Month: November 2020

It’s pretty clear that COVID is being spread in restaurants unfortunately. I thought this piece about how to assess whether outdoor seating is really safe was helpful:

With limited indoor dining capacity and colder weather fast approaching in many parts of the country, restaurants have worked quickly to create comfortable outdoor dining solutions such as plexiglass pods and handcrafted wooden platforms with mini-greenhouses.

But the once seemingly temporary tents and structures have increasingly become permanent fixtures along sidewalks, streets and parking lots, prompting concerns from public health experts that the benefits of eating outdoors — ventilation, access to outside air, increased airflow — are becoming diminished.

“Outdoors means no walls, no ceiling,” Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist and professor at University of California, Los Angeles’ Fielding School of Public Health, told ABC News. “When I see these tents consists of walls, [they] don’t have the ventilation the way an indoor restaurant would.”

When a person breathes or talks, they release microscopic droplets from their mouth and nose that can travel with the airflow, which is why proper ventilation is key.

According to experts, outdoor air dilutes any potential virus that may be floating in the air.

“Imagine that somebody is infected and sitting at a table. When they’re breathing and talking, they’re releasing viruses into the air that behave like cigarette smoke,” Linsey Marr, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Virginia Tech, told ABC News. “If there’s poor ventilation, that smoke or those viruses can build up in the air, leaving other people breathing them, too.”

A tented structure with no walls still allows for air to easily flow in any direction through and under the tent, according to Marr. “Once you start adding walls, you potentially block that wind. Once you add four walls, you’re getting close to being indoors and you lose that benefit of being outdoors.”

The dining igloos and domes have some benefit, said Marr, because they isolate you from other diners.

Bernd Thissen/picture alliance via Getty ImagesIn “Novy’s Brasserie” guests are served at tables in small greenhouses, in Hagen, Germany, May 14, 2020.

But if someone in your own dining party is infected, there is high potential to contract the virus because there’s very little airflow by design in these structures.

The “best case scenario,” according to Marr, is “sitting outside under the great blue sky, no tent, no roof.”

“If someone happens to be infected and is releasing viruses into the air, there’s more of an opportunity for the wind to carry it away,” she said. “What happens is the virus becomes so dilute that the chances of any one person breathing in enough of those to get sick is very, very low.”

Byron Smith/Getty ImagesPeople dine al fresco in Little Italy on Mulberry Street between Hester and Broome Streets on July 4, 2020 in the Manhattan borough of New York City.

Marr explained that even outdoor diners should still behave as though they’re indoors. That includes keeping tables socially distanced, wearing a mask when not eating and minimizing contact with those outside your own party, such as the server.

A 3-D animation shows how virus particles dissipate in open air, with no ceiling or walls to restrict air flow:

“There’s no zero-risk scenario,” Rimoin said, “because there’s no control who you’re seated next to and not wearing a mask.” But she agreed with Marr that an open-sky scenario is the best option because “the more air circulating, the better it is.”

Experts also advise that restaurants reduce the level of background music and noise so that diners can speak more quietly.

According to Marr, a person releases particles just by breathing and talking, so the louder a person talks, the more particles — or aerosols — they release.

“If someone’s infected, they’re going to release viruses in aerosols as they talk. And so if we can, we should try and keep our voices down,” Marr said.

I feel so terrible for people who own restaurants, bars, theatres, concert venues etc. The government should be giving them enough money to stay afloat (as well as paying their employees.) It is a monumental, world historic tragedy that we have mishandled this so badly and the carnage is so overwhelming, both to the disease and the economy.

But I guess we’re all on our own until February. So stay safe…

He ran on unifying the country. And it was a smart appeal to people who are sick of the division and the chaos. But it’s not possible for him to deliver that. Obama ran on that and he failed as well. This is because the Republicans will obstruct and refuse to cooperate and then point the finger and say, “See? He didn’t deliver on what he promised!” It works out great for them.

The New York Times talked to some voters in Texas about their feelings regarding the election. The Trump voters are, understandably, disappointed and upset. Duh. And they believe this idiotic nonsense about the late count proving that Trump actually won on election night.

But some Biden voters are hoping for something that is not going to be possible. Democrats have to ensure that their voters understand the political dynamic or they’re going to regret it.

