Memo to MAGAts:
‘Rona don’t care if your boss thinks masks are unmanly:
This is my shocked face:
I really hope some enterprising epidemiological lab has set up a test and trace study on the Trump plague rat experiment now underway in Tulsa.
As for the afflicted staffers? I’d like to be a better person than I am, but I’m not. I have no sympathy for the six (so far) who have fallen ill in the service of their pandemically murderous boss. What did they expect?
I do regret that everyone they’ve come into contact with (beyond the campaign) may have been infected, and that should any of them require treatment, they’ll be putting at risk much braver folks than they or their coward chief have ever been.
But them? The karma. It is instant.
Open thread. Grim humor particularly appreciated.
Image: Franz Hals, Young Man holding a Skull (Vanitas), c. 1626
Ken
I suppose there’s no chance they’ll postpone the event long enough to deep-clean the arena and anywhere else those six (and their contacts) have been.
The other question is whether they’ll warn any of the people waiting outside. No, actually the question would be whether they have a legal duty to warn them. (I originally wrote “moral obligation” but remembered who we’re talking about.)
different-church-lady
@Ken: It doesn’t matter: I gotta belive one in ten ticket holders will be bringing the thing in with them.
FelonyGovt
I’m quite shocked at myself, how much grim satisfaction I’m getting out of this. I would have hoped to be a better person than that. I have to keep reminding myself about all the innocent non-MAGATS who will be infected by these morons.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Thousand more vulnerable Americans will die. Ha Ha Ha
Am I doing this grim humor thing right?
Ken
@FelonyGovt: I know what you mean. I think the phrase used to be “harshing my karma” – meaning “you’re making me think of things that make me a bad person”.
Edmund Dantes
Doesn’t advance team also potentially cover secret service people and ones that are forced to go ahead or is this purely the political advance team that is sick? Cause if it’s the latter, fuck’em.
JPL
Next week on to Arizona and Wisconsin. He’ll be attending a Students for Trump rally in Phoenix.
jimmiraybob
Thoughts and praye……oh hell, I’m gonna grab a frosty cold one and then take a nap.
e julius drivingstorm
You libs just don’t know when you’re being pwned. The rethugs are gonna have all the ICU’s occupied when you get around to needing one.
realbtl
This is really developing a Jonestown type vibe.
hueyplong
It’s not unreasonable to suspect that no matter what happens, no matter how many are infected, they’ll pretend that it all went off without a hitch and demand an “apology” from the fake news media for worrying that a beautiful Trump rally might be medically dangerous.
Can’t see any reason to hope that any lessons will be learned on that front. Am, however, hoping out hope that Trump will demonstrate his failing functionality at one of these events, in front of his most fervid supporters, to a soft but audibly sad groan from the crowd.
Don’t expect it tonight but tonight wouldn’t be too soon.
Ken
@JPL: I wonder how long it’ll be before someone cancels on him?
MattF
It’s a festival of cruelty and dominance. Tailor-made for Trump.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
HAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH
Dumb shits getting Covid just to own the Libs.
hitchhiker
What’s crazy is that people can’t seem to get their minds around exponential growth, even after we saw it with our own eyes just a few weeks ago. There seems to be a conviction that every graph in the universe is a bell curve, and that once you hit the peak, it will naturally go back down. Those curves leveled off and fell in May because of extreme measures, not because it was “naturally fading away, like a miracle.”
The virus is in communities all over the country, just as it was in NYC and Seattle last February. The result is inevitable, and we’re going to watch it happen all over again, in city after city, as long as people refuse to take the few precautions that have been recommended. In the meantime, in the rest of the world, economies will slowly react to stability — stability is what drives growth. We are not going to be stable until trump is gone, and that’s a fucking shame.
satby
I have to spend multiple days per week with the vile shitstains that follow Drumpf, think all the warnings about the virus are bullshit, don’t social distance, don’t wear masks, and they think I’m the asshole for avoiding them and wearing a mask. And a ton of them are in high risk categories like obesity and diabetes or are older. I used to just wish them ill. I’m starting to wish a lot worse things for them.
Edit: and to be clear, if they just stayed in their lane and did their ignoramus routine among themselves it would be fine, but noooo. They have to be aggressive about their ignorance and disregard for everyone else. So fuckem.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
I hate to be That Guy, but just because they’ve tested positive, doesn’t mean they’ve fallen ill with it, as karmic as that would be if they’re the political (as in campaign and/or WH aides) advance team. Chances are they’re asymptomatic but still unfortunately able to have spread it to others
Brachiator
@Ken:
I’d like it if the attendees would be given a little card that they could use to note that they agree to be denied treatment if they come down with Rona.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t mind if all attendees were to be given a little brochure with virus facts, and also suggesting that they self-isolate after the event for 14 days. The brochure could also provide information about getting testing, and suggestions on how to proceed if people later come down with any symptoms.
I also wish that there would be some minimal tracking, at least asking what city and state attendees were coming from.
These idiots will probably be bringing the virus with them, spreading it around, and taking it back home.
JPL
@Ken: It appears that he is just going to a shipyard in Wisconsin, so that is probably fine. If students are ignorant enough to support the criminal, then it’s their risk. I’m sure they will have to sign waivers.
Ksmiami
[email protected]: I really don’t care (about Trump ppl) do you?
Redshift
Since this is an open thread, to preserve my karma I’ll talk about the Virginia (Virtual) Dem Convention instead. The most important lesson I learned is that campaigns and elected officials really need to invest in home studios and trainingfor their candidates in how to look good on Zoom. Biden, Warren, Bernie, and Tom Perez all had that and came off well, the other speakers, not so much. This was “in the family,” so it wasn’t a big deal, but Mark Warner in his kitchen with wired earbuds hanging down did not make the kind of impression I’d like to see on the campaign trail. The training should include how to position your text so your eyes aren’t darting around somewhere off to the left of the camera.
Omnes Omnibus
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: No.
Ken
Interesting contrast with WWII, when we went to a great deal of trouble to make sure Axis agents didn’t sabotage production at the shipyards.
Bobby Thomson
Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.
Too dark?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@hitchhiker:
Some people (morons) think it was overblown, that many hospitals stood empty, including some in NYC, because of some probably out of context videos claiming to be footage of NYC hospitals, just because the virus was unevenly distributed throughout the population and the that most of the fatalities were 80 year olds with underlying health conditions
hueyplong
Isn’t it likely that trump rally attenders will peer pressure one another to the point that literally no one in the crowd is wearing a mask other than media?
And if so, wouldn’t you bet that at some point trump points out the media people as the only mask wearers and encourages the crowd to react aggressively toward them?
Is there anything that trump is “above” doing or encouraging others to do?
Omnes Omnibus
@Ken: Well, Russia was an ally then. You don’t see Trump inviting the Germans, do you?
Brachiator
@Redshift:
People who do video podcasts have been saying “We’ve been doing this for years, and know what these people need to do.”
There are even YouTube videos, most aimed at teachers, with easy to follow tips on lighting, presentation tips, etc.
At the least, these people should look at how some of the late night TV satirists like Colbert, Seth Meyers and Trevor Noah adapted to a more informal presentation style.
Another Scott
It’s kinda understandable. It’s not like they know anyone who has gotten sick or died of it.
Eh? What’s that you say?!
(via NotLarrySabato)
Cheers,
Scott.
mad citizen
@hitchhiker: “What’s crazy is that people can’t seem to get their minds around exponential growth,”
Was going to try to write a joke about our math literacy, etc., but am blank (the null set). Googled and actually surprised we are #18 on the world rankings. Not surprised New Zealand and South Korea are #s 2 and 3 given how well they have squelched the virus. Japan is #1 in math literacy–not sure how well they’ve done with the virus. https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Education/Mathematical-literacy
Mike in NC
Any MAGAt who has to go into the ICU in Tulsa will be reassured that Fat Bastard will stop by to autograph their ventilator.
