I mean, kinda fits with the retro & performative nature of the GOP. Since the 80s, their voters have elected Cooter from Dukes of Hazard, Gopher from The Love Boat, the star of Bedtime for Bonzo, The Terminator, The Apprentice guy and Clint Eastwood, who later talked to a chair. https://t.co/Q9HMD6DGxJ
However, the film actor and political newcomer could hit potholes in either major party’s primary if he enters next year’s governor’s race, the poll found.
For months, McConaughey has teased political pundits and TV talk show hosts with musings that he might enter politics in his home state.
If he were to take the plunge and run for governor, the poll found, 45% of Texas registered voters would vote for McConaughey, 33% would vote for Abbott and 22% would vote for someone else.
McConaughey’s double-digit lead over the two-term Republican incumbent is significant. The poll, conducted April 6-13, surveyed 1,126 registered voters and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.92 percentage points.
But 56% of Republican voters said they’d vote for Abbott, compared with only 30% for McConaughey.
While Democrats broke 66% to 8% for McConaughey, and independents 44% to 28%, more than twice as many Democratic primary voters — 51% — said they wanted a progressive candidate for governor than wanted a centrist — 25%.
That could pose a problem. McConaughey, who has criticized both major parties, has suggested he’s more of a moderate.
And in the GOP gubernatorial primary, that’s also not obviously a ticket to success. Solid majorities of poll respondents who described themselves as conservative, evangelical or retirement-age Republican primary voters said they’d vote for Abbott.
Only 20% of GOP primary voters preferred a more centrist Republican, and 18% wanted someone more like former President Donald Trump. Fourteen percent preferred someone more conservative than Abbott, who has been avidly courting the right wing of his party in recent weeks after several staunch conservatives, including former state Sen. Don Huffines of Dallas, were mentioned as possible challengers to him in the primary.
Reagan and Schwarzenegger both had been seriously involved in politics before they ran for Governor. What has McConaughey done except tweet?
On the other hand, they loved that Orange TV idiot and his claim to fame was being famous and ignorantly pontificating on TV, so why not?
I’m sure you recall the fact that Lindsey Graham just spent the last four years sucking up to the most incompetent president this country’s ever produced and man he calls “consequential” mainly because he fucked everything up so badly that it will take years to fix. Donald Trump never listened to anyone who wasn’t eagerly licking his boots at the same time and even then he mostly ignored them
Trump never listened to Graham either. But he did invite him to the golf course making him feel very special which Biden evidently isn’t doing. This isn’t surprising since Graham’s full of shit. Even Trump understood that much.
DeSantis’s career has been a distillation of this Florida-Republican adaptability. Born in Jacksonville, he went from being a double-Ivy Leaguer (Yale and Harvard Law) to a Tea Party congressman to a zealous Trump defender who won the president’s endorsement for his gubernatorial campaign. A steady march rightward, it would seem — except that after winning an extremely narrow victory over Andrew Gillum in 2018, DeSantis then swung back to the center, with educational and environmental initiatives and African-American outreach that earned him 60 percent approval ratings in his first year in office.
Combine that moderate swing with the combative persona DeSantis has developed during the pandemic, and you can see a model for post-Trump Republicanism that might — might — be able to hold the party’s base while broadening the G.O.P.’s appeal. You can think of it as a series of careful two-steps. Raise teacher’s salaries while denouncing critical race theory and left-wing indoctrination. Spend money on conservation and climate change mitigation through a program that carefully doesn’t mention climate change itself. Choose a Latina running mate while backing E-Verify laws. Welcome conflict with the press, but try to make sure you’re on favorable ground.
This is not exactly the kind of Republicanism that the party’s donor class wanted back in 2012: DeSantis is to their right on immigration and social issues, and arguably to their left on spending. But the trauma of Trumpism has taught the G.O.P. elite that some compromise with base politics is inevitable, and right now DeSantis seems like the safest version of that compromise — Trump-y when necessary, but not Trump-y all the time.
Of course all of this means that he may soon attract the ire of a certain former president, who has zero interest in someone besides himself being the party front-runner for 2024. And the idea that a non-Trump front-runner could be anointed early and actually win seems at odds with everything we’ve seen from the G.O.P. recently.
Then, too, having the press as your constant foil and enemy isn’t necessarily a plus if they manage to come up with something genuinely damaging. There is a resemblance between DeSantis and Chris Christie, who looked like a 2016 front-runner before certain difficulties involving a bridge intervened.
Still, if you were betting on someone who could theoretically run against Trump, mano a mano, and not simply get squashed, I would put DeSantis ahead of both the defeated Trump rivals (meaning Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz) and the loyal Trump subordinates (meaning Mike Pence or Nikki Haley). Not least because in a party that values performative masculinity, the Florida governor’s odd jock-nerd energy and prickly aggression are qualities Trump hasn’t faced before.
The donor-class hope that Trump will simply fade away still seems naïve. But the donors circling DeSantis at least seem to have learned one important lesson from 2016: If you want voters to say no to Donald Trump, you need to figure out, in a clear and early way, the candidate to whom you want them to say yes.
Apparently donors want a t hug for president who will bend them to his will. Very impressive. And being a total asshole while making some small unnoticed gestures to human decency is abound to appeal to all those suburban women who apparently are going to think he’s just dreamy.
Douthat pushes the increasingly insupportable myth that he has performed super well during the pandemic, particularly compared to those awful blue state Governors.
Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, must have magic at his fingertips.
We’re not talking about his purported skill at fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. We’re talking about his ability to snow the press into taking at face value the claim that his refusal to impose stringent anti-virus rules and regulations has been an unalloyed success.
The latest publication to fall into line is Politico, which on Thursday posted an article headlined, “How Ron DeSantis won the pandemic.” A companion piece observed that he has “survived the pandemic,” and that “Florida has fared no worse, and in some ways better, than many other states — including its big-state peers.”
We’ve succeeded, and I think that people just don’t want to recognize it because it challenges their narrative.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, last May
Leaving aside that this sort of coverage treats the coronavirus battle as if it’s a sporting contest deserving of up-to-the-minute color commentary, the best that could be said about these judgments is that they’re premature.
