In case you want to know what a rational school re-opening plan looks like, here’s the one Cuomo announced today.
- The region must be in Phase 4 of re-opening (right now, NYC is 3, the rest of the state is 4).
- The 14 day rolling average of positive tests must be below 5%. (Currently, every region is under 2% on the rolling average, most closer to 1%)
- If the regional positive rate is over 9% using a 7 day rolling average, schools will close.
- Specifics are up to the school districts, but the State Departments of Health and Education are publishing guidelines that were developed through collaboration between teachers, administrators and health professionals.
- Guidelines include recommendation for distancing, prioritizing in-person education for kids who need it most, and universal masking, with regular mask breaks.
- Guidelines recommend using cohorts, screening for temperature and symptoms daily, and the availability of contact tracing.
The key point about all of this is the screencap above – if the virus is out of control, nothing else matters. Also, a few minutes of Cuomo banging on Trump is classic Cuomo.
“Nobody died in the Watergate scandal.” I like the framing as a “scandal,” because it is.
Also, he announced that every out-of-state traveler from 18 states where the virus is out of control who arrives at an airport will have to fill out a form detailing where they’re from and where they’re going. If they don’t provide that information they can be be fined $2,000, issued a summons, and subject to mandatory quarantine. (These people are already subject to 14 day quarantine.)
This is what not fucking around looks like.
Elizabelle
C-Span link will have the full video. Press conference just ended
One hour, 3 minutes. Starts with the lovely new age piano music while awaiting arrival.
germy
germy
namekarB
I guess I’ll have to fly to Philly and rent a car. I understand the problem but the proposed solution is a band aid. I don’t have any idea how to solve that problem.
cayla
While that is a great plan, I hope he’s planning to throw some resources at the Northern part of the state where the students have already suffered due to lack of reliable internet access. They’ve been promising to replace the copper lines with fiber-optics for years now.
Feathers
@germy: The mother had been tested, but the positive results hadn’t come back yet. She is now saying the test was precautionary, she didn’t think she was sick.
This is why the delays in test results are deadly. We should have unlimited next day results COVID tests by now. New York and New England really need to set up a single zone for COVID rules and quarantine.
Feathers
@cayla: Biden needs to make rural broadband part of the new postal system.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@Feathers: The other day Melissa de Rosa said that the tests that are processed by NY State’s network of labs (250+) are coming back in 3 days or less, but the rest are taking longer due to the prioritization of testing for outbreak states. 1/3 of NY’s tests are sent to out of state labs. I wonder if that woman’s test was caught up in that delay.
Keisha Bottoms, Mayor of Atlanta, was on today’s conference accepting an offer to have New York send down some folks to help her get the test, track and trace going in Atlanta. She mentioned that she told her staff that they would have to behave like the words of the old song, “God Help the Child That’s Got Its Own” because there isn’t any help coming from the federal government. Because we did some work to develop our own testing capacity, we can still do 40K tests/day and get them back in a timely fashion.
low-tech cyclist
I personally think ‘scandal’ is weak tea to describe what’s going on here. Bill Clinton getting blowjobs from Monica Lewinsky was a ‘scandal.’
What we have here is a humanitarian disaster, a massacre in progress. And yes, it does make Watergate look trivial by comparison.
(Re ‘Watergate scandal,’ my recollection is that somewhere between the Ervin Committee hearings and the Saturday Night Massacre, it went from being “the Watergate scandal” to just “Watergate.” But that was 47 years ago, so I won’t swear to it.)
Served
@Feathers: There is a huge disparity here in Chicago. The free and state/city testing sites have taken up to 10 days for results, while private practices/insured patients are getting test results in 2-3 days.
Elizabelle
@Feathers: Also, people should be asked to quarantine as though every result is positive until the results are in. (ETA: Ten days for results? Yikes.)
Cannot believe the jackasses who get on planes, etc., knowing they’re awaiting results (and one who did was pretty sure he had it).
I think the tests have some issue with too many false negatives, too. It beggars belief that some victims did not have the ‘virus, even with 1 or 2 negative tests, early on. (Still wonder about that young woman found dead in her kitchen in New Orleans. Everything described fits the ‘rona, right to the “feeling a little better” and dead the next morning. Cytokine storm, sounds like.)
Elizabelle
@low-tech cyclist: I agree that massacre, or manslaughter through depraved indifference, is not too strong a word.
