COVID-19 Update

It gives me no pleasure to say it - I told ya so, bitches. (Well, maybe a little)

WaPo: (freebie)

A covid surge in western Europe has U.S. bracing for another wave

A surge in coronavirus infections in western Europe has experts and health authorities on alert for another wave of the pandemic in the United States even as most of the country has done away with restrictions after a sharp decline in cases.

Infectious-disease experts are closely watching the subvariant of omicron known as BA. 2, which appears to be more transmissible than the original strain, BA. 1, and is fueling the outbreak overseas.

What to know about BA.2, a new version of the omicron variant

Germany, a nation of 83 million people, saw more than 250,000 new cases and 249 deaths Friday, when Health Minister Karl Lauterbach called the nation’s situation “critical.” The country is allowing most coronavirus restrictions to end Sunday, despite the increase. The United Kingdom had a seven-day average of 65,894 cases and 79 deaths as of Sunday, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Research Center. The Netherlands, home to fewer than 18 million people, was averaging more than 60,000 cases the same day.

In all, about a dozen nations are seeing spikes in coronavirus infections caused by BA. 2, a cousin of the BA. 1 form of virus that tore through the United States over the past three months.

In the past two years, a widespread outbreak like the one in Europe has been followed by a similar surge in the United States some weeks later. Many, but not all, experts interviewed for this story predicted that is likely to happen. China and Hong Kong, on the other hand, are experiencing rapid and severe outbreaks, but the strict “zero covid” policies they have observed make them less similar to the United States than western Europe.

A number of variables — including relaxed precautions against viral transmission, vaccination rates, the availability of anti-viral medications and natural immunity acquired by previous infection — may affect the course of any surge in the United States, experts said.

Most importantly, it is unclear at this point how many people will become severely ill, stressing hospitals and the health care system as BA. 1 did.

Another surge also may test the public’s appetite for returning to widespread mask-wearing, mandates and other measures that many have eagerly abandoned as the latest surge fades and spring approaches, they said.

“It’s picking up steam. It’s across at least 12 countries … from Finland to Greece,” said Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in San Diego, who recently posted charts of the outbreak on Twitter.

“There’s no question there’s a significant wave there.” He noted that hospitalizations for covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, are rising in some places as well, despite the superior vaccination rates of many western European countries.

At a briefing Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said there have been about 35,000 cases of BA. 2 in the United States to date. But she offered confidence that “the tools we have — including mRNA vaccines, therapeutics, and tests — are all effective tools against the virus. And we know because it’s been in the country.”

Kristen Nordlund, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an email Tuesday that “although the BA. 2 variant has increased in the United States over the past several weeks, it is not the dominant variant, and we are not seeing an increase in the severity of disease.” The seven-day average of cases in the U.S. fell 17.9 percent in the past week, according to data tracked by The Washington Post, while the number of deaths dropped 17.2 percent and hospitalizations declined 23.2 percent.

Predicting the future course of the virus has proved difficult throughout the pandemic, and the current circumstances in Europe elicited a range of opinions from people who have closely tracked the pathogen and the disease it causes.

In the United States, just 65.3 percent of the population, 216.8 million people, are fully vaccinated, and only 96.1 million have received a booster shot, according to data tracked by The Post. In Germany, nearly 76 percent are fully vaccinated, according to the Johns Hopkins data, and the United Kingdom has fully vaccinated 73.6 percent.

That lower vaccination rate is very likely to matter as BA. 2 spreads farther in the United States, especially in regions where it is significantly lower than the national rate, several experts said. And even for people who are fully vaccinated and have received a booster shot, research data are showing that immunity to the virus fades over time. Vaccine-makers Pfizer and BioNTech Tuesday asked the Food and Drug Administration for emergency authorization to offer a fourth shot to people 65 and older.

“Any place you have relatively lower vaccination rates, especially among the elderly, is where you’re going to see a bump in hospitalizations and deaths from this,” said Celine Gounder, an infectious diseases physician and editor at large for public health at Kaiser Health News.

Similarly, as the public sheds masks — every state has dropped its mask mandate or announced plans to do so — another layer of protection is disappearing, several people tracking the situation said.

“Why wouldn’t it come here? Are we vaccinated enough? I don’t know,” said Kimberly Prather, a professor of atmospheric chemistry and an expert on aerosol transmission at the University of California at San Diego.

