I reflexively dislike sentences that begin, “The Democrats need to…” because what follows is often nonsense. Maybe this is too, but given our increasingly urgent situation with the pandemic, perhaps the Democrats need to release a comprehensive national plan to fix it. Now.
Politically, that’s almost certainly a bad idea — Trump and his Republican enablers are stomping their own dicks in golf spikes daily, so why interrupt them? Any realistic plan to get the virus under control will require pain, which means it will present copious opportunities for demagoguery. So politically, it’s probably best to let Republicans self destruct as denial blows up in their faces.
But politics aside, can we afford to wait until Trump is defeated and Congress turns over to fully address the scope of this problem? Don’t ordinary people — who are about to get increasingly desperate as housing, food and education insecurity rise — need to hear the straight dope on what it will take to tamp this down?
Biden has a plan, and it’s a good one within the confines of a presidential campaign. But it assumes the country will be largely salvageable after six more months of this dystopian shit-show. I don’t know about y’all, but every day, I grow less confident of that.
Maybe the thing to do is to level with people. I don’t just mean Joe Biden as the party’s presidential nominee but the Democrats as the opposition party at every level — starting with the schools issue since Trump helpfully raised it and back-to-school time is filling parents with fresh dread on a number of levels. Here’s an outline:
- We CAN and SHOULD reopen schools around Labor Day
- The only way to do it safely is to get the virus under control right now
- That will require another 3-week shutdown followed by phased reopening using scientific data to guide policy (since Trump squandered the gains of the original, piecemeal state shutdowns by bullying governors into prematurely reopening states)
- Congress must provide another — more generous — round of stimulus to families and businesses, plus fund local governments and schools, to get through this hardship
- A massive mobilization of people and materials must take place now so that proper testing, tracking and tracing assets are in place for reopening schools and businesses to avoid repeating the Republicans’ failed spring strategy
Democrats at various levels have said all or some of this, so maybe we can reach a broad consensus on this or a similar plan. None of it will happen in the short term because Trump is the POTUS, Mitch McConnell runs the Senate and between 27% and 40% of our fellow citizens are morons.
But my sense is the majority — the real “Silent Majority,” as opposed to the 1968 fantasy bloc Trump keeps tweet-screaming about — is starting to understand that it’s going to take something this drastic to get out of the fix we’re in. They’re looking for answers.
We can’t go on ping-ponging between half-assed responses and denial, not unless we want to experience Great Depression II and massively fail a generation of children. And while Democrats don’t have the power to enact a national plan, they have a platform to tell people the truth — with one voice — about what it’s going to take to end this nightmare and get on with life as every other industrialized country on earth has done or is doing.
Maybe my perspective is off because I’m sitting in the most failed of the failed states right now (12K new infections announced today after yesterday’s record-breaking 15K — and that’s with the books cooked!), but this sure seems like an existential crisis to me. It’s all well and good for Governor Cuomo to say he’ll quarantine visitors from Florida, but how does he enforce that without throwing up roadblocks at state borders?
This thing is bigger than any single campaign, so the response has to be bigger too. We tried Trump’s “let’s pretend it will go away” plan. It failed. It’s going to take a national mobilization on the order of WWII to tamp this virus down to levels where it can be managed. Democrats can’t do that without power, but we can build consensus now for what must eventually be done, and that’s a start.
Kropacetic
The Democrats need to win
ETA: The Dems are putting out plans to deal with the pandemic; several, as they touch on different parts of society that were all affected. It would be good to have a single focal initiative that brought attention to the disparate initiatives. It could serve as a singular shiny object that may just focus media attention on the policy making role of government for once.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
I have a lot of confidence that Biden is already working on this. One of the best things about him is that he will listen to people who know what the fuck they’re talking about, and it’s unthinkable that they aren’t hammering this daily when they talk to him.
hitchhiker
I’m also wondering exactly how the next few months can possibly play out without immediate, focused, nationwide strategy. It’s just impossible to believe that we don’t have it, but …. here we are. I just saw that something like 1 in 100 Americans has/has had the virus. GREAT! Given that we need 70% of us to have it before we reach herd immunity, that just means we have to endure the last few months SEVENTY MORE TIMES.
Every time I see Ron Klain on television I ask myself what will be left by the time he gets to take charge in January.
JoyceH
Any plan the Democrats issue NOW needs an appendix – what the states and local governments can and should do in the event that the federal government does nothing. Because it seems to me that if Biden says ‘we ought to do this’, that’s a slam dunk guarantee that the Trump administration will do anything other than this.
Baud
Two thorny issues.
1. A plan announced today will become obsolete very quickly, so you’ll have to keep announcing new plans between now and election day.
2. The plan has to be somewhat consistent with what Pelosi thinks she can achieve in the House right now, which complicates the coordination process.
schrodingers_cat
K-12 schools open in the last week of August in many places. Do you think that time is enough for Texas, Florida and Arizona to flatten their curves. It has taken NY over 3 months to get there.
JoyceH
@hitchhiker: Now they’re saying it looks like having had COVID doesn’t grant you immunity for anything more than months at the most – if that’s true, there’s no such thing as herd immunity here.
schrodingers_cat
Please everyone go back to your Algebra text and open the page to exponential increase
The same function governs the spread of the virus that does the dynamics of a nuclear reaction.
