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solarbirdIt's a big list today, yep. While it's not ordered very well, a lot of it deals with Republican efforts to hide COVID-19 deaths, downplay the epidemic, and generally push "reopening the economy" while letting larger and larger numbers of people die.
----- 1 -----
Texas Gov. Admits Dangers of Reopening State on Private Call With Lawmakers
“Pretty much every scientific and medical report shows that whenever you have a reopening... it actually will lead to an increase and spread,” Gov. Greg Abbott said.
Olivia Messer
Updated May. 05, 2020
https://www.thedailybeast.com/texas-governor-greg-abbott-admits-dangers-of-reopening-state-on-private-call-with-lawmakers/
During a private call on Friday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott admitted that “every scientific and medical report shows” state reopenings “ipso facto” lead to an increase in novel coronavirus cases, even as he publicly announced plans that same week to end an executive stay-at-home order in the state.
“How do we know reopening businesses won’t result in faster spread of more cases of COVID-19?” Abbott asked during a Friday afternoon phone call with members of the state legislature and Congress. “Listen, the fact of the matter is pretty much every scientific and medical report shows that whenever you have a reopening—whether you want to call it a reopening of businesses or of just a reopening of society—in the aftermath of something like this, it actually will lead to an increase and spread. It’s almost ipso facto.”
...
The audio was recorded by somebody on the call, and a clip of it was sent to The Daily Beast on Tuesday. It was first reported by state political site Quorum Report, which noted that Abbott’s public statements so far have largely only mentioned that Texas may see an increase in the numbers due to increased testing capacity, rather than increased contact. Though Abbott has repeatedly said in public interviews that reopening “can” or “could” cause a spike in cases, the audio recording from last Friday’s call appeared to show a more direct and certain understanding of the risks.
----- 2 -----
#TestAndTrace EVERYWHERE NOW
Rabbit
twitter.com/Noahpinion
6 May 2020
[THREAD] [Particularly good, go read it]
https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1258076760618369025
1/Many of you are probably asking: "Wait, we had an even worse epidemic 100 years ago. Why didn't it wreck the economy??"
Today's twitter.com/bopinion post attempts to answer that question.
[LINKS TO: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-06/why-coronavirus-is-punishing-the-economy-more-than-spanish-flu or just read the thread which is frankly better]
----- 3 -----
Ohio House Republicans move to limit Health Director Amy Acton’s authority
By Seth A. Richardson, cleveland.com
6 May 2020
[EDITOR: The governor there is one of the few Republicans not on the 'herd immunity' plan at this point, so the Republicans in the state legislature are moving against him.]
https://www.cleveland.com/open/2020/05/ohio-house-republicans-move-to-limit-health-director-amy-actons-authority.html
CLEVELAND, Ohio – House Republicans on Wednesday moved to strip Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton’s authority to issue lasting state orders, a direct attack on Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and his response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Republicans on the House State and Local Government Committee passed an amendment to a 2019 regulatory reform bill that would limit health department orders to 14 days. Under the amendment to Senate Bill 1, an order could only be extended if it receives approval from the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review.
...
Several Republicans also questioned the necessity for any orders at all, echoing a letter signed by 33 House Republicans on April 27 calling for DeWine to end coronavirus restrictions immediately.
“We are clearly on the downside of the curve,” said state Rep. John Becker, a Clermont County Republican. “There is no longer a risk of overwhelming the health care system. I’m not sure there ever was. That argument didn’t make sense to me initially.”
----- 4 -----
Trump will urge Supreme Court to strike down Obamacare
Attorney General Bill Barr had urged the White House to soften its attack on the law during the pandemic.
By SUSANNAH LUTHI
6 May 2020
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/06/trump-supreme-court-obamacare-240366
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said his administration will urge the Supreme Court to overturn Obamacare, maintaining its all-out legal assault on the health care law amid a pandemic that will drive millions of more Americans to depend on its coverage.
The administration appears to be doubling down on its legal strategy, even after Attorney General Bill Barr this week warned top Trump officials about the political ramifications of undermining the health care safety net during the coronavirus emergency.
----- 5 -----
Trump touted reopening. Privately, his team sounded alarms.
Tapes of conference calls of FEMA and HHS officials across the country reveal widespread worries about new waves of Covid-19 infections.
By ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN and ADAM CANCRYN
05/06/2020
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/06/trump-fema-hhs-coronavirus-response-239652
President Donald Trump boasted on May 1 that his success in responding to the coronavirus pandemic has made ventilator, test kit and mask shortages a thing of the past, and that much of the country is ready to quickly send people back to work.
“We’ve ensured a ventilator for every patient who needs one,” he said. “The testing and the masks and all of the things, we’ve solved every problem. We solved it quickly.”
