With every government department

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported that a case of COVID, if it doesn’t kill you, can leave you with permanent heart damage, lung damage, eye damage, and, worse, brain damage. That brain damage can happen even in asymptomatic cases and show up weeks later. The damage results in severe psychotic symptoms or paranoid delusions. The virus has been known to cause damage in a few ways. First, it can trigger the development of tiny blood clots, cutting off a bit of the flow of blood to an organ or the brain. Second, it pushes the body into an overactive immune response. Third, it uses cells of an organ (such as the heart) to replicate, damaging those cells. I heard on today’s news that Joe Biden set an ambitious goal to get 100 million people vaccinated in his first 100 days. He complained that at the current pace under the nasty guy’s administration getting everyone vaccinated will take years. Josh Mchaud tweeted an image to show what the nasty guy and his minions are doing. The image is of a horse. The tail and back legs are drawn in fine detail and labeled “Research” and “Clinical Trials.” The body of the horse is sketched in and labeled “Regulatory Review.” The outline of one front leg is labeled “Allocation.” And the head and other front leg don’t look like a horse and are labeled “Distribution.” Joan McCarter of Kos shows the gigantic task awaiting Joe Biden by discussing what happened to the Economic Research Service (ERS) and National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), both under the Department of Agriculture (USDA). Sonny Perdue, the current head of Agriculture and under the direction of the nasty guy, sent hundreds of jobs to Kansas City, telling workers to move or quit. And when they quit the vacant jobs were not filled.

In the meantime, the projects the agencies were taking on food safety, nutrition, conservation, farm economics, and climate change have either just been dropped or continued with little oversight or direction.

So Biden and Tom Vilsack have 400 jobs to fill. Some will be filled by hiring back those that had quit. As for those that moved to KC it would be irresponsible to force them back to DC, now that they’ve settled in. It’s a good thing we have learned how to work remotely. A group doing a review process called Climate 21 Project discussed a demoralized workforce. The also sent a memo to the presidential transition team:

The forced relocation to Kansas City has also meant dozens of reports and millions in research funding have been delayed or scuttled, setting back critical climate change and other research.

McCarter concluded:

Bringing climate change research back and catching up to where the research should have been by now, after four years of derailment from Trump, is going to take a massive effort. So is trying to heal the whole of the USDA. And that's got to happen with every government department. The next year is not going to be a picnic for anyone.

Mark Sumner talked to Emily Epstein White, who is a stand-up comic, about humor in communicating political ideas. Some of the things they talked about: Republicans look at how things touch them as an individual – how does this affect me? Democrats look at how does this affect us? That us includes groups that we are not a part of. We look at how it impacts the whole world. That means Republicans relate through anger and outrage. The nasty guy is successful because he knows how to push the buttons that generate anger. Democratic candidates talk about how policies help the group and conservatives keep wondering how does that help me? Democrats are more able to relate through humor, which involves empathy. The better jokes are the one focused on the person as ridiculous and silly things happen around them. Avoid low hanging fruit and don’t be cruel. The post ends with a couple of White’s routines. Reza Zadeh tweeted a two minute video of robots dancing. It makes them less intimidating. They’ve got some pretty cool moves (better than I can dance). Must have been fun to be on the Robot Dance team. Some of the replies: Less intimidating? Nope.