Social distancing == carbon rods that absorb the excess neutrons
Without that we get a runaway exponential increase. Yes let’s add the kindling of 50 million school children and everyone associated with k-12 education to this raging fire.
Plan A is to get the spread (infection rate) under control without that no plan is going to survive its engagement with reality for more than a couple of weeks at most.
Dread
By the time January rolls around, it’ll be too late. There won’t be a way to put the genie back in the bottle.
MattF
If, somehow, Senate Republicans would go along, then, yeah, it could happen. But… . Sigh.
JoyceH
If the states would just close the bars and restaurants, outlaw large gatherings and MANDATE (with fines) mask wearing in public, that would certainly put a dent in the situation. But I just don’t see how they can reopen the schools for a full M-F schedule for everyone, not without tripling the size of the schools. Schools just weren’t built to be able to hold that many kids six feet apart.
Barbara
Yes. Short of politicians, including but not limited to Governor DeathSentence, having a brain transplant, Dems should try to exert maximum pressure to help PEOPLE and SCHOOLS.
p.a.
CLEEK’S LAW!!! If theBiden admin says A, 30%-40% of the country (overall) will do Z, and sadly they aren’t all concentrated in the confederacy. They’ll go so nuts it will make Obama Derangement Syndrome look moderate. Led by Fux News and hateradio. That’s enough stupid to spike any successful plan. We’re fucked. The stoopid seeds of the last 2 generations are really blooming.
schrodingers_cat
@JoyceH: Haven’t many sports teams had to shut down their practice sessions because of COVID-19 and they are not lacking in resources.
Ocotillo
Related but slightly off topic, the stock market seems to have been doing quite well despite the cluster response to the pandemic. I have been kicking myself for not jumping on the wagon back when the initial collapse was going on but I feared common sense would prevail and the masters of the universe would realize, things can’t really grow until we have some sort of control over the virus. Alas, they are buying up stocks like nobody’s business.
Again, I have been feeling like a I missed the boat but something in the news shook me to my core. Something close to a third of July 1 mortgage payments are being missed or late. Sh*t is gonna get real quick as that continues.
schrodingers_cat
At the very least.
R0 < 1 for schools to start
So besides some New England states and NY and NJ opening schools where the infection is raging is not a great idea.
Being alive is better than being dead.
Gravenstone
The only problem with a national anything right now are the interrelated facts:
So we’re basically doomed to slog our way through until January, knowing that the toll in lost lives and avoidable misery is going to be just immense.
That said, Biden and his team absolutely need to have a plan and be prepared to hit the ground running. Unfortunately that plan is also going to have to deal with the aftermath of all the deaths and other misery that could have been avoided if we currently had even the vestige of a functional federal response. And that’s the part that the Republicans are most likely to weaponize against us in ’22 and ’24.
Cheryl Rofer
My governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, was interviewed on a Washington Post webcast today. She said she’s tried to coordinate with adjacent states, particularly with respect to the Navajo Nation, and could not get cooperation from the governors. Of course those governors are Republicans.
I agree with Betty that we need coordination. But I just don’t see how we get it. Greg Abbott and Doug Ducey are playing catch-up now, so there’s much less in common with New Mexico, which is seeing slight increases and shutting things down to deal with them. And I doubt that those men, those Republican men, would ever want to cooperate with a Democratic woman who is doing better than they are.
Barbara
@Ocotillo: The guy at the WaPo (someone I rarely agree with) ascribes the — in his view — inexplicable market rise to “FOMO” activity, as in “fear of missing out,” because a lot of people who panicked and sold everything in 2008 missed the rise over the next few years. No idea whether he is right, but everyone is just speculating.
JPL
Yeah.. Did you all know that Biden and Obama stopped the testing… According to Aaron Rupar, trump’s rambling today.
dmsilev
@schrodingers_cat: LA just announced that school will continue to be remote for the indefinite future.
glc
Too late for Labor Day, it would probably take that long just to formulate a usable plan; and it has to be funded, and there is substantial construction work and training needed. Too late for Fall 2020, apparently.
Here’s a recent take: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/13/america-schools-coronavirus-covid-19-children
Given that schools can’t open safely, we need to have a plan that takes into account the reality of the situation. I’m frankly more concerned about the psychological impact than the educational impact of the situation.
LongHairedWeirdo
One troubling, but maybe helpful, thought is this: if the Democrats can put up a plan that is scientific, and draws a clear distinction between whatever the heck the Republicans want to do, it will make it more clear that only one side is actually thinking about this. The troubling thought is, we know damn well the Republicans might do something else, just to try to own the libs.
Mary G
@schrodingers_cat:
@schrodingers_cat:
Gotta agree with SC here. There is no fucking way
is achievable in any way given the lack of testing supplies and PPE across the whole country, not to mention the avalanche of new cases bearing down on us, and the active malfeasance of the Republicans. Even if you could find a Dumbledore to magically stand up a thousand factories they could not do it in time. Nor find enough teachers not at risk. Nor get kids to cooperate with the needed distancing and somehow expand schools to fit them. Or get cooperation from a significant percentage of the population who still think they are bullet proof because they’re white and have money.
