@twoodiac: Collected news and opinion for 10 July 2020, with comments
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1/ CDC director Robert Redfield: Keeping schools closed poses greater health threat to children than reopening https://tinyurl.com/ybpvldvs
[Note: Redfield is comparing apples and oranges. There is a legitimate concern that school closings will set back a child’s learning. But he also claims that children are not a demographic at great risk from covid-19. That they are not has been known for a long time, but that is not the concern here. The concern is that closed schoolrooms are the perfect environment for the virus to spread. School children can infect each other and also others, including family members, when they are out of school. China found that the Wuhan virus spread mostly in family settings, and in China schools were among the last to reopen. There has been some controversy about whether children are transmitters and even superspreaders. 3/ below claims they are not; 2/ says they are. 2/ is more recent, and the authors are much better credentialed. I think I’ll go with China and the authors of 2/ on this one.
2/ Study: Young adults, children are superspreaders of COVID-19. https://tinyurl.com/yd8r5pzx [The age group that spreads the novel coronavirus to the most people is not Georgia’s elderly, some 2,500 of whom have died during the pandemic. On average, children and younger adults under the age of 60 are nearly 2.4 times more transmissible, the study found.] [22 June 2020]
3/ Children Are Not COVID-19 Super Spreaders: Time to Go Back to School https://tinyurl.com/y8269msl [May 5, 2020]
4/ CNN: Fact-checking the White House’s statement announcing Roger Stone’s commutation https://tinyurl.com/ychwxo83
5/ Tucker Carlson’s top writer quits after secretly posting racist and sexist remarks in online forum https://tinyurl.com/y82anhco
6/ Trump the victim: President complains in private about the pandemic hurting himself https://tinyurl.com/yd8yp2d2 [“The president has cast himself in the starring role of the blameless victim — of a deadly pandemic, of a stalled economy, of deep-seated racial unrest, all of which happened to him rather than the country.”]
7/ Political Wire (pay subscription required) https://tinyurl.com/yd6c5lw7 [“Here’s a number the Trump campaign fears: A Monmouth poll found 50% of voters say they are “not at all likely” to vote for Trump, compared to 39% for Biden. This tracks with a Pew Research poll that shows 50% of voters “strongly disapprove” of Trump. It will be extremely hard to overcome those numbers.”]
8/ Marc A. Thiessen: An interview with President Trump: ‘The real hate is the hate from the other side’ https://tinyurl.com/y88qc3bs [Trump and Thiessen, a columnist at WAPO, are so confused/dishonest that one doesn’t even know where to begin, so I’ll just leave this here.]
9/ Marc A. Thiessen: Trump confirms, in an interview, a U.S. cyberattack on Russia https://tinyurl.com/ybp98yoz
10/ Up to 8,000 Chinese nationals came into US after Trump banned travel due to coronavirus: AP https://tinyurl.com/y7x8wav8
11/ Real-time data is showing that the coronavirus is causing ‘widespread’ economic damage https://tinyurl.com/yby5u7zo
12/ President Trump and Fauci not speaking as coronavirus pandemic worsens https://tinyurl.com/yaeosc7y
13/ AP: Catholic Church lobbied for taxpayer funds, got $1.4B https://tinyurl.com/y87lnch8
14/ Facebook may ban election ads, report says https://tinyurl.com/yaowmvx9
15/ CNBC: Pandemic deals mightier blow to retail than Great Recession: First-quarter operating income down 58% https://tinyurl.com/yb3cflt5
16/ Dr. Scott Gottlieb estimates as many as 1 in 150 people in U.S. are infected with coronavirus https://tinyurl.com/yazmmf72
