Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, July 31, 2020
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78 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Caitlin Rivers, PhD
@cmyeaton
What Do We Know About Children and Coronavirus Transmission?
ETA: A breakdown of the above at the link
As pandemic rages on, world economic recovery looks ever more shaky: Reuters poll
We ain’t seen nothing yet.
That would be Senator Lamar Alexander
Some of us can relate.
If incubation can be as long as 14 days, how can asymptomatic folks come out of quarantine on 14th day?
Is it because 14 day is an outlier & the guidance is based on when 95% of the incubation takes place?
Go Bob Costas!!!!
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/unconscionable-bob-costas-rails-against-forcing-a-college-football-season-amid-pandemic-when-players-arent-compensated/
Legendary sports broadcaster and CNN contributor Bob Costas railed against forcing college football players participate in a fall season during the Covid-19 pandemic, calling the circumstances “unconscionable.”
His comments on Thursday night came as several major conferences, including the Atlantic Coast Conference and Southeastern Conference, announced their league’s football schedules with tentative starting dates beginning as soon as late September.
“Think of the size of football rosters, and think of the nature of the sport, with contact on every play,” Costas said on CNN’s Facts & Fears: Coronavirus Town Hall with Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta. “And then, think about college football. More and more, that seems less and less likely. It may be unlikely that the NFL can get in a full season. But the idea of playing college football under these circumstances, players not compensated, no union to protect them. That’s unconscionable.”
@OzarkHillbilly:
Given the plague, I’ve no idea when I’ll leave New England again. But when I head your way, I’ll be in touch.
@sam:
Sen. Alexander: No Nancy Pelosi will not be president on 1/20 if there is no election. Moron.
The congressional underclass erupts in fury after Gohmert gets Covid-19
It isn’t unreasonable to assume that lacking normal amounts of self respect is a prerequisite for working for a bunch of twit, nabobs and fools.
@Sleeping Dog: It’s not really that cut-and-dried. Since California has a Democratic governor, and likely would go ahead with their elections, it’s feasible that Pelosi would be reelected on Nov. 3, and be named speaker by those who were also elected.
The whole thing is so untested and crazy that it’s not worth gaming out, but it isn’t completely out of the question.
@Jen:
The election date would be changed by congress for federal offices, a state election could proceed, but if a congressional seat was on the ballot there would be a court case.
It won’t happen anyway, the election will be 11/3.
So normally I am not a fan of re-posting a comment I made on another site but I am going to make an exception. On a pop culture site that has a very active Political Forum I posted the below reply in regards to someone who was talking about pundits who are now getting on the impeachment bandwagon, something that is driving me nuts as the following can attest to:
All this talk of another impeachment trial for Trump has me confused…the dude was already impeached. Folks who are now getting on the impeachment bandwagon are really declaring that they would be okay if the Senate had the balls to remove President Trump from office, but this urgency to get him removed from office is happening way too late in the game. The GOP is just going to have to suck it up and take their lumps/medicine this November.
I get that a lot of folks on the Right want to pretend their guy was not impeached but it is what it is…the other half of impeachment, removal from office…that is what we were all hoping for but in our heart of hearts always knew that was the ultimate long-shot.
Words have meaning, so a lot of these pundits need to stop talking about trying to impeach Trump and instead push for removal from office…not gonna happen, but that is what they should be talking about.
Louis Gohmert might not just be the dumbest person in Congress, he might be the dumbest person in the US. This is what he said in an interview about contracting Covid-19:
I can’t help but wonder if by keeping a mask on and keeping it in place, I might have put some germs — some virus — onto the mask and breathed it in
The stupid, it hurts
@Sleeping Dog: Ah, see I couldn’t fathom this particular Congress agreeing to change the federal date in the first place. I can’t keep up with the gibberish.
It’s such a strange attempt at changing the story from the GDP collapse (or, trying to distract from Obama’s awesome speech yesterday?). Or maybe the Maxwell report? Who knows.
When he’s lost the Federalist Society, he’s truly floating crazy stuff.
@Jen:
Yup and as @inhumans99: notes above, it is far too late for his enablers to be grousing about removing him, now that they are faced with the likelihood of being swept out of government. I want him in office till 11/3, if after that he wants to resign, fine.
@senyordave:
This is why mask hygiene is so important. If you are wearing a reusable cotton mask and talking to an unmasked person with covid-19, you CAN actually get droplets with covid on the outside of your mask. If you then take the mask off, and inadvertently put it back on with the side of the droplets facing IN, you would in fact be breathing in particles.
