August 2, 2021
Congratulations to Akshay P., who won our giveaway for the Apple iPad and Watch Series 6!
“All the lessons are in nature. You look at the way rocks are formed – the wind and the water hitting them, shaping them, making them what they are. Things take time, you know?” — Diane Lane
Denial Is Contagious
Florida leads the nation in new coronavirus cases, but that doesn’t dampen Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’ determination to oppose any science-based public health recommendations to mitigate the damage. In April, DeSantis blocked businesses and other entities from requiring that people show proof of vaccination. The next month, he signed a bill banning any emergency mandates put in place by local officials. And despite the Delta variant posing a much greater threat to younger adults and children, the governor signed another executive order Friday banning school districts from requiring that staff and students wear masks. The following day, Florida recorded its highest one-day total of new cases since the start of the pandemic, and on Sunday the state broke its previous record for hospitalizations, also set over a year ago.
For governors like DeSantis, the rallying cry is individual freedom — any argument about societal responsibility is dismissed. On ABC’s This Week, Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief White House medical adviser, took issue with the stance that the ban was a protection of individual freedoms. “You understand people feeling that they have the individual right to make their own decisions, and I respect that for sure,” Fauci said, “but the issue is, if you’re going to be part of the transmission chain to someone else, then your decision is impacting someone else…and you’ve got to think about it that you are a member of society and you have a responsibility.”
DeSantis has called Covid-19 a “seasonal virus” and predicted cases will likely diminish in August. It’s doubtful anything an eminent immunologist says is going to educate him; nor will what a group of scientists say in a new analysis about the incredible danger that could be posed by a future SARS-Cov-2 variant, if authorities can’t continue reducing virus transmission. DeSantis joins others choosing hoped-for political gain over constituents’ health. Arizona, Arkansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas have all restricted local officials’ ability to implement mask mandates. Last week, Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) signed an executive order prohibiting anyone, including public health, county, and school officials, from enacting vaccine requirements or mask mandates, even as the more contagious Delta variant surges in the state.
Missouri is also experiencing a rampant rise in infections. But when the city of St. Louis and St. Louis County reinstated a mask mandate a week ago — requiring those ages 5 and older to wear masks in indoor public spaces and on public transportation — Attorney General Eric Schmitt immediately filed a lawsuit against the mandate. Schmitt, a Republican running for U.S. Senate, blasted the mask mandate as “unacceptable and unconstitutional” government overreach, adding falsely that “There is absolutely no scientific reason to continue to force children to wear a mask in school.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Faisal Khan, acting director of the Saint Louis County Department of Public Health, spoke at a council meeting last week to explain the rationale behind the mask mandate. The majority of attendees were not wearing masks, and some displayed “racist, xenophobic, and threatening behavior” toward the doctor. The council voted 5-2 to overturn the mask mandate. Days later, an attendee tested positive for Covid, and health officials are worried about the likelihood that others in the crowd were exposed and potentially infected. (CBS News, Forbes, Guardian, Politico, CNN, WaPo)
On The Run
- Belarusian sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, 24, posted a video to her Instagram in which she criticized Belarusian Olympic officials for telling her, after she arrived in Tokyo, that she must run the 4×400-meter relay because other team members had been found ineligible due to incomplete drug testing. Tsimanouskaya had never raced the 4×400 relay event and hadn’t trained for it.
- She had been scheduled to compete in the women’s 200-meter race on Monday, but coaches came to her room Sunday and told her to pack immediately. She was then forcibly taken to the Tokyo airport for a flight back to Belarus. In an interview on Sunday Tsimanouskaya said she was “put under pressure” by team officials and pleaded for help from Japanese police at the airport. She also asked the International Olympic Committee to intervene, saying “I will not return to Belarus.” The IOC tweeted that it was “looking into the situation”. (NPR)
Prime Min
- On August 1, six months to the day after Myanmar’s army seized power from an elected civilian government, state media reported that military ruler Min Aung Hlaing has taken on the role of prime minister in a newly-formed caretaker government. In a speech on Sunday, Min Aung Hlaing repeated his pledge to hold elections by 2023, and said his administration would work with any special envoy named by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). “I guarantee the establishment of a union based on democracy and federalism,” he added.
- The army seized power after Suu Kyi’s ruling party won elections that the military claimed were fraudulent; the country’s electoral commission dismissed the fraud allegations. After the coup, Suu Kyi, 75, was charged with several crimes, including illegally possessing walkie-talkie radios and breaking coronavirus protocols. Military authorities have been faced with months of protests and strikes, paralyzing both public and private sectors. (Reuters)
Additional World News
- Biden wants Putin to behave. So why not go after his money? (Politico)
- Some wildfires rage on in Turkey, affecting coastal resorts (Reuters)
- Haniyeh re-elected as chief of Palestinian Islamist group Hamas (Reuters)
- Crowds defy ban to protest coronavirus measures in Berlin (AP)
- New Zealand Dawn Raids: Jacinda Ardern formally apologises (BBC)
- China reports 55 new COVID-19 cases as Delta variant spreads from Nanjing (Reuters)
- Turkish officials deny ethnic motive in murder of seven Kurds (Al Jazeera)
Not Evictorious
- In June the Supreme Court left in place — through July 31 — a nationwide ban on evictions, rejecting a plea by landlords to end the CDC moratorium on evicting millions of tenants who are struggling to make rent during the pandemic. The Biden administration announced Thursday that it was bound by the ruling and agreed to allow the moratorium to expire on Saturday. Lawmakers were working on legislation to extend the moratorium, but ran out of time.
