All due caveats, but this just might be good news:
Read about Prof Sarah Gilbert and the latest updates on the Oxford COVID-19 vaccine here https://t.co/iGBxCLrKy7
— Oxford University Innovation (@OxUInnovation) July 15, 2020
Meanwhile, in this benighted nation…
Trump administration pushing to block new money for testing, tracing, and CDC in upcoming coronavirus relief bill – The Washington Post https://t.co/SK2Vq7SgIP
— Jacob Heilbrunn (@JacobHeilbrunn) July 18, 2020
… the Squatter-in-Chief wants to punish the CDC for having the gall to demonstrate how widely the virus has spread, even if that means a bunch of Republican congressmen lose their jobs as a result. Even he doesn’t really believe he’ll keep his current position, come the election. Which is a nanomorsel of consolation, I suppose!
Another nanomorsel: The NYTimes is turning on him:
Powerful story on what went wrong: Trump's approach to the virus was not just a misjudgment but a deliberate strategy to pass off responsibility to the states. @shearm @noahweiland @EricLiptonNYT @maggieNYT @SangerNYT https://t.co/8v8WEfmmKC
— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) July 18, 2020
The CDC's Redfield acknowledged to the Journal of the American Medical Association that administration officials—himself included—massively underestimated infections in April and May. He estimated they were missing as many as 10 cases each day for every one they were confirming.
— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) July 18, 2020
Active coronavirus cases in the US topped 1.9 million today. pic.twitter.com/bplhOHXsIl
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) July 19, 2020
Our daily update is published. 762k tests recorded today in the US. 65k new cases. 57k people currently reported to be hospitalized with COVID-19. (More on that shortly.)
States reported 872 COVID-19 deaths today. pic.twitter.com/uNlkVon7jI
— The COVID Tracking Project (@COVID19Tracking) July 18, 2020
U.S. coronavirus deaths near 140,000 as outbreak worsens https://t.co/JH2EbDjaZ5 pic.twitter.com/G3jPLVQxFl
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 19, 2020
It’s not only #coronavirus cases that are rising. Now #COVID19 deaths are, too. https://t.co/r6D1DJ9ql1
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) July 18, 2020
======
Coronavirus: WHO reports record single-day global increase in cases https://t.co/u7O2FHAgSy
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) July 19, 2020
Rising virus totals forcing a rethink of bars, schools & tourism https://t.co/IuRT5xHThy via @medical_xpress
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) July 18, 2020
Countries from the U.S. to South Africa to Australia are struggling to hold down rising rates of the coronavirus, as global deaths from COVID-19 surged past 600,000 in a sign of how far off the world remains from a return to normalcy. https://t.co/UDYpXevBeM
— The Associated Press (@AP) July 19, 2020
'Wartime state' declared in Urumqi, in China's western Xinjiang region, after spike in coronavirus cases https://t.co/IQrv2glJkN
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) July 18, 2020
Russia reports 6,109 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours https://t.co/2Qs4mJ2ZDj pic.twitter.com/UwqScizeip
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 19, 2020
Coronavirus spike continues amid new Catalonia restrictions https://t.co/ALOtxaRDda
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) July 18, 2020
South Africa is poised to join the top five nations most affected by the coronavirus, while numbers around the world are a reminder a return to normal life is still far away. Worldwide virus cases have topped 14 million with more than 600,000 deaths. https://t.co/lqI58EX8yf
— The Associated Press (@AP) July 18, 2020
After a one-day respite, COVID-19 cases in the Australian state of Victoria have risen again, prompting a move to make masks mandatory in metropolitan Melbourne and the nearby shire of Mitchell. https://t.co/GuVJkHpUcj
— The Associated Press (@AP) July 19, 2020
Brazil reports 28,532 new cases of coronavirus and 921 deaths https://t.co/wmTC4ZIXlP pic.twitter.com/nYO7r2JvWy
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 18, 2020
Brazil's Bolsonaro says coronavirus restrictions kill economy https://t.co/WiENK1xw8T pic.twitter.com/OjGUz53odf
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 19, 2020
Mexico reports 7,615 new cases of coronavirus, marking record https://t.co/wbrBmbHutY pic.twitter.com/m8RmetTAYy
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 19, 2020
======
FDA issues 1st emergency-use authorization for #COVID19 'pool testing,' allowing commercial lab Quest Diagnostics to pool samples from 4 individuals. If the pool tests positive, 1 or more people may be infected. Each then would be tested again individually https://t.co/jLD2nzud8D
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) July 18, 2020
Blood test detects positive #COVID19 result in 20 minutes https://t.co/bPvqxpEBX8 via @medical_xpress
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) July 18, 2020
======
Medical professionals are witnessing two different realities: Inside hospitals, they attend to patients fighting for their lives. Outside, society appears to be ignoring the safety precautions experts have recommended to help stop the spread of COVID-19. https://t.co/WM6NZjFf4o
— The Associated Press (@AP) July 18, 2020
A fast-rising rising tide of new coronavirus cases is flooding emergency rooms in parts of the U.S. Some patients have been moved into hallways, and nurses are working extra shifts to keep up with the surge. https://t.co/0WRXQU6PDI
— The Associated Press (@AP) July 18, 2020
GOP senators sound alarm as coronavirus surges in home states https://t.co/Kb9iJayM9H pic.twitter.com/YjVsa6LbYQ
— The Hill (@thehill) July 19, 2020
The coronavirus is wreaking havoc on rural America. In Oregon’s tiny Umatilla County, contact tracers working out of a converted jail try to keep up with the rising number of cases that are overwhelming the community’s resources. https://t.co/jh9j9oUk7P
— AP West Region (@APWestRegion) July 18, 2020
New York's #coronavirus hospitalizations fall to lowest number in four months https://t.co/2mfgKn6OZT via @CBSNews
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) July 18, 2020
Georgia had a record number of new cases today. pic.twitter.com/XTu9bTveXT
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) July 19, 2020
In just 15 days the total number of #COVID19 cases in Georgia is up 49%, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at the state’s data visualization map of cases. The first map is July 2. The second is today. Do you see a 50% case increase? Can you spot how they’re hiding it? 1/ pic.twitter.com/wAgFRmtrPk
— Georgia Person (@andishehnouraee) July 17, 2020
Nearly every day this month Kemp’s health dept has altered the numbers assigned to each color without ever saying so. I take screenshots. Georgia DPH is violating data visualization best practices in a way that’s hiding severity of the outbreak. 3/
— Georgia Person (@andishehnouraee) July 17, 2020
Arizona had a record number of new deaths today. pic.twitter.com/1H42UqA6Zp
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) July 19, 2020
In Arizona, school reopening sparks protest movement https://t.co/JjQqrFL18j pic.twitter.com/eNbtWaUh07
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 18, 2020
OzarkHillbilly
St. Louis County Clamping Down on Youth Sports After Coronavirus Spike
opiejeanne
I don’t understand why so many people are not taking this seriously, but the evil perpetrated by Kemp and Trump is going to make things far worse. Far, far worse.
It didn’t need to be this way. .
brantl
Does it surprise anyone that the sack of shit that is Lindsey Graham, just looks like a sack of shit in a mask, after you put the mask on him? (probably forcibly)
Cermet
What the thugs are doing is so immoral that in many respects its criminal. As for the Oxford vaccine, just hope the effects last long enough that it is effective – if not, as some research has indicated on ant-bogy reponse, then this illness will be around until everyone treats it as a deadly virus and wear masks.
opiejeanne
@OzarkHillbilly: I can’t remember where I saw it, but a doctor who had treated an 11-yo girl who died, was absolutely raging about it on social media today.
The girl’s mother had refused intubation for her daughter, essentially making the child’s status DNR. An 11 year-old with no underlying illness, no pre-existing conditions. And mom says to the doctor that she doesn’t want the child on a respirator.
And these asshats like Kemp are telling us that kids don’t get very sick from this virus. This is not the first child to die from it.
p.a.
Given that the US is a shitshow thanks to the tRumpublican Party, the real concerning thing is how places such as Australia that got their responses in order early still have major issues. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
OzarkHillbilly
@opiejeanne: It was just a month or 2 into the pandemic when I saw a video of a mother trying to care for her 4 yo son in the hospital, just wanting to be there for him 24/7, so he wouldn’t be alone. It was heartbreaking watching him fight for every breath.
I have to admit it triggered some not so pleasant memories.
OzarkHillbilly
Hospitals Are Suddenly Short of Young Doctors — Because of Trump’s Visa Ban
Amir Khalid
Malaysia’s daily numbers. 15 new cases. 11 cases from local infection: eight Malaysians, three non-Malaysians. Four cases from imported infection: two Malaysians returning from the UK, two non-Malaysians coming in from Libya and India. Cumulative total 8,779 cases.
Seven more patiets recovered and were discharged, total 8,553 patients recovered or 97.4% of the cumulative total. the number of active and contagious cases has risen to 103; these patients are in hospital for isolation/treatment. Two are in ICU, one of them is receiving respiratory assistance.
One new death reported, an elder-care home resident with a history of chronic hypertension and stroke. That makes 123 Covid-19 deaths in total. Fatality rate is 1.40% of the cumulative total, 1.42% of resolved cases.
opiejeanne
@OzarkHillbilly: He’s trying to kill us all.
WereBear
To me, it’s simple. They don’t want to. So they heartily endorse the lies and fakery.
For years they have been able to think as they prefer: that their religion is the “one true one,” that their skin color makes them superior to others, that their sexism is good for women, that their feelings of superiority are not the squeals of narcissism but the assertive reassurance of their secret greatness.
