8/28/21 Once Again, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is a COVID19 Super-Spreader

In 2020, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was linked to 649 COVID19 cases in 29 states, a CDC study said. In 2021, the rally did much the same thing.

The rally draws hundreds of thousands of bikers to tiny Sturgis, South Dakota every year -- half a million in 2020. This year the festivities went from August 6 to August 15.

On August 4, South Dakota had 657 cases. On August 25, it was 3,655. That's a 456% increase.

From July 30 to August 6, the state's positivity rate was 10.38%; the week before, it was 6.10%. By mid-August the rate in Sturgis's home county was 34.2%.

The state's Public Health Department spokesman downplayed the statistics. "Our department has only been able to link 39 cases directly to this event," he wrote CBS in an email.

What about screening visitors for vaccinations? "We're not going to start checking papers. I mean, that's not really an American way," said Daniel Ainslie, Sturgis's city manager.

By the city's estimate, the rally brings in some $1.7 million a year for Sturgis, which has fewer than 7,000 residents.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sturgis-rally-2021-south-dakota-covid-19-cases-surge/

https://www.newscenter1.tv/sturgis-considers-financial-impact-of-rally-closure/ Illustration: "Scream for all your worth" by id-iom is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

8/28/21 CDC Chief Walensky Talks Guns and Public Health

There's a reason why the U.S. Centers for Disease Control hasn't studied guns and their effect on the nation's public health: They tried before and suffered a drastic funding cut in 1997, when the National Rifle Association persuaded Congress to cut its funding for gun research.

Now, Rochelle Walensky, the physician who heads up the CDC, is in a position former CDC directors would envy: The National Rifle Association, a political-donation megastar for conservative legislators, is stumbling and relatively weak.

During the Trump years, the NRA got mixed up with a Russian spy, Marina Butino, who was allegedly trying to use the group to set up a connection to the GOP. For the second year, its national is -- or was -- scheduled as Zoom calls. This year's meeting has been canceled altogether. The group has tried to file for bankruptcy, and New York's Attorney General has filed suit to dissolve the NRA altogether.

Oddly enough, the door to gun research was prized open in part by President Donald Trump, who, in 2018, signed a government spending bill that allowed the CDC to pursue gun violence research. Congress followed with $25 million split between the CDC and the National Institutes of Health.

Walensky once mentored a medical student who was affected by the murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School. That student went on to co-found the Gun Violence Prevention Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. The experience drives Walensky at a deep level.

Walensky is pursuing a broad base of support for the research."Generally, the word gun, for those who are worried about research in this area, is followed by the word control, and that's not what I want to do here," Walensky said. "I'm not here about gun control. I'm here about preventing gun violence and gun death."

She also noted that "We cannot understand the research of firearm violence, firearm injury, without embracing, wholeheartedly, the firearm-owning community."

The CDC is spending $2.2 million to create a surveillance tracker for gunshot-wound cases in hospital emergency rooms that works almost in real time, and it collects data on how the injury occurred: self-inflicted, accidental, or from assault. Walensky, however, wants to pursue the issue on all fronts, starting from the reason people buy guns to begin with.

This summer, an average of 200 people have been killed each weekend by gun use. It's time for gun research.

It's been time for a very, very long time.

___________

What do you think the CDC should do early in its gun research?

What do you think of Walensky's idea of "embracing, whole-heartedly, the firearm-owning community?" Is $12.5 million each for the CDC and NIH adequate? Is it a good start? 

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/27/health/cdc-gun-research-walensky/index.html Illustration: "Hand Gun" by Lala Photography at JoLi Studios Colchester is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

8/27/21 Dylan Roof's Death Sentence is Upheld

It has been six years since white-supremacist Dylan Roof walked into the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina and murdered nine members during the final prayer of a Bible study. All the victims were Black.

Roof was charged with a federal hate crime. He told jurors "I still feel like I had to do it," and then served as his own attorney during his sentencing.

In 2017, he pled guilty to state murder charges. Apparently, Roof believed that he'd be rescued by white supremacists.

Since then, Roof has been awaiting execution while appeals wound their way through the court system. The basis of his appeals was that he should not have been declared competent to represent himself in court.

