Survivor stories: Death, loss and selflessness during the pandemic

By Jacqueline Cutler / New York Daily News

Those days when the word corona made you think beer or crown feel like long-gone innocence.

So much happened during these 18 months that how we’re reacting to different phases of the pandemic and how survivors are coping are worth documenting.

“Voices from the Pandemic: Americans Tell Their Stories of Crisis, Courage and Resilience” is a powerful reflection on the last year and a half. Pulitzer-winning journalist Eli Saslow has managed the near-impossible: He makes you want to read more about the pandemic.

This doesn’t bother with maps of where the virus is spiking or death tolls. It can’t be of the moment. Instead, it’s the story of all of us — those who have taken every precaution and those who refused to acknowledge COVID’s deadly path.

Done in the style of the late great Studs Terkel, these are oral histories as the history is happening. Each section has people sharing their stories in their words.

Sure, it’s edited for clarity, but there’s no spin. It’s unfailingly fair: When a tenant recounts her eviction, the next entry is from a landlord who exhausted her savings trying to not evict people.

Even though we think we know the stories of the pandemic, we can’t – at least not all of them. And we never may. Saslow carefully selected a cross-section of people; some who have since died, some who recovered, some who never may.

Saslow reminds us of the first whisperings. On Jan. 4, 2020, there was news about what was considered a pneumonia outbreak in China. Five weeks later, it had a name, COVID-19.

A month later, life as we knew it stopped.

“She’s dead, and I’m quarantined,” Tony Sizemore, of Indianapolis, says of his love, Birdie Shelton, in the first entry from March 2020. “That’s how the story ends. I keep going back over it in loops, trying to find a way to sweeten it, but nothing changes the facts. I wasn’t there with her at the end. I didn’t get to say goodbye. I don’t even know where her body is right now, or if the only thing that’s left is her ashes.”

With that gut-wrenching opening, we’re off. We meet dozens of people we’ve never heard of, which is precisely the point. Everyone knew when Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson were among the first celebrities to get COVID.

But this book introduces Bruce MacGillis, a man in an Ohio nursing home. He refused to let temp workers who couldn’t wear masks correctly get near him and isolated himself until he was vaccinated.

“I’m a hard-ass about this stuff, and I’m not even a little bit sorry,” he told Saslow. “I can’t afford to take chances.”

Some who tell their stories are the superheroes of the pandemic.

A shift leader of a nursing team in Detroit, Sal Hadwan, recounts insane shifts. While we celebrate and honor health care workers – now more than ever – the dire conditions they were working under were horrifying. Remember garbage bags serving as protective gear? Some had one mask per shift.

In April 2020, Hadwan said: “We’re basically handling the most severe cases in the ER, which is not our training. These nurses don’t have a second to relax. You’ve got one patient’s oxygen running out and another whose heart rate is going wild. All you can do is try your best to hear the alarms and then sprint as fast as you can from one emergency to the next. You hope you make it in time. Sometimes you don’t.”

Naturally, it’s bleak. But there are also stories of humanity at its best.

Burnell Cotlon of New Orleans (pictured above) turned his grocery store in the Lower Ninth Ward into a food pantry. He couldn’t afford to, but some of his neighbors couldn’t afford to eat.

As he said in April 2020, “Last week, I caught a lady in the back of the store stuffing things into her purse. We don’t really have shoplifters here.” He knows the customers in his two-aisle market. The woman swiped a carton of eggs, hot dogs, and candy bars.

“She started crying,” Cotlon told Saslow. “She said she had three kids, and her man had lost his job, and they had nothing to eat and no place to go. Maybe it was a lie. I don’t know. But who’s making up stories for seven or eight dollars of groceries? She was telling me, ‘Please, please, I’m begging you. How are we supposed to eat?’ I stood there for a minute and thought about it, and what am I going to do?”

Colton started running tabs – for the first time. He went from having zero customers on credit to 62 within a month. He kept giving to neighbors until he fell three months behind on his mortgage.

In a postscript, Saslow adds that when Colton’s generosity became known, online fundraisers brought in $500,000. Naturally, he put it to great use: forgiving his customers’ debt and beginning construction on a subsidized apartment building. “He also gave out free school supplies and turned his store into a free vaccination site for the community.”

Every page in this is sobering. Every story chilling, relatable, and absolutely forthright.

For those who lost their jobs and who were living paycheck-to-paycheck, rent became impossible to pay. To lose your job, your health, your relatives and now your home is unbearable. Granted, the news often focuses on the tenants, while many of us assume landlords only take time out from counting their money to harass tenants.

It’s a lot easier to feel for the tenants, who are doing all they can.

Saslow interviewed Tusdae Barr, evicted during the pandemic. Although money was tight before COVID, Barr was making rent with everyone in her family chipping in — until work dried up. Barr eventually found herself ousted, then in cheap motels, and finally with relatives.

If you never thought you could sympathize with a landlord, meet Jayne Rocco of Deland, Fla. She became a landlord 25 years ago when broke, reeling from a divorce. Rocco found a lender, bought and fixed up a cheap house, then flipped it and bought two houses. She continued doing this until she had 10 properties, none fancy. Rocco’s profit was about $40,000 a year pre-pandemic.

Trying to help her tenants and pay her bills, Rocco exhausted her savings. She’s still trying, and still has troubles. With some of the people featured, their troubles are financial. For some, such as a newlywed, former athlete Kaitlin Denis, of Chicago, the effects of long-term COVID, are medical. She’s drained and can barely get out of bed.

And some trying to help, such as Amber Elliot, county health director in Farmington, Mo., found herself threatened with anti-vaxxers posting photos of her kids online.

The book ends with a leading voice of science. Stanley Plotkin, 88, a virologist, “developed the rubella vaccine that’s now in standard use throughout the world.” He’s worked on other life-saving vaccines and consults for the World Health Organization.

“Parents can expect their children to grow up, and that’s a relatively new thing,” Plotkin told Saslow in January. “It shouldn’t be taken for granted.”

If this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that nothing can.

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Five months after the novel coronavirus was first detected in the United States, a record surge in new cases is the clearest sign yet of the country’s historic failure to control the virus — exposing a crisis in governance extending from the Oval Office to state capitals to city councils.

President Trump — who has repeatedly downplayed the virus, sidelined experts and misled Americans about its dangers and potential cures — now finds his presidency wracked by an inability to shepherd the country through its worst public health calamity in a century. The dysfunction that has long characterized Trump’s White House has been particularly ill-suited for a viral outbreak that requires precision, focus and steady leadership, according to public health experts, administration officials and lawmakers from both parties.

As case numbers began rising again, Trump has held rallies defying public health guidelines, mused about slowing down testing for the virus, criticized people wearing masks and embraced the racially offensive “kung flu” nickname for a disease that has killed at least 123,000 Americans.

A similarly garbled message for the country has also been put forward by the president’s top aides and other senior administration officials, who contradict one another on a daily basis. On Friday, Vice President Pence used the first White House coronavirus task force briefing in almost two months to praise Trump’s handling of the virus and cast aside concerns about a record spike in new infections.

“We have made a truly remarkable progress in moving our nation forward,” Pence said, a few minutes after announcing that more than 2.5 million Americans had contracted the coronavirus. “We’ve all seen the encouraging news as we open up America again.”

Later Friday, the United States recorded more than 40,000 new coronavirus cases — its largest one-day total.

It was the latest example of whiplash from the Trump administration, which has struggled to put forward a consistent message about the pandemic. While public health experts urge caution and preventive measures such as mask-wearing and social distancing, Trump, Pence and other top aides repeatedly flout their advice, leaving confused Americans struggling to determine who to believe.

“They’re creating a cognitive dissonance in the country,” one former senior administration official said. “It’s more than them being asleep at the wheel. They’re confusing people at this point when we need to be united.”

This portrait of a nation in crisis — and its failure to contain an epic pandemic — is based on interviews with 47 administration officials, lawmakers at the national and state level, congressional staff, federal and local health officials, public health experts and other current and former officials involved in the bungled and confused response.

America’s position as the world’s leader in coronavirus cases and deaths is in large part the result of human error, and the still-rising caseload stands as a stark reminder of the blunders that have characterized the national response. Trump’s actions, and his position in the Oval Office, make him a central figure in any assessment of the country’s handling of the outbreak.

As the White House task force scaled back its meetings and stopped its public briefings in May and June, Trump seized the national spotlight and used it to shift the country’s focus from the virus to an economic comeback he branded the “TRANSITION TO GREATNESS.”

Trump’s public mentions of the coronavirus declined by two-thirds between April and early June. When he did discuss the pandemic, it was often to float misinformation about treatments, masks and testing — science-defying views that have been embraced by his supporters and top Republican lawmakers.

The White House has blocked Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, from some appearances that he has requested to do in recent weeks, according to two people familiar with the matter. White House aides have argued that television interviewers often try to goad Fauci into criticizing the president or the administration’s approach, and that Fauci is not always good about “staying on message,” in the words of a senior administration official. Aides did allow Fauci to appear on CNN recently for a town hall, the official said.

White House officials have battled for weeks over whether to hold the public coronavirus briefing, with some arguing to instead focus on other issues, such as the economy.

As local officials struggled to enforce stay-at-home orders and other restrictions, the virus continued to circulate throughout a country riven by partisan politics and devoid of a national public health strategy, said Max Skidmore, a political scientist at the University of Missouri at Kansas City and author of a book on presidential leadership during health crises.

“We’re the only country in the world that has politicized the approach to a pandemic,” he said.

Now, covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, is advancing at an accelerated pace in the United States, even as other countries reopen their economies after getting their outbreaks under control. European diplomats are poised to approve an agreement that will reopen the European Union to travel from many countries but not American tourists, because the coronavirus is still raging in the United States.

In contrast, states from Arizona to Florida are pausing or reversing their attempts to reopen their economies.

The new peak in cases — coming so quickly after the first and with just months to go before a presidential election and an impending flu season — has alarmed public health experts and the president’s political allies.

“These epidemics are going to be hard to get under control,” said Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and an informal adviser to the Trump administration. He said he expects deaths to soon climb to more than 1,000 per day again. “It’s going to continue to spread until you do something to intervene. I’m not sure we are taking enough forceful action to break the trend right now.”

The president has dramatically scaled back the number of coronavirus meetings on his schedule in recent weeks, instead holding long meetings on polling and endorsements, his reelection campaign, the planned Republican National Convention in Jacksonville, Fla., the economy and other topics, according to two advisers, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

While Pence continues to convene weekly calls with governors to discuss coronavirus testing, supplies and other issues, Trump no longer participates, the advisers said. Trump now receives his updates on the coronavirus effort from Pence, officials said.

Trump’s intense focus on his campaign comes as he has been sliding in public polling and trailing Democratic rival Joe Biden, who is winning support from voters who disapprove of the president’s handling of the pandemic and the accompanying economic recession. Some Republican officials have tried to advise the president to focus more intently on managing the public health crisis at hand, arguing that doing so would help his political standing — and theirs — while also speeding along the economic recovery.

But Trump has shown little indication that he plans to re-engage on shepherding a national coronavirus response in the wake of surging cases. He has expressed frustration to aides that he was criticized for a lack of adequate testing and is now not being given enough credit for the 500,000 daily tests that are currently being conducted, officials said. Trump has repeatedly claimed that the caseload is only going up because of the increasing number of tests, and he has openly discussed reducing testing.

“The number of ChinaVirus cases goes up, because of GREAT TESTING, while the number of deaths (mortality rate), goes way down,” Trump wrote Thursday on Twitter.

In several states, where hospitalizations and positivity rates are sharply increasing, Trump’s words offer little comfort to governors trying to figure out how to respond to a burgeoning crisis.

Some states are still struggling to procure testing kits and supplies for the kits, including swabs, and have pleaded for the federal government to play a larger role in coordinating purchases, resolving supply shortages and distributing the tests. Doctors and health-care facilities are still grappling with shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE), including private doctors’ offices that cannot perform routine procedures safely because they do not have the necessary equipment, according to the American Medical Association.

“It is not clear to us how the administration has distributed PPE across the country during the pandemic, but having a single national coordinated strategy would help ensure that states, hospitals, physician offices and other facilities have a single, centralized authority to work through to acquire essential PPE,” said American Medical Association President Susan R. Bailey.

Politicization of the pandemic has left many Republican governors to choose between staying a doomed public health course while touting economic recovery or acting on recommendations from public health experts who Trump has dismissed.

Young people are driving a spike in coronavirus infections, officials say

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has resisted calls for a statewide mask mandate, even as Florida’s cases jumped by 62 percent from its previous high of 5,511 on Wednesday to a new high of 8,942 on Friday. His argument, made publicly as recently as Thursday, is that not all parts of the state are experiencing the same level of outbreak, and therefore they should not be subject to a one-size-fits-all approach. The state announced Friday that all bars must shut down on-site consumption, three weeks after they reopened.

In Arizona, public health experts and local officials largely credit lobbying efforts by mayors for pushing Gov. Doug Ducey (R) to reverse his position and allow cities to implement mask requirements as they saw fit.

Kristen Pogreba-Brown, an epidemiologist at the University of Arizona, said she found it “disgusting” to watch politics penetrate considerations about public health precautions. She pointed in particular to issues of testing following the president’s erroneous suggestion that increased testing is to blame for the scope of the outbreak.

“The fact that we don’t have a federal testing program is pretty embarrassing, frankly,” she said, noting that her university is developing its own in-house testing system, because “we don’t have faith people can go out and get tested in the community.”

More than five months after the first test for the coronavirus was conducted in the United States, testing equipment is still being doled out based on which states manage to get federal officials on the phone to press their case. After a recent weekend that saw demand for testing outstrip capacity, the governor’s office in Arizona placed a call to the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Daniel Ruiz, Ducey’s chief operating officer. Within 24 hours, they had secured expedited access to a rapid Roche testing machine, he said.

Some states are banding together to issue quarantine orders against visitors from regions with rising cases, further highlighting the lack of a federal standard. Conspiracy theories about masks, vaccines and social distancing have abounded, threatening to stymie local leaders’ attempts to enforce public health guidelines.

Trump’s willingness to ignore ordinances on masks and large crowds has added to the sense of confusion, public health experts said.

“Any time there is politicization of an infectious-disease response, it makes it much harder to intervene,” said Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. People are “less likely to actually listen to public health authorities on what are the best actions to take and how to take them because they think that everything has been politicized in that there is no truth — it’s truth from Democrats or Republicans, rather than the truth,” Adalja said.

As support for masks grows, so does the political risk in not wearing them

The White House has played a central role in undermining the kind of clear and consistent messaging experts say is necessary to mount a successful public health response to a viral outbreak, current and former administration officials said.

Top aides to Pence, including his chief of staff, Marc Short, have grown increasingly skeptical of public health officials within the administration, believing they have been wrong too many times about mitigation techniques and transmission of the virus, according to three officials familiar with the matter. Short has increasingly disagreed with public health experts in coronavirus meetings, these people said.

Trump has undermined Fauci and other health experts repeatedly, publicly dismissing their views about reopening schools, professional sports and other aspects of public life.

While Fauci has been sidelined from briefing Trump and appearing on television, economic advisers such as trade adviser Peter Navarro and Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, have been given a more prominent public role. They have often used the platform to provide false assurances that the recent surges are under control.

“We’re going to have hot spots. No question. We have it now,” Kudlow said Thursday. “And, you know, Texas and parts of the South, the Carolinas, Arizona. We just have to live with that.”

Others without a background in public health, including Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have played an outsized role in guiding the federal response. Just last month, Kushner told others involved in the response that the virus was essentially under control and that there would be no second wave, a former administration official said.

White House officials, including Kushner, Deborah Birx, coordinator of the administration’s coronavirus response, and acting chief of staff Mark Meadows met Thursday to discuss what the administration should be doing to contend with the spike in cases, a White House official said. The plan is for Birx to visit the hardest-hit states to collect more information, and for officials to redirect the therapeutic drug remdesivir to states that are surging.

The official said that Birx and Fauci are also likely to do more regional TV interviews in places where cases are surging.

The White House is also expected to record public service announcements in Spanish about the coronavirus in an attempt to reach the Hispanic community, which has been hit particularly hard by the virus. A senior White House official said top administration officials have regularly offered assistance to officials in Texas, Florida, Arizona and other states. Two administration officials said there will probably be more briefings for reporters, though many are likely to be off-camera.

