Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: May 2, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 31 Comments

Good Morning!!

My state remains number three in coronavirus cases behind New York and New Jersey, despite the act that Gov. Charlie Baker has acted responsibly and Massachusetts citizens are overwhelmingly supportive of the state’s social distancing and other mitigation efforts.

The Washington Post: In educated and affluent Massachusetts, coronavirus cases surged. The decline has yet to come.

Massachusetts has one of the most educated and affluent populations in the country. It’s home to some of the nation’s most preeminent medical centers. And it has political leaders who have worked cooperatively, across party lines, in the face of a crisis.

Massachusetts also has the third-highest number of confirmed state coronavirus cases, along with the fourth-highest death toll. And despite predictions that numbers would be falling by now after a month and a half of people staying at home, new case counts have instead remained stubbornly high.

The state’s struggle to combat the coronavirus reflects just what a tenacious adversary it really is. Even for a place that has a lot going for it, the toll has been severe — and it is growing by the day.

As of Friday, Massachusetts had more than 64,000 cases — behind only New York and New Jersey, its larger northeastern neighbors. New cases totaled 2,106, continuing a dismal streak lasting more than two weeks of at least 1,500 additional cases per day. Deaths hit 3,716, behind only New York, New Jersey and Michigan….

The persistence with which people keep getting sick in Massachusetts has been matched in other hard-hit states. Rather than a precipitous decline, the number of new cases in places such as Illinois, California and the D.C. metro area has instead been leveling off slowly.

Experts say that is to be expected, even if it means a long road ahead.

“If social distancing is done well — and Massachusetts has done it pretty well — the effect is going to be to flatten the curve and spread it out over more time,” said David Hamer, professor of global health at Boston University and an infectious-disease physician at Boston Medical Center. “Instead of a peak, it’s a prolonged plateau. It’s going to be a gradual decline.”

Massachusetts is also working to incorporate cases and deaths that may have been left out of official counts. That will make our numbers look worse. Boston Magazine: Brace for Bigger Numbers of Official Massachusetts COVID-19 Cases.

The warnings have come again and again over the past several weeks: The official count of confirmed cases of COVID-19 is not what it seems. Month-to-month death totals show spikes that far outpace existing data on virus-caused fatalities. Antibody tests suggest neighborhood infection rates as high as one-in-three, far outpacing the number officially confirmed by nasal swabs. People wary of leaving home to seek treatment for any illnesses—pandemic-related or not—may choose to ride out their symptoms at home and may never get official confirmation of what ails them. Without a massive effort to swab every single person in Massachusetts all at once, which would be impossible, it seems the best we can do is make an informed guess about how many people have been touched by this thing, and what we should do in response.

So a new effort to make that guess more accurate may produce some shocking figures, but they shouldn’t come as a surprise. State public health officials now say they are working to count even unconfirmed COVID-19 cases in pandemic-tracking data, and expect to see the official numbers jump upward as a result. The new approach will see those with milder symptoms, or those who have not been tested and do not meet more stringent criteria for classifying illnesses as COVID, added to the tally in hopes of better tracking and responding to the spread of the disease.

In aggregate, more accurate data can give us a look at how the pandemic is trending overall. But the specifics of the results from the tests themselves, it seems, don’t tell us very much. There just aren’t enough tests to tell us conclusively who has had the virus and when, and how they got it, and where.

Read more at the link.

When will the state reopen? The Boston Globe: Expect a painfully slow reopening process, Mass. business leaders say.

Safely resuscitating an economy laid low by the coronavirus likely will be painfully slow and require a gradual return to the workplace supported by mandatory face masks, social distancing, and an expansion of state testing that could cost $720 million a year.

That is the sobering assessment of a high-powered Massachusetts business group — backed by research from top medical academics and professionals — that has the ear of the advisers who Governor Charlie Baker will rely on as he weighs how and when to begin lifting COVID-19 restrictions.

Stephen Pagliuca, the private equity investor and co-owner of the Boston Celtics, has been circulating a 70-page report that details the necessary conditions for reopening and recommends that companies bring back workers in phases, based on age and industry, with white-collar employees who can work remotely the last to come back.

“It’s going to be a while before we get back to normal,” Pagliuca, cochairman of Bain Capital, said during an online presentation to business leaders Friday. The report was put together by the Massachusetts High Technology Council and incorporates research from Bain Capital, McKinsey & Co., and a long list of academics including Brandeis professor Michael Rosbash, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2017.