All the justices in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recused themselves from the case; one had been a prosecutor. Three judges from other districts stood in for them. They unanimously said that Roof deserved the sentence he got.

“Dylann Roof murdered African Americans at their church ... with the express intent of terrorizing not just his immediate victims at the historically important Mother Emanuel Church, but as many similar people as would hear of the mass murder,” the ruling read. "His crimes qualify him for the harshest penalty that a just society can impose."

This isn't the end of the road for Roof's appeals, particularly because the Biden administration isn't in favor of the death penalty.

However, it's a significant setback for anyone who thinks Roof is not beyond saving.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/25/dylann-roof-death-penalty-charleston-506900  

8/26/21 Black Peoples' Headstones Are Being Used as Riprap Along the Potomac

Outrage

A historic outrage has been lying in plain sight for many years: Gravestones from Maryland's historic Columbian Harmony Cemetery, which was the resting place for Black people for almost exactly 100 years.

The cemetery no longer exists. In 1960, commercial development seemed more important, even though 37,000 people were buried there. Among them were two sons of Frederick Douglass, Phillip Reid, who helped create the statue of Freedom that tops the US Capitol building, and Elizabeth Keckly, a confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln.

But in the name of commerce, the bodies were moved to another location. Now, a metro station stands where the cemetery used to be. The gravestones didn't make the journey. They were taken away and used as barriers to shore up eroding shorelines, as if they were blocks of cement, but cheaper.

Unbelievable -- but it happened.

This travesty only got serious attention when a white man, a Virginia state senator, encountered several gravestones on a ramble with his wife on property they had bought along the Potomac shore in 2016. They enlisted Virginia's governor, Ralph Northam, who in turn enlisted historians and volunteers who tracked down the place where the gravestones used to be.

Why did it have to be a white man? Why did it have to be a politician?

On Monday, a memorial park opened with 55 gravestones from the original cemetery, with the white dignitaries and some of the descendants of people who were buried in Columbian Harmony. One of them is a descendant of a Howard University professor who bears his name, William Hart. Hart said that his overwhelming emotion was of happiness and encouragement. He thanked the crowd, including the governors and other attendants for "honoring [his] family with [their] presence."

He's a better person than I am.

Eventually, the gravestones will be part of a one-acre memorial garden in Landover, MD. 

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/24/us/harmony-cemetery-gravestones-repatriated/index.html

Illustration:  "Scream for all your worth" by id-iom is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

8/28/21 Most American Adolescents Report Recent Suicidal Thoughts or Self-Harm

So you think the pandemic is hard on you? Imagine being one of the 54% of U.S. kids 11 through 17 who have been dealing with frequent suicidal thoughts or committing self-harm in the last two weeks. You've had decades to develop coping strategies; they've just started.

The figures are from Mental Health America, which has run the survey since 2014. The organization provides a wealth of resources for those dealing with troubled teens. The link at the bottom of this post is a good place to start.

One top intervention strategy is getting kids involved in programs with other kids. "Mental health isn't always about seeing a therapist or a psychiatrist," says the director of counseling at Montclair State University in New Jersey. "Sometimes it's about becoming involved in your community. It's about making those connections, feeling that you belong."

Parents, teachers, aunts, family friends, and neighbors: Please keep an eye out for adolescents who need help.

Here's a good place to look for resources: https://mhanational.org/depression-teens-0

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mental-health-teens-covid-19-pandemic/

Illustration: "Broken Heart Grunge" by Free Grunge Textures - www.freestock.ca is licensed under CC BY 2.0

8/27/21 Texas Supreme Court Follows Governor Over a Cliff

It has been another can-you-top-this day in Texas -- in this case, a Texas Supreme Court decision that upheld Governor Greg Abbott's order forbidding just about any organization in Texas from imposing a mask mandate. No school, institution, company, grocery store, cigar store, or shootin' match in the sunstruck state can keep out a knucklehead too contrary to put on a mask.

The Court had approved Abbott's decision once already. Then a judge in Bexar County, home to San Antonio and the Alamo, upheld a ban of the ban; that is, the judge said it's okay for schools to require kids and grownups to wear masks.

Yesterday, the Court said, “The status quo, for many months, has been gubernatorial oversight of such decisions at both the state and local levels.”