The struggle against the pandemic is still going on — in Florida and globally — so why the rush to declare DeSantis the “winner” of a war that could yet be lost?
Politico isn’t alone in anointing DeSantis the victor. So too has the Associated Press, which on March 13 posted an article stating, inadequately, that “despite their differing approaches, California and Florida have experienced almost identical outcomes in COVID-19 case rates.”
CNN came to a similar conclusion. “DeSantis’ gamble to take a laissez faire approach appears to be paying off,” it reported — though it was careful enough to qualify that its judgment applied “at least politically, at least for now.”
Indeed, DeSantis’ record on COVID-19 is attracting attention strictly because of politics. He’s being touted as a leading candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, as silly as it is to speculate today on such a distant a horse race. DeSantis’ COVID record is presented as Exhibit 1 for his front-runner status.
Yet it’s important to recognize that a state’s success or failure in combating COVID-19 depends on a multitude of factors, many of which are outside a governor’s control. Those who claim credit for good-looking statistics may be setting themselves up for a boatload of blame if the numbers turn ugly.
As we’ve remarked before, one thing that sets DeSantis apart from most other governors, red or blue, is his tendency to present himself as the victim of anti-conservative coverage.
He grouses unceasingly about being overlooked by the unsympathetic news media: “We’ve succeeded,” he said truculently on May 20, “and I think that people just don’t want to recognize it because it challenges their narrative.”
Assertions about DeSantis’ success rest on several pillars. One is the claim that Florida hasn’t done quite as badly as experts predicted last year, when DeSantis refused to shut down his state and enforce social hygiene measures such as mask wearing. Another is that the differences in outcomes between Florida and other states, particularly in COVID-related deaths, are supposedly minimal.
The judgment also depends on treating every state as a homogeneous entity, eliding variations of urban vs. rural, rich neighborhoods vs. poor, Black vs. white, and so on. And on treating every state as a hermetically sealed fortress unto itself, as though policies in one state have no impact beyond its borders.
All those factors demand close scrutiny. Since that seldom happens, it falls to us to dive into the details. We’ll match Florida’s experience against California’s, since California is among the more frequent punching bags for DeSantis and his fan base.
Florida’s per-capita death rate has exceeded California’s throughout the pandemic.
Let’s take it from the top. It’s arguably true that Florida’s record on the pandemic hasn’t been as bad as was forecast. That’s not the same as saying it’s good. Florida’s COVID death rate is about 155 per 100,000 population, according to data from Johns Hopkins University reported by the Washington Post. California’s is about 141.
The difference isn’t trivial. As my colleagues Soumya Karlamangla and Rong-Gong Lin II observed earlier this month, “If California had Florida’s death rate, roughly 6,000 more Californians would be dead from COVID-19 …. And if Florida had California’s death rate, roughly 3,000 fewer Floridians would be dead from COVID-19.”
As of Friday, Johns Hopkins counts 33,219 COVID deaths in Florida, which has a population of about 21.5 million, compared with 55,795 in California, which has a population of about 40 million. Those figures are a reproach to anyone who tries to assert that the war on COVID-19 has been “won,” in either state.
Yet statewide statistics tell a partial story at best. It’s especially misleading to apply a broad brush to California, one of the most geographically and demographically diverse states in the union. So let’s break the numbers down by county.
By far the worst death rate among large California counties is Los Angeles, at a total of 224.5 deaths per 100,000 residents through the pandemic thus far. As Karlamangla and Lin have explained, L.A. County was uniquely vulnerable to the pandemic, given its high levels of poverty and homelessness and its preponderance of densely packed neighborhoods and multigenerational housing.
L.A. also has a large population of immigrants, many of whom may have been discouraged from seeking COVID testing or treatment during 2020 by the Trump administration’s “public charge” policy, which threatened immigrants with deportation if they sought public services.
The county also has a large population of essential workers — those with little choice but to travel outside their homes to work, heightening their potential for exposure and for passing infection to others.
At the other end of the scale from Los Angeles, however, is San Francisco, which has one of the lowest COVID death rates among major metropolitan areas in the country — 51.4 per 100,000 population.
The Bay Area’s record testifies to the efficacy of stringent anti-pandemic measures: Its counties locked down early and firmly, observe mask wearing and social distancing rules fairly well, and have been cautious about reopening.
No major county in Florida has a death rate anywhere as low as San Francisco’s. The lowest rate is that of Monroe County (the Florida Keys) at 65 per 100,000 population. County authorities shut down tourist businesses on the Keys at the end of March, even erecting roadblocks on U.S. 1, the only highway into or out of the Keys, to prevent non-residents from coming in; the roadblocks came down June 1 but a stringent mask requirement remains in effect in Key West.
The death rates in most of Florida’s major population centers resemble that of Los Angeles: Miami-Dade, the largest, has a rate of 210 deaths per 100,000, Palm Beach 173, Pinellas County (St. Petersburg) 156.
In granular terms, in other words, Florida hasn’t done better than California. Both states are mosaics of rules and regulations, and in both states local conditions and local measures trump those of state governments.
Miami and the Tampa Bay metroplex both have tried to encourage mask wearing and social distancing because their leaders recognize that they face different conditions from rural and less dense regions that have followed DeSantis’ policies; California also has placed pandemic policies in the hands of county officials, with uneven effects.
Florida hasn’t done better than California despite different policies — in the parts of each state that resemble each other demographically, the challenge is similar, and so is the weaponry. And when you put it all together, Florida still does worse overall than California.
Some of DeSantis’ defenders argue that Florida has done better than should have been expected, given that its population is among the oldest, on average, in the country and therefore its residents are especially susceptible to COVID-19.
This is a curious argument, since DeSantis and his sycophants have asserted that the key to his success in combating the pandemic has been taking special care of his state’s seniors. But he can’t have things both ways—either the state’s record has suffered because of its demographics, or he has triumphed over the demographics. Which is it?
