Category Archives: 2020 Election Issues

The audacity of those comparing ‘open up’ protesters to Rosa Parks

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Civil Rights Movement Timeline From 1951 to 1959

President Trump has a couple of times now encouraged or praised the Americans protesting government-issued stay-at-home orders and other recommendations from medical experts in a tone that is quite different from how he talks about protesters who aren’t aligned with him politically.

The response to the movement by some conservatives suggests that they are willing to wield the legacies of civil rights icons when it benefits them politically while blasting Americans whose activism actually aligns more closely with the work of those historical figures.

After demonstrators filled the streets near the several state capitols last month demanding that their political leaders reopen the states, Trump was asked his view on the protesters, many of whom were photographed carrying Make America Great Again signs. He appeared to embrace them: “They seem to be protesters that like me.”

“These are people expressing their views,” he also told reporters on April 17. “I see where they are, and I see the way they’re working. They seem to be very responsible people to me, but they’ve been treated a little bit rough.”

Shortly after, he took to Twitter and seemed to affirm their protests by calling for these states’ liberation.

Other Trump allies have compared protesters to civil rights activists protesting racism — despite some of them carrying Confederate flags and flags with swastikas.

Stephen Moore, a member of the White House council to reopen the country, praised those taking to the streets.

“I call these people the modern-day Rosa Parks — they are protesting against injustice and a loss of liberties,” he told The Washington Post earlier this month.

Trump was asked about Moore’s words the following day at a White House news briefing. “Yeah, I can see where he’s coming from. Strong statement. Strong statement,” Trump said.

And GOP-endorsed Houston City Council member Michael Kubosh invoked Parks as he violated a stay-at-home order this past weekend in a restaurant.

“Sometimes civil disobedience is required to move things forward, and so that’s why we remember Rosa Parks,” he told Houston’s NBC affiliate.

Conservative radio host Dennis Prager, who has questioned the constitutionality of the government advising Americans to stay at home, also invoked Parks while discussing his plans to rebut some recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

“Civil disobedience in the United States has a very, very, very noble history,” he said Thursday. “Rosa Parks wouldn’t sit in the back of the bus because the disgusting law of blacks had to sit in the back of the bus in some Southern cities in the United States. Should she have obeyed the law?”

Parks protested discrimination by refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Ala. Her defiant act is largely viewed as the beginning of the civil rights movement. But when it comes to modern-day protests about racial injustice, Trump and his allies often respond harshly.

After NFL players grabbed headlines for regularly taking a knee during the national anthem to protest racism and police brutality, Trump said they should be fired. At a September 2017 rally in Huntsville, Ala., the president said: “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when someone disrespects our flag, to say: ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out. He’s fired. He’s fired.’ ”

Moore, who served as an economic adviser to Trump, also criticized these athletes’ protests, calling them “shameful and unpatriotic antics.” And Prager called them “divisive.”

And when Black Lives Matter activists interrupted a Bernie Sanders rally in August 2015, Trump suggested that he might respond violently to protesters doing the same to him.

“That will never happen with me,” he told reporters. “I don’t know if I’ll do the fighting myself or if other people will, but that was a disgrace. I felt badly for him. But it showed that he’s weak.”

And multiple personalities on Fox News have praised the “open up” protesters, comparing them to disadvantaged groups around the world.

Yet the same network has regularly showed its most prominent voices criticizing Americans protesting historically marginalized groups.

In June 2018, Fox host Laura Ingraham said athletes critical of Trump and his attacks on athletes protesting racism were “bratty”:

It’s not about bowing down to the president. He doesn’t want you to disrespect the country, the flag, the anthem, which is what these bratty players are doing, using the excuse of Black Lives Matter or some other issue that they probably haven’t even read up on. They just repeat whatever Colin Kaepernick says on any given day. And they think they’re a member of a cool club by doing this. It’s ridiculous.

The inconsistency in approach to these protesters is sparking frustration with many black Americans, a demographic that overwhelmingly disapproves of Trump but that his campaign is hoping to make some gains with in 2020. To many black Americans, Parks is an icon whose act was a pivotal step in helping eradicate American laws that made treating black people as second-class citizens legal. Whatever issues Americans have with government leaders mandating that people stay home, it is quite a stretch to compare those orders to the state-sanctioned racism that Parks was combating.

 

 

 

 

Trump Moves to Replace Watchdog Who Identified Critical Medical Shortages

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Accountability, Coronavirus, Credibility, Dept of Health and Human Services (HHS), Health Policy, Leadership Culture, Leadership Intent, Leadership Trust, Leadership Unplanned Departure, Mislead, Misleading, Mistrust, Mortality, Oversight, Pandemic, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Supply Chain • Leave a comment

Trump Moves to Replace Watchdog Who Identified Critical Medical ...