But that same day, his own health and emergency management officials were privately warning that states were still experiencing shortages of masks, gowns and other medical gear, according to a recording of an interagency meeting between FEMA and HHS officials across the country, conducted by conference call, which was obtained by POLITICO.
----- 6 -----
Jason Furman
twitter.com/jasonfurman
5 May 2020
[EDITOR: From bio - Professor of Practice at Harvard. Teaches Ec 10, some tweets might be educational. Also Senior Fellow twitter.com/PIIE. Was Chairman of President Obama's CEA.]
[THREAD]
https://twitter.com/jasonfurman/status/1257707830787915777
This might be the lowest point in the 74 year history of the Council of Economic Advisers. The stakes on the epidemiological questions are so high that this utterly superficial and misleading "modeling" has no place whatsoever in any discussion of the government's response.
[QUOTED TWEET showing they actually are using Excel's cubic trendline as a COVID-19 tool]
[NEXT TWEET]
The "cubic fit" is based on an approach to epidemiology that has long been absent from any serious epidemiological discussions. It made terrible predictions back in March and April. The functional form was chosen to get the result they wanted.
[THREAD CONTINUES AT LINK]
----- 7 -----
‘We were at a COVID party’: People hold coronavirus gatherings in Walla Walla area
By The Associated Press
May 6, 2020
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/we-were-at-a-covid-party-people-hold-coronavirus-gatherings-in-walla-walla-area/
WALLA WALLA — Some people are intentionally flouting health recommendations by exposing themselves and others to COVID-19 in Walla Walla County, officials said.
Meghan DeBolt, director of the county’s Department of Community Health, told the Union-Bulletin that contact tracing has revealed that some are attending parties with the idea that it is better to get sick with the virus and get it over with.
New positive test results in the county have resulted from such gatherings, she said.
“We ask about contacts, and there are 25 people because: ‘We were at a COVID party,’ ” DeBolt said.
----- 8 -----
DeVos issues rules for sexual misconduct investigations in schools, bolstering protections for the accused
By J. Edward Moreno - 05/06/20
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/496392-devos-issues-rules-for-sexual-misconduct-in-schools-bolstering
On Wednesday Education Secretary Betsy DeVos issued final rules on how all schools will address allegations of sexual misconduct, securing new protections for students and faculty accused of misconduct.
The new rules modify Title IX, a 1972 law prohibiting “discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive Federal financial assistance,” narrowing the definition of sexual harassment and requiring schools to challenge evidence and cross-examine students via a live hearing, among other things detailed in the more than 2,000-page rule.
The new regulations, which take effect in August, will only find schools in violation of Title IX if they are determined to be “deliberately indifferent” to accusations of sexual assault that occurred in their programs and activities.
...
Victim advocacy groups, such as Know Your IX, have said that the new rules are "rolling back the rights of student survivors," claiming they shield schools from liability for sexual misconduct that takes place in their facilities.
"If this rule goes into effect, it will make schools more dangerous and could push survivors out of school entirely," the group tweeted.
Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center, told The New York Times the organization plans to contest the new rules in court.
“Betsy DeVos and the Trump administration are dead set on making schools more dangerous for everyone — even during a global pandemic,” Goss Graves told the Times. “And if this rule goes into effect, survivors will be denied their civil rights and will get the message loud and clear that there is no point in reporting assault.”
----- 9 -----
Josh Marshall
twitter.com/joshtpm
6 May 2020
https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1258127071798329345
Trump: You have to be warriors; some may die; get over it.
[EMBEDDED VIDEO]
[TRANSCRIPT BY EDITOR]
JOHN (reporter): Will the nation just have to accept the idea that by reopening there will be more cases, there will be more deaths?
DONKEYBALLS: So I call these people warriors and I'm actually calling now as you know John the nation warriors you have to be warriors you can't keep our country closed down for... years, and we have to do something. And, hopefully that won't be the case John but it could very well be the case.
----- 10 -----
J. David McSwane
davidmcswane
6 May 2020
https://twitter.com/davidmcswane/status/1258035535936921601
1) The VA signed a $34.5 million deal for N95 masks with a company that advertised “block chain” solutions and had only existed for 2 years.
I called the company to see why
Ended up on a private jet, following one of the most bizarre stories of my career...
----- 11 -----
Ben Casselman
twitter.com/bencasselman
6 May 2020
So twitter.com/jimtankersley talked to Kevin Hassett about the whole "cubic model" mess, and long story short, I'm pretty sure Hassett owes twitter.com/NateSilver538 $538.
https://nytimes.com/2020/05/06/business/coronavirus-white-house-economists.html
[EMBEDDED IMAGE]
[TRANSCRIPT BY EDITOR]
Reported deaths vary by the day, particularly on weekends. To smooth out the volatility, Mr. Hassett said he had employed "just a canned function in Excel, a cubic polynomial."
