Tuesday Reads: Governors DeSantis and Abbott Are Killing Their Citizens.
Posted: August 10, 2021 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Covid-19, Delta variant, Florida, Gregg Abbott, masks, Ron DeSantis, schools, Texas 20 Comments
Childe Hassam, Geraniums, 1888
Good Morning!!
Right now the Southern states are experiencing the kind of surges that hit us in the Northeast at the beginning of the pandemic. Unfortunately these states are dealing with the Delta variant, which spreads much more easily than the early versions of the virus. That’s bad enough, but many Republican governors are making it worse by fighting against simple mitigation strategies that can protect their citizens.
Dakinikat sent me this article from Yahoo News: Southern Hospitals, Crushed By Delta Strain, Report Running Out Of ICU Beds.
Hospitals across the southern United States are reporting dramatic surges in coronavirus patients, forcing some to close their emergency rooms and others to treat more patients than they have capacity for as the delta variant of the virus continues to wreak havoc on regions with large swaths of unvaccinated residents.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) on Monday said the state had “very startling” figures showing the largest, single-day increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations since the pandemic began. He said state hospitals had just eight beds in the ICU left for severely ill patients.
In Louisiana, an epicenter of the current wave, hospitalizations were climbing at the fastest rate since the pandemic started. Last week, the head of the state’s largest hospital described recent weeks as the “darkest” thus far, saying doctors were no longer able to provide patients adequate care under a crush in admissions.
“When you come inside our walls, it is quite obvious to you that these are the darkest days of this pandemic,” Dr. Catherine O’Neal, who runs the Our Lady of the Lake Hospital in Baton Rouge, said last Monday.
O’Neal added later that week that dozens of children and young adults were now in the hospital, a reality that’s new under the delta variant. Half of the 12 children admitted were under the age of 2, The Advocate reported.
At least Louisiana has a Democratic Governor–Jon Bel Edwards–who actually cares about the situation. Not so in Florida and Texas, where Ron DeSantis and Gregg Abbott seem determined to kill as many of their citizens as possible.
Florida reported similar circumstances, with many hospitals over capacity. The Wall Street Journal reported that at least 43% of the state’s intensive care beds are filled with coronavirus patients, prompting complex logistical issues as hospital workers race to find space for a tide of sick residents.
And in Texas several hospitals said they were closing their emergency rooms due to a surge in COVID-19 cases, directing patients elsewhere.
The Artist’s Garden in Argenteuil, Dahlias, 1873’s Garden in Argenteuil, 1873, Claude Monet
The delta variant has upended the country’s reopening plans, prompting cities and states nationwide to reinstate social distancing measures and mask mandates that were relaxed just months ago and meant to usher in an era of relative freedom. Now, COVID-19 cases are rising in every state in the U.S. and hit the highest levels this week since February, averaging more than 100,000 a day.
Many of the states with the biggest outbreaks have some of the nation’s lowest vaccination rates and are led by Republican governors and legislatures that have made it much more difficult to protect their citizens. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has banned vaccine passports and mask mandates for some businesses and schools. Arkansas’ Hutchinson said he made an error when he barred new mask mandates in April, and Texas’ Greg Abbott (R) has faced revolt from some school districts who have threatened to sue over his order to ban mask mandates.
Stephen Collinson at CNN: Kids are the victims of new GOP bid to politicize the pandemic.
America is being forced yet again to learn the same, repetitive lesson of the pandemic: Fighting a raging, evolving virus with cynicism-laced politics rather than medical data only leads to the same result – a prolonged national nightmare.
School kids are the latest victims as Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, the Republican governors of Florida and Texas, prioritize ideology over public health guidance. The governors are clashing with local officials who are resisting their orders banning school mask mandates, which appear to directly contradict traditional conservative resistance to distant, centralized power.
The Delta variant of Covid-19 is challenging the long-held belief that children don’t get hit hard by the coronavirus. The American Association of Pediatrics reported last week that the US had an 84% increase in new Covid-19 cases among children from July 22 to 29, and Dr. Aileen Marty – an infectious disease expert at Florida International University – told CNN last week that children’s hospitals in the Sunshine State are “completely overwhelmed.”
As the Delta variant scythes across the country – especially less-vaccinated Republican states – there are increasing signs that leaders like DeSantis and Abbott have locked themselves into absolutist positions that they will be unable to water down without sustaining serious personal and political damage. But the price for their path is more sickness and death in crowded Covid-19 units among people they were elected to serve.
Renée Carpentier-Wintz
“For any other disease, you would not turn to your political leader for medical advice,” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told CNN’s Pamela Brown on Monday. “Politicians should really let the public health and physician leaders move forward on how to get this thing under control.” [….]
The irony is that by resisting similar measures, these Republicans have proved true warnings by federal health officials that the Delta variant represents a grave threat. Now the same dynamic may play out again, as they ignore CDC advice that all kids in schools should wear masks.
Both governors enjoy strong support in conservative media. DeSantis was recently celebrated by right-wing pundits for his handling of the pandemic and is seen as a possible alternative nominee in 2024 if ex-President Donald Trump decides not to run again. ThSo their refusal to change course as conditions worsen only bolsters the impression that those who want a political future in the GOP must now demonstrate their contempt for common-sense health measures, just as surely as they must repeatedly prove their devotion to Trump.
There’s much more at the CNN link.