“So I’m wearing my mask still … I am the only person indoors and people look at me funny and I don’t care.”

Yet BA. 2 appears to be spreading more slowly in the United States than it has overseas, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, Debbie Dowell, chief medical officer for the CDC’s covid-19 response, said in a briefing for clinicians sponsored by the Infectious Diseases Society of America Saturday.

“The speculation I’ve seen is that it may extend the curve going down, case rates from omicron, but is unlikely to cause another surge. that we saw initially with omicron,” Dowell said.

One reason for that may be the immunity millions of people acquired recently when they were infected with the BA. 1 variant, which generally caused less severe illness than previous variants. Yet no one really knows whether infection with BA. 1 offers protection from BA. 2.

“That’s the question,” said Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. “Better yet, how long does it provide protection?”

Topol said the U.S. needs to improve its vaccination and booster rates immediately to protect more of the population against any coming surge.

“We have got to get the United States protected better. We have an abundance of these shots. We have to get them into people,” he said.

Biden administration officials said that whatever the further spread of BA. 2 brings to the United States, the next critical step is to provide the $15.6 billion in emergency funding Congress stripped from a deal to fund the government last week. That money was slated to pay for coronavirus tests, more vaccines and anti-viral medications.

“That means that some programs, if we don’t get funding, could abruptly end or need to be pared back, Psaki said at Monday’s briefing. “And that could impact how we are able to respond to any variant.”

Today's Tweet

Winner

🇷🇺 Russian Ministry of Truth | LATEST STATEMENT pic.twitter.com/wrZmM9o99h

— Simon Brodkin (@SimonBrodkin) March 16, 2022

Today's Perspective

I make a lot of noise about Press Poodles. I wanna say here and now, these are not the guys I complain about.

Reuters:

Fox News cameraman killed while reporting in Ukraine

Fox News cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski was killed in Ukraine after the vehicle in which he was traveling was struck by incoming fire, the U.S. network said on Tuesday.

Zakrzewski, 55, was reporting with another Fox News journalist, Benjamin Hall, on Monday when they came under attack near the capital Kyiv, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott said in a note to staff. Hall remains in hospital.

He was the second journalist killed covering the Ukraine conflict. Brent Renaud, an American filmmaker and journalist, was shot dead by Russian forces in the town of Irpin in Ukraine's Kyiv region, a regional police chief said on Sunday.

- more -

Maybe they fucked up, putting themselves in danger - taking unnecessary risks. Maybe they just got in the way at the wrong time in the wrong place.

I'm sorry that shit happened.

Can I take just a moment, though, and say this: These two guys are no more or less important than the many thousands who've been killed already, and the many more thousands yet to die because of this fucked up ambition for empire.

There's a special place in the bowels of hell for people like Vladimir Putin and the assholes who won't straight-up condemn him for his crimes.

COVID-19 Update

In what I hope is not an indication that we're just not paying attention, Johns-Hopkins managed to report that we had fewer dead Americans today than we had yesterday.

And then, this from Scientific American:

People, Not Science, Decide When a Pandemic Is Over

Historians of the 1918 influenza pandemic discuss lessons for what the future of COVID might look like

All pandemics end eventually. But how, exactly, will we know when the COVID-19 pandemic is really “over”? It turns out the answer to that question may lie more in sociology than epidemiology.

As the world passes the second anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaration of the COVID pandemic, things seem to be at a turning point. COVID cases and deaths are seeing sustained declines in much of the world, and a large percentage of people are estimated to have some immunity to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease, through infection or vaccination. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released new risk metrics that suggest people in many parts of the U.S. no longer need to wear a mask, and mayors, governors and other officials have been dropping mask and vaccine mandates in a push to get back to normal. Although the COVID-causing virus, SARS-CoV-2, is likely to always circulate at some level, there is a growing belief among some people—though not all—that the pandemic’s acute phase may be subsiding.

“I believe that pandemics end partially because humans declare them at an end,” says Marion Dorsey, an associate professor of history at the University of New Hampshire, who studies past pandemics, including the devastating 1918 influenza pandemic. Of course, she notes, there is an epidemiological component, characterized by the point at which a disease still circulates but is no longer causing major peaks in severe illness or death. This is sometimes referred to as the transition from a pandemic disease to an endemic one. But for practical purposes, the question of when this transition occurs largely comes down to human behavior.