They are not giving up the habits of a lifetime. Especially not when the only leaders they acknowledge will not make them.
opiejeanne
@Amir Khalid: According to the Seattle Times, Washington state had 959 new cases and 10 deaths on Friday, July 17. The total number of cases is 46,026 and the total deaths are 1444.
According to a dashboard run by a teenager named Avi Schiffman, on Saturday, July 18 Washington state had a total of 47,137 cases and 1451 deaths. ( I think he was compiling his numbers by looking at each county and adding them up)
The same dashboard reports for Saturday, July 18 that the US has 3, 833, 716 total cases, 445 new cases, 142,881 total deaths and only 4 new deaths. If that low number of deaths looks odd to you, it may be because of the suppression of information by Trump’s order. I can’t tell if it’s wrong yet, but will know in the morning. I’m going to guess that WA has at least 10 new deaths, the one place the Seattle Times and the dashboard have been in agreement for about two weeks.
What I do know is that Washington state has a rising number of cases, and that the number of deaths each day will begin to rise, possibly within a couple of weeks.
Mel
My dear friend teaches high school. Plans at her school are to start back with the usual number of kids per class (so, overcrowded in the best of times, and allowing for no semblance of social distancing ), no masks or other PPE provided for teachers or staff, but teachers required to purchase their own masks and hand sanitizer all year long. No ventilation upgrades, no additional nursing or janitorial staff, and masks “suggested but not required” for students, parents and visitors, and “a few staff and faculty temperature checks per week”.
WTF?!?
So… kiddos not distanced from each other or teachers, no extra cleaning unless done and paid for by teachers, no PPE provided, no student mask requirement, useless temperature checks, poor, outdated ventilation. crowded cafeteria situations, no added support staff, teachers required to provide one-on-one (undistanced) assistance in classrooms and after school if parent if student requests it, teachets required to do parent conferences, parent nights, etc. with no mask requirement for parents (only for teachers ), and no policy in place to hire additional subs or provide any additional paid leave for ill teachers.
The “changes”? Students will alternate remote learning days, but every student will still be in school at least 3 days a week, and class sizes will still be the same on in-person days. How that is supposed to lessen the risk, nobody can explain. Teachers can apply for a one- year leave (unpaid , with no health benefits in the middle of a pandemic / no guarantee of renewal of contract if they take leave, and taking leave means they will essentially be having to disclose their private health info to their employer) .
Also, teachers are being strongly discouraged from wearing face shields in a room full of likely unmasked teens, because parents are concerned that the “sound quality” of instruction won’t be good enough for their children’s liking if teachers protect themselves with face shields.
Another local school is providing no PPE, just hand sanitizer, only “suggests” that students wear masks, but is requiring teachers to “completely sanitize their classrooms and any likely contaminated areas“ after every class. So, essentially hazmat cleanup with no gloves, no masks, and no face shields provided, and apparentlyvno safe waste disposal methods, performed multiple times a day by the teachers.
This is utter insanity. It’s going yo be carnage.
Betty Cracker
Credit where it’s due: that NYT story is excellent — well worth one of the free clicks for non-subscribers.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
It was asking me to sign up.
Baud
Not COVID, but I didn’t want to pollute the garden thread.
The suburbs also tend to be resistant to progressive ideas though. Something we’ll have to manage down the line.
Sab
@Mel: What state is this in?
Paul in St. Augustine
Caption for the picture of Trump on the golf course, pointing his finger: “I don’t care where the fucking green is, my third shot off the tee is right there, and I say it’s a fucking hole in one.”
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Trump’s internal polls must show him getting crushed in the ‘burbs too:
Getting back to his segregated housing roots.
kuebert
@uncle cosmo: how about them TCNJs?
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
It’s the 1970s again. I should find my bellbottoms.
The suburbs are where people have kids, so they have other things on their minds right now.
rikyrah
@opiejeanne:
No, it did not need to be this way ???
rikyrah
@Mel:
Da phuq ???
WereBear
@Baud:
And rightly so. This entirely Republican-led SNAFU is like a hammer upside the head for them, as they find that — despite what they thought and voted for — their kids, lives, and livelihood can go into the crusher, too! With as little regard as those of people in the inner cities who suffer openly from prejudice and oppression.
I call this the “Karl Rove Problem” since I viewed the whole soap opera. Rove once felt he strode the world like a Colossus. He’d put W in the White House. He was shaping Reality for everyone (as the famous quote put it.)
But sipping champagne and nibbling canapes with the Super-Rich does not make you one of them. Rove was hired help, and when things fell apart he was pensioned off to Fox News simply to prevent him from writing a tell-all book.
Oh, to me, he’s rich. But to him, he’s been demoted from Head Butler to kitchen help. I don’t think he’s jetting off to summer resorts or sumptuous houses any more.
And that’s where the suburbanites are. Still better off than most of us. But for a change, hanging from the same cliffs by their fingernails.
Just like the rest of us.
Jeffro
Those NYT stories are infuriating beyond belief, in ways too numerous to mention. But here’s a double-doozy:
No experience…just trying to solve a frickin’ worldwide pandemic while “taking their cues from the president*” Tell us, NYT, what exactly are those cues? Hmm, could it be “magically solve it and get the economy ‘roaring’ again, somehow, so that I can get re-elected/avoid prison?” How exactly was that aligned with putting our nation and its citizens first?
And man, Hope Hicks – ‘protector of trumpov’s brand’ – sure as hell better not be collecting a government paycheck and even if she isn’t, what the hell is she doing sitting in on meetings literally involving life-or-death matters for the American people? W. T. F???
Quantum man
What do you want to bet if the Oxford vaccine works, Trump will not let it be distributed here in the U.S.?!
Shalimar
Florida Panhandle is still open for business and it is basically a slow tourist season but still with plenty of traffic. But more and more reading on local message boards about small retail stores and restaurants that are temporarily closed because one employee tested positive and eveyone else has to quarantine.
Amir Khalid
@Mel:
I don’t understand American schools expecting teachers to provide regular classroom supplies out of pocket. I understand this even less.
Amir Khalid
@Quantum man:
Or he might seek to hoard it all for the US, like that stunt he pulled with remdesivir.
Central Planning
My daughter’s boyfriend add his family are going for a week-long vacation to the outer banks in North Carolina… “We will be careful” he said
Here’s to hoping they will quarantine for 14 days when they get back to New York. Idiots.
Central Planning
@Amir Khalid: I don’t understand how schools can expect teachers to do a sufficient cleaning between classes.
My son said his university is going to expect professors to clean classrooms between every class. I’m not sure how you do that in 10-15 minutes and not have every classroom smell like chemicals. That can’t be healthy either
SFAW
@Quantum man:
I’ll take that bet, but with certain qualifiers: his maladministration will let XX* doses (or dose-equivalents) enter the US, but they will only go to some private corporation (interestingly enough, set up 5 days before the vaccine gets here, and run by one of the Murderer-in-Chief’s or Jared’s pals) for distribution. They will then be distributed to those persons that can pay the $200,000-per-dose (price set by the corporation [with help from Martin Shkreli, I imagine] and signed off by the M-i-C).
Yeah, OK, it’s a cynical, over-the-top scenario. But after seeing how they’ve operated/grifted over three-plus years, is it really that far-fetched?
* “Where XX is a large positive integer,” as we used to say in tech school.
YY_Sima Qian
Yesterday, China reported 13 new domestic confirmed and 30 domestic asymptomatic cases, all in Urumqi. Still no case summaries, but Urumqi Municipal Health Commission did say the cluster is due to a mass gathering event, a large wedding according to rumors.
China also reported 3 new imported confirmed and 12 new imported asymptomatic cases.
PsiFighter37
@Betty Cracker: Also puts Dr. Birx in a pretty bad light. She may be more ‘political’, as Fauci puts it, but she paid no attention to how these idiots ran the country the past 3+ years.
I hope Biden cans her and puts Fauci fully in charge come January.
SiubhanDuinne
That fuckery with the Georgia charts has me enraged. What a way to start a Sunday morning.
TS (the original)
@p.a.:
We know how it started – but have not yet hit the solution for stopping it spreading.
People returning from overseas were put into 2 weeks quarantine. The security guards became too friendly with some of the people in this quarantine, became infected and took the infection home & shopping etc etc. So the new infections came in from overseas & the quarantine didn’t work as it should have.
It just spread too far & fast by the time the tracing was completed. Why the numbers are still growing, after the level 3 lockdown was renewed I don’t know, other than some folks live with large numbers in multi apartment buildings, not enough social distancing & until today, no-one has had to wear masks (some have but it wasn’t compulsory). Also people travelling places where they are not supposed to go – or they are travelling for work (allowed) not knowing they have the virus.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Central Planning: Dear god. Have they never seen what a faculty member’s office looks like? They think the old dudes are going to clean a classroom?
Soprano2
That NY Times article was something else. It lays out just how screwed we’ve been from the beginning. Dr. Birx should resign in shame.
I was arguing with a guy last night about our mask mandate. So many people here think it’s either control the virus or the economy. I blame that on Fox News and Trump. I told him no, if we get the virus under control the economy will come back, and that’s the only way it can work because people will protect themselves even if the government won’t. He was dubious. I told him that if the virus gets bad they won’t have to close businesses because people will just quit coming. He seemed to agree with that. I said it’s either masks or things close, you can’t have open and no masks.
I read the article in our paper yesterday about the mask mandate debate in Branson. One guy compared it to Germany making Jews wear the Star of David (!) and said if they make him wear one he’s going to put that star and a showerhead on it and tell people “welcome to the showers”. Again, I blame Trump and Fox News for this idiocy. I swear we live in the stupidest timeline.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Mel: I want every funeral to be televised. I want Betsy DeVos asked how many funerals she plans to attend as part of her job.