Attorney jackals??
Kay
The other key point is that states and school districts are going to be making these decisions, not Donald Trump or Betsy DeVos. They’re just strutting around on tv yelling at people instead of working, again.
mali muso
Friend of mine just got tested as a precaution before taking a trip to see relatives. Turned out that they are positive although totally asymptomatic. The testing situation needs some serious attention if we are going to have any hope of slowing this thing down.
Mary G
Chickens coming home to roost:
Kay
So few people handled Donald Trump well, and IMO Cuomo is one of them. Pelosi, Schiff and Cuomo were all good. I don’t know what you need to deal effectively with this idiot bully but whatever it is, they had it.
narya
@Served: We’re somewhere in the middle (FQHC). I think we’re on average just under 5 days. The City is also funding a massive contact tracing effort (with CDC money, I think). It won’t be fully underway for another month or two, but it’s targeting neighborhoods most affected by the virus AND will hire folks from those neighborhoods to do the work.
rikyrah
@Feathers:
She went to take a PHUCKING TEST.
THERE’S A REASON YOU GO TO TAKE THE TEST.
I. JUST.CAN’T.
germy
rikyrah
@Kay:
I despise her, Kay.
I simply do.
Watched those interviews with her and literally wanted to reach through the television and just take a 2×4 upside her head.
rikyrah
@Kay:
I think it’s Schiff’s background as a former prosecutor.
I think it’s Pelosi and Cuomo being from Italian political families. The spawn have more polish, but, they never forgot the rough and tumble of their parents.
Ohio Mom
I just finished berating one of my Republican Senator’s interns about the need for his boss to vote for an increase in federal support for Medicaid. Ohio has already started cutting, and some extra funding from Washington would staunch the bleeding.
At the beginning of the Trump years, I decided my issue would be the social safety net for the disabled. The ARC sent out an email about this upcoming vote, and I obliged.
I used to be able to call those interns and flirt with and cajole them — I always tell them that I don’t just want them to pass my opinion on to their boss, I want them, as a young person interested in policy, with their whole lives ahead of them, to better understand the issue at hand.
I can’t do it anymore. I have no goodwill left. I am absolutely furious at the idea of a Republican.
Maybe I’ll feel better after I eat lunch…
Kay
Team Trump sends out mass texts that read “The President texted YOU and you didn’t respond! Don’t let him down AGAIN” begging for money.
Just Chuck
@low-tech cyclist:
I believe the term you’re looking for is “crime against humanity”. We should send T to the Hague.
Served
@Kay: They are that boss we’ve all had that walks around the office yelling at everyone to GET TO WORK, when they themselves do no work, then swoop in to claim any success and berate everyone else for any failure.
Just Chuck
@Kay:
You can’t blame Team Trump, that’s his constituency.
tarragon
@Elizabelle: Back in March my wife got tested here in NY. We quarantined for 14 days.
We were released from quarantine about 4 hours before getting test results back. Negative actually, but false negative rates were pretty high back then an I can’t imagine the sample sitting for 14 days helped.
scav
@germy: I really wish the guidance councilors of years past had given us a bit of a heads up about all the kids with aspirations of being bioweapons when they grow up. well. age.
Elizabelle
@Kay: @rikyrah:
Rolling Stone noticed Ms. DeVos’s mouthage over the weekend too. Top story on their site right now (no paywall):
If You Weren’t Afraid to Send Your Kids Back to School, DeVos’ Disastrous Interview Might Change That
“The president and his administration are messing with the health of our children,” Nancy Pelosi said in response
===
And, OT, Naya Rivera’s body has been recovered. That was not going to have a happy ending. Wear your life jackets. It’s just lucky her son was able to get back onto the boat, and he was in his lifevest.
Elizabelle
@Served: And sabotage. Trump actively sabotages, as do the worst of terrible bosses.
Kay
@Served:
DeVos really has such nerve. She never works. She does absolutely nothing. I saw she was in Grand Rapids for the CNN interview. She’s there for sailing. On a yacht.
sdhays
@Kay: LOL. Is Dump going to have any money left in the campaign by October? Between the grifters looting the place (as per usual), paying for events and that don’t happen/are smaller than expected, alienating supporters with insulting demands for MOAR MONEYS!!11!, and the seemingly inevitable loser stench he’s contracting, there might not be much left in the campaign coffers before long.