Redshift
@hitchhiker:
Unfortunately, exponential growth isn’t something we easily grasp from everyday experience, it’s something you have to think about to understand. Things like that need reinforcement for most people to internalize them, and we’ve been getting the opposite from too many parts of government. Another in the ongoing series of “yes, this absolutely is Trump’s fault.”
jl
The ‘we live in a failed state’ thing used to be a grim joke, now it’s just grim.
Ladyraxterinok
Sheila Buck, a Tulsa resident wearing a shirt that said ‘I can’t breathe’ sat on street next to arena and prayed. She was arrested.
It’s on video (saw it, was told 1 was from MSNBC)
Yutsano
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I particularly enjoyed the “no one talks about ventilators!” talking point. point. Ventilators are still very much necessary and yes still are in short supply. What happened is the University of Chicago discovered an alternate technique that reduced their need in less severe cases. It was pure luck that got discovered because otherwise yes ventilators would still be a big ass problem. Those fuckheads.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@hueyplong: You know how you have to scold a dog at the moment it’s doing something forbidden because if you delay the dog won’t make the connection? The delay between rally and COVID will work like that for Trump and his followers.
Redshift
@Brachiator: Yeah, good ideas. I wish I knew if they were consciously deciding “everybody’s on crappy zoom video now, so it doesn’t matter” or if it just hasn’t occurred to them that they could do better.
Ladyraxterinok
Black gun owners plan rally in OKC at 2pm today.
Found this atjoemygod
hitchhiker
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Right. Well, at least that’s an argument.
It is true that people building models based on early information made predictions that didn’t pan out. But now we have history to look at. We know how fast it can spread, and how much of a burden it places on businesses and communities when it does.
I think people who say it’s overblown are trying to ignore the nature of exponential growth, which doesn’t respect ignorance or prayers.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Bobby Thomson: Well, you don’t see any Cathars around these days.
Yutsano
@Ladyraxterinok: This will end well. I’m certain all of their 2nd Amendment rights will be respected and they will have a light police presence. I’m also certain this morning I woke up as a purple unicorn.
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Yeah. Unfortunately, a lot of the early lies pushed by Trump and Fox News are still around. The pandemic is overblown, it’s no worse than the flu, etc.
Also, there are a lot of bad actors, including people with some credentials, floating around social media deliberately pushing misinformation.
I’m not sure whether anyone is blaming space aliens for the pandemic. Wouldn’t be surprised.
Dorothy A. Winsor
So I know places “deep clean” after someone with COVID has been there. (Not Trump obviously but employers, frex) It now appears that surface contact is a much less likely route for the virus to follow. At least, I think that’s true. So is deep cleaning still useful?
Presumably most of the damage the infected advance team members did is breathe near other people who are now incubating.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@hitchhiker: The Magat lady on the news last night: Well, I know it’s out there, but I’m not going to wear a mask because I trust my body’s immune system.
These people sound like the 1919 Anti-Mask League redux. Swear to god, this country is irredeemably stupid.
sherparick
@FelonyGovt: That is the sad thing. This is going to be one biggest super spreader event yet. All these people traveling back across country after this event and then having contact with people the next 5-14 days as the virus incubates. I think we can officially start calling it the Trump plague.
hitchhiker
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Ironic, given that it’s sometimes the extreme immune response that kills the patient.
EmanG
When the devil comes to get ya, he’s always right on time…
Anonymous At Work
It’s too late for Trump anyway, in all probability. That sheriff who stood and breathed over his shoulder was subsequently found to be positive. Damage likely done.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Barr issued a statement saying Trump has fired Berman.
Over to you, Berman.
Yutsano
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Paperwork or GTFO Bill.
Brachiator
@Redshift:
I think it just has not occurred to them. And Zoom and similar visual presentation tools have become essential, but it’s still new to a lot of people.
ETA: The pandemic also made it harder for some smart people to use Zoom better. A couple of video podcasters noted that they would often send better quality microphones to guests who appeared regularly on their programs, so that they would not have to depend on crappy headphone microphones. But because of the emphasis on essential supplies during the heart of the lockdown, Amazon and other companies were not fulfilling orders for microphones and other equipment.
Calouste
I wonder if someone on the advance team dares to tell the shitgibbon about the six people testing positive, because they’re afraid he’ll go into a panic and cancel.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
trump has fired the SDNY US Atttorney, who reported to work this morning, I hope to make copies and forward e-files to Adam Schiff, but I doubt it
JPL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: What is happening??? He named the second in command to immediately take over. I read the investigation is tied to trump.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Amazingly, Trump isn’t as dumb as it comes for The Virus, there is President of Belarus
https://youtu.be/Lvntx5aleqw
Raoul
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The uneven distribution appears to have been in part that (of course) large urban areas spiked first. IOW, ‘blue’ states, and in red states, the ‘blue’ cities.
So the Trump-lumpen saw little direct evidence or impact in the first 60 days. Now the graph lines are crossing, or soon will, and even if these folks could snap out of it (many can’t seem to see outside the cult-cloud), it’s relatively too late to act (though acting now would be better than not acting at all), and their now-set priors around masks = liberal means they’ll remain sitting ducks.
Well, they’re ducks who go to WalMart, beerMart, gunMart etc and spread their nasty germs.
Brachiator
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
RE: Trump has fired Berman.
Berman said he’ll continue to move forward with his investigations and will only leave the post when the Senate confirms his replacement.
And also, this:
This will be fun.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@JPL:
I’m just a horrified reporter on this. Our legal eagles will give us the scoop. There’s apparently some technical squabbles on whether Berman can be removed except by a judicial panel that appointed him. And yes indeed, it’s SDNY, so there are investigations of Trump, Giuliani, et al. Berman replaced Preet Bharara.
Brachiator
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Belarus, Britain, Brazil. What is it about these countries starting with the letter B and stupidity about the pandemic?
Yeah, probably a co-inky dink. But still.
raven
President to remove you as of today, and he has done so,” Barr said in a terse letter to the prosecutor.
Cheryl Rofer
The advantage of holding the rallies in places where the exponential curve is starting up is that it will be hard to separate the effect of the rallies from the large numbers.
Raoul
This also just makes me feel really queazy. And harkens back to warnings from Adam to stay frosty throughout all this. Gah.
Martin
@Brachiator: Trump can’t fire Berman. Trump didn’t hire Berman. He was hired by the Judiciary for an indeterminate term that expires “until the vacancy is filled”.
Interesting that Graham is respecting blue slips again. McConnell threw that convention in the garbage a while back.
Graham’s opponent is running national ads, like McGrath is. These guys are feeling the heat.
Another Scott
Cheers,
Scott.
MomSense
I talked to my doctor today because I’m not feeling well. I’m going to have a test tomorrow.
I can’t believe we are living in such stupid times. We have access to information. We have supercomputers small enough to put in our pockets and this bullshit is the best we can do.
Matt McIrvin
@Dorothy A. Winsor: My impression is that surface transmission is a real thing in indoor medical situations where the amount of virus around is very high. So the “deep cleaning” probably is still useful, especially if someone is going to be there within a day or so.
What doesn’t seem to happen is people getting COVID from takeout food or delivered packages, etc. And it’s probably not a long-term problem–just leave a surface for a few days, and any level of live virus that’s likely to infect you will be gone. If it’s outdoors in the sun, the necessary time period is probably much shorter.
Martin
Just to be clear, I really hope none of these people get Covid. I do hope they all DIAF, though, so I’m on team ‘shitty wiring in the BOK Arena and firefighters can’t get past the baby gate’.
Another Scott
https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1274430856937877504
Hmmm….
Cheers,
Scott.
Elizabelle
Fuck Trump and fuck Barr. They are both criminals. I hope they both end up in prison after this all winds out.
I hope Trump is not braying about this as an applause line at his coronaviruspalooza in Tulsa today.
I also would love to see former Presidents come out forcefully against this. It is lawless. Make it clear how abnormal and dangerous Trump and Barr are, here. They are not meant to be above the law. Do not allow them to perch themselves there because “manners and precedent.” Those are out the window.