Cermet
Ugh! My keyboard is a mess and I am too busy on projects. Sorry for that screwed up post, My concern is that a vaccine may not produce enough “anti-bodies”.
I’ve discovered many extra letters in my words or letters not posting thanks to the keyboard of late. Guess that will continue till I replace this sucker. Well, doesn’t much matter of late, anyway, here.
Ohio Mom
What would “kill the suburbs” is their school systems disintegrating. The biggest threat to school systems is Covid.
No matter what each system does to adapt to these trying circumstances, will leave parents wary. They will worry that their kids’ health is being put at risk, they will worry that their children are not getting a “good education” (translates as, “won’t get into the “right” college”).
They might begin to wonder why they are paying a premium to live where they do if their kids are not getting the school experience they shelled out those bucks for.
I live in a suburb. It was never in my plans, but having a kid with a disability meant we needed a very well-funded school system. Those deep pockets meant our kid would get all the services he needed.
I know what the typical suburban parent is like, having had to interact with them for over a dozen years (counting public preschool). I developed a lot of sympathy for school boards, who carry the weight of maintaining all the inflated property values on their shoulders.
Once again, it’s always projection with Republicans.
Amir Khalid
@Soprano2:
I don’t know. It seems to me that Dr Birx is pretty much the last medical expert standing. And there needs to be one in the loop at the White House. And Dr Fauci is still vouching for her. ETA: … so far.
The Thin Black Duke
@Dorothy A. Winsor: DeVos would be happy. Funerals are confirmation that their plan of reducing the surplus population is working out as expected.
Chief Oshkosh
@Mel: Where is this? Do you know whether it’s the entire state or county or school district?
laura
@opiejeanne: So the leopards will eat a child’s face too…..
This didn’t have to be this bad. We could have prevented the worst outcomes but because Obama prepared a handbook of pandemic response it is an affront to the racist sensibilities of the monster our friends and neighbors elected. I’m never going to forgive or forget. Never. I’ll take my bitterness and fury to my grave.
Brachiator
The Pandemic and Latin America, from recent news reports.
Globally, more than 14 million people have tested positive for the virus, and more than 600,000 have died, according to data by Johns Hopkins University and NBC News.
In India, the number of cases has surpassed one million, with 26,273 deaths, according to the counry’s health ministry website.
And, in Latin America and the Caribbean, the death toll has surpassed that in the U.S. and Canada for the first time. Only Europe has recorded more fatalities. Brazil, where more than two million cases of coronavirus have been reported, could have the world’s highest number of deaths from the virus by late this month.
Latin America accounts for over 50 percent of global deaths even though it accounts for just 8 percent of the world’s population.
In terms of confirmed cases, Brazil is number two globally, just behind the United States. Peru now has the world’s fifth highest number of confirmed cases. Mexico comes in seventh.
The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean said this week that the region’s per-capita gross domestic product is likely to drop by 9.1 percent in 2020 due to the pandemic, The Associated Press reported.
Such a drop would take the region back to GDP levels of 2010, something the U.N. commission called “a lost decade.”
Sloane Ranger
@Central Planning: I can’t get over this. Cleaning things is hardly in the skill set of lecturers and teachers,(unless they’re doing home economics, maybe) and don’t they need the period at the end of 1 class to prepare for the next?
WereBear
@Sloane Ranger: You forget that to many parents, teachers are servants and should obey orders.
Chief Oshkosh
@Dorothy A. Winsor: No kidding. But, I see this all over the place, even with more-or-less responsibly-minded institutions. Why in the fuck they think an untrained, already-overworked, disinterested person will produce a consistently clean environment is beyond me.
Frankensteinbeck
@Quantum man:
It won’t be that. What Trump wants most, even more than ‘the virus disappears’, is to be the hero who made it disappear and is worshiped by America because of it. Why doesn’t he do the right things, then? That doesn’t make the virus disappear. His thought processes are too “ME ME ME NOW” to grasp the value of any slow management system. But a vaccine? Oh, yeah. Like his idiot malaria drug, taking credit for a quick fix is exactly how he thinks.
So, Trump will try to rush it, if one appears. But he’s wildly incompetent, everyone who works for him is wildly incompetent, and it is crucial to him that he gets the credit. The rollout will be a fucking disaster. Wrong drugs will be shipped. Vaccines will be packaged in wrong containers that make them contaminated and useless, because he demanded the companies ship MORE MORE MORE NOW NOW NOW. Basic supplies to make vaccine will not be obtained. He’ll ship vaccine to political toadies first, even though that will screw up spreading immunity to the country. He will make asshole demands of other countries, ensuring America is dead last in their priority list of sharing the vaccine. He’ll order full government resources be put into converting factories to produce vaccine, but Kushner will prioritize grifter buddies without realizing those people can’t deliver. He’ll find other ways to screw up I haven’t even imagined.
Trump probably won’t get a vaccine before November. If he does, it. Will. Be. A. SHIT SHOW.
Not sure what he’ll do if a vaccine appears in November or December after he loses the election. He’ll still want to be praised as a hero, but he’ll also be mad at an America that clearly doesn’t deserve his greatness.
J R in WV
I am glad and thankful to have on-site reports from all over the nation and world.
But the reports really only have any value if we know at least approximately where they are coming from. If I say my county only has 13 confirmed cases, so far, and 0 deaths confirmed, so far… that isn’t data, it’s barely a folktale, until I tell you it is rural WV, which because many people don’t leave the county routinely, remains safer than lots of places.
By the way, “Uncle Cosmo” is gone from my universe, into the pie safe. He brings no information, and no snark worth sharing. I don’t mind no information if there’s snark, and I don’t mind no snark if there’s serious info and discussion. But just angry barking, naw, I get that from the dogs when a racoon or possum passes by. Or, FSM forbid, a skunk!!
Ken
Whew.
Marcopolo
@OzarkHillbilly: So on my evening walk yesterday here in St Louis County I passed by a house a block from where I live where there were 12-15 high school age kids milling around in the front yard & in & out of the house with no masks, no social distancing, and I assume sharing the bathroom. So while I am assuming StL County is doing contact tracing & that is why they are linking the spread of Covid-19 in the 10-19 year cohort to youth sports, I think the problem may extend beyond that.
Think about it, even if a few of those kids were siblings, that still meant there were 10 or more families (or were those kids all just free larking without their parent’s knowledge) where the parents don’t seem to be taking any precautions when it comes to their kids. And, once again, maybe the kids were using this friends house at 8:30 p.m. without the parents who own it knowing, but I’m more inclined to think the folks who own the house were all in on hosting this Covid spreading event.
And don’t get me wrong, in a non-Covid environment this kind of non-alcoholic Saturday night get together for HS kids would be great just not at this time.
Ken
He’s already done a lot to ensure that, with upwards of 30% of the US population saying they won’t get vaccinated because it’s all a hoax.
Marcopolo
@Baud: As I said on a thread in the wee hours of this morning the number that caught my eye from that ABC/Wash Post poll was Biden was winning the South by 6 points. That is fucking bonkers.
Duly noting all polls are a snapshot in time, should be taken with a grain of salt, and we should keep our noses to the grindstone and shoulders to the wheel until the day after the election.
Kelly
I checked my rural Marion County Oregon neighborhood in the NYT “Who is wearing masks” map. Somewhat dismayed to see I’m in the leasted masked area of the state. I suppose the good news is Oregon overall is masking up much better than it seems from here. Last several store trips I’ve seen 90% masked customers and 100% masked staff. Yesterday a local painting contractor came by to estimate replacing some siding and painting Mom’s house. He masked up before he got out of his truck and takes masks and distancing very seriously so I’m not entirely surrounded by idiots.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/17/upshot/coronavirus-face-mask-map.html
Marcopolo
@Frankensteinbeck: I dunno, there are other actors than Trump regarding vaccine development, manufacture, & deployment with a lot of leverage. Like the drug companies & Bill Gates, who has already committed a billion dollars to the vaccine development project. Sure Trump will try to meddle in this to his own self-aggrandizement but I think it will ultimately prove bigger than him, particularly if there are several viable vaccines that result and are produced.
I do agree the much bigger problem will be the 25-30% of folks who are shit-for-brains crazy when it comes to believing science and the efficacy of vaccines and who will therefore actively resist become immunized.
Frankensteinbeck
@Marcopolo:
The only reason it would get distributed at all. Hell, the only reason it will get made at all, since giving resources to research a cure means admitting there’s a problem. But remember the PPE getting stolen? Trump will do his level best – and he does have a lot of power to fuck things up – to make it about himself. Other actors can only have a scattershot effect at best, while the federal government will be actively interfering through impatience, selfishness, and incompetence. It will be a shit show, vastly slower than it needs to be, and Trump will be regarded as the man who prevented an easy fix rather than the man who provided one.
trnc
My take: “Dig the mass grave over there and make sure I can’t see it from the cart.”
EthylEster
So this is the third time this week that these virus roundups have contained a tweet that proclaimed that there were about six thousand cases in Russia “yesterday”. This has been true for over two weeks. So it’s not news.
Why not just post a link to worldometers? https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus
trnc
The Darwin Awards committee is always looking for new headliners.
Quinerly
I’ll just leave this here:
The host asked: “There are thousands of people treated unfairly daily, how your number just happened to come up in the lottery, I am guessing it was more than just luck, Roger, right?”
Stone, who was speaking by phone, responded by muttering: “arguing with this Negro”; the beginning of his sentence was hard to hear. It sounded as if Stone was not speaking directly into the phone but rather to himself or someone in the room with him.
https://www.boston.com/news/national-news-2/2020/07/19/roger-stone-uses-racial-slur-on-radio-show
The Moar You Know
@Quantum man: My thoughts exactly. He’s not going to allow foreign vaccines into the US, and the Moderna vaccine has a flaw that’s likely to render it ineffective.