And the RNC having to pay for two conventions that no one is going to go to is just icing on the cake!
Jinchi
It’d really be nice if they had an ally in the federal government, though. In a pandemic, the actions of one bad actor can erase all the gains of 100 others. Individual schools and cities have no control over that.
dmsilev
@Kay: It pains me to say this, but to be fair, that’s not any different from the incessant stream of fundraising messages (mainly emails) that I get from what seems like 50,000 different Democratic candidates, PACs, and associated groups.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
I’m genuinely pleased people are noticing how bad she is. Democrats can actually run against her, which is unheard of for such a relatively powerless official. She’s a turn out engine.
They can’t fire her. She’s richer than any of the Trump people and she’s a 30 year Michigan far Right operative. She owns Trump, not vice versa.
Elizabelle
@Kay: The ‘virus been very, very good to Betsy DeVos. She can take a one/two punch at public schools, and at the teachers and employees within. Kids: collateral. And: they’re in public schools. Not high value.
Mary G
Amazingly vivid thread. Must read. Scary af.
Barbara
@Kay: This is kind of par for the course in how these emails go. Maybe they don’t get enough of them to be inured to the desperate appeals. I have made it onto some RNC email list and their appeals aren’t noticeably worse than the ones I get from the side I actually support. Though Trump’s missive with “Crooked Hillary” in the subject line had me rolling my eyes.
NotMax
@Kay
Orange is the new flack.
Elizabelle
@Kay: I noticed that Governor Whitmer got an “A” (the only one given) for Michigan’s COVID response, with metrics. Some online thing … will try to find it for you.
I am thinking Whitmer (“that woman”) looks even better compared to the odious and evil and stupid Betsy DeVos. Who is well known in Michigan politics, and even more abhorred now.
Jinchi
Did the test results come back in time to avoid the trip? The delays I’ve heard of in terms of testing make even good faith efforts to keep everyone safe almost impossible to follow through with.
sdhays
@dmsilev: They’re all pretty obnoxious, but the ones I’ve seen screenshotted from the Dump campaign seem to be a little bit extra. Sort of like the others are clearly being manipulative, but someone at least thought about how to make it not seem blatantly entitled. The Dump campaign totally feels its entitled to supporters’ money, so they don’t bother with that minor wordsmithing.
mali muso
@Jinchi: Yes, thank goodness. The results were received in enough time to cancel the visit. They posted about it on FB as a cautionary tale to everyone.
daveNYC
Testing becomes useless if the results take longer than seven days to come back. Median hospitalization time until death in China was 18 days.
Dying at home is definitely a thing with this disease because people (somehow) are functioning and happy while at 60% blood oxygen with this. Somehow. Real easy to go from Alice to dead right quick with that situation.
Roger Moore
@rikyrah:
I will say I’ve been incredibly happy with Schiff. I voted for him when he first voted to unseat Jim Rogan back in 2000, but that was mostly because he had to be better than the alternative. I continued to vote for him until I got moved into a different district, but I never knew he had this in him. I’m not saying I didn’t believe he had this in him, but he never showed it until he was Johnny-on-the-spot. It’s always fantastic to discover you already had the right person for the job.
Roger Moore
@Just Chuck:
The Hague is for countries that aren’t capable of dealing with their own criminals. We should prove we are capable by sending Trump to prison for the rest of his miserable life.
kindness
Trump doesn’t care how many people his words kill but he should. Those that aren’t wearing masks and get sick are his prime voters.
Gin & Tonic
@Jinchi: A couple of weeks ago my son and his wife were feeling ill, and his wife was nervous. So they went to get tests. She got her result by e-mail within about 8 hours. He didn’t, so surmised (correctly) that they may have screwed up his e-mail, and called them. 24/7 hotline, gave him his results. They were both negative.
Oh, they live in Ukraine, not the US.
Dmbeaster
@Kay: Someone must believe that this type of fundraising crap works, as its non-stop. The Dem version is chicken little “GIANT DISASTER LOOMING” unless you send money and save us. I hate these mostly because of the underlying doom and gloom message, and what it does to long term support.
Ksmiami
@Ohio Mom: my only desire these days is to be rid of Republicans period.
danielx
@Kay:
So, usual daily routine in Trumplandia then.
