The real revisionist history

My weekly look at the COVID data for Michigan shows another week of declining new cases per day. We’re now a bit more than half of the peak in early April. The deaths per day are revised as more numbers are reported. Two weeks ago there were 81 deaths in one day and 79 in the following day. The CDC has reported more than 576,000 deaths due to COVID in America. WorldOMeters includes deaths probably due to COVID and puts the number over 594,000. About 400,000 of those deaths have been attributed to the nasty guy’s mismanagement. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported that a new study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation says the number of deaths due to COVID in America is actually above 905,000. That number reflects those who died of the disease without being officially tested or counted. Why such a big difference in the numbers? Because people died one at a time and doctors and coroners didn’t necessarily write “COVID” on the death certificate. In some cases a doctor may have been pressured to write something else, in other cases not. I’ve discussed “excess deaths” before. IHME did a variation on that. I’ll let you peruse the details. IHME also ran its analysis on other countries. They say Russia is underreporting by more than 80% and India by more than 75% (I think that means instead of a million cases every three days it is more like more than a million cases a day – yikes!). Even France, with much better reporting is still off by 25%. Sumner also reported on a new round of predictions from the CDC. They modeled a few scenarios with different vaccination rates and level of maintaining mask wearing and social distancing. All the models predict a big drop in cases in July. The size of the drop depended on the model. Sumner does see one flaw in the models. They are based on the restrictions that were in place in March. Already most of America is not close to those restrictions and certainly won’t keep them up through July. A few days ago Biden announced he was in favor of waving patent protections on COVID vaccines. This would allow other countries to also manufacture them, supplying the poorer countries of the world a whole lot faster than is happening now. As soon as that announcement was made the stocks of the four major vaccine makers quickly dropped – Pfizer down 1.2%, Moderna down 7.2% as tweeted by CNBC. Leah McElrath tweeted:

In other words, the market views continued mass death due to unavailability of vaccines as preferable to lower profits.

The New York Times tweeted that the CDC acknowledged the virus is an airborne threat, especially indoors and beyond six feet. The CDC has previously emphasized avoiding close contact. McElrath tweeted:

The refusal of the CDC under the Trump administration to be clear about airborne transmission cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

See that bit above about the nasty guy responsible for 400,000 deaths. Bill in Portland, Maine, for his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included late night commentary. An example:

I admit it: part of me was hoping the second vaccine would turn me into a handsome patriotic super soldier. —Conan O'Brien

Rep. Liz Cheney, daughter of that vice president, is the representative from Wyoming and currently the third-ranking Republican in the House. On all votes but one she has been just as vile as the rest of the GOP leadership and the GOP in general. Laura Clawson of Kos reported the effort to oust her from the leadership will likely succeed next week. The reason for removing her: she refuses to support the Big Lie. That one vote – she was one of ten GOP House members who approved the second impeachment. She’ll likely be replaced by Rep. Elise Stefanik, whose only qualification appears to be she supports the Big Lie. And because of that the nasty guy endorsed her. I’ll let you read the rest of the story. That prompted John Fugelsang to tweet:

We've waited 20 years to see a Cheney punished for lying and instead we get a Cheney punished for not lying.

Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, quoted several takes on this storm around Cheney. Dworkin also quoted a couple other things: Jim Anderson, CEO of SocialFlow, told Axios:

Trump’s social media superpower was never his ability to tweet — it was his ability to get the media to cover what he tweeted.

And now that he’s not tweeting there isn’t much reason to cover him. David Roberts tweeted:

I don't think people appreciate that the US is in a little two-year window between being ruled by vicious lying authoritarian morons the last time and being ruled by vicious lying authoritarian morons the next time. Take some big breaths, cause we're going back under soon.

Michael Harriot tweeted:

I dug up the textbooks used by Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and some of the worst critics of teaching America's true history. Also, you'll be surprised how many Senators attended segregated schools. On second thought, no you won't.

That was his introduction to an article he wrote for The Root. For several of the critics of the 1619 Project (the year the first slaves were brought to America) or of teaching Critical Race Theory, Harriot found the likely history textbook they used in high school and looked at what it said about slavery and racism. These critics were Marsha Blackburn (TN), Tom Cotton (AR), Ted Cruz (TX), Lindsay Graham (SC), John Kennedy (LA), Mitch McConnell (early years in GA), Tommy Tuberville (AL), and Tim Scott (SC). The textbooks they would have used were written in the 1950s or 1960s, one used the 1958 edition of a book first published in 1840. Most of the books said little about slavery or racism. All described the Civil War (though not by that name) as having to do with taxes and northern overreach, not slavery. Several of the textbooks had been approved by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. They were powerful enough that if they didn’t approve of a book most school districts in the South wouldn’t buy it, which limited what was available in the rest of the country. And they didn’t approve of any negative portrayals of the Antebellum South or the Civil War. These books, when they talked of slavery at all, said such things as slaves never revolted, that slaves were happy and content, that their owners were kind to them, that black people helped white people defeat the invading British during the War of 1812, and that Klansmen told black people to be good and stay away from the polls on election day. Hint: they’re all lies – well the last one was true except the violence after the request wasn’t said very loudly. All these people now at the head of the GOP were taught to be racist from a young age. Cruz said he was against the 1619 Project because it was “revisionist history.” Actually, what they had been taught in school was the revisionist history.