WaterGirl
@Mel: Teachers will have to refuse to teach. That’s what I think it will come down to.
trnc
@EthylEster: That’s one I have bookmarked, too.
Quinerly
@Mel: where is this?
Gravenstone
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Heh. I’m reminded of a former professor who went into industry. His desk was an endless stack of papers, with an area just small enough to fit a sheet of paper for signing cleared. Everything was near toppling piles of papers, journals and files.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: I would bet my house that it’s not just Georgia. At least not in spirit. For every red state, I believe there is a unique way to fudge/lie/cheat/misrepresent/under-record the numbers.
Aziz, light!
@Kelly: I’m in Clackamas County just over the Portland city border, and every trip I make to the supermarkets here comes with stockers and deli counter workers with their masks down or half down. I know they can’t do anything about maskless customers but they can control their staff. I’m tired of going to the customer service counter to complain and have whoever is behind that counter pretend that she or he gives a shit.
The only recourse is to avoid the supermarkets and shop at Whole Foods and the like (plus Trader Joe’s).
I live a block from the Willamette River and frequent a popular river park where teenagers gather in high numbers, none of them behaving as though there is a pandemic. In these times, the kids are not alright.
WaterGirl
@Soprano2: I don’t understand the shock/surprise about Dr. Birx. I was on to her after the first (and only) daily briefing I watched.
That was the one with all the male CEOs, all standing close together, all grabbing the podium in the same place in their “manly” stance, all shaking hands.
Her head was bobbing and nodding at every bullshit thing Trump said and at every lie Trump told. I couldn’t bear to watch any of them after that.
Dr. Brix is despicable, and I do not understand how or why everyone did not recognize that right away.
edit: Soprano2, not directed at you, just raging in general.
The Moar You Know
@Mel: I can confirm essentially the same orders came down from our local school board and superintendent. San Diego, CA.
Newsom’s plan has put that on hold, but if we get a drop in our numbers, those are exactly the conditions under which teachers will be expected to go back into the classroom
We are also dealing with a local problem where parents are letting teens known to be infected with COVID-19 leave the house and go party with their friends. 10% of our local COVID cases are among kids under 19 (approx 2400 cases).
Robert Sneddon
NHS Scotland reports 23 new confirmed cases and no deaths from COVID-19. We now have only four people in intensive care with confirmed or suspected COVID-19, with about 300 or so hospitalised which is down a bit from last week.
That number of new cases is up a little from last week’s figures though and something the government will be keeping a close eye on. If there’s a cluster of cases then specific action may be taken like local reimposition of lockdowns.
WaterGirl
@Cermet: I had that problem a year ago on my MacBook Pro laptop, and it’s a known problem on certain models. Happily, it was under warranty and they replaced the system board, which fixed the problem.
edit: I forgot to say how very aggravating maddening annoying and even enraging that was after while.
Emma from FL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: *Snicker* Speak from experience, do you? When I saw that I laughed so hard I started to tear up. I haven’t seen our class schedule but I am told it sessions will be spaced out so the cleaning crew can come in and clean up in between classes.
Jinchi
It’s like they need the media to read their own guidance to them.
WaterGirl
@Amir Khalid:
Even if she is supporting and perpetrating lies?
Ken
@Jinchi: In fairness, any guidance is subject to immediate change due to a 2 AM tweetstorm.
Kay
@Baud:
Suburbs have changed though, Baud. It’s been apparent in public school data for years. When Trump talks about Biden coming to take your suburbs he is once again referring to a 1970,1980s snapshot of the country and a specifically northeastern snapshot of the country. Things have happened since then.
scav
At some point, there are going to be hellish amounts of imaginary people — People that never really existed! Crisis actors! — revealed to exist in everyone’s very own family. It will be astonishing how pervasive the practice was. Entire local economies staffed and run and supported by bipedal vaporware. Entire family tree branches of delusions that somehow took it into their imaginary programming to all simultaneously to drop dead of other causes merely in order to personally embarrass Uncle Orange Nutjob, to frustrate Aunt Gracious Submission’s quest to get her roots dyed and to make Cousin ManlyMan look silly in a frilly mask.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find Americanism listed as a diagnosis in the next DSM.
Kay
@WaterGirl:
I read it too but now I’m reading that the Trump people set that up to blame and smear her, with the NYTimes reliably taking the transcript. That’s a real possibility. They need someone to blame.
I just don’t know and since they all lie constantly and are very adept at manipulating these “insider” stories I’m taking it with a grain is salt. She DID seem too deferential to the Trump people in the press conferences but they’re all such scumbags you know they’d be looking for a fall guy.
Jinchi
What state are you describing, because it sounds like a recipe for disaster. My guess is that they will shut down quickly once campuses start having outbreaks. Either officially, or when parents start refusing to send their children.
Here in California, we’ve been told that school will be started virtually in most counties, because of the latest surge in cases. When classes resume in our county, they’re likely to be part time – with students attending 2 days for 3 hours in the morning, with the remainder online. No cafeteria, no lunch, no intermingling of classes and everyone wearing masks.
Brachiator
Focusing in on Pasadena, CA, in Los Angeles County
More cases among younger people, more community spread, more cases among Latinos
Pasadena reported more new coronavirus cases this week than any other since the pandemic began, as a surge continues through the under-40 and Latinx populations.
Counting 183 new cases between Saturday, July 11 and Friday, July 17, Pasadena shattered the previous record set in mid-May, when the city saw 139 during a seven-day period.
Previously, the virus was mostly spreading through elder care facilities, leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. Now, instead of reporting a dozen deaths in a week, which happened a few times in April and May, the city only reported one death this week — a figure the city hasn’t seen since early June.
Still, the overall rising case counts are troubling for health officials. Last week, the city reported 94 new cases. The week before that, 128.
Pasadena Public Health Director Dr. Ying-Ying Goh’s explanation for the recent spike: “We are, this week, seeing the effects of 4th of July weekend.”
She spoke during a virtual town hall meeting Thursday, explaining the surge was a result of holiday “activities between households,” such as small gatherings and parties, she said….
So far, no one younger than 49 has died in Pasadena, and the median age at death stands at 84, city data shows.
The week’s sole death, reported on Tuesday, July 14, involved a white man who was 65 or older, according to an analysis of city data. His death was linked to an assisted living facility. The facility has been linked to 12 deaths at this point.
A total of 101 people have lost their lives while infected in Pasadena since the outbreak began; 87 of those deaths have been linked to elder care facilities.
With 23 new cases reported on Friday, July 17, the city has counted 99 new cases since this newsgroup last reported on the city’s coronavirus situation on Monday, July 13. Only three of those cases were linked to elder care facilities. The city has tallied a total of 1,643 cases since the outbreak began….
More than half of the city’s 99 cases involved patients younger than 40, mirroring trends health officials and this newsgroup have noted for weeks.
8 cases involved patients younger than 18.
53 cases involved patients between the ages of 18 and 40.
29 cases involved patients between the ages of 41 and 64.
10 cases involved patients 65 or older.
mirroring recent trends, most of the new cases involved Latinx residents. Health officials have said this doesn’t have anything to do with biology.
Instead, it’s a societal effect: Latinx folks tend to work frontline jobs in medical industries, restaurants and other essential businesses, health officials have said. They also tend to live in closer proximity to one another, making it easier for the virus to spread.
While many of the week’s cases landed in the investigatory backlog, officials cleared an extra 40 cases from the same backlog throughout the week. It’s unclear exactly which cases these are, as result, but here’s how they breakdown:
30 cases involved white patients.
63 cases involved Latinx patients.
7 cases involved Black or African American patients.
6 cases involved Asian or Pacific Islander patients.
3 cases involved patients of another race.
In Los Angeles County this week, public health officials saw similar trends as Pasadena, with record-breaking new case counts impacting Latinx communities and young people most heavily.
Even so, during Thursday’s town hall, Goh said while Pasadena’s case count has been increasing dramatically, it’s not accelerating as quickly as Los Angeles or Long Beach.
She expressed some concern that hospitals and elder care facilities could find themselves facing a shortage of personal protective equipment.
“So far we’re doing OK, but we’re concerned about what the future might bring,” she said, calling on the federal government to help procure the much-needed medical supplies.
Meanwhile, earlier this week, Goh and the city’s epidemiologist, Matthew Feaster, published a study of the city’s nursing homes in a Centers for Disease Control medical journal, where they found that 40% of the cases found in the elder care businesses involved asymptomatic patients.
Goh and Feaster used those findings to recommend mass testing strategies, as Pasadena has done, to help control the spread of coronavirus in nursing homes.
Cases have largely abated at most of the city’s nursing homes; Pasadena has only reported six new facility-linked cases since the beginning of the month.
Zelma
I’m on the local school board and I’ve reviewed our district’s re-opening plan. I should point out that ours is a weird district. I live in a resort community with beaucoup million dollar plus mansions. We have increasingly few families with children living here (can’t afford it) and most of our students are paying tuition. Our class sizes are small and our facilities are first rate. Our county has low infection numbers (although they are not decreasing) and adequate testing capacity. (We’re in New Jersey, one of the few states with decent testing.)
The plan is to reopen after Labor Day with in-class instruction. It is well thought out and detailed. There will be the needed resources to keep classrooms clean. There will be shields around desks. There will be masks and social distancing. There will be daily temperature checks and screening. It all sounds great. And it probably won’t work.
We can possibly achieve “social distancing” and compliance in our middle school (5-8). But how do you achieve it in elementary school? Or pre-K? And what will the teachers, many of whom are older, think? And what happens if there is student or teacher who shows symptoms and tests positively?