Democrats would be better telling the truth that WASF and there’s no way to safely open schools in 90% of the country and the only way to get going in the right direction is to vote out Republicans and put the country on an actual war footing where everyone has to pitch in and make sacrifices.
Brachiator
Sounds like a line from Hamilton.
But very true.
Trump is afraid to put forward a national plan. He’s stuck. He is afraid to act, but still wants praise and credit for solving the problem.
And the nation has to suffer because of Trump’s psychological problems.
Mary G
Another killer ad from Biden:
Dorothy A. Winsor
My kindergarten-teacher DIL tells me her school is trying to create a plan that allows parents and teachers to choose some combination that ranges from all FTF to all online. Her doctor says she cannot go into a classroom under current circumstances, so she would be allowed to opt for all online, but if she doesn’t she doesn’t know what grade she’d be asked to teach. She’d like to know that far enough ahead to do some preparation.
mrmoshpotato
@schrodingers_cat:
How many weeks do they need to flatten the curve? Can they do it with all of the Trump trash (including governors) still having their heads shoved up their asses?
Nicole
I just don’t see schools opening safely anytime before January. I think a lot of them will open this fall, run 3-4 weeks and then have to close due to outbreaks. This virus is too contagious and too few people are really sticking to all the things we have in our own power to do to minimize transmission.
I’m a horse racing fan, which has been running for a few months now (with no audience, but as horse racing depends on gambling dollars, no one cares if there’s anyone in the stands), but in the past week, more than a few top jockeys have tested positive for Covid-19; and it’s likely because they’ve been traveling from track to track, rather than staying at one track. Which was so freaking stupid, but there you are.
I absolutely agree, a national plan is needed; I just don’t know how you make a really effective one, when the two most important things people can do are two things that are really inconvenient- wearing a mask and not traveling. And we Americans HATE being inconvenienced.
geg6
We are one month from the first students moving into our dorm. Class schedules are still being adjusted, we don’t yet have a plan for how my department is going to go back to the office, no one has communicated how we plan to do the usual due diligence we always do during move in (going over payment and options for making payment and getting a plan on paper that the student signs) and what our welcome week will be like. There are so many unanswered questions. I think our administration, both the University-wide and the campus level, has done as good a job as I could expect and I’m sure they have a lot more information than I do, but I just don’t know how all of this is going to work. And I have grave doubts it will. I do know that we still have a lot of out-of-state students coming (both new students and returners) and I wonder if they will have to quarantine if coming from places like Florida, Texas, California (probably where most of our OOS students are from). Masks will be required everywhere on campus, inside and out, which the University will provide two to everyone, and there will be hand sanitizer everywhere. Rooms that were never meant to be used as classrooms are being used as classrooms for larger class sizes (our largest class is probably ENGL 15 or MATH 140), mostly freshman gen eds. My hat is off to our physical plant people for figuring this all out. Resident students will be assigned to “pods” for social interactions in the dorm. A lot is done, but so much is still nebulous. And who knows if these carefully considered plans will be completely upended by a surge in our county? A county that went full Trump/GOP the last few years and had a mask compliance of about 20-30% until the Governor made them mandatory statewide a week or so ago?
I just don’t know what to think at this point.
Betty Cracker
@LongHairedWeirdo:
Yeah, that was the main point I was trying to make. We can’t really do anything right now for lack of power, but the Republicans are offering nothing except a deeper hole. I think that’s starting to dawn on people.
Brachiator
But politics aside, can we afford to wait until Trump is defeated and Congress turns over to fully address the scope of this problem?
Conservatives are getting increasingly desperate. Some are insisting that a vast left wing conspiracy is trying to bring Trump down. For example:
Everyone should be asking what Trump’s plan is to reduce infections and to rescue the economy. His plans. Not the Democrats.
NotMax
’20-’21 school year schedule in Hawaii runs from August 4 through May 28.
Expecting that many individual schools will be in shutdown again come Labor Day.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@schrodingers_cat: LA and San Diego schools will be on-line this fall, Gov. Gav. is shutting down gyms, hair saloons, and churches. California is going back on lockdown.
JoyceH
I don’t know about anyone else, but when I go out in public, I’m going with mask and face shield. The mask protects you from me, the shield protects me from you. Both items inexpensive, I expect to be on the leading edge. Heck, come 2021, I expect everyone who can afford it to be sporting PAPR equipment.
prostratedragon
Of course the schools should be able to open soon. The fact that they can’t, or that it was unwise to do so, will be apparent before long, and this should be something that “the Democrats as the opposition party at every level” can campaign on, including making some proposals. They could be distributed instead of being in all cases an explicit Presidential platform.
True, the GOP will vilify any Dem proposal, and do nothing, but that vilification and nothing-doing will not be any worse than the nothing that they’re doing vitriolicly right now. And it will give the Dems something to be committed to and begin to act on as soon as possible in January.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@JoyceH:
THIS!
