Coronavirus News (283)

U.S. tops 60,000 daily coronavirus infections for first time since early August New study shows Republican-leaning counties hardest hit in recent weeks. ..........  The virus is spreading in rural communities in the heartland ......... “Stay home. Wear a mask. Stay six feet apart. Wash your hands frequently.” .........  The widespread use of powerful steroids and other treatments has lowered mortality rates among people who are severely ill. .............  the dry indoor environment is congenial to the spread of respiratory viruses. ......... “Inevitably, we’re moving into a phase where there’s going to need to be restrictions again” ......... The virus isn’t going away magically, and everyone needs to prepare for a challenging winter. ........  the tendency for people to lower their guard around individuals they know best ......... Much of the new transmission is taking place in rural communities in the heart of the nation with limited hospital capacity. They also tend to have older populations more vulnerable to severe outcomes from covid-19. ........ “red” counties with the most intense leanings toward Republicans have had the largest recent increases in cases, while “blue” counties that lean Democratic have tended recently to be flat. ........ the Republican-leaning communities have been less inclined to follow public health guidance, including recommendations about mask-wearing and social distancing  ........ Many of the country’s leading medical experts, including top federal government doctors, have urged adherence to public health guidelines, but that message has competed with the pronouncements of President Trump and his closest political allies, who have played down the threat of the coronavirus. ..........   the White House strategy for fighting the pandemic is bolstered by the Great Barrington Declaration, a document posted online by three “dissenting scientists” that argues the virus should be allowed to spread at natural rates among younger, healthier people while older people and others who are vulnerable are kept isolated. .......... “It’s eventually going to spread everywhere in the U.S. … This virus is opportunistic. 

Pelosi, Mnuchin cite progress in economic relief talks but eye obstacles with Senate Republicans During a nearly 90-minute call, the two negotiators said they continued to exchange proposals on stimulus, virus testing ...........  Pelosi and Mnuchin have been discussing a new spending deal between $1.8 trillion and $2.2 trillion, although President Trump has said he would support even more. ......... McConnell next week plans to put a roughly $500 billion package on the Senate floor, close to a quarter the size of the package Mnuchin and Pelosi are working on. .............   “I’ve told him. So far, he hasn’t come home with the bacon," the president said of Mnuchin. ........... “The Republicans are very willing to do it,” Trump said, insisting that Pelosi is standing in the way and “she’s got a lot of mental problems.” ............ Trump’s uneven posturing appears to have only strengthened Pelosi’s determination to hold out for a bigger and better deal, despite pressure from a number of House Democrats to reach an agreement now. ........... Mnuchin and Pelosi have agreed on several measures to include in a new stimulus plan, including a desire to send another round of $1,200 stimulus checks, more small- business aid and help for the airline industry. They also have sought to extend emergency unemployment insurance, although there have been differences on how to structure such assistance. ..............   Defending his call for higher spending, Trump repeatedly asserted without evidence or explanation that China would pay for the nearly $2 trillion stimulus package. “I’d like to see more money — because it comes back,” he said on Fox Business Network. “We’re going to take it from China. I’ll tell you right now: It’s coming out of China.” .............  The president has repeatedly made false claims about foreign nations paying for domestic spending projects, for instance claiming that Mexico would fund construction of a wall along the southern U.S. border. .............  Asked how he would get China to pay for the stimulus package, Trump asserted: “Well, there’s lots of ways. Okay? There’s a lot of ways. And I’ll figure all of them out. I already have them figured out.” 

A pandemic should be the great equalizer. This one had the opposite effect. The virus is ushering in the greatest rise in economic inequality in decades, both globally and in the United States. .......... Thanks to the rise of China, India and other countries, the share of people living in abject poverty (under $2 a day) is less than a quarter of what it was in 1990. ........... about 100 million people are falling back into extreme poverty this year. ......... The World Food Program — recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize — estimates that the number facing hunger will double this year to 265 million people. ..........  38 percent of those who have lost work due to covid-19 don’t have even a month’s worth of savings. ........... In the current recession, the top 25 percent, after a slight initial decline, has bounced back completely. The bottom 25 percent, on the other hand, has cratered, with job losses of more than 20 percent. .......... For those whose jobs can be done remotely — bankers, consultants, lawyers, executives, academics — life goes on with a few hiccups. For those who worked in restaurants, hotels, cruise ships, theme parks, shopping malls, work has simply disappeared. .............  The tragedy is that we know what we need to do. In March, Congress and the administration acted swiftly and boldly to pass a massive relief and stimulus package, which was so successful it seems to have made many in Washington complacent. It has now largely expired, and the two parties are back to their partisan warfare. The Democrats are right to want a much larger relief package than the administration is offering. Cities and states should not be punished for the collapse in tax revenue that have resulted from the pandemic. But surely the best path for the country is for Democrats to accept the concessions they have extracted from Republicans and then push for more after Election Day. .............  I cannot help but wonder whether the relative normalcy of life for elites has prevented us from understanding the true severity of the problem. For those of us using Zoom, things have been a bit disruptive and strange. But for tens of millions of people in the United States — and hundreds of millions around the world — this is the Great Depression. Can we please help them?

The First Amendment in the age of disinformation.

Coronavirus News (282)

Jimmy Kimmel Slams NBC for Giving Trump His Town Hall Seeing the president on the network that hosted “The Apprentice” was “like taking a time machine back to 2004, when he was just a blowhard reality TV host,” Kimmel said.