The partisanship that has come to surround mask-wearing was on stark display on Capitol Hill on Friday, as House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) convened a hearing of the select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis.

Clyburn and the other committee Democrats attended wearing masks, while the committee’s Republican members were maskless, which led to angry exchanges.

Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) accused Republican members who were maskless of provoking “terror and fear in your colleagues and perhaps your staff.”

Republicans, several of whom had worn masks into the hearing room before taking them off, contended that they could practice social distancing safely while seated maskless at the dais.

“We are six feet apart. We don’t need a mask,” said Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), who is a physician.

Publicly, GOP lawmakers remain largely supportive of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, declining to put any blame on him or the federal response for the upward trend in infections. They generally say the decision-making responsibility now lies with state governments, and that individual citizens bear the onus for responsible behavior to hold down infections.

The CDC is sending teams to states experiencing outbreaks, rather than following the usual policy of waiting for states to ask for help. The agency has sent nearly 150 people out to about 20 states, a federal official said, including California, Arizona, Texas and Florida. It has about three dozen more staffers awaiting deployment to hot spots to provide technical assistance, epidemiological support, surveillance and contact tracing, the official said.

While Trump has attacked some Democratic governors for their handling of the virus, its recent spread in Republican-led states such as Texas, Florida, Arizona, South Carolina and Oklahoma has complicated the politics around the president’s response.

Officials in some states that have contained much of the virus’s spread have called on Republican leaders in other states to take drastic measures to get control of the disease.

“As painful as it is, you’ve got to overdo it in terms of the aggressiveness in which you shut things down,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) said in an interview.

While several Republican governors resisted shutdown efforts during the spring, some have begun to warn their residents that they are hardly immune.

Thomas Dobbs, Mississippi’s top health officer, told residents recently to be prepared for a lack of a hospital bed if they crash their cars or a lack of ventilators if they suffer a heart attack.

“If we’re not careful,” he said, “Mississippi will look like New York.”

Phroyd

How to Vaccinate Homebound Seniors? Take the Shots to Them. One vial of vaccine. Five elderly homebound patients. Six hours to get to them before the vaccine spoiled. Doctors at Northwell Health, the largest heath care provider in New York State, set out last week to solve one of the most vexing medical and logistical challenges of the campaign to get Americans vaccinated against the coronavirus: how to inoculate millions of seniors who live at home and are too frail or disabled to go to a clinic or queue up at a vaccination site. Members of the network’s house calls program had prepared for their first run. A supply of the new Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine made the operation easier, because one visit would do the trick. A medical team mapped out a route that would include a cluster of homes not too far from one another, starting with older patients in underserved communities hard hit by the virus. The doctors contacted the patients well ahead of the visits, knowing they’d need plenty of time to consult with their families about whether to get vaccinated. Only a few turned them down; most were enthusiastic. Before the doctors hit the road, they screened patients on the phone to make sure they were relatively healthy. Any unexpected problems had to be avoided. The doctors were racing against the clock: Once they punctured the seal on the vial and drew the first dose, they had only six hours to use the remaining vaccine, or they would have to throw it out. “We’ll be running a tight ship, I think, but very compassionately,” said Dr. Karen Abrashkin, the program’s medical director, as a bulky, high-tech cooler — actually, a car refrigerator — was loaded onto the back seat of her car last Wednesday and plugged in to a cigarette lighter. Inside was a vial the size of a thimble, containing five doses of vaccine. “It’s a historic moment,” she said. Her first stop was a twofer, the home of a married couple in Hempstead, N.Y. Hector Hernandez, 81, a retired window cleaner who used to scrub high-rise buildings in Manhattan, and his wife, Irma, 80, a retired seamstress, had decided to get vaccinated, after sorting through a potpourri of conflicting advice from friends and family. “First I was skeptical — is it safe?” Mr. Hernandez said. Two friends had warned him to be careful because the vaccine was new. But Mrs. Hernandez’s cardiologist assured the couple it was safe, and another friend seemed confident that getting the vaccine was better than not getting it. The couple’s granddaughters, including one who was laid up with Covid-19 for two weeks, advised waiting to see if the vaccine had long-term side effects. In the end, Mr. Hernandez said, their daughter persuaded them to get vaccinated. “She called and said, ‘You have to get it done, because if you ever get Covid, it can be really bad — you can’t breathe,’” Mr. Hernandez said. As Dr. Abrashkin punctured the vial’s seal with a syringe, Lorraine Richardson, a social worker accompanying her, jotted down the time: 10:11 a.m. The two would monitor the Hernandezes for side effects for 15 minutes, and then hit the road. They had until 4:11 p.m. to reach three more patients. At least two million Americans like the Hernandezes are homebound, a population all but invisible. Most suffer from multiple chronic conditions, but cannot get primary care services in their home. They frequently wind up in hospitals, and their ailments leave them vulnerable to the coronavirus. Updated  March 22, 2021, 1:21 p.m. ET When public health officials drew up plans for distributing vaccines, priority was given to the roughly five million residents and employees of congregate settings like nursing homes, where the coronavirus spread like wildfire during the early days of the pandemic. The virus killed at least 172,0000 residents and employees, accounting for about one-third of all Covid-19 deaths in the United States. A vast majority of Americans over 65, however, do not live in nursing homes or assisted living facilities, but in the community, where it’s more challenging to reach them. There is no central registry of the homebound elderly. Geographically dispersed and isolated, they are often difficult to find. “This could be the next big hurdle for the older population,” said Tricia Neuman, a senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “So much of the vaccination rollout has been a patchwork at the state or local level, but this presents a whole different set of challenges.” Vaccination rates among seniors have risen quickly, with at least 60 percent inoculated so far. But there is no system in place for reaching the homebound, Dr. Neuman noted: “Some people simply cannot get themselves to a vaccination site, so the challenge is getting the vaccine to them, where they live.” In the absence of a centrally coordinated campaign targeting the homebound, local initiatives have sprung up around the country. Fire Department paramedics are administering vaccines to homebound seniors in Miami Beach, Fla., and in Chicago. A visiting nurse service vaccinates older adults located through the Meals on Wheels program in East St. Louis, Ill. Several health systems, like Geisinger Health in Pennsylvania and Boston Medical Center, have identified hundreds of homebound Americans and sent vaccines to them. In Minnesota, nonprofits have started pop-up vaccination clinics at senior apartment buildings and adult day care centers. On Monday, New York City announced that it was expanding efforts to go door-to-door to vaccinate homebound seniors, with plans to reach at least 23,000 residents. The visiting doctors program at Mount Sinai in New York, which cares for 1,200 homebound residents, has vaccinated 185 patients and has been given the greenlight to vaccinate the seniors’ caregivers as well, according to Dr. Linda DeCherrie, the clinical director of the Mount Sinai at Home program. Northwell’s house calls program, which cares for patients in Queens, Manhattan and Long Island, plans to vaccinate 100 patients a week over the next 10 weeks, a timetable that could be accelerated if nurses are allowed to carry rescue medications in case patients develop adverse reactions like anaphylactic shock. While Dr. Abrashkin was administering vaccines on Long Island last week, Dr. Konstantinos Deligiannidis, a colleague, was vaccinating five elderly women in the Brentwood, N.Y., area over the course of four hours. “They were so relieved,” he said. “They had all been worried — how could they get the vaccine since they couldn’t get out of the house?” Dr. Abrashkin and Ms. Richardson visited — and vaccinated — two more elderly women on Wednesday before making their last stop at the sunny, plant-filled kitchen of Juanita Midgette, 73, a retired computer science and business teacher living with arthritis who counts Eddie Murphy among her past students. (Spoiler alert: He was a respectful student, she said, and she recommended his new movie, “Coming 2 America.”) It was 12:31 p.m. when they knocked on the door. Ms. Midgette had heard mixed reviews about the coronavirus vaccine, and had been squabbling with her sister about it. But she had been unable to travel to her native North Carolina and visit with relatives since the pandemic hit, and she was hopeful the vaccine would give her the freedom to do so. She believed in God, and in science. Ms. Midgette said her research into the vaccine led her to conclude that “the positivity greatly outweighs the negativity.” “My research tells me they are doing the best with the data they have collected so far to save lives,” Ms. Midgette said. “It reminds me of when we had the first computers, and they were so large, but we started teaching with them,” she said. “Now they fit in the palm of your hand. Had they waited until they got something smaller, the world would look different than it does today.” After getting the shot, she asked Dr. Abrashkin: “Is it all over?” “It’s hard to be isolated,” Ms. Midgette said. “I’m looking forward to being able to mingle again, in some way, somehow.” Source link Orbem News #homebound #seniors #shots #Vaccinate

From the report by Caroline Chen, posted 6 Feb 2021

To justify their reopening decisions, governors point to falling case counts. “We make decisions based on facts,” Cuomo said. “New York City numbers are down.”

(Me: Cuomo does not make decisions based upon facts.)

But epidemiologists and public health experts say a crucial factor is missing from these calculations: the threat of new viral variants.

One coronavirus variant, which originated in the United Kingdom and is now spreading in the U.S., is believed to be 50% more transmissible. The more cases there are, the faster new variants can spread. Because the baseline of case counts in the U.S. is already so high — we’re still averaging about 130,000 new cases a day — and because the spread of the virus grows exponentially, cases could easily climb past the 300,000-per-day peak we reached in early January if we underestimate the variants, experts said.

Furthermore, study after study has identified indoor spaces — particularly restaurants, where consistent masking is not possible — as some of the highest-risk locations for transmission to occur.

Even with distanced tables, case studies have shown that droplets can travel long distances within dining establishments, sometimes helped along by air conditioning.

We’re just in the opening stage of the new variants’ arrival in the United States. Experts say we could speed viruses’ spread by providing them with superspreading playgrounds or slow them down by starving them of opportunities to replicate.  “We’re standing at an inflection point,” said Sam Scarpino, assistant professor at Northeastern University and director of the school’s Emergent Epidemics Lab. Thanks to the arrival of vaccines, he said, “we finally have the chance right now to bring this back under control, but if we ease up now, we may end up wasting all the effort we put in.”

Dr. Luciana Borio, an infectious disease physician who was a member of the Biden-Harris transition team’s COVID-19 advisory board, put it more bluntly at a congressional hearing on Feb. 3. “Our worst days could be ahead of us,” she said.

I interviewed 10 scientists for this story and was surprised by the vehemence of some of their language.

“Are you sure it could be that bad?” I asked, over and over.

They unanimously said they expected B.1.1.7, the variant first discovered in the U.K., to eventually become the dominant version of coronavirus in the U.S.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that B.1.1.7 will become dominant in March, using a model that presumes it’s 50% more transmissible than the original “wildtype” coronavirus. The model’s transmission rate was based on experience in the U.K., which first detected B.1.1.7 in September and saw an increase in cases that became apparent in December, straining hospitals despite stringent closures and stay-at-home orders. So while our country appears relatively B.1.1.7-free right now, the situation could look drastically different in a matter of months.

Experts are particularly concerned because we don’t have a handle on exactly how far B.1.1.7 has spread. Our current surveillance system sequences less than 1% of cases to see whether they are a variant.

Throwing an even more troubling wrench into the mix is that B.1.1.7 is continuing to morph. Just this week, scientists discovered that some B.1.1.7 coronaviruses in Britain had picked up a key change, known as the E484K mutation. That mutation had previously been found in the B.1.351 variant, which was first discovered in South Africa. Scientists have hypothesized that it’s the E484K mutation that has reduced the efficacy of some vaccines in South African trials, so this is incredibly worrying news.

“It’s really hard to thread this needle without sounding like a prophet of doom,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Science and Security. While vaccines bring hope, she said, governors who are moving to expand indoor dining are “completely reckless”; if they don’t course correct, “I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say the worst could be yet to come.”

[...]

To understand the epidemiologists’ warnings, it helps to understand what variants are, how they have been behaving and our limitations in knowing exactly how far they have spread.

People have a bad habit of anthropomorphizing the coronavirus: ascribing human-like intentions to it, as if a microbe can discern that we finally have a vaccine and try to evade it. But viruses don’t really have any schemes; they just reproduce.

“Coronaviruses are a single strand of RNA in a sac of fat,” epidemiologist Larry Brilliant reminded me. “They’re preprogrammed to replicate and continue replicating. That’s their job.”

Once in a while, when a virus replicates, a mistake occurs, and a letter in the strand of RNA is copied inaccurately. That’s called a mutation. Many times, those mutations are neutral. Sometimes they are detrimental to the virus, and that lineage will quickly die off. Other times, they’re beneficial to the virus in some way, such as by making it more transmissible. When a version of the virus becomes functionally different, that’s when scientists consider it a variant. As of Feb. 4, according to the CDC, the U.S. has found 611 cases of B.1.1.7, the variant first discovered in the United Kingdom, five cases of B.1.351, first identified in South Africa, and two cases of P.1., first identified in Brazil. But that’s almost certainly an undercount.

Part of the reason why epidemiologists are advocating for us to stay hunkered down is because the U.S. doesn’t know exactly where all the variant cases are.

[...]

As of Feb. 4, only 2.1% of the U.S. population had been reported to have received both doses of the vaccine; 8.5% had received one dose. That means we’re in a precarious moment right now where the vast majority of the U.S. hasn’t had a chance to get protected, and the variants have a window to multiply.

(Of course, those who have already gotten sick with COVID-19 have natural immunity, but some scientists are concerned that those who develop only mild symptoms may not gain as much innate immunity as those who receive a vaccine.)

(Me: Read more here)

Of the scientists I talked to, Caitlin Rivers, a computational epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, was the most optimistic about a potential variant-fueled surge. “I do think that B.1.1.7 has the possibility to precipitate a wave, but it probably won’t be as bad as the last wave, because we have a lot of preexisting immunity and we are rolling out the vaccines,” she said. Thanks to the vaccines, the U.S. will have more population immunity by March, when the CDC predicts B.1.1.7 will become dominant, than the U.K. did when the variant hit there late last year. “It’s a low likelihood that we will have a gigantic fourth wave, but not impossible,” she said.

Still, Rivers said, “now is not the time to relax.” She, too, was critical of state policies to loosen restrictions. “When you create the same conditions that allowed the last surge, you should expect the same results,” she said. “Our main move should be to reduce transmission as much as possible while we vaccinate as much as possible.”

Time is not on our side, as the morphing B.1.1.7 variant showed us when it picked up the E484K mutation. While we are lucky that our vaccines still work against the current variants, we have to keep in mind that in this race between vaccines and variants, the variants aren’t staying static.

The big fear is that eventually, a variant will come along that provides the virus with a complete immune escape, preventing our vaccines from working against it. Even though we can update our vaccines, that would take time.

The only way to guarantee that the virus won’t mutate into a variant that our current vaccines don’t cover is to lower transmission significantly, said genomic epidemiologist Alli Black: “The virus will continue to mutate as it continues to spread. We’re not going to stop that biological fact unless transmission stops.” And vaccinating everyone quickly is one key way to make it harder for the coronavirus to get from person to person in the first place.

(X)

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

These days, reading the monthly jobs report can feel like opening a time capsule. According to the data for June, which was released today, the recovery from the COVID-19 recession was still chugging along as of the middle of last month, when the two surveys that form the backbone of the report were conducted. The unemployment rate fell from 13.3 percent in May to 11.1 percent in June, and 4.8 million more people were employed in June than in May.

Those numbers look promising — but it’s important to remember that they’re just a snapshot of what the economy looked like in mid-June. And a lot has changed since then. Most importantly, COVID-19 infections have spiked in states across the country, and many governors have rolled back the phased reopenings that brought many jobless workers back into the labor force. That could have a seismic impact on the sectors of the economy, like leisure and hospitality, that saw the biggest gains in June.

Even underneath the surface of the June report, there were signs that the recession is deepening. Crucially, the number of workers who have permanently lost their jobs rose quite a bit — signaling that for an increasing number of Americans, getting back to work won’t be an easy matter. And the unemployment rate for white Americans continues to be much lower than the unemployment rate for Black, Hispanic or Asian Americans. That’s an important reminder that some workers are continuing to do much better than others as the recovery creaks into gear.