The president announced the nomination of an inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services, who, if confirmed, would replace an acting official whose report embarrassed Mr. Trump.

President Trump moved on Friday night to replace a top official at the Department of Health and Human Services who angered him with a report last month highlighting supply shortages and testing delays at hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic.

The White House waited until after business hours to announce the nomination of a new inspector general for the department who, if confirmed, would take over for Christi A. Grimm, the principal deputy inspector general who was publicly assailed by the president at a news briefing three weeks ago.

The nomination was the latest effort by Mr. Trump against watchdog offices around his administration that have defied him. In recent weeks, he fired an inspector general involved in the inquiry that led to the president’s impeachment, nominated a White House aide to another key inspector general post overseeing virus relief spending and moved to block still another inspector general from taking over as chairman of a pandemic spending oversight panel.

Mr. Trump has sought to assert more authority over his administration and clear out officials deemed insufficiently loyal in the three months since his Senate impeachment trial on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress ended in acquittal largely along party lines. While inspectors general are appointed by the president, they are meant to be semiautonomous watchdogs ferreting out waste, fraud and corruption in executive agencies.

The purge has continued unabated even during the coronavirus pandemic that has claimed about 65,000 lives in the United States. Ms. Grimm’s case in effect merged the conflict over Mr. Trump’s response to the outbreak with his determination to sweep out those he perceives to be speaking out against him.

Her report, released last month and based on extensive interviews with hospitals around the country, identified critical shortages of supplies, revealing that hundreds of medical centers were struggling to obtain test kits, protective gear for staff members and ventilators. Mr. Trump was embarrassed by the report at a time he was already under fire for playing down the threat of the virus and not acting quickly enough to ramp up testing and provide equipment to doctors and nurses.

“It’s just wrong,” the president said when asked about the report on April 6. “Did I hear the word ‘inspector general’? Really? It’s wrong. And they’ll talk to you about it. It’s wrong.” He then sought to find out who wrote the report. “Where did he come from, the inspector general? What’s his name? No, what’s his name? What’s his name?”

When the reporter did not know, Mr. Trump insisted. “Well, find me his name,” the president said. “Let me know.” He expressed no interest in the report’s findings except to categorically reject them sight unseen.

After learning that Ms. Grimm had worked during President Barack Obama’s administration, Mr. Trump asserted that the report was politically biased. In fact, Ms. Grimm is not a political appointee but a career official who began working in the inspector general office late in President Bill Clinton’s administration and served under President George W. Bush as well as Mr. Obama. She took over the office in an acting capacity when the previous inspector general stepped down.

Mr. Trump was undaunted and attacked her on Twitter. “Why didn’t the I.G., who spent 8 years with the Obama Administration (Did she Report on the failed H1N1 Swine Flu debacle where 17,000 people died?), want to talk to the Admirals, Generals, V.P. & others in charge, before doing her report,” he wrote, mischaracterizing the government’s generally praised response the 2009 epidemic that actually killed about 12,000 in the United States. “Another Fake Dossier!”

To take over as inspector general, Mr. Trump on Friday night named Jason C. Weida, an assistant United States attorney in Boston. The White House said in its announcement that he had “overseen numerous complex investigations in health care and other sectors.” He must be confirmed by the Senate before assuming the position.

Among several other nominations announced on Friday was the president’s choice for a new ambassador to Ukraine, filling a position last occupied by Marie L. Yovanovitch.

Ms. Yovanovitch was ousted a year ago because she was seen as an obstacle by the president’s advisers as they tried to pressure the government in Kyiv to incriminate Mr. Trump’s Democratic rivals. That effort to solicit political benefit from Ukraine, while withholding security aid, led to Mr. Trump’s impeachment largely along party lines in December.

Mr. Trump selected Lt. Gen. Keith W. Dayton, a retired 40-year Army officer now serving as the director of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany. Mr. Dayton speaks Russian and served as defense attaché in Moscow. More recently, he served as a senior United States defense adviser in Ukraine appointed by Jim Mattis, Mr. Trump’s first defense secretary.

 

 

 

In educated and affluent Massachusetts, coronavirus cases surged. The decline has yet to come.

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Clinical Testing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Essential Businesses, Essential Workers, Health Policy, Infection Control, Infectious Virus, Mortality, Pandemic, Partisanship, Public Health, Public Safety, Social Distancing • Leave a comment

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Coronavirus cases surged in educated and affluent Massachusetts ...