----- 12 -----
On the Murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a Modern Day Lynching
May 6, 2020 by Libby Anne
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2020/05/on-the-murder-of-ahmaud-arbery-a-modern-day-lynching.html
In late February, two civilian men with no role in law enforcement followed 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery in their truck while he was out for an early afternoon jog, pulled past him and stopped in the road, got out of their truck carrying weapons, and shot and killed him as he tried to jog around the roadblock they had created.
As journalism professor Jelani Cobb put it on twitter, they hunted him like prey. Neither man has been arrested. Neither man has been charged. The two murderers claim they thought the Arbery might be the man who’d been committing some local burglaries—based on zero evidence—and that they were trying to make a citizen’s arrest—with guns and, it seems, a willingness to kill. Based on literally nothing. No evidence, nothing.
Yesterday, a Georgia radio station released a graphic, disturbing video of the killing—video authorities already had, but had not made public. Also yesterday, after the video began to spread on twitter and elsewhere in the news media, the district attorney recommended the case to a Grand Jury for review. A Grand Jury will decide whether Gregory McMichael and his son Travis McMichael should be tried for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. Note that this would not have happened if the video had not been made public—or if there hadn’t been video.
We live in a country where white men can hunt down a black man like prey, shoot and kill him, claim they were acting in the public’s good, and get away with it—so long as the video of the killing isn’t publicly released.
----- 13 -----
Natascha Strobl
twitter.com/Natascha_Strobl
6 May 2020
[THREAD]
https://twitter.com/Natascha_Strobl/status/1247606764914302979
Over the past days I've been exploring extreme right-wing sites from all over the world again. There are various approaches to Corona which I will detail another time. What stands out: Uncontrolled infection seems to be the preferred approach - let me explain why:
[NEXT TWEET IN THREAD]
And it is precisely here that we witness one of the most central elements of fascist ideology: the weak and all its synonyms. A decadent, soft, unmanly, hysterical, panicky, timid, effeminate society is the problem.
[NEXT TWEET IN THREAD]
This is not new and also formed a central narrative of the emerging fascism during modernity's breakthrough: men aren't men anymore, but nervous, urban, overly intellectualized and (here it comes) sickly weaklings. The idea of sick as weak is important.
[NEXT TWEET IN THREAD]
And it is exactly the same point of attack again: To panic because of this virus doesn't agree with masculine or national(ist) values. This is met with all kinds of moral assessments: it hurts the dignity, esteem, the spirit and so forth of the people („Volk“)
[THREAD CONTINUES AT LINK, or also here:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1247606764914302979.html ]
----- 14 -----
State health department tells university COVID-19 modelling team to stop work, limits data access
Rachel Leingang, Arizona Republic Published 6:46 p.m. MT May 5, 2020
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-health/2020/05/05/coronavirus-officials-stop-arizona-state-university-covid-19-modeling-team/5173380002/
[EDITOR: The university's group was saying that extending lockdown to end of May was the only way _not_ to go straight back to exponential. The GOP governor is ignoring that, and shutting them down so they can't generate more forecasts.]
The Arizona Department of Health Services told a team of university experts working on COVID-19 modeling to "pause" its work, an email from a department leader shows.
The modeling team of about two dozen professors at Arizona State University and the University of Arizona was compiling the most robust public model in Arizona of COVID-19.
The email, from DHS bureau chief of public health statistics S. Robert Bailey, came on Monday evening, after Gov. Doug Ducey announced plans to begin easing social distancing in the coming days.
ABC15 first reported on the email stopping the modelers' work.
The state is instead relying on a model from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This model has not been released to the public.
The universities' model had shown that reopening at the end of May was the only scenario that didn't dramatically increase cases.
In late April, Tim Lant, a mathematical epidemiologist at ASU, said the model showed five different scenarios for how the disease could progress in Arizona, depending on how social distancing efforts were relaxed.
The slowest curve, based on if the state reopens at the end of May, is “the only one that doesn't put me immediately back on an exponential growth curve,” Lant said in April. That’s because transmission rates would be lowest at that time, he said.
“I can say, scientifically, no, it's not safe to reopen unless you're planning on, you know, shutting down again after a couple of weeks, and we can help figure out what the appropriate amount of time is to stay open before we shut down,” he said.
Bailey wrote that health department leadership asked the team to "pause" all work on projections and modeling. The department would also be ending access to special data sets the modeling team had been using for their efforts, Bailey said.
----- 15 -----
Top Republican fundraiser and Trump ally named postmaster general, giving president new influence over Postal Service
By Josh Dawsey, Lisa Rein and Jacob Bogage
May 6, 2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/top-republican-fundraiser-and-trump-ally-to-be-named-postmaster-general-giving-president-new-influence-over-postal-service-officials-say/2020/05/06/25cde93c-8fd4-11ea-8df0-ee33c3f5b0d6_story.html
A top donor to President Trump and the Republican National Committee will be named the new head of the Postal Service, putting a top ally of the president in charge of an agency where Trump has long pressed for major changes in how it handles its business.