Princess Leia
Newsom announcing CA shutting down all non-essential indoor activities on most counties.
mrmoshpotato
@JoyceH:
“Gubbermint tyrannity!”
“Waaaahhhhhh!!!!!!! I can’t go get shit-faced at my favorite artisanal sushi bar with my friends!”
JoyceH
@NotMax: ”
’20-’21 school year schedule in Hawaii runs from August 4 through May 28.
Expecting that many individual schools will be in shutdown again come Labor Day.”
Perhaps Hawaii could move most of their classes outdoors. They have the ideal climate for it – not too hot, not too cold.
Ken
It’s looking like that will be a necessary first step, but how to accomplish it? I’d prefer not to wait for the rioting mobs with guillotines.
JPL
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I’m sorry about your car window being broken.
Cheryl Rofer
@mrmoshpotato:
If the states with increasing cases shut down completely now, their cases would still increase for a few weeks because of the delays built into the virus – mostly the incubation periods. Since we know they’re not going to shut down completely, it will take much longer than that. If they’re lucky or apply necessary restrictions NOW, the increase might turn around by early August. More likely September, though.
Probably not.
kindness
Sorry Betty but I think there are many issues where we will all have to just hang on till January 22, 2021 as there won’t be any answers or help till then. I hope we still have a country come then really.
Cheryl Rofer
Ken
That may provide some useful data on how long it takes to move from the new “bruised red” category back to yellow or green. Florida, on the other hand, seems determined to add another color to the charts.
mrmoshpotato
@p.a.:
And the selfish seeds, though they really bloomed in 2016.
“Fuck Hillary! I’m not gonna vote!”
Hoodie
@schrodingers_cat:
This is not complicated. As Cuomo explained in his presser today, NYS is probably the example of best practices. There is no state with greater expertise, the numbers prove their success. Their guidelines require stage 4 and a 7-day average positive test rate of less than 5% to open schools, and shut down of the schools if it goes above 9. There are very few states with the population density of NY that are in that condition, and the ones that do have that kind of population density mostly border NY and took similar measures.
Three weeks lockdown will not be nearly enough for several of the states to meet those requirements even if they lock down, and most won’t do anything near an adequate lock down. For states that do lock down, I would say the delay for the start of school for these places would be a minimum 6 weeks. Reduction measures take forever to kick in because of the exponential growth and the long delay between incubation and hospitalization/death. If no shelter in place, then it will take longer to reach the desired numbers, if ever. Yes, masks undoubtedly help, but compliance is spotty and may not be as effective once you get to high infection rates.
If it were up to me, I would keep schools closed until these numbers are met, no exceptions. At the same time, close bars, end in-person dining and other unnecessary indoor activities that we now are pretty certain to lead to spread. Put more work into improving on-line education, focus on helping the most at risk. Those are worthwhile things to do anyway. If I were Biden, I would have an accelerated infrastructure plan ready to go, maybe even talking to local and state pols to identify some candidates.
People have to quit fudging on what represents adequate results based on emotional needs because that is part of what has led to the current situation. I know people have sincere reasons for wanting to open up schools, but fudging on opening schools out of wishful thinking or a bleeding heart just feeds more laxness about other preventative measures. For example, allowing restaurants to open here led to stupid litigation to allow bowling alleys to open. Idiotic. A lot of people will (wrongly) assume that the schools being open means everything is ok. The schools are the one huge piece of leverage the government has to influence behavior because they run the schools. All those people wanting to juice the economy know that you have to have the schools open for business activity to really pick up, but that is not the reason to open schools. You open schools because the kids need it and only if it’s safe to do so. If you hold out the opening of schools as a potential reward for wearing masks and other measures, then maybe we have a chance of getting this under control. Open the schools under the current conditions and that leverage is gone, perhaps permanently. You may not get a second chance and we’ll move on to the hellish dystopia Trump and his cultists have in mind for the country.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I’d announce a $3000 per head stimulus for households up to 5 persons with a family AGI of 200K and under. Extend the PUA through January 1, 2021. Complete student loan write off, and medicaid extensions to everyone who qualifies for PUA benefits. Essential workers (hospital, cops, fire, EMTs, grocery and food distribution) get the PUA as well. Make those jobs joyful as possible. Use the DPA to force manufacture, not to scavenge orders.
Tell the wealthy “you’ve been given great deals for years while calling for ‘tough choices’. This is the tough choice we are opting for now – cough up a 12% surtax, and, while we’re at it, we’re eliminating favorable short term treatment of capital gains, and choose to give positive treatment to dividends. Also, enjoy your new transaction tax for every trade that happens outside a qualified pension fund, 401K or 457B.”
Mandatory rent and mortgage moratoriums with assistance to note and lease holders for debt service, insurance, and property taxes.
You might not be able to reopen in August, but October or November would be possible.
artem1s
Mary G
MisterForkbeard
@Betty Cracker: Right. I think your plan is probably a good one, but it has to be presaged with a “Things aren’t going to line up according to plan. We need to do these things right now if we’re going to have any hope at all of opening most schools before Labor Day, and chances are it will still have to be delayed.
This is the criteria we’re going to use to propose school re-openings and limited economic re-openings, and this is how we get there. Starting today.”
