COVID-19 Article Roundup

Jorge L. Ortiz, reporting for USA Today:

Even as the USA becomes the first country to reach half-a-million COVID deaths – the actual figure was 500,071 as of Monday at 4:40 p.m. EST – there are signs the pandemic may be abating, from the decreasing number of cases, hospitalizations and fatalities to the improved vaccine rollout and production.

Amid this hopeful scenario, the emergence of coronavirus variants scrambles the picture of what the near future may look like.

[…]

Closing in on the one-year anniversary of the coronavirus outbreak being declared a pandemic – March 11, 2020 – it’s still not clear when the United States, which has reported more than twice as many cases and deaths as any other country, will have a hold on the health crisis.

It’s hard to know who to blame at this point. China? Trump? Ignorant people who refuse to wear masks? State governments who’ve managed to fuck up the response at every step of the way? Take your pick, really. Five hundred thousand deaths leaves plenty of blame to go around.

The point of the stimulus checks is to help people who are in tough spots, and to keep people spending money so that the economy doesn’t stall and enter a downward spiral of layoffs → less spending → more layoffs → even less spending.

Many people are surprised to realize that our congressional leaders cut one specific group out of the stimulus bill with surgical precision. Anyone who was claimed as a dependent by their parents does not get a stimulus check of their own, and parents don’t get the extra stimulus for any children who are over the age of 16. This leaves a large group of people — primarily consisting of young adults (mainly college aged students) and those with disabilities who are unable to care for themselves — who get no help and whose parents receive no help for them.

The determination for who is viewed as a dependent and is therefor ineligible for a stimulus payment was made by the IRS based on the parent’s most recent tax filings, which was either for 2019’s taxes if they were prompt in filing, or 2018’s taxes if they hadn’t filed for 2019 by the time the stimulus checks were cut, which many hadn't. This means that when the stimulus checks went out this spring, they were using information about who to send them to that was outdated by anywhere from 3 months to nearly two years. This is a devastatingly porous structure. An individual could’ve flown the coop in the fall of 2018 and their parents could've claimed them as a dependent (since they lived at home for the first half of 2018). This means that by the time the checks were going out, this person could’ve been living independently and supporting themselves for nearly two years, and they would not receive the stimulus check, despite likely having mountains of student debt on top of the usual expenses of living by oneself. Furthermore, having only been out of school for a year or two, they would likely be one of the first employees to be let go when their employers need to lay off a few folks on account of the pandemic. So again, one of the most financially vulnerable groups of people, recent college students and recent graduates, were cut out of a stimulus program that would’ve benefitted them the most, and also would’ve benefitted the economy the most because they would’ve been the least likely to just throw the extra money into a savings account.

Then, with the second round of stimulus checks, they did the same thing again. It’s brutally unfair, and there’s absolutely no justification or explanation for it. It’s criminal, and young people should remember this when politicians ask for their votes.

Fortunately, it looks like President Biden’s proposed plan will include a full stimulus amount for ALL individuals claimed as dependents. Alicia Adamczyk, reporting for CNBC:

Unlike the last two relief measures, Biden’s plan includes payments for non-child dependents, including many college students and those with disabilities. It would also expand eligibility for those payments to mixed-status families in which one parent is an immigrant.

Nothing is set in stone yet and no bills have passed, but at least someone in the federal government has finally acknowledged this gaping hole in the previous stimulus packages.

I don’t presume to know what everyone in America did for the Thanksgiving holiday, but it sure doesn’t seem like very many people I know heeded any sort of advice from health experts to reduce the spread of COVID-19. For example, my family — despite my protests — decided that we should actually go a bit further than just holding our usual festivities unchanged, and invited extra people outside of the 16 members of our family who showed up to spend four or five hours in the same room. Yep, we brought in more people, and some of them were quite old. The line between their perverted, bad faith “southern hospitality” and an increase in “southerner hospitalizations” is linear and quite short, I reckon. And of course, our venue was decorated with a multitude of Trump signs and flags; sommeliers of political symbolism would’ve nutted over what an apt pairing it was.

Believe me, I let them know what I thought about it, but I’m sure it wasn’t just my ignorant relatives who intentionally flew in the face of expert recommendations. A lot of people tried to justify their normal get togethers by saying things like “well, what if this is your last thanksgiving with some of your elderly family members”, but my response to that is the rather obvious “it’s almost certainly going to be their last one if you give them COVID”.