David Evans
@Brachiator: Britain made a real mess of the early stages of the pandemic -flirting with herd immunity, starting with test and trace and deciding it was too difficult. But at least no-one denies here that the virus exists and is a serious problem. We have been in hard lockdown which we are now reducing in stages.
Frankensteinbeck
@Another Scott:
I think we need to face that Barr only looks competent compared to the rest of Trump’s clown car. He is ‘only shoots himself in the dick sometimes’ level competent. That makes him look like an evil genius beside his boss.
Tom Levenson
@Another Scott: I’ll take incompetence for $400, Alex.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@MomSense:
Do you think it might be COVID? A test is good.
Redshift
@Another Scott: I’m generally very happy with Don Beyer, but I wish he had listened to me when I asked about Barr’s lawlessness at his town hall back in November. He said that unfortunately they were occupied with impeachment and Barr would have to await the judgement of history. One of the legal experts he had as guests said “hell, yes, you should be doing something about him!”
Dorothy A. Winsor
And here’s this from 5 minutes ago:
Baud
@MomSense: I hope it’s nothing.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Haha. Berman should tweet that back at Barr.
Elizabelle
@MomSense: Wishing you the best, MomSense. I hope you are feeling much better, sooner. And no COVID.
Cheryl Rofer
Barr says Trump has told him to fire Berman, but Trump is doing his thing on the White House lawn as he leaves for Coronapalooza
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Another Scott: I think William Goldman invented the line, “the truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand…”, for the movie?
Of course, Barr is pretty bright, as I understand. A lot of people pointing out that this looks like panic. During the Mueller investigation, Brian Beutler used to make the point that Republicans didn’t even know what they were covering up. I wonder if Barr fairly recently found out that what he was agreeing to help cover up when he took the job– the job he thought he could handle, for a man he thought he could manage– is much worse than he thought, and things have quickly gotten out of hand
WaterGirl
@MomSense: I very much hope this is a false alarm. Crossing my fingers and saying a prayer.
You have done everything right that is under your control. I cannot tell you how angry I am at the selfish, ignorant, arrogant people you work with in your office.
They may be nice people otherwise, but there can be no “otherwise’ when we are talking about a pandemic virus that can kill people.
PsiFighter37
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I think the rule of law discussion is going to come to a head real quick. With that admission, Berman can simply call Barr a liar and say he will continue to show up to work.
What a shitshow, even by Trump’s nonexistent standards.
scav
One is almost forced to theorize the administration is purposely doing things wrong and accelerating their baseline disfunction in order to get the inevitable blowback into the media cycle. Any doubt that the lovies at the rally won’t see the system working as designed as blatant <<“DEEP STATE”>> machinations against their messiah, Donnie Dieu-Donné?
JPL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Sure. How do we determine which one is lying?
Redshift
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yeah, I thought it was odd that there was a letter from Barr saying Trump had fired him, instead of a letter from Trump. (Meaning an auto-pen signed letter that he asked Trump to approve, not one actually flown in from Tulsa.)
Once again, we are aided by the fact that a guy whose catchphrase is “you’re fired” nearly always wimps out on firing people himself. Though in this case it may be an instinct to avoid legal problems for himself.
Nora
@Cheryl Rofer:
Was there ever a bigger coward than Trump? He’s not involved, he’s not responsible — when the shit comes down, he’s the first to be out of the room, somewhere else, out of range.
Also, the question has to be asked: what on earth IS he involved in? He’s not dealing with the pandemic or the protests; he’s not doing anything that even pretends to be foreign relations. Is there any part of his job that he’s pretending to do?
Baud
@PsiFighter37:
It’s Infrastructure
WeekDaySaturday Afternoon!Brachiator
@David Evans:
Fair point, even though early on Boris Johnson was pretty much spouting nonsense like “good old British common sense will stand up to Johnny virus and knock him out.”
And of course, in a dumb move similar to Trump, turns out that Johnson had dumped a pandemic response team, and the tracking app that they were working on has been scrapped as useless.
And yet, the UK has some of the best scientists, medical researchers and investigators in the world, who have been consistently clear about the pandemic. Problem is that sometimes their best efforts have been blunted by Johnson’s political advisor Dominic Cummings, and by the inconsistency of the government.
Baud
@JPL: Yes.
Raoul
@MomSense: People use those computers to watch InfoWars while they wait for their clothes to dry, so we’ve already allocated the smart machines to a lot of very, very stupid people.
Elizabelle
@Frankensteinbeck: I think Barr and Trump are used to dealing with people who are overmatched by them, for the most part.
I hope Berman gives them a huge fight. Because, what is to stop Barr/Trump from firing Audrey Strauss (second in command; white collar crime specialist who has tangled with Roy Cohn) and everyone else down the chain? They’ll do it, with pleasure, because it hurts us so badly.
Redshift
@MomSense: Hope it’s nothing serious.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@JPL:
I report. You decide. :-)
Cheryl Rofer
He has ALWAYS had people to cover for him. ALWAYS.
When Harry Truman said “The buck stops here,” he may have been proclaiming his feeling of responsibility, but he was also observing a hard truth.
WaterGirl
@Elizabelle: We are living in the fucking Wild West. With a deranged administration, every bit as evil as the bad guys on the old TV show Wild, Wild West. Where is James West when we need him?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Brachiator:
Is their government as criminal as ours? Because holy moly, we are swimming in crises.
Calouste
@David Evans: It probably helped general awareness that Boris the Clown almost died from COVID-19. Also, Brits have a certain reverence for doctors and nurses in the NHS, and stories of them getting sick and dying were prominently in the news.
WaterGirl
@Cheryl Rofer: On the bright side, this leaves Barr hanging in the wind, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer person.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I would love to think you are right.
Another Scott
@Cheryl Rofer:
No. I don’t take responsibility at all. – Donnie.
He’s such a child.
Cheers,
Scott.
Martin
@JPL: You can take it as a given that they both are.
debbie
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Yep. I worked among them. Nothing would shut them up until a woman on my team of six died.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaterGirl: also, not necessarily on the bright side, but trump will be agitated and distracted when he goes on stage for his Sixty Minute Hate. He’ll probably confess something so bad that Mitt Romney will have to say his cable was out all weekend
@WaterGirl: me too, but at this point I’m not optimistic about revelations what would jolt the lumpenmittel out of their complacency, especially since one lesson that trump has learned– I’m guessing from Fred– is to never write anything down and always speak indirectly and vaguely so as to leave a reasonable doubt, especially when the jury is corrupted
Elizabelle
A kind of cool destresser: livecam from Stonehenge on Facebook. It’s 9:24 p there, local time, but still light — kind of dusk. Summer solstice today.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=583800622502740
LuciaMia
That pretty much sums up his entire presidency.
Elizabelle
@LuciaMia: Although: Trump took front and center on sabotaging the coronavirus response. With an able assist from Jared and who knows who else? There is that.
MomSense
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I hope not, but I spend 40 hours a week in a small office space with people who won’t wear masks. They keep saying clients won’t come in and we’ll stay six feet apart, but people keep coming in and you can’t walk to other parts of the office without walking near people. Plus people get in the elevator with you without masks.
Elizabelle
Spare me. Saint James Comey has an op ed in the WaPost right now, praising Berman to the heavens.
Not linking, but it’s “Geoffrey Berman upheld the finest tradition of the SDNY office.” Past tense.
You helped bring this upon us, Jim.
Kent
Incompetence and evil are not mutually exclusive
Brachiator
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
The jury is still out on this. Boris Johnson has bungled both BREXIT and the pandemic, but he is not quite as bad as Trump. But he is trying hard to catch up.
One quick example. Trump denies the efficacy of testing. Johnson’s minister lied about the number of tests that had actually been performed. He may also have to take the fall for the scapping of the custom made tracking app.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I used to work with very smart doctoral students, and after a while I concluded that, at some point, the ability to do demanding work depended on character rather than IQ. Some of them couldn’t learn because they were used to being the smartest student in the class and were certain they already knew everything.
raven
debbie
@MomSense:
Please take care of yourself!