Both Abbott and DeSantis have ordered school districts not to require masks; some school officials are resisting. DeSantis is even threatening to defund schools that require masks. CNN: Florida governor’s office says state could withhold salaries of officials who enact school mask mandates.
In a move that escalated Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ fight over mask mandates, the governor’s office said Monday that the state board of education could move to withhold the salaries of superintendents and school board members who disregard the governor’s executive order that effectively prohibits mask mandates in school districts.
Last month DeSantis, a Republican, issued an executive order requiring the state’s health and education departments to create rules based on parents’ rights to make the health care decisions for their children who are students. Several lawsuits have since been filed challenging the constitutionality of the executive order.
Several school districts are considering mask mandates and a few have said masks will be required, with some opt-out exceptions.
A statement from the governor’s office on Monday says the state board of education “could move to withhold the salary of the district superintendent or school board members.”
His spokeswoman, Christina Pushaw, pinned a tweet Monday that reads: “Ultimately — Education funding is for the students. The kids didn’t make the decision to encroach upon parents’ rights. So any financial penalties for breaking the rule would be targeted to those officials who made that decision.”
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Woman with a Parasol in a Garden, 1875
It’s close, but I’d have to say DeSantis is the worst. How bad is Covid in Florida? Newsweek: Florida’s COVID Death Rate Is More Than 32 States Combined.
According to a COVID tracker created by The New York Times, Florida is currently recording a seven-day average of 122.1 deaths in the state from the virus, a figure larger than 32 other states combined.
Florida’s figure is also more than double that of the second most affected state, Texas, which is currently recording a seven-day average of 57.6, closely followed by California with around 42 people dying every day.
Louisiana and Missouri have also been badly affected, with average death rates of 33.4 and 25.1 each, while Maine and Vermont are faring the best, reporting figures of 0.1 and 0.3 respectively.
USA Today: As kids return to school, most Florida counties report COVID cases four times higher than last year.
Most Florida children are returning to school in areas where COVID-19 outbreaks are far more intense than they were when school started last year.
In most counties, cases are at least four times higher than a year ago, a USA TODAY Network analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows. Five counties report a more than tenfold increase.
Cases among children are surging too, raising questions about the health consequences of students returning to campuses and a state ban on school mask mandates while vaccines are available for only some of the schoolchildren.
Public health experts and pediatricians said last fall that the most important factor to consider when deciding whether to start classes in-person was the amount of viral spread in the community at large. With cases so much higher than last year, districts are going against those recommendations by welcoming students to campus and limiting online learning options. Those moves follow instructions from the state government, which also prohibited schools from requiring masks for all children.
Over the seven days prior to last Friday’s state report, Florida saw 13,596 cases among children under 12, and 13,858 cases among ages 12 to 19.
Do Fournier, 1951
Philip Bump at The Washington Post: When it comes to the new coronavirus surge, Florida is an obvious outlier.
The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, appealed for out-of-state help to fight the third wave of Covid-19 in his state amid dire warnings while two more of the state’s largest school districts announced mask mandates in defiance of the increasingly hardline Republican.
Abbott’s request came on Monday as a county-owned hospital in Houston raised tents to accommodate their coronavirus patient overflow.
Private hospitals in the county already were requiring their staff to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
Meanwhile, the Dallas and Austin school districts announced Monday that they would require students and staff to wear face masks. The Houston school district already announced a mask mandate for its students and staff later this week if its board approves.
The highly contagious Delta variant is fueling the wave.
The Republican governor has directed the Texas department of state health services to use staffing agencies to find additional medical staff from beyond the state’s borders as the Delta wave began to overwhelm its present staffing resources.
He also has sent a letter to the Texas Hospital Association to request that hospitals postpone all elective medical procedures voluntarily.
As a result of the increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, the state of Florida requested 300 ventilators from the federal government, according to a Department of Health and Human Services planning document obtained by ABC News.
Flowering Garden, Vincent Van Gogh
The request was made on Friday “to replace expended state stores,” the document said.
The ventilators were expected to be delivered on Monday, though it was not said how they will be allocated.
It comes as doctors are stressed and hospitals are tapped for resources, their beds continuing to fill with unvaccinated patients infected with the virus.
“The nurses, the physicians, they have passed burnout a long time ago,” said Dr. Joshua Lenchus, Broward Health’s chief medical officer. “This is sheer exhaustion”
Florida reported an average of over 19,000 new coronavirus cases per day last week, and more than 13,000 hospitalizations were reported across the state Sunday.
CDC metrics on Monday showed five consecutive days with more than 20,000 new infections.
I feel for the citizens of Texas and Florida–especially the young children, who are at the mercy of their parents’ political ideologies as they return to school. This is completely insane!
That’s my rant for today. Thanks for reading, and I hope you stay safe and healthy wherever you live.
Monday Reads: Climate Change is more Dire than we Knew
Posted: August 9, 2021 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Climate change, climate science 6 Comments
“Landscape with Rainbow (Right-hand part of the Three-part fire screen)”
Franz Marc – Painting – 1913
Good Day Sky Dancers!