ETA: Regarding the point that politically it might be better for Dems to just shut up, I think that’s true for now but problematic in September and October. We have to show that we’ve had strong, evidence-based plans that would have saved lives and the economy, and we need to make the point now that there’s an alternative to the cockwaffle’s “Live with it” response.
Take a few hits on the plan being insufficient or hard, but the important thing is that 2-3 months down the road we can truthfully say “We laid out a plan that would have let you keep your job, your house, and would have saved your family member’s life. And it was ignored by Republicans. The only way to fix this is to get rid of Republicans and elect people who actually care about you and about governing, and to let them back in.”
raven
I probably shouldn’t keep doing this but there are plenty of people who think this is all bullshit.
That would be Pat Lang
He also has a screed on what killers Obama and Biden were and how, if Biden wins, it will resume. Don’t underestimate these motherfuckers.
dmsilev
@JoyceH: Most people in my neck of the woods wear masks or cobbled-together equivalents. Face shields are unusual, maybe 10% at most of people out on the streets. However, workers in food stores etc. are much more likely to be wearing both.
Makes sense.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
Repurpose infrastructure. “Neighborhood Remote Learning Hubs” – formerly known as “bars.”
//
@JoyceH
August heat can be brutal.
Nicole
And it’s a good point- that the Democrats should offer up a comprehensive, national plan, as there’s no downside. If the GOP takes them up on it, good, fewer people die. If they continue to cling to magical thinking and make things worse, the Dems go into the fall campaign saying, “Your kids COULD HAVE been safely back at school and the economy COULD HAVE been on its way to recovery if our plan had been adopted.”
Would their plan work? We don’t know, of course, but heck, make the GOP own the shitshow by offering an alternative.
JoyceH
@NotMax: “August heat can be brutal.”
Really? In Hawaii? I lived there in the ’80s and it rarely got above the low 80s. I don’t recall it ever getting scorching like the mainland does.
Mary G
Note: I took out the hyphens that must have been a list function but messed up the formatting on the embed.
dmsilev
@Mary G: He really has given up everything except the whole culture war thing, hasn’t he?
MisterForkbeard
@Nicole: This. We need to show a plan to fix the problem. Biden and Pelosi and Schumer should all go big on it. Publicize it.
Granted, it requires a national plan (Trump can’t do this) and coordination with states and counties to make decisions. But you can outline all of that and talk about incentives, pre-requisites for opening, etc.
If Republicans start taking elements of the plan, take credit for it. If they don’t, show that we had a plan that would have kept people you know alive and you would have gotten to keep your house, your job, your life. And it was ignored by Republicans and ridiculed so they could keep Trump happy.
Lay it on Republicans. It’s their fault this happened to you. They didn’t even try.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@JoyceH:
I wonder if we are going to end up rotating which students attend school on which days. You can space students out more if 20% or more of the students are at home that day. Parents can better plan their work schedules around which day or two the student is home. Students will do better if they are getting at least some in-person instruction.
MisterForkbeard
@Mary G: Good. We should have done this a few weeks ago.
Mary G
Haven’t seen Imm in a while, but saw a tweet that said Rice is setting up outdoor classrooms and hope the Immp is doing well.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@raven:
something that’s gotten lost in the last few weeks: didn’t FL have a startling increase in deaths due to pneumonia staring in around April?
Kay
PPP Loans in an easy search. Courtesy of Propublica
Kelly
@Ocotillo: The Big Cap corps that dominate the uptick make enough money in countries that managed the plague better that the US.
https://twitter.com/ritholtz/status/1282678166046126080
?BillinGlendaleCA
@JPL: Thanks, nothing was taken so I think it may have been an accident(gardeners and weekwackers). I’m having it replaced tomorrow morning.
NotMax
@JoyceH
Yeah, it’s changed. 90 used to be practically unheard of. Now periods of 94, 95, 96 and thereabouts a regularity.
More than a few mid-90s days already this July.
raven
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Dunno
Crashman06
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: My kid’s district mentioned this as a possibility when we took a parent survey about possible reopening over the weekend. I could live with this. We’re in a state with low numbers right now so hopefully it could work for us.
Kay
I don’t know about the plan. People are just really anxious. I wonder if there’s a way he could just do a talk with a small group? Online obviously, but they ask him questions, he responds.
Trump never talks to people, he talks at them. The contrast would be beneficial.
Betty Cracker
@Nicole: To his credit, Biden has done/is doing something like that — putting a mitigation plan out there and saying “this is what needs to happen, Trump should do it now, and if he won’t, I will when I’m sworn in.” It’s just that things are spiraling out of control so fast.
NotMax
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Hawaii already announced plan to institute six feet apart if students are facing each other, three feet separation if they’re facing the same way.
IMHO that should prove workable for about an hour, tops.
MisterForkbeard
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: IIRC, this was partially debunked. There was a large increase, but it wasn’t 3-4x like the numbers originally looked. Maybe a 50% increase or so.
That said, Florida has been proven to be cooking the books on fatalities repeatedly, including changing their criteria so less covid appears in the stats – but also just straight cooking the books and falsifying data.
mrmoshpotato
@LongHairedWeirdo: Shit. The Democratic party doesn’t even need to do that. Just reprint the stories of PPE-seizing mobster shit and the virus explosions in Russthuglican-controlled states.