The change at the Sunday prayer service was so subtle it went unnoticed by several congregants. Tucked in between calls for divine health and wisdom, the Rev. Fred Krebs of St. Paul Lutheran Church, who rarely brings up politics, fleetingly mentioned this month’s presidential election.

“We pray for a peaceful transition,” he told his congregation of 50 people. The carefully chosen words underscored the political reality in Mason, a rural, conservative town of roughly 2,000 people, after Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory over President Trump. Not everyone thought the election was over, and not everyone said they would respect the results.

“My Democratic friends think Biden is going to heal everything and unify everyone,” said Jeanie Smith, who attends the more conservative Spring Street Gospel Church in Mason, which is about 100 miles west of Austin. “They are deceived.”

“Now you want healing,” she added. “Now you want to come together. You have not earned it.”

That is the hard reality Mr. Biden is facing, even after winning a race in which he secured a larger share of the popular vote than any challenger since 1932. Towering before him is a wall of Republican resistance, starting with Mr. Trump’s refusal to concede, extending to G.O.P. lawmakers’ reluctance to acknowledge his victory and stretching, perhaps most significantly for American politics in the long term, to ordinary voters who steadfastly deny the election’s outcome.

It is all a far cry from how Mr. Biden framed this election, from the Democratic primary race through his victory speech last weekend. He cast the moment as a chance for the country to excise the political division Mr. Trump has stoked, promising to repair the ideological, racial and geographic fissures that have grown into chasms since 2016. Announcing his campaign, he called it an opportunity to restore “the soul of the nation.” Last weekend, he declared, “Let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end here and now.”

But on Election Day, Republican turnout surged across the country — particularly in rural areas like Mason, which along with its surrounding county had among the largest percentage increases in voter participation in Texas. Democratic dreams of a landslide were thwarted as Republicans notched surprise victories in the House and emerged as the favorite to retain control of the Senate. In the days since, thousands of Mr. Trump’s most fervent supporters have gathered across the country, including in Texas, to protest Mr. Biden’s triumph as illegitimate.

“We’re willing to accept the results, as long as it’s fair and done correctly and certified correctly,” said Sherrie Strong, another supporter of the president’s. She, like others, took Mr. Trump’s position that it was strange that he had been leading in numerous places because of in-person votes on Election Day, only to be overtaken once mail-in ballots were counted on election night and over the days that followed. (The delay in counting mail-in ballots in several states was because of restrictions imposed by Republican state legislatures.)

“It’s just a little upsetting when you go to bed at night, and all of a sudden, four days later, these votes are magically appearing,” Ms. Strong said.

Mr. Biden’s message did have political appeal, motivating a crucial slice of voters who helped him lead Democrats back into power.

Ann Mahnken, a 72-year-old lifelong conservative who attends the Lutheran church, said the prospect of his bringing the country together was why, after voting for Mr. Trump in 2016, she chose the Democratic candidate this time.

“I could not stand the way our country is,” she said. “I didn’t want to go through four more years of that, not in my senior citizen lifetime. I didn’t want to go through four more years of the chaos and the division.”

Mark Lehmberg, a fellow parishioner who voted for Mr. Trump this year after sitting out 2016, said he had given up on the concept of unity — and he advised Ms. Mahnken to do the same. He backed the president because he did not want the economy to shut down over the coronavirus.

“The relationships have already been jeopardized,” Mr. Lehmberg said. “It’s going be hard — impossible — to get people to come together.”

He’s right. But he does not understand the reason for it.

I don’t think there’s any way around this. Voters want to believe in bipartisan cooperation but it’s a one-way street because Republicans, being a cohesive, radicalized minority party with outsized power, benefit from obstruction. So Democrats have to run as the “unity party” but there’s no way for them to get it. Most people see this and understand it, on both sides. But those people in the middle who Dems need to win the electoral college or in red districts and states don’t pay close enough attention to sort it all out. It’s a problem.

But the braindead are accusing them of it:

Accusations of voter fraud continue to be in the headlines after last week’s general election, including the claims that people who are dead voted. 11Alive confirmed that two of the four Georgia voters the president’s campaign accused of fraudulently voting while “dead” are alive.    

President Donald Trump’s campaign tweeted accusations claiming that James Blalock of Covington, who is deceased, voted in the election. 

 “The only problem? He passed away 14 years ago. Sadly, Mr. Blalock is a victim of voter fraud,” the tweet reads.