I'd rather see the governor's desk occupied by a longhorn steer than by Greg Abbott. A steer knows to get out of the rain if there's a roof nearby. In a thunderstorm, the governor and his justices would probably opt to take a swim, and expect everybody else to join them.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/569587-texas-supreme-court-sides-with-abbott-in-blocking-san-antonios-school?rl=1

Art: https://openclipart.org/detail/285858/texas-state-flag-map

8/26/21 Have We Made Progress in Racial Justice? Not in Louisiana

If you want to believe that racism is retreating into the past, this incident will remind you that we've only just started to leave that past behind.

Aaron Bowman, a Black man, was forced out of his car after a traffic stop in May 2019. He was already on the ground when a white policeman named Jacob Brown came by, got out of his cruiser, and pounded Bowman with a flashlight 18 times in 20 seconds. Bowman wound up with a broken jaw, three broken ribs, a broken wrist and a bloody gash on his head that required six staples.

"I kept thinking I was going to die that night," Bowman told the Associated Press.

Brown had been reported for 23 use-of-force incidents going back to 2015 -- about every two months for four years. Brown resigned this January.

Police stonewalled inquiries about the footage for more than two years, but now, Brown is under federal investigation along with Louisiana police as a whole, and he has been charged with battery and malfeasance in Bowman's beating -- as well as facing charges in two other violent arrests of Black drivers. In one case, he bragged in a troopers' group chat that "it warms my heart knowing we could educate that young man."

This scum-sucking dirtbag belongs in jail -- along with the people who let him get away with this behavior for four years. The kicker to this despicable incident was that it occurred only three weeks after another Black driver was killed by the side of a Louisiana road -- again after a traffic stop, again after a savage beating by police.

______

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/aaron-larry-bowman-louisiana-police-trooper-video-pummel-black-man-flashlight/ Illustration: "Scream for all your worth" by id-iom is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

8/25/21 The Taliban Closes in on Afghanis Who Want to Leave the Country

For Afghanis now on their way to the Kabul Airport, the window for evacuations may be closing frighteningly fast. The deadline is still August 31, and the Taliban has now blocked at least one road leading to an airport gate, stopping Afghanis from reaching the evacuation site.

Throngs of Afghanis are already at the Kabul Airport, waiting to be transported to some friendly country, but the Taliban says it wants to keep those people in the country too. The Taliban is now asking professionals to stay and exercise their skills at home, assuring them that they’ll come to no harm if they stay. It's hard to imagine anyone who doesn't worry that is a lie.

The government has announced Sharia law, but no one seems clear whether that means women must stay inside their homes, unable to go out to work or get an education. Desperate times, for sure.

On Tuesday, President Biden said that 70,700 people had been evacuated since August 14, including some 18,000 on Monday and Tuesday. Only a few more days are left to airlift civilians before the Americans have to evacuate or destroy their equipment and then ferry away their last group of troops. The Taliban has threatened to do something -- they're not clear on what -- if Americans are still on the ground in Afghanistan after that.

We'd guess that the Taliban are worried about brain drain, because practically any Afghani with an education or skills would leave the country just to avoid the clenched fist of the new government.

Let's hope all the Afghanis who helped the United States -- and their families -- can get on a flight.

__________

Do you think that the evacuation ought to go on into September despite Taliban threats? Will it?

Has the US done right by the Afghanis who helped us?

Is there any possibility that the Taliban will not retaliate against Afghanis who stay in the country?

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/24/politics/first-us-troops-leaving-afghanistan/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/24/asia/kabul-airport-afghanistan-intl-hnk/index.html

8/12/21 Floods Leave Scores of Tennessee Residents Dead or Missing

"At least" and "more than" are scary words if you have kith or kin in Tennessee. As of Sunday afternoon, "at least 22 people" were dead and "more than 50 people" were missing in the floodwaters that no one had ever foreseen in middle Tennessee. In rural areas, the flooding took out cell phone towers and telephone lines and made roads impassable. No one outside the area knew who had lived or died. Rescue workers were going door to door to find survivors.