“Every time people walk into stores without masks or even just walk into stores for pleasure, they’re indicating they think the pandemic is winding down, if not over,” Dorsey says. Whether or not there is an official declaration of some kind, “I don’t think anything really has a meaning until, as a society..., we act as if it is.”

Author and historian John M. Barry, who wrote one of the most definitive chronicles of the 1918 pandemic—The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History—has come to a similar conclusion. A pandemic ends “when people stop paying attention to it,” he says. The rest of the matter is a combination of the virus’s virulence, and the availability of vaccines and therapeutics. “We’re almost at that point” with COVID, Barry adds, although vaccines and treatments are still out of reach for many people worldwide. Nevertheless, the public has grown increasingly tired of the restrictions of life under pandemic conditions. “We’ve clearly wearied,” Barry says. But he cautions that there is a danger in moving on too quickly.

The 1918 pandemic—which is estimated to have killed at least 50 million people worldwide, though accurate data are hard to come by—is often described as having three waves. The first came in the spring of 1918, followed by a notoriously deadly second wave that fall and then a third, wintertime wave in early 1919—with cases eventually subsiding by the summer of that year. But Barry says a new variant emerged in 1920 and effectively caused a fourth wave. This wave killed more people in some cities than the second one, even though there was widespread immunity to the virus by then. Although many cities and public institutions imposed restrictions during the second and third waves, virtually none did so during the fourth. By 1921, the flu death toll had returned to prepandemic levels. But moving on too soon was a mistake, Barry says.

Ultimately the 1918 pandemic pathogen (an H1N1 flu virus) evolved to become less virulent: it lost much of its ability to infect cells in the lungs, where it could cause deadly pneumonia. SARS-CoV-2’s Omicron variant appears to cause milder disease as well, although it is not clear how much of that is because it has lost some of the earlier variants’ ability to infect the lower respiratory tract—or because more people have prior immunity from vaccination or previous infection. But there is no law of nature that says a virus must always evolve to become less virulent. It is entirely possible that a future variant could be as transmissible as Omicron and cause more severe disease. The 1918 virus did cause several bad outbreaks in the years afterward, Barry says, noting that one of them—a particularly severe flu season in 1928—led to Congress to expand and reorganize the Hygienic Laboratory to create what is now the National Institutes of Health.

For now, Barry is cautiously optimistic about COVID. “I think it’s more likely than not that future variants will not be any worse,” he says. “In fact, I think it’s more likely that they’ll get milder than that they will get more virulent. But we don’t know that. It’s random event. I think, in the long term, that’s where we will end up, but that doesn’t mean every iteration of the virus is going to move in the same direction.”

The 1918 influenza virus never went away (eventually it morphed into seasonal flu), but most survivors developed some immunity to it and simply decided to move on with their lives. “There’s a certain amount [of infection] we can live with,” Dorsey says. Another factor that helped the pandemic subside from the public consciousness was that it coincided with the end of World War I. Then president Woodrow Wilson and his government were more focused on recovering from the war, and this consumed much of the media attention at the time. “Especially as influenza started to decrease in virulence,” Dorsey says, “it was easier to pay attention to the war.” Finally, as the flu gradually became less severe, other diseases such as polio started to draw far more notice.

Although it is impossible to draw a direct parallel with how the 1918 pandemic ended, COVID may be headed in that direction. Obviously the virus has surprised us before, Dorsey points out. Even after the immediate threat recedes, society will likely be dealing with its aftermath for years to come. The many people who lost family members and the legions of health care workers who witnessed unimaginable amounts of death and suffering will be experiencing grief and trauma that will make it impossible for many to move on—even if the rest of the world does. And that does not include a potential tidal wave of long COVID, the full effects of which society has yet to grapple with.

Devastating as the 1918 pandemic was, history seems to have somewhat forgotten its horrors. With COVID, Barry thinks that is unlikely to happen anytime soon. “In 1918 people died of infectious disease all the time, so there was a certain familiarity with the experience,” he says. That is no longer the case in modern times. COVID has already caused deep and lasting disruptions to society. “It changed everybody’s life for a long time,” Barry says, “and that is not going to be forgotten.”

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Today's Wingnut

Nick Fuentes again. It's hard to take this asshat seriously because I have to think nobody actually believes the way this clown says he believes.

He's just pretending because this is his formula - it's what sells, and that's how he pays his mortgage.