Ken
@raven: The rate of deaths per the whole population is a really stupid move, because the number can only go up over the next few weeks. So I expect he’ll drop that, if he ever revisits this.
The rate of deaths per infections is only moderately stupid, and an easy one to make. As many people have pointed out – I think including David Anderson on this blog – deaths lag infections, so both the daily and cumulative rates appear lower than the actual. That’s especially so when an area has a high exponential growth rate, since the majority of cases will be under two weeks old.
JPL
@mrmoshpotato: trump also removed CDC workers from China in October of 2019.
Kay
What if they made it almost like a forum, where people can talk about what they did and what happened to them during the pandemic and then ask him questions (or not- he can just respond as he sees fit).
I just notice people all have their stories. “I was furloughed and I got unemployment and then we cancelled our trip…”. There are worse stories than that, obviously. Dying. We just had an entire larger law office that had to quarantine. They’re all still getting tested.
Baud
This may be a good time to test our theory about Cleek’s Law. Biden should propose everyone breathe directly into faces of five other people, and then we’ll see if Trump and GOP governors start imposing mask mandates and social distancing.
Patricia Kayden
Ken
I’m sure Hawaii’s high schoolers will rise to the challenge and demonstrate their creativity by composing a lot of dirty jokes based on these directional guidelines.
Peale
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: high school at home because those kids can look after themselves. Grade school kids spread into the high schools.
mrmoshpotato
@Brachiator: Dump’s not too afraid to put forward national plan. He’s too stupid, too selfish and too traitorous.
He thought the presidency was going to cause everyone to kiss his fat, orange ass ala Russia, North Korea, etc.
Barbara
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Indeed. That’s the plan in Virginia. It’s also the plan for reopening all of our US offices.
Kay
The theme would be that Americans did better with the pandemic than the Trump Administration. Make it us versus them. We (mostly, in the beginning) did what we were supposed to do. They divided us and then did nothing to help us.
raven
@Ken: That was this morning, this is now
?BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Will Pat volunteer to part of the 1.6%?
Barbara
@Mary G: So, let’s just pretend the real crisis doesn’t exist or has gone away and gin up a fake crisis that lets Trump fly his bully colors at full mast. How much longer, exactly, will anyone keep up the pretense that he isn’t just sort of delusional at this point?
raven
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Funny you should ask “I have had some of these symptoms for months, but they have not been severe enough to force me into a hospital. IMO, for an old man to let the medicos decide to intubate and hook him up to a ventilator is suicidal.”
Baud
@raven: Thankfully, those percentages cannot change.
mrmoshpotato
@Nicole:
It’s a shame the Greatest Generation can’t come back in the prime to smack some of their descendants.
Nicole
@Betty Cracker:
You’re so right, and it’s so infuriating because NYS was RIGHT THERE in front of the nation’s eyes. Jesus, learn from all of our mistakes, rest of the country! We were back when the CDC was telling us not to wear masks! But, as @Hoodie: said, states fudged results based on emotional needs, and it’s turned into a disaster. This is by far the most interesting time I have lived in, and it sucks.
zzyzx
I go back and forth about a national plan, mainly because there’s only so much will for a shutdown, so I feel like it should be coordinated for the most effective local timing. Part of our problem now is that we locked down places that weren’t hit yet, and as a result, they’re not willing to do it again.
But, to be honest, I’m not sure what the end game is anymore. It looks like locking down only works until you loosen up and then it comes back. If the idea was to flatten the curve, we have to be flexible with the rules and loosen and tighten based on how the community is doing. I mean obviously, testing still needs to improve along with some sort of tracing, but outside of that, and getting universal mask usage, I don’t know what the next step is.
…but it looks a lot different here in the Pacific Northwest where we’ve just been getting 50-150 new cases a day by Seattle for months now. We haven’t had the exponential growth curve…
Nicole
“What these whippersnappers need,” they would say, “is a nice ten-year Depression. Along with a Dust Bowl. And then follow it up with a World War; the second in 20 years. Then they’ll learn about inconveniences.”
Ruckus
We are all screwed.
Got that out of the way. But it is the best we can expect, as shitforbrains not only won’t do anything positive, he is completely incapable of doing anything in any way positive. And governors are constrained by our shitty politics and by shitforbrains, to be able to do anything except lockdowns. We have the police, which seems to be able to only do the wrong things at the wrong time, so that’s not helpful. We have real life still going on, with all it’s attendant issues, health, economy, safety, all the while we are having a situation which the world really hasn’t seen the likes of and a political system that seems to reward abject stupidity.
We are screwed. So what do we do?
If Joe Biden does much that undercuts shitforbrains, that will cause shitforbrains to react worse than he’s doing now. If Biden doesn’t, that lessens our possible recovery, because shitforbrains wants us to fail, that after all is what whomever is paying him wants and it’s the most likely outcome, given his history from birth. We have to depend on governors. That means that some states are going to get a lot worse before this has any possibility to turn around, because some are as dumb as shitforbrains.