Inside the Fall of the CDC How the world’s greatest public health organization was brought to its knees by a virus, the president and the capitulation of its own leaders, causing damage that could last much longer than the coronavirus. ...........  a superspreader event in which 52 of the 61 singers at a 2½-hour choir practice developed COVID-19. Two died. .......... When the next history of the CDC is written, 2020 will emerge as perhaps the darkest chapter in its 74 years, rivaled only by its involvement in the infamous Tuskegee experiment, in which federal doctors withheld medicine from poor Black men with syphilis, then tracked their descent into blindness, insanity and death. ............  A vaunted agency that was once the global gold standard of public health has, with breathtaking speed, become a target of anger, scorn and even pity. .......... How could an agency that eradicated smallpox globally and wiped out polio in the United States have fallen so far? ....... the escalating tensions, paranoia and pained discussions that unfolded behind the walls of CDC’s Atlanta headquarters ......... battles that are as much about protecting science from the White House as protecting the public from COVID-19. It is a war that they have, more often than not, lost. ...........  A shifting and mysterious cast of political aides and private contractors — what one scientist described as young protégés of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, “wearing blue suits with red ties and beards” — crowded into important meetings about key policy decisions. ......... Veteran CDC specialists with global reputations were marginalized, silenced or reassigned — often for simply doing what had always been their job. Some of the agency’s most revered scientists vanished from public view after speaking candidly about the virus. .............  Theirs was the model other nations copied. Their leaders were the public faces Americans turned to for the unvarnished truth. They’d served happily under Democrats and Republicans. ......... Now, 10 months into the crisis, many fear the CDC has lost the most important currency of public health: trust, the confidence in experts that persuades people to wear masks for the public good, to refrain from close-packed gatherings, to take a vaccine. .......  what can happen when people lose confidence in the government and denial and falsehoods spread faster than disease. He called it the “bankruptcy of trust.” .......  Emails and calls bounced among the agency’s leaders .........   In the fierce chaos of Trump’s Washington, the CDC needed a streetfighter. Instead, it got “the nicest grandfather you can imagine” .......... the American public health system, which has been quietly gutted since the Great Recession. ......... years of federal and state cuts had left about 26,000 fewer employees at state, county and municipal health agencies since 2009 ........ In the secure, high-tech room where the CDC brain trust met, the mood turned dark as the scientists began to fear they were confronting a pandemic. .......... The lab official tried to contact a chief virologist at the China CDC who was usually helpful, but got no response. Neither did colleagues who reached out to Chinese scientists with whom they had collaborated for years. The Americans concluded that the regime in Beijing was telling them to keep quiet. .......... China was a hard target. Even U.S. spy agencies struggled to gather intelligence on the evolution of the disease. ..........  “What the fuck are we paying for people to be in China if they can’t go where there’s an outbreak when there’s an outbreak” ............  His coverage of the SARS pandemic had helped shape his view of China as what he called “an expansionist totalitarian empire.” .......... The CDC, which had been the public face of the government during every health crisis in memory, soon became nearly invisible. After a few more briefings, a Pence aide told the agency’s media staff that this was the president’s stage, not theirs. ......... A friend of one CDC scientist ribbed him: “We keep waiting for the CDC to show up on a milk carton as a missing child.” ...............  Trump countermanded science in a flurry of inaccuracies and dangerous advice, saying the virus would soon go away, theorizing about injecting disinfectant as a treatment, and dismissing recommendations about wearing a mask. ..........  In contrast, South Korean officials gave near instantaneous approval to commercial labs, and they quickly began testing 10,000 people a day. ........... “There’s a four-foot gap at the top of the shower curtain that you bought from Home Depot — and you’re calling this a quarantine area?” ........ Trump flew to Atlanta for an impromptu tour of the CDC laboratories. Wearing a red “KEEP AMERICA GREAT” cap, Trump briefly praised the CDC’s tests as “perfect” and talked about the record high ratings for his recent appearance on Fox News. Asked by a reporter about cruise ships, the president said he preferred that the Grand Princess passengers remain on board because their arrival — even at a federal quarantine site — would cause a spike in U.S. case numbers. “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship,” Trump told reporters. .............. At the same time as they were watering down Cetron’s criticism of the cruise industry, the White House and DHS were pushing him to invoke quarantine powers to stop a problem that barely existed: the spread of coronavirus by migrants trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. ............... border officials tested unaccompanied children seeking asylum — and expelled them even if their results were negative. ........ By April, the numbers were brutal. There were 608,000 cases of COVID nationwide. More than 26,000 people had died, about 10,000 of them in New York City, where the per capita death rate had surpassed Italy’s. ................ the agency had a “culture where petty rivalries between egos tend to subordinate the public good.” ........... the tough new policy would “convert a problem of incomplete data to a problem of invalid data.” ......... the 1918 flu pandemic that had infected a third of the world’s population, killing more than 50 million people ................ Obama was clear: All decisions had to be made quickly and grounded in the best available science. .......... “You know, Rahm,” Besser recalled him saying. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be writing scientific guidance.” Cursing, Emanuel crumpled the paper in his fist, threw it aside and began eating his lunch. At a crucial moment, science prevailed. ......... One CDC official recalls seeing the July 8 tweet and sighing in defeat. “Come on, man, this is your team! You don’t have to tweet it like that! You can just pick up the phone and call Redfield!” ........... Everyone nitpicked the CDC’s subsequent proposals, records show — even Trump’s daughter Ivanka, who suggested granting paid sick leave to teachers and administrators at high risk for COVID-19 complications. ............. In a section that described the higher proportion of cases among Hispanic children, the White House counsel’s office wanted the CDC to add a reference to one of the president’s favorite bugaboos, the Mexican border. ..........   The HHS unit was even critical of the suggestion that schools might need to close in areas where the virus was raging uncontrolled. ......... One of their prime tormentors was Michael Caputo, a political fixer handpicked by Trump himself to oversee communications at HHS. A proud protégé of convicted dirty trickster Roger Stone, Caputo had served as an adviser for Russian politicians, worked for Trump’s campaign and promoted conspiracy theories. Soon after arriving at HHS in April, Caputo began riding herd over CDC communications seen as conflicting with Trump’s political message. ................. She attracted the administration’s ire with her blunt assessments in media interviews. 