But the point is that Fuentes doesn't have to believe the way he says he believes - there are literally millions of rubes out there who take this shit to heart, and will act on it once they're well-enough conditioned.

We saw how this can play out Jan6. So we have to take it all very seriously.

Right Wing Watch:

Today's Tweet

Letters from the Trucker Convoy - Part 2

(feat. @thetonymichaels as Bob and @JoJoFromJerz as Tammy) pic.twitter.com/Qpzpe1AqIT

— Gabe Sanchez  (@iamgabesanchez) March 13, 2022

An Observation

 

Those Hyper-Patriotic Americans who hate foreigners and immigrants are the same people who hate large numbers of Americans too.

Green Shoots

Russian Spring is coming.

ПРИБЛИЖАЕТСЯ РУССКАЯ ВЕСНА

Meet Marina Ovsyannikova  (Марина Овсянникова)

What she did:

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/te4ypg/russian_state_tv_broadcast_hijacked_by_an/

Her sign says:

Stop the war

Don't believe the propaganda

You are being lied to here

And she has more to tell us:

Redditt: https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/te5mjo/the_anti_war_girls_name_is_marina_asvanjikova_she/

What's happening in Ukraine right now is a crime, and Russia is the aggressor state. The responsibility for this aggression lies on the conscience of a single person, and that person is Vladimir Putin.

My father is Ukrainian, my mother is Russian. They were never enemies. This necklace I'm wearing symbolizes that Russia should immediately stop this fratricidal war, and our brotherly nations will be able to make peace with each other.

Unfortunately for the past years I've been working on Channel 1, spreading Kremlin's propaganda, and I am now terribly ashamed of myself for that. I'm ashamed for allowing myself to speak the lies from the screens of TVs. Ashamed for letting Russian people get zombified.

We stayed silent in 2014, when it all began. We did not go out to protest when Kremlin poisoned Navalny. We just quietly observed this inhumane regime. And now the entire world has turned away from us, and ten generations of our descendants won't be able to wash away the shame of this fratricidal war.

We, the Russian people, are a thinking, smart nation. Only we can stop this madness. Go out and protest. They can't imprison us all.

COVID-19 Update

We had pretty much every body covered. And soon we'll be back to the same old shit - fighting asshole Republicans who'd rather watch people die than take a chance that the Liberals have been right all along. 

WaPo:

Millions of vulnerable Americans likely to fall off Medicaid once the federal public health emergency ends

As many as 16 million low-income Americans, including millions of children, are destined to fall off Medicaid when the nation’s public health emergency ends, as states face a herculean mission to sort out who no longer belongs on rolls that have swollen to record levels during the pandemic.

The looming disruption is a little-noticed side effect of the coronavirus crisis, and it is stoking fears among some on Medicaid and their advocates that vulnerable people who survived the pandemic will risk suddenly living without health coverage. For the Biden administration — which will make the decision on when to lift the health emergency — there is the potential political stain of presiding over a surge of poor, newly uninsured Americans, depending on how things go once states resume checking which Medicaid beneficiaries still qualify.

“The main concern I have is people are going to be cut off for reasons that have nothing to do with their eligibility,” said Gordon Bonnyman, a staff attorney for the Tennessee Justice Center, a nonprofit working for affordable health care. “Either they drop the ball, or the state drops the ball.”

The unprecedented work that lies ahead will wind down a profound, temporary change Congress made to Medicaid, the nation’s largest public health insurance program, early in the pandemic.

The first coronavirus relief law, in March 2020, offered states a bargain to help them cope with the sudden spurt of Americans losing jobs and health benefits that accompanied the worst public health crisis in a century: The federal government would give states extra money to help pay for Medicaid if they promised not to move anyone off the program as long as the emergency lasted.

Every state accepted the bargain at a moment when few imagined that, two years later, the pandemic — and the public health emergency the Department of Health and Human Services has been renewing every 90 days since the coronavirus’s first winter — would still be present. In that time, Medicaid caseloads have jumped about 22 percent nationally as new people have joined and no one has cycled on and off the rolls. The nearly 78 million Americans on Medicaid as of September, the latest figure available because federal tallies run months behind, are the most since the program began as a shared federal-state responsibility in the 1960s as a pillar of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty.