Roger Moore
@Served:
One of the things I’ve come to realize is that you can tell a quality boss by their tendency to give credit where it’s due even when speaking outside their organization. A bad boss tries to take credit for what their employees do because they think it’s important to look as if they’re doing things. A good boss understands their job is to find and equip employees who do the work. Crediting the people they have working for them is the way they show off they’ve done a boss’s real job of putting together a great team.
Baud
@Dmbeaster: I know someone who does fundraising for a public interest organization, and it’s the same. And, yeah, there’s some business analysis out there that says these types of emails work best when blasting emails to a diverse group of people. It doesn’t even matter, apparently, that the emails aren’t all that consistent (for example, “We’re losing and need your help!” vs. “We’re winning big and need your help!”).
Ksmiami
@Kay: I have a cook friend that works on one of the Scamway family’s seven mega yachts… they are criminal grifters.
danielx
Note: our sainted blogmaster quoted in 2011 the original 2005 source for the 27% crazification factor. It still holds up well.
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
The one saving grace is that the Democrats seem to be OK at including unsubscribe links and actually unsubscribing you when you use them. It would be better if they treated campaign emails as opt-in rather than opt-out, though.
JPL
Uhoh.. Pissy pants is going to be upset. Both Los Angeles and San Diego are going to do remote learning in the fall. The tweets will be coming.
Brachiator
The idiocy and attacks on the CDC are intensifying.
Damn. I did not know that Woolery was an expert in infectious diseases.
This kind of thing is intensely delusional. The whole world is wrong and trying to take Trump down.
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: Most campaigns do this but unaggressively. I get lots of mail from Dem candidates saying “We really need the help” or “We see you haven’t donated yet” but they’re all couched in asking terms. The most aggressive I’ve seen is Biden and Obama’s “Whatever you’re doing is not enough. You may have made monumental efforts but we have to give everything we can to defeat Trump because it’s that important. Volunteer, Donate, Vote.”
Trump’s campaign is basically bullying people. That’s all they were ever good at, and they do it when the worse doesn’t meet their expectations. And right now, their own supporters are ‘failing’ them so of course they’re going to be assholes. It’s worked every time before!
Baud
@Brachiator:
danielx
@Brachiator:
What?!?? I mean, who….?
Who besides the shitgibbon gives a flying fuck about Chuck Woolery’s opinion on anything whatsoever?
Jess
@Brachiator: I have to admit that I’m impressed by their determination to fight to the bitter end. I guess that’s something blind faith gives you.
JPL
@Brachiator: trump has already left WHO and could easily cut CDC spending. We’d be in a world of hurt if he did that. He could turn around and give the money to Billy Graham to track viruses and the republican Sen. Collins would say that’s unfortunate.
Elizabelle
@Brachiator: Chuck Woolery.
That is just … desperate. And fucking hilarious, if you think about it longer.
Kelly
Best boss I ever had went one better. He’d have me pause what I was doing for our team and jump into other teams that had problems my skills were particularly suited to solve. The increased visibility was a huge boost to my career.
James E Powell
@Kay:
Sure, but Nancy Pelosi doesn’t buy store brand ice cream, so both sides!
MisterForkbeard
@Jinchi: Right. A test that you take a week before leaving isn’t going to be very useful, and that’s how long it’s taking right now.
My county in CA just partially closed up again (bars and indoor restaurants, mostly), and we really should have done it 3-4 weeks ago. I just heard that the nursing home/post-acute surgery surgery center two blocks from my house has multiple cases now.
On June 1st we had 2-15 new cases each day. Now we have 50-100. It went up over 5x in 6 weeks. That’s insane. And we’re better off than a lot of other counties.
Emma from FL
@rikyrah: A lot of Michigan folk despise “the Amway clan” something fierce. One of my friends, the gentlest man you will ever meet flat out refers to them as evil.
Eunicecycle
@Baud: I used to fundraise for a couple of nonprofits, a nature center and later a hospital. As a fundraiser you want to communicate some type of urgency: give now instead of later. It is tough to do sometimes without sounding hysterical. Matching gifts are an easy way: if you give now your gift will be doubled! Also another fundraising truism is the people most likely to give are people who gave already. I’ve never done political fundraising, but my last boss had (for Rs) and she said it was similar.
MisterForkbeard
@Dmbeaster:
I hate hate hate this approach. Hate it. Have never given any money to an ad like that, and some of the campaigns will fundraise off of blip polls from Rasmussen from 5 months ago. They can go fuck themselves.