One issue that gets consistently glossed over in reporting on DeSantis’ “win” is the degree to which Florida may be exporting its pandemic problem. The state’s beaches and coastal entertainment zones were wide open during last year’s college spring break, and are again this year.
DeSantis loves to boast about the tourism boom in South Florida, but his braggadocio should be a warning for other states. That’s because there are signs that the spring break carousers simply brought their infections and their consequences home with them last year.
Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Ball State University found that COVID case rates in counties with universities that scheduled breaks early in the spring last year rose within a week of students returning to campus, compared to rates in counties with few college students. Mortality rates began to rise in those locations three to five weeks after students returned, suggesting that students transmitted their infections to higher-risk (that is, older) people.
They also found that universities with students more likely to travel by air, to New York City and to Florida “contribute[d] more to COVID-19 spread than … universities with less of this travel.”
To put it another way, Florida may welcome spring tourists with open arms, knowing they’ll be someone else’s problem when they become sick and spread their illness far and wide. The virus knows no geographic boundaries, and it’s perfectly content to hitch a ride.
Finally, what about Florida’s economic “boom”? Here’s DeSantis, in full gloat, courtesy of CNN: “If you look at what’s happening in South Florida right now, I mean this place is booming. It would not be booming if it was shut down. Los Angeles isn’t booming. New York City’s not booming. It’s booming here because you can live like a human being.”
The breadth of this boom is open to question. The news articles painting DeSantis as a political winner often feature quotes from contented business owners, but they tend to be bar and restaurant owners and other petty merchants happy that their establishments have remained open.
Politico observed that California’s Disneyland has remained closed while Orlando’s Walt Disney World is open, but fails to mention that Disney World imposes strict social hygiene measures, including mask wearing and social distancing that aren’t part of the DeSantis playbook.
Economic booms are relative. Compared to California, Florida’s economy is a popgun. Its per capita gross domestic product is about $51,200; California’s is $77,500. Florida’s median household income was about $59,200 in 2019; California’s was about $80,440.
Of more pressing significance, Florida’s state budget faced a shortfall of more than $2 billion (at least before Congress enacted a pandemic relief bill with billions of dollars in help for states”). California has recorded a windfall of some $15.5 billion.
The discrepancy isn’t due to differences in civic virtue, but to the states’ divergent tax structures. Florida has no income tax, but California depends heavily on its income tax, which is sensitive to the sort of investment gains seen during 2020. California’s windfall isn’t expected to last beyond this year.
The media’s rush to crown Ron DeSantis as having vanquished COVID-19 looks more like a rush to get in front of a parade every day. But it’s a mug’s game. A lot can happen between now and the next presidential election, and as we’ve seen, the coronavirus is ready and willing to prove everybody wrong.
But I’m afraid “DeSantis the contrarian hero” starting to take on the whiff of received wisdom and he will benefit from it no matter what the statistics say. The media just wants to believe it. It’s fun.
Trump must be starting to get a little bit grumpy about this. Will he be willing to fade into obscurity as his top Florida henchman becomes the star of the party? Stay tuned.
James Fallows passed along this list of useful unsolicited advice from @kevin2kelly. I’m not quite at his age, but I can certainly endorse a good part of it — and now that I think about it, much of the rest. (I’m still learning, obviously.)
Fallows added his own maxim” “Never miss a chance to give a *deserved* compliment.” Absolutely.
Kelly wrote:
It’s my birthday. I’m 68. I feel like pulling up a rocking chair and dispensing advice to the young ‘uns. Here are 68 pithy bits of unsolicited advice which I offer as my birthday present to all of you.
• Learn how to learn from those you disagree with, or even offend you. See if you can find the truth in what they believe.
• Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.
• Always demand a deadline. A deadline weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary. It prevents you from trying to make it perfect, so you have to make it different. Different is better.
• Don’t be afraid to ask a question that may sound stupid because 99% of the time everyone else is thinking of the same question and is too embarrassed to ask it.
• Being able to listen well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love keep asking them “Is there more?”, until there is no more.
• A worthy goal for a year is to learn enough about a subject so that you can’t believe how ignorant you were a year earlier.
• Gratitude will unlock all other virtues and is something you can get better at.
• Treating a person to a meal never fails, and is so easy to do. It’s powerful with old friends and a great way to make new friends.
• Don’t trust all-purpose glue.
• Reading to your children regularly will bond you together and kickstart their imaginations.
• Never use a credit card for credit. The only kind of credit, or debt, that is acceptable is debt to acquire something whose exchange value is extremely likely to increase, like in a home. The exchange value of most things diminishes or vanishes the moment you purchase them. Don’t be in debt to losers.
• Pros are just amateurs who know how to gracefully recover from their mistakes.
• Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence to be believed.
• Don’t be the smartest person in the room. Hangout with, and learn from, people smarter than yourself. Even better, find smart people who will disagree with you.
• Rule of 3 in conversation. To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and once more. The third time’s answer is close to the truth.
• Don’t be the best. Be the only.
• Everyone is shy. Other people are waiting for you to introduce yourself to them, they are waiting for you to send them an email, they are waiting for you to ask them on a date. Go ahead.
• Don’t take it personally when someone turns you down. Assume they are like you: busy, occupied, distracted. Try again later. It’s amazing how often a second try works. [Don’t be a pest though or you will turn yourself into a stalker. Learn how to take no for an answer, too. — digby]
• The purpose of a habit is to remove that action from self-negotiation. You no longer expend energy deciding whether to do it. You just do it. Good habits can range from telling the truth, to flossing.
• Promptness is a sign of respect.
• When you are young spend at least 6 months to one year living as poor as you can, owning as little as you possibly can, eating beans and rice in a tiny room or tent, to experience what your “worst” lifestyle might be. That way any time you have to risk something in the future you won’t be afraid of the worst case scenario.
• Trust me: There is no “them”.
• The more you are interested in others, the more interesting they find you. To be interesting, be interested.
• Optimize your generosity. No one on their deathbed has ever regretted giving too much away.