All the headlines are rather dire today. The Andrew Cuomo stories of sexual harassment are growing with worse-than-ever details. The Republicans have gone deficit hawk and are now refusing to increase the deficit level. The Delta Variant news just keeps getting worse. However, the recent climate change research backs up our anecdotal stories on what we see and experience as intense outlier weather events are related to worsening climate change. A newly released UN report suggests that “Humans have pushed the climate into ‘unprecedented’ territory, landmark U.N. report finds. U.N. chief calls findings ‘a code red for humanity’ with worse climate impacts to come unless greenhouse gas pollution falls dramatically. This coverage is from WaPo
The landmark report, compiled by 234 authors relying on more than 14,000 studies from around the globe, bluntly lays out for policymakers and the public the most up-to-date understanding of the physical science on climate change. Released amid a summer of deadly fires, floods and heat waves, it arrives less than three months before a critical summit this November in Scotland, where world leaders face mounting pressure to move more urgently to slow the Earth’s warming.
Monday’s sprawling assessment states that there is no remaining scientific doubt that humans are fueling climate change. That much is “unequivocal.” The only real uncertainty that remains, its authors say, is whether the world can muster the will to stave off a darker future than the one it already has carved in stone.
…
“What the world requires now is real action,” John F. Kerry, the Biden administration’s special envoy for climate, said in a statement about Monday’s findings. “We can get to the low carbon economy we urgently need, but time is not on our side.”
It certainly is not, according to Monday’s report.
Humans can unleash less than 500 additional gigatons of carbon dioxide — the equivalent of about 10 years of current global emissions — to have an even chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.
But hopes for remaining below that threshold — the most ambitious goal outlined in the Paris agreement — are undeniably slipping away. The world has already warmed more than 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), with few signs of slowing, and could pass the 1.5-degree mark early in the 2030s.
Max Pechstein, Untitled Palau Landscape (detail). Oil on canvas. From the estate of Vance E. Kondon and Elisabeth Giesberger.
This report is sliced and diced as the big headline in every news source around the world. Will it get a decent listen and bring about much-needed action? This is from CNN: “Earth is warming faster than previously thought, scientists say, and the window is closing to avoid catastrophic outcomes .”
As the world battles historic droughts, landscape-altering wildfires and deadly floods, a landmark report from global scientists says the window is rapidly closing to cut our reliance on fossil fuels and avoid catastrophic changes that would transform life as we know it.
The state-of-the-science report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the world has rapidly warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels, and is now careening toward 1.5 degrees — a critical threshold that world leaders agreed warming should remain below to avoid worsening impacts.
Only by making deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, while also removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, can we halt the precipitous trend. “Bottom line is that we have zero years left to avoid dangerous climate change, because it’s here,” Michael E. Mann, a lead author of the IPCC’s 2001 report, told CNN.
Unlike previous assessments, Monday’s report concludes it is “unequivocal” that humans have caused the climate crisis and confirms that “widespread and rapid changes” have already occurred, some of them irreversibly.
“Burning Landscape”
Jackson Pollock, 1943
This from NPR cited in the Warren Tweet above.
The authors — nearly 200 leading climate scientists — hope the report’s findings will be front and center when world leaders meet for a major climate conference in November.
The effects of that warming are obvious and deadly around the world. Heat waves, droughts and floods are killing people and disrupting lives around the world this summer. Wildfires are burning with unprecedented frequency and intensity, including in places that used to rarely burn. Smoke and smog are choking people in cities and towns from Asia to the Arctic. Ocean heat waves are threatening entire ecosystems and supercharging hurricanes and typhoons.
The science is clear: Human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are the primary driver of such changes.
One of the biggest recent advances in climate research is in the field of so-called attribution science, which ties global warming to individual weather events such as hurricanes or heat waves. Scientists can now say with certainty that humans are causing more extreme weather, including heavy downpours and extended heat waves and droughts.
“This whiplash — this increase in both extreme wet and dry events — is projected to increase through the 21st century,” says Kim Cobb, one of the report authors and a paleoclimate scientist at Georgia Institute of Technology.
This is the first time that paleoclimate researchers, who study the climate of the past to understand how Earth will change in the future, have helped write every chapter of the report. Their work helps put today’s climate in perspective. “We can now say global surface temps are reaching levels not seen in 100,000 years,” says Cobb. “The rate of warming since 1970 is higher than any 50-year period in the last 2,000 years.”
The report also confirms that global sea level rise is accelerating. Globally, sea levels rose about 8 inches on average between 1901 and 2018, although the water rose much more in some places, including in some cities on the East Coast and Gulf Coast of the United States.
Sea level rise is primarily driven by melting glaciers, and Arctic ice. There’s a lag between emissions and ice melting, which means even if humans were to stop all greenhouse gas emissions today, sea levels would continue to rise for a few decades, the report notes.
“Sea level change through the middle of this century has largely been locked in,” says Bob Kopp, one of the report’s authors and the director of the Institute of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at Rutgers University. That means no matter what, people living in coastal areas will need to adapt to higher seas.
This tweet links to the reports.
“The Rainy Season in the Amazon Rainforest ” , Kazuya Akimoto. ‘2008
Of course, nothing changes if we can’t get the world to change or even change things at the local level. My state’s politics are somewhat driven by the priorities of the Oil and Gas industry. They throw money around to ensure it stays that way. This is from Forbes. “Fugitive Methane Worsens Warming: New Assessments Point To Urgent Oil And Gas Fix.” Methane is the third leg of this discussion.