Once the federal emergency is lifted, every state will need to reassess its entire bloated roster. Many of the people who will be removed from the safety-net insurance probably will qualify for private health plans, according to Biden administration officials and health-care researchers and advocates.

But large questions hover over how many beneficiaries whose incomes have risen above Medicaid’s eligibility thresholds will simply disappear instead of sliding over to other insurance. And it is unclear how many who remain eligible will be removed from the program improperly.

For Biden health officials, helping states get ready for this enormous task — dubbed “unwinding” from the health emergency — has been a preoccupation for several months. They have sent states a detailed punch list of recommended steps to take in preparation, dispatched letters spelling out federal expectations and continued to confer often with each state.

“This is at the top … of our priority list,” said Daniel Tsai, who oversees Medicaid in HHS’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “We intend to and are using all levers available to us to make sure we are connecting people with coverage.”

Still, each state runs its own program. Interviews with state officials, health-care advocates and policy specialists reveal deep differences over how much time, effort and money states are devoting to this work. In certain places, advocates warn that problems — including outdated addresses for renewal notices and error-prone computer systems — could undermine some of the poorest Americans’ ability to afford care.

Brad Ledgerwood knows the possibility of errors, and he knows the stakes. Ledgerwood lives in Cash, Ark. — a “spot in the road,” as he puts it, with 342 residents in the Arkansas Delta. Nearly half live in poverty.

Ledgerwood was born with cerebral palsy. “I can do everything I want to do as far as my mind,” he said. He has been on Cash’s city council for nine years. “My problem is my physical ability,” he said. “I cannot do anything physical by myself. My mom and dad are my hands and feet.”

At 40, he has been on Medicaid more than half his life, since he turned 18, under a part of Arkansas’ program that covers care at home to help people like him stay out of nursing homes. His mother, Ann, quit her job as a county appraiser to be his caretaker. Medicaid covers the cost of eight hours of care a day, adding up to about $62,000 in benefits a year that she is paid. Ledgerwood has that amount of coverage — three times what he would get otherwise — because he is grandfathered into an older version of the program for as long as he remains eligible.

Starting in November, Ledgerwood said, the first of four notices from the state arrived in the mail, telling him that he no longer qualifies for Medicaid — but that his benefits would continue for now because of the public health emergency rules. The notices have kept coming even after a county nurse paid him a visit in January and confirmed the services he needs. They have kept coming even after he and his Legal Aid lawyer called the state and were assured that a computer glitch caused the letters.

If notices keep coming once the health emergency ends, and he is dropped from Medicaid even temporarily, he will not return to the same level of benefits. Ledgerwood said he worries that he and his parents couldn’t live on his father’s pay from a Jonesboro factory that makes Delta truck toolboxes. If that happened, Ledgerwood fears, his mother might need to go back to work, and he might land in a nursing home like the one 60 miles away where his grandfather spent his final years — rather than rolling up and down the road in his wheelchair, greeting neighbors when the weather is fine.

Asked about such computer-generated errors, Cindy Gillespie, secretary of Arkansas’ Department of Human Services, said, “If there is something going on, we want to know and get it fixed.”

Ledgerwood’s Legal Aid lawyer, Trevor Hawkins, questions whether Arkansas is equipped to handle the work ahead. Already, the state has amassed a large backlog of Medicaid applications. The legislature has not provided additional money for that or for the unwinding, but Gillespie said the extra money from the federal government allowed her department to hire a contractor a few months ago to help it get caught up. And the state’s Medicaid director, Dawn Stehle, said she has been convening weekly internal meetings since the fall to prepare for the unwinding.

Arkansas’ Medicaid enrollment has grown from 927,282 in early 2020 to nearly 1.1 million by January. Because the state has continued eligibility reviews through the pandemic, it believes that more than 220,000 people no longer qualify but are still getting benefits. Starting this month, a nonprofit working with the state will try to call those people to check their phone numbers and addresses.

But Hawkins pointed out that Arkansas passed a law last year that requires the state to carry out its Medicaid eligibility decisions within six months of when the unwinding begins — half the time the Biden administration says states should take.

A recent Ohio law requires a more tightly compressed period: two or three months, depending on how long someone has been on Medicaid. Michigan lawmakers are considering something similar.

Advocates predict that if Medicaid programs move hastily, they will have too many erroneous addresses and call centers will be overwhelmed. And they fear that computerized eligibility systems, which can be error-prone in certain states in ordinary times, will be unable to spit out accurate renewal decisions. Compounding the problem, many states’ Medicaid agencies are short-staffed, having lost workers during the pandemic, while some employees hired lately have no experience at handling renewals.