• To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just re-do it, re-do it, re-do it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them.
• The Golden Rule will never fail you. It is the foundation of all other virtues.
• If you are looking for something in your house, and you finally find it, when you’re done with it, don’t put it back where you found it. Put it back where you first looked for it.
• Saving money and investing money are both good habits. Small amounts of money invested regularly for many decades without deliberation is one path to wealth.
• To make mistakes is human. To own your mistakes is divine. Nothing elevates a person higher than quickly admitting and taking personal responsibility for the mistakes you make and then fixing them fairly. If you mess up, fess up. It’s astounding how powerful this ownership is.
• Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
• You can obsess about serving your customers/audience/clients, or you can obsess about beating the competition. Both work, but of the two, obsessing about your customers will take you further.
• Show up. Keep showing up. Somebody successful said: 99% of success is just showing up.
• Separate the processes of creation from improving. You can’t write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don’t select. While you sketch, don’t inspect. While you write the first draft, don’t reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgement.
• If you are not falling down occasionally, you are just coasting.
• Perhaps the most counter-intuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others, the more you’ll get. Understanding this is the beginning of wisdom.
• Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat.
• This is true: It’s hard to cheat an honest man.
• When an object is lost, 95% of the time it is hiding within arm’s reach of where it was last seen. Search in all possible locations in that radius and you’ll find it.
• You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on.
• If you lose or forget to bring a cable, adapter or charger, check with your hotel. Most hotels now have a drawer full of cables, adapters and chargers others have left behind, and probably have the one you are missing. You can often claim it after borrowing it.
• Hatred is a curse that does not affect the hated. It only poisons the hater. Release a grudge as if it was a poison.
• There is no limit on better. Talent is distributed unfairly, but there is no limit on how much we can improve what we start with.
• Be prepared: When you are 90% done any large project (a house, a film, an event, an app) the rest of the myriad details will take a second 90% to complete.
• When you die you take absolutely nothing with you except your reputation.
• Before you are old, attend as many funerals as you can bear, and listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. The only thing people will remember is what kind of person you were while you were achieving.
• For every dollar you spend purchasing something substantial, expect to pay a dollar in repairs, maintenance, or disposal by the end of its life.
•Anything real begins with the fiction of what could be. Imagination is therefore the most potent force in the universe, and a skill you can get better at. It’s the one skill in life that benefits from ignoring what everyone else knows.
• When crisis and disaster strike, don’t waste them. No problems, no progress.
• On vacation go to the most remote place on your itinerary first, bypassing the cities. You’ll maximize the shock of otherness in the remote, and then later you’ll welcome the familiar comforts of a city on the way back.
• When you get an invitation to do something in the future, ask yourself: would you accept this if it was scheduled for tomorrow? Not too many promises will pass that immediacy filter.
• Don’t say anything about someone in email you would not be comfortable saying to them directly, because eventually they will read it.
• If you desperately need a job, you are just another problem for a boss; if you can solve many of the problems the boss has right now, you are hired. To be hired, think like your boss.
• Art is in what you leave out.
• Acquiring things will rarely bring you deep satisfaction. But acquiring experiences will.
• Rule of 7 in research. You can find out anything if you are willing to go seven levels. If the first source you ask doesn’t know, ask them who you should ask next, and so on down the line. If you are willing to go to the 7th source, you’ll almost always get your answer.
• How to apologize: Quickly, specifically, sincerely.
• Don’t ever respond to a solicitation or a proposal on the phone. The urgency is a disguise.
• When someone is nasty, rude, hateful, or mean with you, pretend they have a disease. That makes it easier to have empathy toward them which can soften the conflict.
• Eliminating clutter makes room for your true treasures.
• You really don’t want to be famous. Read the biography of any famous person.
• Experience is overrated. When hiring, hire for aptitude, train for skills. Most really amazing or great things are done by people doing them for the first time.
• A vacation + a disaster = an adventure.
• Buying tools: Start by buying the absolute cheapest tools you can find. Upgrade the ones you use a lot. If you wind up using some tool for a job, buy the very best you can afford.
• Learn how to take a 20-minute power nap without embarrassment.
• Following your bliss is a recipe for paralysis if you don’t know what you are passionate about. A better motto for most youth is “master something, anything”. Through mastery of one thing, you can drift towards extensions of that mastery that bring you more joy, and eventually discover where your bliss is.
• I’m positive that in 100 years much of what I take to be true today will be proved to be wrong, maybe even embarrassingly wrong, and I try really hard to identify what it is that I am wrong about today.
• Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists. To be an optimist you don’t have to ignore all the many problems we create; you just have to imagine improving our capacity to solve problems.
• The universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success. This will be much easier to do if you embrace this pronoia.
There’s a lot of good stuff in there well worth pondering.
As far as I can tell in my neighborhood, the pandemic is officially over. Sure some of us oldsters are still following the guidelines but the number of younger people just going completely back to normal is huge. Big change from even a couple of weeks ago.
Sadly, some of them are going to get this thing. And a few oldies who haven’t been fully vaccinated will too. And that’s not good for anyone.
What used to be a mysterious new variant first detected in the UK is now the most dominant coronavirus strain in the US.And unlike the original strain of the novel coronavirus, the more contagious B.1.1.7 strain is hitting young people particularly hard.”(Covid-19) cases and emergency room visits are up,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
We are seeing these increases in younger adults, most of whom have not yet been vaccinated.”Now doctors say many young people are suffering Covid-19 complications they didn’t expect.
And it’s time to ditch the belief that only older adults or people with pre-existing conditions are at risk of severe Covid-19.
Viruses mutate all the time, and most mutations aren’t very important. But if the mutations are significant, they can lead to dangerous new variants of a virus.”
The B.1.1.7 variant has mutations that allow it to bind more” to cells, said Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a CNN medical analyst and professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University.”
Think of this mutation as making the virus stickier.”
Coronavirus latches onto cells with its spike proteins — the spikes surrounding the surface of the virus.”There is a little difference in the way the (B.1.1.7) spike protein holds that makes it stick to your cells a little more easily,” said emergency physician Dr. Megan Ranney, director of the Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital Health.
