Jun 29, 2020
SCOTUS
NYT
Supreme Court Strikes Down Louisiana Abortion Restrictions
The case, over a state law requiring doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, is the first abortion ruling since two Trump appointees joined the court.
Supreme Court Lifts Limits on Trump’s Power to Fire Consumer Watchdog
The case concerning the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was part of a politically charged battle over presidential authority.
Federal Executions Can Restart After Supreme Court Declines a Case
The move clears the way for the executions of four men in the coming months after a 17-year gap during which no inmate on death row for federal crimes was put to death.
Seems like the Roberts Court is all over the fuckin' map.
On Monuments
NYT - Charles Blow:
Washington would free his slaves in his will, when he no longer had use for them.
Let me be clear: Those black people enslaved by George Washington and others, including other founders, were just as much human as I am today. They love, laugh, cry and hurt just like I do.
When I hear people excuse their enslavement and torture as an artifact of the times, I’m forced to consider that if slavery were the prevailing normalcy of this time, my own enslavement would also be a shrug of the shoulders.
I say that we need to reconsider public monuments in public spaces. No person’s honorifics can erase the horror he or she has inflicted on others.
Slave owners should not be honored with monuments in public spaces. We have museums for that, which also provide better context. This is not an erasure of history, but rather a better appreciation of the horrible truth of it.
Washington would free his slaves in his will, when he no longer had use for them.
Let me be clear: Those black people enslaved by George Washington and others, including other founders, were just as much human as I am today. They love, laugh, cry and hurt just like I do.
When I hear people excuse their enslavement and torture as an artifact of the times, I’m forced to consider that if slavery were the prevailing normalcy of this time, my own enslavement would also be a shrug of the shoulders.
I say that we need to reconsider public monuments in public spaces. No person’s honorifics can erase the horror he or she has inflicted on others.
Slave owners should not be honored with monuments in public spaces. We have museums for that, which also provide better context. This is not an erasure of history, but rather a better appreciation of the horrible truth of it.
Today's Tweet
Morons with guns and attitude.
She has her finger on the trigger, and she scans her own guy at least twice.
A couple pointed guns at protesters in St. Louis as a group marched toward the mayor's home to demand her resignation. https://t.co/5EqDd43QCd pic.twitter.com/KWNaif77ch— ABC News (@ABC) June 29, 2020
COVID-19 Update
"The new normal" is likely to be a pretty ugly one for a while.
WaPo:
“In the absence of warfare between major powers, we have never seen anything like this,” said Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for Economics in Washington.
At Changi (Singapore), one of the world’s great travel hubs, traffic plunged from 5.9 million passengers in January to a mere 25,200 in April — a 99.5 percent drop. The number of airlines serving the airport collapsed from 91 to 35. Two of the four main terminals have been temporarily mothballed; plans for a fifth have been set back at least two years.
But travel is only one way that the coronavirus is disrupting global interconnectedness. The pandemic is interrupting the flow of workers, money and goods that increasingly bound the postwar world, helped to lift more than a billion people out of poverty since the fall of the Berlin Wall and delivered unprecedented stability and prosperity to much of the planet. To encapsulate: U.S. investment in China raised demand for soybeans that enabled Brazilian farmers to buy German cars.
President Stoopid said trade wars are simple things, and easy to win.
He started fucking with all our partners - China in particular - and we'd seen some of the effects of isolation when COVID-19 kicked in. The pandemic just made it a lot worse.
Remember, the Trump Recession started in February this year when COVID-19 was barely a blip on the radar.
I'm generally in favor of a globalized economy because if we do it right, there's a good bunch of positives when it comes to raising people up out of poverty, which tends to tamp down on the kind of violent rebellion that rarely accomplishes anything other than trading one asshole ruler for the next.
Unfortunately, big players in economics often do the same thing with banks and paperwork that others have done with tanks and rifles.
The version of globalization we were living was the workin' guy's nightmare - a cycle of deflation that pushed down on prices and wages while it boosted profits and power of a smaller and smaller group of CEOs.
Anyway, as we move through the pandemic, we can expect lots more upset and the usual calls for sacrifice, which I fear will be coopted and used against us by unscrupulous manipulators.
Jun 28, 2020
COVID-19 Update
- Mortality for COVID-19 appears higher than for influenza, especially seasonal influenza
- While the true mortality of COVID-19 will take some time to fully understand, the data we have so far indicate that the crude mortality ratio (the number of reported deaths divided by the reported cases) is between 3-4%
- The infection mortality rate (the number of reported deaths divided by the number of infections) will be lower
- For seasonal influenza, mortality is usually well below 0.1%
- Mortality is to a large extent determined by access to and quality of health care
Muddling through and stumbling forward.