If my perceptions are representative of the South or of the United States as a whole — and I hope they aren't — then it’s fair to say that Americans are remarkably selfish and short sighted. This is a grim prediction, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see 1.5 million positive COVID tests this week, Monday-Friday.

Wear a mask. Don’t attend events with crowds. Don’t be a dick.

I’m not going to lie, I’m sick of seeing people blame college kids for the pandemic. Back in March, it was their fault for going on spring break. Then in the fall it was their fault for not staying locked up in their dorms. Now, the New York Times has a page dedicated to tracking COIVD outbreaks at Universities.

Here’s the deal: this pandemic wasn’t caused by college kids. Maybe they aren’t being as responsible as they should, but how long can we expect them to put everything on hold during one of the most transformative and exciting times in their lives, especially given that they aren’t at great personal risk and there’s no sign of things getting better because the government has done nothing to mitigate the virus’s spread? At some point, you have to start deciding what risks are worth it to get back to something resembling normal, and college kids simply had the least to lose when our national patience began to wear down and were therefore the first to start making those risk assessments.

If you want to blame this shit on one group, blame it on Donald Trump and his crooks who were supposed to be running this country. Blame it on stupid Christians who go to church and refuse to wear masks and ignore science even though they’re more susceptible and should know better. Don’t blame it on kids because they’re acting like kids are supposed to act.

For more articles about the United States’ failed federal response to the pandemic, check out CopyrighBro’s COVID-19 Roundup.

COVID-19 diagnoses have been trending upwards lately, and by a lot. For a solid week now, the United States has seen more than 100,000 new cases per day. The warm weather didn’t make the virus “miraculously disappear”, but by all indications, the cold weather is allowing another, far more severe wave of infections to clobber the United States.

Wear. A. Mask.

If you think this needed to be said, if you think they had a point, if you think what they said was funny: fuck you. These people are cruel, racist, and self-serving, and they lack any capacity for empathy. They’re a good example of the worst type of human beings our country is capable of producing.

Also, their grammar was predictably atrocious.

Read the original story from the Grand Forks Herald about Elvia Ramirez’s beautiful life and tragic death.

Two days ago, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced that they were cancelling the second debate, originally scheduled for this upcoming Wednesday, October 15th.

After news of Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis broke just nine days ago, the commission had announced that they were transitioning to a virtual event, presumably to protect the moderators, participants, and staff safe from the infectious Trump campaign.

But that just wouldn’t do for Donald Trump (who was hospitalized with COVID just a week ago). He refused to participate in a virtual debate, calling the proposal “ridiculous”. According to Trump’s rent-a-doc physician Sean CONley, Trump is no longer contagious. Even though he had the virus just a few days ago, it seems to have just disappeared. Like a miracle. The standard time for quarantine has been fourteen days all along, but somehow, Trump is a-okay in less than 10? Interesting.

No, no. Don’t be fooled by the blurred line between medicine and politics. Trump is still contagious, and he should not be returning to public events for several more days. I’m positive he pressured Conley into telling the press that he would be fine to return to business as usual. His campaign had to know the Commission wouldn’t allow an in-person debate so soon after his diagnosis, and having Conley give the all clear was a tactic to give Trump some wiggle room to at least pretend he wanted to debate in person; Trump never would’ve agreed to a virtual debate because it highlights his failure to contain the pandemic. Best case scenario for Trump, they cancel the debate altogether, or refuse to move to an in-person debate, giving Trump latitude to back out. Worst case for Trump, they allow the debate to happen in-person, and he has the opportunity to infect Joe Biden with Trumplague.

Donald Trump may have walked away from the first debate thinking he won, but he was the only one. Even others in his campaign came away realizing how much more sane, reasonable, and likable Biden was than Trump. They know he’s weak, and they don’t want to showcase his weakness on the national stage again, if they can prevent it. The possibility of Trump refusing to debate has been lingering for months, and now it’s coming to fruition. Add that to the list of our destroyed democratic norms.

As of right now, the next debate is scheduled for October 22nd. We’ll see what excuse the Trump campaign comes up with for that one.