If you just focus on the report’s headline numbers — the unemployment rate and number of payroll jobs — the country’s economic situation was looking up in June. In fact, the drop in the unemployment rate may have been even more dramatic than the topline number lets on. Over the past few months, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been struggling with an issue that’s unique to our pandemic-ridden times: A substantial number of workers were reporting that they were absent from their jobs for the entire week referenced in the survey for “other reasons.” That probably meant they were temporarily out of work because of COVID-19 — but they weren’t counted as unemployed.

To be clear: The BLS has been extremely transparent about the presence of this problem, and it does not mean that the numbers were fudged. Our methods for measuring unemployment are simply not designed for a pandemic-induced recession. But it is important to take the misclassification issue into account because if those workers had been included in April, BLS estimates that the unemployment rate would have been about 20 percent; in May, the rate would have been about 16 percent. By June, the BLS reported that it mostly had the misclassification issue under control — which meant the actual unemployment rate declined even more substantially, to around 12 percent.

Bear in mind, though, that we still have a long way to go before we’re anywhere near pre-pandemic levels of unemployment. It’s all about your frame of reference: An 11.1 percent unemployment rate is stunningly low compared with where we were in April, when close to 20 percent of the population was unemployed. But it’s still higher than at any point in modern history — including the unemployment rate at the apex of the Great Recession.

And there are many reasons to believe that the recovery could stall — or even backslide — in the coming months. One clue is tucked in the June report: Of those who did lose jobs, a larger share of them were permanent than in previous months.

In April and May, 88.6 percent of job losses were classified by the BLS as “temporary,” which fit the early theme of this recession: Businesses shut down temporarily to stop the spread of COVID-19 but planned to reopen later as the virus came under control — particularly with the assistance of government loans such as the Paycheck Protection Program, which incentivized small businesses to keep employees on payroll during the closures. But in June, the share of job losses that were temporary fell to 78.6 percent, a sign that a growing number of workers will not have a job waiting for them when the crisis lifts.

“As more job losses become permanent, this recession will look more and more like an ordinary recession, where in recent history the recovery has been a slow slog,” said Nick Bunker, the director of economic research for North America at the Indeed Hiring Lab, a research institute connected to the job-search site Indeed. “That means the hopes of a quick recovery will be slimmer and slimmer.”

The fact that some of the industries hit hardest early in the recession made big gains in June is both good and bad news. Leisure and hospitality, which had lost a staggering 8.3 million jobs in March and April, built on its May gains to add 2.1 million more workers in June, an increase of nearly 21 percent month over month. Similarly, retail trade, which lost 2.4 million jobs in March and April, bounced back with about 740,000 new workers in June, a 5.4 percent increase month over month. And education and health services, another of the industries most affected (with 2.8 million total job losses in March and April), added 568,000 jobs in June, for a 2.6 percent gain month over month.

Overall, almost every major industry sector of the economy added jobs in June, with total private employment up by 4.3 percent since May. However, it is worth noting that despite better-than-expected jobs reports in both May and now June, total private employment is still down 10.2 percent relative to its pre-crisis level in February. Things are looking better, but there is still a lot of room for improvement.

And the hammer might fall yet again on sectors like leisure and hospitality, which includes the restaurant industry. Several states allowed restaurants and even bars and casinos to reopen at partial capacity in May and June — only to abruptly close them again when case counts started to spike. That means that some of the workers who finally got to return to their jobs as servers, bartenders or blackjack dealers might well be unemployed again in the July report.

That everything these days is in a state of flux complicates even the most seasoned experts’ ability to read the report. Erica Groshen, who served as BLS commissioner from 2013 to 2017, said it’s extremely difficult to isolate the impact of the many different forces that are churning underneath the report. “We’ve got all of these effects that are going at cross-purposes,” she said. “We have the ongoing effects of restrictions in place. We have the effects of some restrictions being lifted. And we have the deepening of the recession itself.” All of that, she said, makes it hard to assess exactly what’s happening under the surface — much less what will happen next.

And again, the gains have not been equally distributed throughout the population — another theme of this very unequal recession. Although the unemployment rate for women dropped at a faster rate (2.8 percentage points) than for men (1.6) in June, women still had a higher overall unemployment rate than men did. Likewise, the unemployment rate for white Americans dropped by 2.3 percentage points last month, while it only fell by 1.4 percent for Black Americans and 1.2 percentage points for Asian Americans. And at 15.4 percent, Black Americans still have the highest unemployment rate of any racial or ethnic group, 5.3 percentage points higher than their white counterparts.

Perhaps one bit of encouraging data in this jobs report was that the unemployment rate for Latino or Hispanic Americans did drop by quite a bit — it was down 3.1 percentage points in June. However, that still left their overall unemployment rate at 14.5 percent, which is not only far higher than it was before the coronavirus recession began (it was 4.4 percent in February) but also higher than the unemployment rates for white (10.1 percent) or Asian (13.8 percent) Americans.

As we’ve said often during this crisis, you really need the next jobs report in order to interpret the current one. The June report shows that the unexpected employment gains of May were not a mirage — the economy really did start recovering earlier and more quickly than many economists expected. But next month’s report could be a sobering reminder of just how fragile any economic gains are — at least while the virus is still spiraling out of control in many parts of the country. So we’ll know better by next month whether the concerning trends in this report have deepened, as well as how much the recent COVID-19 outbreaks across the country have hamstrung the nascent recovery. In typical fashion, our economic data is moving at a much slower pace than the virus, which leaves us guessing at where things might head next.

Dry Bones and New Life

A homily on Ezekiel 37:1-14 preached at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Pittsburgh, on the Fifth Sunday in Lent 2020

As the rate of infection and death from the coronavirus continues to rise, harrowing stories are emerging. We’re hearing about shortages of medical supplies, overcrowded hospitals, and empty grocery store shelves. We’re hearing about people having to suffer life-threatening conditions at home because the hospitals are already overflowing. We’re hearing about more depression from the isolation we’re all having to endure. We’re hearing about rising rates of domestic abuse, as we all are staying indoors and, in many cases, in very close quarters.

And we’re hearing about death. About dead bodies. Corpses.

Over a week ago — which seems like months and months ago now — I read in The Guardian about how funeral homes are not able to keep up with the number of dead bodies they’re being asked to deal with: “Coffins awaiting burial are lining up in churches and the corpses of those who died at home are being kept in sealed-off rooms for days as funeral services struggle to cope in Bergamo, the Italian province hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic.” Between the 1st of March and the 19th the province’s largest funeral company handled more than 600 burials or cremations. Normally, they would handle around 120. Their director said this: “A generation has died in just over two weeks. We’ve never seen anything like this and it just makes you cry.”

I am haunted by that image of coffins lined up in churches. I’m haunted by the image of corpses being kept in houses, waiting until someone can come get them ready for burial. I’m haunted by the graves and the urns.

“The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry.”

So wrote the prophet Ezekiel in our Old Testament lesson for this morning. The remains of the dead are scattered like so many dehydrated branches across the surface of the valley.

Ezekiel had his vision of the valley of dry bones at a time when God’s people were at the full height of their rebellion against God. The Jewish scholar Jon Levenson refers to “the most hideous disobedience and the most obscene idolatry” of God’s people. And God warned that this idolatry would mean death. And that is just what happened, figuratively speaking. The powerful armies of Babylonia eventually conquered the holy city of Jerusalem and carried the Israelites off into exile. The great temple that King Solomon had built was destroyed — a symbol of death and tragedy if there ever was one. The dream of Abraham — that his descendants would dwell forever in the land that God had promised them — was over. Destruction and death held sway.

Ezekiel’s valley was full of bones. The spirit of the Lord “led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry.”

“He said to me, ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’ I answered, ‘O Lord God, you know.’ Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.”

Ezekiel is told to speak the word of the Lord to these decayed corpses, amid the rubble of death that God’s people have been reduced to. And that word will bring life to those dry bones. And then, in one of the most stirring passages in all the Bible, Ezekiel says:

“So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.’ I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.”

I would love to see a movie director like Steven Spielberg or J. J. Abrams try to depict this vision. It would be the eerie and triumphant opposite of that terrifying scene at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when the Nazi villain’s skin and muscles rot away and his bare skeleton finally explodes into dry powder. Ezekiel sees the reversal of that scene: The desiccated, brittle bones that Ezekiel sees around him suddenly begin to rattle, then reassemble themselves into skeletons. Soon glistening pink musculature appears on them and then, finally, skin and hair. And at the last moment, at the Lord’s command, their lungs fill with air and they open their eyes. They are alive once more.

The Lord tells Ezekiel that this is a symbolic picture of how God will bring God’s exiled people back into the promised land:

“Then he said to me, ‘Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act,’ says the LORD.”

But is it only a symbol? Or is there some hope here for actual dead bodies, actual corpses?

Jon Levenson, who is one of the greatest Hebrew Bible scholars of our time, reminds us that Jews didn’t come to believe in the resurrection of actual human bodies until after the time of Ezekiel. But, he says, even if Ezekiel didn’t have a clear picture in his mind yet of resurrection, he must have believed that God could raise corpses to new life. “[E]ven as a figure [of speech], [Ezekiel’s] vision of resurrection must have carried considerable credibility,” Levenson says. For that reason, he adds, “Ezekiel’s vision anticipates the later [Jewish] expectation of resurrection… [For Jews to think that God] could reassemble his deadened people and bring them back to life was hardly outrageous.” To put it simply, this symbolic prophecy of resurrection led God’s people to realize that God would one day do this literally. He would literally take dead bodies and make them come to life again.

Friends, we must remember and hold onto this conviction in this time of the coronavirus. We must hear Ezekiel’s prophecy, and we must cling to it. It is not the teaching of Scripture that once people die, God stops caring about their bodies. It is not the teaching of the Christian faith that God is only interested in our souls or our “spiritual lives,” and not in our lungs, our tracheas, our throats. No, as we will say together in just a moment, we believe in the resurrection of the dead — the bodily resurrection of the dead.

And we believe this because what Ezekiel prophesied is exactly what took place on Easter Sunday morning — the day we are commemorating again today, as we do every Sunday. God raised His Son Jesus Christ, who was truly dead and buried, to new bodily life. And because of that, we believe that He will do the same for us.

Which means that we can never make peace with the coronavirus. We can never say, “Oh, well, the people who are dying would probably have died soon anyway. And besides, death is going to come for us all eventually, so we’d better just get used to it.” No! Death is our enemy. Death is judgment, and death is curse. We are right to mourn it, to be shocked by it, to be horrified by it. When we read stories about row after row of coffins, we should feel it like a slap in the face. And we should support the effort to defeat this virus in whatever large or small ways we can.

Friends, God’s promise this morning to all who truly turn to Him in faith is that the coronavirus will not have the last word. The bodies that are being cremated or buried will be raised from the dead. You and I, though the virus may take us, will be raised from the dead. We will not be raised merely as souls or spirits or ethereal, angelic beings. We will be raised in and as our bodies. And in that great day, no virus or sickness of any kind will be able to destroy our joy because we will be fully united with the risen, indestructible, unconquerable Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Because He died and rose again for us, we will rise too. We will rise and we will never die again.

Amen.

1. Who’s your celebrity crush?

I don’t have celebrity crushes most of the time. I have people who I think are pretty and people that I admire, but I don’t have any of them that I crush on. Alongside my favourite voice actors (seiyuu), Emma Watson would definitely be up there. There’s something about intelligence that makes a person far more appealing.

2. Are you single or taken?

As single as they come! I haven’t even been in a relationship, and I don’t really have any interests in getting into one!

3. Rant. Just do it.

I’m nervous. I’m doubting. I hate this feeling in me. I feel so out of place, so uncomfortable, and it’s eating me on the inside. I wish I had friends in real life. I really wish I did, but it feels like I’m growing apart from everyone, and I’m pushing them all away because I can’t stand being reminded of my past, and I feel like every step I take is just a desperate attempt to get myself back on track, and I’m trying to be proud of myself. I really am. But I have a hard time acknowledging anything that I do. I never feel like I’m enough. I feel insufficient. I feel like I’m just a statistic. I feel inferior yet superior at the same time. My self-image is warped. I feel like I’m lying to myself and to others. It hurts. It hurts a lot, and I don’t want people to know but I do at the same time. It’s a pain unlike any other, and as much as I can say that I don’t feel lonely, I feel like there should be people in my life that I can call my friends, and I want someone that I can mutually call my best friend without them saying that they are just my “good friend”. I want to know that I mean the upmost to a person without feeling I’m burdening them. I want to be No. 1 at something. 

I dream about chasing dreams like becoming a medical professional, but I continue to realize and face my shortcomings that would prove that I’m not really fit for it. I want to do it, but quite frankly, I’m too stupid. 

I can’t even articulate what’s truly paining my mind. It’s difficult. I don’t know why my body and mind wants to destroy itself.

But sometimes, I think I fix myself better.

4. Do you think it's okay to separate the artist from the art?

Personally, I’m one of those people who usually say no to this question. Now, if you have weird kinks or like pineapple on pizza, that’s none of my business. I won’t hold it against you. However, I find it hard to separate when things are illegal or morally wrong.

Examples:

Net-juu no Susume was a really heartwarming anime, and it was one of my favourite anime that depicted a wholesome adult romance that unveiled many truths about the real world despite spending its time online, but I would’ve never watched the anime if I would have known that the director was a Holocaust-denier. The rest of the staff? I don’t know, but I felt extremely uncomfortable even reblogging content after I found out.

I was planning on watching Rurouni Kenshin, and to this day, I believe I’m missing out, but I cannot support or condone or even watch a series that has a creator as wretched as Nobuhiro Watsuki. If you don’t know, he was charged in February of 2017 for child pornography. He was fined 200,000 yen. It was a slap on the wrist. Even though Rurouni Kenshin wasn’t a reflection on his person according to fans, I don’t feel keen on watching a show created by such a man.

In regards to actors, this goes for them too. If they are not supportive of the LGBTQ community, if they are racist, if they have committed acts that are cannot be condoned, I wouldn’t want to watch them or anything. Again, I have a hard time keeping track of who’s actually clean in this world, and in Japan, there is a lot of covering up. It was recently revealed that a lot of Madhouse anime that people love were probably made at the expense of animators who are human beings.

5. How many accounts do you have?

I have a few.

@nsisbest385 - my main where I stockpile my music @natsspammityspamspamham - This one where I am really open and reblog everything that I want to reblog (no exceptions; if I don’t even think about it, I just reblog) @natsthinkitythinkthinkthonk - used to be for inspirational stuff/writing, but now it’s mostly seiyuu stuff. I post things for their birthdays. I should’ve made a separate account. @semitranslatedseiyuublog - Where I semi-translate stuff but mostly transfer seiyuu content from Reddit. @awkwardbsd - This account has more followers than all my other accounts combined. It’s for awkward screenshots, memes, and other stuff surrounding the Bungou Stray Dogs universe. @dragontypepropaganda - I didn’t tell anyone this existed until now. I’m generally not on it. I just queue and leave.

6. How many pairs of shoes do you have?

Let’s see... uh... 1 for outside, 1 for exercise, 1 for my house slippers, 3 for orchestra that I never use, 2 dress shoes that I really never use, and I’m supposed to get 1 pair of slippers for outside.

7. Opinion on…

I don’t think I can answer this.

8. How many accounts do you follow?

9. Favourite brand of clothing?

I’ve been wearing more Uniqlo lately, but my wardrobe has a lot of hand-me-downs despite being so sensitive tactile-wise.

10. Name a dog

Atticus (boy) and Haruko (girl)

11. What unusual talent do you have?

I can whistle. I haven’t tried in a while, but I can put my feet behind my head.

12. What’s the most interesting school's gossip you’ve ever heard?

Keep in mind, I was only in school until grade 9-10. One of my PE teachers Ms. Snow had really scary eyes. When she got mad at me (which is pretty frequent considering she didn’t know who I was and kept calling me by other Asian people’s names because “we look the same”), I swear her eyeballs would extend from her sockets a little. They looked like they were about to pop out of her head. My sister said that urban legend states that she once fell down the stairs and both eyeballs popped out. She put them back in and carried on.