The accusations were amplified on national television.

“Mr. Blalock was a mailman for 33 years until he passed away in 2006. Fourteen years later, according to state records, he was still mailing things. James Blalock cast a ballot in last week’s election,” Tucker Carlson said in a clip and story labeled on Fox News’ website as an opinion piece. 

However, 11Alive was able to find out that James Blalock did not vote in last week’s election. Mrs. James Blalock did vote.

“He’s not voting. He didn’t vote,” Agnes Blalock told 11Alive. “It was me.”

Newton County officials confirmed that Agnes Blalock voted using her married name.

“Her voter registration was signed as Mrs. James E. Blalock, Jr. and that is exactly how she signed her name when she voted in the Nov. 3 general election,” officials said. 

They posted a statement online saying James Blalock’s widow has always voted under that name. 

Blalock said that, when the accusations came out, she knew it wasn’t fraud. There was also one main thing she wanted people to know about her husband.

“Best man I ever knew. Best one to me. I couldn’t have had a better one,” she said. 

 Another person accused of voting in Georgia was Linda Kesler.

“Mrs. Linda Kesler of Nicholson, Georgia voted in the election,” a tweet from Trump campaign said. “The only problem,” she passed away 17 years ago, in 2003.”

11Alive was able to determine that is also false.  The Jackson County Board of Elections said she did not vote.    

“Linda Kesler of Nicholson was marked deceased in 2003 and did not vote. Lynda Kesler who has a different address, birthday, and zip who is entitled to vote—did vote,” the board of elections said.

I don’t think they care if it turns out not to be true. They are just following Cokie’s Law It’s “out there” and that’s all that matters. I would guess that at least 40 million Trump voters, maybe even more, will always believe the election was stolen because they heard stories like this.

There are a lot of Republican election lawyers out there. They’ve been organizing to contest elections for decades and they were prepared to contest this one if it was close enough. Trump had them lined up to do it, which isn’t surprising. He’s telegraphed for months that he was going to contest the results.

But this election isn’t close enough to steal it. And Trump has put the guy who didn’t know he was being punked by Borat in charge:

President Donald Trump’s senior campaign aides were gathered in their headquarters Saturday morning when word emerged that Rudy Giuliani would be holding a news conference in the parking lot of a Philadelphia landscaping business.

They knew that meant trouble.

Senior campaign aides scurried to urge organizers to kill the event, infamously staged at the wrong “Four Seasons” — a landscaping business adjacent to an adult bookstore and a crematorium. But Giuliani plowed ahead anyway, delivering a conspiracy-filled rant that undercut the legal strategy the president’s advisers had meticulously mapped out in the run-up to the election.

Campaign officials described the episode as disastrous, saying it scared off many of the lawyers they spent months recruiting, who now no longer wanted to be involved. With the campaign already facing exceedingly long odds in its recount efforts, there are widespread concerns within Trumpworld and GOP circles that Giuliani’s antics are thwarting the president’s legal machinery from within.

“I can’t imagine that a rational person” in the general public “wouldn’t be adversely affected by the way he conducts himself,” said Barry Richard, who represented George W. Bush in the 2000 Florida recount.

Yet Giuliani is taking on a heightened role. The president on Friday appointed him to oversee any new post-election litigation. The move, which was first reported by the New York Times, has distressed top campaign officials and other advisers, who worry Giuliani’s Hail Mary ploys will damage Trump’s reputation and potentially harm his future political aspirations.

Damage his reputation? Are they kidding? His reputation among normal people is as low as it can possibly be. He’s responsible for tens of thousands of preventable deaths not to mention the destruction of virtually everything decent in America over the course of the last four years.

And yet the Republican party has steadfastly stood by him, squeezing every last judge and arms sale out of him and laying so many landmines for the Democrats to try to defuse that they won’t have time to do anything else.

And it’s clear there is nothing he can do to damage his reputation with his cult-following. He is impervious to scandal or embarrassment with them.

And anyway, what they see as an intrusion into a sophisticated legal strategy isn’t really that. It’s not as if David Bossie and Jason Miller are the A-Team and they’re the ones who have been running the legal strategy until now:

Giuliani’s promotion also threatens to complicate a legal apparatus that has been in the works since June. The campaign began assembling a team of lawyers in swing states and counties where recounts might take place. The effort since the election has been overseen by Citizens United President David Bossie, who was tapped because of his conservative street cred and connections to pro-Trump activists around the country.