 

Robert Lighthizer Blew Up 60 Years of Trade Policy. Nobody Knows What Happens Next. Trump’s trade representative joined the administration with one mission: Bring factory jobs back from overseas. The results so far? Endless trade wars, alienated allies, and a manufacturing recession. ............  He’s ruptured international relationships, maintained tariffs on $350 billion worth of imports, and constructed a series of piecemeal and delicate agreements with trading partners that are as good as the next president’s dedication to enforcing them. .................... The gap between American imports and exports of goods is as big as it’s ever been, while manufacturing output and job growth flatlined in 2019. To the extent that manufacturers have pulled out of China, they’ve shifted to countries like Vietnam and Mexico, rather than set up factories in the U.S. And Lighthizer has failed to achieve his most ambitious goals, as a tempestuous president’s abrupt twists and turns sabotaged the patient, insistent approach on which his trade representative had built his reputation. ..............  Trump’s tactics have undermined his goal of reviving America’s industrial might. ............ we still see a trade deficit today that’s bigger than when Trump took office, and ongoing outsourcing of jobs, despite good efforts to try and turn around a mess.” ............  Ultimately, import quotas on Japanese steel and cars didn’t save the Rust Belt — Japanese automakers simply set up shop in the union-free American South, while robots thinned the ranks of workers needed on factory floors. ...........  Moving plants to cheaper locales all over the world was rapidly becoming the default setting for American companies, and plenty of attorneys were making good money helping them do it. ............  “The fact that the Appellate Body had ruled against the U.S. repeatedly was the primary reason Lighthizer was determined to bring down the WTO” ..............  Decades later, Donald Trump blamed NAFTA for a host of ills — from the rise of automation to the decline of unions — and it helped him win traditionally Democratic states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. ........... To be fair, conventional wisdom had begun to shift under President Barack Obama, as it became increasingly clear even to free-trade advocates that U.S. efforts to prevent China from flouting international rules and norms weren’t working. .................  Obama spent much of his second term negotiating a trade pact with 12 other Pacific Rim countries, with the idea of creating a U.S.-centered economic bloc to counter China’s influence, and tried to sell it to Congress. The Trans Pacific Partnership marked a rare point of agreement with Republican leadership, but an alliance of labor-oriented progressives and tea party conservatives opposed it. ................  Many staffers harbored hopes that Trump would put his own stamp on the TPP agreement and move ahead with it. Instead, Trump pulled out of the deal on the first business day of his administration, stunning USTR officials who had devoted years to hammering out its intricately balanced details. “It was like someone died,” said one former staff member, describing the mood at headquarters on that rainy January Monday. ...............   To Trump, relationships with other countries usually come down to who’s “winning.” In trade, that usually refers to the trade deficit — that is, America’s exports to a country minus its imports. Like his boss, Lighthizer focused on the goods deficit, since the U.S. imports far more stuff than it exports, which he sees as a problem. That leaves out services, including everything from the many billions in financial expertise the U.S. provides, to tourists and foreign students who attend college here. On that front, the U.S. actually sells more to the rest of the world than it buys. ...............   Trump often gave no notice of his tariff pronouncements, blindsiding careful USTR employees. “When you’re getting calls from the private sector asking what’s going on, and you have to somewhat jokingly say, ‘I haven’t checked Twitter,’ That can be a challenge,” said one former staffer. ........... Over time, staff gained respect for Lighthizer’s management of his single most important constituent: the president. While USTR’s profile heightened, Lighthizer largely avoided the limelight, knowing that upstaging his boss could hasten his exit. He also coped with Trump’s more extreme trade impulses, like hiking tariffs without warning and threatening to end various alliances and agreements. ..............  The world’s second-biggest economy had become a market system that was fundamentally different from the capitalist model upon which most international trade laws and norms are predicated. ......... the Chinese executed an about-face around the time of the great financial crisis, when capitalist systems neared collapse. Returning to a managed economy, they subsidized exports, required outside companies to enter joint ventures with Chinese ones, and encouraged widespread piracy of intellectual property. ...............  In the TPP, the Obama administration negotiated a trade agreement with Pacific Rim nations that would theoretically be so attractive to China, it would meet the pact’s requirements for fair competition so that it could join. .......... The Trump administration’s thinking: Assembling a coalition of nations to pressure China would never have worked. ........... Farmers, an important Trump political constituency, were compensated for the lost Chinese market with tens of billions of dollars in subsidies — more than the auto companies received during the last recession — and no obligation to repay them. But manufacturers, faced with higher prices for imported parts, got nothing. That helped drive the sector into a recession ...............  “The strategy of talking to these people had been tried across two administrations and basically led to nothing.” ............. by Lighthizer’s own metrics, the U.S. isn’t winning the trade war. The trade deficit with China has barely budged, and it’s widened with other countries like Vietnam as American companies responded to tariffs by moving operations elsewhere in the region. .................  Although they’re not usually cast as such, tariffs aren’t so much a weapon against other countries as they are a signal to domestic business: Lighthizer was telling American companies that investing overseas wouldn’t be the obvious choice it had been in the past. ............   “The business community’s concern is that an effort to reset tariffs risks ending up with higher tariffs everywhere”  

U.S. tops 60,000 daily coronavirus infections for first time since early August New study shows Republican-leaning counties hardest hit in recent weeks. 