The word fugitive methane conjures up the Harrison Ford movie, where the hero was always running and hiding. It’s a good concept for methane leakages that occur in all phases of natural gas production and processing, except they are not heroes.
Methane has also been hiding from the press which has paid most attention to controlling carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas (GHG). But the poor sister has now awakened to tell us she is responsible for 25% of present global warming. The world should have had a second Paris Agreement for methane back in 2015.
But its not too late as the “methane lever” can still be moved to make a substantial change to current warming by global GHG emissions.
Methane is the second important greenhouse gas. Methane emissions are surreptitious and really bad. The global warming effect of methane is 20-80 times that of carbon dioxide, depending on duration (how many warming years are counted).
The amount of methane in the atmosphere has more than doubled in the past 250 years since the industrial revolution
Fossil fuels, agriculture, and waste management comprise the big three sources of man-made methane. In the US, methane emissions from oil and gas are almost half of all man-made methane emissions.
So, that’s a lot to read and think about so I’ll leave the down thread shares to you as well as the discussion.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Lazy Caturday Reads: The Pandemic is Bad Again and Getting Worse.
Posted: August 7, 2021 Filed under: just because 21 Comments
Cat Fight, Leonard Tsuguharu Foujita
Good Morning!!
I hate to keep focusing on the pandemic; but, unfortunately, it’s bad again and getting worse. The AP reports: US now averaging 100,000 new COVID-19 infections a day.https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-b0811d7287ef240ae619ba1e385e0a63
The U.S. is now averaging 100,000 new COVID-19 infections a day, returning to a milestone last seen during the winter surge in yet another bleak reminder of how quickly the delta variant has spread through the country.
The U.S. was averaging about 11,000 cases a day in late June. Now the number is 107,143.
It took the U.S. about nine months to cross the 100,000 average case number in November before peaking at about 250,000 in early January. Cases bottomed out in June but took about six weeks to go back above 100,000, despite a vaccine that has been given to more than 70% of the adult population.
The seven-day average for daily new deaths also increased, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. It rose over the past two weeks from about 270 deaths per day to nearly 500 a day as of Friday.
The virus is spreading quickly through unvaccinated populations, especially in the South where hospitals have been overrun with patients.
Health officials are fearful that cases will continue to soar if more Americans don’t embrace the vaccine.
“Our models show that if we don’t (vaccinate people), we could be up to several hundred thousand cases a day, similar to our surge in early January,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky said on CNN this week.
Joe Pinkster at The Atlantic: Yes, the Pandemic Is Bad Again. Masks are reappearing and return-to-office plans have been postponed. Welcome to Delta’s whiplash.
In early August—well before the colder months when the coronavirus thrives—many Americans, even vaccinated ones, are finding themselves with the same sort of anxieties they were relieved to let go of in the spring: If I eat at a restaurant, what is the risk to myself and others? What about going to my workplace? And what will restrictions allow me and my loved ones to do a couple of months from now?
Painting by Yana Movchan
Of course, the pandemic is nowhere near as bad as it was last winter, thanks to vaccines that confer high levels of protection against symptomatic cases of COVID-19. The 60 percent of U.S. adults who are fully vaccinated are substantially safer than the 40 percent who aren’t, even with the Delta variant circulating.
But emotionally, the near future feels uncertain again. Just a few months ago, I felt like the rest of the year was easier to visualize. Now a light fog seems to have descended, similar to the denser one that obscured the future for the first year of the pandemic. I’m back to feeling a mild sense of the “horizonlessness”—the lack of a firm reference point in the future—that was pervasive last year.
Even some experts are surprised by the swerve the pandemic has taken. Before Delta, Andrew Noymer, a public-health professor at UC Irvine, wasn’t expecting a significant resurgence of the virus—or a need to re-mask—until the fall. Earlier this summer, “I was out there saying that it’s okay to take off your mask,” Noymer told me. “And here we are seven weeks later—there’s Delta, and guess who’s masking at the grocery store again, even though he’s fully vaccinated? This guy. I feel the same whiplash.”
David Smith at The Guardian: Biden said America had ‘gained the upper hand’ over Covid – has Delta changed the game?
A month ago Joe Biden appeared to have victory over the coronavirus pandemic within his grasp. As tens of millions of Americans got vaccinated, cases, hospitalizations and deaths were falling precipitously.
Not so fast. In the past week alone the highly contagious Delta variant fueled a rise in daily Covid-19 cases of 43% and pushed deaths up by 39%. Republicans such as Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, proved all too willing to take the politicization of face masks to new extremes.
Biden is confronted anew by the reality that he is trying to govern a nation cripplingly polarized in politics, media and even science. The US president and his team of experts’ mission to tame the pandemic and heal divisions has collided with the Delta variant and the DeSantis variant.
“They may have underestimated the degree to which vaccine hesitancy would become a Republican party platform position,” said Laurie Garrett, an award-winning science writer and author of The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance. “They were imagining that they were dealing with people who were individually scared, had concerns based on crazy things they read on the internet, were fearful of getting autism.
Two Cats, by Gertrude Abercrombie
“What they didn’t imagine is that there would be this whole deliberate Republican party position of opposition to all things that Biden would put forward about Covid. It’s not just vaccines, it’s masks, it’s social distancing, now it’s going to be vaccine passports. I’m just waiting for the guns to come out.” [….]
