters deemed suspicious” fails.

Daniel Carpenter considers both what Republicans might do to hack the electoral college vote and Democrats’ options for unhacking the hacking:

In one scenario, even if Biden wins the popular vote in a state, a Republican governor or state secretary might refuse to certify the state’s slate of electoral college electors. That would mean that not enough electors would be selected, resulting in no presidential candidate being able to win a majority (270) of the 538 electoral college votes.

They could, in theory, throw out all norms regarding the will of the people, etc., and toss the election to the House of Representatives. “But here’s the rub,” Carpenter explains:

The Constitution directs the House to vote by state delegation, and Republicans currently hold a majority of the House’s state delegations. Assuming that the GOP maintains that lead in the new Congress and that lawmakers would vote for their own party’s nominee, the House would thus elect a Republican as president. As former Colorado senator Timothy Wirth and Newsweek’s Tom Rogers put it, this is how Trump could “lose the election and still remain president.”

Democrats playing hardball, if they learned anything from the 2000 election, have a recourse that, while unprecedented, is not technically out of bounds constitutionally. Assuming Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) retains her speakership, she could under Article I, Section 5 have her majority seat enough “contested” House races to seat enough Democrats to control a majority of state delegations ahead of the House selecting the president.

As the judge of contested elections, the House can entertain any challenge to the election results at the beginning of its session (after choosing the speaker, customarily its first vote). Usually, the House refers these challenges to a committee to investigate. The committee recommends awarding the seat to one or another candidate, and the House votes on that recommendation. If enough Democratic challengers surfaced to allow the Democrats to claim a majority of delegations, then the attempt to manipulate the presidential election could be reversed.

This is all nuts, of course. But not as nuts as the acting president. He has the Manhattan district attorney (and possibly the state of New York) breathing down his neck with a criminal investigation that could wreck his real estate empire in a way no federal pardon can immunize. Trump already has to be considering how, if he loses in November, he could resign days ahead of leaving office, making Vice President Mike Pence president just long enough to pardon him for any and all federal crimes Trump may have committed. It would be corrupt. It would be out of order. So, what else is new? Justice in this country has been out of order for some time.

Finally, let’s look at the concept of qualified immunity for police. U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves found he could not deliver justice for Clarence Jamison, a Mississippi black man who had his new Mercedes convertible torn up in a roadside search by a white Mississippi officer named Nick McClendon. McClendon claimed that Jamison’s temporary tag was “folded up.” (Not true, writes Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern.)  The doctrine of qualified immunity for police officers shields them from lawsuits. Reeves was not about to let that stand in the way of his disapproving loudly. He cited case after familiar case of black men abused by lawmen shielded by qualified immunity:

Our courts have shielded a police officer who shot a child while the officer was attempting to shoot the family dog; prison guards who forced a prisoner to sleep in cells “covered in feces” for days; police officers who stole over $225,000 worth of property; a deputy who bodyslammed a woman after she simply “ignored [the deputy’s] command and walked away”; an officer who seriously burned a woman after detonating a “flashbang” device in the bedroom where she was sleeping; an officer who deployed a dog against a suspect who “claim[ed] that he surrendered by raising his hands in the air”; and an officer who shot an unarmed woman eight times after she threw a knife and glass at a police dog that was attacking her brother.

Jamison was lucky. He walked away from the encounter with only his property damaged. McClendon violated Jamison’s Fourth Amendment rights, the judge found, but there was nothing he could do about it.

Stern writes:

With a historian’s eye, Reeves demonstrated that these decisions are not anomalies. They are part of the federal judiciary’s long, dispiriting history of “slamming shut the courthouse doors” on the most vulnerable, particularly Black Americans. The Supreme Court has corrected such injustices in the past. It outlawed school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education. And just this year, it abolished non-unanimous jury verdicts, a tradition rooted in bigotry. “Just as the Supreme Court swept away the mistaken doctrine of ‘separate but equal,’ ” Reeves concluded, “so too should it eliminate the doctrine of qualified immunity.”

Presiding now over the whole system is Donald J. Trump, a man who throughout his life has abused the legal system to evade justice, not to guarantee it. Right now he and his allies are looking for ways to bend justice to his will, to their advantage, and to thwart democracy. The whole system is out of order.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.