With the original strain of the novel coronavirus, “you need a certain inoculum — a certain amount of virus — in order for the infection to basically stick,” Reiner said.”Is one viral particle enough to make you sick? No, probably not. On the other hand … sometimes a massive inoculum can kill an otherwise healthy person. And we’ve seen that in health care workers,” he said.”
So these new variants, particularly the UK variant, seem to be stickier. So the notion is that it’s more contagious, so to speak, because potentially you don’t need as much of an inoculum to get sick.”
What this means in real life: “You can be in a place and maybe have a briefer exposure or have a smaller exposure — more casual exposure — and then get infected,” Reiner said.And because B.1.1.7 is stickier, “you may indeed have a higher viral load.”
“If you have a higher number of viral particles in your respiratory tract, then it’s going to be easier to spread it to other people,” Ranney said.
That’s another reason why it’s so important for young adults to get vaccinated.B.1.1.7 cases have now been reported in all 50 states, the CDC said.
“What we’re seeing in a bunch of places now is sick, young people — hospitalized young people. Whereas earlier on in the pandemic, it was primarily older people,” Reiner said.
“The reason for this might be as simple as the older population in this country has either been exposed to this virus, killed by the virus, or now vaccinated against the virus.”
As of Saturday, more than 78% of people age 65 and over have received at least one dose of vaccine, and 60% have been fully vaccinated, according to CDC data.
“The unvaccinated — those are the people who are getting infected — we’re seeing a large number of young people, and they’re the ones we’re seeing in hospitals now.”
In March, New Jersey saw a 31% jump in Covid-19 hospitalizations among young adults ages 20 to 29, the state health commissioner said. And the 40-49 age group saw a 48% increase in Covid-19 hospitalizations.Ranney said she’s also noticed a stark change in who’s getting hospitalized.
“This has been kind of a gradual increase in the proportion of folks who are younger over the last couple of months,” she said, citing data from COVID-NET — which tracks cases from more than 250 hospitals in 14 states.
“Looking at the week of December 26 or January 2, age 65-plus would be, say, 3,000 (hospitalizations). And then everything else together is 3,000. More than 50% were age 65-plus.”But by March 27, “it was about one-third (ages) 18 to 49 … about one-third ages 50 to 64, and then about one-third 65-plus,” Ranney said.
As an emergency room doctor, Ranney said she regularly sees young, previously healthy patients struggling with coronavirus.”I see at least a few people on every ER shift that I work who are there because they are having persistent trouble breathing or other side effects as a result of Covid-19,” she said.
Ranney said she generally defines “young people” as those under 50. But “no matter which age cutoff you use, right now, we’re seeing more B.1.1.7 than the older variants.”
“We’re certainly seeing it more in 20s and 30s as well,” she said. “And people in their 20s and 30s are less likely to be vaccinated and more likely to be out and about.”
The vast majority of positive coronavirus tests don’t go through genomic sequencing to figure out whether it’s B.1.1.7 or another strain. But as genomic sequencing increases nationwide, health experts say there’s no doubt B.1.1.7 is fueling more hospitalizations among young people.Dr. Justin Skrzynski is a Covid hospitalist — or specialist in the care of Covid-19 patients — at Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak in Michigan. He said the facility sends a portion of its coronavirus samples to the state for DNA analysis.
“Right now, the regular Covid test we do — that’s still just showing Covid (or) no Covid,” Skrzynski said.
“But we do send a lot of those out to the state, and we are seeing something like 40% of our patients now (with) B.1.1.7.”Reiner said he thinks both human behavior and the “stickiness” of B.1.1.7 are leading to more Covid-19 hospitalizations among young people.”It may be simply because of just (more young people) getting infected … and perhaps the inoculum (viral load) is higher,” he said.
Sometimes, young people can be victims of their own strong immune systems.Throughout the pandemic, doctors have noticed some young, previously healthy patients suffer from Covid-19 cytokine storms. That’s basically when someone’s immune system overreacts — potentially causing severe inflammation or other serious symptoms.
As B.1.1.7 keeps spreading, it’s possible the number of young people with cytokine storms will increase, Reiner said.”We’ve certainly seen people come into our hospital, very young people (in their early 20s) … need to be put on ECMO, which is basically a heart-lung machine for days or even weeks because they come in with cardiomyopathy — which is a response to a cytokine storm,” he said.
As more young people get infected, doctors are worried they’ll see more of a disturbing trend they’ve noticed for months — long-term complications.
“I cannot tell you how many people I’ve taken care of in the ER who are in their 20s, 30s and 40s, who are never sick enough to end up in the ER with Covid, but who now have long-lasting respiratory difficulties,” Ranney said
.”Or they have persistent loss of taste and smell, and they’re losing weight because there’s no joy from eating. Or they have that kind of brain fog that we hear about with long Covid. And it’s not universal. It’s not every person who gets Covid who’s going to get that. But there is the reality that this disease is not benign — regardless of whether they get hospitalized or in the ICU,” she said.
“So I think there’s this false sense of both ‘I’m immune to it just because I’m young,’ and ‘Even if I catch it, I’ll be fine.’ You may be lucky. And that may be true, that if you catch it, you’ll be fine. But there’s also a chance that you won’t.”
Reiner said some long-haul symptoms in young people have lasted roughly a year now — “debilitating symptoms that have come in the aftermath of their coronavirus infection,” he said.”So what I would say to young people is that Covid-19 doesn’t have to kill you to wreck your life.
“Health experts say it’s critical to keep practicing Covid-19 safety precautions until many more people get vaccinated. Yet some states have ditched mask mandates or reopened bars to full capacity just as B.1.1.7 was spreading rapidly.
And that’s likely fueling the spread of B.1.1.7 among young people, Reiner said.
“They’re the people going out to the bars. They’re the people meeting for brunch. The older people in this country have been hunkered down for a year because they’ve been worried about dying from this virus. Young people in this country haven’t worried so much about dying from this virus.