The Republican National Committee member from Maryland has also served as a bridge between the campaign and RNC, which had at times clashed during the final months of the race. He has been working the phones from home after testing positive for the coronavirus early this week.

Bossie has joined a regular 9:30 a.m. conference call with general counsel Matt Morgan, as well as top campaign officials Bill Stepien, Justin Clark and Jason Miller, to discuss the day’s agenda. The group has also been holding daily conference calls with on-air surrogates to go over messaging, and with legal and political operatives in the half-dozen states with slim margins.

They have been meeting regularly with the president, allowing him to poke and prod at their ideas while presenting him with a menu of options. The group — which has told the president that he’s facing an uphill path — has outlined to him how they view each state as a mini-campaign governed by different laws.

Looking to buttress its infrastructure, the campaign has shifted staffers from Florida to neighboring Georgia, which is conducting a hand recount.

Much of the focus, however, has been on crafting lawsuits in three states that zero in on specific allegations of voting irregularities. In Arizona, the campaign has drawn attention to issues with voting machines. In Michigan and Pennsylvania, it is complaining about not having adequate observation at voting sites.

The Pennsylvania suit also revolves around the idea that voters in Democratic-heavy Philadelphia had more of an opportunity to “cure” improperly cast ballots than those in the more conservative parts of the state. While the Arizona case was dropped Friday, the Michigan and Pennsylvania cases are pending.

Campaign officials describe it as an incremental approach aimed at chipping away at Biden’s leads and creating margins that are small enough to force recounts. While they concede their lawsuits are unlikely to succeed, they insist they’re not frivolous.

They are frivolous. But that’s not good enough for Rudy and the president:

But their strategy has resulted in a clash with Giuliani, who has advocated for more of a damn-the-torpedoes approach. The former New York City mayor has been working independently of the Trump legal apparatus. He’s gone on Fox News and made allegations of widespread voter fraud. Early on, he ordered lawsuits to be filed without the consent of the campaign’s legal team.

Things came to a head during a meeting at the White House last Friday, one day before the Four Seasons Total Landscaping imbroglio. As the group batted around options before the president, Giuliani interjected and derided them as insufficiently aggressive. Some in the room were taken aback.

During a Thursday meeting at the White House that was attended by the president, Giuliani accused Trump aides of lying to Trump about his chances. Clark aggressively pushed back, and the two shouted at one another. Vice President Mike Pence was also present. The encounter was first reported by the Times.

Trump has gone with Giuliani because they are both nuts. But it’s also because Trump wants to keep his cult excited and on board with his plan to run in 2024 as the “rightful” president whose election was stolen from him — and them.

And, once again, the GOP is taking advantage of Trump’s hold on those voters to get a big turnout in Georgia in January. Trump isn’t a problem for them — he’s an asset. He always has been.

This piece by Ban Ki-moon, former secretary-general of the United Nations and Patrick Verkooijen, CEO of the Global Center on Adaptation, is important

The Trump administration’s dismissal of climate change has cost America dearly at home and abroad. Outside the US, President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement has encouraged other nations to ignore their own climate pledges. The Amazon is burning. Illegal logging has accelerated in Indonesia, according to conservation-news site Mongabay. Russia is mulling oil exploration in the Arctic. Over the past three years, climate-related disasters have cost the world $650 billion, according to Morgan Stanley.

Domestically, Trump’s decision to silence climate scientists and gut environmental protection agencies has left the country ill-equipped to deal with the destruction wrought by climate change. That is why it is imperative that President-elect Biden makes reversing this a priority from day one. This is not just because the costs of ignoring climate change are becoming an intolerable burden on all the Americans who lose their homes and livelihoods to hurricanes, floods and wildfires. As Biden’s clean energy and environmental justice plan makes clear, acting on climate change could be the biggest economic and employment opportunity in history. Many of the strategies used to accomplish this will also simultaneously help tackle other pressing crises.

If the ongoing pandemic has taught us anything, it is that the health of humans, the economy and our planet are deeply intertwined. If we continue to slash and burn our forests, for example, deadly pathogens will continue to jump species and humans will remain vulnerable to future pandemics. Our overlapping health, economic and environmental crises are connected. They demand connected solutions.