Basically, he’s admitting he doesn’t understand how masks work, nor how to keep himself safe, so pretty par for the course with him.
Gateway Pundit: is Dr. Fauci to blame for Herman Cain‘s death?
@Sleeping Dog: Please do.
@EddieInCA:..Go Bob Costas!!!!
I remember hearing Bob Costas on the local Sunday Night Sports show on KMOX AM out of
Saint Louis in 1983 as I drove from Southern Illinois to work in Jefferson City every week.
(US Route 50. A very nasty road in those days.)
He was a class act then and still is.
@EddieInCA:
I don’t see how anyone at any level can play football with the pandemic raging on.
I don’t know the epidemiological aspects well enough, but given the amount of very close contact inherent in the sport, I imagine a single infected player, say a linesman, could spread the virus to dozens of players over the course of a single game.
It’s not likely players will wear masks during play. They can wear face shields built into the helmets, as some players already do. Whether that could help or mitigate contagion enough, I’ve no idea.
@Teve: My gawd the comments at Gateway Pundit are frightening. They live in a complete alternate reality.
@Teve:
Wow, wait till they get a load of this over at Lucianne.com. They’ll be calling for Fauci’s trial and execution.
@gVOR08: Will America survive RWNJ media? I honestly don’t know.
What if Republicans don’t get better after Trump, what if we look back on Trump as the beginning? Who will the GOP run in 2024? Derek Chauvin? The vice president will be the guy who founded Stormfront?
@Teve: Nope, they have plenty of dreadful options waiting. Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, Marsha Blackburn, etc. are all heirs to Trump.
@gVOR08:
What’s scary is even if they were right about hydroxychloroquine (they aren’t), Dr. Fauci lacks the authority to either authorize or forbid its use in any patients at any time. That rests with the FDA.
Therefore, this is a blatant attempt to stir anti-Fauci sentiment for reasons we all know.
There’s more, too, like portraying reports of lack of results from hydroxychloroquine as “demonizing it,” but I won’t get into it.
I’ll add to what I posted yesterday about low(ish) mortality rates:
If the odds of dying from COVID-19 are around 1-2%, and if you give hydroxychloroquine to all patients sick with COVID-19, whether hospitalized or not, odds are about 98-99% will recover. If you give them all aspirin, odds for recovery are about the same. If you give them cotton candy, the odds won’t change significantly. If you make them watch porn… Well, you get the idea.
That’s how anecdotal information tends to work. “My friend/mom/uncle/acquaintance/cousin had cancer. They took colloidal silver and now they are fine!” Of course, they also underwent radiation or chemotherapy, and took other drugs, maybe medical marijuana too. Maybe dozens or hundreds of other people with the same cancer also took colloidal silver and died. You don’t know that from your anecdote.
This is why we need clinical studies, ideally double-blind with a control group, to isolate the variables and measure with some measure of precision what really happens.
Cardinals-Brewers postponed due to positive Covid test.
MLB season is circling the drain.
@Kathy: The Hydrochloroquine cranks are now saying that it works great but only if it’s administered extremely early in the infection. That’s impossible to refute, hell here in Florida it’s taking a week or two to get your test results back.
Chris Hayes’ non-news podcast, Why Is This Happening? (Why? Why?!?) has a very good interview with David Roberts about social bubbles and how people on both sides of the political divide evaluate information.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/revisited-the-information-crisis-with-david-roberts/id1382983397?i=1000486356366
Short version: almost no one carefully looks at new evidence and incorporates it into their worldview, but folks on the left generally have scientists as one of the trusted sources they have faith in.
@Kathy:
Fauci now says face shields and goggles can be somewhat efficacious in preventing transmission. But I don’t know how well that would work with a heavy contact sport such as football.
Going to go out on a limb and say that I think Biden’s choice will be Karen Bass. There is currently an enormous lobbying effort on her behalf being conducted by party insiders and major fundraisers / donors, while a concurrent effort to torpedo Harris / throw her under the bus is in full force. The intent appears to be to create a rationale for Biden not to select her (ostensibly based on the perception that she will not be a good fit for the office and will be running for the presidency the day Biden gets elected). Bass is seen as the safer, “less likely to create controversy” choice.
@Teve:
That’s not unreasonable. Some drugs used for spinal cord injuries must be given within an hour or so of injury to staunch the damage. of course, it’s rather easy to know when such an injury happened.