Your president, ladies and gentlemen:

https://twitter.com/VicBergerIV/status/1290779176002150400

There is a lot of discussion about why the US has done so badly in combating the COVID 19 pandemic and there are a dozen different reasons. But honestly, there is one overriding reason and I don’t think there can be any debate about just how lethal it was and continues to be:

https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1290988136261193728?s=20

"We're set to rock & roll, but the big problem we have is Democrats don't want to open their schools, b/c they think it's going to hurt the election for the Republicans." – Trump still thinks mask mandates & schools closures are Dem conspiracies, not necessary public health steps pic.twitter.com/56WfTxF978

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 5, 2020

"By the time we get to [Election Day], we will probably be in very good shape" — Trump suggests the coronavirus won't be an issue preventing seniors from physically going to the polls in November pic.twitter.com/NOgENfPCdx

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 5, 2020

When you have a fool like this who is worshipped by 40% of the country saying he has the virus under control, suggesting people could inject disinfectant to “clean the lungs”, that kids have immunity, don’t wear masks, it will go away etc, etc, etc, it’s not surprising that our outbreak is far worse than anywhere in the developed world.

I don’t think we can put the genie back in the bottle, unfortunately. He’s already done it and the cult won’t believe otherwise now. And the result is massive numbers of dead Americans. with many more to come. Pray for science to come up with a solution because our president and his accomplices have basically told their people to spread it and there’s little chance they’ll change course now.

I don’t know for a fact that Republican satisfaction with the way things are going has plunged precipitously since the pandemic hit reflects disappointment with how their Dear Leader has handled it. But it’s got to be a factor, right? He keeps saying over and over again that everything’s going great. And it’s not.

I talked to a teacher today. She lives in Nebraska. It’s one of the states that doesn’t have a mask mandate. Yesterday I learned that Omaha is the largest US city with neither a state nor a local mask mandate.  She’s worried that the schools aren’t prepared to safely reopen for in-person learning. I agree with her.

I’m filled with rage that she is going to be subjected to an unnecessary experiment on the transmission and spread of a deadly virus. We do NOT need another human death data point to prove what the rest of the country has learned over and over again.

I’m trying to channel my anger in a productive way. I want the elected officials in the state to know how long aerosols stay in  in the air. So I’ll post videos showing that.

??UPDATE on airborne—newest aerosol study (CDC journal) indicates that coronavirus is persistent and stable up to 16 hours in the air! Typical air exchange every 20 min to 4 hrs, depending on ventilation. But up to 16 hours is worrisome (HT @kprather88) pic.twitter.com/YJOQvEzu84

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) July 14, 2020

 

REPORT: Virus is stable in air: once airborne, SARS-CoV-2 retains ability to infect for at least 16 hrs

It’s hardier in aerosols than SARS-1 or MERS This helps explain why airborne route could be major culprit Wear masks, distance, ventilate buildingshttps://t.co/8zvADRf0Fx — Dr. Ali Nouri (@AliNouriPhD) July 14, 2020

I want them to understand that air handling in rooms makes a big difference on how long aerosols stay afloat and what has to be done to clear aerosols from rooms. See this thread and video.

??CLEARING AEROSOLS FROM ROOMS: Now that aerosol transmission of the coronavirus is established, the big question is how to disperse aerosols quickly enough. Well, this video explains it all. Thread ??of latest evidence. #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/ZiOdMG2GPs

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) July 31, 2020

But what do you do when someone you love lives in a place where the Governor threatens to sue the county health director if they require masks in the state’s most populous county?

How do you help them when their Governor told the local officials in the county with the highest infection rates in the state they wouldn’t get federal COVID-19 money if they required masks?  (Link) (You might remember when Rachel Maddow brought that up about the cases in Dakota County with the Tyson meatpacking plant.)

Ricketts tells local governments they won’t get federal COVID-19 money if they require masks

LINCOLN — At his regular coronavirus press conferences, Gov. Pete Ricketts makes a point of urging Nebraskans to wear a mask when they go to a store.

But when it comes to the state’s 93 courthouses and other county offices, he doesn’t want local officials to require masks. In fact, he’s told counties that they won’t receive any of the $100 million in federal COVID-19 money if their “customers” are required to wear masks.

