COVID-19

Sunday Morning Coffee

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment

Thoughts on a couple of things I read this morning over coffee:

American Rescue Plan Passes – Cosplay Socialist Complains

Yesterday the US Senate passed the Democrats’ $1.9T stimulus legislation on a 50-49 vote. It’s too bad this bill did not include a minimum wage increase of some kind, and I would not have means-tested the direct payment checks. But this legislation will put money in the pockets of people who will spend it, and includes changes to the way we support low-income families that should help reduce child poverty. It also provides funding to accelerate the pace of Covid-19 vaccinations.

It’s also excellent politics because passage keeps a campaign promise that will boost the economy while bringing the pandemic to an end that much more quickly. It will embed new support for poor families that will be difficult to withdraw later. I think Biden learned something from the 2010 midterm election catastrophe: Republicans cannot be trusted to negotiate in good faith, and in the end the won’t, so push through the most you can without their help.

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Natural Experiment

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment

It looks like Texas and Mississippi have decided to conduct a natural experiment by lifting all Covid-related restrictions by next week:

The governors of Texas and Mississippi both announced Tuesday that they are lifting statewide mask mandates and allowing businesses to reopen at full capacity even as the decline of daily Covid-19 cases slows and federal officials urge states to exercise caution.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said at a press briefing at Montelongo’s Mexican Restaurant in Lubbock that he will issue a new executive order that rescinds most of his previous Covid-19 restrictions, including a statewide mask mandate. He added that all businesses would be allowed to open “100 percent,” effective March 10.

Will Feuer, CNBC

As far as I can tell, these are the first states to completely lift all pandemic-related restrictions since it began last year. I call this a “natural experiment” because it will test at least two ideas.

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COVID Common Sense? Or Covidiocy?

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment

Mick Staton thinks it’s time to apply some “common sense” to Virginia’s coronavirus response. From the Bull Elephant:

In just over four months the number of confirmed covid-19 cases in Virginia has reached nearly 89,000.  Of those confirmed cases,  a little over 2,100 people have died [over 2200 now].  We can argue about inflated death numbers or under-counted people who have the virus but have never been tested all we want, but all of that is pure speculation, and cannot be quantified or counted.  People who feel sick are getting tested.  If you don’t feel sick and you test positive for the antibodies, do you really qualify as a victim of a disease you never knew you had?  For now, let’s just deal with confirmed numbers.

Virginia has a population of about 8.536 million people.  Based on the confirmed numbers listed above, only about 1% of the population of Virginia has contracted this virus, and 0.024% of the population of Virginia has died from it.

Virginia hit its highest number of daily reported cases on May 25th of this year at 1,439.  When we once again compare that to our population of 8.536 million people, that means the greatest chance anyone had of contracting this disease on any given day is about 0.01%.

Mr. Staton thinks that a lockdown needed to happen based on what we knew four months ago, but now thinks it was not necessary then – and certainly not now – on the grounds that COVID isn’t really that much worse than the flu at the end of the day.  After all, only 90K Virginians have gotten this deadly disease, and only 2100 2215 have died from COVID since the pandemic started.

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No, the Angry White Guy is Not the Victim

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment

I’m sure a lot of you have seen this video of Daniel Maples, a Florida insurance salesman, yelling at an elderly woman that he “feels threatened” because she asked him to wear a mask while shopping at Costco.

Turns out the agency he worked for let him go after this went viral on social media. Jonathan V. Last, Executive Editor at The Bulwark, thinks this is a bad thing because “maybe he’s a good guy having a really crappy day.” The Bulwark, by the way, is the internet home for the “Defending Democracy Together Institute,” a PAC put together by a group of anti-Trump conservatives like Bill Kristol and Mona Charen, among others.

I signed up for a Bulwark newsletter, and in a recent email Last made Costco Guy the victim when Maples actually victimized others. Readers of course pushed back, so Last responded with a second email elaborating on his argument. It boils down to “we don’t know anything about this guy and he should not be punished for a 17-second lapse. He didn’t pull a gun on anyone and didn’t assault anyone, so what’s the big deal? And we shouldn’t go after people who refuse to wear a mask because it’s not worth the trouble.” (Last asks if others speak up when they see someone texting while driving, and the answer is yes, I do.)

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“I Carry a Gun for Self-defense, but I Ain’t Wearing No Mask.”