I used to give to Harris and Warren (and now Biden) because they DON’T do that stuff.
MaryL
@Served: It’s the complete opposite in my Maryland County. I went through the free drive thru last week and got my results in two days. Husband went to a private doctor and was told it could take up to 10 days.
jonas
A sad reflection playing itself out thousands of times a day across the country now, it seems.
jonas
We elected him to be an asshole to immigrants and minorities — not us!
jonas
She’s not windsurfing, though, right? Because *that* would be a real sign she’s an out-of-touch elitist.
MomSense
Cautionary tale, here. We have a new cluster of cases at a social services agency in Waldo county. This is a county that had a big cluster at a nursing home in April and then 10 cases between April 15 and July 12 – and then this agency opened to clients with protocols in place and now nine new cases added Sunday. They are now assigned a contact tracer and doing a lot of testing. There was a total of 3 active cases in the whole county at the time this new cluster happened. Maine is one of only 3 states in the country that has flattened the curve. My point is that this shit comes at you fast.
Captain C
@JPL: Susan Collins’ standing up to Trump seems to follow the Brave Sir Robin playbook.
Mary G
Yay:
Boo: I notice that the OC isn’t yet there and plan to start harassing my state senator and assemblyperson, both Republicans, and work to throw them out, along with the sheriff who refuses to cooperate with civilian review, and the school district board that is afraid of MAGAts and had to be shamed by parents into shutting down in March.
JPL
@Elizabelle: Just wait until Pat Sajak weighs in, then you’ll know we are in trouble.
Ken
@Brachiator: The Gong Show guy? I thought he died.
MisterForkbeard
@jonas: Even stupider: Trump is just being a little mean to them. Over e-mail.
It’s not like he’s putting your kids in cages, trying to make sure you’re denied medical services or wanting you to get the death penalty for a crime you’re proven innocent of.
They’re kicking and screaming because they’ve gotten 1% of the bad behavior that Trump hands out on a daily basis to minorities and democrats. It’s just not cool guys, staaahp it. Most whiny fucks I’ve ever seen.
@Mary G: This is probably going to be most of California, at least the Bay counties and Sacramento. It’s not going to get a lot better in the 5 weeks before school is supposed to start. I have a kiddo that’s supposed to start kindergarten then, and we’re pretty sure this year is essentially lost for her.
mrmoshpotato
@jonas:
We? Let me see if I can get my hands on the paper printout of my electronic vote for Hillary Clinton to slap you with it.
Or would you prefer the voting machine was dropped on you?
Elizabelle
@Brachiator: I mean, if Woolery was better, he’d be in CONGRESS, right? Cuz he’s got the looks and mad skillz to be a Republican congressman. No question.
Ken
Sadly it’s not that bad, compared to what some places are seeing. We are all getting a lesson in the power of exponential growth.
Marcopolo
Hello folks. Reporting in from Missouri where this dropped this morning:
Those numbers seem to be consistent with Trump generally running 8-10 points worse than 2016. And no, I don’t think Biden wins MO (still thinking things tighten a little down the stretch) but if he did that would be a huge landslide since TX, GA, NC, FL, IA, and maybe MT, OH, AK and SC would be ahead of MO in going blue.
What I do hope this that those MO numbers reflect continued GOP erosion in the suburbs around St Louis where I am really hoping we can flip MO-2 from Red to Blue. The R incumbent only won by 4% in 2018.
Okay, now I actually do have to do my taxes. :( At least I have the funds to pay them unlike a lot of folks.
mrmoshpotato
@Kay:
Kay
This is interesting
From Ga Tech
greenergood
@naWait I don’t gumekarB:
@namekarB: Sorry I don’t understand your post – are you saying that the solution is to fly to a non-isolating state and then drive into one that is, because there’s no border restrictions on the roads? How irresponsible is this? The only states in the US that have a ‘green’ light, and that’s green on a very small ledge – are NY and NJ – and you want to jeopardise this by figuring out a way of subverting the borders? Do you have a family that you care about? Do you know how much strife and death NY has gone through to lower their COVID rates??
?BillinGlendaleCA
Somebody just broke the passenger side window on my Prius, ugh.