The Postal Service’s Board of Governors confirmed late Wednesday that Louis DeJoy, a North Carolina businessman who is currently in charge of fundraising for the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, will serve as the new postmaster general.
The action will install a stalwart Trump ally to lead the Postal Service, which he has railed against for years, and likely move him closer than ever before to forcing the service to renegotiate its terms with companies and its own union workforce. Trump’s Treasury Department and the Postal Service are in the midst of a negotiation over a $10 billion line of credit approved as part of coronavirus legislation in March.
Trump has indicated he wants the Postal Service to dramatically raise fees for delivering packages for customers such as Amazon in exchange for tapping the line of credit. Trump has long argued that Amazon doesn’t pay the Postal Service enough, a charge the agency has fiercely contested. (Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.)
----- 16 -----
Trump order to paint border wall black could drive up cost $500 million or more
By Nick Miroff and Josh Dawsey
May 6, 2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/trump-border-wall-black-paint/2020/05/06/dbda8ae4-8eff-11ea-8df0-ee33c3f5b0d6_story.html
President Trump is once more pushing to have his border wall painted black, a design change that is projected to add at least $500 million in costs, according to government contracting estimates obtained by The Washington Post.
The president’s determination to have the steel bollards coated in black has fluctuated during the past several years, and military commanders and border officials believed as recently as last fall that they had finally talked him out of it. They consider the black paint unnecessary, costly and a significant long-term maintenance burden, and they left it out of the original U.S. Customs and Border Protection design specifications.
Trump has not let go of the idea, insisting that the dark color will enhance its forbidding appearance and leave the steel too hot to touch during summer months. During a border wall meeting at the White House last month amid the coronavirus pandemic, the president told senior adviser Jared Kushner and aides to move forward with the paint job and to seek out cost estimates, according to four administration officials with knowledge of the meeting.
...
The Post obtained a copy of painting estimates that federal contracting officials produced, and it shows costs ranging from $500 million for two coats of acrylic paint to more than $3 billion for a premium “powder coating” on the structure’s 30-foot steel bollards, the high end of the options the officials have identified.
----- 17 -----
Trump and some top aides question accuracy of virus death toll
Axios
Jonathan Swan, Sam Baker
May 6, 2020
https://www.axios.com/trump-coronavirus-death-toll-d8ba60a4-316b-4d1e-8595-74970c15fb34.html
President Trump has complained to advisers about the way coronavirus deaths are being calculated, suggesting the real numbers are actually lower — and a number of his senior aides share this view, according to sources with direct knowledge.
What's next: A senior administration official said he expects the president to begin publicly questioning the death toll as it closes in on his predictions for the final death count and damages him politically.
Reality check: There is no evidence the death rate has been exaggerated, and experts believe coronavirus deaths in the U.S. are being undercounted — not overcounted.
Behind the scenes: The official said Trump has vented that the numbers seem inflated and has brought up New York's addition of more than 3,000 unconfirmed but suspected COVID-19 cases to its death toll.
- Texas Gov. Admits Dangers of Reopening State on Private Call With Lawmakers
- Wait, we had an even worse epidemic 100 years ago. Why didn't it wreck the economy?
- Ohio House Republicans move to limit Health Director Amy Acton’s authority [EDITOR: The governor there is one of the few Republicans not on the 'herd immunity' plan at this point, so the Republicans in the state legislature are moving against him.]
- Trump will urge Supreme Court to strike down Obamacare
- Trump touted reopening. Privately, his team sounded alarms.
- This might be the lowest point in the 74 year history of the Council of Economic Advisers.
- ‘We were at a COVID party’: People hold coronavirus gatherings in Walla Walla area
- DeVos issues rules for sexual misconduct investigations in schools, bolstering protections for the accused [EDITOR: Also shielding schools.]
- Trump: You have to be warriors; some may die; get over it.
- The VA signed a $34.5 million deal for N95 masks with a company that advertised “block chain” solutions and had only existed for 2 years. I ended up on a private jet, following one of the most bizarre stories of my career.
- Yeah, the "cubic model" was just Excel.
- On the Murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a Modern Day Lynching
- Uncontrolled infection seems to be the preferred approach of the right
- [Arizona] State health department tells university COVID-19 modelling team to stop work, limits data access [EDITOR: The university's group was saying that extending lockdown to end of May was the only way _not_ to go straight back to exponential. The GOP governor is ignoring that, and shutting them down so they can't generate more forecasts.]
