America drank away its children’s future

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos discussed news out of the Washington Post. The National Guard does several things quite well, things like helping those hit by disasters or confronting protesters. But being emergency accountants is not one of those jobs.

The Post reports that the nasty guy is proposing to governors that the National Guard be sent to hospitals to “help improve data collection.” Most people hearing this say ‘its silly” or “makes no sense.” But others, like Sumner, see this as more of a threat. If a guy with a gun is looking over your shoulder you are going to write down the number he tells you to write down. Those people didn’t die of the virus, must have been pneumonia. Looks like it’s safe to go back to school.

That is scary.



Rogelio Garcia tweeted:

OUR LOCAL PAPER: The Houston Chronicle obituary section was 43 pages today.

Let that sink in.

madeline lane-mckinley tweeted:

Betsy DeVos says that "only" 0.02% of children will probably die as a result of schools re-opening.

That's 14,740 children.

That's about 40 times the number of school shooting victims from the last 10 years.

I’m so annoyed with conservatives who say they should be allowed to oppress a certain group of people because it affects only a small number. In particular that argument has been used against the transgender community. I reject such reasoning. Oppressing others, no matter how many or how few, is bad.

I also see DeVos framed it as a very small percentage. But it would still be 14,740 dead children.

It’s also annoying that those same children, while still in the womb, are talked about with the phrase “sanctity of life.” Now that they’re living children their lives have lost that sanctity.

A couple replies to madeline note the statistic DeVos used doesn’t mention the teachers, the teacher’s children, the children’s parents, the bus drivers, lunch servers, janitors, school staff, etc.

Chris Ehrick replied to madeline:

Keep in mind that what she really wants is the end of public education as we know it. A few thousand dead kids would likely serve those ends, because parents will simply pull their kids out of school, etc. I no longer underestimate the callous inhumanity of this administration.

And Alex Gibb adds:

She said multiple times on CNN this am that Ps should be able to choose a school that opens if theirs doesn't. They're trying to undercut public schools for that very reason.

In a separate post Sumner discusses the school situation. Political leaders, from the nasty guy and DeVos on down to the state level keep saying schools need “discretion” or “flexibility.” No, say Sumner, they need hard rules. School board need to be able to say “we can’t” and point to those rules. Otherwise they will decide based on the most vocal members of the community, even if it risks children.

Those hard rules can include flexibility – if the district meets these well defined standards it can do this and if it meets those standards it can do that. The government failing to provide strong, definitive, and consistent rules to schools would be an unforgivable act that will linger for generations.



Georgia Logothetis collected today’s pundit roundup on Kos. She quoted Paul Krugman of the New York Times:

So we’re now facing a terrible, unnecessary dilemma. If we reopen in-person education, we risk feeding an out-of-control pandemic. If we don’t, we impair the development of millions of American students, inflicting long-term damage on their lives and careers.

And the reason we’re in this position is that states, cheered on by the Trump administration, rushed to allow large parties and reopen bars. In a real sense America drank away its children’s future.

David Rothkopf supplies the numbers:

More than 80 charges against Trump associates. 3000 dead post Hurricane Maria. 20,000 lies. 70,000 migrant children detained (in 2019). More than 100,000 dead of gun violence since 2017. 140,000 dead from COVID. 3,000,000 infected. All because of 70,000 votes in 3 states. Vote.

Social medial platforms that make their money from advertising allow advertisers to create “blocklists.” This allows them to say their ads do not appear in posts that contain particular words. For example, an adult business would not want their ads to appear in posts that discuss children. It also allows them to avoid having their product next to a controversial topic.

Walter Einenkel of Kos discusses an article by the Wall Street Journal about a problem with blocklists. Many companies have added to their blocklists phrases like, “George Floyd,” “protests,” “Black Lives Matter,” and “policing.” They’ve done that even though (1) many have support for BLM on their web pages or other corporate literature, and (2) there is heightened interest in these stories, so they get clicked on more, so advertising there would expose the ads to more eyes. And that means these stories don’t bring in as much money to the media company that posted them. Yes, indeed, the revenue of a story influences what kinds of stories get written the next day. So, says Einenkel, by putting Black Lives Matter in their blocklist a company is saying this topic should not be discussed – even as elsewhere they proclaim the support BLM.



Aysha Qamar of Kos told the story of Malone Mukwende. He’s a black man in his second year of medical school at St. George’s University in London. He noticed something: books that discuss how medical conditions show up on the skin always show how they appear on white skin. But a rash on dark skin looks different. Over the last half year that has likely been a factor in getting proper COVID-19 treatment for black patients. When a doctor is called because a person might have COVID symptoms the doctor might ask, “Is the patient pale?” No, he’s black. “Have the lips turned blue?” No, they’re black.

Mukwende has now written a handboook, Mind the Gap, to teach healthcare providers how physical symptoms appear differently on varying skin colors. The book hasn’t been published yet, though news of the book is spreading across social media.