Biden health officials are telling states to take their time, urging them to use a full year to help ensure that renewals are handled accurately — double the six months the Trump administration had said would be allowed.

But there is a catch. The extra federal money will last no more than three months after the public health emergency ends. After that, states will have to shoulder a bigger portion of the costs associated with their swollen Medicaid caseloads while finishing the unwinding.

The administration and congressional Democrats have tried to create a cushion to deter states from unwinding quickly to save money. The cushion, part of a far-reaching social policy bill, would ratchet down the extra federal payments more gradually. But the legislation, called the Build Back Better act by its enthusiasts, is stalled on Capitol Hill.

One state’s experience with a similar insurance program offers a preview of what can go wrong if states move too fast. In Utah, a federal insurance program for children from working-class families was initially handled in a fashion similar to Medicaid, with all children kept in the program during the pandemic. Last year, the state reversed course on the Children’s Health Insurance Program — widely known as CHIP — scrambling in two months to send renewal notices and make new eligibility decisions. More than 40 percent of Utah children on CHIP were dropped.

“It ended up being a disaster,” said Matt Slonaker, executive director of the Utah Health Policy Project, a nonprofit that fought for several years to expand Medicaid in that state and coaches Utahans to sign up for Affordable Care Act marketplace health plans. He fears Utah will not take enough time for the Medicaid unwinding, either.

A big wrinkle in planning is that it is unclear when that unwinding will begin.

The latest extension of the health emergency runs through mid-April. States are assuming that HHS will continue it, because Biden health officials have promised to give 60 days’ notice before its end, and that has not happened.

The Biden administration has no official forecast of how many people are likely to fall off Medicaid. Tsai and other policy experts cite research by the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank, that began estimating late last year how many people would lose coverage after the health emergency stops. The latest updates predict that more than 14 million beneficiaries could lose Medicaid if the emergency expires midsummer, and nearly 16 million if it ends early in the fall.

Matthew Buettgens, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute who is the study’s lead author, said that no matter when it begins, “the systems themselves, both human and computer, weren’t designed to handle that volume.”

Meanwhile, a new study by the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute’s Center for Children and Families estimates that 6.7 million children insured through Medicaid will lose coverage.

“This could be disastrous for children — especially Black and Latino children,” whose families are more likely to be poor, said Joan Alker, the Georgetown center’s executive director and the study’s main author.

Tsai and Jonathan Blum, chief operating officer of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, known as CMS, said the agency is working with states’ Medicaid programs more intensively than ever, coaching them to avoid a widespread loss of eligible people and find smooth paths to other coverage for those who no longer qualify.

Some states are embracing federal advice far more than others.

In California, where Medi-Cal is the nation’s biggest Medicaid program, the state took the rare step starting in December of sending letters to all 14.4 million beneficiaries to test whether they reached their intended recipients, said Jacey Cooper, Medicaid director in the state’s Department of Health Care Services. The program has given California’s county social services departments, which are in charge of renewals, scripts to answer callers’ questions in 19 languages. To do even more outreach, California is giving extra money to federally funded “navigators” — community workers who help consumers sign up for ACA health plans and steer others toward Medicaid.

“It definitely keeps me up at night,” Cooper said, “because I want to ensure that people who need coverage can remain on coverage.”

In New Mexico, which has the highest proportion of residents on Medicaid in the country, the state has told the three insurers that provide Medicaid managed-care plans that they must offer ACA health plans, too, to make it easy for people to switch over, according to Nicole Comeaux, the state Medicaid director. And Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) persuaded the legislature to devote $35 million to help people with the transition from Medicaid, including to pay premiums for a month for anyone who moves into a marketplace plan.

In contrast, Jodi Ray, director of Florida Covering Kids & Families, has been sending emails since the fall to Florida’s Department of Children and Families, which runs Medicaid there. She keeps suggesting that her squad of navigators, the nation’s largest, help with the unwinding.

“We are on the ground,” Ray said. “I keep trying to offer up: Here is a strong team that can help.” She said she has not heard back.

Katy DeBriere, legal director of the nonprofit Florida Health Justice Project, said the state’s computerized eligibility system is antiquated and predicted that “it is going to be a huge problem.”