Garrett added: “The White House has really struggled to come up with a strategy to deal with the 20, 25%, virulently anti-vaccine faction. I don’t think they’ve come close to imagining a strategy for that.
“It’s not for lack of trying. They’ve got they’ve gone through the entire cookbook of recipes for, confronting vaccine resistance and refusal.and I think they just are at a loss, just as we are for just about everything else that goes on politically in the United States right now.”
The vaccine resisters will choose to poison themselves rather than get two life-saving shots in the arm. The Daily Beast: Pharmacists Fight Off COVID Truthers Demanding Horse Medicine Instead of the Jab.
It’s not snake oil, literally. But as bogus COVID-19 miracle drugs go, horse paste comes pretty close.
As coronavirus infections rage among the unvaccinated, those suspicious of the shot are championing a new supposed COVID-19 cure. Thanks to a dubious study of ivermectin, a drug used in humans to treat parasites like scabies, cranks have seized on the drug as the new solution to coronavirus prevention and treatment.
Devotees have besieged pharmacists with prescriptions from shady online prescribers, forcing pharmacies to crack down and treat the antiparasitic drugs like opioids. As human-approved ivermectin prescriptions have been harder to come by, enthusiasts have taken to raiding rural tractor supply stores in search of ivermectin horse paste (packed with “apple flavor!”) and weighed the benefits of taking ivermectin “sheep drench” and a noromectin “injection for swine and cattle.”
“There is certainly a noticeable increase in calls to poison centers regarding ivermectin being misused,” a Texas-based poison control specialist, who requested anonymity due to concerns of repercussions, told The Daily Beast via email. “It’s clear that a vast majority are associated with a belief that it will prevent or treat COVID. That said, I do want to be careful not to be sensational—there’s no epidemic of ivermectin overdoses in hospitals, but it’s needless suffering given the lack of conclusive evidence of a benefit.”
All to treat and prevent a disease for which there’s a free and widely available vaccine.
There’s much more on these crazies at the link.
Hernán Valdovinos, 1948
Last year, before the vaccine was available, hundreds of thousands of bikers converged in Sturgis, South Dakota for a massive super-spreader event, and then took the virus home to infect their friends and families in several other states. Now vaccine resisters have once again converged on Sturgis for another super-spreader.
The Washington Post: Sturgis Motorcycle Rally revs up, drawing thousands and heightening delta superspreader fears.
Friday Reads: The War on Vaccines and Masks (i.e Health)
Posted: August 6, 2021 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: coronavirus pandemic Covid-19 35 Comments
“JAN 14 1956, JAN 15 1956; Nurse Cuca Martinez (Left) does her best to soothe Elizabeth Tarrant, 7, of 881 S. Umatilla St., Dr. Rosalind Ting (right) readies the needle for child’s first polio injection. Elizabeth received her inoculation at the last free public clinic of the current series. Which was stopped because of a shortage of Salk vaccine.; Credit : Denver Post (Photo By Cloyd Teter/The Denver Post via Getty Images) – . GettyGetty”
Good Morning Sky Dancers!
I’ve spent the early morning basically hearing one colleague after another at LSU beg their President and Board to take this 4th surge of Covid-19 seriously. They were interrupted because the Board just had to listen to a sportscaster. They are not going to test students, staff, and faculty. They are not even taking the State’s order of indoor masking seriously. We’ve done all of this before and politics and idiots are making things unsafe.
I remember getting in the station wagon, Daddy drove us to the gymnasium of Herbert Hoover Elementary school where everyone from my toddler sister and kindergartner me waved and smiled at all our friends and neighbors and got shots. I had the measles, the chickenpox, and enough of those diseases that Me–the mother–took both my kids to get what vaccines were available. While Dr. Daughter had about as bad of chickenpox experience as I did, Baby daughter got into the trials for the chickenpox vaccine and had exactly one of the crusty little things show up near the injection site and no misery. I had a wallet-sized record of vaccines that I had to show whenever I went to a new school or university. No big deal. I’m pretty sure that was a nearly universal experience. Anyone who lived through any pandemic or massively deadly outbreak of something just did what they should do. Roll up your sleeve and be thankful you’re not going to be the next person sick.
WTF has happened?
I’m watching this thread of Robert Mann who has basically said that he’s resigned himself to getting covid-19 even though he’s vaccinated because there will be massive numbers of unmasked, unvaccinated people on campus all crammed into rooms with inadequate ventilation. The only ones the President and the board seem concerned about are the damn football players.
“Children receiving diphtheria immunization, New York City, 1920s
Metropolitan Life Insurance company promoted diphtheria immunization in New York in the 1920s. The children lined to up receive what at that time would have been toxin-antitoxin mixture from school nurses.”
UNO–no longer part of the LSU system but the LU system–still plans to open up too. I’m not teaching there this fall and frankly, I see that as a good thing for me. I can’t believe that everything will not be shut down again by September because of deliberately stupid people’s politics. Meanwhile, the private sector is stepping up.
Michael M. Grynbaum / New York Times: CNN fires three employees who went into the office unvaccinated.
Alison Sider / Wall Street Journal: United Airlines to Require All U.S. Employees to Get Covid-19 Vaccines
Jake Harris / WFAA-TV: Back to School: Here’s what to know about vaccination requirements
Christa Emmer / Our Community Now: Disney to Reinstate Mask Requirements at US Parks
Meanwhile, President Biden is getting more creative about ways to get the country vaccinated. This is from WaPo: “Biden administration considers withholding funds and other measures to spur vaccinations.”