13. Ever prank called a store?

I think I almost tried once until I got a scolding or something (wasn’t even my parents).

14. What’s your coffee order?

Don’t have one. I don’t like coffee. I’m generally open to tea.

15. What’s a question do you constantly get asked?

“How are you?” I usually choose the easy route to answer to this question. I just say “good thanks”. You want the truth? I lie to myself.

“Why did you leave school?” It was a living hell. I didn’t feel safe. I was breaking down years ago. School nearly broke me, and if I stayed there any longer, I would’ve died (not an exaggeration).

“What are your hobbies?” I usually just say music and watching cartoons* (anime). They usually ask what else, and I just stare blankly.

16. If you had to get a tattoo right now, what would you get and where?

I wouldn’t want one.

17. Google the top song from the year you were born

Apparently, it’s How You Remind Me by *gasp* Nickelback.

18. Rant about your favourite musician

I seriously wish I was able to go to Sara Bareille’s version of the Waitress. I wish I was able to see it on Broadway. She’s such a talented individual, and she deserves all the attention she gets.

19. What’s your favorite teacher you’ve ever had?

All of my best teachers have been outside of school. I would say that my favourite teachers are my current bass teacher and my taekwondo master who has taught me for over a decade.

20. Describe your blog in 3-5 words

Fando(o)m, ranting, anime, seiyuu, random

21. What’s a conspiracy you believe in?

I believe aliens exist. I don’t think it would be logical to assume that Earth is the only planet that has “intelligent” (I say that very loosely) lifeforms.

“But they don’t have water or oxygen” Bold of you to assume that said aliens would need such a thing. I would think they can adapt like humans and all that. I just think it’s dumb to close ourselves off to believing that there are people other than ourselves that exist in this wide and expanding universe.

22. If you could see any concert tonight what would you choose?

I would really want to see the Waitress. If that doesn’t count, I would want to see some seiyuu singing live. It would depend. Hosoya doesn’t sing much anymore, Maaya Sakamoto has a waitlist longer than my lifespan (I have no luck with lotteries), and Saori Hayami has the same issue. I would want to see Sphere live too, but I don’t know all of their songs.

23. If you could break one of your bad habits which would you choose?

My depression... or my anxiety. Actually, those aren’t habits. I guess the closest I will get is doubting myself and beating myself up.

24. Can you dance? Sing?

A strong no to both.

25. What’s something you can’t stop buying?

Uh… I don’t go out and buy anything. I don’t make money so I don’t buy. However, if I did, I would really want to treat myself to good food and anime stuff.

26. Crowds or small groups?

Small groups... obviously.

27. How long before a trip do you pack?

Depends on where. When it comes to the Philippines, weeks for the Balikbayan boxes and less than a week for my actual clothes (usually pack a ton of clothes because I sweat a lot and “we’re not doing laundry!”)

28. What celebrity would you rate a PERFECT 10?

I feel like I don’t have a good grasp of the culture so I actually can’t say anything about my favourite seiyuu. We don’t even know if that’s their true personality. However, I feel like my perfect 10s are Emma Watson and Robin Williams. They might not be my “crushes”, but they are perfect 10s. 

29. What quote or inspirational setting do you think is bs?

“When you hit rock bottom, the only way to go is up!” Nah man, you just don’t know what rock bottom looks like. It’s gonna get worse.

“Don’t fix what isn’t broken!” All because you can’t see what’s wrong with it doesn’t mean it isn’t broken. Yeah, I’m talking about the school system.

“Pain makes you who you are. It makes you stronger.” I can say that my trauma gives me anxiety.

30. If you had to dye your hair an unnatural colour right now, what would you choose?

I go by “Purple Dino” online so I’d have to say dark purple.

31. You can change one thing about your life right now. what are you changing?

I wish I could breathe properly. My allergies make it so hard for me to exist. It affects my breathing, sleep, dental care, and so much more. I think that’s the one physical thing I would change.

32. How old do you get mistaken for?

Apparently, I look like I’m in middle school even though I’m almost a legal adult.

33. What do you think about a lot?

Anime, seiyuu, my own shortcomings. 

34. Do you like your Hogwarts house or do you wish you were a different one?

I like Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff. I haven’t done my test in a while. 

35. What does home mean to you?

Home is where you live. It’s where the heart lives. It’s where you feel safe, and it’s where you can take off the mask that you live in during the day. It’s the place where I don’t have to lie through my teeth. I can cry, I can laugh, I can scream, and I can finally be me.

36. What do you think you’d be arrested for?

I feel like I would be caught for pirating anime even if I don’t profit off it. 

37. Have you ever been called down to the principal's office?

I’ve been there, but I haven’t been called down there because I really wasn’t important in school.

38. Post a picture of the outfit you would choose if you could have any outfit you wanted

Probably a dark coloured hoodie with sweatpants. That’s my default during the winter anyway.

39. Describe your aesthetic

Tired dead eyes with existential dread and depression. That’s how I see myself.

40. Answer with one of your ‘school memes’ (inside jokes you have with your class/grade) with no explanation 

I’m not sure how to say this, but I was really not in the “right crowd” at school, and I was never let into any of these things. I can’t answer this, and it pains me just to read this because I’m missing out on so much of my youth and “high school life”. 

I’m tagging @caratheillustrious who reblogged the questions!

A TRUE [REMINDER] TO ALL LIVING IN GODS CREATED WORLD🌍

🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

THEY KNOW THAT WE 👁GODS💫FAMILY OF REAL ANGELS HAVE BEEN SENT BACK INTO THE [FLESH] ARE HERE!!!

🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

[AGAIN,] I SAY UNTO YOU WHO ARE [DAILY] AWAKENED🌄 WORLDWIDE🌏THIS POWER [19] YEAR IS THE YEAR OF POWER ANGELS!

MANY FIRST TIME HISTORIC EVENTS WILL BE [REVEALED HAPPENING] BEFORE THE ENTIRE WORLD🌎OF THE LIVING💫

AND IF YOU [STAY IN HOLY💫SPIRIT💫]BY PRAYING🙏 DAILY WITH YOUR FAMILY💫CERTAIN THINGS SHALL BE TOLD YOU THAT YOU MAY UNDERSTAND AND PREPARE!!!

🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

WHAT OUR 👁GOD💫TELLS ME AND MY REAL BROTHER IN HOLY💫SPIRIT💫THE HEAD ANGEL KING OF MERCY KNOWN IN [FLESH] AS PRESIDENT44 BARACK OBAMA WE TELL YOU

YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION TOO! SURELY IF YOU DO NOT LISTEN AND OBEY! WHEN OUR 👁GODS💫BIGSIGN💫HAPPENS YOU WILL BE ONE OF THE MANY WHO FALL!!!

👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣

THE AWAKENING🌅AND GATHERING OF ALL MY REAL ANGELQUEENWIVES👑TRULY IS NO ACCIDENT!!! LIKE MIRACLES, HEALINGS AND REAL BLESSINGS GIVEN THE BIGSIGN OF OUR 👁GODS💫IS NEAR!!! PREPARE NOW I AM HE , [SON OF CATHY😇] CURTIS RAY👑

👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑*👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑

THE HEAD ANGEL QUEENS HAVE BEEN SO REVEALED UNTO THE WORLD!!! WE ARE NOW CLOSER TO THE BIGSIGN💫OF GOD💫👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑

💞 [SANDRA😇👑 GABBY😇👑 ANA😇👑] 💞

STACEY DASH👑

KRIS KARDASHIAN👑

OPRAH👑

RAYMI PAYANO👑

LALA VASQUEZ👑

STEPHANIE SANTIAGO👑

AYLEN ALVAREZ👑

TAMMY TORRES👑

OLIVIA JOHNSON👑 [OLLIEJAYY]

GEMMA KELLY👑

👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣

ANGELINA IVY👑

LAIS DELEON👑

ASHLEY ALEXISS👑

WINNY MUNOZ👑

MAGGIE BROWN👑 [MODEL]

MELISSA LEE👑

ROSEMARY CHURCH👑

NIKKI👑

LUPE'👑

MIMI👑

👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣

MYA HARRISON👑

ANITRIA D. GLASS👑

KELLITA SMITH👑

JAIME MAGGIO👑

NISEY KAMAI👑

DOLLY CASTRO👑

JENNIFER LOPEZ👑

ARDEN CHO👑

ANAIS ZANOTTI👑

MICHELLE CARUSO-CABRERA👑

👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣

5,000 HEAVENLY💫WAR SHIPS DO [HOVER] OVER EVERY MAJOR CITY WORLDWIDE🌎

🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

HAVE A VERY BLESSED DAY MY QUEENS👑

🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷

NO PATIENCE START VIDEO AT 1MIN 15SECS

👉BLESSINGS4 DR. MUMBI🔥

🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷

👉THE TRUTH HURTS BUT IT STILL TRUTH!!!👉MANY OF YOU WHO DISLIKE THIS VIDEO OF TRUTH [WILL NOT BE] SEEING HEAVEN 👉ANYWAY!!! FOR NO ONE IS ABOVE MY👈👉REAL ANGELS😇ON EARTH IN [FLESH]👈

🙏IT IS THE SPIRITUALLY AWAKENED🌄🙏WHO SEE AND ACCEPT THE REAL TRUTH!!!

💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥[ONE DAY I'M GOING TO LIST THE BULLSHIT] DONE TO ME AND MY SON IN THE CITY OF VAN NUYS BY YOU MANY DEMONS!!! 6+YRS

IT WILL BLOW YOUR FUCKING MINDS!!!!!!!!

MANY OF YOU DON'T KNOW THE REAL INFO

[SO, LOSE THE ATTITUDE] TRUST I DO NOT GIVE A FLYING FUCK PEOPLE!!! WHY DO YOU THINK I'M PREPARE TO RAISE MY HAND?

FUCK YOU AND YOUR ATTITUDE!!! I'VE DONE TOO MUCH FOR THIS CITY OVER THE YRS!!! 👉👉UNGRATEFUL MOTHERFUCKERS👈👈

👹BLAME THE 2 UPSTAIRS REAL DEMONS THATS WHO YOU SHOULD HAVE A MAJOR ATTITUDE WITH THEY FUCKED YOU GOOD!!! 👉THE CURSE 👁GOD💫HAS ON YOU👈IS BECAUSE OF THEM 2 DEMON FUCKS👹

NEXT UP NUMBERS 21, 22, 23, 24 AND 25!!!!!💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥

⚡🌧⚡🌧⚡🌧⚡🌧⚡🌧⚡🌧⚡🌧⚡🌧⚡

👁GODSAYS💫A GREAT STORM VERY LOUD APPROACHES BRINGING A USUALLY LONG [LIGHTNING⚡STRIKE] THAT WILL NOT BE FORGOTTEN BY MANKIND FOR AWHILE! THE VERY DARK COVERED SKY OF BLACKEN CLOUDS MANY WILL REMEMBER!!!

🌧⚡🌧⚡🌧⚡🌧⚡🌧⚡🌧⚡🌧⚡🌧⚡🌧

🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇 IT IS FAR TOO LATE TO ACKNOWLEDGE ME YOU HAD YOUR [OPPORTUNITY] FOR MANY YEARS!!! 👉NOW, AS YOU [SEEK HELP] WITH [WHAT IS OWED YOU] FROM YOUR BELOVED ANCESTORS HUNDREDS OF YEARS OF FREE FORCED LABOR OR [FREEDOM JUSTICE] TO STAY IN THE LAND OF OPPORTUNITIES AND NOT BE FORCED INTO A COUNTRY YOU DO NOT KNOW BECAUSE OF YOU PARENT'S EFFORTS FOR A BETTER LIFE!!!

I WILL NOT HELP YOU!👈 YOUR EFFORTS TO GET [DUE FREEDOM] TO LIVE IN A COUNTRY NOT YOUR BIRTHPLACE OR [RIGHTLY OWED] PAYMENT FOR HARD WORK COMPLETED IN BUILDING AMERICA🇺🇸 IS UP TOO YOU!!!

ASSISTANCE FROM ME WILL NOT HAPPEN ONE DAY YOU WILL [BOW DOWN] AND TRULY APPRECIATE THE POWER OF WE, 👁GODS💫 ANGELS!!! STOP THINKING WE OWE YOU!!!!! 👉WE DON'T OWE YOU SHIT! UNDERSTAND!!

👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁

FINALLY YOU!!! IT WAS SAID LONG, LONG AGO ["YOU SPEAK WITH FORK TONGUE"]🐍

YOU WILL SAY [ONE THING] AS TRUTH THEN IN [MERE SECONDS OR MINUTES] DO THE TOTAL OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU SAID!

YOU HAVE SINCE YOUR BEGINNING TRULY 👉FUCKED OVER EVERY SKIN COLOR OF MAN 👁GOD💫HAS CREATED AS HUMANS

👉[IN THE COLDEST DEATH💀WINTER🌁]👈

📜YOU THOUGHT UP, SIGNED AND DID SO MAKE THEM BELIEVE YOUR HEART AND WORDS AS TRUTH📜AS THEY SIGNED🖋 A PEACE TREATY📜THAT INCLUDED HEAVY BLANKETS FOR THE COLD WINTER FREEZE

👁💀👁💀👁💀👁💀👁💀👁💀👁💀👁💀👁

💥YOU BROKE YOUR WORDS AS USUAL💥 SENDING MANY WAGONS OF BLANKETS THAT WERE 💀[INFECTED WITH POLIO]💀 AND WAGONS OF BAD SPIRIT💫LIQUOR!!!

MANY MEN LOST THEIR LIVES BUT MOSTLY THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN!

💀👁💀👁💀👁💀👁💀👁💀👁💀👁💀👁💀

YOU TRULY ARE SLITHERING, CUT THROAT, SHOOT'EM IN THE BACK TYPE OF BREED! FUNNY ACTING IN YOUR WAYS!!! YOU HAVE HUNTED EVERY ANIMAL UNTIL THEIR NEAR EXTINCTION💥🔫💥THEN YOU TURN RIGHT BACK AROUND AND TRY AND SAVE THEM LOOKING DOWN YOUR NOSES AT THOSE WHO WEAR ANIMAL SKIN!!!

[YOU HAVE BEEN PRIVILEGED] SO LONG YOU WILL DO OR SAY ANYTHING TO STAY ON WHAT YOU PERCEIVE AS [THE TOP]✔

[WHAT YOU FORK TONGUES] DONT REALLY UNDERSTAND IS YOU ARE ALRIGHT AT THE BOTTOM! YOU ARE THE NEW MINORITY ITS 👉JUST THAT YOU REFUSE THE TRUTH!!!👈

DOESN'T MATTER, YOU'RE THE VERY LAST TO AWAKEN🌄WORLDWIDE AND FOR YOU IT'S GOING TO BE A VERY RUDE AWAKENING ESPECIALLY THOSE IN THE GOP👹SENATE☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝

👉THERE ARE NO PASSES INTO HEAVEN💫

👉FOR ANY OF YOU MENTIONED ABOVE👈

FOR IF YOU HAVE WENT AGAINST GOD💫AND US, SURELY YOU'VE BEEN JUDGED ALREADY!!! YOU SHALL NOT SEE HEAVEN💫👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁WHEN THE SHIT POPOFF LOOK ELSEWHERE TRUST WHEN THE BIGSIGN HIT ALL LIVING IN 👁GODS💫CREATED WORLD WILL SHAKE👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁👁

AWAKEN🌄AND FACE TRUE REALITY🌄

☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

AMAZON'S MERCHANTS ARE FEELING THE [PAIN💥] OF A TRADE WAR WITH CHINA🇨🇳 ~BLOOMBERG

APPLE, KEURIG DR. PEPPER, DOLLAR TREE, FITBIT AND MACY'S PRESS U.S.🇺🇸 TO DROP CHINA🇨🇳 PLAN! IT'S TIME DEMONTRUMP👹 COWARDLY BOWED DOWN TO CHINA🇨🇳

A GLOBAL ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IS REAL THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN IS HAPPENING NOW!!!

GODSAYS💫NO DEAL SHOULD BE MADE WITH A REAL CORRUPT DEMON👹IN FLESH WHO THE ENTIRE WORLD KNOWS AS RACIST PATHOLOGICAL LIAR!!!