- Housing advocates and some lawmakers are still calling for an extension due to the increase in coronavirus cases, and the fact so little rental assistance has been distributed. On Sunday, House Democratic leaders along with Speaker Pelosi entreated the administration to immediately extend the moratorium, calling it a “moral imperative” to prevent over 3.5 million vulnerable tenants from being put out of their homes as early as Monday during the surge of Delta variant cases. (AP News)
Trump Pushed For Election Probes
- Last week, the Washington Post reported that at the end of 2020, then-President Donald Trump conducted a personal pressure campaign against his acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, whom Trump repeatedly called to raise various election fraud allegations he had heard about, and to ask what the Justice Department was doing about it. Justice Department official Richard Donoghue participated in the calls and took notes, which were given to Congress last Wednesday and released to the public on Friday.
- In one December 27 conversation, according to the written account, Rosen told Trump that the Justice Department “can’t + won’t snap its fingers + change the outcome of the election.” The president replied that he understood, but wanted the agency to “just say the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen.” David Laufman, a former senior Justice Department official, said the documents show the extent to which senior Justice Department officials “were on a knife’s edge” in late 2020 as Trump sought to prevent Biden from becoming president. “These notes reveal that a sitting president, defeated in a free and fair election, personally and repeatedly pressured Justice Department leaders to help him foment a coup in a last-ditch attempt to cling to power,” Laufman said. “And that should shock the conscience of every American, regardless of political persuasion.”
- In a statement on Saturday, Trump tried reverse-blaming those “corrupt and highly partisan House Democrats who run the House Oversight Committee” who released documents, including court filings, which they “dishonestly described as attempting to overturn the election.” Trump denied ever instructing the DOJ to call the election results “corrupt,” then said Congress and others must investigate the “incredibly corrupt Presidential Election.” (WaPo, The Hill)
Additional USA News
- Oregon Wildfire Could Burn Until Fall, As Fire Season Worsens (NPR)
- Kinzinger: ‘Significant amount’ of subpoenas likely in Jan. 6 probe (Politico)
- Already Distorting Jan. 6, GOP Now Concocts Entire Counternarrative (NYT, $)
- Ob-gyn associations recommend all pregnant people get vaccinated against Covid-19 (CNN)
- ‘Do it for the people you care about’: Florida woman urges people to get vaccinated after losing her dad and brother to Covid-19 the same week (CNN)
- McCarthy jokes it’ll be hard not to ‘hit’ Pelosi with gavel if he is Speaker (The Hill)
I Will Survive
Americans worried about climate change are flocking to survivalist schools and taking urban-disaster preparedness courses. Once the domain of campers and hunters, survivalist schools across the country are busily instructing young families and urbanites in skills they can use if faced with wildfires, droughts, and destructive storms increasingly brought about by Earth’s rising temperatures. Sadly, there is growing pessimism about what the quality of life will be like for the next generation.
“It was never like that before,” said Shane Hobel, founder of the Mountain Scout Survival School. Hobel estimates that heightened interest in his courses is fueled by “50 percent climate change and 50 percent the ‘political stuff.’” Whatever someone’s particular nightmare scenario is, there’s a shared concern among some of Hobel’s customers that the foundation on which modern society rests is becoming more fragile. “If something breaks down, if the grid drops out, all of this modern technology fails us instantaneously,” he said. “Very few people in the country are foraging and hunting each day, but there is no other technology that’s going to save you. These skills will keep you alive — period.”
Whether or not one thinks that training to survive in the wilderness is the best way to prepare for the looming crisis, it’s likely that periodic disasters will force many city dwellers to at least temporarily evacuate their homes, which is why urban-preparedness courses at survival school are particularly popular. Tony Nester is head instructor at Ancient Pathways, which teaches desert and wilderness survival in Arizona and Colorado. “We talk about it. What plans do you have in place? How do I get my family evacuated? Where do we go? What supplies should we have with us? How do we get out of our house in 15 minutes? How do we get across town to get to our kids? We’re discussing those issues more and more.”
For those who can’t get away to survivalist school, but still want some rudimentary info, try binge-watching episodes of Naked and Afraid. (NBC News)
Additional Reads
- Earth’s energy imbalance removes almost all doubt from human-made climate change (NBC)
- The Privacy Battle That Apple Isn’t Fighting (Ars Technica)
- A Plant That ‘Cannot Die’ Reveals Its Genetic Secrets (NYT, $)
- Fractons, the Weirdest Matter, Could Yield Quantum Clues (Wired)
- Dogs, Unlike Wolves, Are Born to Communicate With People (Wired)
- Russian cosmonauts give video tour of module that jolted space station (Reuters)