It’s a nightmare.
Another Scott
@Frankensteinbeck: It’s both (a floor polish and dessert topping).
He’ll snarf up any semi-promising vaccine like he supposedly tried to buy a German company working on a vaccine. He wants control and he wants to be able to use it for patronage and effusive praise from his supporters (and to punish his enemies).
He doesn’t care if the virus totally goes away in actuality. He just wants it go away in red states, and he wants it to go away via his and Javanka’s actions (with them getting a cut).
He’ll make sure his people get a vaccine. He’ll make sure it goes to (white people) in red states. The rest of us? Well, one has to kiss the ring if one wants his favor…
He’s transparent about this stuff. (Puerto Rico, fires in California, etc., etc.)
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Gravenstone
@Emma from FL: A question for the folks who are planning those scheduled cleaning intervals; what the fuck do you do with the kids in the 10-15 minutes you’re going to allot for cleaning? They have to congregate somewhere. And you know damn well there won’t be social distancing in that holding area. Especially since it will need to hold ALL the kinds at any given time.
Marcopolo
@Kay: St Louis County is a living example of this. Back in the olden times (about a year ago) when folk still got together in person for political organization (:)) I went to a post card/letter writing party in a house about 5-6 miles west of where I live (inner ring St Louis suburb that’s been very diverse since the 60’s-70’s). Back in the day, where the event was held was where white folks used to move/flee to escape encroaching diversity. Of the 30 or so people attending 2-3 were AA but surprisingly 6 or 7 were Indian (sub continental not native American). I honestly had no idea that sub community had grown that much. These Indian-American women (it was like 26 women and 4 men so I was in the minority) I talked to were generally 2nd gen, from families full of white collar highly educated professionals (Drs & Lawyers) & very excited about becoming full throated politically involved activists for the first time.
I realize this is anecdata but assume that similar stories are playing out in the ‘burbs around the country (Orange County in CA; Fulton & Gwinnett Co’s in GA).
Marcopolo
@Another Scott: Right, but time after time Trump has shown us how utterly incompetent he and his team are at actually doing stuff. He will try to do all the things you list but he will fail miserably. I guess we will find out sometime around 6 months from now but I still think this is bigger than he is and that there are stakeholders with enough leverage to thwart his goals.
I have a life to attend to in meatspace so I am signing off but I wish every jackal a nice Sunday. And for those near where I live good air conditioning. Heat index is supposed to reach 106 here today & that comes with humidity.
Ken
Odd. California had one of the earlier outbreaks, so I would have thought that reporters had learned about the lag between detection and death. The younger case profile (and improved treatment methods) will likely translate into fewer deaths, but they need to wait about three weeks to get the results of this week’s increase in cases.
EthylEster
(from the link supplied by) @Quinerly : “It’s the diet version of the N-word, but as an African American man, it’s something I deal with pretty frequently,” he said. “If there’s a takeaway from the conversation, it is that Roger Stone gave an unvarnished look into what is in the heart of many Americans today.”
What word? The word Negro occurs in the article. Is THAT the diet version of the N-word?
I must be dense but I need this to be spelled out…literally.
Jinchi
You can point out that countries that took the virus seriously are now open for business, while the U.S. looks like it will be shuttered for at least another 6 months.
Kelly
@Aziz, light!: I have yet to see a mask at the nearby county park but at least there’s broad stretch of cold fast water between us and the park. My nearest (5 minutes away) hardware store was so terrible about masking I barked at them and told them I wouldn’t be back. My business will go to the one 15 minutes away that was strict about masks before there where any mandates.
joel hanes
@Amir Khalid:
I don’t understand American schools expecting teachers to provide regular classroom supplies out of pocket. I understand this even less.
1. The school district has no money.
2. And no more is forthcoming
3. Because Republicans: “taxation is theft” and “*those* *people* in the public schools”
joel hanes
@Central Planning:
I’m not sure how you do that in 10-15 minutes and not have every classroom smell like chemicals.
Soap. But 15 minutes to clean they arms and desk surface of every student seat ?
Soprano2
@Amir Khalid: I’ve provided data for sewer modeling, so let’s just say I know how models can be manipulated. They’re only as good as the data put into them. Dr. Birx relied way too much on a favorable model, even though the information coming from people who were actually on the ground and operating in these places contradicted what the model said. I think she was too invested in telling Trump and his group what they wanted to hear. She’s a scientist, she should have known better IMHO. She could have followed the pandemic playbook even if they didn’t, but instead she tried to please Trump, and here we are. I don’t think they listen to doctors and scientists at this point anyway, so she’s just giving a seeming stamp of approval to the stuff they already want to do.
All these school reopening plans sound unworkable to me. My niece in-law and nephew have already decided that their daughter will start kindergarten as online only, because our school district has provided them that option and her mom already stays at home with them. I hate that she won’t have the normal first year of school experience, but being safe is smarter. I have to say, I’ve been impressed with our local authorities considered how high the MAGA content of this part of the country is. Yesterday at WalMart I only saw 4 people without masks, where before without the ordinance I saw about 20% of people wearing them. Most people will do it if they’re told to.
joel hanes
@Aziz, light!:
My Santa Clara CA Safeway has 100% mask compliance by the staff, and would-be customers who refuse to mask are summarily ejected.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: The Georgia graphs were probably not intentionally malicious. I assume they just decided to put the data into 5-6 evenly divided bins, let the software do its thing, and didn’t think about the ramifications.
The problem is, there’s no “quality control” by people who know what they’re doing when it comes to accurately communicating important information with the public. And then, Gov. Kemp and others just take the graph and throw it up on a screen and say – “see, it looks the same as last week”. Because he only cares about appearances and spin.
Doing work well is hard. Over worked civil servants who aren’t trained in how to convey scientific information accurately aren’t the villains here (most likely).
It’s good the watchers are keeping an eye on them, because it won’t get fixed otherwise.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
dnfree
@Betty Cracker: my kids and grandkids live in various suburbs of Chicago. They are a beautiful blend of colors, native countries, languages, cultures. One bilingual school has a display of flags of all the heritages their students represent. I’d say Trump hasn’t been in a middle-class suburb in quite a while.
patrick II
@Marcopolo:
Not to be too cold-hearted, but if that vaccine works I will take it, and so will most sane people, but if the 30% of hardcore RWNJ Trump loons don’t want to take it, I’m O.K. with that — as long as children have to be vaccinated by law.
Brachiator
@Ken:
The lag time and other issues are noted. I am posting from my phone, and did some edits. My errors, not the reporting.
I had some problems trying to format the link. Hopefully, it shows up correctly.
https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2020/07/17/pasadena-breaks-record-for-new-coronavirus-cases-this-week/amp/
joel hanes
@dnfree:
At my son’s Sunnyvale elementary school, the children came from households that collectively spoke fourteen different languages.
raven
@dnfree: When I went to my 50th reunion in Villa Park I was very interested to see there is a Muslim school right next to Willowbrook High School.
Kirk Spencer
@Gravenstone: The thing I keep considering is related to that. In high schools and junior high schools, what’s the locker and hallway plan?
The classes may isolate, but that’s the interval where everything gets spread between the bubbles.
Kirk Spencer
@patrick II:
A couple of things. First, there’s a large number of anti-vaxxers on the left. I still agree with the label “loons” but it’s worth keeping in mind.
Second and personal, I’m going to wait 2-3 weeks before I get it. That should be sufficient time for the consequences of both rushing and of TeamTrump’s handling to show, and if those don’t impact the effectiveness and don’t have unacceptable costs then I’ll consider it safe enough.
Kelly
https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/2020/07/18/oregon-face-mask-requirement-protests/5464954002/
mrmoshpotato
@laura:
Well put.
“‘I never thought leopards would eat MY KID’S face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.”
Kelly
I may wait for a vaccine with approval from a European Union nation.
Ken
@Brachiator: Thanks, link works now.
raven
I
trollhattan
@Soprano2:
Our county and city school districts have thrown in the towel on restarting in fall and have committed to distance learning through the calendar year.
Two weeks earlier it seemed plausible to have classes in person, in reconfigured spaces on modified schedules, then a big jump in cases scratched that idea.
And I already noted here that yesterday, my kid and I saw a few dozen grown-ass men in a local park playing tackle football in front of perhaps a hundred spectators–no masks, no distancing, no brains. I gua-ran-goddamn-tee some of those folks are headed to the hospital in the next two weeks.
trollhattan
@raven:
Concentrated evil. I thought Scott Walker was bad….
Ken
@Kirk Spencer: Also the school bus plan.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@raven:
Republicans are the Constitution Lovers
dnfree
@Ohio Mom:
Not all suburbs are like yours. Many suburbs have populations ranging from working class through middle class. My daughter couldn’t afford to live where she teaches, but the suburb she does live in is fine. Retail and offices fund the schools, not affluent taxpayers. They are concerned with their children getting a good education, but most don’t tie that to getting into the right college. My daughter and her husband went to a state school.
dnfree
@raven: I have children in Villa Park, Hoffman Estates, and Evanston.
Ken
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Kemp has probably heard that the Constitution doesn’t cover shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater, but may have dozed off before the caveat that it’s fine when the theater is on fire.
