Next Tuesday, June 30, at 10 am ET, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will hear testimony from
- Anthony Fauci, MD – Director, National Institute Of Allergy And Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health
- Robert Redfield, MD – Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Stephen Hahn, MD – Commissioner Of Food And Drugs, Food and Drug Administration
- Admiral Brett Giroir, MD – Assistant Secretary For Health, Department of Health and Human Services
Do you have questions for any of them? You can contribute those questions here, and they may be used.
And here’s a Sarah Cooper bonus for you!
Dorothy A. Winsor
I just got the nicest note out of the blue. An older woman who read the Herald article about me wrote to say she’s decided that in her late 60s, she wasn’t too old to make art after all. I flinched at that article because it had my age in the first line, but evidently it helped someone.
Also, I blogged today. Colbert sometimes does a bit where he reads the final and first drafts of greeting cards. I decided to blog about first and final drafts of the first paragraphs of my books. Much revision! Beginnings are really hard. (My website it glitchy right now. If it doesn’t come up, just reload.)
MaxUtil
I mean…it’s Sarah Cooper for VP now right? I mean, that’s clear isn’t it?
HumboldtBlue
Adm McRaven has apparently penned a column
Litlebritdifrnt
Just watched the powerful NASCAR video of all of the drivers and teams marching behind Bubba Watson’s car in solidarity with him after a noose was found in his garage area. Considering it is NASCAR that is some powerful shit, and Richard Petty showed up to put the boot on the racists ass.
Mike J
Why was CDC so slow to recommend masks, even if they had to tell people to make them at home?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Morons are already trying to compare Wallace to Smollett and that Wallace “did it himself”
catclub
@Mike J: There was a shortage of N95 masks.
Cheryl Rofer
@Mike J: Take your questions to the site I linked.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Litlebritdifrnt: ETA Bubba Wallace not Watson. I don’t follow NASCAR.
Gretchen
@Mike J: I think it didn’t occur to the scientist types how many quilters would get to work sewing them, and there wasn’t any data at first that cotton masks would help.
Barbara
@Mike J: To the extent they had a reason, it was that they were afraid of diverting masks from hospital personnel.
I accept that there has been and that there had to be a huge learning curve. What I find hard to accept is the degree of certainty that is conveyed in early pronouncements. Walking them back is infinitely harder than hedging at the front end that “based on what we know right now — which could and probably will change . . .” Yes, it gets tedious but it’s important.
Gretchen
I hope they ask who was slow walking testing. And I’d like to know if Jared was trying to impede things to make a profit. And health care workers STILL don’t have enough masks, 4 months in. That’s got to be malevolence, not incompetence.
Cheryl Rofer
Folks, if you’ve got questions, go to the link and submit them. It’s not that hard to do.
Here’s the link again.
Redshift
@Barbara:
I know otherwise sensible people who scrambled to get N95 masks when all this started, so I can’t entirely fault them on that.
japa21
@Cheryl Rofer: I wnet there and read questions already submitted. The two I had been thinking of were already there. I am going to give it some thought and come up with something worthwhile. Thank you for the link.
Roger Moore
@Redshift:
A lot of hospitals are still rationing surgical masks, so it’s not as if the problem has gone away.
meander
…and next Tuesday, June 30, at 9:50 am ET, the Pres will call these four officials to the White House for a meeting, preventing them from testifying to Congress, as has happened previously.
The Pres’s staff will say it was a long-scheduled meeting, Fauci and the others will say it wasn’t on their schedule, and the media will report it as “President claims meeting was already scheduled weeks ago”.
JustRuss
@Gretchen: yep, my the hospital my sis-in-law works at gives them one mask per day, and they’re in an area that’s been hit very hard. She’s already caught covid, and fortunately, recovered.
WaterGirl
@HumboldtBlue: That was a great clip. I didn’t see a link to the column there, though. Do you happen to have that?
WaterGirl
@meander: Hopefully, they will all have been smart enough to have prepared remarks – and have submitted those remarks in writing to the committee long before the date and time of the interview.
Roger Moore
@Gretchen:
I think a big chunk of that is that the demand for masks has skyrocketed, and manufacturers still haven’t caught up. I’m afraid they’re never going to catch up, unless/until it’s obvious that the newly increased use of masks is staying around long-term. Until then, they won’t invest in new manufacturing capability.
Brachiator
@Mike J:
This perhaps misses the larger point that Trump mismanaged the response to the pandemic and throttled the CDC from the very beginning. A smarter administration might have provided for the supply of masks to the public. Instead, we had an administration that wasn’t that concerned about getting equipment to hospitals, let alone with advising the public.
@Barbara:
People do not hear the qualifications. People want science to be oracular and definitive, like religion.
A scientist talks about the work on a vaccine and reporters ask for the exact date and time the vaccine will be delivered.
And then people get angry when there is a later change or clarification. There have even been comments here along the lines of “it makes you distrust government when the scientists lie.”
And we have seen that some people look at an instruction as a mere recommendation, and a recommendation as an opinion. Sometimes you need to try to make sure that the main message is heard, even if you reverse or qualify the message later.