ThresherK
I’ve been saying that Covid-19 was The Old Man in the Cave for almost four months. Didn’t know the teleplay would that specific, though.
I can live with it, but not what they do to innocent others. This will be an exponentially worse rerun of the infection maps following Florida spring breakers, won’t it?
Martin
@Elizabelle: One thing you can usually rely on is that government institutions have tribal loyalty as well.
Berman is currently serving at the pleasure of the SDNY:
An acting position is not filling the position. When the Senate failed to confirm an appointee by the end of the 120 days, it became the responsibility of the Judiciary to fill the position, and they did.
I’m willing to bet that no part of the Judiciary is willing to recognize anyone other than Berman as USA in that district until the Senate confirms someone. They can kick that up to USSC and that won’t change.
Brachiator
@MomSense:
Is there any push to make sure that people in your office get tested?
JPL
So is it now the Friday night/Saturday night massacre?
Elizabelle
@MomSense: That was the situation that faced a friend of mine, Army psychologist in Germany with a small office. No possibility of social distancing. They allowed her to work remotely from home (video/secure system) and she’s just now going back to the base. Because Germany responded better to the ‘virus.
I wish you were allowed to work remotely. In some instances, that could be much safer for your clients, too. Your agency could provide services at non-banker’s hours.
It is not fair for them to put your mother’s life, and your own health, at risk like that. At the cost of your financial security. But you know that …
Elizabelle
@Martin: I am hoping on that, too. Stand your ground, Mr. Berman.
JPL
@MomSense: I hope that you feel better soon.
Jinchi
Fingers crossed for the staff of the convention center. I hope they’re all outfitted in the best hazmat suits available.
Bobby Thomson
@Martin: you’re a real humanitarian.
Firefighters are much more likely to have PPE.
Bill Arnold
I would not overplay the risks being taken in Tulsa, though they’re extremely stupid rationality-impaired by tribal membership to not be wearing masks. It depends on the quality of the ventilation in the indoor venue, the quality of vetting being done (e.g. temperature checks?), and even verbal suggestions to wear a mask for anyone coughing or sneezing.. Outdoors appears to reduce the risk of transmission a lot.
Thread on masks. (Jeremy Howard, who is a anti-anti-masker crusader, but with some interesting links.)
At this point if you go to scholar.google.com and search on masks covid-19 (or whatever) and sort by date, you’ll see the newest research, including a few anti-masker papers. (I personally found the anti-masker stuff to be weak and cherry-picked, but they’re worth looking at to see how science is done when political agendas are involved.)
JPL
@Martin: Does Berman wait until he receives a letter from trump?
Yutsano
@Elizabelle: Has anything been presented with Dolt45’s signature on it yet? No? And he’s denying knowing anything about it? Go nowhere Berman. Make Bill cough up the goods.
mrmoshpotato
Awwww……fuck ’em!
JoyceH
Huh. So Barr said in a letter that Trump fired Berman, but Trump said that he’s not involved. I think Berman should hold out for a letter with Trump’s signature.
rikyrah
SC,
Did you see this?
You nailed it ?
mrmoshpotato
@Jinchi: Yes. May the event staff have someone looking over them.
Brachiator
@JPL:
And Pandemic Night Fever.
I heard a CBS radio news report that people at the Tulsa rally will be allowed in beginning at 3 pm local time, but that the rally will not start until 7:30 pm.
I don’t know what the ventilation is like, but this might allow plenty of time for the virus to circulate if any attendees are infected.
It’s not clear at all that the people responsible for this thing have thought about mitigation efforts at all.
rikyrah
@MomSense: …
?????
Get tested
James E Powell
Trump says he’s not involved. Does the attorney-general have the authority to fire a US attorney?
Mallard Filmore
@WaterGirl:
… if they are not wearing a mask, they are quite willing to kill you.
debbie
@raven:
NPR reported this morning that Clayton had never been a prosecutor. Is this really the job for a newbie?
Martin
@JPL: I would, and then I’d consult with SDNY. It’s their call who to recognize as the USA.
In the meantime, I’d hand a copy of everything over to the NY AG who also has jurisdiction here.
Martin
I’ll add to the above, TPM is suggesting that Trump can fire him, but only SDNY can appoint a replacement, so SDNY could simply reappoint Berman. I suppose this could be a daily event of being fired/rehired until January.
I wonder how vacation accrual works in that situation?
Ken
Ah, yes, the classics.
JPL
@Martin: You’re good!
Keith P.
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
EDIT: looks like someone beat me to it. But yeah, Trump stepped on his own dick again.
Elizabelle
@Keith P.: And Barr’s, in the process.
James E Powell
@James E Powell:
The court in United States v. Hilario, 218 F.3d 19, 26 (1st cir. 2000) states that “the Attorney General does not have the authority to discharge a United States Attorney,” but doesn’t cite authority for that.
Yutsano
@Elizabelle: It’s almost as if Barr is the one who really wants him gone. This smells to me that he’s trying to stop something. Is it flop sweat for ol’ Bill coming out?
Elizabelle
@Yutsano: Yup. Lot of Supremes and reporters and other interested parties looking into this situation, right now.
Uncle Cosmo
Um…a fair number of us understand that it’s not “an exponential growth curve” but a logistic growth curve. Which is only exponential in the early phases, when there is a (near-)infinite supply of resources to fuel grown (in the current case, unexposed people). Once whatever is growing (in the current case, the number of victims) starts to take up a significant fraction of the resources available, growth starts slowing down. If you take the derivative of a logistic growth curve to get the number of cases per unit time, it does in fact look something like a bell curve.
The reason people still talk about “exponential growth” is that no locality seems to have come close to a fraction of residents who’ve contracted COVID-19 large enough to slow the growth from (approximate) exponential. That, I gather, was what Sweden was shooting for – one nationwide “COVID Party” – and it just didn’t happen.
JPL
@Yutsano: Didn’t trump say Nixon’s problem was that he personally fired people? I assume trump will issue a tweet on his way home after tonight’s event
trump would have no problem throwing his mother under the bus, so this is about trump.
raven
@debbie: Like all the rest of the fucking morons he has running the show.
gwangung
@debbie: From Trump, yes.
different-church-lady
@JPL: Infrastructure Week Massacre.
JPL
@different-church-lady: That works.
WaterGirl
@Mallard Filmore: Exactly! That’s why my complete sentence was:
NotMax
@Brachiator
Doomteenth celebration.
Jeffro
I’m about to jump in and fix dinner, but I had to LOL at this being the one time trumpov was actually supposed to take responsibility (’cause without it, Berman ain’t going nowhere) and he defaulted to his usual “who, me? I’m not involved”
LOLOLOL
Congress, impeach the f*** out of Barr and let’s get going here. This is just ridiculous. Nobody fires IGs and US Attorneys left and right without being a complete crook, up and down.
Martin
@Yutsano: Maybe. Trump really has a terrible sense of what is a real legal threat and what isn’t. Barr would likely know what Berman is working on, and whether or not it’s a problem.
I will say this, the DOJ 90 day policy means that if Berman was going to bring something to the SDNY, he’s got about 6 weeks to do so, which means Barr would be notified of it soon, if not already. My understanding is that Barr can’t stop Berman from bringing a case, though. So Barr may not have tipped Berman’s hand to Trump, but is urging Trump to remove Berman, because.
So yeah, this is smelling very Nixonian to me.
Another Scott
Several people seem to be in burn-it-all-down mode now…
https://twitter.com/notlarrysabato/status/1274436130948222976
Another possible pickup opportunity for Democrats.
Fight for every seat!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): There was excess capability built up for treating other conditions in hospital systems burdened by COVID (like the hospital ships), and a lot of that went unused because self-quarantine actually reduced a lot of the conditions people go to the hospital for. They weren’t catching the flu, they weren’t getting into as many car accidents or having so many work-related accidents.