We are screwed. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. And realistically I see no real way other than hunker down and protect your self and your families. We don’t have a working federal government, we won’t have the day Joe Biden takes over so between now and whenever, I think we are all on our own. We can band together online but other than that…….
Hate to say all that, but reality is a harsh and ugly mister.
HumboldtBlue
@NotMax:
Wow, I was in Hawai’i from 87-92 and I don’t think it ever got to 90,
raven
@Ruckus: And I’ve had the second AC unit in 2 months go down!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@mrmoshpotato: Greatest Generation were the Reagan Democrats.
Ruckus
@zzyzx:
Lockdown only works when it’s harsh enough and long enough. That means that the exposed people have to resolve without exposing too many more to the virus. They have to recover or die. If you open up too soon there are carriers who will infect more people and it can grow again, just as we have seen and are seeing. I’d guessimate that it will take about twice as long as the gestation period of the virus. So I’d say about 2 months minimum. There is no other fix, and people will still die.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Nicole:
Which is a solid point. Back then, people thought it was the end of the world. It wasn’t. The survivors were scarred, but they created a better future. We can do that too.
Ruckus
@raven:
If you are anything like me that is bad. Not good on the wallet but even worse on the living. I do not do well in hot. I’ve always had that a bit but as I’ve gotten more geezer it’s gotten worse. And at 71 I’m claiming full geezer.
NotMax
@HumboldtBlue
Been here since 1983. The change has been both dramatic and sustained.
Betty Cracker
@Kay:
Exactly! Maybe it’s too late now that Trump has thoroughly politicized the issue, but I think there’s an opening here. Even in my mega-MAGA county, people are starting to wear masks again now that cases are spiking.
The conspiracy people are definitely a problem, but they are not the majority. I think most people are scared and want someone who’s not a lunatic to show them the end game. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s how it seems to me.
raven
@Ruckus: The first one was the whole house hvac in out rental (next door). We really had no choice sop we popped the 5K for that. Our house has a 20+ year old unit downstairs and a separate heat pump upstairs. The upstairs was my office but it was turned over to the artist when I retired so she works up there. It has been ailing and leaking r22 so, after the second $85 recharge, our guy agrees that I best off putting a window unit in up there. A complete replace would be $4k and, with the age of our downstairs unit, we can’t take a chance that I dies too. The window unit should be here Thursday so we should be good.
catclub
@mrmoshpotato: I would say that K-12 all over the south starts more like the FIRST week of August ( for football practice). Back in march and april, the sensible rule was : we don;t open anything until we have two weeks of numbers going down in our area. By that rule, no fuckin way.
Nicole
Saul Alinsky would be proud. I mean that sincerely; he talks in Rules for Radicals about the importance of demonizing your opponent. The GOP is much better at following his rules than we are, which is hilarious, since he’s one of their boogeymen. Or, it would be hilarious, if his rules weren’t so effective.
Ruckus
@NotMax:
In socal we have had many weather experiences over my decades, boiling hot, not to bad, smog so thick visibility is less than 3 miles, raining for so many days, the concept of arks was raised, and in seriousness. I’ve seen the LA river where even after a major rain there’s less than a couple of feet in it and yet I’ve also seen it completely full. Here’s a picture with normal runoff or even a bit more. That’s a view of 6th street, my shop was about 10 blocks south. I’ve seen this completely full, almost overflowing and moving very swiftly.
Ruckus
@raven:
I’ve been to Atlanta in the summer. Not my piece of cake. Still better than smog so thick that breathing was a chore and you were advised to stay inside, like the air is different indoors.
zzyzx
@Ruckus:
I don’t think we could do an Italy or Spain style lockdown, let alone what China has done. And I’m not convinced that the European lockdowns did anything but slow things down while it burned through a lot of the population.
One thing I wish we had was accurate data of how many cases Europe actually saw since no one was really testing then the way that we are now.
bluefoot
@hitchhiker:
That’s assuming herd immunity is even possible (hopefully through vaccines), and it may not be. Recent data on re-infection and antibody persistence is sparse, but not encouraging. So IMO it’s even more imperative to have a national-level plan and to start implementing yesterday. Because we’re going to have to deal with this long-term, so the sooner we put something in place that works, the better. Especially since we’ll have to iterate our plan as we learn more about the virus and disease.
raven
@Ruckus: When I was a kid in Whittier I had real respiratory problems during the summer and that was in the 50’s! It’s 92 right now and high humidity but it’s still in the low 70’s at daybreak so we hit the walk then. I’m edging toward going back to swimming in the early morn. The word is the Y is pretty empty and if scoot through the locker room. . . ?
Jay
@hitchhiker:
Chinese studies show that only 3% of Sars Covid 19 patients show an immunity response, ( not nessicarily imuunity, just that the immune system recognizes the virus and responds).
so, 97% of the people who have been infected and recovered, can be reinfected.
Italy’s study, ( different strain) says 7.6%.