Coronavirus News (281)

Hear people out (literally)  people felt more connected to others after a phone call than those who chatted via email. 

Research: Type Less, Talk More adding video to an “old-fashioned” phone call may not further increase our sense of connection to another person  ........  Being able to see another person, in short, did not make people feel any more connected than if they simply talked with them. A sense of connection does not seem to come from being able see another person but rather from hearing another person’s voice. .......... a person’s voice is really the signal that creates understanding and connection. ..........  Text-based interactions are sometimes simpler and more efficient and enable recipients to respond at their leisure.  If you’re sending a simple message, a quick update, or an attachment, then emails and texts are the way to go. ......... take a little more time to talk to others than you might be inclined to. You—and those you talk to—are likely to feel better as a result. 

The economy may never be the same 

A Combative Trump and a Deliberate Biden Spar From Afar at Town Halls With less than three weeks left in the campaign, there was no sign that either candidate was diverging from the political tracks they laid down months ago. ...........  President Trump spoke positively about an extremist conspiracy-theory group, expressed skepticism about mask-wearing, rebuked his own F.B.I. director and attacked the legitimacy of the 2020 election in a televised town hall forum on Thursday, veering far away from a focused campaign appeal. Instead, he further stoked the country’s political rifts as his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., pushed a deliberate message anchored in concerns over public health and promises to restore political norms. ........... On the central issue of the election, the coronavirus pandemic, the two candidates appeared to inhabit not just different television sets but different universes. .........  Trump repeatedly declined to disavow QAnon, a pro-Trump internet community that has been described by law enforcement as a potential domestic terrorism threat ...........  Trump improvising freely, admitting no fault in his own record and hurling various forms of provocation. .......... and briefly appeared to promise Ms. Guthrie that he would “let you know who I owe” money to ......... and at one point he delivered a kind of miniature filibuster by listing various properties he owns .......... “On the masks, you have two stories,” Mr. Trump said, claiming falsely that most people who wear masks contract the virus. ........  When Ms. Guthrie pointed out that the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, had said there was no sign of such widespread voter misconduct, the president shot back, “Then he’s not doing a very good job.” ...... The president has continued to predict that the virus will soon disappear, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. 

‘Long Covid’ Could Be A Cyclical Disease That Moves Around Body Systems, Report Finds  The review found people to be suffering from a wide-range of symptoms, including those affecting mental health and fatigue, the brain, breathing, the cardiovascular system, the skin and the liver. The researchers say there may be four different syndromes that could be responsible for the symptoms: post-intensive-care syndrome, post-viral fatigue syndrome, long-term Covid symptoms and damage to the lungs and heart. Testimony from patients show ongoing Covid-19 to be a “cyclical disease,” with symptoms moving around the body and fluctuating in severity over time. An emphasis on acute Covid-19 symptoms, particularly respiratory issues, has led to difficulties in patients receiving treatment or recognition for “long Covid”, the researchers say. ................  for some people, Covid-19 infection is a long term illness 

McConnell Won’t Support $1.8 Trillion White House Stimulus Bill—Even If Pelosi And Trump Make A Deal  

Coronavirus News (280)

Pandemic favors these companies 

Trump would go higher than $1.8 trillion on coronavirus stimulus deal 

He Won’t Concede, but He’ll Pack His Bags All evidence suggests that the president would run from the responsibility of overseeing the violent fracture of America. .........  The presidency is a burden, he said, and Trump is “incredibly lazy” and unsuited to physically and cognitively demanding work. ..........  Not only has Trump not resigned—he has signaled that he’s willing to plunge America into chaos in an effort to remain in the White House. ..........   we should remember that Trump had a vision of the presidency that began with extreme laziness, and that the end of his presidency could go roughly the same way. .......... Trump asked Kasich to be his running mate and, in the event of a Trump victory, to be “in charge of domestic and foreign policy.” What, Kasich’s team asked, would Trump be in charge of? The answer, delivered seriously: “Making America great again.” This is not the offer of a man fanatically devoted to the collection of power. It is the offer of a man too lazy to reach for the remote. ....... Trump thought that the presidency is like many large organizations: capable of running itself, with the president a public figurehead, no more necessary to the United States’ daily operation than the guy who plays Ronald McDonald is to the McDonald’s corporation. The deep state—a permanent bureaucracy that runs things in its own interests, irrespective of who is president—was not his villain. It was his fantasy. ...........  the ridiculous absentee governing, especially in Trump’s first year. It turns out you can refuse to make hard decisions, and that is exactly what Trump did ......... an executive branch swiss-cheesed with vacant positions, run in practice by appointees with wildly diverse levels of competence who botch things while preserving the president’s ability to watch copious amounts of cable news. ......   The president who sleeps away a year in office does not awake to find his ship on course for safe harbor. He finds it run aground and ripped apart, leaking its contents all over the country like the Exxon Valdez. The second was impeachment, the Russia investigation, and other accusations of criminality against Trump and his associates. Being much poorer than he claimed to be, then hiring cut-rate criminals to run his affairs, made honorable departure from office ahead of schedule—and without permanent taint—impossible.  .........  staying in office is the surest way to evade investigation, prosecution, and conviction. .........   just as there was an indolent way into the presidency, there is an indolent way out ......... As for the prospect of civil war: Trump is a coward, and all evidence suggests that he would run from the responsibility ....... A civil war sounds like a lot of work. ........... The easiest path is also the most lucrative. Get on Marine One, protesting all the way, and spend the rest of your days fleecing the 40 percent of Americans who still think you are the Messiah, and who will watch you on cable news, spend their money on whatever hypoallergenic pillow you endorse, and come to see you whenever you visit their town. .............  That seems to be what Trump is preparing now: insurance against a loss, so he can skate past criminal charges and live out the playboy post-presidency he has longed for since taking office.