So that’s the situation where I am. I’d love to hear what’s going on in other Sky Dancers’ states.

Meanwhile, states like Georgia and Texas are risking reopening businesses even as cases and deaths rise.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution yesterday: Georgia’s COVID-19 death toll increases to 1,165; cases nearly reach 27.5K.

UPDATE [6:30 p.m.]: Since 11:30 a.m., state officials have increased Georgia’s coronavirus death toll by 18, meaning 1,165 Georgians have died due to the outbreak.

In the past 24 hours, the Georgia Department of Public Health has recorded 33 COVID-19 deaths.

In addition, the DPH confirmed 358 cases of COVID-19 since 11:30 a.m., bringing the state’s total to 27,492. Of those, more than 5,300 patients have been hospitalized at some point in Georgia, which is about 19.3% of all cases. At least 1,229 patients have been admitted into a hospital’s intensive care unit due to the virus.

More than 168,000 tests have been conducted in Georgia, and about 16.3% of those have returned positive results.

ABC News: COVID-19 cases on rise in state that starts 1st phase of reopening.

Texas reported its highest daily number of COVID-19 deaths, just a day before Governor Abbott’s stay-at-home order expired and the state began reopening.

On Thursday, the Lone Star State death toll reached 50, bringing the total number of coronavirus fatalities in the state to 782. Positive cases increased by 1,033, the biggest one-day jump in three weeks.

These numbers precede phase one of the governor’s reopening plan, taking effect May 1. Under the new guidelines, all retail stores, restaurants, movie theaters, and malls may reopen, but must limit their capacity to 25% of their listed occupancy. Museums and libraries are permitted to open under the same guidelines, while churches and places of worship remain open.

“As we open Texas, we are each called upon to be Texans; to act responsibly as we reengage in the economy, to continue following all health precautions and sanitizing guidelines, and to care for our vulnerable neighbors. Lives depend on our actions. I know you will respond as Texans,” Gov. Greg Abbott stated in his report to open the state.

The Texas Democratic Party has criticized the Republican governor, posting on twitter, “Governor Abbott’s slow reaction to the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent rush to reopen the state is shameful.

Though the state has eased restrictions, many cities are keeping their own safeguards in place.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is working overtime to cover up their mistakes in dealing with the pandemic.

The Washington Post: White House blocks Fauci from testifying before House panel next week.

The White House is blocking Anthony S. Fauci from testifying before a House subcommittee investigating the coronavirus outbreak and response, arguing that it would be “counterproductive” for him to appear next week while in the midst of participating in the government’s response to the pandemic.

The White House issued a statement about Fauci’s testimony shortly after The Washington Post published a story Friday afternoon quoting a spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee, who said the White House was refusing to allow Fauci to appear at a subcommittee hearing next week.

”In fact, Fauci is expected to appear at a Senate hearing related to testing the following week, according to a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.

The Republican Senate, that is.

A Cat Accepts a Lick from a Cow at a Dairy Farm in Massachusetts, photo by Ira Block

Los Angeles Times: Trump administration blocks public disclosure on coronavirus supplies.

The Trump administration is refusing to disclose how it is distributing medical supplies for the coronavirus response that were brought to the U.S. at taxpayer expense through a White House initiative known as Project Air Bridge.

The administration instead has allowed six multibillion-dollar medical supply companies that are receiving government aid to import the supplies to block public release of the data, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Trump Administration continues its whole-of-government response to COVID-19, including safely opening up America again and expediting vaccine development, it is counterproductive to have the very individuals involved in those efforts appearing at congressional hearings,” said White House spokesman Judd Deere. “We are committed to working with Congress to offer testimony at the appropriate time.

“At this time, FEMA does not have the authority to release this information,” a spokesperson for the agency said in response to questions from The Times.

A spokesperson for McKesson Corp., one of the companies, denied making any demand that information be kept secret. “Consistent with McKesson’s commitment to fighting this pandemic, McKesson is cooperating with FEMA to facilitate the release of state-by-state data as appropriate,” the spokesperson said.

Nevertheless, the lack of disclosure effectively hinders any public accounting of which states are receiving the most assistance and what formulas are being used to distribute the equipment, despite a public investment of tens of millions of dollars in the airlift operation.