- Top Republican fundraiser and Trump ally named postmaster general, giving president new influence over Postal Service
- Trump order to paint border wall black could drive up cost $500 million or more
- Trump and some top aides question accuracy of virus death toll
----- 1 -----
Texas Gov. Admits Dangers of Reopening State on Private Call With Lawmakers
“Pretty much every scientific and medical report shows that whenever you have a reopening... it actually will lead to an increase and spread,” Gov. Greg Abbott said.
Olivia Messer
Updated May. 05, 2020
https://www.thedailybeast.com/texas-governor-greg-abbott-admits-dangers-of-reopening-state-on-private-call-with-lawmakers/
During a private call on Friday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott admitted that “every scientific and medical report shows” state reopenings “ipso facto” lead to an increase in novel coronavirus cases, even as he publicly announced plans that same week to end an executive stay-at-home order in the state.
“How do we know reopening businesses won’t result in faster spread of more cases of COVID-19?” Abbott asked during a Friday afternoon phone call with members of the state legislature and Congress. “Listen, the fact of the matter is pretty much every scientific and medical report shows that whenever you have a reopening—whether you want to call it a reopening of businesses or of just a reopening of society—in the aftermath of something like this, it actually will lead to an increase and spread. It’s almost ipso facto.”
...
The audio was recorded by somebody on the call, and a clip of it was sent to The Daily Beast on Tuesday. It was first reported by state political site Quorum Report, which noted that Abbott’s public statements so far have largely only mentioned that Texas may see an increase in the numbers due to increased testing capacity, rather than increased contact. Though Abbott has repeatedly said in public interviews that reopening “can” or “could” cause a spike in cases, the audio recording from last Friday’s call appeared to show a more direct and certain understanding of the risks.
----- 2 -----
#TestAndTrace EVERYWHERE NOW
Rabbit
twitter.com/Noahpinion
6 May 2020
[THREAD] [Particularly good, go read it]
https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1258076760618369025
1/Many of you are probably asking: "Wait, we had an even worse epidemic 100 years ago. Why didn't it wreck the economy??"
Today's twitter.com/bopinion post attempts to answer that question.
[LINKS TO: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-06/why-coronavirus-is-punishing-the-economy-more-than-spanish-flu or just read the thread which is frankly better]
----- 3 -----
Ohio House Republicans move to limit Health Director Amy Acton’s authority
By Seth A. Richardson, cleveland.com
6 May 2020
[EDITOR: The governor there is one of the few Republicans not on the 'herd immunity' plan at this point, so the Republicans in the state legislature are moving against him.]
https://www.cleveland.com/open/2020/05/ohio-house-republicans-move-to-limit-health-director-amy-actons-authority.html
CLEVELAND, Ohio – House Republicans on Wednesday moved to strip Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton’s authority to issue lasting state orders, a direct attack on Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and his response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Republicans on the House State and Local Government Committee passed an amendment to a 2019 regulatory reform bill that would limit health department orders to 14 days. Under the amendment to Senate Bill 1, an order could only be extended if it receives approval from the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review.
...
Several Republicans also questioned the necessity for any orders at all, echoing a letter signed by 33 House Republicans on April 27 calling for DeWine to end coronavirus restrictions immediately.
“We are clearly on the downside of the curve,” said state Rep. John Becker, a Clermont County Republican. “There is no longer a risk of overwhelming the health care system. I’m not sure there ever was. That argument didn’t make sense to me initially.”
----- 4 -----
Trump will urge Supreme Court to strike down Obamacare
Attorney General Bill Barr had urged the White House to soften its attack on the law during the pandemic.
By SUSANNAH LUTHI
6 May 2020
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/06/trump-supreme-court-obamacare-240366
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said his administration will urge the Supreme Court to overturn Obamacare, maintaining its all-out legal assault on the health care law amid a pandemic that will drive millions of more Americans to depend on its coverage.
The administration appears to be doubling down on its legal strategy, even after Attorney General Bill Barr this week warned top Trump officials about the political ramifications of undermining the health care safety net during the coronavirus emergency.
----- 5 -----
Trump touted reopening. Privately, his team sounded alarms.
Tapes of conference calls of FEMA and HHS officials across the country reveal widespread worries about new waves of Covid-19 infections.
By ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN and ADAM CANCRYN
05/06/2020
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/06/trump-fema-hhs-coronavirus-response-239652
President Donald Trump boasted on May 1 that his success in responding to the coronavirus pandemic has made ventilator, test kit and mask shortages a thing of the past, and that much of the country is ready to quickly send people back to work.
“We’ve ensured a ventilator for every patient who needs one,” he said. “The testing and the masks and all of the things, we’ve solved every problem. We solved it quickly.”
But that same day, his own health and emergency management officials were privately warning that states were still experiencing shortages of masks, gowns and other medical gear, according to a recording of an interagency meeting between FEMA and HHS officials across the country, conducted by conference call, which was obtained by POLITICO.