BUT THE CHOICE IS PRESIDENT XI JINPINGS

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

🌄AWAKEN NOW!!! 👉SEE ON YOUTUBE👈

HOW THE RICH GET RICHER- MONEY IN THE WORLD ECONOMY BY DW DOCUMENTARY!!!

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩 WEDNESDAY JUNE 26TH 2019 0220 HRS PST

GODSAYS💫THE DEMON👹MNUCHIN👹IS A LIAR WHO SEEKS TO STABLE INVESTORS ON WALL STREET!!! ONLY SILLY FOOLS WOULD INVEST ON HIS WORDS!!!

FOR THE CHINESE IN HOLY💫SPIRIT DO SAY MUCH DIFFERENT AS THEY SPEAK WITH ME THY, LIVING 👁GOD💫FOR IT IS TRUTH THAT ☀SILENCE IS GOLDEN☀SOMETHING THE

👉[EVIL👹LYING👹DEMON👹MNUCHIN]👈 💥💥💥KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT!!!💥💥💥

ONLY FOOLS RUSH IN WERE EVEN ANGELS SEEK ADVICE FROM 👁GOD💫TO ENTER!!!

THE SPIRIT IS MIGHTIER THAN THE [FLESH] 👉THERE IS NO DEAL👈 AS OF YET AND NOT 💥EVEN CLOSE TO 10%💥

ONLY THE LYING DEMON👹FALLING ON THE SWORD FOR HIS EVIL👹MASTER👹

💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵

INVEST AND LOSE YOUR MONEY💵FOOLS ON THE PURE LIES AND SPECULATION OF HIM!!! YOU'LL BE SORRY WITH BIG LOSES!!!! 💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵

FOR SURELY PRESIDENT XI JINPING🇨🇳 HAS NO IDEA OF WHAT HE WILL DO UNTIL I DO SO ADVICE HIM! THEN THE DECISION IS HIS ALONE! BUT THERE IS NOTHING EVEN CLOSE TO 10% JUST MORE EVIL👹 LIES FROM THE EVIL👹DEMON ADMINISTRATION🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩

THE SPIRIT IS MIGHTIER THAN ANY FLESH DO NOT BELIEVE THE EVIL LYING MOUTHS OF DEMONS👹IN FLESH WAIT UNTIL AFTER THE G-20 SUMMIT!!! WISDOMTRUTH!!!

HANG SENG CLOSED AT ONLY +36!!! THINK!!! ☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝☝

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸BLESSINGS4 CNN'S CHRIS CUOMO💫 FOR ADDRESSING THE HIGH RATE OF VETERANS SUICIDE!!!

BLESSINGS4 MATT MILLER💫 VETERAN AND DIRECTOR OF VETERANS CRISIS LINE

BLESSINGS4 DR. SANJAY GUPTA💫

BLESSINGS4 THE DIRECTOR OF COLUMBIA LIGHTHOUSE PROJECT🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏KELLY POSNER GERSTENHABER🔥

BLESSINGS4 DON LEMON💫

22 VETERANS PER DAY TAKE THEIR LIVES IF YOU FEEL YOURSELF OR SOMEONE AT RISK RECEIVE NEEDED HELP 1-800-273-TALK!

👉THANKS FOR SHARING YOUR POWERFUL PERSONAL TESTIMONY CHRIS💫

🙏THE MESSAGE IS TREATMENT HELPS🙏

YES, I'M WATCHING THE DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL🇺🇸 DEBATE!

What If The Republicans Win Everything Again

The Mail Ballot Factor Is A Wild Card

Saagar Enjeti: Trump WON The GOP Civil War, But Can They EVER Win Again?

Early on, California election authorities decided to proactively send mail ballots to all registered voters, just as they did in the pandemic general election of 2020. They can be returned via enclosed postage paid envelopes or dropped off at voting centers on September 14. So, if California Democrats do become motivated to vote, it wont be hard for them to do so. And you do have to wonder if Donald Trumps demonization of mail ballots during and after the 2020 presidential election might still inhibit Republicans from voting that way, even if there remains an option for turning in ballots in person.

Newsom Is Embracing A Risky Message Telling Voters To Ignore The Replacement Race

Without question, the 2003 recall election haunts todays recall opponents. There is a strong belief that Davis lost because his lieutenant governor, Cruz Bustamante, jumped into the replacement race and drew voters into supporting the recall without mustering enough support to beat Schwarzenegger. So, Team Newsom not only kept credible Democrats from running to replace him; theyve also tried to discourage Democratic voters from answering the second question on the ballot about their preference among replacement candidates. As Politico noted recently, this one-and-done messaging may be confusing or even angering the very voters Newsom needs:

Its kind of counterintuitive to forgo your right to vote,;said;Barbara OConnor, director emeritus of the Institute for the Study of Politics and the Media at Sacramento State. Everyone is in a conundrum about what they should do.

What makes the pay-no-attention-to-the-replacement-candidate-behind-the-curtain instruction to Democrats especially confusing is a new round of anti-recall ads attacking replacement front-runner Larry Elder as to the right of Trump. If Elder is so evil, shouldnt Democrats vote for someone else in the field of 45 other candidates, some of whom identify as Democrats? Its unclear.

What If Trump Wins

For many people, the prospect of what might happen if Donald Trump wins a second term is too awful to contemplate. But, as we are witnessing with the coronavirus, not contemplating scenarios that have at least some chance of happening is a grave mistake. Indeed, its a mistake that helped elect Trump in the first place.

Ideally, the press corps would be hard at work exploring this question. Alas, it is not. In the thousands of presidential campaign stories that have been published this year, you will be hard pressed to find much reporting or informed speculation about what policies Trump might pursue if hes reelected, or what the consequences might be if he were successful in enacting them. Thats not because such things arent knowable in advance. If that were the problem, political reporters wouldnt have spent the last six months gaming out which candidates were, say, likely to win which primaries. The real reason campaign journalists dont do this kind of work is that its not what theyre trained to doand, perhaps, its not what most people want to read.;

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The Gop Would Rather Nation Crumble Than Give Democrats Political Win On Infrastructure

Politics in Washington is full of playacting, but few recent charades have been as absurd as the extended negotiation between Democrats and Republicans over whether they can agree on a bipartisan infrastructure bill.

Now it seems to be approaching its inevitable end: Republicans now say they’ll be making a counteroffer to the latest White House offer, even as everyone tells reporters how poorly negotiations are going.

All of which provides an excellent case study in how the two parties are motivated and constrained by their political incentives, regardless of what they might think about the substantive issue at hand.

Let’s start by considering three possible outcomes of this effort. First, Congress could pass a meaningful infrastructure bill with support from members of both parties. This is what both sides say they want .

Second, Democrats could pass an infrastructure bill with zero Republican votes. This is probably what will end up happening, provided that Sens. Joe Manchin III and Kyrsten Sinema , self-appointed guardians of bipartisan compromise, can be persuaded that the effort to win the support of Republicans was performed with sufficient enthusiasm.

Third, the bill could fail altogether, either because Manchin or Sinema pulls their support, or because a Democratic senator falls ill and can’t vote for it in the 50-50 Senate, or for some other reason.

Bipartisan passage of the bill Democrats-only passage of the bill Failure of the bill

What Motivates The Republican Party

The GOP seems wildly hypocritical and unprincipled, until you understand its guiding idea.

In the fall of 2014, the Obama White House was busy trying to stop the spread of Ebola. The administration sent advisers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to assist the afflicted countries health ministries, and it sent troops to West Africa to build emergency hospitals. It began screening people arriving in the United States from at-risk nations. It isolated and treated several American medical personnel who contracted the virus abroad and brought it back home.

Toward the end of his new book, The Imposters, Steve Benen reminds us of what the Republican Party was doing while all of this was happening:

As Election Day neared . . . Kentucky Republican eagerness to exploit public anxieties started to spin out of control. Paul publicly questioned Ebola assessments from the actual experts, blamed political correctness for the Ebola threat, and traveled to battleground states questioning whether Obama administration officials had the basic level of competence necessary to maintain public safety.

He added soon after, describing a hypothetical flight, If this was a plane full of people who were symptomatic, youd be at grave risk of getting Ebola. If a plane takes twelve hours, how do you know if people will become symptomatic or not?

The Impostors:How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politicsby Steve BenenWilliam Morrow, 384 pp.

Ed Kilgore

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How Far Can A Governor Take Emergency Powers

Republicans have criticized Newsoms use of emergency power during the coronavirus pandemic, saying hes exerted too much control without the usual checks and balances. As the pandemic sidelined normal work in the Legislature last year, Newsom issued as many executive orders in 2020 as his predecessor did in eight years.;

Assemblymember Kevin Kiley a Rocklin Republican now running in the recall election sued Newsom to try to limit his emergency power, but ultimately lost in court. With that ruling that a governor has broad authority to change or rescind laws during an emergency, GOP candidates are now talking about how theyd use such power themselves.

I would not use executive authority to create new laws and new policies, as this governor has, Kiley said in an interview with CalMatters. But I would use it to unwind things that never shouldve been there to begin with.;

Kiley said he would end Newsoms pandemic emergency declaration, which would set the stage for reversing related public health rules, such as the requirement that children wear masks at school and that state employees and health care workers get vaccinated against COVID-19 . Other GOP candidates also pledge to reverse Newsoms mask and vax orders.;;;

But the major Republican recall candidates are talking about using emergency powers for a lot more than the pandemic.;

Kevin Faulconer, the Republican former mayor of San Diego, said he would to speed up prevention efforts to clear trees and brush.;

Republican Party Faces Rage From Both Pro

By Peter Eisler, Chris Kahn, Tim Reid, Simon Lewis, Jarrett Renshaw

13 Min Read

WASHINGTON – After riots at the U.S. Capitol by President Donald Trumps supporters, the Republican Party is facing defections from two camps of voters it cant afford to lose: those saying Trump and his allies went too far in contesting the election of Democrat Joe Biden – and those saying they didnt go far enough, according to new polling and interviews with two dozen voters.

Paul Foster – a 65-year-old house painter in Ellsworth, Maine – is furious at party leaders for refusing to back the presidents claims that the election was stolen with millions of fraudulent votes. The party is going to be totally broken if it abandons Trump, Foster says, predicting Trump loyalists will spin off into a new third party.

I just wish he would run away with his tail between his legs, Cupelo says.

Though Republicans have now lost control of the White House and both houses of Congress in just four years, Trumps base remains a potent electoral force in the party. That base helped him capture more voters some 74 million than any Republican in history. The vast majority of his supporters, including 70% of Republicans, remain loyal, according to new Reuters/Ipsos polling conducted days after last weeks riot at the Capitol, and many activists say theyre willing to abandon the GOP for any perceived slight against their leader.

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Theres Even More Drama On The Horizon

Sparse polling of the recall election has shown a tightening contest on whether or not to remove Newsom. Elder also has a growing lead in the replacement race, though at least one poll has YouTube financial advisor and self-identified Democrat Kevin Paffrath actually topping the field. Team Newsom probably has mixed feelings about future polling, fearing both confirmation of the trend favoring Newsoms removal and less alarming numbers that might let Democrats relax back into complacency and indifference.

The anti-recall effort has the resources to dominate paid advertising down the stretch , but it will need to settle on a consistent message and combat the growing word of mouth among Republicans that this is the moment theyve all been waiting for. Another variable involves the internal dynamics of the replacement race. With no general election on tap , Elders Republican rivals have no reason to hold back from savagely attacking him from one angle as Democrats attack him from the other. If late polls show a rival catching up with the talk-show host, it could have a hard-to-predict effect on turnout or might even vault Paffrath into the governorship should Newsom fall.

What If 19 Alternate Histories Imagining A Very Different World

Caller: Can Republican Party Ever Win Again?

Alternate history, long popular with fiction writers, has also been explored by historians and journalists. Here are some of their intriguing conclusions.

1. What if the South won the Civil War?

Effect: America becomes one nation again in 1960.

Explanation: In a 1960 article published in Look magazine, author and Civil War buff MacKinlay Kantor envisioned a history in which the Confederate forces won the Civil War in 1863, forcing the despised President Lincoln into exile. The Southern forces annex Washington, DC renaming it the District of Dixie. The USA moves its capital to Columbus, Ohio now called ;Columbia but can no longer afford to buy Alaska from the Russians. Texas, unhappy with the new arrangement, declares its independence in 1878. Under international pressure, the Southern states gradually abolish slavery. After fighting together in two world wars, the three nations are reunified in 1960 a century after South Carolinas secession had led to the Civil War in the first place.

2. What if Charles Lindbergh were elected President in 1940?

Effect: America joins the Nazis.

3. What if Hitler successfully invaded Russia?

Effect: The Fuhrer is revered in history as a great leader.

4. What if James Dean had survived his car crash?

Effect: Robert Kennedy survives his assassination attempt.

5. What if President Kennedy had survived the assassination attempt?

Effect: Republicans win every election for the next 30 years.

6. What if Christianity missed the West?

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‘combative Tribal Angry’: Newt Gingrich Set The Stage For Trump Journalist Says

All these factors combined to produce a windfall for Republicans all over the country in the midterms of 1994, but it was a watershed election in the South. For more than a century after Reconstruction, Democrats had held a majority of the governorships and of the Senate and House seats in the South. Even as the region became accustomed to voting Republican for president, this pattern had held at the statewide and congressional levels.

But in November 1994, in a single day, the majority of Southern governorships, Senate seats and House seats shifted to the Republicans. That majority has held ever since, with more legislative seats and local offices shifting to the GOP as well. The South is now the home base of the Republican Party.

The 2020 aftermath

No wonder that in contesting the results in six swing states he lost, Trump seems to have worked hardest on Georgia. If he had won there, he still would have lost the Electoral College decisively. But as the third most populous Southern state, and the only Southern state to change its choice from 2016, it clearly held special significance.

Trump Says Republicans Would Never Be Elected Again If It Was Easier To Vote

President dismissed Democratic-led push for voter reforms amid coronavirus pandemic during Fox & Friends appearance

Donald Trump admitted on Monday that making it easier to vote in America would hurt the Republican party.

The president made the comments as he dismissed a Democratic-led push for reforms such as vote-by-mail, same-day registration and early voting as states seek to safely run elections amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Democrats had proposed the measures as part of the coronavirus stimulus. They ultimately were not included in the $2.2tn final package, which included only $400m to states to help them run elections.

The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if youd ever agreed to it, youd never have a Republican elected in this country again, Trump said during an appearance on Fox & Friends. They had things in there about election days and what you do and all sorts of clawbacks. They had things that were just totally crazy and had nothing to do with workers that lost their jobs and companies that we have to save.

I dont want everybody to vote, Paul Weyrich, an influential conservative activist, said in 1980. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.

The urgency of getting election officials those resources should not be lost in the political fighting, said Myrna Perez, director of the Brennan Centers voting rights and elections program.

Also Check: What Do Republicans Think About Healthcare

Reality Check 2: The Fight Is Asymmetricaland Favors The Gop

While Democrats gesture on Twitter at building new systems, Republicans are working the current one with ruthless effectiveness.

The threats to a free and fair election that have emerged since last November are realand require nothing more than the willingness of state legislators to use and abuse the existing tools of government. Arizona, whose two new voting rules were just validated by the Supreme Court, also took the power to litigate election laws away from the Secretary of State and gave the power to the Attorney General. In at least 8 states, Republicans are advancing legislation that would take power away from local or county boards. Many more states are moving to make voting harder. It might be anti-democratic, but it falls well within the rules.

Also within the rules: How McConnell helped build a federal bench almost certain to ratify the power of those legislatures to pass laws far more restrictive than the Arizona rules upheld last week. He creatively eviscerated Senate norms to keep Merrick Garland off the Supreme Court and hand Donald Trump an astonishing three nominations in a single term. And hes recently suggested that, should a Supreme Court vacancy open, hed block even consideration of a Biden nominee if the Republicans take the Senate back in 2022. This is abnormal, anti-democratic and a cynical abuse of powerbut its legal within the existing rules.

The Plausible Solution: Just Win More

Whether the public sees Democratic demands for these structural changes as overdue or overreaching, the key point is that they are currently exercises in futility. The only plausible road to winning their major policy goals is to win by winning. This means politics, not re-engineering. They need to find ways to take down their opponents, and then be smarter about using that power while they have it.