I wouldn’t wish sickness on anyone, but Donald Trump isn’t just anyone. He’s the man trying the hardest to unravel our democracy for personal gain. He’s spent countless hours denying the gravity of and spreading misinformation about the pandemic which now ails him because he thought it made him look bad, and the optics were more important to him than the 200,000+ lives lost as a result of his negligence. Karma is a bitch, and Donald Trump deserves this.

This news raises a few practical questions and concerns for the next few weeks. Will Trump get a boost out of pity? Will his base see this news as a national tragedy and rally around him, potentially pulling in some undecided voters? I doubt it. I don’t see how news of Donald Trump getting infected with the virus he played down for months will do anything other than make him appear weak to his base, or force them to believe he was lying the whole time. If anything, I think this will raise concerns about Trump’s longevity and help Biden. After all, Trump’s beloved stock market doesn’t seem to have a ton of confidence in him.

If his case is asymptomatic or very mild, he could actually take this as a chance to say “look, I had it and it wasn’t bad, so it was smart of me to downplay it”, which could be more influential for undecided voters.

Some people have suggested that the president may not have COVID-19 at all, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think any “look how strong he is for beating COVID” bump he may receive would be extremely small, and the people who would say that are almost certainly in his base already. It could drive turnout a little bit, but I doubt it. A campaign’s most valuable resource is the candidate’s time, and even if Trump wanted a get out of jail free card for the last two debates, having to spend half the time between now and the election quarantined is an astronomically high price to pay.

However, reports indicate that Trump is already experiencing mild symptoms, which raises the question, if his sickness progresses and becomes more debilitating or even life threatening, what happens? Surely, Trump won’t participate in the next presidential debate in person. Could the rest of the debates be cancelled altogether? If Trump’s sickness progresses the point of requiring ventilation, what happens on Election Day? Mike Pence will be in charge of the country while Trump is incapacitated, and presumably, votes for Trump will be counted as usual and he will resume power after he comes off the ventilator. What if he were to die before the election; do votes for Trump then count as votes for Pence? Can the Republican Party nominate someone else in the days before the election? Can votes already cast for a Trump/Pence ticket then be converted to support the new nominee? I don’t think so.

Another important question: what if Joe Biden gets sick? He spent nearly two hours on stage with the man yelling like a maniac. Fortunately, Joe Biden and his wife Jill have just tested negative, so we won’t wander too far down the path of hypotheticals, but man, there’s a lot to ponder.

Erika Edwards and Denise Chow, reporting for NBC News:

In the predawn hours of March 30, Dr. Deborah Birx stepped in front of the camera on the White House lawn and made an alarming prediction about the coronavirus, which had, by then, killed fewer than 3,000 people in the United States.

"If we do things together, well, almost perfectly, we can get in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 fatalities” […]

On Saturday, Birx's prediction came true, as the number of lives lost to Covid-19 in the U.S. topped 200,000.

Now, many experts are making another ominous prediction: A surge in the number of new infections in the fall and winter, combined with growing fatigue over social distancing and other public health measures, could result in more than 415,000 deaths in the U.S. by January, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, or IHME, at the University of Washington.

Uh oh Republicans, it looks we’re outside of Trump’s defined “very good job” territory. It’s okay, I’m sure he’ll soon move the goalposts again to ease your cognitive dissonance so you’ll carry on with supporting him via willful ignorance.

Robert Costa and Philip Rucker, writing for The Washington Post:

“This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency,” national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien told Trump, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward. “This is going to be the roughest thing you face.”

[…]

“Trump never did seem willing to fully mobilize the federal government and continually seemed to push problems off on the states,” Woodward writes. “There was no real management theory of the case or how to organize a massive enterprise to deal with one of the most complex emergencies the United States had ever faced.”

No shit.

Holly Yan and Madeline Holcombe, reporting for CNN:

Just over seven months ago, no one in the US had a confirmed case of Covid-19. On Monday, the US topped 6 million cases of coronavirus, which has killed over 183,000 people and left many young adults with long-term problems.

My god, this is getting old.

The pandemic seems to slowing at this point, but this most recent million can still be attributed to the south. Southerners: see here.

For more articles about the United States’ failed federal response to the pandemic, check out CopyrighBro’s COVID-19 Roundup.