Medieval Europeans didn’t understand how the plague spread. Their response wasn’t so different from ours now.  When the new disease first arrived, little was clear beyond the fact that it killed with terrifying speed. Near-certain death trailed the first symptoms by four days or less. The doctors were helpless. This city was soon overwhelmed with corpses. Workers in church yards dug pits down to the water table, layering bodies and dirt, more bodies and dirt. ........... Seven centuries later, the plague in Europe stands as an example of a pandemic at its worst — .............. in both cases, the first instinct was to close borders to try to keep the disease at bay. When that didn’t work, officials called for strict rules — but only some people paid attention. All the while, there was a proliferation of conspiracy theories. Many tried to blame the disease on outsiders or minorities — in medieval Europe, often Jews. ............. “Much has changed since the 1340s ... but not human nature.” ............. daring dinner parties in which a host would gather 10 friends, with plans to reconvene again the next night. At the next dinner, Stefani said, sometimes “two or three were missing.” ........... many faced their last moments cut off from everybody else ...........  People, after the onset of symptoms, were a mortal danger to those around them. So in some cases, family members abandoned sick loved ones, even children. Their deaths were noticed only when neighbors smelled the rotting corpses. ...........  In 1348, she said, the city was in its own state of near-lockdown. The inns were closed. .......... People were panicked. It was unclear how the disease spread — but there was no doubt that proximity to others was a risk. Animals — oxen, dogs, pigs — were dying, as well. .............  They prayed and disavowed sin. They obsessed about the air and used scents and fires to ward off perceived deadly vapors. They were mostly guessing; scientists wouldn’t know what actually caused the plague — how the bacteria was spread by rats and fleas — until 500 years later. ..................  At a time when people were trying to avoid the disease with trial-and-error strategies, only one thing seemed to work: If the plague arrived in your city, drop everything, flee the crowds and take refuge in the countryside. ...............  All through the coronavirus pandemic, there have been accounts of people taking their own countryside flights to safety — New Yorkers decamping to the Hamptons, British urbanites seeking out holiday cottages. ..................  But Cerrina Feroni said his ex-wife had already heard all of his stories many times over, and he had likewise heard all of hers. So instead, during pandemic lockdown in Fiesole, they watched Netflix.  

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Kamala Harris and the ‘Double Bind’ of Racism and Sexism Reactions to her debate performance show not only the bias that women and people of color face, but the fact that for women of color, that bias is more than the sum of its parts. ............  and a top Google search around that time was whether she was born in the United States. ........... unleashed a steady drip of racism and sexism, underscoring not only the double standards women and people of color face, but what happens when multiple identities meet: a Black woman, an Indian-American woman, a woman whose parents were immigrants. .........  One of the oldest racist tropes is that of the “angry Black woman.” ........   “Angry,” “mean,” “aggressive,” “disrespectful”: All of these words, which Mr. Trump has used to describe Ms. Harris, play to this stereotype, which was also used against Michelle Obama. False suggestions that Ms. Harris is scheming to run the country in Mr. Biden’s stead play to it, too. ...............  a tightrope: Stereotypically feminine behavior can lead voters to see women running for office as more likable but less of a leader, while stereotypically masculine behavior can make voters see them as more of a leader but less likable. .............  “the classic double bind” ........... “Women can either be seen as leaders or they can be seen as feminine, and the two don’t go together.” .......... another racist trope, the promiscuous, hypersexual “Jezebel.” ............... T-shirts with the slogan “Joe and the Hoe” were briefly available on Amazon. ............   The lawyer and civil rights activist Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced the term “intersectionality” three decades ago to describe how various identities can overlap to produce discrimination more complex than just, for instance, racism plus sexism. ........... “women may not vote against the rampant sexism because of race, and people of color may not vote against the racist and xenophobic dimensions of the Trump assault because of anti-Black racism within Indian communities and misogyny within Black communities.” ............. identity policing. ............. Identity policing is related to broader patterns of “othering,” or casting a person as “not one of us.” .......... the frequent mispronunciations of her name  

Britain’s Boris Johnson pressured to introduce ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown to stop the coronavirus

The US is seeing a resurgence of Covid-19 cases. Small household gatherings are helping drive it, CDC chief says  "The consequences of this virus, particularly for older folks -- the people that we really want to gather with on Thanksgiving -- can be really dire," he said. And frankly, I'd rather do a Zoom Thanksgiving with people that I love than expose them to something that might kill them" ..................  US health officials should know by November or December whether there is a safe and effective vaccine, Fauci said, adding, "It is conceivable that we might even know before then." 