----- 6 -----
Jason Furman
twitter.com/jasonfurman
5 May 2020
[EDITOR: From bio - Professor of Practice at Harvard. Teaches Ec 10, some tweets might be educational. Also Senior Fellow twitter.com/PIIE. Was Chairman of President Obama's CEA.]
[THREAD]
https://twitter.com/jasonfurman/status/1257707830787915777
This might be the lowest point in the 74 year history of the Council of Economic Advisers. The stakes on the epidemiological questions are so high that this utterly superficial and misleading "modeling" has no place whatsoever in any discussion of the government's response.
[QUOTED TWEET showing they actually are using Excel's cubic trendline as a COVID-19 tool]
[NEXT TWEET]
The "cubic fit" is based on an approach to epidemiology that has long been absent from any serious epidemiological discussions. It made terrible predictions back in March and April. The functional form was chosen to get the result they wanted.
[THREAD CONTINUES AT LINK]
----- 7 -----
‘We were at a COVID party’: People hold coronavirus gatherings in Walla Walla area
By The Associated Press
May 6, 2020
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/we-were-at-a-covid-party-people-hold-coronavirus-gatherings-in-walla-walla-area/
WALLA WALLA — Some people are intentionally flouting health recommendations by exposing themselves and others to COVID-19 in Walla Walla County, officials said.
Meghan DeBolt, director of the county’s Department of Community Health, told the Union-Bulletin that contact tracing has revealed that some are attending parties with the idea that it is better to get sick with the virus and get it over with.
New positive test results in the county have resulted from such gatherings, she said.
“We ask about contacts, and there are 25 people because: ‘We were at a COVID party,’ ” DeBolt said.
----- 8 -----
DeVos issues rules for sexual misconduct investigations in schools, bolstering protections for the accused
By J. Edward Moreno - 05/06/20
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/496392-devos-issues-rules-for-sexual-misconduct-in-schools-bolstering
On Wednesday Education Secretary Betsy DeVos issued final rules on how all schools will address allegations of sexual misconduct, securing new protections for students and faculty accused of misconduct.
The new rules modify Title IX, a 1972 law prohibiting “discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive Federal financial assistance,” narrowing the definition of sexual harassment and requiring schools to challenge evidence and cross-examine students via a live hearing, among other things detailed in the more than 2,000-page rule.
The new regulations, which take effect in August, will only find schools in violation of Title IX if they are determined to be “deliberately indifferent” to accusations of sexual assault that occurred in their programs and activities.
...
Victim advocacy groups, such as Know Your IX, have said that the new rules are "rolling back the rights of student survivors," claiming they shield schools from liability for sexual misconduct that takes place in their facilities.
"If this rule goes into effect, it will make schools more dangerous and could push survivors out of school entirely," the group tweeted.
Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center, told The New York Times the organization plans to contest the new rules in court.
“Betsy DeVos and the Trump administration are dead set on making schools more dangerous for everyone — even during a global pandemic,” Goss Graves told the Times. “And if this rule goes into effect, survivors will be denied their civil rights and will get the message loud and clear that there is no point in reporting assault.”
----- 9 -----
Josh Marshall
twitter.com/joshtpm
6 May 2020
https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1258127071798329345
Trump: You have to be warriors; some may die; get over it.
[EMBEDDED VIDEO]
[TRANSCRIPT BY EDITOR]
JOHN (reporter): Will the nation just have to accept the idea that by reopening there will be more cases, there will be more deaths?
DONKEYBALLS: So I call these people warriors and I'm actually calling now as you know John the nation warriors you have to be warriors you can't keep our country closed down for... years, and we have to do something. And, hopefully that won't be the case John but it could very well be the case.
----- 10 -----
J. David McSwane
davidmcswane6 May 2020
https://twitter.com/davidmcswane/status/1258035535936921601
1) The VA signed a $34.5 million deal for N95 masks with a company that advertised “block chain” solutions and had only existed for 2 years.
I called the company to see why
Ended up on a private jet, following one of the most bizarre stories of my career...
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Ben Casselman
twitter.com/bencasselman
6 May 2020
So twitter.com/jimtankersley talked to Kevin Hassett about the whole "cubic model" mess, and long story short, I'm pretty sure Hassett owes twitter.com/NateSilver538 $538.
https://nytimes.com/2020/05/06/business/coronavirus-white-house-economists.html
[EMBEDDED IMAGE]
[TRANSCRIPT BY EDITOR]
Reported deaths vary by the day, particularly on weekends. To smooth out the volatility, Mr. Hassett said he had employed "just a canned function in Excel, a cubic polynomial."
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On the Murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a Modern Day Lynching
May 6, 2020 by Libby Anne
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2020/05/on-the-murder-of-ahmaud-arbery-a-modern-day-lynching.html
In late February, two civilian men with no role in law enforcement followed 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery in their truck while he was out for an early afternoon jog, pulled past him and stopped in the road, got out of their truck carrying weapons, and shot and killed him as he tried to jog around the roadblock they had created.