The Biden administration is considering using federal regulatory powers and the threat of withholding federal funds from institutions to push more Americans to get vaccinated — a huge potential shift in the fight against the virus and a far more muscular approach to getting shots into arms, according to four people familiar with the deliberations.
The effort could apply to institutions as varied as long-term-care facilities, cruise ships and universities, potentially impacting millions of Americans, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations.
The conversations are in the early phases and no firm decisions have been made, the people said. One outside lawyer in touch with the Biden administration on the issue is recommending that the president use federal powers sparingly.
There is a particular focus in the discussions on whether restrictions on Medicare dollars or other federal funds could be used to persuade nursing homes and other long-term-care facilities to require employees to be vaccinated, according to one of the people familiar with the talks.If the Biden administration goes forward with the plans, it would amount to a dramatic escalation in the effort to vaccinate the roughly 90 million Americans who are eligible for shots but who have refused or have been unable to get them.
The discussion at the highest level of government also signals a new phase of potential federal intervention as the White House struggles to control the delta variant of the virus, which is spreading more rapidly than even some of the more dire models predicted.
Elvis Presley receives a polio vaccination from doctors at the CBS studios, New York, in 1956. Photograph: Seymour Wally/NY Daily News via Getty Images
Headlines on the Delta surge from Republicans are beyond ridiculous including DeSantos blaming the Delta surge on Biden and refugees at the Southern Border while totally ignoring his mismanagement of Florida’s Public Health. This is from the Miami Herald: “Incredibly, DeSantis blames Florida COVID surge on Biden, immigrants. Scapegoat much?” This is an Op Ed by Fabiola Santiago.
Florida Gov. Ron
DeSantis has failed to protect Floridians from COVID-19.
That fact alone is grounds for condemnation, but this week he’s throwing into the mix a little xenophobia for political effect.
Instead of supporting common-sense, expert-guided public health measures to deal with highly transmissible variants in Florida, the governor bet on GOP-branded rhetorical rubbish about “freedom of choice” on life-saving masks and vaccines.
And we lost.
Florida continues to lead the nation in COVID cases and hospitalizations, breaking most of the coronavirus statistical records that chronicle the sickness and suffering residents were, and still are, enduring. It doesn’t get any more gut-wrenching and infuriating than to see cases of children infected with the deadly delta variant soaring in Florida hospitals, more so than in any other state.
These lying bags of conspiracy shit are killing people. It’s insane because it’s mostly their voters that listen to the nonsense but it drags innocent people along for the ride to the cemetery. Los Angeles is looking for ways to mandate vaccines.
Here’s our crazy republican Attorney General shaming the Bishop of Layfette Diocese’s Catholic Churches
Texas and Louisiana are now facing the Lambda variant and it’s uglier than the Delta,
On April 18, 1955, 8-year-old Ann Hill of Tallahassee, Fla., received one of the first Salk polio vaccine shots.
I’m beginning to feel like we’re a group of Cassandras here.
The new COVID Lambda variant has been detected in Louisiana, doctors told WBRZ Thursday.
It was first reported in the U.S. in Houston and health care officials believe since Texas and Louisiana share a border, the virus variant was easily spread.
“I do know that with the proximity with Texas, there have been a few cases detected in North Louisiana with the Lamda variant. But we don’t know whether this is going to be a more aggressive or less aggressive virus,” Dr. Aldo Russo, the medical director at Ochsner said.
Dr. Russo said the Lambda variant has not been detected in the capital region yet, but health care professionals are testing for it.
“We are monitoring this very closely. Our teams are sequencing the different variants,” Dr. Russo said.
The Lambda variant was first reported in Peru in December and has become the dominant strain of the virus there. It’s concerning for the country because the vaccine used in Peru is not effective against this new variant.
“They have stated that there may be some resistance to the vaccine, but that it was a different vaccine that they were using. They were using the Chinese vaccine,” Dr. Russo said.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate was down in July with big gains in employment for Black and Latinx workers. This is via the AP. The entire economy rests on getting through this Delta variant. Maybe that’s why Employers are getting a lot more serious about testing and vaccines than Republican stooges.
U.S employers added 943,000 jobs in July and drove the unemployment rate down to 5.4% in another sign the economy is bouncing back with surprising vigor from COVID-19. But there is growing fear the fast-spreading delta variant will set back the recovery.
The worry is that the resurgent virus could discourage people from going out and spending and trigger another round of shutdowns or other restrictions.
“That is a definite downside risk,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics. “The risk is from a more cautious consumer, if they don’t want to engage in outside activities. … You’re also hearing about big companies that are delaying a return to work. That might be something that slows things down.’’
The Labor Department collected its data for the report in mid-July before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week reversed course and recommended that even vaccinated people resume wearing masks indoors in places where the variant is pushing infections up.
Still, the July numbers looked good. They exceeded economists’ forecast of more than 860,000 new jobs. Encouraged by their prospects, 261,000 Americans returned to the job market in July. And the unemployment rate fell from 5.9% in June.
I think most people prefer mitigation and vaccinated neighbors and workers to another potential shutdown. However, I’m staying put here in Lousyana where our Republican Stooges like everyone miserable but themselves. Here’s so more on the struggle to get folks vaccinated.