Spain’s study says 5%.
as these numbers show, and John Hopkins makes very clear, there has never been “herd immunity” with out a vaccine and 80% of the polulation being vaccinated.
terraformer
I’m still looking for coordinated Dem messaging along the lines of:
Democrats have passed hundreds of bills that help working families, including a whole host of support for specifically for COVID-19 – such as wage coverage, a freeze on mortgage payments, with the funds added to the END of your mortgage (not immediately payable after X months), and a halt in evictions nationwide – but they are sitting on Mitch McConnell’s desk as Republicans, who control the Senate, will not allow any votes on these measures. All the while, passing bills that give tax breaks to rich people and to corporations, and making sure that we don’t really know who gets that money….
Or similar. Surely every time a Dem gets in front of a camera, they should say something along these lines….but I don’t hear it or see it. This is the lowest of fruit – why aren’t Dems at least stating this over and over and over?
zzyzx
@bluefoot: what’s giving me hope is that we’re not seeing massive reinfections in places that had a bad first wave. If that continues as we continue to reopen, I’ll feel confident that the studies aren’t showing what we feared they would.
senyordave
It won’t be adopted as is, the GOP will want concessions that make any plan much worse. Then when nothing is passed they will blame Democrats. The worst thing a presidential candidate can do is to offer detailed plans on anything. Doubly bad if it involves any pain on the part of anyone at all.
Juju
@hitchhiker: herd immunity through natural virus spread is a myth. That’s why we have had pandemics of various viruses throughout history. Think polio or smallpox. The only way you get herd immunity is with vaccination.
sukabi
@schrodingers_cat: reopening schools should be the goal, putting an arbitrary timeline in place to achieve it by will only work in a controlled situation…we don’t have anything close to that.
Absolutely NONE of the conditions to achieve safe school reopenings will be met in the next 6 weeks by this administration, they won’t even try. And the states don’t have the resources to do it on their own.
mrmoshpotato
@Nicole:
That’s exactly what I was thinking! /S
Mel
We can’t reopen schools. Not until precautions are in place that protect teachers and staff as well as students.
Anyone who has worked in education can testify that children and teens are not going to abide by social distancing rules. Teachers in middle grade and secondary schools are going to be faced with daily exposure to anywhere from about 100-175 children just in their classroom alone, not to mention the cafeteria, bus duty, hall duty, and extracurricular activities exposure.
Teachers will be told to enter this environment with little more protection than a paper or cloth mask, likely provided at their own expense.
Most schools don’t provide hand sanitizer or enough restroom acces for teachers to wash their hands under the best of conditions. Many schools have outdated ventilation systems, and changing a filter more frequently will do very little to help make those systems safer.
Our schools are overcrowded as it is, as a result of budgets being stripped to the bare minimum. Schools cannot afford to hire enough teachers to reduce class sizes to anything near a level where social distancing in seating alone is possible.
And schools providing appropriately effective PPE in enough quantity for teachers and staff? Not going to happen.
A lot is being said about the concept of giving kids “mask breaks” throughout the day to make it “easier” for them to “tolerate” using cloth masks. Why the hell bother with masks in the first place, if you plan to let a group of 15 year olds congregate free-range outside three times a day? Anyone who thinks that those kiddos will stay 6 feet apart, talk softly, not cough or sneeze or yell or laugh, not hug, not engage in silly horseplay despite a staff member or teacher being assigned to supervise the large group is just engaging in magical thinking.
Fair Economist
@Ruckus: In Socal the amount of water in most riverbeds is determined by how much is released from a dam upstream. That’s determined by reservoir capacity and expected water demand rather than current rainfall. I live on a creek below a dam and it’s very noticeable. If there’s a lot of water in the creek it just means the floodgates are open.
low-tech cyclist
Fuck yeah they do. I have quibbles with your plan, Betty, but that’s secondary. The important thing is to fight to save people’s lives, as you’re proposing, rather than just give up.
Why? Because it’s what the good guys do. Especially when ‘fighting’ is no more for us than leaning on our Congresscritters, and is no more for them than writing and passing some legislation in the House, and then flinging it at Mitch McConnell’s chelonian face.
Yeah, it probably wouldn’t do any good. But dammit, we’ve got to try. It’s what the good guys do.
Pittsburgh Mike
“We need a plan.”
This is exactly right, and it is scary how few politicians of either stripe see it. Even when there was a half-assed lockdown, no one explained what happened next.
In Germany, schools are reopening, in a country with a per-capita new case rate is 1/50th of ours. The school I was reading about was doing home testing of everyone at the school, not just when they start, but every 4 days.
A real plan would spin up home tests of some form (saliva, throat culture), and contact tracing teams. This will require the defense appropriations act, and probably guaranteed purchases of a large volume to get enough infrastructure in place to test millions of school children at high rates.
You’d recognize that indoor crowds of any form are dangerous, and you’d set priorities. Bars don’t reopen — perhaps you buy them out and close them. Schools *do* reopen — with frequent testing, and reorganized classes to keep students in pods. Restaurants are take out or al fresco only. Masks are required for shopping. Produce a contact tracing app that will at least tell you where you’ve been, and when, so you can share useful info if you get sick.
We wasted the first lockdown because no one prepared for after the lockdown, and no one explained to people what would happen next. Without a clear, explained plan, the next lockdown will fail, too.