Biden’s plan is ambitious, but we urge him to go further. On the campaign trail, the Democratic candidate was equivocal about the future of fossil fuels. We urge him to end subsidies to the fossil fuel industry once and for all. According to an International Monetary Fund (IMF) study, the US spent $649 billion in fossil fuel subsidies in 2015 alone — more than the country’s defense budget and more than seven times the federal spending on education in that year. The US remains, along with China and Russia, one of the world’s top three subsidizers of dirty fuels, the IMF report noted. To remain so would make a nonsense of the President-elect’s own climate plan.

Some of those billions would be better spent on education and scientific research — so savagely neglected and sabotaged by President Trump. Innovation is an essential part of dealing with climate change. We will need a barrage of innovations to strengthen our food security, to improve how steel and cement are made, and to feed the hungry without destroying more of our natural habitats. Data is a resource, like seeds, water or money, and it can be used to help farmers make better decisions, such as when to sow crops. Timely health data can detect outbreaks of infectious diseases and stop their spread. But at present, the world dedicates as little as 4% of global research and development spending on green innovation, according to The Economist — more than $80 billion a year, or just twice the amount tech firm Amazon spends on R&D.

Lastly, we would urge President-elect Biden to invest in adapting to climate change as well as curbing it because millions of Americans are already living with the effects of global warming. Miami may be fighting for survival in the face of rising sea levels while Manhattan needs to be better prepared for the next Superstorm Sandy.

Under President Trump, America lost precious time in the race to limit climate change. The President-elect represents a fresh start. Investing in science, innovation and adaptation, and re-engaging with the international community on climate action, will rebuild a better nation. And hopefully a better world, too.

COVID and the economy are urgent crises that must be dealt with immediately. Climate change is an existential threat that will require the administration’s ongoing full attention. Not to mention the threat to democracy we’ve seen revealed in this last administration. It’s a very full plate.

Here are 10 climate executive actions Biden says he will take on day one

There is a #MillionMAGAMarch this morning in Washington, D.C. Have you heard? This guy did.

https://twitter.com/JennieSTaer/status/1327275772474699776?s=20

Even Jesus cannot find the fraud:

https://twitter.com/MilionMagaMarch/status/1327342157452210179?s=20

Via Insider:

K-pop fans are using the #MillionMAGAMarch hashtag to post pictures of pancakes in protest of the pro-Trump rally taking place on Saturday afternoon. 

Actor Shea Depmore urged her followers on Twitter and TikTok to post the pictures of pancakes, instead of counter-protesting in person at the Million MAGA March, due to take place in Washington, DC.  

“Proud Boys and mega-mad MAGAers are descending upon D.C this Saturday for the Million MAGA March. I’ve seen many on this app rightfully warn people to stay away, as these fools come strapped and they’re angry,” Depmore said in a video posted to Twitter and TikTok on November 12. “But I don’t want these Proud Boys to be proud.”

what to do about the million mega mad boy march on sat

someone pls help me get in touch with the kpop stans 🙏🏼🥞💞 pic.twitter.com/v480H2zbG5

— Shea Depmore (@SheaDepmore) November 12, 2020

Depmore found plenty of takers:

Let’s mess with the #MillionMAGAMarch and post pics of pancakes 🥞 #ProudBoys pic.twitter.com/p9N0DvH6qO

— Dr. Tony Ortega (@DrTonyOrtega) November 14, 2020

Got blueberry?

We are all overly proud of our university educations. They become that “only tool in the toolbox.” The whole world looks like a problem to attack with better ideas, more facts, sharper analysis, populist policies, smarter messaging, etc.

North Carolina Chief Justice Cheri Beasley fell short in her bid for reelection on Nov. 3 by 3,000 votes. Since then, local boards of election counted absentee and provisional ballots. The lead in her race flipped multiple times over the last couple of days. When I awoke this morning, she led by 35 votes out of 5.4 million cast. There will be a recount. Every vote matters.

Despite Joe Biden winning the presidential election, Democrats are asking themselves why they failed to win seats in the House of Representatives. Why they failed to gain control of the U.S. Senate. Why the polls were wrong again. Etc.

Moderates in Congress blame progressives and slogans born in street protests. Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the Bronx blamed the DCCC and candidates’ lack of internet engagement. One of the first comments I saw on social media: How do we reach Trump voters?