From The New York Times:

President Trump is considering new immigration regulations that would allow border officials to temporarily block American citizens and legal permanent residents from returning to the United States from abroad if authorities believe they may be infected with the coronavirus. In recent months, Mr. Trump has imposed sweeping rules that ban entry by foreigners into the United States, citing the risk of allowing the virus to spread from hot spots abroad. But those rules have exempted two categories of people attempting to return: American citizens and non-citizens who have already established legal residence.

This is outrageous and treasonous.

🇺🇸 United States: 0

🦠 COVID-19: 26

Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

Shan Li and Jennifer Calfas, reporting for The Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. has surpassed five million confirmed cases of the coronavirus as some states saw sharp upticks while others showed signs that the spread of the virus was easing.

The U.S. continues to lead the world in number of confirmed cases, followed by Brazil with about three million cases and India with more than two million, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Brazil and India. Great company we’re keeping these days.

It’s been a little over two weeks since we hit 4,000,000. Still, it seems to be the south’s fault.

🇺🇸 United States: 0

🦠 COVID-19: 25

Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

Harriet Torry, reporting for The Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. economy contracted at a record rate last quarter and weekly jobless claims rose for the second straight week, amid signs of a slowing recovery as the country continues to struggle with the coronavirus pandemic.

The Commerce Department said U.S. gross domestic product—the value of all goods and services produced across the economy—fell at a 32.9% annual rate in the second quarter, or a 9.5% drop compared with the same quarter a year ago. Both figures were the steepest in records dating to 1947.

It’s a good thing we elected a businessman whose market savvy uniquely positions him to be able to shield the American economy from disaster and deliver us to a new era of economic prosperity. No, wait.

It’s a good thing we have the opportunity to reelect a businessman whose market savvy uniquely positions him to be able to fix the American economy after he drove it into the ground by fumbling the federal response to a global pandemic.

🇺🇸 United States: 0

🦠 COVID-19: 24

Jim Morrill and Francesca Chambers, reporting for The Charlotte Observer:

Trump had forced Republicans to move the event to Florida after failing to get guarantees he could have a full house in Charlotte because of the coronavirus. But Jacksonville, like the rest of Florida, has been hit with a surge of COVID-19 cases. Trump said Thursday it was irresponsible to hold the convention there.

“I told my team it’s time to cancel the Jacksonville, Florida, component of the GOP convention,” he told reporters at the White House. “We’re going to do some other things with tele-rallies and online the week that we’re discussing ... I’ll still do a convention speech in a different form. But we won’t do a big crowded convention per se, it’s just not the right time for that.”

Womp womp.

Too bad they moved it from Charlotte.

That didn’t take long. Just fourteen days to add another million cases — that’s a 33% increase from July 9th — and it’s almost entirely the south’s fault. Like I said when we hit three million, these next few are on us.

On the bright side (ha), at least the Trump administration seems to be taking this a little bit more seriously now.
God knows how long that’ll last, but hopefully it’s not an act.

Southerners, listen up:

• Stop being selfish and put on a mask. Don’t confuse inconvenience with oppression.

• Wash your hands, and carry some hand sanitizer.

• Don’t listen to antivaxxer bullshit. Or do, honestly, cause if you’re that far gone you’re beyond reason. If your kids die from COVID-19 because you won’t get them their shots, don’t act surprised, Darwin called that shit like a hundred years ago. Can’t believe we’re still having the conversation about vaccines.

• Stay home.

• Push your representatives to renew the $600 weekly unemployment benefit so that people whose jobs aren’t essential can stay home.

Alana Wise, reporting for NPR:

President Trump took to the White House briefing room on Tuesday to praise his administration's response to the virus that has killed more than 140,000 Americans so far. In a reversal of his recent statements and tone, he acknowledged the severity of the pandemic and urged Americans to comply with preventative measures.

"It will likely unfortunately get worse before it gets better," Trump said in uncharacteristically somber remarks, encouraging Americans to social distance, practice good hygiene and wear masks.

The president said his administration is in the process of developing a strategy for the coming months, including developing treatments and vaccines for COVID-19.

Trump — who has mostly cast mask usage as a personal choice and declined to wear one himself — urged people to wear face masks, citing a spike of cases in the Sun Belt in recent weeks.