The lack of transparency about distributions comes on top of the administration’s refusal to provide information about the financial terms the White House struck with the medical distribution companies, which together reported more than $2 billion in profits last year.

The New York Times: Trump Moves to Replace Watchdog Who Identified Critical Medical Shortages.

President Trump moved on Friday night to replace a top official at the Department of Health and Human Services who angered him with a report last month highlighting supply shortages and testing delays at hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic.

The White House waited until after business hours to announce the nomination of a new inspector general for the department who, if confirmed, would take over for Christi A. Grimm, the principal deputy inspector general who was publicly assailed by the president at a news briefing three weeks ago.

The nomination was the latest effort by Mr. Trump against watchdog offices around his administration that have defied him. In recent weeks, he fired an inspector general involved in the inquiry that led to the president’s impeachment, nominated a White House aide to another key inspector general post overseeing virus relief spending and moved to block still another inspector general from taking over as chairman of a pandemic spending oversight panel.

Mr. Trump has sought to assert more authority over his administration and clear out officials deemed insufficiently loyal in the three months since his Senate impeachment trial on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress ended in acquittal largely along party lines. While inspectors general are appointed by the president, they are meant to be semiautonomous watchdogs ferreting out waste, fraud and corruption in executive agencies….

[Ms. Grimm’s] report, released last month and based on extensive interviews with hospitals around the country, identified critical shortages of supplies, revealing that hundreds of medical centers were struggling to obtain test kits, protective gear for staff members and ventilators. Mr. Trump was embarrassed by the report at a time he was already under fire for playing down the threat of the virus and not acting quickly enough to ramp up testing and provide equipment to doctors and nurses.

That’s all I have for you today. I’m getting ready for a visit from my brother and at least one of my nephews. They can’t some inside, but we can take a walk and sit on a bench outside on this lovely spring day.

Have a nice weekend, Sky Dancers!

Friday Reads: Nasty Tempered Man Baby refuses to Mask and Isolate

Posted: May 1, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: 2020 Elections, COVID19, morning reads | 21 Comments

Good  Morning!

I’m just kinda sorta wondering what all of this year’s adventures are going to do to kids.  Then, I see things like this …  Barley Beth and Ethel are simply divine.  I’m also thrilled to see my friends all over the city with their small children and their home and school activities.  I’m sure not all houses have access to food, the internet, and at least one parent that can stay at home during these times and function in so many roles.  I’m sure that many resilient kids will bounce back and grown up fine.  I just really worry about the already disenfranchised ones or the ones whose parents must work and are left to their own devices for the day.

 

Kids really are a great reminder of why we need to stop doing stupid things to the world, the animals around, the plants, and each other.

cronoroy

Recognize today’s art? So, a lot of these clever children’s books covers updated for a the Covid-19 Pandemic come from “Jerusalem-area dad designs COVID-19 versions of classic kids books. Eytan Buchman, a hi-tech professional, got creative adapting classic children’s book covers to the situation.”

The others come from the artist Stefanie Trilling and you may find them on her facebook page where she has all kinds of covers in her Children’s books for Pandemics  page.  I used to read Corduroy to Dr. Daughter all the time so this one was fun for me as well as her Good Night Zoom.  My sister’s favorite nighttime story was Good Night Moon and I used to hear my Dad and Mom discuss how crazy they were going reading it over and over. And now, I say goodnight Zoom to my Financial Engineering class every Wednesday night.

So there’s Ethel and Barley and then there are man babies who must’ve had horrid parents or something.  Ever wonder what kind of cruelties create these sort’ve people and the man baby in the white house trying to kill us all because he needs attention constantly and can’t be bothered to actually do his job?

Trump is showing he can’t go without an attention fix as heads to Arizona with all the hoopla and tax payer money that involves for no really good reason. Also, his fluffers  will get him good and ready for his West Point show.  How many good people will lose their lives because he simply can’t stay at home in the one place where nearly everything is available to him?  This includes doing his damned job that he’s not ever really doing?

He’s undoubtedly reading the polls and still ranting at his staff for showing him how badly he’s losing to Biden right now. So, no wonder he wants to kill us all–and especially the folks working at meat plats and those first responders–because he needs a rally fix.  So, off to Arizona because why not?  This is from Market Watch.

President Donald Trump will leave Washington next week for a trip to Arizona, getting out of the White House and back on the road as states ease coronavirus lockdowns and polls reportedly show his support dwindling in battleground states.