Biden leads Trump by 17 points as election race enters final stage Opinium/Guardian poll finds Biden ahead by 57-40 margin Biden leads on healthcare, the economy and race relations .......... a record 17 points .....   It is just short of the lead in the popular vote that Ronald Reagan enjoyed in his second landslide victory in 1984. Four years later, Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis led George HW Bush by 17 points only to suffer defeat, but that poll was taken in July so Bush had ample time to recover. ........ some Republicans fear a rout in the races for the presidency, Senate and House of Representatives. ....... a hectic month that saw the death of the supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Trump’s disastrous debate performance and a White House outbreak of coronavirus that infected the president himself swung the pendulum decisively in Democrats’ favour. .......... Biden has gained five percentage points among undecided voters since September. ........ His reputation as a successful businessman took a hit from a New York Times investigation into his tax affairs. ........ voters say Biden, 77, has better mental stamina than 74-year-old Trump by a 48% to 44% margin. ........ Trump’s core support is notoriously loyal, and still turning out at his resurrected campaign rallies .......... Nearly two in three (62%) of ex-Trump voters (who voted for him in 2016 but will not do so this year) say his handling of the coronavirus pandemic is the reason they switched their vote. In addition, almost half (47%) of ex-Trump voters say his personality and behaviour contributed to the switch. ......... Democrats have said a massive victory is the surest way to avoid lengthy legal disputes that could even spill over into street violence. .......... Biden’s lead relies on the success of mail-in voting, likely to hit record levels during the pandemic. ....... when it comes to mail-in voters, 75% intend to vote for Biden and only 22% intend to vote for Trump. .........  Half (50%) of voters are worried that if the president loses the election, he will not concede. 

The Next Generation of Office Communication Tech with 42 percent of American full-time employees working from home for the foreseeable future as the pandemic lingers, new forms of mixed reality technologies are creating mainstream virtual substitutes for offices, and redefining the future of work in the process. ............  Many companies we work with are using them to shrink their real-world office footprints by about a third on average and energize far-flung employees, many of whom are already more productive while working from home with no commute. .............  Longer term, companies will use mixed reality to create conditions for remote collaboration and innovation that are as good as, or even better than, in person. ......... multidimensional “collaboratories” that are improving knowledge worker productivity and collaboration.  ....... Almost a decade before the pandemic struck, technology pioneers began using large-screen video “portals” to connect satellite offices into each other’s worlds through informal, always-on video feeds. ........... Now teams in some of the world’s largest financial services companies and retailers meet in virtual offices using mixed reality programs like Sneek and Pukkateam. ........... The anonymity and scale of the online platform let managers hear more voices, including those who typically would not speak up in person. More employees participated, as peers freely validated each other’s observations. One participant said they had “never felt this listened to before.” ........ online sticky notes, shared digital whiteboards and live co-editing of wikis, slides and documents to bring people together. ...........  could design and launch a new digital banking business line and product in a virtual workspace just as well, and in a fraction of the time, as it had one year earlier for another product, when it flew in people to brainstorm in person. .......... the combination of video, voice, chat, and collaboration tools created more opportunities for all team members to contribute, rather than be drowned out by those with loud voices or a forceful presence — or if they simply missed the session because they couldn’t fly in. With greater representation in the virtual room, teams were able to realize better and more holistic solutions in a way that just wasn’t happening before. .........  practically every large corporation we speak with today is asking for innovations to make virtual working sustainably productive. .........  large multi-monitor displays that will move virtual collaboration from laptop screens to a more immersive full-size format .......... Ten years from now, we will look at the current crop of virtual office, focus group and collaboration tools with the same disdain we now have for crackly phone calls. 

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MUSK: TESLA IS ROLLING OUT A BETA OF “FULL SELF-DRIVING” NEXT WEEK  “I drive the bleeding edge alpha build in my car personally,” he added at the time. “Almost at zero interventions between home and work.” ....... According to Musk, the update will take the feature from 2D to “4D,” meaning that the vehicle will be able to not only sense the three-dimensional world around it, but also predict changes in factors like location, direction, and speed.  

Why The Amy Coney Barrett Hearings Are Verging On The Absurd Modern Supreme Court confirmation hearings are empty theater, and Barrett’s is no exception. ........... She would likely vote to further dismantle Obamacare, uphold abortion limits that would make it impossible to get an abortion in some states, invalidate most regulations on guns and back corporations over individuals in most legal matters. She does not seem inclined to recuse herself from a case involving Trump’s election, even as the president has implied that he wants Barrett confirmed, in part, to rule in his favor if election-related issues reach the Supreme Court. ............. Barrett, if confirmed, would be to the ideological right of both Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh .....  polls show that a clear majority of Americans believe that the winner of the election should choose Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s replacement ...... She didn’t say anything to annoy Republicans or win over Democrats. And, of course, that was the point. 