And there’s a lot of pandemic fatigue.
“Reiner said he understands many businesses have been devastated and need to fully reopen once it’s safe to.
“But easing the mask mandate makes zero sense,” he said. “There is no economic hardship, and there’s no personal hardship to require a person to wear a mask when they’re out in public.”
Ranney said young people may misinterpret the lifting of safety mandates.”When you hear that … as a regular person who’s not following the day-to-day (data), you think, ‘Well, my governor wouldn’t open it if it’s not safe,'” she said. “So I think there is that mixed message.”
It’s not just young adults who are getting infected with this variant. More cases of B.1.1.7 are showing up among children, too.
“Absolutely, we are seeing a higher number of kids test positive for B.1.1.7 than we have seen for the other virus types,” Ranney said.”It’s not necessarily that kids are more susceptible to B.1.1.7. But it’s just that they’re more likely to be exposed to it both because they’re out and about, and because this version is more transmissible.
“While classroom learning is relatively safe when the right safety precautions are taken, health officials say after-school activities — such as youth sports and other extracurriculars — are causing more children to get Covid-19.
And while Covid-19 deaths among children are extremely rare, they have happened.
The good news about B.1.1.7: We don’t need a new playbook to fight it. But we do have to follow the existing playbook closely to snuff out this highly contagious variant.
“Even though it is more transmissible, every piece of data that we have supports that we can still stop it using the same techniques that we have used for other variants,” Ranney said.
“So it’s still about masks and physical distancing and ventilation and vaccines. And our current vaccines — and this is really critical — the current vaccines work really well against B.1.1.7.”
But here’s the catch: The longer a virus circulates, the more opportunities it has to develop new mutations. And if the mutations are significant, they can lead to more problematic variants — including some that might evade vaccine protection.
“To me, this is a warning sign. This is a shot across the bow of what could happen,” Ranney said.B.1.1.7 “does spread more easily. It is increasing the number of cases. We’re seeing some increases in hospitalizations, probably due to the B.1.1.7 spread. But the vaccines work against it,” she said.”There may be future variants for which we are not so lucky.”
California plans to completely re-open on June 15th. And if everyone can keep their wits about them until then there should be no problem in doing that. But if a bunch of young people and right wingers don’t get vaccinated and this variant does to us what it’s doing to Michigan I don’t think it will happen.
The good news here is that there seems to be a willingness to get vaccinated here and the program is working pretty well. If they can get to the hard to reach populations, especially with the one-shot J&J, we might just beat the odds. But I do wish people would be a little bit more careful. Big, maskless, indoor parties are still a bad idea.
Remember that “Health and Freedom Conference” starring Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell and other right wing crazies? Here’s a taste of Trump lawyer Lin Wood:
The grassroots anger at Gov. Brian Kemp and other top state officials who refused to overturn former President Donald Trump’s election defeat bubbled up on Saturday at several county GOP meetings across the state as activists gathered to censure or rebuke the GOP leaders for their stances.
Republican delegates in more than a half-dozen counties passed resolutions over the past week assailing Kemp for not doing more to help Trump’s false claims of voting fraud. And several more also punished Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who have also drawn Trump’s wrath.
The governor’s forceful defense of a new election rewrite that includes new restrictions to voting pushed by pro-Trump forces has put him on more solid footing with his party’s base, but the fallout of the weekend showed he’s still not in the clear.
Though he has so far escaped a top-tier Republican primary opponent, former Democrat Vernon Jones launched a challenge against him on Friday, vowing to win over anti-Kemp conservatives despite only switching to the GOP earlier this year.
And while most local GOP groups refused to rebuke Kemp, the mostly rural counties that did offered evidence that the governor must still shore up his base in an expected rematch against Democrat Stacey Abrams, the nationally known voting rights advocate and former House leader who narrowly lost to him in 2018.
Even a fraction of Republicans who remain skeptical of Kemp could pose problems to Kemp in November 2022, much like a sharp turnout drop in conservative rural areas hampered U.S. Senate incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in the January runoff defeats to Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
“Many of the Trump supporters that did not return and vote in the January runoff will not return to vote for Kemp in 2022,” said Brian Pritchard, a North Georgia GOP activist and commentator. “The only way to get a Trump supporter to vote for Kemp is to get Trump to endorse Kemp. And we don’t see that happening.”
You never know. Trump likes to hold grudges but he also likes to make his enemies grovel for his favor. We’ll have to see.
Photo by Jim Lanthier via Adirondack Daily Enterprise.
“That’s what happens when people listen to us.” — One America News producer Marty Golingan upon seeing Capitol insurrectionist holding a flag emblazoned with his network’s logo.
One America News Network continues to promote conspiracy that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen.” At least a few staffers are uneasy about that. Sixteen of 18 staffers the New York Times interviewed “said the channel had broadcast reports that they considered misleading, inaccurate or untrue.”
To go by much of OAN’s reporting, it is almost as if a transfer of power had never taken place. The channel did not broadcast live coverage of Mr. Biden’s swearing-in ceremony and Inaugural Address. Into April, news articles on the OAN website consistently referred to Donald J. Trump as “President Trump” and to President Biden as just “Joe Biden” or “Biden.” That practice is not followed by other news organizations, including the OAN competitor Newsmax, a conservative cable channel and news site.
OAN has also promoted the debunked theory that the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 were left-wing agitators. Toward the end of a March 4 news segment that described the attack as the work of “antifa” and “anti-Trump extremists” — and referred to the president as “Beijing Biden” — Mr. Sharp said, “History will show it was the Democrats, and not the Republicans, who called for this violence.” Investigations have found no evidence that people who identify with antifa, a loose collective of antifascist activists, were involved in the Capitol riot.
Charles Herring, the president of Herring Networks, the company that owns OAN, defended the reports casting doubt on the election. “Based on our investigations, voter irregularities clearly took place in the November 2020 election,” he said. “The real question is to what extent.”
Spoken as if the answer to that question is none of his concern.
