For days, as coronavirus cases climbed across the state, Arizona’s Republican governor blocked local lawmakers from being able to mandate that residents wear masks.
The mayors of Arizona’s largest cities went on national television and radio shows, pressing the governor, Doug Ducey, to give them the power to require mask-wearing in their cities if he was unwilling to mandate it statewide.
Hundreds of Arizona medical professionals sent Ducey an open letter this week, outlining the evidence that masks save lives and asking him to require citizens to wear them.
Partially bowing to pressure, Ducey announced on Wednesday that he would allow local governments to set their own mask-wearing regulations.
And there’s this:
Without any change in the state’s public health policies, the latest model from researchers at Arizona State University projected that Arizona hospitals could run out of hospital beds in late June or early July and have to shift into “surge status”, Humble said on Wednesday morning.
“You should be honest with people: that comes with a different standard of care,” Humble said.
While he did not mandate masks statewide, Ducey said that wearing a face mask was “an issue of personal responsibility” and that “every Arizonan” should wear one.
Surge status speaks for itself: unnecessary death, and medical professionals being run into the ground. Unlike cops in Atlanta, who are not answering 911 calls except for officer down in some sectors, physicians and nurses don’t have a cop-like union, so they’ll just work themselves to the bone because some Trump-fellating governor needed to impress the king before a big rally in his state.
But don’t let anyone tell you that the grim reaper doesn’t have a sense of humor: the Pinal County Sheriff who refused to enforce a stay-at-home order because of the constitushun was diagnosed with COVID. If doctors were like cops, they’d tell this asshole to GOMER and go home to choke to death in his own secretions.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
And what happens when they reach their physical limits of what their bodies can take?
Sounds like that’s a police force who needs serious defunding then if they can’t do their job.
germy
Masks have become the norm inside the House of Representatives, where some politicians embrace the novel coronavirus precaution with colorful odes to their home districts. But there are holdouts: a small group of Republican representatives who have consistently declined to wear face coverings in Congress.
terraformer
I saw a great tweet this morning from a user in Kiev, and sadly, I couldn’t agree more:
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I wonder if “defunding” (a really dumb tag for something else entirely) should be retired and the focus shifted to taming police unions. I’m normally very pro-union, but those fuckmooks are just gangs of gunthugs posing as something else.
MattF
I think it’s important to keep in mind that these guys are getting their happy places massaged by emulating Donald Fucking Trump. It’s a feature of authoritarian regimes– the Leader is surrounded and supported by a cloud of little Leaders.
mad citizen
@terraformer: It’s a devastating tweet, thanks for sharing. My chemtrail/QAnon sister-in-law was at our house yesterday (fortunately just stopping to go out with my wife) and my wife innocently asks about her lack of mask/whether she wears one. Response “I don’t believe any of it, you’ll never convince me it’s real, etc.” Just such utter BS. Then she talks about being sick for 3 weeks a few months ago, lost sense of taste/smell for a week, etc. She thinks she had it then. The schizophrenic nature of these people is beyond belief.
After all of this, I hope the voting rate among nurses and doctors this time is 90% or above.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Comrade Scrutinizer: “Defund” is on target because that’s what’s going to happen win or lose is what’s going to happen if these police forces don’t get their shit together; turning urban areas back into ’80s style combat zones is just going to kill the tax base that pays for these idiots salaries and pensions. There is the shinning example of the corpse of the city of Detroit for anyone who wants to ride the racists train into the ground.
Gin & Tonic
@terraformer: That city prefers to be known as Kyiv.
germy
@mad citizen: “It’s not real but I think I had it” is the same logic as Trump’s “Bolton is lying but it’s classified material”
WereBear
It’s one thing to make up your own facts when the population who clings to the lies will deal with this reality clash on their own. In such cases they hit the wall without help, and barely reach their own social circle. Even then, cognitive dissonance kicks in, and they will blame the victim so they can continue to believe the lies.
But that’s not the case when it’s a pandemic. As terrible as it is, that might be the only reality clue that’s big enough to make a dent in our current crop of Trump cultists.
OzarkHillbilly
@mad citizen: I wonder if they will be able to get the time off from work?