Peter Slevin / New Yorker: The Struggle to Vaccinate Springfield, Missouri
Heather Long / Washington Post:‘We’re back to panicking’: Moms are hit hardest with camps, day cares and schools closing again
Nicole Carroll / USA Today: The Backstory: My brother is one of millions who won’t get the COVID-19 vaccine. I asked why. Here are his reasons, my responses.
So, have you made any lifestyle changes yet? More open or back to staying mostly home?
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Thursday Reads: Rude, Repulsive Males Edition
Posted: August 5, 2021 Filed under: just because 14 CommentsGood Morning!!
Is it the pandemic? Lately there have been so many reports of bad behavior by people in public places like airplanes and restaurants. The latest shocking airline incident happened on a Frontier Airlines flight on July 31.
Frontier now says they support the flight attendants, who will be paid during the investigation.
10 WBNS: Ohio man taped to seat on flight after allegedly groping, fighting flight attendants.
An Ohio man and former Ohio Wesleyan University student was arrested after he was reported to have groped two attendants on a flight to Florida, according to a police report from the Miami-Dade Police Department.
The report says 22-year-old Max Berry of Norwalk, in northern Ohio, was on a Frontier Airlines flight on July 31 from Philadelphia to Miami.
Berry finished two alcoholic drinks and ordered another from a flight attendant when he brushed an empty cup against the attendant’s backside, according to the report.
After the attendant told Berry not to touch them, Berry allegedly spilled his new drink on his shirt and went to the restroom.
Berry came out of the restroom without his shirt on and an attendant helped get him another shirt out of his carry-on bag, according to the report.
After walking around for about 15 minutes, the report says Berry groped a flight attendant’s breasts. The flight attendant told Berry to sit down and not to touch her.
The report says Berry walked up behind two flight attendants, put his arms around them and groped their breasts again.
After the incident, the flight attendants who were groped asked another flight attendant to watch Berry.
The new flight attendant watching Berry asked him to calm down several times and remain seated. Berry then punched them in the face and a fight ensued, according to the report.
The report says the flight attendant and nearby passengers got control of Berry and taped him down and used a seatbelt extender to tie him down for the remainder of the flight.
Berry was taken into custody and taken to the Miami-Dade County Jail and is being charged with three counts of battery.
Get this: when Max Berry was a student at Ohio Wesleyan, he received an award for being the “perfect role model,” according to The Daily Mail.
According to Conan.com, Max’s father Christopher Berry is a “computer tech” who is “affiliated with the Republican Party,” and
He was 51 years old when his son Max went viral in August 2021. Max was caught on camera being intoxicated and unruly while on a Frontier Airlines flight from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA to Miami, Florida, USA on July 31, 2021. Max screamed “My parents are worth more than f—–g $2 million goddamn dollars” and “My grandpa is worth more than your f—–g life.”
Conan.com also checked out Max’s Twitter page. His tweets are about as childish as you would expect.
What happens when a rude, “unruly” male with a powerful father gets into a position of power? You get Andrew Cuomo.
Here’s a very good article by Danielle Tcholakian at The Daily Beast: Andrew Cuomo Remains a Fucking Creep to the Bitter End.
This fucking guy. This empty shirt, this morally bankrupt sack of hot air, this corrupt scion of unearned entitlement and utter fucking bullshit.
I’m speaking, of course, about New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, a man who couldn’t tell the truth, or do the right thing or even just pantomime anything remotely resembling humility if his life depended on it—and indeed, for once, it seems like his political life might.
New York Attorney General Tish James’ report investigating Cuomo’s misconduct against female employees and women he encountered because of his powerful position became public Tuesday morning, 168 pages plus three appendixes cataloguing interviews with nearly 200 people, many of whom wisely preserved documentation of their experiences, knowing full well that the notoriously manipulative and threatening governor would not go gently into any sort of good night.
Some of the report’s details were known already, of course; the investigation itself was triggered by women bravely going public with their experiences, a necessity born of the toxic culture of machine politics in Albany, and New York more broadly, that has long protected Andrew Cuomo from any kind of comeuppance for his undeniable pattern of abusive, power-hungry and predatory behavior.
But there were new complaints, like that of a state trooper to whom Cuomo apparently took such a fancy, he literally changed the state’s laws to put her on his security detail despite her inexperience—or, as he told investigators, because he “was on constant alert to recruit more women, Blacks, and Asians to the state police detail.” After getting her on his security detail, the trooper had to deal with the governor commenting on her appearance, her sex drive and telling her that he was looking for a romantic partner who “can handle pain.” Some champion of diversity in the workplace.
The report is damning, horrifying and thorough. In response, the governor released a pre-recorded video, bravely fielding exactly zero questions from the press. He talked about how he’d learned to hug and kiss from his mom and dad, as though that was license to hug and kiss any staffer—or any New Yorker he came across, apparently—any time, before playing a slideshow of photos showing him kissing famous people over the years, which was apparently meant to serve as exculpatory evidence pardoning him from a wealth of allegations of groping and unwanted kissing in the workplace. He described himself as a champion of women, without really explaining why all these different women, many of them working for him, testified that he was creeping on them, making them feel small and intimidated and uncomfortable as they tried simply to do their jobs.
There is much more well worth reading at the the link.