Charles Herring defended OAN’s coverage. “A review process with multiple checks is in place to ensure that news reporting meets the company’s journalist standards,” he said. “And, yes, we’ve had our fair share of mistakes, but we do our best to keep them to a minimum and learn from our missteps.”
Mr. Golingan added that, since Inauguration Day, OAN’s news director, Lindsay Oakley, had reprimanded him for referring to Mr. Biden as “President Biden” in news copy. Ms. Oakley did not reply to requests for comment.
More than a dozen employees have resigned since the Capitol riot.
“And the thing is, when people speak up about anything, you will get in trouble,” said Allysia Britton, a former OAN news producer.
Dominion Voting Systems has sued Fox News, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell over alleged defamatory claims about its voting machines in the wake of Trump’s 2020 loss, something OAN has done as well. One of its most popular YouTube videos is hosted by OAN White House correspondent, Chanel Rion, features a man claiming to have heard “company executives say they would ‘make sure’ Mr. Trump lost.”
Mr. Golingan, the producer, said some OAN employees had hoped Dominion would sue the channel. “A lot of people said, ‘This is insane, and maybe if they sue us, we’ll stop putting stories like this out,’” he said.
Not as long as there are Trump cultists ready to believe.
“Policing in America is on trial here,” Joseph Giacalone told the Washington Post last week. “Derek Chauvin has done more damage to policing in America than any issue since I’ve been alive.” The retired NYPD detective sergeant teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Chauvin is on trial in Minneapolis, Minn. for the murder of George Floyd last May.
One would think repeated negative press, rumors of cracks in the “blue wall of silence,” and nationwide calls for sweeping police reform might have given more officers pause. Particularly around Minneapolis. And one would be wrong (USA Today):
Journalists covering a protest in a Minneapolis suburb Friday night were forced on their stomachs by law enforcement, rounded up and were only released after having their face and press credentials photographed.
The incident occurred hours after a judge issued a temporary order barring the Minnesota State Patrol from using physical force or chemical agents against journalists, according to court documents. It also barred police from seizing photographic, audio or video recording equipment, or press passes.
The journalists were covering a protest in the Brooklyn Center suburb of Minneapolis where last week a white officer shot and killed a 20-year-old Black man, Daunte Wright, during a traffic stop last Sunday. The officer who fired the fatal shot captured on body-cam video has been arrested.
Police declared the protest an unlawful assembly after about 30 minutes and an an incident propmpted police to deploy pepper balls and chemical irritants. They ordered the crowd of about 500 to disperse. Journalists lingered to report on events, thinking they did not need to disperse, said Jasper Colt, a photojournalist with the USA TODAY Network.
Police forced the journalists to the ground onto their faces and began photographing them.
The Minnesota State Patrol issued guidance to its troopers and other law enforcement agencies, MSP said in its statement. The guidance highlights the orders in the temporary restraining order prohibiting MSP from enforcing general dispersal orders against the press.
MSP is also prohibited from “arresting, threatening to arrest, or threatening/using physical force” against members of the press.
“MSP will not photograph journalists or their credentials,” the agency said in a statement. “However, troopers will continue to check credentials so media will not be detained any longer than is necessary. In addition, MSP will no longer include messaging at the scene advising media where they can go to safely cover events.”
Use of force they know. And PR? not so much.
“The emergency order requires law enforcement to take certain steps to protect journalists… the order requires law enforcement to leave them alone,” said Adam Hansen, an attorney with Apollo Law LLC, who is working on the civil case with ACLU-Minnesota. “We absolutely see what happened last night as a violation of the court’s order and we’re doing everything we can to make sure that it doesn’t continue tonight and on into the future.”
The Seattle International Film Festival has curated its first-ever virtual program for 2021, which is running now through this Sunday, April 18th (via the SIFF Channel, available on Roku, Fire TV, Android TV and Apple TV—or online at watch.siff.net). The slate features a grand total of 219 films, including 93 feature length films from 69 countries…plus 126 short films. I have a fresh batch of reviews to share, so let’s dive in!
Beans ***½ (Canada) – Writer-director Tracey Deer’s impressive debut (co-written with Meredith Vuchnich) is a bittersweet coming-of-age story about a 12 year-old Mohawk girl nicknamed “Beans” (Kiawentiio). Beans’ preteen turmoil and angst is juxtaposed with a retelling of the 1990 “Oka crisis” standoff in Quebec, which involved a land dispute between Mohawk protesters and Canadian law enforcement. Beans, her little sister, father and pregnant mother find themselves in the thick of the (at times life-threatening) racist backlash from the local Quebecois settler community. Deer’s interweaving of documentary realism (via archival news footage of the crisis) with wonderful, naturalistic performances from her cast makes for an absorbing social drama.
The Bears’ Famous Invasion *** (France) – Granted, the bruin incursion recounted in this charming fairy-tale is likely more “famous” in Italy than elsewhere (Lorenzo Mattotti’s animated film is adapted from a popular Italian children’s book that I have never heard of called La famosa invasione degli orsi in Sicilia), but the story has universal appeal. A wandering minstrel and his young daughter happen onto a gargantuan bear while seeking shelter in a cave. Lucky for them, the hungry bear is up for swapping tales (as opposed to gobbling down an obvious easy dinner). The two tales told intersect in clever fashion. An imaginative and splendidly animated family-friendly entertainment.
Deadly Cuts *** (Ireland) – Strictly Ballroom meets Eating Raoul in this twisted black comedy from writer-director Rachel Carey. A quartet of hairdressers living in a crime-ridden Dublin neighborhood are working overtime to brainstorm new “cuts” that are innovative and exciting enough to wow the judges at the imminent “Ahh Hair!” championship. The women suffer a setback when their salon is vandalized by a gang who run a neighborhood protection racket. When the gang’s oafish leader shows up at the salon demanding payment, the confrontation escalates and the women are forced to defend themselves-with extreme prejudice. Let’s just say… it’s on to the championship, girls! The film becomes increasingly more campy and over-the-top as it progresses, but it’s (darkly) funny throughout.