They certainly have issues to campaign on. In the few weeks, we have learned that some of Americas wealthiest people have paid only minimal or no federal income tax at all. Even as the Wall Street Journal editorial writers were responding to a Code Red emergency , the jaw-dropping nature of the reportfollowed by a New York Times piece about the impotence of the IRS to deal with the tax evasions of private equity royaltyconfirmed the folk wisdom of countless bars, diners, and union halls: the wealthy get away with murder.

Of course this is a whole lot easier said than done. A political climate where inflation, crime and immigration are dominant issues has the potential to override good economic news. And 2020 already showed what can happen when a relative handful of voices calling for defunding the police can drown out the broader usage of economic fairness.

Filed Under:

Read Also: How Many Senate Seats Do The Republicans Have

Can Democrats Avoid A Wipeout In 2022

Bidens plan: Go big or go home.

The good news for Democrats who watched Joe Biden unveil a historically ambitious agenda last night is that newly elected presidents have almost always passed some version of their core economic planparticularly when their party controls both congressional chambers, as Bidens does now.

The bad news: Voters have almost always punished the presidents party in the next midterm election anyway. The last two times Democrats had unified controlwith Bill Clinton in 199394 and Barack Obama in 200910they endured especially resounding repudiations in the midterms, which cost Clinton his majority in both chambers and Obama the loss of the House.

Theres a very different strategy this time, David Price, a Democratic representative from North Carolina and a former political scientist, told me. Theres an openness now to the sense that a bolder plan, ironically, might have greater appeal for independents and others we need to attract than trying to trim and split the difference with Republicans.

There is this recognition of this moment and how fleeting it is, and an evaluation that, absent the trifecta of control, it is very hard to move big policy, said a senior official at one of the partys leading outside advocacy groups, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategizing. So you have to take your shot. I think thats part of what undergirds Go big.

source https://www.patriotsnet.com/what-if-the-republicans-win-everything-again/

What If The Republicans Win Everything Again

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/what-if-the-republicans-win-everything-again/

What If The Republicans Win Everything Again

The Mail Ballot Factor Is A Wild Card

Saagar Enjeti: Trump WON The GOP Civil War, But Can They EVER Win Again?

Early on, California election authorities decided to proactively send mail ballots to all registered voters, just as they did in the pandemic general election of 2020. They can be returned via enclosed postage paid envelopes or dropped off at voting centers on September 14. So, if California Democrats do become motivated to vote, it wont be hard for them to do so. And you do have to wonder if Donald Trumps demonization of mail ballots during and after the 2020 presidential election might still inhibit Republicans from voting that way, even if there remains an option for turning in ballots in person.

Newsom Is Embracing A Risky Message Telling Voters To Ignore The Replacement Race

Without question, the 2003 recall election haunts todays recall opponents. There is a strong belief that Davis lost because his lieutenant governor, Cruz Bustamante, jumped into the replacement race and drew voters into supporting the recall without mustering enough support to beat Schwarzenegger. So, Team Newsom not only kept credible Democrats from running to replace him; theyve also tried to discourage Democratic voters from answering the second question on the ballot about their preference among replacement candidates. As Politico noted recently, this one-and-done messaging may be confusing or even angering the very voters Newsom needs:

Its kind of counterintuitive to forgo your right to vote,;said;Barbara OConnor, director emeritus of the Institute for the Study of Politics and the Media at Sacramento State. Everyone is in a conundrum about what they should do.

What makes the pay-no-attention-to-the-replacement-candidate-behind-the-curtain instruction to Democrats especially confusing is a new round of anti-recall ads attacking replacement front-runner Larry Elder as to the right of Trump. If Elder is so evil, shouldnt Democrats vote for someone else in the field of 45 other candidates, some of whom identify as Democrats? Its unclear.

What If Trump Wins

For many people, the prospect of what might happen if Donald Trump wins a second term is too awful to contemplate. But, as we are witnessing with the coronavirus, not contemplating scenarios that have at least some chance of happening is a grave mistake. Indeed, its a mistake that helped elect Trump in the first place.

Ideally, the press corps would be hard at work exploring this question. Alas, it is not. In the thousands of presidential campaign stories that have been published this year, you will be hard pressed to find much reporting or informed speculation about what policies Trump might pursue if hes reelected, or what the consequences might be if he were successful in enacting them. Thats not because such things arent knowable in advance. If that were the problem, political reporters wouldnt have spent the last six months gaming out which candidates were, say, likely to win which primaries. The real reason campaign journalists dont do this kind of work is that its not what theyre trained to doand, perhaps, its not what most people want to read.;

Read Also: How Many Registered Republicans In Texas

The Gop Would Rather Nation Crumble Than Give Democrats Political Win On Infrastructure

Politics in Washington is full of playacting, but few recent charades have been as absurd as the extended negotiation between Democrats and Republicans over whether they can agree on a bipartisan infrastructure bill.

Now it seems to be approaching its inevitable end: Republicans now say they’ll be making a counteroffer to the latest White House offer, even as everyone tells reporters how poorly negotiations are going.

All of which provides an excellent case study in how the two parties are motivated and constrained by their political incentives, regardless of what they might think about the substantive issue at hand.

Let’s start by considering three possible outcomes of this effort. First, Congress could pass a meaningful infrastructure bill with support from members of both parties. This is what both sides say they want .

Second, Democrats could pass an infrastructure bill with zero Republican votes. This is probably what will end up happening, provided that Sens. Joe Manchin III and Kyrsten Sinema , self-appointed guardians of bipartisan compromise, can be persuaded that the effort to win the support of Republicans was performed with sufficient enthusiasm.

Third, the bill could fail altogether, either because Manchin or Sinema pulls their support, or because a Democratic senator falls ill and can’t vote for it in the 50-50 Senate, or for some other reason.

Bipartisan passage of the bill

Democrats-only passage of the bill

Failure of the bill

What Motivates The Republican Party

The GOP seems wildly hypocritical and unprincipled, until you understand its guiding idea.

In the fall of 2014, the Obama White House was busy trying to stop the spread of Ebola. The administration sent advisers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to assist the afflicted countries health ministries, and it sent troops to West Africa to build emergency hospitals. It began screening people arriving in the United States from at-risk nations. It isolated and treated several American medical personnel who contracted the virus abroad and brought it back home.

Toward the end of his new book, The Imposters, Steve Benen reminds us of what the Republican Party was doing while all of this was happening:

As Election Day neared . . . Kentucky Republican eagerness to exploit public anxieties started to spin out of control. Paul publicly questioned Ebola assessments from the actual experts, blamed political correctness for the Ebola threat, and traveled to battleground states questioning whether Obama administration officials had the basic level of competence necessary to maintain public safety.

He added soon after, describing a hypothetical flight, If this was a plane full of people who were symptomatic, youd be at grave risk of getting Ebola. If a plane takes twelve hours, how do you know if people will become symptomatic or not?

The Impostors:How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politicsby Steve BenenWilliam Morrow, 384 pp.

Ed Kilgore

Read Also: What Is Trump’s Approval Rating Among Republicans

How Far Can A Governor Take Emergency Powers

Republicans have criticized Newsoms use of emergency power during the coronavirus pandemic, saying hes exerted too much control without the usual checks and balances. As the pandemic sidelined normal work in the Legislature last year, Newsom issued as many executive orders in 2020 as his predecessor did in eight years.;

Assemblymember Kevin Kiley a Rocklin Republican now running in the recall election sued Newsom to try to limit his emergency power, but ultimately lost in court. With that ruling that a governor has broad authority to change or rescind laws during an emergency, GOP candidates are now talking about how theyd use such power themselves.

I would not use executive authority to create new laws and new policies, as this governor has, Kiley said in an interview with CalMatters. But I would use it to unwind things that never shouldve been there to begin with.;

Kiley said he would end Newsoms pandemic emergency declaration, which would set the stage for reversing related public health rules, such as the requirement that children wear masks at school and that state employees and health care workers get vaccinated against COVID-19 . Other GOP candidates also pledge to reverse Newsoms mask and vax orders.;;;

But the major Republican recall candidates are talking about using emergency powers for a lot more than the pandemic.;

Kevin Faulconer, the Republican former mayor of San Diego, said he would to speed up prevention efforts to clear trees and brush.;

Republican Party Faces Rage From Both Pro

By Peter Eisler, Chris Kahn, Tim Reid, Simon Lewis, Jarrett Renshaw

13 Min Read

WASHINGTON – After riots at the U.S. Capitol by President Donald Trumps supporters, the Republican Party is facing defections from two camps of voters it cant afford to lose: those saying Trump and his allies went too far in contesting the election of Democrat Joe Biden – and those saying they didnt go far enough, according to new polling and interviews with two dozen voters.

Paul Foster – a 65-year-old house painter in Ellsworth, Maine – is furious at party leaders for refusing to back the presidents claims that the election was stolen with millions of fraudulent votes. The party is going to be totally broken if it abandons Trump, Foster says, predicting Trump loyalists will spin off into a new third party.

I just wish he would run away with his tail between his legs, Cupelo says.

Though Republicans have now lost control of the White House and both houses of Congress in just four years, Trumps base remains a potent electoral force in the party. That base helped him capture more voters some 74 million than any Republican in history. The vast majority of his supporters, including 70% of Republicans, remain loyal, according to new Reuters/Ipsos polling conducted days after last weeks riot at the Capitol, and many activists say theyre willing to abandon the GOP for any perceived slight against their leader.

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Theres Even More Drama On The Horizon

Sparse polling of the recall election has shown a tightening contest on whether or not to remove Newsom. Elder also has a growing lead in the replacement race, though at least one poll has YouTube financial advisor and self-identified Democrat Kevin Paffrath actually topping the field. Team Newsom probably has mixed feelings about future polling, fearing both confirmation of the trend favoring Newsoms removal and less alarming numbers that might let Democrats relax back into complacency and indifference.

The anti-recall effort has the resources to dominate paid advertising down the stretch , but it will need to settle on a consistent message and combat the growing word of mouth among Republicans that this is the moment theyve all been waiting for. Another variable involves the internal dynamics of the replacement race. With no general election on tap , Elders Republican rivals have no reason to hold back from savagely attacking him from one angle as Democrats attack him from the other. If late polls show a rival catching up with the talk-show host, it could have a hard-to-predict effect on turnout or might even vault Paffrath into the governorship should Newsom fall.

What If 19 Alternate Histories Imagining A Very Different World

Caller: Can Republican Party Ever Win Again?

Alternate history, long popular with fiction writers, has also been explored by historians and journalists. Here are some of their intriguing conclusions.

1. What if the South won the Civil War?

Effect: America becomes one nation again in 1960.

Explanation: In a 1960 article published in Look magazine, author and Civil War buff MacKinlay Kantor envisioned a history in which the Confederate forces won the Civil War in 1863, forcing the despised President Lincoln into exile. The Southern forces annex Washington, DC renaming it the District of Dixie. The USA moves its capital to Columbus, Ohio now called ;Columbia but can no longer afford to buy Alaska from the Russians. Texas, unhappy with the new arrangement, declares its independence in 1878. Under international pressure, the Southern states gradually abolish slavery. After fighting together in two world wars, the three nations are reunified in 1960 a century after South Carolinas secession had led to the Civil War in the first place.

2. What if Charles Lindbergh were elected President in 1940?

Effect: America joins the Nazis.

3. What if Hitler successfully invaded Russia?

Effect: The Fuhrer is revered in history as a great leader.

4. What if James Dean had survived his car crash?

Effect: Robert Kennedy survives his assassination attempt.

5. What if President Kennedy had survived the assassination attempt?

Effect: Republicans win every election for the next 30 years.

6. What if Christianity missed the West?

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‘combative Tribal Angry’: Newt Gingrich Set The Stage For Trump Journalist Says

All these factors combined to produce a windfall for Republicans all over the country in the midterms of 1994, but it was a watershed election in the South. For more than a century after Reconstruction, Democrats had held a majority of the governorships and of the Senate and House seats in the South. Even as the region became accustomed to voting Republican for president, this pattern had held at the statewide and congressional levels.

But in November 1994, in a single day, the majority of Southern governorships, Senate seats and House seats shifted to the Republicans. That majority has held ever since, with more legislative seats and local offices shifting to the GOP as well. The South is now the home base of the Republican Party.

The 2020 aftermath

No wonder that in contesting the results in six swing states he lost, Trump seems to have worked hardest on Georgia. If he had won there, he still would have lost the Electoral College decisively. But as the third most populous Southern state, and the only Southern state to change its choice from 2016, it clearly held special significance.

Trump Says Republicans Would Never Be Elected Again If It Was Easier To Vote

President dismissed Democratic-led push for voter reforms amid coronavirus pandemic during Fox & Friends appearance

Donald Trump admitted on Monday that making it easier to vote in America would hurt the Republican party.

The president made the comments as he dismissed a Democratic-led push for reforms such as vote-by-mail, same-day registration and early voting as states seek to safely run elections amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Democrats had proposed the measures as part of the coronavirus stimulus. They ultimately were not included in the $2.2tn final package, which included only $400m to states to help them run elections.

The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if youd ever agreed to it, youd never have a Republican elected in this country again, Trump said during an appearance on Fox & Friends. They had things in there about election days and what you do and all sorts of clawbacks. They had things that were just totally crazy and had nothing to do with workers that lost their jobs and companies that we have to save.

I dont want everybody to vote, Paul Weyrich, an influential conservative activist, said in 1980. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.

The urgency of getting election officials those resources should not be lost in the political fighting, said Myrna Perez, director of the Brennan Centers voting rights and elections program.

Also Check: What Do Republicans Think About Healthcare

Reality Check 2: The Fight Is Asymmetricaland Favors The Gop

While Democrats gesture on Twitter at building new systems, Republicans are working the current one with ruthless effectiveness.

The threats to a free and fair election that have emerged since last November are realand require nothing more than the willingness of state legislators to use and abuse the existing tools of government. Arizona, whose two new voting rules were just validated by the Supreme Court, also took the power to litigate election laws away from the Secretary of State and gave the power to the Attorney General. In at least 8 states, Republicans are advancing legislation that would take power away from local or county boards. Many more states are moving to make voting harder. It might be anti-democratic, but it falls well within the rules.

Also within the rules: How McConnell helped build a federal bench almost certain to ratify the power of those legislatures to pass laws far more restrictive than the Arizona rules upheld last week. He creatively eviscerated Senate norms to keep Merrick Garland off the Supreme Court and hand Donald Trump an astonishing three nominations in a single term. And hes recently suggested that, should a Supreme Court vacancy open, hed block even consideration of a Biden nominee if the Republicans take the Senate back in 2022. This is abnormal, anti-democratic and a cynical abuse of powerbut its legal within the existing rules.

The Plausible Solution: Just Win More

Whether the public sees Democratic demands for these structural changes as overdue or overreaching, the key point is that they are currently exercises in futility. The only plausible road to winning their major policy goals is to win by winning. This means politics, not re-engineering. They need to find ways to take down their opponents, and then be smarter about using that power while they have it.

They certainly have issues to campaign on. In the few weeks, we have learned that some of Americas wealthiest people have paid only minimal or no federal income tax at all. Even as the Wall Street Journal editorial writers were responding to a Code Red emergency , the jaw-dropping nature of the reportfollowed by a New York Times piece about the impotence of the IRS to deal with the tax evasions of private equity royaltyconfirmed the folk wisdom of countless bars, diners, and union halls: the wealthy get away with murder.

Of course this is a whole lot easier said than done. A political climate where inflation, crime and immigration are dominant issues has the potential to override good economic news. And 2020 already showed what can happen when a relative handful of voices calling for defunding the police can drown out the broader usage of economic fairness.

Filed Under:

Read Also: How Many Senate Seats Do The Republicans Have

Can Democrats Avoid A Wipeout In 2022

Bidens plan: Go big or go home.

The good news for Democrats who watched Joe Biden unveil a historically ambitious agenda last night is that newly elected presidents have almost always passed some version of their core economic planparticularly when their party controls both congressional chambers, as Bidens does now.