"Whether you like the mask or not, they have an impact," he said.

Is this a realization that their plan of ignoring the pandemic and hoping it will disappear was not only stupid and ineffective, but costing them support? Is it just an attempt to correct course for their political strategy? I truly hope so, becuause if it’s the result of some new discovery about the virus, we should be scared. What could the administration have learned that would caused Trump to change his tone so suddenly and drastically?

Erica Werner and Jeff Stein, reporting for The Washington Post:

The Trump administration is trying to block billions of dollars for states to conduct testing and contact tracing in the upcoming coronavirus relief bill, people involved in the talks said Saturday.

The administration is also trying to block billions of dollars that GOP senators want to allocate for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and billions more for the Pentagon and State Department to address the pandemic at home and abroad, the people said.

Point me in the direction of a single public health expert who says we need less testing. I’ll wait.

Of course we don’t need less testing, we need far more testing, and we need more accurate tests. I’ve been saying this for months, as has anybody with a brain. The fact that Trump thinks we need less testing indicates at best a wholly political approach to addressing the pandemic, and at worst a complete misunderstanding of object permanence.

One of the best ways to safely get the economy back up and running would be to let people who we suspect have immunity (those with COVID-19 antibodies) go out and keep businesses afloat while those who haven’t yet been exposed continue to stay home. The crazy thing is that if everyone played along, we could put this whole thing behind us in a matter of weeks. Blocking funding for testing would be idiotic, selfish, and cruel (nothing new for the Trump administration), but it’s also a huge miss from a political perspective: Americans love an opportunity to rally behind their president to achieve a common goal or defeat a common enemy. Why would the Trump administration pass up such an opportunity during an election year? It’s remarkable hubris and short-sightedness.

A few of my most despised senators have teamed up again, but this time, they’re not trying to destroy strong encryption so that the government can spy on us, they’re just peddling some xenophobic bullshit clearly designed to pander to their base.

Senators Thom Tillis, Marsha Blackburn, and Tom Cotton (all from my despised senator list) have joined forces again, this time with Senators Martha McSally and Josh Hawley to introduce legislation that provides an avenue for U.S. citizens to sue the Chinese government for the loss of life and financial hardships they’ve endured as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Not only do they blame China for the pandemic’s disastrous (yet preventable) effects on the U.S., but the press release on Tillis’s website goes so far as to compare the COVID-19 pandemic to 9/11, as if it was somehow an instance of state sponsored terrorism (which won’t help to tamp down preposterous, idiotic, completely unproven conspiracy theories that the coronavirus was designed as a weapon in a Chinese lab). They purport that their bill “is closely modeled after the 2016 Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), that gave more legal remedies to victims of terrorism, particularly those of 9/11 victims”. Again, obvious pandering, this time packaged with a pathetically weak comparison.

These senators have a remarkable ability to talk out of both sides of their mouth. They’re simultaneously downplaying the severity of the pandemic to make the Trump administration’s inadequate response seem acceptable (god forbid they piss off the Trump klan), and hyping up the death toll and financial costs to rile up their base against a common (and more or less manufactured) enemy.

The bill doesn’t provide any directive or course of action for citizens seeking to hold the United States government responsible for the ongoing, reckless negligence that they’ve branded as a “response” to the disease.

Zachary Cohen, Luke McGee, and Alex Marquardt, reporting for CNN:

Russian cyber actors are targeting organizations involved in coronavirus vaccine development, according to a new warning by US, UK and Canadian security officials on Thursday that details activity by a Russian hacking group called APT29, which also goes by the name “the Dukes” or “Cozy Bear.” […]

Cozy Bear is one of two hacking groups linked to Russian intelligence that is believed to have accessed the Democratic National Committee's internal systems in the lead-up to the 2016 US election, but Thursday's announcement is the first time this group has been named in connection to cyberattacks related to the coronavirus pandemic.

The NCSC, which is the UK's lead technical authority on cyber security and part of the UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), assessed that APT29 "almost certainly operate as part of Russian Intelligence Services". […] This assessment is also supported by partners at the Canadian Communication Security Establishment (CSE), the US Department for Homeland Security (DHS) Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the National Security Agency (NSA), the NCSC said. […] "APT29's campaign of malicious activity is ongoing, predominantly against government, diplomatic, think tank, healthcare and energy targets to steal valuable intellectual property," according to a press release.

