Music: Wes Montgomery — ‘Sunny’
CDC says U.S. could get coronavirus under control in one to two months if everyone wears a mask
CNBC reports: The United States could get the coronavirus pandemic under control in one to two months if every American wore a mask, a top Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official said Tuesday. “The time is now,” Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the CDC, said during an interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association’s Dr. Howard Bauchner. “I think if we could get everybody to wear a mask right now I think in four, six, eight weeks…
Love is medicine for fear
Arthur C. Brooks writes: We are living in a time of fear. The coronavirus pandemic has threatened our lives, health, and economy in ways most Americans have never experienced. We have no idea what the future will bring. According to the American Psychological Association’s annual “Stress in America” survey, the percentage of people in the U.S. who say that “the future of our nation is a significant source of stress” rose to 83 percent in June 2020, up from 63…
Coronavirus data has already disappeared after Trump administration shifted control from CDC
CNBC reports: Previously public data has already disappeared from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website after the Trump administration quietly shifted control of the information to the Department of Health and Human Services. Since the pandemic began, the CDC regularly published data on availability of hospital beds and intensive care units across the country. But Ryan Panchadsaram, who helps run a data-tracking site called Covid Exit Strategy, said that when he tried to collect the data from the…
Trump weakens environmental law to speed up permits for pipelines and other infrastructure
CNBC reports: President Donald Trump on Wednesday finalized a rollback to the country’s landmark environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act, by speeding up approval for federal projects like pipelines, highways and power plants. NEPA was signed into law by President Richard Nixon 50 years ago and requires federal agencies to consider the environmental consequences of infrastructure projects before they are approved. The law has also been vital in allowing communities to weigh in on how such projects impact climate…
‘Outright lies’: Voting misinformation flourishes on Facebook
By Ryan McCarthy, ProPublica, July 16, 2020 On April 3, Terrence K. Williams, a politically conservative actor and comedian who’s been praised by President Donald Trump, assured his nearly 3 million followers on Facebook that Democrats would light ballots on fire or throw them away. Wearing a red “Keep America Great” hat, Williams declared, “If you mail in your vote, your vote will be in Barack Obama’s fireplace.” The video has been viewed more than 350,000 times. On May 8,…
Coronavirus responses highlight how humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview
The more politicized an issue, the harder it is for people to absorb contradictory evidence. Drew Angerer/Getty Images News via Getty Images By Adrian Bardon, Wake Forest University Bemoaning uneven individual and state compliance with public health recommendations, top U.S. COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci recently blamed the country’s ineffective pandemic response on an American “anti-science bias.” He called this bias “inconceivable,” because “science is truth.” Fauci compared those discounting the importance of masks and social distancing to “anti-vaxxers” in their…
Is the Saudi government plotting against another U.S.-based critic?
Dexter Filkins reports: In early May, officials with the C.I.A. reached out to Ali Soufan, a former F.B.I. agent who served as a lead investigator in the months before the September 11th attacks, to say they had learned that Al Qaeda militants were plotting against him. The officials asked Soufan not to disclose many details, but, he told me, “The information was specific enough that they felt that they had to inform me.” Two weeks later, Soufan, who lives in…
Music: Wes Montgomery — ‘Bumpin’ On Sunset’
Methane rises to highest level on record
The Guardian reports: Animal farming and fossil fuels have driven global emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane to the highest level on record, putting the world on track for dangerously increased heat levels of 3C to 4C. Since 2000 discharges of the odourless, colourless gas have risen by more than 50m tonnes a year, equivalent to 350m cars or double the total emissions of Germany or France, according to the latest Methane Budget study by a global team of…
In historic move, Asheville, North Carolina approves reparations for Black residents
Asheville Citizen Times reports: In an extraordinary move, the Asheville City Council has apologized for the North Carolina city’s historic role in slavery, discrimination and denial of basic liberties to Black residents and voted to provide reparations to them and their descendants. The 7-0 vote came the night of July 14. “Hundreds of years of Black blood spilled that basically fills the cup we drink from today,” said Councilman Keith Young, one of two African American members of the body…
Fauci: ‘Bizarre’ White House behavior only hurts Trump
The Atlantic reports: Anthony Fauci isn’t about to quit, despite the White House’s clumsy attempts to stain his public image. More so now than at any other point in their uneasy partnership, it seems that if President Donald Trump wants to be rid of Fauci, he’ll need to fire him. In recent days especially, the White House has stepped up efforts to discredit Fauci, a move he describes as “bizarre.” “Ultimately, it hurts the president to do that,” Fauci told…
Global surge in coronavirus cases is being fed by the developing world — and the U.S.
The Washington Post reports: When the United States began shutting down this spring, a virus that emerged months earlier as a mysterious outbreak in a Chinese provincial capital had infected a total of fewer than 200,000 people worldwide. So far this week, the planet has added an average of more than 200,000 cases every day. The novel coronavirus — once concentrated in specific cities or countries — has now crept into virtually every corner of the globe and is wreaking…
Trump administration strips CDC of control of coronavirus data
The New York Times reports: The Trump administration has ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and send all Covid-19 patient information to a central database in Washington beginning on Wednesday. The move has alarmed health experts who fear the data will be politicized or withheld from the public. The new instructions were posted recently in a little-noticed document on the Department of Health and Human Services website. From now on, the department — not the…
Trump’s final presidential pardon: himself
Bill Press writes: Jan. 20, 2021. EXCLUSIVE TO THE HILL: According to official documents obtained by our team of White House correspondents, President Trump’s last official act as president, just minutes before leaving the White House to head directly for Mar-A-Lago, pointedly boycotting incoming President Joe Biden’s Inauguration, was to issue one final presidential pardon. In a brief written statement, Trump said, “Under absolute powers bestowed on me as president under Article II of the Constitution, I am awarding a…
I’m a former civil servant. We are professionals, not a ‘deep state’
Russell E. Travers writes: If the intelligence community needs to correct understatements of threat (no, the Islamic State is not defeated) or correct overstatements of threat (no, data doesn’t suggest a significant threat from refugees), that’s not a “deep state” undermining the president; that’s a professional civil service doing its job. Just like the civil servants at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Justice Department and everywhere else in the government. A century ago,…