Time after time, huge (apparent) Democratic vote leads run up in blue cities during early voting evaporate on Election Day when returns come in from smaller, red counties in the countryside where Democrats have little foothold or organization.

While promoting his 50-state strategy, Howard Dean would say, “We’re going to be in places where the Democratic Party hasn’t been in 25 years.” And, “If you don’t show up in 60 percent of the country, you don’t win, and that’s not going to happen anymore.” The 50-state strategy lasted through the 2006 and 2008 election cycles, both Democratic landslide elections. Then it was gone.

You can’t win if you don’t show up to play. If you do show up, you’d best have “game.”

That is not about better policies or messaging, but basic, competent organization at the county level.

On election night 2006, retired quarterback Heath Shuler defeated 8-term incumbent Republican Rep. Charles Taylor to win the congressional seat in North Carolina’s 11th District. Shuler lost the largest Republican county in the district by 3,000 votes that night. Losing there by 3,000 votes helped Shuler flip the seat. He did not to have to win every county. Shaving Republican margins in the red ones was critical, and he had the organization on the ground to do it.

Four years later, NC state Sen. John Snow was not so lucky.

John Snow was the last Democratic state senator standing in North Carolina’s far west. Jane Mayer wrote about his 2010 reelection race in a New Yorker piece titled “State for Sale.” Conservative kingmaker Art Pope poured almost a million dollars into that one race. His PACs sent two dozen attack flyers into John’s district in North Carolina’s far-western tip. One echoed the infamous 1988 Willie Horton ad.

Snow lost that race. But even after all the money spent against him, Snow lost by 161 votes in a district then spanning eight counties with an average population under 30,000 — by less than the undervote in his race in his two largest counties. People there cast ballots but did not vote in John’s race. Shuler’s well-funded congressional campaign had game. Counties in Snow’s district did not. As a candidate well down-ballot in 2010, his race was an afterthought for many voters.

Chief Justice Cheri Beasley is not in the fight of her political life because of poor messaging or insufficient internet engagement. Candidates in down-ballot races like hers have little of either to run on. Raising large sums is unseemly for judges. They have no expansive campaign teams. They rely on the Democratic Party to deliver votes for them. If it can.

But the basic organizing strategy of the party is top-down (and ass-backwards). In presidential years especially, the big money and media presence of the presidential campaign dominates organizing strategy at the state level. Money and organizers flow into the few, big blue cities where reside large blocks of Democratic voters. And then, only in blue cities in swing states. It’s logical. It’s efficient. Until the dozens of red, rural counties Democrats ignore begin reporting votes and their leads slip away.

You can’t win if you don’t show up to play.

Democratic candidates who run statewide races campaign and organize where they can find votes in bulk: in larger cities. Candidates who run in districts do not have that luxury. They need votes in their own districts whether or not there are cities of any size in them.

Democrats organize as if marquee candidates heavily promoted in blue enclaves will help down-ballot candidates win. But if their more-rural counties had game, they might elect local candidates and the marquee ones and take back state legislatures from Republicans in the process. Or at least shave Republican margins out there enough so Democrats’ statewide contests are not hanging by a thread.

The problem with that kind of grassroots infrastructure-building is no one wants to do it. The incentives are not there. There’s no money in it for campaign consultants, for campaign vendors. There’s no resume-building credit for budding politicos hoping to move up swiftly to the big game. And those of us enamored of our own smarts are too busy trying to game out what clever, intellectually appealing strategies we conceive will accomplish all of the above.

With our university training, we suppose we can win elections with grand ideas that will change hearts and minds. Perhaps that too is ass-backwards. Perhaps mastering the nuts and bolts of winning elections out where Democrats’ skills are the weakest will work where our top-down strategies fail. That was Dean’s vision. It seemed to work while the party allowed it.

Last week, I commented on President Obama coolly sinking a three-point basketball shot from the corner. All net. He didn’t do that with progressive policies, killer messaging, or right-thinking. He did it with skills, skills we cannot expect rural committees to manifest in “visualize world peace” fashion once every general election after a 1-hour Coordinated Campaign training.

Winning is itself persuasive. Democratic committees out in the provinces that don’t go to sleep for two years between elections will by their very daily presence over time persuade rural neighbors Democrats do not have horns, tails, and bits of baby between their teeth.