“The governor encourages people to wear a mask,” according to his spokesman Taylor Gage, “but does not believe that failure to wear a mask should be the basis for denying taxpayers’ services.” The no-mask mandate has been poorly received in some corners of the state, with officials criticizing the loss of local control. It also runs counter to the advice of public health officials, who have stressed the importance of wearing masks.

In Lincoln, the state’s second-largest city, officials were preparing to require all visitors to wear masks when entering the City-County Building. But the draft rules were promptly dropped when officials were informed that Lancaster County wouldn’t receive CARES Act money if it instituted a mask requirement.

Omaha World Herald  by Paul Hammel June 18, 2020 

I’ve watched dozens of school board and city council meetings around the country discussing mask mandates. I’ve watched helplessly as city council people say they are “following the data” as the reason they won’t vote for a mask mandate. But there is no expert in the room to explain they are looking at outdated or the wrong data for their situation.

I’ve heard school boards quoting studies from Switzerland, New Zealand, Denmark & Finland on infection rates in schools to justify in-person schooling.  But they are not comparing the transmission of a virus in societies that wear masks to the US with our anti-maskers.

They aren’t comparing communities that don’t have a high rate of community spread to ones that do. They aren’t doing what Laurie Garrett says must be done to understand the infection rate in their community. First there must be baseline testing and then daily testing with fast results followed by contact tracing.

All teachers, staff & kids need to be tested FIRST & daily during school with a tracking method in place. NOBODY has that now (Except maybe Trump’s WH). Then they need air filtration systems, spread out classrooms & more staff. They don’t have that or the money to get it. 2/5 pic.twitter.com/asZHVTfoB7

— Spocko (@spockosbrain) July 26, 2020

When they compare reopening the schools in the US to other countries they are also missing a bigger picture. Some other countries had leaders who understood how to use their economic system to protect human lives while they prepared for and fought the virus.

The US COULD have done the same, but instead protected corporate lives & profits. Once THEY were protected the Trump admin stopped seeing the urgency to protect human lives. The phrase “It is what it is” shows that they accept a certain number of people will die.

Ignorance & Incompetence vs Willful Ignorance & Maliciousness

We gave people the benefit of the doubt at certain points in the pandemic. In the beginning we could say, “They didn’t know better.” or “They were doing the best they could with what they understood at the time.” We believed they were acting in good faith.

But now we are seeing people who KNOW how these actions will play out. They can’t say, ‘We didn’t know that people would die!” They will work up multiple rationalizations on why they HAD to push for reopening schools in person. They don’t want to be called irrational immoral monsters because of their decisions and actions.

We need Garrett to team with former heads of the CDC
to explain this to parents.
It is IRRATIONAL & IMMORAL to ask you to send your kids back to school unless the federal government provides this level of testing, tracking, air filtration & support for teachers, admin & staff.4/5 pic.twitter.com/4afUKRFGcm

— Spocko (@spockosbrain) July 26, 2020

No one should be running this deadly experiment. What do we do when it’s over? Who do we hold accountable? Who knew better but argued and pushed for this unnecessary experiment to happened?

The group of people I’m raging at now are those who are actively thwarting actions that will save lives. I’m infuriated by those in power doing this, but also angry at those who see this as a experiment to run in their community with the lives of my friends and loved ones.

If you have a minute, take the time to watch this.

Right now, polls say Joe Biden has a healthy lead over President Trump. But we’ve been here before (cue 2016), and the polls were, frankly, wrong. One man, however, was not. The historian Allan Lichtman was the lonely forecaster who predicted Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016 — and also prophesied the president would be impeached. That’s two for two. But Professor Lichtman’s record goes much deeper. In 1980, he developed a presidential prediction model that retrospectively accounted for 120 years of U.S. election history. Over the past four decades, his system has accurately called presidential victors, from Ronald Reagan in ’84 to, well, Mr. Trump in 2016.

In the video Op-Ed above, Professor Lichtman walks us through his system, which identifies 13 “keys” to winning the White House. Each key is a binary statement: true or false. And if six or more keys are false, the party in the White House is on its way out.

I would feel more optimistic about this if it weren’t for the fact that they cheat. No model can adjust for that. Still, it’s fun. And he might be right!