Sister Golden Bear
Given the Trump administration is still trying to gut transgender rights — Friday the DOJ joined legal effort in Idaho law to ban transgender athletes* — I’ll show them same care and regard they have for us, i.e.:
Fuck ’em. All of them. I’m down for instant karma. And divine smiting.
*Using the same “sex is assigned at birth and can never be changed” argument that the SCOTUS shot down.
Calouste
@Keith P.: Most likely explanation is that the shitgibbon said “can no one get me rid of this turbulent district attorney” and expected Barr to take care of things, and hadn’t heard yet that Barr has invoked his name at the second attempt to take care of things. I assume there will be a signed letter dismissing the acting DA before the day is out.
Mary G
@MomSense: Sending you good vibes. I know you worry about your mom. I hate to admit it, but it’s kind of a relief that my mom went ten years ago in hospice at home without suffering. The separations and saying goodbye over FaceTime are so horrifying.
Before today, in Orange County CA where I live, hit the most new cases in a day on June 14 with 297. Today it was 413. Not good. Testing has also fallen off a cliff in the last two days. I don’t know if it’s a reporting problem or now that they ran our health department head off, it’s just not a priority any more.
Jinchi
Yes, but since most people are mathematically illiterate, all they will see is : Trump rally, followed by exponential growth.
Matt McIrvin
@Uncle Cosmo: I do see a bit of a disconnect that puzzles me sometimes in that a lot of people, including some epidemiologists, still talk as if uncontrolled spread is going to rapidly drive every place in the world straight to the herd-immunity level (actually if that happened there would be some overshoot and we’d go beyond it)… but that hasn’t actually happened anywhere. It seems as if when it gets Lombardy/New York-bad, people do react, change their lives and a kind of social immunity kicks in. But in the worst cases it does have to get that bad: hundreds of cases per million per day.
Now, it may be that the level of behavior modification required to control this isn’t sustainable anywhere, and there will be multiple waves until we get to 60-70% having been infected (and maybe it never ends if the immunity isn’t permanent). But so far, it seems to me like the big catastrophes actually do get a reaction. I suspect the Western states where this is spiking hard now are going to change their tune once we get more or less to the “everyone knows someone who died” level.
different-church-lady
@Cheryl Rofer: Isn’t that also the dis-advantage? If you can’t separate the numbers, then you can just blame the rally for all of it.
Feathers
@hitchhiker: @mad citizen: @Redshift: @Uncle Cosmo:
There have been people calling for replacing Algebra II with statistics for people not planning to go on to pre-calculus. It’s just as demanding intellectually and mathwise. Also a hell of a lot more useful in today’s world.
Morzer
I found this book summary alarmingly plausible as a future prediction:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/20/the-great-escape-50-brilliant-books-to-transport-you-this-summer
stinger
This is the best sad news I have heard in a very, very long time.
randy khan
@Redshift: Inquiring minds want to know if that’s the same kitchen where he made the grilled cheese sandwich.
Mallard Filmore
@WaterGirl: I tried to make it more personal for the offender.
Cheryl Rofer
@Jinchi: Good point
Amir Khalid
@Brachiator: Don’t forget the Bunited States of Bamerica.
Ken
In many states, when you’re let go they have to pay you for unused vacation days. Also many companies grant vacation immediately on hire, though you can’t use it for 60 or 90 days. So an argument could be made that at each firing, they have to pay him for 5/10/whatever days of vacation, which are restored when he’s re-hired.
No idea what would happen under federal law.
pat
@Matt McIrvin:
I have read and believe that “herd immunity” can only be achieved by VACCINATION.
I honestly don’t know where this stupid stuff came from and why it is not shot down repeatedly!
Jinchi
The UK had the good fortune that, when Boris acted like a fool, he contracted a pretty serious case of coronavirus himself. After that, they started taking the pandemic more seriously. Not perfectly so, but enough to make a difference.
There is only one person in the world that I wish the pandemic on, if only to take him off the board for a few weeks.
jl
@Matt McIrvin: ‘including some epidemiologists, still talk as if uncontrolled spread is going to rapidly drive every place in the world straight to the herd-immunity level’
Some epidemiologists went around saying things that were guesses or opinions early in the spread to the US that were their opinions, and they should have been more careful, IMHO.
One was assertion that the transmission mechanism of covid-19 was so uncontrollable by government or individual responses to risk that herd immunity, and resulting death and disability through reaching that through infection, would spread to > 70 percent of world population in a two or three years.
Another was the early and grim Imperial College study that asserted that the epidemic waves would come so rapidly and be so severe, that the only control measure that would avoid repeated NYC style health system meltdowns would be 6 weeks of stringent complete shutdowns followed by 2-3 weeks of relief for almost two years. This was opinionizing through mystery meat simulation modelling. I never found a description of the simulation assumptions and structure, there was just an assurance that a model existed and list of parameters that went into whatever the model was, though I haven’t looked for the needed documentation needed.
Another was that a second wave is an inevitable law of nature for epidemics spread by respiratory transmission.
I think some experts acted irresponsibly at the outset of the epidemic in the US.
FlyingToaster
@Bobby Thomson:
Going all Abbé Arnaud on us? Good for you.
During one of my phone calls with my mom down in Flah-ri-dah, I mentioned that our (MA) governor was forced to allow churches to reopen by the Trump administration. And then I said:
You know, I encourage them to go back to their houses of worship. All of them. All at once. Just fucking go for it. The Virus will know its own.
Matt McIrvin
@pat: Pandemics did burn out on their own before the invention of vaccines. It’s just that a whole lot of people had to die first (and the disease would come back later).
planetjanet
@randy khan: Yes, yes it was. But it was the infamous tuna melt sandwich, which he mentioned.
scav
@Amir Khalid: Alternatively spelled as Benighted States of Bamerica according to the OED.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
As he was about to get on Marine One, a reporter asked him about the Berman firing. Trump said “That’s up to the Attorney General. I’m not involved. I don’t know anything about it.” (From memory, but that was the gist.)
Of course he lies about everything and contradicts himself six times before breakfast, but even Trump might find it challenging to square “knowing nothing about it” with doing a victory dance in the end zone. But I guess we shall see.
Martin
@Feathers: So, I convinced my local district to move to integrated math through high school, like basically every other country on earth does.
Basically, you cover it all including statistics through the 4 years. You tailor some of it to practical math as well. What you lose is some of the ability to accelerate that sequence, so you can do one year of calc in HS, but not more than that. There’s no benefit to accelerating more than one year.
Yutsano
Nadler is getting involved…
Kent
We could get there with 2.64 million deaths as well.
Herd immunity requires 80-95% of the population to be immune. If we use the low end estimate:
330 million (US Population) x 80% x 1% mortality rate = 2.64 million deaths
And then a year later when the immunity wears off we get to do it all over again.
jl
@Matt McIrvin: Every disease is different. Some, like measles, produce frequent and repeated waves of infection that are impossible to stop except through immunization, and nab pretty much anyone not immune from previous infection or immunization.
Others do not, and their size and frequency are substantially modified by preventive behavior and individual response to perceived risk of infection.
WaterGirl
@Mallard Filmore: You’re right! It’s like the difference between passive voice and active voice. They re choosing to put you at risk. I have nothing but contempt for people like that.
Matt McIrvin
@jl: Erik Loomis over on LGM seems to be very doomist about all this, sometimes suggesting that we might as well adopt a greater degree of reopening than most liberals are willing to contemplate just because all control efforts will fail and we’re all doomed to get it anyway.
Mary G
This doesn’t look like a packed house to me (no words, just screams and whistles):
James E Powell
@Feathers:
I’ve been calling for that since the late 70s when I took Intro to Statistics and wondered why the F they didn’t teach us this in high school. See also, Intro to Deductive Logic.
jl
@SiubhanDuinne: Doing their very best to make this scheme backfire and end up in monumental legal chaos. Was this statement before or after Barr put out that Trump did in fact personally decide to, for reals, fire him?
Amir Khalid
@Brachiator:
Don’t forget BoJo saying early on that he was responding to Covid-19 the way the mayor of Amity responded to the shark threat in Jaws. Surprise, surprise: same stupid head-in-the-sand strategy, same bad outcome.