WaPo:
With Trump leading the way, America’s coronavirus failures exposed by record surge in new infections
Five months after the novel coronavirus was first detected in the United States, a record surge in new cases is the clearest sign yet of the country’s historic failure to control the virus — exposing a crisis in governance extending from the Oval Office to state capitals to city councils.
President Trump — who has repeatedly downplayed the virus, sidelined experts and misled Americans about its dangers and potential cures — now finds his presidency wracked by an inability to shepherd the country through its worst public health calamity in a century. The dysfunction that has long characterized Trump’s White House has been particularly ill-suited for a viral outbreak that requires precision, focus and steady leadership, according to public health experts, administration officials and lawmakers from both parties.
As case numbers began rising again, Trump has held rallies defying public health guidelines, mused about slowing down testing for the virus, criticized people wearing masks and embraced the racially offensive “kung flu” nickname for a disease that has killed at least 123,000 Americans.
A similarly garbled message for the country has also been put forward by the president’s top aides and other senior administration officials, who contradict one another on a daily basis. On Friday, Vice President Pence used the first White House coronavirus task force briefing in almost two months to praise Trump’s handling of the virus and cast aside concerns about a record spike in new infections.
“We have made a truly remarkable progress in moving our nation forward,” Pence said, a few minutes after announcing that more than 2.5 million Americans had contracted the coronavirus. “We’ve all seen the encouraging news as we open up America again.”
Later Friday, the United States recorded more than 40,000 new coronavirus cases — its largest one-day total.
With Trump leading the way, America’s coronavirus failures exposed by record surge in new infections
Five months after the novel coronavirus was first detected in the United States, a record surge in new cases is the clearest sign yet of the country’s historic failure to control the virus — exposing a crisis in governance extending from the Oval Office to state capitals to city councils.
President Trump — who has repeatedly downplayed the virus, sidelined experts and misled Americans about its dangers and potential cures — now finds his presidency wracked by an inability to shepherd the country through its worst public health calamity in a century. The dysfunction that has long characterized Trump’s White House has been particularly ill-suited for a viral outbreak that requires precision, focus and steady leadership, according to public health experts, administration officials and lawmakers from both parties.
As case numbers began rising again, Trump has held rallies defying public health guidelines, mused about slowing down testing for the virus, criticized people wearing masks and embraced the racially offensive “kung flu” nickname for a disease that has killed at least 123,000 Americans.
A similarly garbled message for the country has also been put forward by the president’s top aides and other senior administration officials, who contradict one another on a daily basis. On Friday, Vice President Pence used the first White House coronavirus task force briefing in almost two months to praise Trump’s handling of the virus and cast aside concerns about a record spike in new infections.
“We have made a truly remarkable progress in moving our nation forward,” Pence said, a few minutes after announcing that more than 2.5 million Americans had contracted the coronavirus. “We’ve all seen the encouraging news as we open up America again.”
Later Friday, the United States recorded more than 40,000 new coronavirus cases — its largest one-day total.
Jun 27, 2020
The More They Learn
We keep talking about "when this over..." and "once we get past the pandemic..."
It's possible now that there will be no vaccine that's as effective against this thing as we'd like to think it's going to be.
And there may never be the kind of curative we need for it.
We've heard already about how this particular coronavirus is evolving, now that it's found its way into a new host species.
And it's beginning to look like maybe the thing develops quickly into a syndrome that could present lifelong problems for anyone who contracts it.
That's the way I'm hearing some of what's being said by the clinicians.
Mind you, I have no training or background in any clinical field of study. It's just that I worked with some really brainy clinicians for a long time, and what I hear right now is lots of brainy clinicians speaking the way brainy clinicians speak when they're a little frustrated at not knowing what they need to to know.
Reuters - Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Scientists are only starting to grasp the vast array of health problems caused by the novel coronavirus, some of which may have lingering effects on patients and health system for years to come, according to doctors and infectious disease experts.
Besides the respiratory issues that leave patients gasping for breath, the virus that causes COVID-19 attacks many organ systems, in some cases causing catastrophic damage.
“We thought this was only a respiratory virus. Turns out, it goes after the pancreas. It goes after the heart. It goes after the liver, the brain, the kidney and other organs. We didn’t appreciate that in the beginning,” said Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California.