Even if COVID-19 tests were instantaneous, you wouldn’t know when the infection happened. We know once people show symptoms, the infection may be 2 to 14 days behind them. so you’d need to be tested daily and receive results within hours.
Or you could take a therapeutic dose of hydroxychloroquine daily, just in case you got infected. No doubt these proponents know the therapeutic dose, the common side effects, the contraindications, and the common complications, as well as known interactions with other drugs.
I mean, surely they know all this, from all those many studies that shows it works, right? Surely they wouldn’t be advocating merely self-dosing with something just because their Fearful Leader claims ti works, would they?
@Kathy:
I don’t see how anyone below the pro level can play football with the pandemic going on. The NFL could institute a quarantine for thier players, and have it be a hard quarantine, where everyone associated with interacting with players lives in the same hotel. Only way it would work. But the NFL Players Association would never allow it.
Somehow, the real football players in Europe (soccer here in the states) are able to make it work. Constant rapid testing, contact tracing, quarantine, and masks are all part of it. The English Premier League has had a few positive tests, but not enough to be of concern to the league. They finsihed their full season last Sunday. Same with SerieA, La Lega, The Bundesliga, Ligue One, etc. All are finishing their full seasons. The FA Cup final is this weekend (Arsenal v. Chelsea, ugh. That’s like Louie Ghomert vs. Jim Jordan. If only they both could lose.) at Wembley with no fans. But they’ll have a worldwide audience, and the FA Cup will be complete. The Europa League will finish in a month (Go ManUnited!). Same with the Champion’s League.
Yet we have 155K dead and counting and the virus still spreading.
So much winning here. Are you tired of it yet?
@Gustopher:
I’ll buy that. In my experience, few people consider or incorporate into their worldview any evidence. That’s why so many editorials and opinion pieces resort to narratives, especially those that personalize an issue with the experiences of a sympathetic subject. Mere evidence isn’t enough.
That’s also why a simple, provable statistic like “immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans,” falls flat in the face of headlines screaming, or merely saying “illegal immigrant kills area woman.”
@Kathy:
By the way, Barbara Res, who was Trump’s top (and only, I think) female executive in the Trump Organization says that Trump’s claim to be taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventative medicine was total bullshit, because he was and is far too paranoid about putting any unknown substance into his body. I believe her. This is a man who eats at McDonald’s because they can’t poison any mass-produced foodstuffs ahead of time and give them to him.
@Kathy:
FWIW, the FDA can keep a drug off market, but once approved, physicians are free to prescribe it for anything they want.
@EddieInCA:
Exhausted. Same as everyone.
Imagine what must constitute a loss for Trump the Horrible Ass.
As to European Soccer, one can assume their greater success at reducing community transmission, though it’s flaring up again, let them engage in organized sports more safely.
This is infuriating:
@MarkedMan:
Off-label use is common when a drug for condition X is found useful for condition Y. It happens. The FDA can authorize compassionate use, too, though usually this involves experimental drugs not yet approved for general use. I think that’s where hydroxychloroquine fell into.
But, yeah, doctors have a wide latitude to prescribe what they deem appropriate for their patients.
@CSK:
Oh, I believe “they” can 😉
@Monala: If proven, I suspect it is negligent homicide — probably a stretch, but a stretch well worth making.
@Kathy:
Oh, sure they can. But Trump seems to believe otherwise.
Speaking of which, I wonder how his nightly dinner order is fulfilled. Is it delivered to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, which of course would give away the identity of the recipient to anyone who wanted to contaminate the food, or is a Secret Service agent dispatched to the nearest Mickey D’s to stand in line and place the order: “Yeah, gimme two Filet-o-Fishes, a Big Mac, large fries, and a large Diet Coke. Supersize it.” The agent then pays for the goods, places them (except for the Coke) in a portable warming oven, and rushes them back to the White House.
Or does the WH employ a chef specially trained at Hamburger University to prepare Trump’s din-din nightly on site?
@Monala:
Of course they did. What was the messaging from the beginning? This is an US vs THEM thing: liberal blue states and cities are plague-ridden so why is it a conservative red state rural problem? Why do lockdowns in small town America if this is a New York thing? Why should I compromise my rights or my paycheck because some liberals are dying far away from here? FL tried to blame it’s infected on NY travelers – there is still a 14 quarantine in FL for Tri-State travelers even though it’s FAR more liklely you’ll catch in in FL and take it home. Ban was renewed recently because hey, gotta blame somebody amirite?