Origuy
This could be good news:
They found that people who developed the clots have an increased amount of a protein called alpha defesin. They are planning to test a drug called colchicine which may lower the amount of the protein.
JoyceH
I’d like someone to ask if face shields are just as good as masks and can they be worn in lieu of masks. I have both, and the face shield is certainly more comfortable, and I believe protects the wearer as well as protecting others. If I had my druthers, I would wear a shield instead of a mask, but would like to know what the doctors say. (The article I saw seemed to be saying the CDC said shields were as good.)
Brachiator
Absolutely love The Empty Seat clip!
Love it!
gbbalto
@Origuy: Watch out for side effects! Also used to induce polyploidy in cannabis plants.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
+1. The build-up and finish are letter-perfect.
wvng
As a book end to Sarah Cooper’s new video is a brutal new one from The Lincoln Project of Trump going to his rally, and returning. https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=173794694118549&id=105756057589080
Another Scott
@Brachiator: http://adhocresponsegroup.org/
Specifically, http://adhocresponsegroup.org/OPCAST_Ad_Hoc_Subgroup_Stockpile_Recommendations_05-20-20.pdf
(Sorry about the formatting)
At the base of the causation pyramid, there was a reluctance to spend money for boring things like preparing for a pandemic or other disaster. Governing on the cheap is costing us tens of trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives…
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Feathers
Grrr. The fuck in FTFNYT is going to get a lot louder. They just hired Charlotte Greensit, the managing editor of The Fucking Intercept, as the new acting editorial page editor. Has a huge hate on for Biden:
She also had the audacity to, after all the shit The Intercept pulled in the election, to blame Obama for the dangers we faced with President Trump.
So the FTFNYT editorial page is in the hands of an Edward Snowden fan, with links to the Russian disinformation machine. Did they need to go that far to find someone who wanted Trump reelected?
trollhattan
@Feathers:
Really? REALLY? Had allowed myself to think they would improve with a change there, albeit just a bit but also noticeable. How can this move not make them much, much worse?
“Put out a call for somebody who hates Biden as much as whatsisname hates Hillary.”
trollhattan
Hey governor of Florida, bang-up job you’re doing there with coronavirus containment. Just super.
J R in WV
The New York Times has been in the pocket of Russian dictators since the days of Uncle Joe Stalin, back when their Moscow desk man Walter Duranty told the world that there was no famine in the Ukraine, that things there were great. All the while Stalin shipped the whole harvest out of Ukraine leaving the population to starve in the winter.
Called Stalin’s apologist, Duranty said “But there is no famine…” — the Times loves them some dictators, from Mr. Stalin to Mr. Hitler. And then to Mr. Trump. Despicable!
Elizabelle
@Feathers: Ugh. Terrible hire. They will lose even more subscribers, would be my guess.
It’s the fucking Sulzbergers.
StringOnAStick
As soon as covid hit here and the day after the dental office I worked for closed, I started making cloth masks for my family and friends. Then came the feds position that “these don’t work, a waste of time” , but I kept making them because I was replicating the surgical masks I used at work, and if they didn’t work then why was I and every other dental employee required to wear them? Vindicated.
At a retail store today these was an older woman customer wearing her mask as a chin sock while ranting into her phone. She didn’t wear it properly during checkout and then coughed in the cashiers face. It was all I could do to not come unglued on her and I know my dirty looks landed but didn’t change her behavior. All this so she could get the perfect tablecloth. Everyone else was wearing masks at each place I went.
Uncle Cosmo
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I was wondering how long it would take the fuckheads to get around to their inevitable false-flag go-to. Epistemic closure at its foulest.
Brachiator
@JoyceH:
A recent NPR story on masks.
Haven’t seen anything on face shields.
evodevo
@Origuy: Colchicine is used to combat gout…it is toxic, and you have to watch the dosage pretty close. Other than that, good on them..
Amir Khalid
@JoyceH:
I don’t think a face shield replaces a mask. Every photo I’ve seen of a doctor/nurse/medical tech in a face shield shows them also wearing a mask. If you’re going to be in close contact with people, you may need both.
Bill Arnold
@Feathers:
I scanned Charlotte Greensit’s twitter for the last month ( https://twitter.com/cgreensit ). Not as bad as I expected; there are links to two(plus) anti-Trump pieces (one a podcast transcript, both basically anti-fascism pieces[1]) and to a few more that are negative about the DJT administration. Also a criticism of B. Obama and of Joe Biden, for things about 1/10 of one percent as bad as what D.J. Trump and his administration do every day.
Anyway, her twitter feed has a fairly small median number of comments per tweet (so far at least), so she will see pokes if she need to be poked. Let’s not allow her to bring The Intercept’s “criticizing Republicans feels bad; criticizing Democrats feels great!” approach to the NYTimes.
[1] Donald Trump Is an Autocrat. It’s Up to All of Us to Stop Him. (James Risen, June 4 2020) “I have a question for American leftists: Do you finally see the difference between the Democrats and Donald Trump?”
Elizabelle
@Bill Arnold: Gonna wait and watch WRT Greensit.
WaterGirl
@JoyceH: You should pose the question at Cheryl’s link, because just last night someone here explained why/how they aren’t as good because they let in droplets at the top and at the bottom.