Uncle Cosmo
Your bad taste & your loss, ‘Eer. I only asked Jeffro to define his acronym – & had to ask repeatedly. Wasnt aware that’s a shunning offense, but you go right on ahead. Maybe the next time I have some information (which I frequently do) or some “snark worth sharing,” one of your buddies will pass it along & save you the horror of seeing it under my nym.
raven
@dnfree: Well there you go! I left there in 1966 so it’s a whole different universe. What’s weird is that the town itself is pretty much unchanged and Butterfield Road and 22nd St are another world
eta My old man coached at Evanston High in the 50’s.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
so the only president we’ve got had a complete mental breakdown on camera the other day, which was aired on national television this morning, and tomorrow morning, Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Rob Portman et al will pretend to know nothing about it. Aaron Rupar’s feed has all the horrors, at least I hope there isn’t more out there
trump went on to say, yeah, then the questions got really hard. You couldn’t have answered them
Cheryl from Maryland
@Central Planning: This is impossible. My husband now has to go to dialysis 1/2 hour early so the staff can disinfect the chair he will sit in for 4 hours as well as other equipment. And the Center has only 3 shifts a day of patients. FYI, the disinfectant is so harsh he developed contact dermatitis that never clears up despite long pants, over the knee socks and arm sleeves. He is on autodial for prescription-grade hydrocortisone.
Kilgore Trout
@opiejeanne: Yes, things in WA are concerning for sure.
My wife and I and both our adult sons are very fortunate that we can all work remotely (although my wife is in the travel business so not a lot of work to do for her) and other than grocery store trips and take out once or twice a week we just don’t go to any indoor public places.
We’re about to have our primary (exclusively vote by mail) and it will be interesting to see if longtime initiative gadfly Tim Eyman’s going all in with anti-masker / open it up rhetoric will win him the party’s nomination to run against Jay Inslee for governor.
Jinchi
Likewise.
I’m not an anti-vaxxer, but I absolutely don’t trust the Trump administration. He’s been very explicit in peddling snake oil, wants to suspend safety standards to ensure fast-tracking, encourages fly-by-night grifters. and he’s fired anyone who pushed back on his idiocy.
Best case scenario is that he simply decides that the flu vaccine cures coronavirus and convinces everyone to get their annual shot.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Emma from FL
@Gravenstone: I work at an University with lots of green space for people to social distance. So in that, we are lucky.
sgrAstar
@Mel: would you please tell us where this school is? Without location details this info is worthless. Thx.
?
Jinchi
I suppose we could name it after someone who fought for the United States? But really how many people fit that bill?
Kay
@Marcopolo:
My middle son is single and he’s looking for a house so I’ve been going with him sometimes. Toledo and Michigan suburbs- “inner ring”, they call them, are really diverse.
I don’t think he’s buying, though. We’ve looked at tens of them and he always finds something wrong with the place.
I think he’s going to build. One of these- a pole barn house. I don’t think he should live in a suburb. He has a lot of cars and minibikes and motorcycles and now he’s collecting, modifying and repairing electric scooters and bikes. I think he belongs out in the country. I think his neighbors will hate him if he’s close in. My husband calls this “5 acres and a pond” – that sort of person :)
sdhays
@Another Scott: Like you, I tend to look for the least evil, least conspiratorial reason to explain things, but I think you’re probably wrong in this instance. I think they know exactly what they are doing.
When the governor is looking at some of the worse infection numbers in the country and his response is to ban masking orders, anyone working for the governor doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt.
Jay
@EthylEster: Black is the preferred word to reference the minority, by the minority. African American is also acceptable to some.
because one can’t say the n-word with out blatently being outed as a racist, racists have seized on saying the other N word, and will argue in circles for hours, that saying the other N word isn’t racist.
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The judge should throw out the suit with prejudice and sanction the Gov’s lawyers for being willing to put their names on such a thing.
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Ken
@Jinchi: I rather like the idea of naming each base after a decorated veteran who trained or was posted there.
sdhays
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “Well, we could name it Fort Trump, Donnie.”
I’d like someone to say that just to watch the gears spin.
dnfree
@raven: small world, as they say! We lived in various suburbs ourselves (Glen Ellyn, Elmhurst, Homewood, Elgin) decades ago, the city of Chicago in the 1960s and 1970s (South Shore and north side), and then a more rural area for many years. We’re back to Elgin to be closer to family. Cool that your dad was a coach in Evanston. What did he coach?
Another Scott
@Ken: https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-hackneyed-apologia-for-censorship-are-enough/
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@sdhays: That name’s taken.
And, of course, it was a giant fiasco.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-poland-usa-defense-forttrump/us-polish-fort-trump-project-crumbles-idUSKBN23H36P (from June 10, 2020)
This is my shocked, shocked face.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
More on Trump and renaming military bases.
Trump has promised a veto, breaking with several of his fellow Republicans in Congress, of the annual National Defense Authorization Act over an amendment to remove the names of Confederate generals from military bases within a year.
It’s like he is mentally stuck in the 19th century. Very comfortable in his white nativism.
Kay
Well, everyone just be kind to your co-workers or employees with small children, because they are in a tough spot. In order to keep kids and staff safer at daycare they are sending kids home with the slightest elevation in temp. My daughter and one of the women who works at our office has already encountered this. They are scrambling to manage this but with no coordinated effort at all it’s hard. None of these people budgeted doubled child care costs and big gaps in coverage. There’s going to be a lot more absenteeism.
snoey
@Jay: Old school southern racists gave the game away by pronouncing it as “nigrah”.
germy
Portland Police twitter account posted this:
One of the first replies to the tweet:
I thought it was an excellent salute to the “passive voice” we all see in police reports.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Brachiator:
“beautiful”– the poverty of his vocabulary continues to fascinate me, in the way that those monstrous fish they find in the deepest ocean waters, or close up picture of bugs that look like 1950s monsters fascinate me. One interesting thing from Mary Trump’s book, which I spite-bought and listened to), “nasty” was one of old Fred’s favorite words.
Steeplejack (phone)
@EthylEster:
Yes, Stone said “Negro.” That’s the “diet version.”
sdhays
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Of all the people who have stood out during the Dump years, Chris Wallace has got to be the one that has surprised me the most. Of course, he didn’t treat Dump like this when he was running against Hillary, but I’ve been surprised at how recently he’s been getting these interviews with Republicans and then, shockingly, forcing them to confront reality for a few minutes.
The subject of the interview is always shocked and dismayed because they’re used to Fox being a “safe space” for their racism and lies.
artem1s
@WereBear:
suburbs were invented communities so their kids didn’t have to sit in a classroom with those kids. Communities with no economic base except maybe a mall with a cluster of big box discount stores, chain restaurants, hotels and the local high school and/or community college. All of the suburban municipality’s revenue is taking a hit. It’s no wonder they are screeching about opening bars and schools again. Unfortunately going to the mall and buying more crap isn’t going to help them or their kids get thru the plague or this crash.
Another Scott
@sdhays: Wallace has some of the skills of his old man. He can indeed ask probing questions to try to get at the truth.
But he’s not consistent. I don’t know if it’s because his managers pull his strings at times, or what.
Many have tried to claim that the really horrible parts of Fox News are the “entertainment” shows (Fox&Friends) and that the “hard news” part of the operation is fine. I don’t agree. Being better than horrible is not “fine”.
tl;dr – Yay Chris. But do much better and do it consistently.
Cheers,
Scott.
Citizen Alan
@Kirk Spencer: How many weeks did it take for people to realize the side effects of thalidomide?
Jinchi
@sgrAstar: Mel’s story is anecdotal, but we’ve seen lot’s of commentary confirming it.
A big problem is that many states are punting the decision to schools and school districts. This forces local officials and principals to make tough decisions instead of allowing them to plan towards statewide standards. Rules could be completely different from one town to the next.
Kay
Ohio has open enrollment for public schools so we get quite a bit of transferring back and forth between districts. The more desirable districts are known as “receiving schools” because they take more than they lose, and then there are “sending districts”- the opposite. My own district is a receiving district not because it’s better than the others, but because it’s bigger so offers more.
The in-district counties were concerned that there would be a kind of sorting, where some parents would rush to schools that were doing FTF and max that enrollment leaving those that offered less FTF with fewer students and less revenue. It also takes a nightmare planning job and turns it into “impossible”
So we’re doing a county wide plan. All the districts in the county will offer the same plan. They can open enroll out of county but there’s no transportation with that option, so most parents can’t swing it.
patrick II
@Kirk Spencer:
I don’t really want any of them to die. That’s mostly me angry at my powerlessness. Those people, right or left, or a sign of a broader deficit in our society — the breakdown of trust. It’s just not reasonable to think being asked to wear a mask is Fascism, That attitude is fostered by profiteers, some with political motives, some purely mercenary, intent on keeping them stupid.
It is hard and angrifying to watch.
sgrAstar
@Kay: where are you reading that the NYT details abt Birx was a setup? I doubt that very much.
Jinchi
@EthylEster: Specifically he said, “I can’t believe I’m arguing with this Negro.”
Replace “Negro” with “Jew” and it should be obvious that the statement was racist even if the word isn’t.
Kay
@sgrAstar:
I saw it on twitter and it sounds plausible to me, that the Trump people would push that out to cover their asses. I was not a fan of hers but it’s a little suspicious to me that we found the culprit and – surprise! – it isn’t the Trump people.
I don’t know but we’ve been at this a while. The people who work for Donald Trump are not credible witnesses. They may not be lying this time! But they’re no longer on my witness list.
trollhattan
@Another Scott:
You’re known by the company you keep (or work at). At some point, accepting the big paycheck of tainted money removes much of your professional veneer.
It’s equally true that Trump won’t be availing himself to a network not named Fox, so better to have a Chris Wallace than a [spit] Sean Hannity there, because Wallace will ask actual probing questions. Wallace nevertheless understands that his professional credentials are forever marred by his choice of employers.
But he’ll retire and write a book and we can all hardly wait.
sdhays
@Another Scott: Ha!
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: We’ll have to agree to disagree on this one.