As journalism professor Jelani Cobb put it on twitter, they hunted him like prey. Neither man has been arrested. Neither man has been charged. The two murderers claim they thought the Arbery might be the man who’d been committing some local burglaries—based on zero evidence—and that they were trying to make a citizen’s arrest—with guns and, it seems, a willingness to kill. Based on literally nothing. No evidence, nothing.
Yesterday, a Georgia radio station released a graphic, disturbing video of the killing—video authorities already had, but had not made public. Also yesterday, after the video began to spread on twitter and elsewhere in the news media, the district attorney recommended the case to a Grand Jury for review. A Grand Jury will decide whether Gregory McMichael and his son Travis McMichael should be tried for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. Note that this would not have happened if the video had not been made public—or if there hadn’t been video.
We live in a country where white men can hunt down a black man like prey, shoot and kill him, claim they were acting in the public’s good, and get away with it—so long as the video of the killing isn’t publicly released.
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Natascha Strobl
twitter.com/Natascha_Strobl
6 May 2020
[THREAD]
https://twitter.com/Natascha_Strobl/status/1247606764914302979
Over the past days I've been exploring extreme right-wing sites from all over the world again. There are various approaches to Corona which I will detail another time. What stands out: Uncontrolled infection seems to be the preferred approach - let me explain why:
[NEXT TWEET IN THREAD]
And it is precisely here that we witness one of the most central elements of fascist ideology: the weak and all its synonyms. A decadent, soft, unmanly, hysterical, panicky, timid, effeminate society is the problem.
[NEXT TWEET IN THREAD]
This is not new and also formed a central narrative of the emerging fascism during modernity's breakthrough: men aren't men anymore, but nervous, urban, overly intellectualized and (here it comes) sickly weaklings. The idea of sick as weak is important.
[NEXT TWEET IN THREAD]
And it is exactly the same point of attack again: To panic because of this virus doesn't agree with masculine or national(ist) values. This is met with all kinds of moral assessments: it hurts the dignity, esteem, the spirit and so forth of the people („Volk“)
[THREAD CONTINUES AT LINK, or also here:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1247606764914302979.html ]
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State health department tells university COVID-19 modelling team to stop work, limits data access
Rachel Leingang, Arizona Republic Published 6:46 p.m. MT May 5, 2020
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-health/2020/05/05/coronavirus-officials-stop-arizona-state-university-covid-19-modeling-team/5173380002/
[EDITOR: The university's group was saying that extending lockdown to end of May was the only way _not_ to go straight back to exponential. The GOP governor is ignoring that, and shutting them down so they can't generate more forecasts.]
The Arizona Department of Health Services told a team of university experts working on COVID-19 modeling to "pause" its work, an email from a department leader shows.
The modeling team of about two dozen professors at Arizona State University and the University of Arizona was compiling the most robust public model in Arizona of COVID-19.
The email, from DHS bureau chief of public health statistics S. Robert Bailey, came on Monday evening, after Gov. Doug Ducey announced plans to begin easing social distancing in the coming days.
ABC15 first reported on the email stopping the modelers' work.
The state is instead relying on a model from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This model has not been released to the public.
The universities' model had shown that reopening at the end of May was the only scenario that didn't dramatically increase cases.
In late April, Tim Lant, a mathematical epidemiologist at ASU, said the model showed five different scenarios for how the disease could progress in Arizona, depending on how social distancing efforts were relaxed.
The slowest curve, based on if the state reopens at the end of May, is “the only one that doesn't put me immediately back on an exponential growth curve,” Lant said in April. That’s because transmission rates would be lowest at that time, he said.
“I can say, scientifically, no, it's not safe to reopen unless you're planning on, you know, shutting down again after a couple of weeks, and we can help figure out what the appropriate amount of time is to stay open before we shut down,” he said.
Bailey wrote that health department leadership asked the team to "pause" all work on projections and modeling. The department would also be ending access to special data sets the modeling team had been using for their efforts, Bailey said.
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Top Republican fundraiser and Trump ally named postmaster general, giving president new influence over Postal Service
By Josh Dawsey, Lisa Rein and Jacob Bogage
May 6, 2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/top-republican-fundraiser-and-trump-ally-to-be-named-postmaster-general-giving-president-new-influence-over-postal-service-officials-say/2020/05/06/25cde93c-8fd4-11ea-8df0-ee33c3f5b0d6_story.html
A top donor to President Trump and the Republican National Committee will be named the new head of the Postal Service, putting a top ally of the president in charge of an agency where Trump has long pressed for major changes in how it handles its business.