Also be sure to check this piece by Erin Gloria Ryan: Andrew Cuomo Is Every Horny Male ‘Mentor’ and Creepy Office ‘Dad,’
And what about Andrew’s younger brother Chris, who works at CNN?
Earlier this year, CNN executives floated an idea to their star anchor Chris Cuomo. If he wanted to formally advise his brother, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, on responding to the sexual harassment accusations that had engulfed his administration, he could take a temporary leave from CNN and return to the network later.
The idea was informal and strictly optional — not a request — and intended as an acknowledgment of Mr. Cuomo’s unique position as both a prime-time network anchor and the brother of a prominent politician facing a scandal, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal conversations.
The exchange, which has not been previously reported, underlines the conundrum for a news network whose top-rated anchor belongs to one of the country’s most powerful Democratic families — and the lengths that CNN’s president, Jeff Zucker, and his team have gone to accommodate Chris Cuomo, even as the anchor has had to apologize for participating in strategy sessions with Andrew Cuomo’s aides.
The idea for a possible leave was floated after Chris Cuomo’s involvement in those sessions was first reported in May. CNN called the anchor’s actions “inappropriate,” though Chris Cuomo faced no discipline.
Chris Cuomo has told CNN leadership that he planned to continue on his program and abide by rules preventing him from commenting on his brother’s scandal, the people said. He also promised not to discuss Andrew Cuomo’s strategic response to the scandal with any government officials besides the governor himself.
On Tuesday, hours after Ms. James’s report was released, Chris Cuomo was in the anchor chair for his 9 p.m. show, “Cuomo Prime Time.” He opened with a segment on the coronavirus, airing a clip of President Biden asking governors to help stop the spread of the Delta variant.
The clip omitted Mr. Biden’s other notable statement: calling on Governor Cuomo to resign.
Chris Cuomo should be fired.
Another rude male in a powerful position is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is refusing to help save lives in his state as the Cornavirus spreads out of control.
Gov. Ron DeSantis lashed out at President Joe Biden a day after Biden told the Republican governor to “get out of the way” of mask mandates.
During a stop in Panama City on Wednesday, DeSantis accused Biden of “helping facilitate” COVID-19 by not securing the border with Mexico. He said immigrants crossing the border are spreading variants of the virus.
“You have hundreds of thousands of people pouring across every month,” DeSantis said. “Not only are they letting them through, they’re farming them out all across the country, putting them on planes, putting them on buses. Do you think they’re worrying about COVID for that? Of course not.”
“Why don’t you get this border secure?” DeSantis added. “Until you do that, I don’t want to hear a blip about COVID from you.”
DeSantis’ comments came after Biden on Tuesday criticized the governor’s opposition to mask mandates.
“Look, we need leadership from everyone. If some governors aren’t willing to do the right thing to beat this pandemic, then they should allow businesses and universities who want to do the right thing to be able to do it,” Biden said in remarks about the pandemic. “I say to these governors, please help. But if you are not going to help, at least get out of the way of the people who are trying to do the right thing. Use your power to save lives.”
The Herald/Times asked the DeSantis administration for COVID-19 data on immigrants crossing the border but did not receive a response.
Of course not. This man is a murderer.
This is from The Guardian: ‘The Pied Piper leading us off a cliff’: Florida governor condemned as Covid surges.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis earned a new moniker this week as the resurgent coronavirus continued to wreak havoc on his state: the “Pied Piper of Covid-19, leading everybody off a cliff.”
The stark assessment of the Republican politician from Dan Gelber, the mayor of Miami Beach, came as Florida continued to set records for new cases and hospitalizations, saw worrying surges in both deaths and rates of positivity, and led the nation in pediatric Covid admissions.
With the highly contagious Delta variant swirling, a state comprising little more than 6% of the US population was accounting for one in five of the country’s new cases, recording 50,997 in the three days to Tuesday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Meanwhile, DeSantis, who says the spike is “seasonal” and opposes lockdowns or new restrictions, was following up his signing of an executive order banning children from having to wear masks in schools by
dismissing the burgeoning crisis in Florida’s hospitals as “media hysteria”.
“You try to fearmonger, you try to do this stuff,” DeSantis snapped at a reporter who asked him at a press conference in Miami on Tuesday about the state setting a new high for Covid hospitalizations of 11,863.
“Our hospitals are open for business. We’re not shutting down. We’re gonna have schools open. We’re protecting every Floridian’s job in this state, we are protecting people’s small businesses. These interventions have failed time and time again throughout this pandemic,” he said, referring to mask mandates.
I haven’t gotten to the ultimate rude, misogynistic, bullying, powerful male: Donald Trump. Here are a few stories to check out on the latest news about his attempt to stage a coup after losing the election:
Philip Bump at The Washington Post: A newly released letter tells us more about Trump’s last-ditch push to steal the election.
ABC News: DOJ officials rejected colleague’s request to intervene in Georgia’s election certification: Emails.
Aaron Blake at The Washington Post: A key witness emerges in probe of Trump’s DOJ election scheme.
Raw Story: Top DOJ official had resignation letter ready to go as Trump threatened to fire his acting AG.
Just Security: Mark Meadows Timeline: The Chief of Staff and Schemes to Overturn 2020 Election.
That’s all I have for you today, but this is an open thread so let us know what you’re reading and thinking about. Have a nice Thursday!!
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