I believe it was deliberate. But let’s say you’re right – If the people were stupid enough to do that and not understand the ramifications, then those people have no business holding those positions.
It very much looks to me like they worked backwards – i want the map to stay the same… adjust the groups until it does.
I obviously have no direct knowledge so it’s all speculation.
Ruckus
@WereBear:
Just like the rest of us.
This right here is the crux of the issue. They, like shitforbrains want to be special, they absolutely do not want to be part of the whole. Their whiteness, or whatever is supposed to make them better than someone else. shitforbrains’s money is supposed to make him extra special, his presidency makes him extra special. They don’t see the concept of reality vs position. Position makes them special, reality is that the virus absolutely doesn’t give a damn about position. The rest of us don’t give a damn about position either, we hold the view that being alive is all that’s required and your position gives you squat. People that worship money don’t, probably can’t see that view, because they are worshiping position – richness. We value life, they actually don’t, right up until the moment their life is threatened, they worship position. Their superior position gives them the right to make sure you belong in their neighborhood, that the color of you skin gives you position. Their position is the most important thing, not what they do when the chips really are down, but what they are, position in the hierarchy of bullshit.
Every life isn’t valuable, only those that have achieved position.
Kids don’t have position, unless their parents have position, at which point they do. Position gives them rights that people who can’t have position can not have. Money gives one position. That’s why shitforbrains has always said he had far, far more money than he does – without that money he’s got no position – and he knows it. Right up until 3 1/2 yrs ago, his only position was money. It still is because he is incapable of earning any position. He was handed the one he has and he is completely, totally, horribly incapable at it. He didn’t earn his position, he can’t earn that position, he was falsely rewarded it, because people with the outlook that position is everything believed his false position of wealth. To them merit is given by position, not by reality.
Ruckus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
From his history, I’d say being nasty was also his favorite pastime. His life’s work as it were. It’s possibly why shitforbrains was his favorite, he picked up the nasty part so easily.
Amir Khalid
Looks like we’re way overdue for a new thread.
Matt McIrvin
@WaterGirl: Massachusetts has been doing the same thing as Georgia for the county-by-county state maps in their daily dashboards. The bins keep changing so that differences between counties don’t just get washed out as total cases mount up. The purpose of that map isn’t to show a time series (the time series is shown elsewhere), so I don’t see the problem unless Georgia explicitly is comparing them as a time series.
Steeplejack
I am lucky in that mask compliance (staff and customers) is very good at both of the groceries I go to: the substandard Safeway, whose extreme convenience makes up for the spotty selection, and the new super Giant, which is almost Wegman-esque in its opulence. I’ll be going there more often, since my insider pipeline at Trader Joe’s is coming to a temporary end. About the only other places I go are the liquor store and a handful of restaurants (for takeout only). Occasional one-offs like Micro Center, but only if safety procedures are in effect.
As of yesterday I’m on at least two weeks of hiatus from car-service duty. The mother of my friend who works at Trader Joe’s decided to visit from New Jersey for the weekend (the sister and niece didn’t come), so I will not be seeing my friend until two weeks after Mom leaves. I explained all this to my friend a couple of weeks ago, when the possibility first came up, and she is cool with it. My friend’s brother, who is a corrections officer in New Jersey, got the coronavirus back in March, and, although he self-quarantined and recovered, he has contact with their mother and brings over his 8-year-old son for day care. So who knows what level of exposure is still around? But I would be doing the same no matter what unknown person came to visit.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Who would have guessed that Fred and Donald were fans of Janet Jackson’s Nasty.
More seriously, very intriguing and disturbing. I wonder if old Fred used it the way Trump does, to dismiss women.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Jinchi
I’m critical of the Georgia government response, but this map looks perfectly legitimate. The official page this map is presented on is a daily status report. It’s purpose is to identify the counties with the worst outbreaks. It’s not presented as a trend over time, only one map appears at a time. The color range changes with the daily data, because there is no obvious high value or low value. If they had decided on a high value metric early in the pandemic, everything would have saturated red a month ago and the map would now be essentially useless.
Note also that the actual statewide change in caseload over time is plotted just below that map, so it’s not being hidden.
Ken
@WaterGirl: I work with (and write) data visualization software, and it is common for it to “auto-bin” the data in situations like this. That is, the color scale always runs from blue to red, and the range of data values determines the endpoints.
I agree it’s at best distortion and at worst deliberate malpractice to not take that into account. The better practice is to set the limits based on some objective criteria, for example you would say that 0-1% is green, 1-2% is yellow, etc. The only problem with that approach is that you sometimes have to add a new color (“bruised red”, say) when the data goes outside the range that you considered.
Edit: If as others have said this is not intended as a time-series but as a daily comparison, it’s not all that bad. A time-series map would set the scale from the entire range of data, so in this case would start with everything blue and gradually turn redder.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Amir Khalid: if recent patterns hold, there will be three or four threads in the next hour or two
Yutsano
@Amir Khalid: What the flowers in Central Park thread isn’t cutting it for you? :P
I actually agree. I have resolved to leave the house today to get the forest on my head cut and bop on to the store (not necessarily in that order) but the laziness bug has hit hard. It will get done today just not right now.
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Bigfoot likes to sleep in on the weekends, but makes up for it later.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
How long do you think it will be before the FTFNYT try to walk it back?
SFAW
@artem1s:
Not really. Suburbs were the natural outgrowth of population increase/expansion. Cities can only hold so many, etc. Suburbs have been around for more than 100 years, although that particular naming may not have been in vogue.
“White flight,” on the other hand …
Zinsky
Anne – Thank you for your lovely flower pictures again! Trump can’t understand even the basic biomedical and sociological factors involved in addressing a viral pandemic, so he doesn’t even try. I have seen this in other sociopaths – if they can’t understand something, they rationalize their failure away by assuming the facts they don’t know aren’t worth knowing. Trump is pathetic and is going to lose by historic margins in November.
SFAW
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
At least one of which will be one FP-er bigfooting another.
Yutsano
@SFAW: It is Sunday however. The later postings will be slow to generate. Then they will rapidly appear like mad hornets tumbling one upon the other with the Blogfather doing the strongest stomping.
Or this is all we get and we double Tbogg.
Kent
I’m in Camas, across the other river from Portland. I see good mask use up here, but it’s sort of an affluent enclave. We are at 88% on the NYT mask map. I only shop at Costco anymore because they are 100% serious about mask enforcement and have big wide aisles that make distancing easy. Luckily we are a family of 5 so can absorb Costco quantities. And if I can’t buy it there I don’t buy it. We do have a local QFC that is very good about masking. I have popped in there from time to time to grab something and skip back out through the self checkout without interacting with anyone.
The kids in our neighborhood are starting to do more hanging about with each other though. I can’t say I don’t blame them. We should be fucking over this by now. It isn’t their fault their leaders are criminally insane.
lowtechcyclist
@Ken:
Oh come on. By the time they had three days’ worth of these graphs, people were probably using them as a time series, or trying to.
It’s just the same as polls being snapshots, but everyone knows people will compare last month’s polls with this month’s polls.
It’s not like they were going to run out of colors if they kept the same scale in place; there are plenty of colors. Bruised red, red violet, etc.
Having taught the class two or three dozen times at three different colleges, I can tell you this shit is in all the elementary statistics (i.e. statistics for non-math types) textbooks, in the “how to lie with statistics” chapter near the front of the book.
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: @Jinchi:
“How about Fort Obama?”
lowtechcyclist
@Ruckus: Shorter version:
Jeffro
I think the trumpov campaign is REALLY regretting letting the Ill Douche sit for an interview with Mike Wallace. I’m sure trumpov himself thinks he “really showed ’em!” with his wit, and insults, and the bit about being able to identify an elephant and all, but whew…it was baaaaad.
I know his maliciousness and cruelty should be the main things I hate about him, but honestly, his unbelievable stupidity always comes out at the top of the list.
Jay
ProfDamatu
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yeah. Though not all college faculty are guys…
More on point, it is definitely not appropriate to ask faculty to sanitize rooms after every class. At least not if you want actual cleaning to take place, because 15 minutes is simply not sufficient time to get all your own students on their way, clean, and get to your next class on time. And I’m sure that ending class early would be unacceptable!
And of course even more important is the fact that cleaning like this is barely more than kabuki, based on what we know about transmission. Fomites are much less of a concern than poor air circulation and quality…but fixing that issue would be very costly, while requiring professors to “sanitize” desks after each class is cheap, and looks like you’re doing something.
Kay
Trump’s deranged and this makes no sense, but what IS true is that the failure on healthcare extends to the entire GOP and existed LONG before Trump.
George W Bush vetoed an expansion in Medicaid for lower income children and offered nothing to them as a replacement. 30 fucking years these people have been whining about health care and not one of them did anything about it.
Every single advancement in US health care coverage is wholly due to the efforts of one party- the Democrats. If it were up to conservatives 75% of people would have no access to health care, including the entire senior citizen cohort.
Ken
Suddenly I’m envisioning the chemistry faculty coming up with fast ways to completely sterilize the room.
Brachiator
@Jeffro:
And yet his base sees his cruelty as “toughness,” and his stupidity as deliberately toying with the media.
Geminid
There was an article posted July 19 in The Jerusalem Post about an Israeli doctor who tested positive for Covid-19 in April. She had a cough and a fever. She tested negative in May and June, but tested positive again this month after treating a Covid-19 positive patient. Not good.
Chief Oshkosh
@Matt McIrvin: It’s a visual that is supposed to show by color how each county is doing. Dark blue means low infection rates. Bright red means high infection rates. If the colors never change, that means that the state overall is holding steady. The problem is that the colors never changes, but infection rates are skyrocketing.
