caulfield12

In other ways, the spread of COVID-19 is keeping Americans from going back to work. The perception of public transit as unsafe, for example, makes it expensive and tough for commuters to get to their jobs. Schools and day-care centers are struggling to figure out how to reopen safely, meaning millions of parents are facing a fall juggling work and child care. This is a disaster. “The lingering uncertainty about whether in-person education will resume isn’t the result of malfeasance, but utter nonfeasance,” the former Department of Homeland Security official Juliette Kayyem has argued in The Atlantic. “Four months of stay-at-home orders have proved that, if schools are unavailable, a city cannot work, a community cannot function, a nation cannot safeguard itself.” International comparisons are enlightening. Countries that successfully countered the virus seem to have enjoyed better financial recoveries; countries that did not shut down saw major hits to their economy anyway. In Sweden, authorities declined to enact strict public-health measures as the virus took hold. It has seen significantly higher case counts and more deaths than its neighbors, such as Norway, and its economy tanked. Or consider South Korea. With aggressive contact tracing and mass testing, it kept many of its commercial and educational facilities open as it quashed the pandemic. (The country has tallied just 288 deaths from COVID-19, compared with roughly 135,000 in the United States.) The unemployment rate there is 4.2 percent, and the economy is expected to contract just a small amount this year, due in part to falling exports. In New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern did a “little dance” to celebrate the country’s reopening one full month ago. In Taiwan, thousands of fans cheered from the stands at a baseball game last week, unafraid of disease. In France, one of the hardest-hit countries in Europe, families are back to going on vacation, eating in cafés, and visiting loved ones in hospitals. In the United States, outbreaks are shutting everything down yet again. The United States can still contain the spread of COVID-19 and save lives, epidemiologists argue. The country can still flatten the curve and lower the death toll. Simple, low-cost measures like requiring masks in public would preserve as much as 5 percent of GDP, economists haveestimated, as well as preventing thousands from getting sick. The supposed trade-off between public health and the economy doesn’t exist. And right now, the country is choosing not to save either. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/the-terrifying-next-phase-of-the-coronavirus-recession/ar-BB16KRlD

LEAST POPULAR: BETSY DEVOS,who has 28% favorable, and 40% unfavorable rating. JEFF SESSIONS: 34% (-4% net), RICK PERRY: 30% (-3% net), STEVEN MNUCHIN: 26% (-3% net), RYAN ZINKE: 22% favorable, 22% unfavorable, 22% have no opinion of him, and 34% haven’t heard of him. politico.com Can the Left really wish death on others? What’s the point? Those numbers are not even being reported anymore. It’s laughable after all the attacks on China that we’re openly operating like the worse totalitarian regimes around the world...and nobody is even slightly surprised because we’re so anesthetized to it all. Meanwhile, we will see Mulan in Wuhan movie theatres with national chains across the country opening up beginning on Monday, six months after the lockdown originally was imposed.

Long live Thomas Paine!

She married into the super-rich Amway fortune family. That’s her lone education qualification. Nepotism. She’s never had the perfect anything. She’s basically ordering teachers and students to walk through a firing squad of bullets every day...with 5 or 7 of those 100 bullets during long lasting damage to an American family that no amount of money will fix. The American thing would have been to give 91% of the $3 trillion spent so far to those earning under $75,000 as a household. Instead, they only got a measly 9%. “Draining the swamp” in reverse and exchanging corporate welfare for a lost generation saddled with paying off the massive $26 trillion debt accrued over the last forty years.