Russia? Conduct a cyber attack against the United States!? They would never!

Natural selection at work in the case of Mr. Richard Rose, reported by Fox News:

“Let [me] make this clear,” Rose wrote. “I’m not buying a f—ing mask. I’ve made it this far by not buying into that damn hype.”

Karma’s a bitch.*.

🇺🇸 United States: 0

🦠 COVID-19: 19

*I may sound like a bitch too — let me elaborate a bit. Yes it’s a tragedy that someone died, but this man’s death was completely preventable, and it was brought on by his own ignorance and pride. A larger tragedy will be if anyone he came in contact with also dies as a result of his selfishness. Still more tragic is the fact that so many people in our nation are willfully blind to reason because they apparently value the ugly principles of their orange demagogue more than they value their lives.

Today, the United States surpassed three million cases of COVID-19. This is an astonishing number already, but it represents just one percent of the country’s population. The scariest part is that this pandemic could — and likely will — get much worse. If the northeast was to blame for the first two million cases, then the south is certainly to blame for this million (and the next two or three, at this rate). 

I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m ready for this nightmarish campaign of sickness, death, and governmental negligence to come to its end and be placed firmly in the trash can of history. But some shortsighted people can’t reckon with the fact that the easiest way for us to truly and safely end the lockdowns and get the economy back on its feet (and restart sports, and educate our kids, and take the masks off, reopen businesses, and...) is to decisively beat the virus so that people will feel safe when we’re able to do those things, so we seem to be stuck in this hellscape indefinitely. Beating the virus means wearing masks, avoiding crowds, washing your hands; you know the drill. At this point, if you aren’t doing all you can to help our country move past this embarrassing chapter of our history, then you’re a selfish, irresponsible asshole.

And again, it’s important to ask ourselves why our country has done such a remarkably poor job of dealing with this compared to the countries we usually like to be compared to. Could it have anything to do with our incompetent Commander in Cheeto? You decide.

🇺🇸 United States: 0

🦠 COVID-19: 18

I live in the south, and though many people here don’t realize it yet, we’re about to get slammed with a wave of COVID-19 infections. In conversations with family members, friends, and coworkers, a frustrating trend has popped up where, even after being presented with valid data or charts showing the increases in COVID-19 cases in the south, they still seem largely unbothered. When you ask why this is, you typically get one of two responses.

The first retort that comes up from people here in the south who aren’t taking the pandemic seriously is that they think hospitals are greatly exaggerating the number of cases they have in an effort to acquire three to four times more money from insurance companies. This piece from USA Today explains some of the details behind that. While it would be possible for a hospital to exaggerate their numbers and receive more money, the amount of the increase in funding is far less significant than fearmongers would have you believe. Additionally, the piece seems to indicate that only Medicare is subject to these possible manipulations, not private insurers. Regardless of these finer details, allow me to pose two questions.

1. Many people claim to know nurses and other hospital staff who provide them with “insider knowledge” of this alleged insurance fraud. But how could one trust the word of such a source, if that source is a person who regularly sees such fraudulent and immoral activities transpiring and doesn’t have the integrity to speak out publicly or report them?

2. If the rise in COVID-19 cases is primarily attributable to dishonest hospital staff, why are states in the sun belt experiencing such an explosion of cases while other areas of the country are not? Do the people who live there suffer from a lack of morals that allows them to be comfortable with their complicity (a lack of morals which, if based on areas with more reported COVID-19 cases, doesn’t seem to affect the northeast or the west coast)? Or is it more likely that the demonstrably less defensive responses of the states with the most severe increases (Florida, South Carolina, Arizona, Texas, etc.) simply led to an increase in new infections in the region?