Fair Economist
@Mary G: Reports of testing are messed up in OC CA. The tests reported on any day are only a small fraction of those reported for that date several days later. Most tests never get reported in that daily headline number. Dunno why.
The increases in cases reported, hospitalizations, etc. are still relentless and horrifying. The epidemic is contained though still active in LA county but is exploding elsewhere in Socal. Riverside and San Bernadino are looking even worse than us.
Jinchi
Herd immunity can be acheived if a large percentage (60-80%) of the population contract the virus, assuming they develop antibodies to protect against reinfection.
But only about 1% have contracted it so far and nearly 120,000 people have died in the US. Millions would likely die if we tried to establish herd immunity without vaccination. This is what Fauci has been warning Trump since day one. A part of Trump’s brain seems to have absorbed it, which is why he wants credit for saving millions of lives.
Fair Economist
@James E Powell: I also think statistics is far more important than Algebra II. Everybody needs to know the basics of statistics to evaluate evidence.
rikyrah
@Another Scott:
????
JPL
@Yutsano: Martin should chime in but why not just issue a subpoena.
jl
@Matt McIrvin: I think we are in the midst of a frightening and risky forced experiment with learning by doing with this new bug. Even in the US, where the experiment seems to be if most of the country botches everything, what will happen.
More and more countries seem to showing that the disease can be controlled without bringing society and the economy to a screeching halt.
From what I read, Australia never completely closed its schools nationwide, some provinces kept them at least partially open throughout their initial control efforst, and it is doing far better than we are. OTOH, UK botched it and had to close schools after they reopened for two weeks.
I think covid-19 spread is very sensitive to details of social arrangements and precautions that we don’t fully understand, or understand well at all, yet.
Hate to bothesides it, but looks like most optimistic and most pessimistic viewpoints are wrong. I guess I’m not really bothsidsing it, since I think it is established that the ‘let it rip, and look forward to quick herd immunity through infection to rescue things’ is a bad approach.
Another Scott
@Fair Economist: The https://rt.live/ map of estimated Rt numbers are pretty scary. For a while, only about 1/4 of the states were in red. Now, roughly half of them are, and the Rt values are increasing. Mostly “red” states are in red, but CA is there.
The individual state graphs are below on that page. It’ll be interesting to see how OK’s changes over the next 2-4 weeks – it’s 1.30 now.
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Kent
I dunno. Algebra II is a lot more aligned with existing science curriculum, especially physics and chemistry. At one level, physics is basically just a year-long course of applied algebra: Kinetic energy = 1/2mv2, gravity = GM1M2/r2 and so forth. And chemistry also relies heavily on algebra: Ideal gas laws, calculating specific heat, calculating molarity, calculating PH, etc.
Science teachers would have to spend a LOT more time teaching algebra if students came into their classes without it
I think the more appropriate course (for normal non-remedial and non-accelerated students) would be:
8th Grade: Algebra 1
9th Grade: Geometry
10th Grade: Algebra 2
11th Grade: Statistics or pre-Calc
12th Grade: AP Stats or AP Calc.
Yutsano
@JPL: He could do that, but that gets issued if Berman refuses. Pretty sure he’s willing to show up voluntarily.
Jinchi
I think thats a natural lag, due to delays in testing and reporting. The date listed should be the day the sample was taken. It might be a few days before the sample is actually tested and then another few days before the result is reported. The actual lag will differ from place to place, so the total number grows for a few days.
I’d heard that Georgia justified reopening by (deliberately?) misreading the number of positive tests and declaring that there had been a decline in the numbers over the previous week. The decline vanished after the final numbers came in, but by that point they’d already lifted restrictions.
Mallard Filmore
@Matt McIrvin:
That will make trade with many first world nations difficult. AU, NZ, VN, TH, CH, etc … are already forming travel bubbles with each other, having no COVID-19 cases in 2 or 3 weeks. It will start with essential travelers like medical, bug business types, and the like from areas known to be free of the virus. Its hard to see how the USA can compete in this environment.
Thailand has rumors that future tourists will initially be limited to expensive luxury island areas where the visitors can be easily isolated for 2 weeks.
As a USA citizen, if I was in charge of one of those countries over there, I would not let me in.
The USA will get the USA market, China gets the rest.
Brachiator
@James E Powell:
Not enough good math teachers. And too many teachers drafted into teaching the subject are afraid of math.
Also, it would be useful to touch on this in middle school or junior high school.
Or maybe something less formal.
jl
I think another lesson being shown around the world, is that to get effective control without sacrificing social and economic life, you should hit the disease very early and very hard, to get prevalence as low as possible. And use the down time to get an effective surveillance, contact trace and isolation program, ready to go as soon as any shutdown ends. Edit: but actually, experts with practical experience in infectious disease control already knew that from 100 years of history, and were yelling it, but leaders in the US didn’t listen. Heck, most of them at the federal level seem to have been fired anyway before this began.
US is useful there too in showing how to not do that, and resulting bad and longlasting aftereffects. Any country wants to put themselves in a bad fix, they can always look to places like US, UK, Sweden, Brazil.
Aleta
One of many paid actors (imo) in Tulsa. It’s like a fake village of living-advertisement exhibits erected on twitter.
https://twitter.com/KyleMartinsen_/status/1274104886267961345
Martin
@Matt McIrvin: I’m not there, but I’m close. The national plan seems to be to figure out what keeps the hospitals maxed out, and then employ just enough measures to keep R0 = 1.
Basically, it’s the pareto equilibrium point for the economy in a pandemic. Push hospitals harder and the economy suffers disproportionately. In short, so long as we’re mainly killing retirees, there’s no economic loss. Meatpacking plants have recognized they can replace line workers as fast as they’re dying, so not economic loss there either.
States like CA are trying in some degree to restructure the economy slightly to make that equilibrium point somewhere else. Online services, remote activities generally favor our economy. Plus we see an opportunity to make climate change progress by leaning into that in the hopes that it’ll stick.
We’ll just note that the economic pareto equilibrium point cares fuck-all how many people die, and that’s the approach the feds and the GOP have embraced, in case anyone had any questions as to where everyone’s priorities are.
HumboldtBlue
A short break for a wonderful hug
Jinchi
If that’s his real view and not just an expression of frustration, then Eric Loomis is an idiot and he should be told so by everyone who knows him.
jl
@Another Scott: CA is very big compared to most states. Regions of the state vary from excellent, to OK, to average all the way down to horrible shape.
Over last month, from county and regional statistics I’ve seen, the big increases are in SW San Joaquin Valley, and Imperial Valley corporate ag crop work crews and ag industry processing plants. Imperial county has a cumulative population prevalence of confirmed cases that rival NYC’s. 2.5 percent of the population has been infected.
I heard a news report that 75 percent the new cases are from patients and staff at rest homes, prisons, large corporate work places (factories, warehouses and processing plants) and construction sites, and homeless population. Not much community spread from rest of society doing retail business, outdoor activities, recreation, etc.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JPL: as I recall from the last go-round, if they have to ask a judge to enforce a subpoena, they have to show that they started with a request– IANAL and the last three years have scrambled a once pretty-solid memory.
Also, it looks like Berman is, or was, a partisan Republican, he maxed out to trump in ’16, so some degree of diplomacy is probably not a bad idea
ETA: also cromulent, Matt Miller (NAL but a high-ranking flack for the Holder DoJ) suggests Berman is not the only one they’re hoping to get to come in
joel hanes
@Ken:
deep-clean the arena
Surface contagion is much less important than infection from aerial droplets, the smallest of which can hang in the air for an hour or so, and drift a long way in that hour.
jl
@Martin: with infectious disease there are at least several pareto equilibria, with at least several hills and valleys scattered in between.
I think case of US is very definitely not pareto efficient, with too much ineffective and overly costly control, and too much disease, death and disability. Theoretical and empirical reasons to believe that decentralized profit maximizing response drives society to one of those lose-lose equilibria.