And if 75% of teachers and even 50% of teachers choose online or hybrid...then what? Not adhering to science...better yet, the complete disregard of sound science and reason, is most certainly NOT American. In America, we value every individual life and fight to our fullest to protect those lives...knowing there will always be ways to make that money back with American ingenuity and perseverance. We were not a country that was based on economic opportunity cost valuations of every person, regardless of race, creed or color. Killing off more lives than any country in the world despite spending the highest on GDP per capita on health care expenses in the entire world isn’t American. Threatening to remove health care security in the midst of the worst national crisis since World Two and the Great Depression is not an American value. Communist/socialist beliefs value the contribution of the working class...refusing to lead essential workers like lambs to the slaughter. They embrace the ideas of solidarity, not divisiveness and lives lived by the decrees of the privileged few making decisions about what is best for them, not the greatest good for the greatest number. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

What salary would you pay per hour? How to protect from Covid spread? Where would these daycares be located? Students would go to companies that host daycare on site? Local shopping malls? Community centers or non profits? Besides K-8 education majors, psychology/counseling majors...which students would be extremely interested unless you paid roughly $12-18/hour depending on cost of living in that area? Why just not use AmeriCorps/ViSTA national service halftime positions that come with a stipend and university voucher? This is how SE Asian countries do contract tracing...they don’t mess around, even in the case of only two positive individuals. Nobody found infected by ‘privileged’ foreigners yet By THE NATION The Public Health Ministry announced on Thursday morning (July 16) that nobody was found to have been infected with Covid-19 after exposure to two cases – the Egyptian soldier in Rayong and the Sudanese girl in Bangkok. On Tuesday, lab officials said all 1,336 persons, including 886 who visited Passione shopping mall, 447 who went to Central Rayong department store and three who were summoned by an SMS from a government agency, tested negative to Covid-19. Also, none of the 267 high-risk persons in Bangkok were found infected. On Wednesday, 1,252 people in Rayong went to mobile biosafety units to take tests and their results are not out yet. Source: https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30391414

For an administration that's hypercritical about how China controls information, it's especially amusing to see the WH now employing similar information control tactics. Hopefully, we will be able to see the difference between what HHS reports and what hospitals report, maybe Johns Hopkins and IHME can continue their impartial reporting.

We gave Boeing and the major airlines how much again, $60 billion and counting? Good luck with those who keep calling for property tax REDUCTIONS. New Estimate to Reopen Schools After Coronavirus: $116.5 Billion A projection by the American Federation of Teachers estimated that America’s K-12 schools will need an average of $1.2 million each to reopen from coronavirus-related closures. A SOBERING NEW ESTIMATE for how much it will cost schools to reopen in the fall – both safely and with the proper academic and emotional supports in place for the 55 million children whose schools were shuttered as the coronavirus spread across the U.S. – puts the total financial burden at $116.5 billion. https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2020-06-09/new-estimate-to-reopen-schools-after-coronavirus-1165-billion

14 Tweets That Sum Up How Teachers Feel About Going Back To School During A Pandemic https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/14-tweets-sum-teachers-feel-050000198.html

And he’s anti-tobacco, to boot.

Any Socal games on the schedule?...he was on a Padres‘ games last year too.

Meanwhile, Oklahoma governor shockingly is Covid-19 positive. And kudos to Dr. Anthony Fauci for keeping his cool while maintaining a sense of humor throughout this... “I cannot figure out in my wildest dreams why they would want to do that," he said. "I think they realize now that that was not a prudent thing to do, because it's only reflecting negatively on them.” Tate Reeves is the Republican governor of Mississippi. He's also an economics major who worked for a bank prior to getting into politics. In other words, he knows numbers. Which brings me to a series of tweets from Reeves earlier this week in which he systematically destroyed the argument that everyone should just get Covid-19 now so that we build up a herd immunity. (The geniuses behind that theory of the case are some of the same ones pushing for young people to have coronavirus parties so everyone there gets exposed.) Here's Reeves' data-driven argument against that thinking -- in seven tweets. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/15/politics/tate-reeves-mississippi-coronavirus-herd-immunity/index.html

But among those 80 and above age group who smoked cigarettes and pipe tobacco for at least 60 of those 93 years?

My 93 year old uncle (also in Texas) tested positive but somehow developed no symptoms. Way too many false positives.

It is all about keeping your social circle as small as possible (it is a numbers game) and keeping the ICUs from being overwhelmed. Cousin’s wife’s brother in Dallas says they have had patients with no symptoms for up to 19 days from original exposure. But if 10 people meet for a get together and 3-4 days later, none of them have symptoms, it is HIGHLY LIKELY that no one was exposed.