We keep looking for ways to think our way to victory rather than doing the grunt work of year-round organizing. Stacey Abrams didn’t turn Georgia blue on Joe Biden’s campaign coattails. He won the state on hers.

Every wonder why firefighters have Dalmatians? #learnontiktok #tiktokpartner pic.twitter.com/dsnOBke6LQ

— NowThis Impact (@nowthisimpact) November 13, 2020

Here are a couple of examples of the caliber of people the Republicans are sending to congress in 2021:

Though war metaphors are common in the language of sports, it appears that Tommy Tuberville, the incoming Republican senator from Alabama, didn’t learn much about World War II in his time coaching Auburn football. On Thursday night in Montgomery, Tuberville told his supporters about the sterling military record of his father, an American G.I. who landed on Normandy Beach in D-Day and drove a tank across western Europe, earning five bronze stars and a Purple Heart at the Battle of the Bulge during his deployment.

Despite being of an age at which American men pick up military history as if by osmosis, Tuberville did not seem familiar with the politics of the European theater: In his speech, the new senator described how his father took part in “liberating Paris from socialism and communism.” While this may be an effort to compare his father’s combat experience to his own effort to halt “the doctrine of socialism” in America, the coach’s political framework is off. When First Sergeant Charles Tuberville landed in France in 1944, he was part of a campaign to liberate the Allied power from the Nazis. Though the full name of the party that Hitler rode into power was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, the Nazis were fascists. And for students of history aware of the robust French left prior to the war, Tuberville’s gaffe could accidentally suggest that his father was involved in a different march into Paris in the 1940s.

How about this?

Yeah and that’s how our government was set up. You know, our government wasn’t set up for one group to have all three of branches of government. It wasn’t set up that way, our three branches, the House, the Senate and executive. 

I think it’s clear he’s just another moron at the end of the bar who doesn’t have a clue about anything in American history other than what Rush Limbaugh told him. And, like Trump, he doesn’t know basic civics.

And then there’s this lovely person, a QAnon believer who is wasting no time in being a total jackass in Washington:

Our first session of New Member Orientation covered COVID in Congress.

Masks, masks, masks….

I proudly told my freshman class that masks are oppressive.

In GA, we work out, shop, go to restaurants, go to work, and school without masks.

My body, my choice.#FreeYourFace

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) November 13, 2020

She’s going to be a lot of fun.

This piece by Ed Yong at the Atlantic is kind of terrifying. This country is just not prepared for the hell we are about to go through with this pandemic. And the people on the front lines who are tasked with getting us through it are already burned out and pushed to their limits:

In the months since March, many Americans have habituated to the horrors of the pandemic. They process the election’s ramifications. They plan for the holidays. But health-care workers do not have the luxury of looking away: They’re facing a third pandemic surge that is bigger and broader than the previous two. In the U.S., states now report more people in the hospital with COVID-19 than at any other point this year—and 40 percent more than just two weeks ago.

Emergency rooms are starting to fill again with COVID-19 patients. Utah, where Nathan Hatton is a pulmonary specialist at the University of Utah Hospital, is currently reporting 2,500 confirmed cases a day, roughly four times its summer peak. Hatton says that his intensive-care unit is housing twice as many patients as it normally does. His shifts usually last 12 to 24 hours, but can stretch to 36. “There are times I’ll come in in the morning, see patients, work that night, work all the next day, and then go home,” he told me. I asked him how many such shifts he has had to do. “Too many,” he said.

Hospitals have put their pandemic plans into action, adding more beds and creating makeshift COVID-19 wards. But in the hardest-hit areas, there are simply not enough doctors, nurses, and other specialists to staff those beds. Some health-care workers told me that COVID-19 patients are the sickest people they’ve ever cared for: They require twice as much attention as a typical intensive-care-unit patient, for three times the normal length of stay. “It was doable over the summer, but now it’s just too much,” says Whitney Neville, a nurse based in Iowa. “Last Monday we had 25 patients waiting in the emergency department. They had been admitted but there was no one to take care of them.” I asked her how much slack the system has left. “There is none,” she said.