Massachusetts has one of the most educated and affluent populations in the country. It’s home to some of the nation’s most preeminent medical centers. And it has political leaders who have worked cooperatively, across party lines, in the face of a crisis.

Massachusetts also has the third-highest number of confirmed state coronavirus cases, along with the fourth-highest death toll. And despite predictions that numbers would be falling by now after a month and a half of people staying at home, new case counts have instead remained stubbornly high.

The state’s struggle to combat the coronavirus reflects just what a tenacious adversary it really is. Even for a place that has a lot going for it, the toll has been severe — and it is growing by the day.

As of Friday, Massachusetts had more than 64,000 cases — behind only New York and New Jersey, its larger northeastern neighbors. New cases totaled 2,106, continuing a dismal streak lasting more than two weeks of at least 1,500 additional cases per day. Deaths hit 3,716, behind only New York, New Jersey and Michigan.

Even as many states began opening up their economies Friday — allowing restaurants, shopping malls and hair salons to do business — that remained a distant prospect in Massachusetts. Instead, Gov. Charlie Baker (R) on Friday was announcing new restrictions, including a requirement that people wear masks while in public.

“This is going to be a way of life,” Baker said. “No ifs, no ands, no buts, no doubts.”

The persistence with which people keep getting sick in Massachusetts has been matched in other hard-hit states. Rather than a precipitous decline, the number of new cases in places such as Illinois, California and the D.C. metro area has instead been leveling off slowly.

Experts say that is to be expected, even if it means a long road ahead.

“If social distancing is done well — and Massachusetts has done it pretty well — the effect is going to be to flatten the curve and spread it out over more time,” said David Hamer, professor of global health at Boston University and an infectious-disease physician at Boston Medical Center. “Instead of a peak, it’s a prolonged plateau. It’s going to be a gradual decline.”

Like other states, Massachusetts has avoided some of the most dire projections about how many people would fall ill. Its social distancing measures also have prevented hospitals from becoming overwhelmed.

But actually pushing down the rate — rather than treading water — will be tricky to pull off, because of the nature of who is getting sick.

More than half the state’s deaths have been people in long-term-care facilities, such as nursing homes. The elderly make up a slightly higher share of the Massachusetts population than the national average.

Essential workers — who have to commute to their jobs each day and often are in close quarters with others — also have been hit hard.

“Some people have been able to completely shelter at home. Their risk of getting anything is very low indeed,” said Jeffrey K. Griffiths, who teaches public health at Tufts University. “But there are other groups of people that man the gas stations, the grocery stores, the hospitals. They’re police and firefighters. They still have to go to work.”

And then there are the poor, for whom social distancing at home is particularly challenging.

Geralde Gabeau, an advocate for the state’s Haitian community, said she knows of immigrant families that are living 10 to a two-bedroom apartment and sharing a single bathroom.

“If one person gets infected, the likelihood of everyone being infected is very high,” she said. “There is no room for people to isolate.”

Gabeau said the immigrant assistance group she runs, Immigrants Family Services Institute-USA, has gone from helping 60 families to more than 300. “Our phone never stops,” she said.

And she hesitates before opening Facebook: “All you see is RIP,” she said. “Every single day, people are losing their grandparents. Yesterday we lost a young man, 34 years old. A family in Boston lost four people. The Haitian community is mourning like crazy.”

Immigrant groups say Massachusetts needs to do a better job circulating information about the coronavirus in multiple languages. Though much of the literature is translated into Spanish, that accounts for only about 40 percent of the state’s population that is not proficient in English. Gabeau said she has taken it upon herself to produce videos in Creole to help spread the truth about the virus for the Haitian community, which makes up a significant share of the state’s 1 million-plus foreign-born residents.

Massachusetts was among the earliest states to reckon with a coronavirus outbreak, recording its first case on Feb. 1. But Hamer said the virus was probably present far earlier, and it was far more widespread than anyone knew when Baker declared a state of emergency on March 10. With everyone cooped up indoors for the New England winter but without official mandates to socially distance, the virus had ample opportunity to spread.

Many of the cases from early March were traced back to a late-February conference hosted by a biotech company, Biogen.

Experts say that on the whole, the state has done well with its response. Baker is a Republican, while Democrats dominate the legislature. The two sides have worked cooperatively, with little partisan rancor.

“I would say that as a state we are doing this right,” said Maryanne Bombaugh, president of the Massachusetts Medical Society. “It’s a very positive example of how you can work together and make a difference for your people.”

Bombaugh cited in particular the prevalence of testing in Massachusetts, including of the asymptomatic, which she said accounts at least in part for the state’s relatively high infection levels. The state also is tracing those who come into close contact with people who have tested positive, a vital step in containing future outbreaks.