From minute one the plan was and still is to screw over as many blue states as possible during a crisis. These ghouls openly admitted Blue State Lives don’t matter with their actions but are now freaking out since Red State Lives are next on the chopping block. Karma’s wearing steel-toe boots lately….
@HarvardLaw92: Karen Bass would pass the traditional test of a VP candidate — when you hear their name, is your first question “Who is that?”?
The big public push for Bass as opposed to Harris actually strikes me as people who don’t want Harris trying to tank a decision that is all but made.
Duckworth would have been an interesting choice, but I haven’t heard much about her in the past week or so. I might not be paying a lot of attention though. We will find out soon enough.
@KM: Covid is also screwing over the west coast — California is doing very badly, Oregon badly and Washington seems to be… not great.
King County has about as many confirmed cases as they did at the first height of the epidemic (hard to compare, though, since we have much better testing now… hospitalization is creeping up), and other parts of the state are doing very badly.
If Karma is at work here, it’s not playing fair as the west coast states shut down hard, very early.
@Gustopher:
Agreed. Very interesting.
Not all that interested in Bass.
Still think it’s Warren.
@Gustopher:..If Karma is at work here,..
“Karma” is not science. In fact it is hocus pocus mumbo jumbo like invisible angels.
“Karma” is not at work anywhere.
It is no more valid than flat earth.
Adios, Mofos
@HarvardLaw92: There also seems to be a counter-effort going against Bass, something about trips to Cuba and saying nice-ish things about Castro.
Who knows at this point…the speculation is reaching the bloodletting phase.
@CSK:
Not everything Trump the Idiot believes is wrong, but that is the way to bet.
As to who fetches the hamberders, why do you think he bothers keeping a vice president around?
@sam:
I can’t stop laughing.
@Jen:
Once this becomes more widely known, I’d say that’s it for Bass.
@Kathy:
Actually, I thought maybe that was Jared’s job.
@CSK:
I was joking about Trump hiring a chef to prepare cuisine a la McDonald’s, but it turns out he actually did this. Whoever it wasn’t could quite manage to produce a meal with true Mickey D’s taste.
Maybe they could turn the WH kitchen into a McDonald’s franchise. The hell with anyone who might favor of somewhat healthier diet.
@Jen: @CSK: Wa! If that’s all it takes to make a “disqualifying statement,” you guys need to adjust your outrage meters (which, from what I can see, is probably necessary anyway, but…).
@Kathy: @CSK: I read of a report in the past couple days that a study was done of hospital personnel who wore masks and those who wore face shields. The people who wore face shields got covid at a rate of some number per hundred (or whatever metric they picked) and the ones who wore masks… Didn’t get covid. (IIRC)
I wish I could remember better or where I saw that, but sigh… Might have heard it on NPR, which if so I was only half listening and may have it all wrong. If so…. double sigh.
@OzarkHillbilly:
On the show I’m working on right now, cast wears no PPE while we film. BUT… only hair, makeup and Costumes are allowed to approach the cast at ANY time. Hair, Makeup and Wardrobe are wearing N95 masks, and face shields, gloves, full disposable paper gowns, and they’re swapped out every 4 hours. Three times per shooting day. The face shields are sanitized with UV Light, and the masks and gowns and gloves are burned are tossed.
So far, it’s working.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Come on. Surely you can see what the Trump campaign will do with this. Karen Bass loves Castro! Karen Bass is a Commie! Does it bother me? No. Will it bother the right and, more importantly, some on the fence? You betcha. It’s already started at some of the pro-Trump websites.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Fauci’s point was that the eyes have mucous membranes, and a shield, like goggles, affords some protection to the eyes, whereas a mask provides none.
@CSK:
Jared would be the perfect food taster.
I saw a video once on how to make a McDonald’s burger. For someone of influence, if not taste, the WH staff could manage to acquire patties, seasonings, and sauce from McDonald’s directly, then it’s just a matter of overcooking everything.
@CSK:
@OzarkHillbilly:
@EddieInCA:
I haven’t looked into the matter of face shields, but obviously air circulates within them, and without a mask you will aspirate anything in that air, including droplets laden with SARS-CoV-2.
I assume they protect the eyes, and perhaps skin, from droplets falling in. Hospital personnel treating COVID patients wear them, as did the technicians who took or samples for a COVID test. This makes sense. When around probable or known COVID-19 carriers, the odds of catching a tainted droplet in the eye over multiple interactions are very high.