In addition to respiratory distress, patients with COVID-19 can experience blood clotting disorders that can lead to strokes, and extreme inflammation that attacks multiple organ systems. The virus can also cause neurological complications that range from headache, dizziness and loss of taste or smell to seizures and confusion.
And recovery can be slow, incomplete and costly, with a huge impact on quality of life.
The broad and diverse manifestations of COVID-19 are somewhat unique, said Dr. Sadiya Khan, a cardiologist at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago.
With influenza, people with underlying heart conditions are also at higher risk of complications, Khan said. What is surprising about this virus is the extent of the complications occurring outside the lungs.
Khan believes there will be a huge healthcare expenditure and burden for individuals who have survived COVID-19.
LENGTHY REHAB FOR MANY
Patients who were in the intensive care unit or on a ventilator for weeks will need to spend extensive time in rehab to regain mobility and strength.
“It can take up to seven days for every one day that you’re hospitalized to recover that type of strength,” Khan said. “It’s harder the older you are, and you may never get back to the same level of function.”
While much of the focus has been on the minority of patients who experience severe disease, doctors increasingly are looking to the needs of patients who were not sick enough to require hospitalization, but are still suffering months after first becoming infected.
Studies are just getting underway to understand the long-term effects of infection, Jay Butler, deputy director of infectious diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters in a telephone briefing on Thursday.
“We hear anecdotal reports of people who have persistent fatigue, shortness of breath,” Butler said. “How long that will last is hard to say.”
While coronavirus symptoms typically resolve in two or three weeks, an estimated 1 in 10 experience prolonged symptoms, Dr. Helen Salisbury of the University of Oxford wrote in the British Medical Journal on Tuesday.
Salisbury said many of her patients have normal chest X-rays and no sign of inflammation, but they are still not back to normal.
“If you previously ran 5k three times a week and now feel breathless after a single flight of stairs, or if you cough incessantly and are too exhausted to return to work, then the fear that you may never regain your previous health is very real,” she wrote.
Dr. Igor Koralnik, chief of neuro-infectious diseases at Northwestern Medicine, reviewed current scientific literature and found about half of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 had neurological complications, such as dizziness, decreased alertness, difficulty concentrating, disorders of smell and taste, seizures, strokes, weakness and muscle pain.
Koralnik, whose findings were published in the Annals of Neurology, has started an outpatient clinic for COVID-19 patients to study whether these neurological problems are temporary or permanent.
Khan sees parallels with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Much of the early focus was on deaths.
“In recent years, we’ve been very focused on the cardiovascular complications of HIV survivorship,” Khan said.
And as usual - the more they learn,
the more they understand how little they know.
Curious
"Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc" is a logical fallacy (with this, therefore because of this) - but I still have to wonder why Republicans are so nonchalant about fighting this pandemic.
Today's "Shocked - Shocked!"
Rachel Maddow:
Republican ass-kissers are again having to work overtime to ignore it and cover it up, or to distract from it, or they're lining up to rationalize it. Understand, they're not trying to deny it - they're trying to make it seem like it's not another stomach-turning fucked up mess because of 45*'s self-dealing and ineptitude - exacerbated by their own failures to stand up to a blustering bullying pseudo-macho washed-up game show host.
DURING THE FUCKING PEACE TALKS
...because it's in Russia's interest to keep us bogged down - it flips the 1980s script so now it's Putin playing the good guy helping the Afghanis fight the imperialists and blah blah blah.
NYT:
The officials familiar with the intelligence did not explain the White House delay in deciding how to respond to the intelligence about Russia.
While some of his closest advisers, like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have counseled more hawkish policies toward Russia, Mr. Trump has adopted an accommodating stance toward Moscow.
Republican ass-kissers are again having to work overtime to ignore it and cover it up, or to distract from it, or they're lining up to rationalize it. Understand, they're not trying to deny it - they're trying to make it seem like it's not another stomach-turning fucked up mess because of 45*'s self-dealing and ineptitude - exacerbated by their own failures to stand up to a blustering bullying pseudo-macho washed-up game show host.
DURING THE FUCKING PEACE TALKS
...because it's in Russia's interest to keep us bogged down - it flips the 1980s script so now it's Putin playing the good guy helping the Afghanis fight the imperialists and blah blah blah.
NYT:
The officials familiar with the intelligence did not explain the White House delay in deciding how to respond to the intelligence about Russia.
While some of his closest advisers, like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have counseled more hawkish policies toward Russia, Mr. Trump has adopted an accommodating stance toward Moscow.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)