On Saturday, a creek running through Waverly, TN rose so fast that grocery store employees downstream from a devastated area of town climbed on desks and counters and tried unsuccessfully to break the ceiling so they could retreat into the attic. Mercifully, the water began to subside before they were swept away.

Parts of the area took 17 inches of rain in 24 hours, breaking the previous rainfall record by three inches. The deluge was double meteorologists' previous estimates of the maximum flooding possible in that area of the state.

"We had an incredible amount of water in the atmosphere," Hurley said of Saturday's flooding. "Thunderstorms developed and moved across the same area over and over and over."

Nowadays, such destructive, unheard-of weather is happening far more often.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tennessee-flood-death-toll-missing/ Photo: "Heavy Rain, Flash Flooding Possible Across Parts of Lower Mississippi Valley, Southeast" by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC BY 2.0

8/22/21 DeSantis's Press Secretary Threatens Journalists

The ex-President used to call the media "the enemy." DeSantis doesn't say it out loud, but he seems okay with having his press secretary sic strangers on reporters whose stories she doesn't like.

After one story, Press Secretary Christine Pushaw tweeted "drag them." The story reported that DeSantis was touting a COVID19 antibody treatment that a big donor had invested in.

In another tweet, Pushaw threatened to "put [the reporter] on blast." She even set a deadline for the changes, and then retweeted someone else who asked followers to "Light. Them. Up." The reporter was Brendan Farrington with the Associated Press in Tallahassee.

The AP's incoming CEO, Daisy Veerasingham, wrote a letter to DeSantis on Friday asking him to stop "harassing behavior" from Pushaw. Her actions after the antibody treatment story "Resulted in a torrent of abusive comments directed at the reporter," Veerasingham wrote. "We call on you to eliminate this attack strategy from your press office."

Pushaw's response to the letter was defiant. She tweeted that the AP "is embarrassed they got caught pushing potentially deadline misinformation narratives ... and make the story into 'Republicans pounce.' Don't fall for it."

Maybe this sort of thing has happened for years on a smaller scale, but social media have enabled Pushaw's tactics to threaten reporters' lives. In this case, at least, Twitter blocked Pushaw's account, although for a mere 12 hours.

No one needs to tell WRP readers how dangerous an attack on the press -- even from a sycophantic underling -- is to capital-D Democracy. It's a deliberate effort to suppress the truth in favor of a lie. There are NO circumstances that a factually accurate story -- or even an inaccurate story that was written in a good-faith effort to tell the truth -- could be banned under the first Amendment.

Mind you, the Supreme Court justice who was confirmed despite obvious red flags -- Brett Kavanaugh -- is talking about taking a swipe at the First Amendment protections that have stood in place for more than half a century.

This is not Afghanistan. It's not Russia or China. Unless and until the Constitution itself is changed, Christine Pushaw and the man responsible for her prominence, Rick DeSantis, deserve to be sued, not only by the AP, but by the U.S. Attorney General. Or at least by the American Civil Liberties Union. Or somebody. To be frank, I don't know who has the standing to put an end to this.

_________

Do you think that this is a big deal -- or not?

Is this development really a threat to democracy?

Do you think that DeSantis and his press secretary should be sued?

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ap-desantis-reporter-harassment_n_61201c8ae4b0caf7ce30a657 Illustration: "Scream for all your worth" by id-iom is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

8/20/21 "Please Lower the Price of Insulin," say House Dems to Drug Execs

The average price of insulin tripled between 2002 and 2013 and almost doubled between 2012 and 2016, according to the American Diabetes Association.

Three companies produce 99 percent of the insulin in all the wide world: Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi. Yesterday, two leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee -- both Democrats -- asked these companies to explain what they'd done to lower insulin prices since the committee last brought it up with them, in early 2019.

“The Committee is troubled that despite your company’s expressions of shared concern, insulin prices in the United States remain unacceptably high,” wrote Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and oversight subcommittee Chairwoman Diana DeGette (D-Colo.). They pointed out that very little has changed since insulin was first developed a century ago and that everyone but Americans pays less.