That’s a huge problem. The entire exercise is to SHOW how you’re doing. Instead of showing how infection rates are changing as indicated by changing colors, they’ve set the colors to never change. Instead, the infection range for each color simple gets bumped up every week.
Jay
pat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Projection. It’s all he’s got.
This is hysterical.
Ruckus
@lowtechcyclist:
Frank is right but I think it’s actually simpler than that. Which is also one reason that some don’t think they are racist, as racist words fall out of their mouths. In the forefront they see position, for example, they hold some productive or semi productive job which allows them to be a two car family, while that black man has to walk everywhere, he obviously doesn’t have position.
The effect is the same, it’s just a definition they would never make about themselves, they don’t necessarily see political definitions as valid, even as they fall right into one side or the other. It is an excuse to be able to believe their position is better, which makes them better. shitforbrains is that way, his money position makes him better, which is why he so over inflated his wealth, and therefore position. He can lie about it and no one will check – and no one did for a very long time. The lie became reality, that he had a financial position, and therefore value as a person.
Do you value someone because of their position, or that they got position because of their existence and who and what they are and believe? President Obama and President Trump hold or have held the same position. Are they the same? And even position people can look at position and say they don’t qualify, because of some other position. Position has hierarchy and in our country wealth is a high position.
Jay
Sab
@ProfDamatu: That’ how they thought at my job before I quit it in March. No face masks. No restricting client access to the office. Let’s just send a secretaty around with a spray bottle of rubbing alchohol twice a day and otherwise carry on as before.
jonas
JFC. Did he really say that? Describing this guy’s pathologies is pushing the lexical boundaries of our language more each day.
WaterGirl
@SFAW: It’s not always big footing. Anne Laurie and I knowingly have posts right around the same time (5am -ish and 10pm -ish) weekdays. Some people want COVID in the morning, some want On the Road, some want both, but they are not in competition with one another.
But yeah, sometimes there is definitely stomping!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes, pretty much this. They think reality is a salad bar.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s an interesting statement the way Trump projects. So were almost at Trump doing the Hitler in the Bunker meltdown Downfall scene on national TV.
Miss Bianca
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I’m so swiping this.
Bill Arnold
@SFAW:
Don’t know about your scenario (which is a bit over the top), but I am quite sure that early doses of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine will, in the US, be distributed to the rich and powerful first, with some for the police and oh yes health care workers.
The virus differentially kills people in the age cohorts with most of the power and money, and being vaccinated will harden their already-shriveled hearts, including with increased and aggressive pushes for the public to accept massive death in exchange for <strike>Moloch’s</strike> Mammon’s [smiles] at the rich and powerful.
We should(must) be prepared to push back on such moves massively, with pre-tuned narratives.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Likely that why North Korea breaks out their English Theasarous to insult Trump, it’s obvious even to them that Trump’s English sucks and they want to rub it in his face.
Hoppie
@SFAW: Suburbs are substantially the result of the Progressive drive against corruption early in the last century. Municipal water and sewer agencies were -dare I say? – perceived as cesspools of corruption. The solution usually was to decouple them from city boundaries. After that, very few non-Sunbelt cities were able to annex new development, which then went on to (often) incorporate for all of the mentioned reasons – control of schools, protecting property values, racism – against both American blacks and immigrants. So here we are.
Uncle Cosmo
There’s a #4 (or maybe a #3a) that applies to school districts whose next higher layer of government is hostile to them. E.g., Baltimore City, population ~600.000, which is essentially the 24th county of the state of MD with ~10% of the population.
The City (including its school system) is funded by a piggyback percentage on the state income tax paid by City residents and the property tax, essentially a pass-through from the owners to their City-resident tenants. Any additional funding would have to come from the State or the Feds.
Most of the remaining ~90% of the MD population lives in the suburbs of DC or Baltimore. DC Metro residents (~2.5 million) are largely indifferent to the plight of Baltimore (unless it costs them money). Baltimore Metro residents outside the City limits (~2.2 million) are actively hostile to Baltimore; many of them moved out of the City for better schools and lower property taxes**, and any elected official who tries to help the City with its financial problems (including school funding) puts her/his re-election in severe jeopardy. Were it not for the offices & downtown attractions, which the suburbanites are happy to enjoy, many if not most of them would be happy to erect a Berlin-style wall at the City line & leave us to rot.
Absent a Democratic Governor strongly committed to Baltimore City’s well-being, this is unlikely to change – and IMO, due to the state’s political peculiarities, we aren’t likely to see another of those in my lifetime (unless the MD GOP put up a total nutcase for the job, which could happen).
A pandemic side note: In past years August would see City teachers descend on The Book Thing to collect box upon box of free books to distribute to their students. That almost surely will not happen this year (though there is an outdoor event schedule for next Friday) – the organization “went into hibernation” at the end of 2019, having lost its nonprofit status, and it is unlikely to be restored before early 2021, particularly since all things IRS-related have gone into slo-mo due to the pandemic’s impact on staffing and processing.
**As I’ve noted before, this was how I landed in this uptown Baltimore row house >30 years ago: The owners’ older child was about to start school, and instead of subjecting her to the underfunded City system or paying for private school, they sold me the place & bought its near-twin ~1/4 mile beyond the city line so she could attend the much better Baltimore County schools.
Bill Arnold
@Chief Oshkosh:
Another reason this pisses me off is that there is still no solid evidence, after 6 months, that SARS-CoV-2 is spread by indirect contact through contamination surfaces.
Focus should be on respiratory spread, with an emphasis on source control (of infected people, knowing and unknowing). Mandatory masks indoors in shared spaces with expulsion or other discipline for any lapses in mask discipline. Mandatory distancing. Plus other measures likely to reduce respiratory spread, which is the proven dominant mode of transmission for SARS-CoV-2.
Mel
The schools are in Ohio. The mandate where I’m at excludes students in schools from the mask requirement, leaving this up to each school district to decide what to do. Since there is no statewide or local mandate that children mask in public places, schools would likely have great difficulty legally defending a consistent mask requirement even if they tried to put one into practice. Various surrounding counties are setting their own mandates (or not, in some cases), and different cities within different counties are setting their own. Thus, there is no overall consensus, no reliable or consistent plan or method to enforce the mandates in many areas (often, it falls to the individual health departments), and some school districts in the region don’t even have finalized re-opening plans posted yet.
A few of the wealthy districts have plans that include some social distancing and slightly better protection for students (desk shields, reduced class sizes, “parents’ choice” remote learning options, etc.), but still no rules guaranteeing that students must wear masks; however, most nearby districts’ plans are essentially fruitless and put the burden and risk squarely on the teachers and staff.
I absolutely agree with Watergirl – it will likely have to come down to a widespread teacher strike, but with so many teachers depending on their jobs for their family’s health insurance, and with so many struggling to pay their basic bills as it is because of low salaries (and for younger teachers and second career teachers, high student loan debt), that is an exceptionally difficult decision for most teachers to make. It will be hard to get an across the board response, especially from private school and charter school teachers who have no union protections at all, and many of whom are on year to year, fire-at- will contracts regardless of their job performance ratings or their years of seniority.
And no, to sgrAstar, who said that information about issues with school re-opening is meaningless without a specific location, I’m not naming the exact school or city, because many of my friends and former colleagues are truly frightened about losing their jobs and health insurance for speaking out about the dangerous conditions. Having spent years in the classroom before illness made me unable to teach, I respect and fully understand their concerns, as I’m certain that almost everyone here does as well.
Steeplejack
@Mel:
Nobody is asking for a specific school name. But “Ohio” gives at least some useful context.
evodevo
@Jay: Especially since, in my day (Fifties and Sixties), they pronounced it “nigra” in a sneering voice…just daring you to say anything about it. Used to piss me off big time…
Oh, wait, I see snoey beat me to it…
Mel
@Steeplejack: Just got back in and saw that there were several questions as to location. No problem with giving the state, and I know that most people here, you included, understand that sometimes there is a bit of need for discretion, especially in unpredictable situations.
I do feel that sgrAsatr decrying any information about problematic school re-openings as “worthless” without a location, especially when so many lives (and livelihoods) are at stake, and when the same scenario is playing itself out in numerous school districts all over the country, is rather silly.
Statistics, citations, exact publications, exact numbers: yes, verification is essential in so many circumstances. But privacy is important as well, and anyone who has worked in education knows how political it is, and that educators are often not at all free to express their personal opinions, much less challenge a school board’s re-opening plan, without putting their employment and their professional future on the line. Even if I would be comfortable with it, I’m never going to assume that I have the right to make that decision for a former colleague, so I chose initially to not state any info regarding location.
WaterGirl
@Mel: If teachers went on strike, and then they were fired, would they get unemployment? They could apply for ACA right away, and with no income coming in, would their premiums be fairly affordable?
It shouldn’t have to come to that, but I am wondering. It makes me sick to my stomach that people have to risk their lives for a fucking job, all because we have a sociopathic toddler in the oval office, and an entire party of Republicans with no morals and no humanity.
J R in WV
@patrick II:
But with Trump in charge — how could we possible KNOW if a vaccine works, if it is safe, if it won’t cause birth defects, etc, etc???
Because to Trump, none of that matters, nothing matters but WINNING that ELECTION ~!!!~ And if it takes fooling millions of people into taking a shot of Lysol in the arm, he will be all over it!!
ETA: I’m all over getting approved vaccines, I started with Salk polio and Smallpox as a youth in the 1950s. Went to the Health Department a couple of years ago for boosters and newer vaccines that weren’t around when I was a kid.
But now, today, trusting Trump with something I put into my veins?
NONONONO
Not gonna happen, ever. Maybe Fauci, but not Trump, not his Dr. Brix NoNoNo!!!