The Postal Service’s Board of Governors confirmed late Wednesday that Louis DeJoy, a North Carolina businessman who is currently in charge of fundraising for the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, will serve as the new postmaster general.
The action will install a stalwart Trump ally to lead the Postal Service, which he has railed against for years, and likely move him closer than ever before to forcing the service to renegotiate its terms with companies and its own union workforce. Trump’s Treasury Department and the Postal Service are in the midst of a negotiation over a $10 billion line of credit approved as part of coronavirus legislation in March.
Trump has indicated he wants the Postal Service to dramatically raise fees for delivering packages for customers such as Amazon in exchange for tapping the line of credit. Trump has long argued that Amazon doesn’t pay the Postal Service enough, a charge the agency has fiercely contested. (Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.)
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Trump order to paint border wall black could drive up cost $500 million or more
By Nick Miroff and Josh Dawsey
May 6, 2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/trump-border-wall-black-paint/2020/05/06/dbda8ae4-8eff-11ea-8df0-ee33c3f5b0d6_story.html
President Trump is once more pushing to have his border wall painted black, a design change that is projected to add at least $500 million in costs, according to government contracting estimates obtained by The Washington Post.
The president’s determination to have the steel bollards coated in black has fluctuated during the past several years, and military commanders and border officials believed as recently as last fall that they had finally talked him out of it. They consider the black paint unnecessary, costly and a significant long-term maintenance burden, and they left it out of the original U.S. Customs and Border Protection design specifications.
Trump has not let go of the idea, insisting that the dark color will enhance its forbidding appearance and leave the steel too hot to touch during summer months. During a border wall meeting at the White House last month amid the coronavirus pandemic, the president told senior adviser Jared Kushner and aides to move forward with the paint job and to seek out cost estimates, according to four administration officials with knowledge of the meeting.
...
The Post obtained a copy of painting estimates that federal contracting officials produced, and it shows costs ranging from $500 million for two coats of acrylic paint to more than $3 billion for a premium “powder coating” on the structure’s 30-foot steel bollards, the high end of the options the officials have identified.
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Trump and some top aides question accuracy of virus death toll
Axios
Jonathan Swan, Sam Baker
May 6, 2020
https://www.axios.com/trump-coronavirus-death-toll-d8ba60a4-316b-4d1e-8595-74970c15fb34.html
President Trump has complained to advisers about the way coronavirus deaths are being calculated, suggesting the real numbers are actually lower — and a number of his senior aides share this view, according to sources with direct knowledge.
What's next: A senior administration official said he expects the president to begin publicly questioning the death toll as it closes in on his predictions for the final death count and damages him politically.
- The U.S. death toll has surpassed 71,000, with more than 1.2 million confirmed cases, according to the latest figures.
- Trump's engagement could amplify a partisan gulf we saw in this week's Axios-Ipsos Coronavirus Index over believing the death statistics.
Reality check: There is no evidence the death rate has been exaggerated, and experts believe coronavirus deaths in the U.S. are being undercounted — not overcounted.
Behind the scenes: The official said Trump has vented that the numbers seem inflated and has brought up New York's addition of more than 3,000 unconfirmed but suspected COVID-19 cases to its death toll.
Real men eat dirt?
Date: 2020-05-07 05:30 am (UTC)Re: Real men eat dirt?
Date: 2020-05-07 06:58 am (UTC)I'd say "never" but there are always exceptions somewhere. They tend to get executed once their movement takes power, but nonetheless: exceptions.
And even if they are smart, they are not rational, and take pride in that. It's not about smart, it's not about rational, it's not about thinking, it's about reacting, and tribal identification, and most of all, NOT BEING A GODDAMN BITCH, which is to say, absolute hatred and loathing of women and anything they've decided, culturally, is "womanly."
It's not rational, and rationality is the wrong tool.
It's kind of like how people still keep thinking that somehow there'll be some point which is "too far" or "too low," and there won't be.
The reason people find it difficult to think properly about Donkeyballs Donald is that they cling to that notion. It's wrong.
The only deciding factor is "does it improve my situation as quickly as possible." That's the definition of good. Effects on others are not only not a factor, but aren't even considerations. They don't even come to mind. If someone else brings them up, it's "yeah, well, is it gonna make it not work?"
Because does it work or not is literally all that matters.
So you have a psychopath leading a movement of racists, misogynists, and sadists, and the most important of these is misogyny. The misogyny might be hidden under layers - religion in particular - but it's still the biggest part of all of this. Women == different. Women == less. Women == font of evil, gateway for sin, voids sucking the man life force, however you want to put it, it's all the same goddamn thing.
And until you learn to think of it that way, you'll keep getting it wrong. Once you start thinking of it that way, it all makes perfectly good sense.
Think like a psychopath, and you know what they're going to do.
Psychopathy, sociopathy...
Date: 2020-05-07 01:01 pm (UTC)