The Salt in Our Waters ***½ (Bangladesh) – Writer-director Rezwan Shahriar Sumit’s sumptuously photographed variation on the venerable “city mouse-country mouse” scenario concerns a metropolitan sculptor (Titas Zia) who travels to a remote fishing village in the Bangladeshi Delta for a sabbatical. Inspired by the beauty of the coast (as well as one of the young women), he begins work on new pieces. Some villagers are puzzled by his sculptures (which they view as “idols” with no practical purpose) but are hospitable to their guest.
However, when the fishermen find their nets are suddenly coming up short (due to rising tides), the recently arrived outsider becomes a convenient straw man for the “Chairman”, the local head cleric and village leader. A compelling, beautifully acted drama that makes salient observations on tradition vs. modernity and science vs. fundamentalism.
The Spy **½ (Norway, Belgium, Sweden) –Swedish director Jens Jonsson’s WW2 drama is based on a “rumored” story regarding famous Norwegian-Swedish actress Sonja Wigert. After Sonja (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal) shuns the advances of German occupied Norway’s reichskommissar Josef Terboven (Alexander Scheer), he arranges to have her father arrested by the SS (as spurned Nazis do). Swedish intelligence offers to help free her father if Sonja agrees to get chummy with Terboven so she can gather intel (they are eager to find out if/when the Germans plan on invading Sweden).
The film drags in the first half, which is essentially a series of fetes and elegant dinners where Sonja flirts and mingles with high-ranking Nazis, but eventually delivers on its “spy thriller” billing with added layers of subterfuge and intrigue. While not destined to be mentioned in the same breath as Mephisto or The Last Metro, The Spy is a stylish (if workmanlike) genre entry. The screenplay was written by Harald Rosenløw-Eeg and Jan Trygve Røyneland.
Topside*** (USA) – Be advised: This stark, intense and harrowing drama about homelessness and heroin addiction is not for the squeamish (count me among the squeamish). Co-writers and directors Logan George and Celine Held’s film begins literally in the dark underbelly of New York City…and figuratively works its way down from there. A homeless single mother (Held) and her 5-year old daughter (Zhaila Farmer) survive hand-to-mouth living in an abandoned subway tunnel. When city officials order a sweep of the subterranean community, mother and daughter are forced “topside” onto the mean streets. Not a “feel good” film, but the most gripping and heartbreaking junkie drama I’ve seen since Jerry Schatzberg’s 1971 character study The Panic in Needle Park.
Wisdom Tooth ** (China) – Writer-director Liang Ming’s drama is an ambitious feature debut–perhaps overly so. Set in northeast China, the film begins as a character study about a brother and sister struggling to make ends meet in a fishing town. The young woman (Xingchen Lyu) is an undocumented worker and on the verge of losing her hotel maid job. Her half-brother (Xiaoliang Wu) has just lost his fishing job.
When the siblings befriend the free-spirited daughter of a prosperous mob boss, the sister oddly begins to act like a jilted (lover?) once her brother and their new friend start sleeping together…but there is no explanation as to why. There is a suggestion that the two women have the hots for each other, but that thread goes nowhere fast. About 40 minutes in there is a hint that you’re now watching a crime thriller, but no thrills ensue. Ultimately the film is a wash.
Trump is desperate to get credit for the vaccines, so much so that he claimed the other day on a pathetic Newsmax interview that he believes they should be called “Trumpcines” (yet another example of his highly overrated branding expertise…) But he couldn’t bring himself to be photographed getting the shot and neither has he done any kind of PSA or outreach to his own voters to get vaccinated.
Why? Because he’s a chickenshit who can’t ever bear to get on the wrong side of his voters over anything (unless he just blurts out something he doesn’t understand like saying “we should take the guns first and then have due process.”)
He knows his people aren’t getting vaccinated largely because he promoted the idea that the virus was “just going to go away” and that it’s been overblown in order to hurt him politically. They believed him and now they are giving their lives for the cause and taking a lot of people with them:
About 31 percent of adults in the United States have now been fully vaccinated. Scientists have estimated that 70 to 90 percent of the total population must acquire resistance to the virus to reach herd immunity. But in hundreds of counties around the country, vaccination rates are low, with some even languishing in the teens.
The disparity in vaccination rates has so far mainly broken down along political lines. The New York Times examined survey and vaccine administration data for nearly every U.S. county and found that both willingness to receive a vaccine and actual vaccination rates to date were lower, on average, in counties where a majority of residents voted to re-elect former President Donald J. Trump in 2020. The phenomenon has left some places with a shortage of supply and others with a glut.
For months, health officials across the United States have been racing to inoculate people as variants of the coronavirus have continued to gain a foothold, carrying mutations that can make infections more contagious and, in some cases, deadlier. Vaccinations have sped up and, in many places, people are still unable to book appointments because of high demand. In Michigan, where cases have spiraled out of control, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, recently urged President Biden to send additional doses.
But in more rural — and more Republican — areas, health officials said that supply is far exceeding demand.
In a county in Wyoming, a local health official asked the state to stop sending first doses of the vaccine because the freezer was already stuffed to capacity with unwanted vials.
In an Iowa county, a clinic called people who had volunteered to give shots to tell them not to come in because so few residents had signed up for appointments.
In a county in Pennsylvania, a hospital set up a drive-through in the park, stocked with roughly 1,000 vaccine doses. Only about 300 people showed up.
And in interviews with more than two dozen state and county health officials — including some who said they were feeling weary after a year of hearing lifelong friends, family and neighbors tell them that the virus was a hoax or not particularly serious — most attributed low vaccination rates at least partly to hesitant conservative populations.
“I just never in a million years ever expected my field of work to become less medical and more political,” said Hailey Bloom, a registered Republican and the public information officer for the health department that covers Natrona County, Wyo., which Mr. Trump won by a wide margin last year.
If the shoe were on the other foot, the Republicans would be demanding that Democrats either be forced to get vaccinations or should be denied medical care if they caught the virus after refusing.
You know they would. Personal responsibility and all that:
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