Uncle Cosmo
I had a boss like that once. Card-carrying sociopath. Looked like Jabba the Hutt with greasy longish hair & glasses. One of his classic ploys was to get an assignment from higher up that was due in 3 weeks, leaving plenty of time to fulfill it – except that he’d withhold the information from his staff until 4 PM of Due Date Eve & snarl (usually on his cellphone as he commuted between locations) that it had to be finished by 9 AM and we all had to work through the night to get it done.
I was singled out for particularly harsh treatment, & I never understood why, until the person he’d inserted as a buffer between him & the staff told me, You learned the details of the work we do way too fast – he knows you’re smarter than he is & he’s terrified you’ll take his job. Didn’t matter that I didn’t particularly want his job…
Frankly, the only reason I can think of that neither he nor I ended up dead (with the other in prison for the murder) was that I had settled into a course of Prozac by that time.
Anyway, he soon abused an underling who wasn’t about to take it, & when the smoke settled & dust cleared he’d been transferred out. (Any decent corp would have fired him, or better yet had him shot; but he still had customers who’d pay for his services, so…) It was still the longest 18 months of my working life.
Elizabelle
@Uncle Cosmo: Ugh. My sympathies. I hope he was forcefully retired not long after that. Nobody needs managerial “skills” like that.
Elizabelle
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yikes. Were they burglarizing it? Sad to hear that.
I mean, that’s one way to drive business to your glass shop, but really ….
Roger Moore
@MisterForkbeard:
My brother explained to me over the weekend how the Castro Valley school district is planning to do things, and it sounds as if it’s designed to be as stupid as possible. Parents will have to decide at the beginning of the school year if they want online only or to have some in-person instruction, and they won’t be able to change their mind. If they choose in-person instruction, the kids will be going to school for half days every day.
This is just so stupid it’s hard to imagine being any dumber. Either way is impossible for families where both parents have to work outside the home, since their kids will be home for some time every day. My other brother contrasted the way they’re planning on doing things in Germany (where he lives now). In Germany, they’re having kids in school the whole day but for alternate weeks. Their idea is that the 9 days when kids are out of class will give enough time for any infections the kids get in class to present symptoms, so they will know that class needs to be quarantined. They’re actually designing their classes around both what will work for parents and what will be good epidemiology.
Uncle Cosmo
Um, no, that’s not really true. The Trump campaign leans really heavily on the implicit threat of retribution: “We know who you are and we know you haven’t contributed!” The Democratic variety involves serious handwringing & poverty-pleading & attempts to induce guilt if you don’t send them $$$: “You know you have $$$ to spare, you know we need it, why are you being so stingy?”
But I agree that both versions suck donkey/elephant balls. I subscribed to Biden’s text messaging service & unsubscribed a week later when I realized I was getting nothing but whiny appeals for $$$.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
They’re now talking about incentivizing premature opening. This is monstrous.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabelle: I think the gardeners may have hit with their weed wacker. It was around the time when they were here, front neighbor has a ring doorbell, was broken between 10am and 11am when the gardeners were here. Also nothing is missing.
The Pale Scot
@JPL:
At JPL @ #57
President Pissy Pants just rolls of the tongue, doesn’t it
Kay
@Roger Moore:
It really is difficult though. They’re trying to plan for space. Kids who opt to stay home almost have to stay home because if they come back we’d have to get rid of one :)
There’s this thing going on in my district where they’re relieved about 20% of parents say they are keeping their kids home because that frees up space. Win/win!
Uncle Cosmo
@Elizabelle: “Forcibly retired”-? Hah. As I said, there were still customers who were willing to pay top dollar for his analytical work. They essentially isolated him – he didn’t get to be the boss of anyone. (Except one of his former flunkies, a guy who looked like the character Gaylord in Broom-Hilda whom we referred to as the Turkey Buzzard, who begged to go with Jabba & keep flunking away because he was too incompetent to keep a job any other way.)
low-tech cyclist
@Roger Moore:
Agreed.
And I dearly hope President Biden opens the books not only on the Trump Administration, but on the Shrub Administration as well. Fucking bunch of war criminals.
low-tech cyclist
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
They really ARE a death cult.
My local school board meets later this week, and is soliciting comments. My recommendation will be to open LATE, like maybe September 21, to have the chance to see what happens with school systems (e.g. FL) that open early, and learn from their experience.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay:
The school could sell that kid to the circus, it would even raise revenue for the school…win, win!
Aleta
My NP relative (very experienced, conscientious, fastidious) got covid. Presumably from one of the longterm care and rehab facilities she works for. (It’s now a few months later, and the other facilities she visited still have no cases.) She’s not hands on w/ patients.
