In only took a couple of days for Donald Trump to start spreading rumors that Kamala Harris does not meet the constitutional qualifications to be Vice President (and President for that matter). You know, like he did about Barack Obama during Obama’s presidency.
He is so predictable. I guess in Trump’s deranged racist brain, if someone is black (even half black) then they can’t be president.
The Atlantic has an interesting (and somewhat depressing) article pointing out that it is likely that COVID-19 will be with us for a long time, or even indefinitely. That would make it similar to the flu, which comes back pretty much every year, and we are able to deal with it. The title is “The Coronavirus Is Never Going Away“.
They point out that SARS, which is closely related to COVID-19, “was snuffed out through intense isolation, contact tracing, and quarantine” and is no longer found in humans. But unlike SARS, COVID-19 can be spread by people who have no symptoms and don’t know they are infected, which makes it harder to eliminate.
Their conclusion?
The most likely scenario, experts say, is that the pandemic ends at some point — because enough people have been either infected or vaccinated — but the virus continues to circulate in lower levels around the globe. Cases will wax and wane over time. Outbreaks will pop up here and there. Even when a much-anticipated vaccine arrives, it is likely to only suppress but never completely eradicate the virus. (For context, consider that vaccines exist for more than a dozen human viruses but only one, smallpox, has ever been eradicated from the planet, and that took 15 years of immense global coordination.) We will probably be living with this virus for the rest of our lives.
The good news is that treatments and vaccines should make COVID-19 “much less dangerous and less disruptive”. But that will take time.
There are two good articles out recently, detailing exactly how Donald Trump screwed up the response to the Coronavirus, and his staff enabled him. You may think you already know all about that, but it is interesting to see it all laid out for you.
In Slate, “The Trump Pandemic, A blow-by-blow account of how the president killed thousands of Americans” by William Saletan.
In the Washington Post, “The lost days of summer: How Trump fell short in containing the virus” by Philip Rucker, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Josh Dawsey, and Robert Costa.
Yes, it is possible, and not even all that hard to defeat the coronavirus. New Zealand did it — they just celebrated 100 days (more than three months) without anyone inside NZ catching COVID-19. And all domestic restrictions were lifted… in June. No more social distancing, no more masks, the economy is fine, schools are open, almost everything back to normal.
How did they do it? If you’ve been paying attention, I’ll bet you already know the answers:
NZ locked down early, when it was easier to use contact tracing to find people who were exposed and isolate them. Nobody said stupid things like “it will just magically go away”.
They ramped up testing early. Nobody left it to local governments. They worked together.
They made sure that people would not violate isolation orders, which meant that they only needed to do it for a short time. Nobody decided to hold campaign rallies or motorcycle festivals.
They closed their borders, preventing anyone who is not a resident of NZ from arriving. And they tested all arrivals, and had them quarantine for two weeks.
Are you seeing a pattern here? NZ responded early, and enforced restrictions, which allowed them to return to normal much more quickly. In other words, they did the opposite of what Trump did.
Currently, NZ has 23 active coronavirus cases. All of them are residents who returned from abroad with the virus, and were promptly isolated. They are tested three times before they can leave.
They even have officers stationed by quarantine facilities to make sure nobody in isolation sneaks out. It might sound drastic, but keeping the spread contained meant that far fewer people had to be isolated, and with restrictions lifted in June, far less inconvenience for everyone.
Bottom line: New Zealand had 22 deaths from COVID-19. The US is currently at 165,617 deaths. Adjusting for population the US already has — per capita — 112 times the deaths of NZ, and we are still dying here.
New Zealand had 1,219 confirmed cases. The US has passed 5 million cases (and rising).
Today, Donald Trump signed several executive orders to provide economic relief for the coronavirus pandemic. Let’s ignore the fact that the constitution says that only Congress (and in particular the House) can allocate funds. Instead, Trump is going to redirect money from FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund (DRF).
Meanwhile, here’s a headline from Fox News: “Most Active Hurricane Season on Record So Far”. They go on to say that even though we are only two months into the 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season, it is already one of the most active on record, ever. But the DRF has far less money in it than needed for coronavirus relief, so it will be exhausted, leaving absolutely no money for hurricane relief. Oops!
Furthermore, and far worse, Trump directed the Treasury Secretary to defer payroll taxes. At the same time, the White House announced that if Trump is reelected, he plans to terminate the payroll tax permanently.
If you don’t know what payroll taxes do, you might be forgiven for thinking that sounds ok. Payroll taxes pay for Social Security and partly for Medicare. No more payroll tax means no more Social Security. And less money for Medicare, which will eventually kill that too.
Heather Cox Richardson had a great article yesterday about blatant corruption in the Trump administration. But what I found interesting was that she started the article with this sentence:
Trump dominated the news today, which is usually a sign of negative news stories and his need to create distractions from them.
Indeed, Trump had said all kinds of outrageous things, and the news media ate them up and talked about them non-stop. And most of them then didn’t publish the real news, which was that the inspector general for the state department resigned, effective today (even though he had been on the job less than three months). He didn’t give any reason for his departure, but it was probably because he was investigating that blatant corruption.
There was also even more corruption, including by Attorney General William Barr and by Lindsay Graham.
If you want to know more about that corruption, I suggest you read HCR’s column. But to me, the main point is that Trump is still able to manipulate the media by acting out. And we let him get away with it.
That’s right, 4 cases of voter fraud found in the 2016 election. Out of around 129 million votes cast. That’s 0.000003 percent. Ten times more people die from lightning (43/year).
A whopping 150,000 people (and rising) have died from the coronavirus this year. And that’s before we open schools and make things far worse.
You must have a problem in your mind if you think that somehow the Black Lives Matter is more dangerous than the police. You must have a problem in your mind if you think that Antifa is the one going to take your freedom. … you must be hypnotized by these social media code words or by conservative talk show hosts.
I am not in favor of abolishing the police, but I am in favor of minimizing their power. Law enforcement is a necessary element of a free and civil society and I am wholeheartedly in favor of having a law-abiding peacekeeping force that ensures the peace and safety of its citizens. … What I want is what most rational and free-thinking people want — I want freedom to live the life that I want without fear of my government oppressing me or physically assaulting me. Patriots want that. And guess what, many people within the BLM movement just want the same thing.
Even though I was very upset at what Bundy did at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, I applaud him for acknowledging that his views and the BLM movement are two sides of the same coin.
What a fantastic summary of what is going on in our country. This must have been made a few days ago, because they left off the part about Trump and the Republicans massively screwing around with the Post Office so your ballots sent by mail will arrive too late to be counted (if you even receive them at all).
Warning: like the last one, this video contains obscenity. And I’m not just talking about the swear words.
This is a new kind of ad from The Lincoln Project. It is 6 minutes long, so it likely won’t be shown on TV. And it uses actors, rather than the usual politicians saying and doing things.
But it has an incredibly strong message, which is that Donald Trump has been able to normalized behavior that previously would have been unacceptable (even impeachable). He is like a machine gun, spitting out insults, racist dog whistles, and outright lies so fast that they don’t register anymore. And Trump’s enablers, including Fox News and the GOP-controlled Senate, have helped by making craven excuses for him.
How do you fight this? By pointing out what would happen if you had been asleep since Trump became president, and suddenly woke up and were told everything that had gone terribly wrong in the last 3 and a half years, all at once.
UPDATE: The Washington Post has an interesting article about The Lincoln Project and how it is driving Trump out of office by driving him nuts.