The bad news: Voters have almost always punished the presidents party in the next midterm election anyway. The last two times Democrats had unified controlwith Bill Clinton in 199394 and Barack Obama in 200910they endured especially resounding repudiations in the midterms, which cost Clinton his majority in both chambers and Obama the loss of the House.

Theres a very different strategy this time, David Price, a Democratic representative from North Carolina and a former political scientist, told me. Theres an openness now to the sense that a bolder plan, ironically, might have greater appeal for independents and others we need to attract than trying to trim and split the difference with Republicans.

There is this recognition of this moment and how fleeting it is, and an evaluation that, absent the trifecta of control, it is very hard to move big policy, said a senior official at one of the partys leading outside advocacy groups, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategizing. So you have to take your shot. I think thats part of what undergirds Go big.

Pharmacies face extra audit burdens that threaten their existence

The clock was about to strike midnight, and Scott Newman was desperately feeding pages into a scanner, trying to prevent thousands of dollars in prescription payments from turning into a pumpkin.

As the owner of Newman Family Pharmacy, an independent drugstore in Chesapeake, Virginia, he was responding to an audit ordered by a pharmacy benefit manager, an intermediary company that handles pharmacy payments for health insurance companies. The audit notice had come in January as he was scrambling to become certified to provide covid-19 vaccines, and it had slipped his mind. Then, a month later, a final notice reminded him he needed to get 120 pages of documents supporting some 30 prescription claims scanned and uploaded by the end of the day.

“I was sure I’d be missing pages,” he recalled. “So I was rescanning stuff for the damn file.”

Every page mattered. Pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, suspended in-person audits because of covid last year, shifting to virtual audits, much as in-person doctor visits shifted to telehealth. Amid added pandemic pressure, that means pharmacists such as Newman are bearing significantly more workload for the audits. It also has allowed benefit managers to review — and potentially deny — more pharmacy claims than ever before.

According to data from PAAS National, a pharmacy audit assistance service, while the number of pharmacy audits in 2020 declined nearly 14% from the year before, the overall number of prescriptions reviewed went up 40%. That meant pharmacies had to provide more documentation and stood to lose much more money if auditors could find any reason — even minor clerical errors — to deny payments.

The average audit in 2020 cost pharmacies $23,978, 35% more than the annual average over the previous five years, the PAAS data shows. And the number of prescriptions reviewed in September and October was fourfold over what PAAS members had seen in previous years.

Pharmacists have long complained that audits seem to have little to do with rooting out fraud, waste and abuse, but have become a way for these intermediary companies to enrich themselves. According to business analysts at IbisWorld, the pharmacy benefit manager market in the U.S. has grown to nearly $458 billion this year, up from less than $300 billion eight years ago.

Even before the pandemic, independent pharmacies were struggling financially with reimbursement rates they say are too low, the loss of customers to mail-order services or chain pharmacies, and a variety of measures by the benefit managers, including charging pharmacies fees and keeping manufacturer rebates for themselves.

Adding insult to injury: Many independent pharmacies report having received buyout offers from the large drugstore chains that own the PBMs, which pharmacists see as the primary reason for their financial struggles.

At a minimum, pharmacists say, virtual audits increase wait times and drive up costs for customers. At worst, the audits cost pharmacies thousands of dollars in payments for drugs already dispensed to customers, and may ultimately drive them out of business.

“It’s definitely pulling pharmacy staff away from their duties, and it’s become an administrative burden, which does have a direct impact on patient safety,” said Garth Reynolds, executive director of the Illinois Pharmacists Association. “They have to be the de facto audit team for the pharmacy benefit managers.”

Trent Thiede, president of PAAS National, said many of the more than 5,000 pharmacies he works with stepped up to offer covid testing and shots and to become an even bigger resource for customers during this health crisis. “With vaccinations in full swing, priorities should be focused on serving patients and our communities, not responding to audit requests,” Thiede said.

When auditors come in person, they primarily do the review themselves, occasionally asking pharmacists to pull additional documentation.

“In these virtual audits, you have to pull the prescription, put it through a copier of some kind, get everything aggregated, get all the signature logs. They want your license off the wall. They want all the employee licenses faxed,” Thiede said. “It’s a lot more laborious for these pharmacies.”

Express Scripts, one of the nation’s largest benefit managers, moved to virtual audits as a safety measure, said spokesperson Justine Sessions. “The virtual experience is very similar to the in-person audits in both scope and scale, and are conducted with the same frequency,” she wrote in an email. “When it is safe to do so, we intend to resume on-site audits.”

CVS Caremark, a benefit manager affiliated with the CVS pharmacy chain, and OptumRx did not respond to requests for an interview.

Dave Falk, who owns 15 Illinois pharmacies, said the largest audit he had ever seen before the pandemic was for 60 to 70 prescriptions, valued at $30,000 to $40,000. Then, last fall, his pharmacy in Robinson had to defend $200,000 in prescriptions in a virtual audit.

“None of these prescriptions were below $450,” he said. “These audits are not random. It’s a money grab by PBMs.”

He was appalled when the auditor asked his pharmacist to report the temperature of the refrigerator for perishable medications. The information has no bearing on whether prescriptions filled months earlier were appropriate.

“They’re looking for any reason to recoup funds,” Falk said.

After Falk and his pharmacist spent hours providing the documentation, the auditor initially denied $36,000 in drug payments, mostly because of missing patient signatures. Like most pharmacies during the pandemic, Falk’s had stopped collecting patient signatures last year for safety reasons. Major trade associations representing the PBM companies and pharmacies had come to an agreement last year that patients wouldn’t need to sign for medications provided through mail order, delivery or curbside pickup.

Nonetheless, Falk’s staff had to track down dozens of patients to have them sign affidavits that they had received the prescriptions, reducing the auditor’s denial to $12,000.

“That’s $12,000 for ridiculous reasons,” Falk said.

In Newman’s eight years as a pharmacist, he said, he has undergone six audits, all but the most recent done in person. In the virtual one, conducted on behalf of the health insurer Humana, Newman uploaded his documentation before the deadline. But he, too, was flagged for missing signatures.

Dan Strause, president and CEO of Hometown Pharmacy in Madison, Wisconsin, said his pharmacies received more than 1,000 pages of audit requests last year, covering more than $3 million in prescription claims. That represented 1.5% of his company’s total annual revenue. He said pharmacists saw a surge last year of what they call predatory audits, which look for ways to deny legitimate payments for prescriptions.

“What they did in 2020 was reprehensible,” Strause said. “While we were taking care of patients, they’re sitting back in their comfy offices figuring out ‘How can we make money off this? Can we find a loophole? Can we find a missing document? Can we find a reason to take back stuff?’”

Lisa Dimond, a spokesperson for Humana, said the company is required by the government to perform audits to see if pharmacies are adhering to regulations, but conducted fewer audits and reviewed fewer prescriptions in 2020 than in 2019.

“We have worked to reduce as much administrative burden as possible on our network pharmacies, offering extensions, when needed, while still working to ensure pharmacies are filling prescriptions appropriately for the safety of our members,” she said in a statement.

Pharmacists bristle when large pharmacy chains that operate their own benefit managers offer to buy their stores, acknowledging that times are tough. Joe Craft owns the Happy Druggist chain of pharmacies in central Ohio. He said he regularly receives letters seeking to buy his business from the same companies that cause him to lose an average of $6,000 in payments with every audit, about a week’s worth of revenue for a single drugstore.

“When you read that letter, you’re thinking to yourself, ‘Hell, yeah, times are tough,’” he said. “Of all people, they should know.”

And oftentimes, when independents are sold to bigger chains, those drugstores are shut down, and the chain pharmacy directs customers to one of its locations miles away.

Thiede and many pharmacists believe that, while in-person audits may resume after the pandemic, virtual audits may be here to stay as well.

“They can do more because they don’t have to travel and fly across the country and sit in your pharmacy all day long,” Thiede said. “They can just do it from their home and accomplish more.”

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

Photo: Ridofranz, Getty Images

source https://wealthch.com/pharmacies-face-extra-audit-burdens-that-threaten-their-existence/

Companies Pan for Marketing Gold in Vaccines

This story also ran on NBC News. It can be republished for free.

For a decade, Jennifer Crow has taken care of her elderly parents, who have multiple sclerosis. After her father had a stroke in December, the family got serious in its conversations with a retirement community — and learned that one service it offered was covid-19 vaccination.

“They mentioned it like it was an amenity, like ‘We have a swimming pool and a vaccination program,’” said Crow, a librarian in southern Maryland. “It was definitely appealing to me.” Vaccines, she felt, would help ease her concerns about whether a congregate living situation would be safe for her parents, and for her to visit them; she has lupus, an autoimmune condition.

As the coronavirus death toll soars and demand for the covid vaccines dwarfs supply, an army of hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and long-term care facilities has been tasked with getting shots into arms. Some are also using that role to attract new business — the latest reminder that health care, even amid a global pandemic, is a commercial endeavor where some see opportunities to be seized.

“Most private sector companies distributing vaccines are motivated by the public health imperative. At some point, their DNA also kicks in,” said Roberta Clarke, associate professor emeritus of marketing at Boston University.

Among senior living facilities — which saw their largest drop in occupancy on record last year — some companies are marketing vaccinations to recruit residents. Sarah Ordover, owner of Assisted Living Locators Los Angeles, a referral agency, said many in her area are offering vaccines “as a sweetener” to prospective residents, sometimes if they agree to move in before a scheduled vaccination clinic.

Oakmont Senior Living, a high-end retirement community chain with 34 locations, primarily in California, has advertised “exclusive access” to the vaccines via social media and email. A call to action on social media reads: “Reserve your apartment home now to schedule your Vaccine Clinic appointment!”

Although the vaccine offer was a selling point for Crow, it wasn’t for her parents, who have not been concerned about contracting covid and didn’t want to forgo their independence, she said. Ultimately, they moved in with her sister, who could arrange home care services.

This marketing approach might sway others. Oakmont Senior Living, based in Irvine, reported 92 move-ins across its communities last month, a 13% increase from January 2020, noting the vaccine is “just one factor among many” in deciding to become a resident.

But some object to facilities using vaccines as a marketing tool. “I think it’s unethical,” said Dr. Michael Carome, director of health research at consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. While he believes that facilities should provide vaccines to residents, he fears attaching strings to a vaccine could coerce seniors, who are particularly vulnerable and desperate for vaccines, into signing a lease.

Tony Chicotel, staff attorney at California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, worries that seniors and their families could make less informed decisions when incentivized to sign by a certain date. “You’re thinking, ‘I’ve got to get moved in in the next week or otherwise I don’t get this shot. I don’t have time to read everything in this 38-page contract,’” he said.

Oakmont Senior Living responded by email: “Potential residents and their families are always provided with the information they need to be confident in a decision to choose Oakmont.”

Some people say facilities are simply meeting their demand for covid vaccines. “Who is going to put an elderly person in a place without a vaccine? Congregate living has been a hotbed of the virus,” said retired philanthropy consultant Patti Patrizi. She and her son recently chose a retirement community in Los Angeles for her ex-husband for myriad reasons unrelated to the vaccines. However, they accelerated the move by two weeks to coincide with a vaccination clinic.

“It was definitely not a marketing tool to me,” said Patrizi. “It was my insistence that he needs it before he can live there.”

The concept of using vaccines to market a business isn’t new. The 2009 H1N1 pandemic ushered in drugstore flu shots, and pharmacies have since credited flu vaccines with boosting storefront sales and prescriptions. Many offer prospective vaccine recipients coupons, gift cards or rewards points.

A few pharmacies have continued these marketing activities while rolling out covid shots. On its covid vaccine information site, CVS Pharmacy encouraged visitors to sign up for its rewards program to earn credits for vaccinations. Supermarket and pharmacy chain Albertsons and its subsidiaries have a button on their covid vaccine information sites saying, “Transfer your prescription.”

But the pandemic isn’t business as usual, said Alison Taylor, a business ethics professor at New York University. “This is a public health emergency,” she said. Companies distributing covid vaccines should ask themselves “How can we get society to herd immunity faster?” rather than “How many customers can I sign up?” she said.

In an email response, CVS said it had removed the reference to its rewards program from its covid vaccination page. Patients will not earn rewards for receiving a covid shot at its pharmacies, the company said, and its focus remains on administering the vaccines.

Albertsons said via email that its covid vaccine information pages are intended to be a one-stop resource, and information about additional services is at the very bottom of these pages.

Boston University’s Clarke doesn’t see any harm in these marketing activities. “As long as the patient is free to say ‘no, thank you,’ and doesn’t think they’ll be penalized by not getting a vaccine, it’s not a problem,” she said.

At least one health care provider is offering complimentary services to people eligible for covid vaccines. Membership-based primary care provider One Medical — now inoculating people in several states, including California — offers a free 90-day membership to groups, such as people 75 and older, that a local health department has tasked the company with vaccinating, according to an email from a company spokesperson who noted that vaccine supply and eligibility requirements vary by county.

The company said it offers the membership — which entails online vaccine appointment booking, second dose reminders and on-demand telehealth visits for acute questions — because it believes it can and should do so, especially when many are struggling to access care.

While these may very well be the company’s motives, a free trial is also a marketing tactic, said Silicon Valley health technology investor Dr. Bob Kocher. Whether it’s Costco or One Medical, any company offering a free sample hopes recipients buy the product, he said.

Offering free trial memberships could pay off for providers like One Medical, he said; local health departments can refer many patients, and converting a portion of vaccine recipients into members could offer a cheaper way for providers to get new patients than finding them on their own.

“Normally, there’s no free stuff at a provider, and you have to be sick to try health care. This is a pretty unique circumstance,” said Kocher, who doesn’t see boosting public health and taking advantage of an uncommon marketing opportunity as mutually exclusive here. “Vaccination is a super valuable way to help people,” he said. “A free trial is also a great way to market your service.”

One Medical insisted the membership trial is not a marketing ploy, noting that the company is not collecting credit card information during registration or auto-enrolling trial participants into paid memberships. But patients will receive an email notifying them before their trial ends, with an invitation to sign up for membership, said the company.

Health equity advocates say more attention needs to be paid to the people who slip under the radar of marketers — yet are at the highest risk of getting and dying from covid, and the least likely to be vaccinated.

Kathryn Stebner, an elder-abuse attorney in San Francisco, noted that the high cost of many assisted living facilities is often prohibitive for the working class and people of color. “African Americans are dying [from covid] at a rate three times as much as white people,” she said. “Are they getting these vaccine offers?”