She felt sick, informed the Drs. in charge, and tested negative. Within 2-3 days she was much sicker, and many patients and staff there had also become sick or tested positive. Her 2nd test was also negative. (Due to all the other positives at the facility and her symptoms, she was presumed positive.)
I haven’t heard estimates for how many people test false negative and how many tests may be botched in some way, but I bet some of the people who test false negative return to bopping around w/o masks or going to parties. And her tests and labs were done by a hospital, not some friend of Kushner’s operating a pop-up SwabsMart stand in the dark.
(She says she’s fine now except for fatigue at night. Back at work. The facility with cases remains shut down. She also said there was no way of predicting or understanding which of her positive-test patients became very sick and which showed no effects. In that small anecdotal sample were individuals who got sick or didn’t or died regardless of age, obesity, serious conditions, or athlete-type health (in there for injury rehab). It’s not about obesity or good health she says (and in the past she was one of those fat-shaming practitioners who imo also had a personal prejudice problem).)
Elizabelle
@Uncle Cosmo: Were his analytical skills that worth it?
My sister had a horror story boss. Woman who was such a mean micromanager she was driving away subordinates, in droves. (Personally, I thought my sister should have left. The stress and angst was not worth it. And, it was a dreadfully managed company, you could tell from her stories. The top management were appalling.)
But: this woman was extremely competent at her job. She made the company money. Although: it eventually got so bad they really did have to fire her, because too much turmoil.
And then, the company finally got around to checking in with her previous employer, in a big city 3 states south. Where she had also been a star performer. They learned she’d job-hunted nationally because she was unemployable regionally. She was legend for being awful. The previous employer was a little surprised the company had not checked in with them earlier (again, terrible leadership at the top, above this wretched woman). They would have warned.
All that trauma. All those people gone. One woman.
Elizabelle
@Aleta: Way interesting. I hope your relative continues to improve. Scary.
Uncle Cosmo
This particular customer – a fairly significant Federal agency – thought so. (Frankly I doubt it – it took me about a year to learn 95% of what he knew, which is what scared him.) Thing is, he played nice with his superiors & colleagues on the same level – he only abused underlings. The guy who replaced him (he refused to leave unless he got to choose his replacement) was a former colleague (they coauthored reports & papers) who was astonished to find group morale in the “terlet” & had to find out through bitter experience what a momser Mr Hutt was – after which New Boss (who FWIW was a real sweetheart) decreed we would never have anything to do with him no matter what the corporation wanted.
The thing that got Jabba moved out was a list one of my coworkers drew up for the HR folks who came in from the regional HQ to investigate the accusations of that disgruntled employee. Our company never made (or makes) anything; we sold technical expertise & made a good living thereby – so it was of paramount importance to hire and retain the best experts out there. That list showed everyone who had been part of the office over the previous 3 years. In an office that varied in size from 6 to 15 employees, something like 45 staff members had either transferred or left the corp. Mr Hutt had presided over at least a threefold (more like 4- or 5-fold) turnover in personnel in that interval – personnel that the corp thought highly enough of to hire in the first place. Ecco la baccia del morto!
(Some years later I learned something about his life, & I very nearly felt sorry for him; he’d gone through some soul-destroying shit growing up. But all he seemed to have taken from that experience was an attitude that I’ve had a crappy life & someone’s going to pay for that – the “someones,” of course, being anyone he had power over. Triste!)
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Goddam Germans with their intelligent planning and taking the needs of parents and kids into account. Makes it tough for impulsive and moronic leaders.
Gvg
@Feathers: Rural? I can’t get broad band in my mid sized town with a major University. Rural needs it but so does most of the country.It’s needed ebverywhere.
No One You Know
@Kay: Increasingly, so does Nancy Pelosi’s team. I sent blistering email today on the subject of emails that say “need input, not money,” then do a two-penny freshman marketing survey, complete with leading questions and breathless answers, and then demand money.
What can I say? Exclamation points and yellow highlighter makes me crabby, but being actively misled makes me angry.
ballerat
@Elizabelle: I’ve been calling it a genocide. Because that’s what it is.
ballerat
@Baud: They send out both kinds. Or 10 kinds. They track the response rate from each type and the dollar amount donated. It’s critical for marketeers to know which ploy works best.
Phishing operations do the same.