The letter's effect is likely to be zilch. Just take a look at the drugmakers' responses to the 2019 letter. Eli Lilly said insured patients who paid more than $35 a month should call the Lilly Diabetes Solution Center. That was the most substantive of the three. Novo Nordisk looked forward "to ongoing dialogue with the Committee on policy solutions that support patients," while Sanofi said it was “committed to helping patients get the treatment that they are prescribed.” The committee's 2021 letter pointed out that the price of one of Sanofi's insulin products had risen 82 percent since 2012.

Meanwhile, Walmart has said it's planning to launch a new, much less expensive brand of insulin. From the evidence, undercutting prices will be a breeze.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/568548-house-democrats-press-insulin-manufacturers-for-lower-prices Image: "Health" by 401(K) 2013 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

8/19/21 Need a Positive Story? Olympic Javelin Thrower Auctions Her Medal to Save a Baby's Life

She may have a silver medal, but Maria Andrejczyk of Poland has a decidedly gold-medal heart.

The family of 8-month-old Miloszek Malysa, who has a heart defect, was doing an online fundraiser when Andrejczyk heard of it. The boy needed an operation at Stanford Medical Center. The total cost including travel would be $385,000.

Andrejczyk won her silver medal after she recovered from bone cancer. She decided to part with her medal to save his life, and set up an online auction.

A Polish convenience store called Zabka won the auction, paying enough to cover the entire cost of Miloszek's trip. Then they added a noble gesture of their own: They returned Andrejczyk's medal.

Such kindness! 

https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/568470-olympian-sells-her-medal-for-babys-life-saving

Illustration: "Heart" by hile is licensed under CC BY 2.0

8/20/21 Income Up, Revenue Down, Taxes Dive in a Hole in the Ground

In 2019, 44% of U.S. households owed NO federal income taxes. In 2020, that number went up to 61%. That's 76 million households in 2019 and 107 million in 2020.

"But keep in mind: It was only temporary," wrote Howard Gleckman of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. The proportion will fall in the next two years, the TPC figures, to about 57% of households for 2021 and about 42% percent for 2022. Assuming the laws don't change, that is.

How'd it happen? Well, the millions who lost their jobs in the first months of the pandemic had steep drops in their employment income.

Then there were three rounds of stimulus checks, each structured as refundable tax credits. The stimulus checks "had the effect of significantly reducing tax liability in both 2020 and 2021 ... And the payments flipped some households from paying income tax to not doing so," Gleckman writes.

Not that those households went tax free. Heck, no. That's only the bazillionaires. Everyone else paid payroll taxes (Medicare, Social Security, etc.) and state taxes, not to mention sales tax and so forth.

About 21% of households paid neither federal income taxes nor payroll taxes last year -- but you wouldn't want to be in their shoes, because those households didn't bring in a lot of money either. Fortunately, they benefited from some of Biden's tax credits for low-income earners.

Go figure. Hey, go crazy with it! 

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/568567-61-percent-of-households-owed-no-federal-income-taxes-last-year-analysis

8/19/21 Zuckerberg Touts Facebook's Clean-up of COVID19 Misinformation

"If we see harmful misinformation on the platform, then we take it down. It's against our policy," Mark Zuckerberg told "CBS This Morning" co-host Gayle King in an exclusive interview on Wednesday. Zuckerberg said Facebook had deleted 18 million posts with COVID19 misinformation.

"But how many people have viewed the misinformation? Is it more than 18 million? Is it less than 18 million?" King asked. "And Facebook is being blamed for that."

"I understand what you're saying," Zuckerberg said. "The number that I have off the top of my head that I can share is the number of pieces of misinformation that we've taken action against."

Once again, Facebook ends up with egg on its face after a single question from a journalist. Its effort sounds good in principle, but it doesn't take much to peer inside Zuckerberg's statements and find more tap-dancing with the facts.

What's more, while there's no question that 18 million posts is a lot, we've seen an awful lot of innocent posts get censored because Facebook algorithms can't tell the difference between objectionable content and reasonable content that contains similar words. (Similarly, Facebook algorithms have trouble finding offensive photos. Once they though a cow’s head was a human head, for example!)

Facebook's efforts are typically like someone trying to do surgery in a pair of mittens.

Let's hope 18 million deleted posts is enough to put COVID19 misinformation to bed.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-covid-misinformation-post/

Photo: "I hate you COVID" by Matthew Almon Roth is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0