Trump’s Chances Are Dwindling. That Could Make Him Dangerous.  Every scientific poll we’ve seen had Trump losing the debate, some by narrow margins and some by wide ones.  ........ John McCain, for instance, briefly pulled ahead of Barack Obama following the 2008 Republican convention, and Obama didn’t really solidify his lead until early October. .......... Hillary Clinton led by only 1.4 points in our national polling average heading into the first debate that year. ......... It’s been an exceptionally stable race. ...... In 2016, the polls did show Clinton ahead, but between tight margins in tipping-point states and the large number of undecided voters, there was a fairly high probability — around 30 percent, according to our forecast — that Trump was going to win anyway. ............  nothing intrinsically rules out a larger polling error. We had one in 1948 — when Dewey didn’t defeat Truman, after all — and in 1980, when Ronald Reagan won in an epic landslide instead of the narrow margin that polls predicted. ............. a 7-point Biden lead on Election Day could, indeed, turn into a 2-point Biden popular vote win where Trump narrowly wins the Electoral College. ....... But it’s about equally likely that a 7-point Biden lead could translate into a 12-point Biden win, in which he’d not only carry states like Georgia and Texas, but would also have a shot in South Carolina, Alaska and Montana. ..........  Even a small probability that the U.S. could become a failed or manifestly undemocratic state is worth taking seriously. ........ Consider that Trump’s convention produced, at best, a very meager bounce in his favor. His attempt to pivot the campaign to a “law and order” theme fell completely flat in polls of the upper Midwest. He’s thrown the kitchen sink at Biden and not really been able to pull down Biden’s favorables. His hopes that we’d turn the corner on COVID-19 before the election are diminishing after cases have begun to rise again in many states. His campaign, somehow, is struggling to hold on to enough cash to run ads in the places it most needs to run them. The New York Times and other news organizations are likely to continue publishing damaging stories on his taxes and personal finances from now until the election. And now he’s seemingly lost the first debate. ......... If Trump intuits that he’s unlikely to win legitimately — it’s not hard to imagine him escalating his anti-democratic rhetoric and behavior. It’s also not hard to imagine this rhetoric further eroding his position in polls. ...... So we could be headed for a vicious cycle where Trump increasingly gives up on trying to persuade or turn out voters and voters increasingly give up on him.

How Trump Could Spark A Full-Blown Election Crisis  

An Open Letter to Judge Amy Coney Barrett From Your Notre Dame Colleagues from what we read your confirmation is all but assured. 

White House Embraces Covid-19 ‘Herd Immunity’ Declaration  

White House embraces a declaration from scientists that opposes lockdowns and relies on ‘herd immunity.’   The White House has embraced a declaration by a group of scientists arguing that authorities should allow the coronavirus to spread among young healthy people while protecting the elderly and the vulnerable — an approach that would rely on arriving at “herd immunity” through infections rather than a vaccine. ..........  about 85 to 90 percent of the American population is still susceptible to the coronavirus. ....... The Great Barrington Declaration, which argues against lockdowns and calls for a reopening of businesses and schools. .......... “The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.” ............ The document grew out of a meeting hosted by the American Institute for Economic Research, a libertarian-leaning research organization. ..........   Sunetra Gupta and Gabriela Gomes, two scientists who have proposed that societies may achieve herd immunity when 10 to 20 percent of their populations have been infected with the virus, a position most epidemiologists disagree with. .......... What they found runs strongly counter to the theory being promoted in influential circles that the United States has either already achieved herd immunity or is close to doing so, and that the pandemic is all but over. That conclusion would imply that businesses, schools and restaurants could safely reopen, and that masks and other distancing measures could be abandoned.  

New virus cases are trending upward in a majority of the states.   Uncontrolled coronavirus outbreaks in the U.S. Midwest and Mountain West have strained hospitals, pushed the country’s case curve to its highest level since August and heightened fears about what the winter might bring. ............ the country’s trajectory is worrisome — and worsening. Many experts fear what could happen as cold weather encroaches on more of the country and drives people indoors, where the virus can spread more easily. ............  New cases are trending upward in 36 states, including much of the Northeast ........ Testing remains insufficient in much of the country. 