Matt McIrvin
I am so mad on behalf of all my friends/family in Arizona, who are just utterly dismayed and terrified about this. Everyone could see what we went through in the Northeast back in the early spring, and instead of taking it as a warning, the people in charge decided it was proof that they were better than us.
Meanwhile in Massachusetts we’re still taking this fairly seriously and now our new case rate is lower than the national average and still dropping.
This is not necessarily a red/blue state thing–I don’t understand what the deal is in California either. I think it’s a “whether you were hit hard already” thing, Americans being as bullheaded as they are.
Calouste
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: You’d think that the police would be happy to see the back of a guy so incompetent that he had a weapon stolen from him by someone he was trying to arrest, thereby putting his colleague who was there at risk as well, but apparently that is not what it is all about. They’re all bad apples.
Matt McIrvin
…It’s almost as if there’s a kind of social/behavioral herd immunity that, for people raised in US culture, can only be maintained for any length of time if the rate of COVID infection hits a certain level, around 100-200 cases per million per day. And it probably decays
Louisiana is a worrying case, since they actually had an early wave on the level of the Northeast, beat it down pretty quickly, and are now having a second wave.
PsiFighter37
Got lucky and found a nice AirBnB on a farm in New Hampshire and will be spending all of next week up there. They are the only state in NE taking a more “lax” approach – no mandatory self-quarantine on arrival, but you need to have quarantined at your home prior to arriving. It certainly assumes folks will be more responsible, so it will be interesting how it turns out. We will be around Portsmouth – not a huge city by any means, so I anticipate we will be able to social distance and be okay.
Arizona seems like they are well and truly fucked. Hope it aids in turning the state bluer faster now that Ducey has fucked up big time.
OzarkHillbilly
@PsiFighter37: Voting red gets you dead.
Barbara
Slightly OT. I seem to have made my way onto a number of Republican email lists — all begging for money. The newest is a “personal message” from Nikki Haley, telling me that Thom Tillis is being outraised in North Carolina and polling data puts his victory “within the margin of error.” Maybe I should see this as a contrarian sign and contribute to his opponent. I mean, seriously, how did I get onto their mailing list?
PsiFighter37
@Barbara: I think Tillis could be in real trouble. Roy Cooper is going to sail to reelection, and I would venture to guess that Biden is leading in the state as well.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Barbara:
You know what you did!
Sab
@mad citizen: I know it’s family, but why is your wife going out with a person who won’t wear a mask?
We won’t let our kids in the house any more. Two of them work essential jobs with exposure to the public. The third one behaves irresponsibly. So we wave at them through the front door.
Matt McIrvin
@PsiFighter37: NH has been doing all right by mostly trying to keep out infected people from Massachusetts. But Mass. is beating this down enough that in a couple of weeks the situation may be reversed, with more general infection in NH. (Maybe not, new cases are declining in NH too.)
satby
@terraformer: I agree with that tweet.
cain
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
They get screamed at for not doing their jobs and that it’s all their fault that people are dying – or – they realize any break means people will die. Horrible.
azlib
Ducey is basically a pawn of the AZ Chamber of Commerce. He does not do anything without their approval. I have this on good authority from a lobbyist friend of mine. He is getting pounded daily by the local paper, though. His basic take is as long as we have hospital capacity (which is running out now) AZ is okay. The head of Banner Health (one of the big hospital chains here) has raised the alarm about hospital capacity, but to little effect.
Ohio Mom
PSI Fighter: Portsmouth is a charming town, and any beach anywhere is a balm for the soul. Enjoy yourself and send pictures.
Jinchi
I’m concerned about the stubborn rise in the number of cases-per-day, too. Still California has done well keeping the curve close to flat, especially when compared to states that have seen severe outbreaks. It’s like they’ve figured out 90% of the solution and just need that extra 10% to actually crush this thing.
Matt McIrvin
@Jinchi: California’s a big state, maybe a finer regional breakdown would make it clearer what’s going on. One of the earliest visible outbreaks was in the Bay Area and they took care of it; is it a SoCal vs. rest of state thing?