Unlike states that have been besieged by protests, there has been comparatively little pressure in Massachusetts to reopen before public health experts give the all clear. The state is among a coalition, led by New York, that is trying to coordinate reopenings across the Northeast rather than acting individually, as many states have done.

The state’s nonessential-business closure extends until at least May 18, with an advisory group due to report back to Baker by then on the best way to gradually reopen.

The governor on Friday said he was encouraged by a slight decrease in the percentage of coronavirus-positive patients requiring hospitalization. “Overall, this is a very good sign,” he said.

Yet testing is still below what epidemiologists would like to see before stay-at-home restrictions can be lifted. A sustained drop in positive results is another prerequisite. And although experts say it is probably coming, it will take some time to get there.

“The plateau is telling us that we’re getting there,” Griffiths said. “But if we were to open up again while we’re at that plateau, we would just see another sharp spike up.”

 

 

 

 

There’s a more accurate way to compare coronavirus deaths to the flu

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Flu vs Covid19 death rate by age per CDC : Coronavirus

If we measure flu mortality the same way we count covid-19 deaths, the picture becomes very stark.

Months into the coronavirus pandemic, some politicians and pundits continue to promote ham-handed comparisons between covid-19 and the seasonal flu to score political points.

Though there are many ways to debunk this fundamentally flawed comparison, one of the clearest was put forth this week by Jeremy Samuel Faust, an emergency room physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School.

As Faust describes it, the issue boils down to this: The annual flu mortality figures published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are estimates produced by plugging laboratory-confirmed deaths into a mathematical model that attempts to correct for undercounting. Covid-19 death figures represent a literal count of people who have either tested positive for the virus or whose diagnosis was based on meeting certain clinical and epidemiological criteria.

Such a comparison is of the apples to oranges variety, Faust writes, as the former are “inflated statistical estimates” and the latter are “actual numbers.”

To get a more accurate comparison, one must start with the number of directly confirmed flu deaths, which the CDC tracks on an annual basis. In the past seven flu seasons, going back to 2013, that tally fluctuated between 3,448 and 15,620 deaths.

Note that these numbers are very different from the CDC’s final official flu death estimates. For 2018-2019, for instance, the 7,172 confirmed flu deaths translated to a final estimate of between 26,339 and 52,664 deaths. Again, that’s because the CDC plugs the confirmed deaths into a model that attempts to adjust for what many epidemiologists believe is a severe undercount.

Now, let’s add a bar for this season’s covid-19 deaths, which as of this writing stands at 63,259, and which will be even higher by the time you read this. Note the drastic change in the y-axis to accommodate the scale of covid-19 mortality.

This year’s data are necessarily incomplete, as 22 weeks remain in the flu season. There are not likely to be many more flu deaths, as we are well past the worst of the season. But covid-19 mortality has plateaued at around 2,000 deaths per day. Where it will head next is anyone’s guess.

Using an apples-to-apples comparison, we can say that the coronavirus has already killed eight times as many people as the flu. By the time we get data for the entire season, the difference appears likely to be at least tenfold, or a full order of magnitude.

The coronavirus, Faust writes, “is not anything like the flu: It is much, much worse.”

One of the most challenging things about this pandemic is making sense of the profound uncertainty surrounding the many quantities that might appear, at first glance, to be rock solid. On the surface, comparing flu and coronavirus deaths seems like a simple proposition: dig up the official numbers of both and see which is greater.

But that effort gets complicated as soon as you realize that flu mortality is not reported as a tally but as an estimated range, which is far different from the individual counts, based on testing and diagnoses, used for covid-19. And because we can’t test and diagnose everyone, those covid-19 deaths are probably undercounted as well. Soon, what once appeared to be a simple mathematical exercise turns into a mess of algorithms, estimates and uncertainty.

People encountering that uncertainty for the first time, as many of us are during this pandemic, are likely to react in one of two ways. Some cherry-pick a single number that comports with their biases, creating an artificial certainty to score political points or avoid upsetting their preconceptions. That’s what the politicians and talking heads using faulty flu data to downplay the outbreak are doing. Others throw their hands up and declare the truth to be unknowable, indulging in the cynicism that believes you can “make statistics say whatever you want.”

But rather than try to make sense of this uncertainty ourselves, there’s a third option: turning to the experts who’ve devoted their entire careers to these questions. We can listen to the epidemiologists and physicians, people like Faust and his colleagues, who are trained to draw the best possible conclusions out of uncertain data, understanding that those conclusions may have to be updated as new information comes in.

And while the experts might not all agree on some points, something like a critical consensus emerges if we listen to enough of them. Then, that consensus can be used to inform policy that helps save lives and protect the economy.