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Amy Barrett: A New Conservatism  and her Catholic parish in South Bend, Ind. ......... an outsider of unbending conviction on social issues. .......... “We now affectionately call her Judge Dogma” ........ Mr. Trump, who in 2016 promised to appoint justices who would overturn the federal right to an abortion .............  Judge Barrett is from the South and Midwest. Her career has been largely spent teaching while raising seven children, including two adopted from Haiti and one with Down syndrome, and living according to her faith. She has made no secret of her beliefs on divisive social issues such as abortion. A deeply religious woman, her roots are in a populist movement of charismatic Catholicism. ...........   the ecstatic traditions of charismatic Christianity, like speaking in tongues ......... To Judge Barrett’s critics, she represents the antithesis of the progressive values embodied in Justice Ginsburg, her life spent in a cocoon of like-minded thinking that in many areas runs counter to the views of a majority of Americans. .......... She has made clear she believes that life begins at conception, and has served in leadership roles for People of Praise, and her children’s school has said in its handbook that marriage is between a man and a woman. Her judicial opinions indicate broad support for gun rights and an expanded role for religion in public life. ..........   and if she is confirmed, as seems all but certain, she could have an effect as early as next month, when the court will hear cases on the Affordable Care Act and a clash between claims of religious freedom and gay rights. She will represent a rising conservatism subtly different from what the court’s five other Republican appointees embody. ........   For Judge Barrett, 48, that vision comes from a deep sense of calling, one rooted in family and faith, and one that began before she was born. ........... Seeking to emulate the close-knit community of the Twelve Apostles, Mr. Coney and his wife, who had six girls and a boy after Amy, joined People of Praise, based in South Bend, and were a grounding force for the group’s New Orleans community................    and then, like her grandmother, mother, aunts and sisters, went to high school at St. Mary’s Dominican, an all-girls Catholic school. .......... In a course on social justice her junior year, the girls read papal encyclicals about economic inequality, nuclear disarmament and the rights of workers, even as they learned about the church’s stance against contraception and abortion. Their teacher, Royann Avegno, 70, spoke often of her eight children, seven of whom she had adopted, most with congenital conditions or special needs; three died. She brought one child to visit the class — he could not stand or talk, and she spoke with the students about the dignity of human life, even when it was frail. .......................  When Ms. Barrett applied to law schools, Ms. Brady said faculty members “spent hours” arguing for her to consider Harvard over Notre Dame, which was generally not highly ranked among the nation’s top law schools. Friends said Ms. Barrett later told them that while she had been accepted at the University of Chicago, Notre Dame had offered her a scholarship. ................. “I’m a Catholic, and I always grew up loving Notre Dame,” Judge Barrett said in 2019. “What Catholic doesn’t?” ............ Despite being urged to consider Harvard, Judge Barrett chose to attend law school at Notre Dame. .. .....  the nation’s elite conservative law school ...............  She graduated at the top of her class and received an award for the highest academic achievement. .............. hired her without even an interview, after Mr. Kelley had insisted she would have been the top student at Harvard, too, the judge said. ......... had appreciated Judge Barrett’s analytical skills and clear writing .......... “Amy Coney is the best student I ever had.” ........   respected her ability to simplify some of the court’s more complex cases. ..............  “It was not something I would have thought to do in the middle of my clerkship, to go serve the dying with the nuns.” ............ Returning as a 30-year-old professor, Ms. Barrett was not much older than her students. She deliberately wore glasses, “to try to look very imposing,” she later said. Organized, a good speaker and caring toward her students, she was repeatedly voted teacher of the year. ................  making clear her conviction that life began at conception, according to a campus magazine. But she also said the core right to abortion established in Roe appeared secure ......... “The fundamental element, that the woman has a right to choose abortion, will probably stand,” she said. .......... In a 2006 commencement address, she gave her students three pieces of advice: Pray before accepting a new job. Give away 10 percent of what you earn to church, charity or friends in need. Choose a parish with an active community and commit yourself to cultivating relationships there. .............. “When your life is placed firmly within a web of relationships, it is much easier to keep your career in its proper place.”  .......  she recalled walking to campus and sitting on a cemetery bench contemplating a household with five children younger than 10. “I just thought, OK, well, if life’s really hard, at least it’s short,” she said, laughing. “But I thought, what greater thing can you do than raise children?” ........ When her youngest son was born with Down syndrome, on oxygen in the intensive care unit ............ The family had a significant support system. Mr. Barrett’s aunt helped take care of their children for years, allowing both parents to pursue their professional ambitions. .............  “Between church, God, a supportive community, you end up thinking, why is welfare important, we can have support from our community and God.” ......... She served from 2015 to 2017 on the board of Trinity School, the private school of 250 students in South Bend that some of her children attend and that was started by and remains closely linked to the People of Praise. ............... Mr. Trump gave an early signal of what he had in mind just a few months after she joined the appeals court. “I’m saving her for Ginsburg,” he told people .............   “Her opinions in death penalty-related cases certainly are not in line with church teaching” ............ she understands the oath she gives as a jurist is to apply the law before her whether or not that coincides with her personal moral or other beliefs.” .............. Judge Barrett has acknowledged that judges using Justice Scalia’s methods do not always agree .......   While the Notre Dame law faculty and her former fellow Supreme Court clerks generally supported her for the appeals court, some have said they will not line up behind her this time. ........... Judge Barrett suggested she would try to bridge the bitter divides, invoking the friendship between Justice Ginsburg and Justice Scalia, who had “disagreed fiercely in print without rancor in person”  

Doctors Are Warning That Trump Could Experience The Worst COVID Symptoms In The Next Week “For the next few days, I’d want him 50 feet away from an ICU, not a helicopter ride,” one leading doctor said. ...............  the disease sometimes flares up dangerously in the second week of symptoms, even in patients who had seemed to be doing well. ........... On Sunday, Conley confirmed that Trump has been given a steroid, dexamethasone, that is normally only recommended for patients with severe cases of COVID-19 who are having serious trouble breathing. The drug damps down the body’s immune system, which can jump into overdrive and damage the lungs and other organs. .............  But even after being given dexamethasone, patients who required oxygen still had a mortality rate of about 20%. “These are not miracle drugs” ........... To require oxygen and to be put on remdesivir and dexamethasone so quickly after becoming infected suggests that Trump’s illness was fairly severe, though it is unlikely that a typical COVID-19 patient with the same symptoms would have been given such intensive treatment. ..............  We do know that Trump was given a lung scan, which Conley said delivered “expected findings.” .......... That timeline is important, because the second week of COVID-19 can be the most dangerous. ............. Doctors warned that patients in the second week of the disease can suddenly get much more seriously ill. “Week two is the worst because of the fact that you have the inflammatory response to the virus”  

Kudlow: Stimulus deal is not dead at all

Kudlow: Mnuchin may offer bigger than $2.2T stimulus proposal

Dr. Anthony Fauci hopes worrisome numbers jolt Americans to take steps to stem spread of Covid-19

महामारीविरुद्धको लडाइँमा काठमाडौं पछि पर्‍यो : मन्त्री ज्ञवाली