This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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Companies Pan for Marketing Gold in Vaccines published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

Colleges That Require Virus-Screening Tech Struggle to Say Whether It Works Before the University of Idaho welcomed students back to campus last fall, it made a big bet on new virus-screening technology. The university spent $90,000 installing temperature-scanning stations, which look like airport metal detectors, in front of its dining and athletic facilities in Moscow, Idaho. When the system clocks a student walking through with an unusually high temperature, the student is asked to leave and go get tested for Covid-19. But so far the fever scanners, which detect skin temperature, have caught fewer than 10 people out of the 9,000 students living on or near campus. Even then, university administrators could not say whether the technology had been effective because they have not tracked students flagged with fevers to see if they went on to get tested for the virus. The University of Idaho is one of hundreds of colleges and universities that adopted fever scanners, symptom checkers, wearable heart-rate monitors and other new Covid-screening technologies this school year. Such tools often cost less than a more validated health intervention: frequent virus testing of all students. They also help colleges showcase their pandemic safety efforts. But the struggle at many colleges to keep the virus at bay has raised questions about the usefulness of the technologies. A New York Times effort has recorded more than 530,000 virus cases on campuses since the start of the pandemic. One problem is that temperature scanners and symptom-checking apps cannot catch the estimated 40 percent of people with the coronavirus who do not have symptoms but are still infectious. Temperature scanners can also be wildly inaccurate. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has cautioned that such symptom-based screening has only “limited effectiveness.” The schools have a hard time saying whether — or how well — the new devices have worked. Many universities and colleges, including prominent research institutions, are not rigorously studying effectiveness. “So why are we bothering?” said Bruce Schneier, a prominent security technologist who has described such screening systems as “security theater” — that is, tools that make people feel better without actually improving their safety. “Why spend the money?” More than 100 schools are using a free virus symptom-checking app, called CampusClear, that can clear students to enter campus buildings. Others are asking students to wear symptom-monitoring devices that can continuously track vital signs like skin temperature. And some have adapted the ID card swiping systems they use to admit students into dorms, libraries and gyms as tools for tracing potential virus exposures. Administrators at Idaho and other universities said their schools were using the new tech, along with policies like social distancing, as part of larger campus efforts to hinder the virus. Some said it was important for their schools to deploy the screening tools even if they were only moderately useful. At the very least, they said, using services like daily symptom-checking apps may reassure students and remind them to be vigilant about other measures, like mask wearing. Some public health experts said it was understandable that colleges had not methodically assessed the technology’s effectiveness against the coronavirus. After all, they said, schools are unaccustomed to frequently screening their entire campus populations for new infectious diseases. Even so, some experts said they were troubled that universities lacked important information that might help them make more evidence-based decisions on health screening. “It’s a massive data vacuum,” said Saskia Popescu, an infectious-disease epidemiologist who is an assistant professor at George Mason University. “The moral of the story is you can’t just invest in this tech without having a validation process behind it.” Other medical experts said increased surveillance of largely healthy college students seemed unduly intrusive, given that symptom checkers have limited usefulness and the effectiveness of wearable health monitors against Covid-19 is not yet known. Updated  March 2, 2021, 3:28 p.m. ET The introduction of campus screening tools has often been bumpy. Last fall, the University of Missouri began requiring all students, faculty and staff to use CampusClear, a free app that asks users about possible symptoms, like high temperature or loss of smell. Users who say they have no symptoms then receive a “Good to Go!” notification that can clear them to enter campus buildings. The school initially did not enforce the use of CampusClear at building entrances, however, and some students used the app only infrequently, according to reporting by The Missourian, the campus newspaper. In October, the university began requiring people to show their app pass code to enter certain buildings, like the student center and library. The university has promoted the app as a tool to help educate students. But how effective it has been at hindering coronavirus outbreaks on campus is unknown. A spokesman for the University of Missouri said the school was unable to provide usage data on CampusClear — including the number of students who had reported possible symptoms through the app and later tested positive for the virus — requested by a Times reporter. Jason Fife, the marketing director at Ivy.ai, the start-up behind CampusClear, said nearly 425,000 people at about 120 colleges and universities used the app last semester, generating about 9.8 million user reports. Many schools, he noted, use data from the app not to follow individual virus cases but to look for symptom trends on their campuses. Ivy.ai, however, cannot gauge the app’s effectiveness as a virus-screening tool, he said. For privacy reasons, the company does not track individual users who report symptoms and later test positive for the infection. At some universities, administrators acknowledged that the tech they adopted this school year did not pan out the way they had hoped. Bridgewater State University in Bridgewater, Mass., introduced two tools last semester that recorded students’ whereabouts in case they later developed virus infections and administrators needed to trace their contacts. One system logged students’ locations every time they swiped their ID cards to enter campus buildings. The other asked students to scan printed-out QR codes posted at certain locations around campus. By the end of the semester, however, only about one-third of the 1,200 students on campus were scanning the bar codes. Ethan Child, a Bridgewater senior, said he had scanned the QR codes but also skipped them when walking by in the rain. “I think it’s reasonable to ask students to do it — whether or not they’ll actually do it is another thing,” he said. “People might just pass it by.” Class Disrupted Updated March 2, 2021 The latest on how the pandemic is reshaping education. Administrators discovered that the key to hindering coronavirus outbreaks was not technology but simply frequent testing — once a week, for on-campus students — along with contact tracing, said Chris Frazer, the executive director of the university’s wellness center. “I’m glad we didn’t spend an exorbitant amount of money” on tech tools, Dr. Frazer said. “We found what we need is tests and more tests.” The location-tracking tools ultimately proved most useful for “peace of mind,” he added, and to confirm the findings of contact tracers, who often learned much more about infected students’ activities by calling them than by examining their location logs. Other schools that discovered location tracking was not a useful pandemic safety tool decided not to deploy it at all. At Oklahoma State University, in Stillwater, administrators said they had planned to log students’ locations when they used campus Wi-Fi for possible later use in contact tracing. But the school never introduced the system, said Chris Barlow, the school’s health services director, partly because administrators realized that many students had contracted the virus off campus, in situations where public health measures like mask wearing were not followed. At the University of Idaho and other schools, administrators described devices like fever scanners as add-ons to larger campus safety efforts involving student testing and measures like social distancing. Last fall, for instance, the University of Idaho tested its students for the virus at the beginning and middle of the semester, with some random testing as well. The school also used a wastewater testing program to identify an impending virus outbreak at fraternity and sorority houses, proactively quarantining more than a dozen chapters before cases could spread widely through the community. “We got out in front of it early,” C. Scott Green, the president of the University of Idaho, said. “We were able to isolate those that were sick, and we got back under control.” Still, there were hiccups. The university required food service employees who worked at the dining hall to undergo temperature checks using hand-held scanners. But several developed virus infections anyway, and the university was forced to temporarily close the dining hall over a weekend for deep cleaning. As for the free-standing temperature-scanning stations, Mr. Green himself has experienced their limitations. He said one mistakenly stopped him from entering an athletic building right after he got out of a hot car. Source link Orbem News #Colleges #require #Struggle #Tech #VirusScreening #Works

A damning read. (A long read too, audio available at the link.)

(but BE CAREFUL with reports from the New Yorker)

From the report by Charles Duhigg, posted 26 Apr 2020:

When the coronavirus pandemic started, E.I.S. alumni (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention operates a fellowship program known as the Epidemic Intelligence Service) began working non-stop, with some setting up cots inside their offices. While the virus remained overseas, the C.D.C. led communications, scrupulously following E.I.S. protocols. But soon after the coronavirus landed on American shores the White House took over. E.I.S. officers were dismayed to see the communication principles that the C.D.C. had honed over the years being disregarded, and sometimes turned on their head. A Coronavirus Task Force, led by Vice-President Mike Pence, was formed, excluding everyone from the C.D.C. except its director, Dr. Robert Redfield. “The C.D.C. was ordered into lockdown,” a former senior official at the agency told me. “They can’t speak to the media. These are people who have trained their entire lives for epidemics—the finest public-health army in history—and they’ve been told to shut up!”

Since then, the primary spokesperson during the pandemic has been not a scientist but President Donald Trump—a politician notoriously hostile to science. Further complicating matters, Trump has highlighted a rotating cast of supporting characters, including Pence; Dr. Anthony Fauci, from the National Institutes of Health; Dr. Deborah Birx, from the State Department; and the President’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. “When there are so many different figures, it can cause real confusion about whom to listen to, or who’s in charge of what,” Dr. Tom Inglesby, the director of the Center for Health Security, at Johns Hopkins, said. “And, if the response becomes political, it’s a disaster, because people won’t know if you are making recommendations based on science or politics, and so there’s the risk they’ll start to tune out.”

Already, it’s clear that some confusion has taken hold. Though the C.D.C. formally recommended, in mid-March, that Americans practice social distancing, governors in five states have refused to order residents to stay home. (One of those states, South Dakota, is now contending with a major outbreak.) Federal leaders have given shifting advice—initially, Americans were told that they did not need to wear masks in public, but on April 3rd, at a White House press briefing, masks were recommended—and this has risked undermining public confidence. Trump announced the change by saying, “You don’t have to do it. I’m choosing not to do it.” Had the C.D.C. been in charge of communicating about masks, the agency surely would have used the change in guidance as a teaching opportunity, explaining that scientists had come to understand that people infected with the coronavirus can be contagious but asymptomatic for longer than originally thought—which means that we need to be more careful when we cough, even if we feel healthy or just have seasonal allergies. Trump’s daily briefings, however, are chaotic and contradictory. Within the span of a few days, Trump threatened to quarantine New York City, then reversed himself; soon after declaring that he intended to “reopen” the U.S. economy within two weeks, he called for thirty additional days of social distancing. Such inconstancy from a leader is distracting in the best of times. It is dangerous in a pandemic. “Right now, everyone is so confused by all the conflicting messages that, each time the guidance evolves, fewer and fewer people might follow it,” Besser, the former C.D.C. director, said. “We’re going backward in our sophistication.”

Morale at the C.D.C. has plummeted. “For all the responses that I was involved in, there was always this feeling of camaraderie, that you were part of something bigger than yourself,” another former high-ranking C.D.C. official told me. “Now everyone I talk to is so dispirited. They’re working sixteen-hour days, but they feel ignored. I’ve never seen so many people so frustrated and upset and sad. We could have saved so many more lives. We have the best public-health agency in the world, and we know how to persuade people to do what they need to do. Instead, we’re ignoring everything we’ve learned over the last century.”

In early March, as (King County WA Executive) Dow Constantine was asking Microsoft to close its offices and putting scientists in front of news cameras, de Blasio and New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, were giving speeches that deëmphasized the risks of the pandemic, even as the city was announcing its first official cases. De Blasio initially voiced caution, saying that “no one should take the coronavirus situation lightly,” but soon told residents to keep helping the city’s economy. “Go on with your lives + get out on the town despite Coronavirus,” he tweeted on March 2nd—one day after the first COVID-19 diagnosis in New York. He urged people to see a movie at Lincoln Center. On the day that Seattle schools closed, de Blasio said at a press conference that “if you are not sick, if you are not in the vulnerable category, you should be going about your life.” Cuomo, meanwhile, had told reporters that “we should relax.” He said that most infected people would recover with few problems, adding, “We don’t even think it’s going to be as bad as it was in other countries.”

De Blasio’s and Cuomo’s instincts are understandable. A political leader’s job, in most situations, is to ease citizens’ fears and buoy the economy. During a pandemic, however, all those imperatives are reversed: a politician’s job is to inflame our paranoia, because waiting until we can see the danger means holding off until it’s too late. The city’s epidemiologists were horrified by the comforting messages that de Blasio and Cuomo kept giving. Jeffrey Shaman, a disease modeller at Columbia, said, “All you had to do was look at the West Coast, and you knew it was coming for us. That’s why Seattle and San Francisco and Portland were shutting things down.” But New York “dithered instead of telling people to stay home.”

De Blasio and Cuomo kept bickering. On March 17th, de Blasio told residents to “be prepared right now for the possibility of a shelter-in-place order.” The same day, Cuomo told a reporter, “There’s not going to be any ‘you must stay in your house’ rule.” Cuomo’s staff quietly told reporters that de Blasio was acting “psychotic.” Three days later, though, Cuomo announced an executive order putting the state on “pause”—which was essentially indistinguishable from stay-at-home orders issued by cities in Washington State, California, and elsewhere. (A spokesperson for de Blasio said that City Hall’s “messaging changed as the situation and the science changed” and that there was “no dithering.” A spokesperson for Cuomo said that “the Governor communicated clearly the seriousness of this pandemic” and that “the Governor has been laser focused on communicating his actions in a way that doesn’t scare people.”)

Today, New York City has the same social-distancing policies and business-closure rules as Seattle. But because New York’s recommendations came later than Seattle’s—and because communication was less consistent—it took longer to influence how people behaved. According to data collected by Google from cell phones, nearly a quarter of Seattleites were avoiding their workplaces by March 6th. In New York City, another week passed until an equivalent percentage did the same.

(emphasis mine)

Tom Frieden, the former C.D.C. director, has estimated that, if New York had started implementing stay-at-home orders ten days earlier than it did, it might have reduced COVID-19 deaths by 50% to 80%. Another former New York City health commissioner told me that “de Blasio was just horrible,” adding, “Maybe it was unintentional, maybe it was his arrogance. But, if you tell people to stay home and then you go to the gym, you can’t really be surprised when people keep going outside.”

More than fifteen thousand people in New York are believed to have died from COVID-19. Last week in Washington State, the estimate was fewer than seven hundred people. New Yorkers now hear constant ambulance sirens, which remind them of the invisible viral threat; residents are currently staying home at even higher rates than in Seattle. And de Blasio and Cuomo—even as they continue to squabble over, say, who gets to reopen schools—have become more forceful in their warnings.

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Over the past few months, mask-wearing in public has become the norm. In some states, it’s even required. But for Black Americans — and young Black men in particular — wearing a mask can feel like a catch-22. Public health experts now say masks are crucial for preventing the spread of the virus, which has disproportionately affected Black people. But putting on a mask can be an intense source of anxiety for many Black people — particularly Black men — who worry that they’ll be harassed or profiled while they’re wearing one.

“Almost immediately after mask-wearing became widespread, there were anecdotal reports of Black men being followed and asked to leave stores because they were wearing masks,” said ReNika Moore, director of the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program.

A new study underscores just how widespread this kind of profiling could be. Researchers at the University of North Carolina found that in a survey experiment, non-Black respondents who scored high in racial resentment — a measure that’s designed to assess negative attitudes toward people of color — were much likelier to perceive a young Black man as threatening or untrustworthy if he was wearing a homemade mask or a bandanna, compared to a white man around the same age.

“There’s no doubt at this point that masks keep people safer from COVID-19,” said Marc Hetherington, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina and one of the authors of the study. “But certain types of masks may also be putting young Black men in danger of harassment or profiling.”

Researchers had all respondents read a short fictitious news story about a young man who said he had been laid off due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But the photo of the man that accompanied the narrative varied by race (white or Black) and face covering. In some pictures, the man was wearing no mask; in others, he was wearing a surgical mask, a homemade cloth mask or a bandanna.

The respondents were then asked to rate how “threatening” and “trustworthy” the young man was. The study found that non-Black respondents who scored high in racial resentment were significantly more likely to say the young Black man was threatening or untrustworthy when he was wearing the bandanna or the homemade mask. Michael Jeffries, a professor of American studies at Wellesley College, said this study further affirms the fears of Black people wearing certain masks in public. “Our reactions are based on the way that we’re treated. These are not figments of our imagination.”

CalvinJohn Smiley, a sociology professor at Hunter College, said the findings reminded him of a lively conversation that sprang up in a WhatsApp group earlier in the pandemic. He and the other Black men on the thread were swapping thoughts on which kinds of masks and bandannas would be safest for them to wear. “The standard darker blue or standard red colors were ones that we all kind of said, we’re definitely not going to wear that,” he said, because of the colors’ associations with street gangs. “It’s really a horrible decision to make — do I wear this mask and potentially be stopped and profiled by the police? Or do I not wear it and risk my health and livelihood?” he said.

The UNC team’s findings have serious health implications, especially given how the coronavirus has disproportionately affected Black people. But the research has also turned up one potential solution. Since the researchers found that surgical masks didn’t increase negative perceptions of Black men the way homemade masks or bandannas did, cities and states could make those masks more widely available. And some places have already done something like this: In Rochester, NY, the city mailed out almost 500,000 surgical masks to residents.

Several experts and activists pointed out, though, that simply mailing out surgical masks won’t solve the underlying issues that make some Black people feel unsafe covering their faces in public. Tyler Whittenburg, chief counsel of the Justice Systems Reform group at the advocacy organization Southern Coalition for Social Justice, said that the anxiety about wearing face masks isn’t just about the masks themselves. It’s linked to the larger systemic issues around police violence and the surveillance of Black people that have been raised by protesters across the country in the past month. “If you want to help mitigate that anxiety, then listen to the people that are out in the streets,” he said. And Lauren Hill, an assistant professor of public health at the University of North Carolina, said it’s important that businesses and local governments ensure that Black people aren’t harassed in public, regardless of what kind of mask they’re wearing.

Smiley told us that listening to Black Americans and paying attention to their experiences is especially important because even if surgical masks don’t trigger damaging stereotypes now, that might change. It’s possible, for example, that because they haven’t been readily available until recently, the masks — and people who wear them — might be perceived more negatively if masks start being distributed for free. And that change could disproportionately impact Black Americans, given the difficulties they already face with other types of face masks.

On a personal level, Smiley has prioritized wearing a mask from the start, since he believes he was actually sick with the virus earlier this year. And now, he’s mostly worried about being harassed on the rare occasions when he forgets to wear a mask. But he understands many Black people may still feel uncomfortable putting one on — and he said that complexity and ambivalence is one reason this problem may not have a simple fix. “This really is a matter of health and people’s lives, so we can’t ignore it,” he said, adding, “But it is probably going to be more complicated than just finding a neutral mask.”