Another rebuttal they’ll offer to support their dismissal of the gravity of the pandemic is the high number of people who experience mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. It’s true that many people who have COVID-19 won’t know it. However, we may not be looking for symptoms in the right places: from the start, we’ve compared sickness caused by the coronavirus to the flu. We looked for respiratory symptoms, but we didn’t necesarily spend a lot of time looking at what other dots we could connect. It’s possible that we missed some things, and new evidence suggets as much. Just this week, we learned that in addition to the serious respiratory symptoms many COVID-19 patients are experiencing, they’re also experiencing serious neurological symptoms. From an opinion piece in The New York Times by Melinda Wenner Moyer:

Earlier this month, French researchers reported that 84 percent of Covid patients who had been admitted to the I.C.U. experienced neurological problems, and that 33 percent continued to act confused and disoriented when they were discharged.

According to Dr. Mady Hornig, a psychiatrist and epidemiologist at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, the possibility that neurological issues “will persist and create disability, or difficulties, for individuals downstream is really looking more and more likely.”

Note that the French President is a very liberal man, and it wouldn’t make any sense for the “fake news media” (which presumably exists in France) would drum up false conspiracies about COVID-19 to make their President look worse.

If you’re in the south and you still don’t believe this is a big deal, you may not be thinking rationally. Maybe you’re stuck under the spell of Trump’s demagoguery, forced to deny the validity of anything that could cast him in a negative light. Or, maybe you have COVID-19, and it’s affecting your cognitive abilities. Whatever the case may be, I encourage you to take a hard look at the data that supports your arguments and question its legitimacy (assuming you have any data to point to).

If you’re in the south and you’re capable of rational thought, check out these charts. They’re frightening but they’re informative, and it’s important for everyone to understand the weight of the threat we face. This is not a left versus right issue. Like it or not, how you react to this will affect others, and how others react will affect you.

These charts are startling. The south is heading into a peak similar to the one New York experienced, and we are woefully unprepared for it.

Those charts are interactive over on 91-DIVOC.com, so if you head to their site, you can touch any point to see the specific data behind it. The data itself is from Johns Hopkins University and the WHO, so you can trust it (unless you’re a complete COVID denier or someone who thinks it’s caused by 5G towers/was started in a lab/etc.).

While it’s true that COVID-19 isn’t as deadly as we first thought, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t still extremely bad for a ton of people. While a lot of people who get the virus will be asymptomatic, they can still spread it to others. There’s no way to know whether you’ll be someone who experiences the symptoms of not, and it’s selfish to decide that “it’s worth the risk”. People who do experience symptoms get seriously sick, and are appearing to suffering long term problems ranging from difficulty breathing because of scar tissue in their lungs to permanent loss of smell. And that’s not to mention the fact that people are dying. Nearly 130,000 Americans have died: that’s more than the number of American soldiers and civilians who died in World War One.

If you’re in the south, please, do all you can to keep yourself and those around you safe. Here is a list of some of the most important things we all need to do in order to keep this from really getting out of hand.

• Make a concerted effort to stay home more and avoid crowds.

• If you need to go somewhere, try to use a drive-thrus or use curbside pickup at stores. Also, remember to sanitize items you bring into your home. Spritzing groceries with hydrogen peroxide is a great way to get germs, including coronavirus, off of your items (which plenty of other people likely touched).

• If you must go into a public place where you’ll be around people you don’t know, please wear a mask. It isn’t difficult, and it’s not that uncomfortable. Find a cool mask and get excited about wearing it; they don’t have to be boring and ugly to be effective.

• Use lots of hand sanitizer and wash your hands with soap frequently.

• Don’t hoard toilet paper. Or anything else, for that matter.

• Reach out to your representatives and let them know that you expect them to do what’s necessary to keep us safe, from enforcing social distancing and implementing mask requirements, to ensuring that the pandemic unemployment benefits (which end this month) get extended so that people employed in nonessential industries can stay out of work without living in poverty.

Finally, to those who say that this pandemic presents us with a choice between letting a bunch of people get sick and saving our economy, listen up. That line of thinking is being fed to you. It is a false choice. There’s no reason we can’t do both, and in fact, stopping the pandemic definitively will be the best way to get the economy back up and running like normal. Doing a half assed job like we did the past few months is only going to prolong the pain from a belly up economy with 11% unemployment (a number which is about to jump back up). Even if businesses are open, they aren’t going to be successful if people don’t go to them because they’re scared of contracting a deadly virus. It isn’t hard to understand.

Also, Donald Trump still thinks the pandemic is going to “disappear”, so make of that what you will. Plenty of other countries have figured this out, why hasn’t ours?