The entire state of Iowa is now out of staffed beds, Eli Perencevich, an infectious-disease doctor at the University of Iowa, told me. Worse is coming. Iowa is accumulating more than 3,600 confirmed cases every day; relative to its population, that’s more than twice the rate Arizona experienced during its summer peak, “when their system was near collapse,” Perencevich said. With only lax policies in place, those cases will continue to rise. Hospitalizations lag behind cases by about two weeks; by Thanksgiving, today’s soaring cases will be overwhelming hospitals that already cannot cope. “The wave hasn’t even crashed down on us yet,” Perencevich said. “It keeps rising and rising, and we’re all running on fear. The health-care system in Iowa is going to collapse, no question.”

In the imminent future, patients will start to die because there simply aren’t enough people to care for them. Doctors and nurses will burn out. The most precious resource the U.S. health-care system has in the struggle against COVID-19 isn’t some miracle drug. It’s the expertise of its health-care workers—and they are exhausted.

He notes that there have been many improvements in testing and care for COVID patients than there was in the spring but the numbers are so daunting that those improvements will not be able to stop the rising death count.

Intensive-care units are called that for a reason. A typical patient with a severe case of COVID-19 will have a tube connecting their airways to a ventilator, which must be monitored by a respiratory therapist. If their kidneys shut down, they might be on 24-hour dialysis. Every day, they’ll need to be flipped onto their stomach, and then onto their back again—a process that requires six or seven people. They’ll have several tubes going into their heart and blood vessels, administering eight to 12 drugs—sedatives, pain medications, blood thinners, antibiotics, and more. All of these must be carefully adjusted, sometimes minute to minute, by an ICU nurse. None of these drugs is for treating COVID-19 itself. “That’s just to keep them alive,” Neville, the Iowa nurse, said. An ICU nurse can typically care for two people at a time, but a single COVID-19 patient can consume their full attention. Those patients remain in the ICU for three times the length of the usual stay.

Nurses and doctors are also falling sick themselves. “The winter is traditionally a very stressful time in health care, and everyone gets taken down at some point,” says Saskia Popescu, an infection preventionist at George Mason University, who is based in Arizona. The third COVID-19 surge has intensified this seasonal cycle, as health-care workers catch the virus, often from outside the hospital. “Our unplanned time off is double what it was last October,” says Allison Suttle of Sanford Health, a health system operating in South Dakota, North Dakota, and Minnesota. Many hospitals have staff on triple backup: While off their shifts, they should expect to get called in if a colleague and their first substitute and the substitute’s substitute are all sick. At least 1,375 U.S. health-care workers have died from COVID-19.

The first two surges were concentrated in specific parts of the country, so beleaguered hospitals could call for help from states that weren’t besieged. “People were coming to us in our hour of need,” says Madad, from NYC Health + Hospitals, “but now the entire nation is on fire.” No one has reinforcements to send. There are travel nurses who aren’t tied to specific health systems, but the hardest-hit rural hospitals are struggling to attract them away from wealthier, urban centers. “Everyone is tapping into the same pool, and people don’t want to work in Fargo, North Dakota, for the holidays,” Suttle says. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum recently said that nurses who are positive for COVID-19 but symptom-free can return to work in COVID-19 units. “That’s just a big red flag of just how serious it is,” Suttle says. (The North Dakota Nurses Association has rejected the policy.)

Short-staffed hospitals could transfer their patients—but to where? “A lot of smaller hospitals don’t have ventilators or staff trained to take care of someone in critical condition,” says Renae Moch, the director of Bismarck-Burleigh Public Health, North Dakota. “They’re looking to larger hospitals,” but those are also full.

Making matters worse, patients with other medical problems are sicker than usual, several doctors told me. During the earlier surges, hospitals canceled elective surgeries and pulled in doctors from outpatient clinics. People with heart problems, cancers, strokes, and other diseases found it harder to get medical help, and some sat on their illness for fear of contracting COVID-19 at the hospital. Now health-care workers are facing an influx of unusually sick people at a time when COVID-19 has consumed their attention and their facilities. “We’re still catching up on all of that,” says Choo, the Oregon physician. “Even the simplest patients aren’t simple.”

We practice sophisticated medicine in America but it’s only as good s the people who administer it. And we’re running them into the ground. On top of that Trump is out there saying they’re all a bunch of greedheads who are inflating the numbers in order to make more money.

It’s a recipe for disaster this winter.

For more information on how the pandemic is being spread, read “This overlooked variable is key to the pandemic.” It’s fascinating. This pandemic is different than others and our approach to containing it needs to be different as well.