Edit: but if big business sector can rake in some cash from going business or from government cash spigot, it cares F-all about pareto optimality.
MoCA Ace
@JPL:
Fucking orange sociopath will be within two miles of me :( Soon as I heard the news I told my boss I’m taking that day off. I don’t want to be within a thousand miles of that odious shit pile or his rancid supporters.
joel hanes
@satby:
fuckem
The resting shade of efgoldman saw what you did there.
Peace be upon him, and upon his memory.
SiubhanDuinne
@jl:
It was a couple of hours after.
Bobby Thomson
@jl: SJ County is the ancestral home of two previous generations. I’m glad Dad didn’t live to see this.
MoCA Ace
@MoCA Ace: A couple days ago I started seeing Dump signs spring up all over the area. Almost like the local Rethugs thought it was November 1st or something. Found out about the visit yesterday… now it all makes sense.
pat
@Jinchi:
Well what’s the difference, actually, between vaccination and 80% being infected? I mean, it is not at all achievable just by letting the virus run amok!
Just imagine 250 million people being infected in order to protect the other 20%? Give me a break.
jl
@Bobby Thomson: That was doing well for a while, but recently has been going in a bad direction.
I can’t find breakdowns of where the new cases are coming from at all, not at state, regional or county level. If anyone knows where to find them, please post a link.
But I tend to believe that news report on the 75 percent. I hear news reports of outbreaks at nursing homes, and processing plants, warehouses, that produce 20, 30, 40 cases at a time around greater SF Bay Area.
joel hanes
@hueyplong:
If I was a reporter, and if my editor had assigned me to cover this disaster from inside the arena, I’d be working on the wording of my resignation letter.
Bruuuuce
@Jinchi:
Also, even if we achieved herd immunity without a vaccine, that would leave the next generation vulnerable to a resurgence from the extant virus. Not okay.
jl
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s cool. Why not prepare the way for as big a mess as possible? I guess bright side is that the ginormous legal mess the Trumpsters are preparing will keep them tangled up in court fights for a long time, and produce ever more disastrous dilemmas for their evil schemes.
Jinchi
Nobody in the top tier and none in the half of the arena behind the stage. So at best 1/4 full? Of course this could be early, before everyone is seated.
Still, they could have easily spaced people out, ‘filled the stadium’ and blamed social distancing if the final tally looked a bit sparse.
They could also have taken a page from the restaurant industry, filled half the seats with mannikins in Trump gear and tricked Trump into thinking he had 100,000 people in the room. Win-Win!
Although I guess that’s me thinking like a leftwinger.
JPL
I think the road blocks are gone and trump can do whatever. Berman has faith in Strauss but honestly how long will she last. I do hope that like Martin suggested, he turned over some information to the state of NY>
Mary G
Looks like Parscale’s not delivering the bodies:
Barbara
@Martin: I am not quite as doom and gloom as Erik Loomis, because I do think physicians and hospitals have made some progress in actually treating people, but it’s still an incredibly big risk for any given individual, no matter how young and apparently healthy. And it’s devastatingly unfair to health care workers. It’s also completely random. You could adopt an actual plan that would prioritize simple universal steps (mask wearing) combined with more intensive steps for those likely at higher risk — free testing for all nursing home personnel and other high risk occupations. And maybe it would have the same impact over time, but at least it would try to mitigate harm to the most at risk and keep the risk of hospitalization from spiking beyond what can be easily managed.
If I think about this too much I can’t contain my rage, so I have slipped into a kind of numb fury as I binge read through numerous books of both the light and heavy variety to distract my mind.
Here is a quote from one of them:
“He” was Denis Diderot.
Jinchi
@pat: Agreed. What’s the point of herd immunity if virtually everyone has to contract the virus to get there?
jl
@Mary G: “Parscale’s not delivering the bodies”
I think Parscale will produce plenty of bodies, just not the ones he promised.
Martin
@Kent: There is no inherent benefit to clustering math by topic. In fact, there are quite a few downsides. The year gap between Algebra I and II, and then between geometry and trig is a disadvantage. Further, students get the sense that algebra techniques don’t apply to geometry problems, or that stats sits entirely apart from all of these.
The better approach is to teach algebraic techniques consistently through 4 years, as well as geometry/trig, and tie the two tracks together where appropriate. Further, geometry is generally where proof writing is introduced and focused on (too much) and then abandoned afterward, where it should instead be touched on throughout again. And stats should also have a 4 year long track, with some discrete math in there.
The segregation of subjects leads to undermining problem solving in students. Lots of problems have an algebraic as well as a geometric solution, but we’re teaching students to favor one type of thinking over another, rather than accepting any solution (and maybe asking them to demonstrate how the two approaches are ultimately one in the same – here’s where the proof writing can come in)
What we find at the university level is that students are really skilled at applying techniques to problems presented in a standard form, but as soon as you deviate from that, they are completely lost. They cannot rethink the problem using techniques from a different branch of math, nor can they rework the problem into a form that lends itself to an easy solution.
As an example, 84 * 116 looks like a difficult problem to solve without pencil and paper, but its just (100 – 16)(100 + 16) = 100^2 – 16^2 = 9744. I can’t do the former quickly in my head, but I can rattle off the latter easily.
They don’t learn to do that because they would only be presented with 84 * 116 as a ‘show me you can do long multiplication’ problem, and not as an algebraic ‘difference of two squares problem’.
I’ll note, the SAT would present that kind of problem, which is why having the money for SAT prep is so key to doing well on the SAT for most students.
About 80% of our students scored a 4 or 5 on AP Calc AB or BC, and yet we need to run virtually all of them through a remedial problem solving course because they’re just terrible at reading a graph and inferring information, and crossing these disciplines. If we dump them into a first term programming/problem solving course, they’ll almost all fail it because we envisioned it as learn programming against the strength of problem solving you should acquired in HS, but the reality is they never learned problem solving, so they’re going in with no strengths, with 2 exceptions:
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent: Oddly enough, that is more or less the path I followed, except 11th and 12th grade were IB math (covering the same basic areas).
JPL
@jl: haha That’s a shining light to an otherwise shitty day. trump canceled his speech to the overflow crowd.
pat
Dying thread, I think, but here in western Wisconsin our local paper reports new cases every day. It was 2,3, finally 0, and then the supreme court invalidated Gov. Evers’ order to continue the lockdown.
Bars opened. A couple of weeks later, the daily count of cases is 20, 23, 25, and they are young people in their 20s who have been in those recently opened up bars.
On the other hand, all employees and most of the customers in the local essential businesses are wearing masks.
ETA: interesting that these new cases are mostly minor and do not require hospitalization. Hmmm..
stinger
Yesterday Barr said that Craig Carpenito would serve as acting US attorney in New York until Jay Clayton could be confirmed. Barr can’t keep his story straight for 24 hours.
joel hanes
@Jinchi:
Loomis is thin-skinned, arrogant, contemptuous of those who disagree with him, and vindictive.
Within the last week, a regular and liberal commenter at LGM told Loomis straight out that a particular series of Loomis articles had been wrong and destructive, and Loomis kickbanned him.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
huh, Berman’s out. I was hoping he’d force the issue if only to further embarrass trump and his goon. My optimistic take is he knows his successor better than Barr does, and she’s one of those fabled “career DoJ” people
jl
@stinger: I read that threatened revolts in DC DOJ and SDNY forced Barr to change the appointment, and there was time to parcel out some investigations to make them harder to stop.
Also, that now every burp and fart of the SDNY will be tied up in court as illegit.
I don’t understand the law of it, just what I read.
zzyzx
I don’t like thinking of herd immunity as an all or nothing approach. I see it as being on a continuum where getting 20% or so of the population immune is helpful by itself because it slows the spread of future waves.