Florida’s Department of Children and Families did not respond to requests for comment about its preparations.

CMS has latitude to penalize states if they shirk federal rules for the unwinding — but has not so far. Tsai said it will be better able to assess how prepared states are once it is clear when the unwinding will begin.

Bonnyman, with the Tennessee Justice Center, is one of many advocates around the country who are nervous. “What scares me is this system was not working great when they lifted the needle off the record,” Bonnyman said of Tennessee’s Medicaid renewals. “We won’t know what’s going on … until it fires back up. We just have to wait for people to be hurt.”

From his wheelchair in Cash, Ledgerwood has the same anxiety.

“I think a bunch of people will be getting cut off for no reason because the computer messed up,” he said.

“I know how to fight it,” said Ledgerwood, who has just been appointed to a Medicaid consumer advisory board that Arkansas is creating. What he worries about, he said, “is people who don’t know to call a lawyer and don’t know their rights. Some people will fall through the cracks.”

Today's Tweet

She's taking a big risk just by speaking her mind, but she goes well beyond that.

She tells us she gets it - she's not at fault for the war, but she owns responsibility for the situation in front of her.

Can't ask for more than that.

The shero we need.

I am certainly not a prominent figure in the Russian anti-war movement, and there are people here who have much more to say.
But this war is my responsibility, and I feel it's important to speak out#StandWithUkraine️ #NoWar #NoToWar #нетвойне pic.twitter.com/ErkaCK5I2u

— Vlada Zhuravlyova🤍💙🤍 (@ZhurVl) March 12, 2022

And also too: 

For those wondering if what is happening in Russia can happen in the United States—it already has.

Never forget when Trump had protesters in Portland grabbed off the streets and thrown into unmarked police vans.

We must protect democracy at all costs. pic.twitter.com/hb8KvKHdiA

— MeidasTouch.com (@MeidasTouch) March 13, 2022

Today's Beau

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

Always remember DumFux News is not on our side.

Today's Pix

click

Два слова

"Two words".

And very shortly after they arrested that woman, they arrested another woman who was simply commenting on what she had just witnessed.

IMO - Putin may be on his last legs. Unfortunately, that probably means he'll make things worse for everybody.

If there's any "good news" here, it's that Putin is now soliciting China for military help in Ukraine, which could signal he's worried about having the resources to handle the occupation of a country where the citizens are not amenable to his charms, while having to spend lots of time and energy and money trying to keep the lid from blowing off at home.

It could also be an old Cold War play to make it look like he's got more support than he actually does.

So far, I think Biden and NATO have done really well. The shooting is confined to one place, and while that's extremely shitty for Ukraine, it's something we need to continue to concentrate on.

There's always the danger that things could get a lot worse because an asshole bully like Putin will keep testing the west, pushing to see where we draw the line - if we draw the line - and we could eventually get a much wider shooting war anyway.

Everybody always points back to Chamberlain and Munich, and they always say you have to smack the bully in the face as hard as you can, or he'll just go on pushing, and by the time we wise up, we've lost the initiative and he's knocking on the door of world conquest and blah blah blah.

I've said this my own bad self, but here's the thing: weapons of mass destruction. Nukes. Bio. Chemical. Russia's got it all, and we know Putin is not exactly shy about using them. There's already some reports of white phosphorous munitions being used on Ukrainians

So yes, we have to smack the bully as hard as we can, but we have to do it in ways that don't 

give him anything concrete to justify escalating beyond anyone's ability to pull back and calm down.

Throw in the fact that Putin has already just made shit up and thrown a bunch of it in the air anyway, and it's easy to see how easy it'd be to stumble into a Dr Strangelove ending.

Suffice to say

1. We can all be glad it's not me having to make these decisions
2. It's good that we've got some real pros on hand to do this work for us

Today Is Not Today

Dreadful news, fellow nerd fans - it's come to me attention that this is not actually Pi Day.

The first seven digits in pi are 3.141592.

So there hasn't been a real Pi Day since March 14, 1592.

But, at least here in USAmerica Inc, where every day is a holiday because we're so extremely excellent at rationalizing our way to "reasons" for Carnal Celebrations and Special-Today-Only-Sales-Events, we'll go ahead and truncate the thing and pretend history isn't history, and do a little online drunk shopping. It's just who we are, y'know?

Sorry about all that - carry on.