PsiFighter37
@Matt McIrvin: That is what I have read. If that is the case, my plan to to PCH with the family may still work – but might fly into one of the smaller airports further north (e.g. Santa Barbara or San Luis Obispo) instead of starting at LAX.
Jinchi
How are they doing that? A lot of people in New Hampshire work in Massachusetts. These are small states and it takes less than an hour to get from Boston to Manchester.
Jinchi
@Matt McIrvin: SoCal has it the worst, although Oakland is hit hard too.
In the Bay Area, at least, people seem to take shelter-in-place pretty seriously and mask wearing is pretty common.
germy
“Once all the boomers die out, everything will be okay”
Barbara
@Matt McIrvin: I expect that puts NH in a real bind. It’s one of my favorite states to visit, partly because one of my kids just loves hiking in the White Mountains. A significant part of the NH economy revolves around people from nearby states, mostly MA, spending time in NH.
Calouste
@germy: A number of COVID-19 outbreaks have been traced back to singing. Just saying.
Gin & Tonic
@Ohio Mom: Portsmouth has a good handful of nice small breweries, too.
Ruckus
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Are the police unions like any other union?
Or does the immunity that police get completely change the face of what a union is? Isn’t a union to protect the workers from pay and working conditions/employers that harm them? Because that’s not what I see police unions doing. What I see from police unions is that they are protecting the workers from the public, from the courts, getting special privileges for them that protect them for paying for unlawful acts except in the most egregious cases. The unions have helped turn the police from protectors of the law to unchecked abusers/violators of the law, allowing them almost unchecked power. Effectively they have become the enforcers of racial inequality.
NotMax
It’s been announced that masks will be handed out at the Dolt 45 Infect-a-thon.
Where do they come from? Who is paying for them? Are these what Jared was referring to when he said “It’s our stockpile?”
donnah
If the Trump party required that attendees at the Tulsa rally signed a waiver, I wish it included a mandatory clause that stated the signee would not be allowed to check in to any of their local hospitals for care if infected.
germy
@NotMax:
That’s my guess.
sanjeevs
@terraformer: Reminds me of the transcript of the leaked conversation where McCarthy and Paul Ryan talk about Putin paying Trump and Rohrbacher.
But later Ryan talks about Russian social media warfare:
Rodgers: Yes! The propaganda…my big takeaway from that trip was just how sophisticated the propaganda…
Ryan: It’s very sophisticated.
Rodgers:…coming out of Russia and Putin.
Ryan: Very sophisticated.
[Crosstalk]
Rodgers: Not just in Ukraine. They were once funding the NGOs in Europe. They attacked fracking.
Ryan: Correct.
Rodgers: Russia TV. I was not…you know…I hadn’t tuned into Russia TV until that trip. It’s, it’s frightening.
Ryan: So he’s saying they’re doing this throughout Europe. So, uh… [Unintelligible]
Ryan: This is, this isn’t just about Ukraine.
Rodgers: So, yeah, it is a, um…[unintelligible]…a way…it’s really a messaging…you know…they are…it’s a propaganda war.
Ryan: Russia is trying to turn Ukraine against itself.
Rodgers: Yes. And that’s…it’s sophisticated and it’s, uh…
Ryan: Maniacal.
Rodgers: Yes.
Ryan: And guess…guess who’s the only one taking a strong stand up against it? We are. Rodgers: We’re not…we’re not…but, we’re not…
McCarthy: [unintelligible]…I’ll GUARANTEE you that’s what it is.
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3726371/Read-the-transcript-of-the-conversation-among.pdf
Barbara
@Ruckus: There is nothing to stop states from limiting the issues that police unions are permitted to negotiate. Use of force should be something that is set by the community, and simply not subject to negotiation. Of course, police unions can weigh in on legislation or policy changes but it should not be something that is subject to an employment contract. Ditto with disciplinary actions — I can understand that police unions might want some amount of neutrality so that not every disciplinary proceeding is turned into a political opportunity, but that’s not what we have now. What we have now is unchecked favoritism that effectively shields police officers from accountability.
