Cast doubts on all virus death numbers

A couple of Native American tribes in South Dakota set up checkpoints going into their reservations. These traffic stops on US and state roads require tests for the coronavirus before proceeding. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (R) demanded that if the checkpoints weren’t removed in 48 hours there would be legal action.

The tribes declined her request, saying it interfered with their efforts to protect those who live on the reservation. There is quite a concern already – the Navajo nation in Arizona has been hard hit by the virus compounded by most homes not having running water and the health system for natives being seriously underfunded for decades.



Dartagnan of the Daily Kos community talks about a Washington Post article about how desperate the nasty guy is to reopen the economy. He then discusses the corporate view of things. They’re not worried about the safety of workers – the workers whose physical distance needs will be compromised by showing up (and that doesn’t include the management making these decisions). Besides, with unemployment this high there will be others willing to take the job if existing workers refuse to come in or get sick.

What they’re worried about is legal liability, of being sued by workers who get sick. I’ve mentioned this before. Dartagnan sees one way out of the problem – follow guidelines on how to keep workers safe. These used to come from the CDC, but the nasty guy squashed their report. I thought of another solution – don’t open until it’s safe.



Laurie Garrett, who has written about plagues, tweeted her White House contacts say there will be two tactics used to reopen America and get the nasty guy reelected.

1. Cast doubts on all virus death numbers and try to get Americans to disbelieve their health departments and the CDC reports.

This is top level gaslighting. Some in the virus task force are already starting to do this. Yeah, declare the count too high when many people see evidence the count is too low.

2. Use Executive Orders to “create demand” for certain manufactured good by outlawing some products and mandating the purchase of replacements.

An example is to ban truck rigs more than ten years old, forcing truckers to buy new rigs. Another is to ban electrical equipment from “foreign adversaries.”



The blog Calculated Risk discusses finance and economics. After the jobs numbers for April were posted last Friday this blog displayed four charts showing the economy collapsing.

One of those charts is one I saw after the Great Recession. In its new form it gives an indication of what we’re in for. The chart shows a dozen recessions starting with the one in 1948. For each one it shows the percent of job loss from the previous employment peak and continues the line until the job numbers finally match and exceed the peak before the recession.

The shortest return to pre-recession levels was the one in 1980, which was about 10 months. Alas, there was another recession in 1981 and that one took about 2½ years to rebuild the workforce. The 2001 recession took four years to rebuild, the Great Recession took more than six years. The chart only shows the huge drop in this year’s employment, down 14% in two months, more than twice the drop of the Great Recession and significantly faster than any of the other recessions.

This is going to take a while.



Quote of the day:

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.
~~Herman Melville, Poor Man's Pudding and Rich Man's Crumbs (1854)

Hyunsu Yim tweeted about the success that South Korea has had controlling the virus. But there was a new cluster of cases traced to a gay nightclub. There isn’t much LGBT visibility in the country (meaning it isn’t very welcoming of LGBT people). So this news means gays are being threatened and it could become deadly.



Joan McCarter of Kos reports that when the Senate created the CARES Act, in which a half-trillion went to bail out corporations and $300 billion when to “small business” loans (much gobbled up by not small businesses) the GOP senators did not ask how to pay for it. But now that the House is writing a bailout for the people – direct payments, unemployment help, rental and mortgage help, and student loan help, at least – those GOP senators are suddenly screaming about how to pay for it and the need to cut Social Security. Of course they did. We knew this was coming.



Walter Einenkel of Kos reports on a new study showing all the money the Gates Foundation spent on education reform was a bust.

One of the myriad problems with billionaires like Bill Gates pouring tons of money into reshaping our education system is that people like Bill Gates are not educators. They rarely have even a small amount of education in what education is and should be.

The Gates Foundation money was spent mostly to force legislation to force taxpayer money away from traditional public schools. In that effort was to evaluate teachers by the test scores of their students.

The Foundation spent $215 million and required school systems (taxpayers) to spend $575 million more. Short answer: It didn’t work. Slightly longer answer: This wasn’t philanthropy because Gates was making the world better for rich people.