Woolery? https://www.yahoo.com/news/kansas-freshman-gop-rep-watkins-000957910.htmlGreg, still willing to support your Congressman? In another extraordinary twist on Tuesday, the White House stepped up what is now a full frontal assault against the government's top infectious disease specialist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been telling the truth about the dire turn taken by a pandemic that is now infecting twice as many people per day as it was several months ago. In a USA Today op-ed, Trump's top trade adviser and anti-China polemicist Peter Navarro wrote that the respected scientist "has a good bedside manner with the public, but he has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on." cnn.com Seriously, I wouldn't expect something this non-nonsensical out of Turkey, the Philippines, Brazil or Tajikistan. Chuck Woolery, a former game show host, is now being "retweeted" as a supposed knowledge leader on Covid-19. What in the H.E.L.L. is going on in America these days? Disgraced trade representatives/fringe economists are on the same level as the head of the NIH ever since Ronald Reagan, a fact and science-driven leader still going strong as ever at Joe Biden's current age? ABSOLUTELY EMBARRASSING.

What’s the psychological and lifetime earnings cost to K-12 and university students for at least ANOTHER lost semester of online/distance education vs. 6 weeks of many businesses reopening at 25-50% of previous levels of business activity...? Then all the knock-on consequences to parents (at least one) not being able to work due to having to stay at home with younger children to supervise...or risk the health of grandparents enlisting them as caregivers for months at a time?

Even if he once again challenged the emoluments clause by hawking MAGA masks back in February/March to his own followers for $19.95 and they were made in China instead of 3M...AND the rest of the country was required to wear real masks of their choice from the beginning of the 1st shutdown through the first or second week of June upon entering any public facility, he would still be looking at better than 50/50 odds of being re-elected.

Everyone on the "hoax" side of this claimed hundreds of thousands were dying all over the streets and hospital waiting rooms of China. How can it suddenly NOT be real? What changed? How many of those same people are going without masks or social distancing? Yet still asking their kids to work and/or go to school without any PPE in order to earn money for the family? How many of the conspiracy crew are turning down the extra $600/week and volunteering themselves to basically take pretty much any essential services job that likely pays less than it would be to sit on the couch through the end of July and collect unemployment payments? How many are rejecting subsidized health care coverage from the government? How many will not receive a vaccine but want to send their kids to public schools? Will they pay restitution to their classmates and classmates' families if they get them sick? Why don't they all home school them, then? How many believe in FOX News, Breitbart, Alex Jones and OAN over real journalism? How many of these same anti-maskers were fighting to defend President Obama from 2009-2013 when he made every possible effort to reach out to the other side....when the GOP philosophy of Mitch McConnell was OPENLY ADMITTED TO BE for the Congress to make him a one term president and obstruct every single thing he wanted to accomplish no matter how center right it was (ObamaCare was more to the right than Romney's own Massachusetts health care plan)? That cheered on the blocking of Merrick Garland and are still cheering on the filling of hundreds of lifetime judicial appointments in an "election year" when those appointments should have been suspended beginning in January... If these same things were happening under Obama, he would have been impeached about 3 months ago, if not 4. Imagine ServerGate and Benghazi TIMES ten.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/white-house-campaign-urges-jobless-040719927.html White House urges jobless to "find something new" Brilliant.