Ruckus
@Barbara:
I got on a couple of them in the last election. One was for a condescending dipshit who moved from NJ to CA and ran for gov. I replied to his first email with a few choice words, got a second one, pulled out the sailor dictionary and sent that one off. Got a third, supposedly from the wife, scolding the entire state about how great her man was and we’d be lucky to have him. Still had that dictionary out so she got a nice reply as well. He got his ass roasted. The other was from an asshole state house guy from a district that I live no where near and have never lived near. That sailor dictionary works well.
Baud
DACA upheld!
Roberts opinion. 5-4.
ETA: At least temporarily. Need to read the opinion. But a punt is a win!
JPL
DACA survived
Dorothy A. Winsor
@germy:
I feel guilty for thinking this, but I’m wishing for a super spreader event.
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
Part of it is that people in socal drive a lot to go to work or whatever. Up until about 2 weeks ago that was severely cut back, especially in the beginning. Now it’s up to about 80% of traffic as normal (just my guess) but that is a massive amount of people out and about, many with no masks. Remember that LA county is larger in population than 41 states, the weather/land mass holds a lot of air in the area. For an airborne virus that may not be ideal. Stupidity doesn’t help.
J R in WV
Working for the state of WV, unions were technically not allowed to negotiate with the state. On the other hand, there were good civil service protections, job descriptions, etc. I joined the union way back, I’m married to a union girl, after all.
I think the police need to settle for either civil service, or a union, but not both. Also, very tired of police unions protecting criminal activity on the part of their members — should become accessories after the fact once someone is convicted of a crime.
Oh, wait…
never mind!
NotMax
@Baud
Too soon for anything more than supposition but is it possible Roberts has belatedly learned on which side the judgment of history’s toast is buttered?
Baud
@NotMax:
Reading now. Roberts is clearly punting. The opinion goes off on an administrative law technicality, which effectively means that it’ll take some time to redo everything and hopefully gets us to Biden.
Ruckus
@Barbara:
Exactly my point. And the unions are a part of that. Certainly the unions have a point and a voice, but this total or almost total immunity from responsibility is federal law and effects all of us.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
As I told somebody here who was whimpering about loving police:
If the cops quit, who is going to show up to my burglary call three hours later to shrug his shoulders and shoot my dog?
I also had this one to throw out:
They’re fantastic to call to write a burglary report about 4 hours after the event, shrug their shoulders, and run no prints.
Got a murder or rape you don’t want solved? Call LMPD.
Want to turn snitch to rat out your narcotics competitors so you can corner the market? Maybe your handler at Narcotics outranks the detective your competitor is snitching for and you’ll get lucky. God forbid you either impede the flow or drop the price below profitable levels – LMPD is there to prop up the business model….
Matt McIrvin
@Ruckus: This map seems to imply that the big increases are mostly in the Central Valley and Imperial County: https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/These-California-counties-have-seen-a-surge-in-15342509.php
but I wouldn’t be surprised if LA County has the highest general infection level just because it’s got the people
…yeah, the biggest hotspot is SoCal as you’d expect, so I guess the percentage increases in the central region are from a lower baseline:
https://www.latimes.com/projects/california-coronavirus-cases-tracking-outbreak/
Benw
@Baud: good news! I’m guessing Biden might just be pro-DACA
:)
Frankensteinbeck
Trump had a good economy report to distract his toddler attention on Monday, but losing on LGBT rights, sanctuary cities, and now DACA? He’s going to froth at the mouth.
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
There’s definitely a SoCal vs NoCal thing. The big hot spots right now are all in Southern California. I think a lot of people are tired of staying home and inside and just want to get out, and that’s making them careless. In my area of LA County, mask wearing indoors seems to be good, but people are way too lax about it outdoors. Orange County is more troubling. The anti-mask people there stalked and harassed the county health officer into quitting, and by doing so have kept the county from adopting a mandatory mask rule.
It also looks like there’s a problem in the agricultural areas of the state, especially the Central Valley. There are a lot of worries about outbreaks among farm workers.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@germy:
The guitar player is pretty dishy and the kind of girl that I got great joy out of wrecking the morals of in my wayward, misspent youth.
Betty Cracker
@Frankensteinbeck: The low-quality hires probably scattered like cockroaches when this ruling came down.