I’d also be very dubious as to any claim right now of what percentage of US citizens might have antibodies. There was so little testing in the first month or two that there’s no way of knowing based on case count. 1% feels really low since we know .7% of the country has had positive tests and there’s no way that we were testing close to everyone.
jl
@zzyzx: Unless you get to 75 or 80 percent of herd immunity, the peak of a subsequent wave won’t be reduced enough to avoid a health system meltdown. It does slow progress from an outbreak to explosive exponential expansion of a new epidemic wave somewhat, and give a lot more time for contact tracing and isolation to shut down a new big epidemic wave. Fifty percent can do a lot for the latter, not much for the former.
Edit: you can design shutdown and other stringent and costly control policies to get a soft landing at herd immunity. But the problem for the current ‘herd immunity’ proponents, is that a well-designed approach requires the very intrusive and costly social controls that they claim their approach will avoid. The Swedish herd immunity epidemic guru seemed to think that Sweden could have a rip roaring full blown epidemic and then magically stop it as soon as herd immunity was achieved. To the dismay and howls of most of Swedish epi community. And then it turns out that they were nowhere near herd immunity, just as he said it was just a week or two away. A huge policy fail for Sweden
Edit2: though, one point for Sweden over the US, that from what I read, the Swedish epi guru who ran their herd immunity program had the guts and integrity to admit the plan failed. Though, small consolation to all the dead and maimed, and the people who knew them.
joel hanes
@zzyzx:
getting 20% or so of the population immune is helpful by itself
It is helpful, but to a small degree.
Because of the exponential nature of the infection mechanism, a 20% immunity level doesn’t make an appreciable difference in the outcome.
zzyzx
@jl:
I see it as a piece. I’m sure the math is more complicated than the simplistic view, but if the R0 is 2.0 but 20% of the population is immune, it’s suddenly 1.6 for free. It’s easier to go from 1.6 to under 1 than 2.0, so we can have fewer restrictions at that point than we would have to do otherwise.
JPL
So even Pence is forgoing his outdoor rally speech. sad
jl
@zzyzx: As long as adequate early surveillance, contact tracing and isolation program is ready to go, there is some benefit.
Ken
Too expensive. Just put up cardboard cutouts. Trump doesn’t wear his glasses so he won’t be able to tell.
zzyzx
@jl: I’ll be curious to see what happens when Spain and Italy reopen for real.
If they don’t have new peaks, I’ll be tentatively hopeful that we’ll be avoiding worst cases. So far the northeast isn’t getting hit hard as they reopen. But I want more data before making predictions. It was just a few weeks ago where the consensus here was that we’d be seeing 3000 deaths a day in the US by now. It’s being very weird and I don’t have a good grasp on what’s going on.
jl
@Ken: there must be a lot of Trump cardboard cut-outs left over from his crooked university that were used for his personal appearances and individual student counseling.
TheronWare
Wait, no overflow crowd?! Ahahahahahahahaha!
jl
@zzyzx: you can read the detailed country covid-19 policies for Europe here (I hope they expand their covid-19 coverage worldwide soon, like their non-covid-19 policy database)
European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies
https://www.euro.who.int/en/about-us/partners/observatory
I think the best place to look at the stats is
Our World in Data covid-19
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus
More and more countries are learning tricks to do a meaningful reopening without big second waves and spikes, so far. But it has been over a month since some countries have taken big steps like reopening schools, and so far they are able to manage it.
Edit: IMHO, as noted above, something about covid-19 spread is very sensitive to details of the control methods. Australia managed to keep its schools partially open throughout their initial response, UK blew it and had to close again two weeks after reopening.
OTOH, Australia did its homework, and they did some very detailed studies of school outbreaks in order to understand how they work in their own school systems, details re staff precautions, class size, room ventilation and floorplans, etc. UK is run by goofs almost as bad as the US. That explains some of the difference.
Michael Cain
@Martin:
The CRS, writing a few years ago, expressed the opinion that based on the admittedly thin case law, if Trump simply appointed someone under the Federal Vacancies Act, that appointment would take precedent over the district court’s appointment. Of course, neither Trump nor Barr have said a word about grabbing someone that has already been approved by the Senate for some other post and making them a US Attorney immediately but temporarily.
The damage that a reelected Trump could do with the Federal Vacancies Act, the pool of a few hundred people who have already been approved by the Senate for this or that post, and a willingness to shuffle the bodies around every 210 days is terrifying.
Kent
@Martin: I’m not quibbling with anything you just wrote. I’m sure there are extensive ways that our math curriculum could be revamped and improved.
I’m just quibbling with the general notion that statistics should replace algebra in the mid-level HS curriculum (10th or 11th grade).
As a science teacher I’m frankly not really that close to the big discussions about the best ways to teach math. What I do know teaching physics and chemistry is that most students come in pretty weak in basic algebra and that is the biggest barrier to them being successful in physics and chemistry.
mrmoshpotato
stinger
@Matt McIrvin: I’d like to postpone my inevitable hospitalization and death as long as possible, if that’s all right with Mr. Loomis.
Brachiator
@Martin:
I distinctly remember using the math I was learning in class in chemistry and physics classes. We even had this wild practical experiment involving going onto the roof of the school building and using geometry to calculate some distances.
But I was on a science track where I was going to hit the big three, biology, chemistry and physics. Math, the way it was being taught, seemed totally irrelevant to students just taking a general science course.
But it’s funny. We didn’t learn to balance a checking account or do household budgeting, but still a lot of kids could hold a lot of sports stats in their heads or used math when doing car repairs or other stuff. The key was connecting what was taught in class to every day life.
ETA. Never learned any accounting in high school or college. Had to pick that all up later.
Martin
@Kent: As Brachiator notes, context is really important. For people like me who take fairly naturally to pure math, we can push through just fine. But most students aren’t like that – all math teachers are, though.
It would be ideal if the math topics were coordinated with the science topics to reinforce that learning each way. The segregated model makes that harder, but integrated gives a lot more flexibility when topics are presented and reinforced.
And too much of both of the math and science curriculum is geared toward mastery of that discipline, and not enough to broader literacy. That would involve practical topics like balancing a household budget and maybe sports stats (why not) but in the sciences, it would be less about stoichiometry and more about recognizing if a article about a pandemic is bullshit or not, just through basic critical thinking, understanding how we validate science, and so on.
It’s not like the universities aren’t going to run students through the whole chemistry curriculum anyway, so it’s okay if we leave some of the technical science out of HS in favor of basic scientific literacy for everyone.
Scientists can do less to save us in this time than idiots can do harm by denying that Covid is even a thing.
J R in WV
I see on CNN that Trump couldn’t fill his little Oklahoma arena, and the stage for the outdoor speechifying is being torn down without any need to address a big overflow crowd.
And it will be hard to blame it all on the demonstrations, as only a 100 or so folks are there to oppose Trumpism, and they aren’t next to the arena nor blocking access at all.
All this is good news for America, of course.
MisterForkbeard
@mrmoshpotato: That looks like less than half full – almost no one on the top seats and some amount of open seats in the lower areas. Ouch.
Another Scott
@Kent: I still vaguely remember a problem in one of my undergrad physics classes. Only one person in class got it right, because he remembered the old “complete the square” trick to solve it. :-/
Math is a huge field and its useful in many, many areas. But, like anything, if people don’t use it, they forget it. I don’t know the best way to structure the curriculum, but given the advances in software tools like Mathematica, I’m not sure that teaching people the various (kinda) tricky techniques to solve algebraic equations by hand, etc., is that useful anymore. It’s probably better to (somehow) teach people how to get an intuitive feeling for orders-of-magnitude in a solution, and how to think about problems clearly, and how to pick the tools to solve the problem at hand.
I sorta wish that I remembered how to take square roots by hand, but not enough to actually look it up. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
trnc
True, but the downside for him is that ignoring the rising case numbers will look even more stupid in hindsight as cases spike in that area.
Feathers
@Kent: I think Martin mentioned the integrated approach above. My understanding is that this is how the rest of the world does it and why they do better in math. You teach a little bit of algebra, geometry, trig, statistics each year. Then when that unit comes around next year, you do a review of what you learned the year before, and then move on. Much more retention when you come back to the same concepts year after year, instead of cramming for a test in something you’re never going to see again.