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment

The Virginian-Pilot reports that almost one in five workers in Eastern Shore poultry plants have tested positive for COVID-19. This result tracks with a study suggesting that spending more than a short time in enclosed spaces drastically increases risk of contracting the virus.

Another study shows that COVID-19 infections would plummet if 80% of Americans wore masks.

The answer to both our pandemic and economic problems is very simple. Avoid spending more than a few minutes in closed spaces with other people. If you must do this, wear a mask. Indeed, wear a mask pretty much all the time when near other people. Testing and tracking would also help, but these two simple things can get us more quickly back to watching sports over a plate of wings and a glass of beer in a bar. We don’t need government assistance or private donations. Find something to cover up your face before you go out and limit your time indoors with people you haven’t quarantined with (“quaranteam,” as a friend of mind called it) whether it’s a retail store, salon, or bar.

Demanding a right not to do this in the name of liberty makes no sense of any kind. It’s curious to me that the same people who arm themselves so they’re prepared to stop a mass shooting in a McDonald’s won’t wear a mask to stop the spread of a disease. Your mask protects me more than you, and I’m willing to do my part to make sure I don’t give you my bug. In any event, it’s the fastest way out of this economic mess and the best way to protect as many lives as possible.

Governor Northam should require that everyone wear a mask in public as we reopen Virginia. Even if he doesn’t, get a mask. Wear it a lot. Things will get better.

Sunday Morning Coffee

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment

A few of the articles I read this morning over coffee with short comments on each.

Protests against lockdowns and stay-at-home orders begin. Are these starting organically or driven by right-wing organizations?

Back in January when SARS-COVID-2 began to spread from China, a good friend of mine told me government would eventually have to shut down businesses and limit large gatherings of people in order to limit the contagion and protect the health care system. I responded that even if necessary, lockdowns like this would generate protest and backlash in the US if they lasted more than a week or two. Those protests have started.

This week a few dozen people gathered at Capitol Square in Richmond to demand an end to stay-at-home orders in Virginia by 1 May.

Both Capitol and Virginia State Police were on hand and had to remind the protesters to maintain social distancing guidelines since they said the groups encouraged participants to hug and share food during the event.

“The reason why I’m not wearing a mask is that I’m not going to have someone tell me I have to,” said protester Benjamin Wright, who lives in Richmond.

This kind of right-wing virtue signaling will spread across the US and could seriously limit the ability of US institutions to deal with this crisis. And make no mistake: it’s driven by right-wing organizations like the Proud Boys and part of Trump’s reelection campaign.

It can also lead to this kind of tragic outcome when people believe what they hear on propaganda networks instead of members of their own family.

In Pursuit of PPE

This story about an executive for a Massachusetts hospital system buying personal protective equipment for his staff demonstrates both the failure of markets to allocate resources to filling an urgent need and the failure of government to protect public health. Shortages will generate higher prices, but government should work to improve the situation by taking action to increase production, not throw up road blocks and threaten to redirect shipments on a whim.

Awarding high-dollar contracts for the purchase of masks from bankrupt firms with no staff that have never made a mask does not seem like the best way out of the PPE shortage mess.

The New England Journal of Medicine is a good general resource on SARS-COVID-2, by the way.

Just so this isn’t All Coronavirus All the Time…

As the Bernie Sanders campaign ended and the Democratic Party continued coalescing support around Biden’s candidacy, I got into it a bit with some Our Revolution folks on Twitter. I tried to make the point that for now policy has to take a back seat to ending the Trump disaster (not to mention what looks like nascent fascism) with little success. But I also pointed out that politicians like Sanders and Warren, supported by activist groups like the Indivisibles and Resistance organizations, have moved American politics to the left. So the reason Sanders’ Our Revolution movement failed to achieve electoral success has more to do with the failure of their “unite the working class” strategy than with refusal by Democratic Party elites to back progressive policies. More to come on this in the coming days.

Pandemic and National Security

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment
USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71).
U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Michael D. Cole
Public Domain,
http://www.navy.mil/view_image.asp?id=57046

One of three deployed US aircraft carriers has been sidelined by corona virus infections on board. This pandemic has, at least temporarily, taken this warship out of the fight. I would be surprised if it’s the only one, but even if it is we’re looking at a serious erosion of American war fighting capability.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt, a Nimitz class nuclear aircraft carrier, has a crew of about 3200, not including its associated Air Wing. More than four thousand Naval personnel were on the Theodore Roosevelt when the vessel docked in Guam with more than 100 crew members testing positive for the virus, according to the linked article.

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