Which "soft" government leaders have been most effective during this crisis? One would argue that the female governors/mayors and 3 Republican governors (Inslee/Cuomo/Newsom have also done well)...have performed as well as anyone. Kansas is NOT an easy state to deal with, not unlike Iowa. Lots of religious communities that are conservative/traditional, and then rural folks and farmers that are usually anti-government in general. Otoh, you've had idiots like Kris Kobach "valiantly" attempting to investigate mail-in ballot scandals that have unearthed 22 individuals over the past couple of decades. Westboro Baptist Church. Endless arguments about teaching creationism vs. evolution/Darwin in the schools. It's almost inconceivable to imagine a "non-bullying" attitude getting anyone's attention....at least outside of Johnson County, where the bullying is more over your social circle and net worth/connections. I don't get you Greg, why you harbor mostly ill feelings towards women like Hillary Clinton, Gretchen Whitmer in MI, Chelsea Clinton scared you for five years, Stacey Abrams in Georgia, then the shockingly Democratic female governor of one of the more conservative overall states in the USA in KS....why do they scare you so much? I mean, we've had these arguments for decades about how female politicians exhibiting ambition/aggressiveness, traits valued in men, come across as unlikable in the world of business or Washington, D.C. Why don't Ivanka and Melania scare you even moreso? If someone is a model (the two Trumps) or more attractive (we could even extend this to Sarah Palin, Kristi Noem or Tulsi Gabbard) than average, they are rendered harmless? During a flurry of activity on his Twitter account, Trump retweeted a message from game show host Chuck Woolery that claimed “everyone is lying” about the coronavirus as part of a plot to sabotage the economy and hurt Trump’s reelection campaign. “The most outrageous lies are the ones about Covid 19,” wrote Woolery in the message promoted by Trump. “Everyone is lying. The CDC, Media, Democrats, our Doctors, not all but most ,that we are told to trust. I think it’s all about the election and keeping the economy from coming back, which is about the election. I’m sick of it.” Asked about the retweet at a briefing later Monday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said that the “notion of the tweet was to point out the fact that when we use science, we have to use it in a way that is not political.” In an op-ed published on the CNBC website, Mulvaney wrote: “I know it isn’t popular to talk about in some Republican circles, but we still have a testing problem in this country. My son was tested recently; we had to wait 5 to 7 days for results. My daughter wanted to get tested before visiting her grandparents, but was told she didn’t qualify. That is simply inexcusable at this point in the pandemic.” https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-identifies-another-hoax-the-coronavirus-152649383.html

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/apr/04/the-two-meetings-that-changed-the-trajectory-of-australias-coronavirus-response It doesn't take watching HAMILTON to realize the conflict between the Federal government and individual states, as well as individual states between each other (see the Articles of Confederation), but in such a divisive political atmosphere, the MOST logical thing to do would have been to sit down with all the governors for as long as it took to hash out some shared/universal agreed-upon principles for the response that each state could agree with. Neither too flexible nor too prescriptive, but at least doing 50-65% of what needed to be done (as a whole) instead of 25% in some places, 0 in others, 75-100% in the Northeast/I-95 Corridor. Australia has a very TRUMP-like PM in Morrison, but even he was politically astute enough to realize that everyone had to come together and push forward with a set of shared, mutual values.

I think one part of it was also that he was conflicted about making Xi Jinping look bad at the time, and trying to protect his personal relationship with him as well as preserve the trade deal...and then you have this whole "anti-science/anti-vaccine/climate change" is a hoax or conspiracy concocted by the Left, that doing anything to so much as acknowledge it made him look weak. Not to mention the whole "hiding in his basement with a huge mask" argument against Biden. From everything we know about Trump, he's absolutely obsessed with germs, having tables/eating utensils wiped clean....having EVERYONE around him tested. The personal valet coming down with COVID-19 really shook him up, that it could get that close to him. There was even that week when he claimed to be taking HYDROXY to "prevent" getting sick, and speculation that his doctors were covering up something. In the end, all they had to do was study SARs and MERs to realize that the WORST thing that could happen with masks would be that they weren't as effective as previously thought. If you bring an umbrella and it doesn't rain, you're slightly inconvenienced. But if you're stuck in a downpour without one? Surely, they cause skin irritation ("maskne") with some due to the cloth, they're uncomfortable when speaking or exercising or in extremely hot/humid weather, but it's simply a matter of being polite and courteous and respectful to OTHER people, not possibly spreading your own germs. I don't remember people intentionally coughing or sneezing on others before, at least in public....why the mask has become such a symbol is just idiotic/inane.

Cost required to safely reopen schools in August/Sept., roughly another $150-200 billion. Odds of that happening despite seven months to prepare....approximately 1%.