@Gustopher: We did, and dropped significantly. It was when we opened back up in June that the cases started to rise again, and have now surpassed the previous highs in April.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Disqualifying statement? I said absolutely nothing of the sort.
I said that there was clearly an effort afoot to undercut Bass.
This sounds really close to “you’re getting yourselves worked up little ladies,” so maybe dial back the condescension a wee bit?
@sam: Wow. Dogs have such good spatial sense. When my dog gets the zoomies, I always marvel at how easily she avoids any obstacles in her path.
@Jen: Please note that there were 2 people that I was replying to. One said…
Since that person wasn’t you, well… do the math! 🙁 X-(
ETA: While I’m here, please feel free to contextualize my comments in any ways you see fit. I come from a long line of DGAFs and once I got a job offer from a fruit packing company specifically because the manager knew my reputation as an a$$hole.
@CSK: Got no dog in the Karen Bass fight. Ain’t gonna buy one for it, neither.
@Kathy: I suppose that next you’re going to say that you think that Starbucks coffee tastes burnt. 🙂
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Have you ever had a rare or medium rare burger at McDonald’s or any other fast food franchise?
@Just nutha ignint cracker: You addressed your comment to both of us.
I really couldn’t care less about your reputation as an asshole. I am going to push back when people are needlessly rude and implying that I “need an outrage adjustment,” because that’s sexist, misogynistic language. And also was totally inaccurate.
@Jen: At least he didn’t refer to you as “sweetie”… 😉
I imagine there must be a lot of outrage on the Right for the things Obama suggested in his eulogy for John Lewis–making voting a national holiday, admitting Puerto Rico and DC as states, returning the right to vote to ex-felons, killing the filibuster, or, as he called it, the “Jim Crow relic”…oh I’ll bet they’ll be howling over that one…Obama himself has certainly moved further to the left from where he used to be…
Speaking of Karen Bass, it’s one thing to praise Fidel Castro, it’s quite another to praise L. Ron Hubbard…
Sleepytown High School will start the school year exclusively with remote learning.
Sexual intercourse you Trump. The local citizens of Sleepytown and their school board know what’s best for their students. Not you!
When I first clicked on the link it was there. Now it is behind a paywall.
ah, there are some indications there is something one can treat COVID-19 patients with, but with a limited window of opportunity.
Not Trump’s snake oil pill, but interferon.
I’m re-watching Star Trek Deep Space 9 starting from season one, and I remain assured it’s the best Trek. The moral righteousness Captain Sisko feels in season one episode six is breathtaking. Star Trek deep space nine’s radical depiction of black love.
@Teve: excellent article! Thanks for sharing.
@Teve: several other good articles on that site! I liked the one on 24th century policing that uses Odo as a case study about corrupt policing today, and the one that ranks the Jem’Hadar. I like the latter because the number two Jem’Hadar on the list is from one of my favorite episodes, “Hippocratic Oath.” I liked that episode in part because it tackles one of the rarely spoken class divides in Star Trek: between those who came up through Starfleet Academy like Dr. Bashir, and those who rose up through the ranks like Chief O’Brien.
@Kathy: Well, I haven’t, but I know one fast food company that became famous for their medium-rare hamburgers.
Unfortunately, their name is Jack in the Box and they’re famous for their burgers having something else, too. 🙁 There’s a reason that I don’t go to drive-ins for rare beef.
@Jen:
We have a meeting of the minds. A good start.
Ah! Now there’s a breach again. When I said, “you guys,” I was referring to Democrats at large and the statement was conditioned on what constituted a disqualification in YOUR political party–of which I am not a member and for which I can’t remember ever voting for a candidate (while I still voted at all 🙁 ) because I grew up rwnj-level conservative on the Left Coast. On that point, rest assured, if I had been referring to you specifically, I would have been more exact in my language [edit: and said “you two”].
Well… (and yes, I am…)
@Teve: We have started a re-watch/completion of DS9 (we watched it at the time it was on but we had two babies across the last several seasons of seasons and in the pre-DVR days keeping up with shows meant the VCR and enough times forgetting to set it, etc, meant we never got to it–not to mention hourlong dramas and infants are often a poor mix).
I haven’t watched most of these since they originally aired, and while the first two seasons have some clunkiness at times, the average quality is much higher than TNG’s first two seasons (especially TNG’s first, which is really not very good).
I have been struck by Avery Brook’s presence as Sisko more than I remembered, and am looking forward to when his character becomes a bit more central later (I had forgotten what an ensemble show it was and how key characters could miss whole shows or have minor appearances at best).