Trump announced the Arizona trip, as well as plans to visit Ohio “very soon,” during a White House event on Wednesday with executives from companies including Wynn Resorts WYNN, -5.74% and Hilton HLT, -3.98%.

“I think I’m going to Arizona next week,” Trump said. “And I’m going to, I hope, Ohio very soon. And we’re going to start to move around.” A White House spokesman later said Trump would visit a Honeywell HON, -4.72% facility in Phoenix on Tuesday.

Both Arizona and Ohio are considered crucial states for the November presidential election. Trump reportedly erupted at his top political advisers last week when they presented him with polling data that showed his support eroding in a series of battleground states as his response to the coronavirus comes under criticism.

The Associated Press reported that new surveys by the Republican National Committee and Trump’s campaign pointed to a harrowing picture for the president as he faces reelection.

Here’s the Kicker:

Trump added at the Wednesday event that he wanted to begin holding “massive rallies” “in the not-too-distant future,” but gave no planned dates.

White House spokesman Judd Deere said Trump’s Tuesday visit “will highlight Honeywell’s investment in critical medical equipment production within the United States and the addition of 500 manufacturing jobs in Arizona.”

“Honeywell is adding new production capability at an existing aerospace facility to meet the increased demand for N-95 respirator masks in the face of COVID-19,” he added.

Yeah, well as for that “President Trump’s Favorability Ratings Recede from March’s Peak”. via PRRI.

New data from PRRI shows that President Donald Trump’s favorability rating has dropped seven points over the last four weeks. Today, just over four in ten (43%) Americans hold mostly or very favorable views of Trump, compared to a 54% majority who hold mostly or very unfavorable views of him. In mid-March, Trump’s favorable rating was 49%, the highest at any point since 2015, and the first time in PRRI polling that Americans have been more likely to say they have a favorable than the unfavorable view (46%).

Trump benefited from a brief “rally around the flag” effect as the coronavirus pandemic began to spread in the U.S. But over the last four weeks — as the total number of reported U.S. cases of the coronavirus increased exponentially from around 33,000 cases to more than 900,000 cases — this boost has rapidly dissipated.[1]Trump’s current favorability rating (43%) is similar to the 40% of Americans who held favorable views of him in February shortly after he was acquitted of impeachment charges, and the 41% of Americans who held favorable views of him between March and December 2019.

The AJC reports “Internal GOP poll points to troubling signs for Georgia Republicans.” . This reported by Greg Bluestein.  We know what JJ thinks about her ‘governor’ already and she’s not alone.  Imagine Biden taking Georgia!

An internal poll conducted for the Georgia House GOP Caucus points to troubling signs for Republican leaders: President Donald Trump is deadlocked with Joe Biden and voters aren’t giving the White House, Gov. Brian Kemp or the Legislature high marks for the coronavirus response.

The poll also suggests trouble for U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, showing the former financial executive with 11% of the vote and essentially tied with Democrats Matt Lieberman and Raphael Warnock. U.S. Rep. Doug Collins leads the November field with 29% of the vote, and outdoes Loeffler among Republicans by a 62-18 margin.

The survey, obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, was conducted by the political polling and research firm Cygnal between April 25-27 and it involved 591 likely voters. The margin of error is 4 percentage points.

It’s one of the few recent polls that offer a snapshot of how Georgians view the government’s pandemic response, though it was taken before Kemp’s decision Thursday to lift the shelter-in-place order for most Georgians.

The WSJ reports Trump is losing seniors to Biden too. “Trump Makes Push for Seniors as Coronavirus Crisis Erodes Support. President trails Joe Biden in polls among older voters, who are paying close attention to his handling of the pandemic—and watching his press briefings”  The funniest reports are the ones about Trumperz temper tantrums at his own campaign staff. This is from The Atlantic “It’s Slowly Dawning on Trump That He’s Losing. The president is raging at his advisers, as they try to explain where he went wrong.”

It’s far too early to know who will win the 2020 presidential election, but at the moment, President Donald Trump is losing.

There’s ample polling to back that up. RealClearPolitics’s average has the presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, up 6.3 percent on Trump. Polling averages in each of the potentially decisive states show Biden up, too, save North Carolina—and even there, the most recent polls show Biden ahead by 5 percent. A survey of Texans released yesterday even has Biden up by a point in the Lone Star State.