Uncle Cosmo
@Gin & Tonic: “That city” certainly didn’t care to speak Ukrainian when I spent four days there about a decade ago. Everyone I met wanted to speak Russian. Whenever I pulled out my Ukrainian phrasebook (which worked just fine in Lviv just prior, smiles all around in fact) people stared at me wondering what planet I was from.
mad citizen
@Sab: Yes I hear you. They were seeing their other two sisters and were supposedly taking the one without a car for an appt, but I think that got cancelled and they went to lunch. I’m not super happy about any of it, but my wife is working with the public anyway 3 days a week. I’m on a work at home plan for the rest of the year if nothing changes.
My SIL didn’t need worry about time off from work. She retired from a phone company job and has been driving a school bus in recent years.
Omnes Omnibus
@Uncle Cosmo: I know what you mean. People in the Belgian Congo get so upset when I call it the Belgian Congo these days.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
Southern California is a large and very diverse area. Los Angeles County alone is a large area.
Contributing to the recent increase is a problem with how data is collected.
In San Bernardino County, there were 33 cases among cadets at a law enforcement training academy. Small outbreaks here and there, all adding up to a significant problem.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
There has also been a very serious problem with institutional settings. Here in Pasadena- which for some odd reason has its own health department separate from LACDPH- something like 60% of cases and 90% of deaths have come in long-term care facilities like senior homes and skilled nursing facilities. The numbers for the county as a whole aren’t quite that bad, but they’re still very scary. There is something deeply wrong with the way we’re caring for vulnerable people.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: I was thinking about a trip to Leopoldville, but it will probably have to be next year.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
The issue of care facilities is a problem all around the world. But I also suspect that care was acceptable to adequate before the pandemic hit. No one could really be prepared for it. But I don’t know what measures have been taken to deal with the problem. Coming back to local issues, I know that the Pasadena city councilman in the district with many of the nursing homes was raising a fuss, but I don’t know if he got answers to his questions. I recall, however, that all the residents of at least one facility were moved out.
I try to track the numbers, and the cases at nursing homes always include residents and a number of staff. It seems impossible to keep the virus out of some institutions and social spaces.
Fair Economist
@Matt McIrvin:
From watching the locations of outbreaks here, our problem is a combination of poor people who can’t take appropriate precautions with conservative and crazy (but I repeat myself) people who won’t, and are even starting to interfere with other people who are.
L85NJGT
@Brachiator:
Communicable disease outbreaks are a chronic issue in long term care facilities. I think it’s mostly an issue of beating the bucks out of build quality and operating budgets.
Villago Delenda Est
“Personal responsibility”. There’s your problem. MAGAts are like their Dear Leader; they’re not responsible for anything at all.
Lobo
Twice as many deaths as Vietnam. 2 VN Units. And we are not done yet.
Sigh!
laura
@Ruckus: Most police and fire are associations and not unions – and their are a number of differences that include a prohibition to strike.
Despite that, they get the lion’s share of funding and the most remunerative economic packages at the bargaining table – because the public has been very receptive to “public safety” as opposed to other public servants who they have been conditioned to see as lazy overpaid burdens on the taxpayer. I have used the excessive settlement payouts in bargaining for years as evidence of waste fraud and abuse. It has never been a successful argument in 20+ years. In dealing with these groups along with other recognized employee organizations, they are very good at figuring out how to maximize their constituents’ total compensation, but they do not engage in collective job actions for anyone other than themselves and their leaders are as dumb as a fucking stick with few exceptions.
SmallAxe
AZ reporting in. WASF and it’s not just because the Gov is a Koch sucking idiot. Only about 30% of people are masking. It’s going to get a lot worse
LongHairedWeirdo
@terraformer: This is one of the things that makes me wonder how the Republican Party has gone so completely bonkers.
“You know, other countries noticed that, when the President tried to strongarm Ukraine into doing him a personal favor, his party blew it off *completely*. That means no country will ever be able to trust us completely. Now, they’re seeing you all defend an incompetent ignoramus and say that up is down, black is white, etc., and now, they’re not just laughing (in the case of our allies: to keep from crying) at him, they’re laughing at you, and the rest of us. Doesn’t that concern you, just a little bit?”