But you don’t have to take the public polling at face value. Take the president’s and his campaign’s word for it.

“I don’t believe the polls,” Trump told Reuters yesterday. Claiming the polls are wrong is the last refuge of a struggling candidate. “I believe the people of this country are smart. And I don’t think that they will put a man in who’s incompetent.” (A bit late for that.)

Privately, however, Trump is not so sanguine. Late yesterday, a trio of stories arrived reporting on turmoil inside the president’s reelection campaign. It’s a throwback to the news-dump Fridays of the early Trump administration—or to the fractious leaks that characterized Trump’s 2016 campaign. CNN reported that Trump screamed at his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, last Friday over his sliding poll numbers, even threatening to sue him. (How serious the threat was, CNN notes, is unclear, and Trump issues empty lawsuit threats as reflexively as many people check their phone.)

The New York Times confirms that account, and The Washington Post adds more detail, saying that campaign, White House, and Republican National Committee officials held a de facto intervention, trying to impress upon the president the political peril he faces and to get him to rein in his catastrophic daily briefings.

So, how is bothering workers making much needed PPE or threatening Ohio with a massive rally supposed to help any of this?  Well, that’s the wrong question. The question is how ill is this man that he needs to do these things at this time?

So,that Biden Sexual Assault thing. (sigh) Y’all know I’m only voting for Joe because every one that voted in the primaries cancelled my vote if it ever gets cast at this point.  I’ve got a long list of complaints and most of them are actually major complaints.  However, given the other choice is the death of us all and the country, he’s like the only sane choice.

Here’s some links on that.

Joe Biden:  Statement by Vice President Joe Biden

Washington Post: Joe Biden denies he sexually assaulted a former Senate aide, calls on National Archives to release complaint if it exists

BuzzFeed News: Tara Reade Knows She Has A Difficult Allegation. And She’s Had A Difficult Time Getting A Hearing.

Katie Glueck / New York Times:  Biden Denies Tara Reade’s Assault Allegation

CNN:  Biden denies sexual assault allegation: ‘This never happened’

Joe Biden released a statement Friday denying a former aide’s claims he sexually assaulted her 27 years ago, saying of Tara Reade’s allegation: “This never happened.”

Friday’s statement is the first detailed response from Biden to Reade’s allegation and comes as pressure built on the presumptive Democratic nominee to personally address the matter.

“While the details of these allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault are complicated, two things are not complicated. One is that women deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and when they step forward they should be heard, not silenced. The second is that their stories should be subject to appropriate inquiry and scrutiny,” the former vice president and presumptive Democratic 2020 nominee said in the statement.

He continued, “Responsible news organizations should examine and evaluate the full and growing record of inconsistencies in her story, which has changed repeatedly in both small and big ways.”

“But this much bears emphasizing,” he said. “She has said she raised some of these issues with her supervisor and senior staffers from my office at the time. They — both men and a woman — have said, unequivocally, that she never came to them and complained or raised issues. News organizations that have talked with literally dozens of former staffers have not found one — not one — who corroborated her allegations in any way. Indeed, many of them spoke to the culture of an office that would not have tolerated harassment in any way — as indeed I would not have.”

In the MSNBC interview, Biden said he is “saying unequivocally, it never, never happened. It didn’t. It never happened.”

He said he has not reached out to Reade, and does not remember her making any complaint.

So, I guess we have to watch this play out.  We have one pussy grabber in the office already and a whole lotta people didn’t care about it.  I just don’t even know what to say at this point other than what the fuck is the matter with men in this country if they think they can just do these things?

But, then, a lotta people just weren’t parented very well, I guess.  Stay Safe!  Be Kind and Gentle to yourself!  We’re all in this together!

Well, some of us other.  Others are trying to killing us  Just ask Politico! “Wearing a mask is for smug liberals.  Refusing to is for reckless Republicans. ”  So why not ignite yet another culture war?

For progressives, masks have become a sign that you take the pandemic seriously and are willing to make a personal sacrifice to save lives. Prominent people who don’t wear them are shamed and dragged on Twitter by lefty accounts. On the right, where the mask is often seen as the symbol of a purported overreaction to the coronavirus, mask promotion is a target of ridicule, a sign that in a deeply polarized America almost anything can be politicized and turned into a token of tribal affiliation.

Yeah.  That’s all I needed to read.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

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