More on the Pandemic

 #Yoshua Yaffa, "Believe It or Not," The New Yorker, September 14, 2020.

"A 2017 Yale study found that labeling Facebook content 'disputed' increased the share of users who judged it to be false by less than four per cent." "In April, after Trump suggested that disinfectant could be injected into the body to treat COVID-19, health officials in several states  reported spikes in calls to poison-control hotlines." "Disinformation cannot be targeted with precision -- to release a falsehood into the world is to lose control over its trajectory and impact." "When it comes to COVID-19, the apparent      result of the combined disinformation campaign of Trump and Fox News have been devastating."

#Alana Semuels, "After job losses, power cuts loom for millions," TIME, September 21-28, 2020.

"In September, after a pandemic-prompted pause, power companies serving tens of million of Americans will resume service cutoffs to customers who are behind on their bills. In some states, moratoriums are ending; in others, utility companies' pledges to keep customers connected are winding down." "Carbon Switch, an energy efficiency startup, estimates that 34.5 million people will lose shutoff protections in 14 states in the next month [October in this case]." "There are still 29 million Americans receiving unemployment benefits for the week ending August 15, according to Commerce Department data."

#Amy David Sorkin, "The Shifting Pandemic," The New Yorker, July 6-13, 2020.

"Since the coronavirus first took hold in this country, Donald Trump has heedlessly promoted the idea that it can be treated solely as a political, or even a cultural problem. But the rising umbers of cases, coupled with the listlessness of the Administration, suggest that the respite may be  brief, and that we are squandering whatever advantage we gained by the ebb in the states first affected." "Trump is trying to "jam the pandemic into the nativist, xenophobic, rhetorical framework that helped him get elected in 2016."

#Charlotte Alter, "Down the Rabbit Hole," TIME, September 21, 2020.

[QAnn conspiracy theory] lets "its followers believe President Trump is a hero defending the world from a 'deep state' cold of Satan-worshiping pedophiles, Democratic politicians, and Hollywood  celebrities who run a global sex-trafficking ring, harvesting the blood of children for life-sustaining chemicals." "Whitey Phillips, a professor at Syracuse University, has said: 'You cannot have a functioning democracy when people are not at the very least occupying the same solar system.' "According to the Pew Research Center, 25% of Americans say there is some truth to the conspiracy theory that the COVID-19 pandemic was intentionally planned."

#Senator John Thune said that any bill over $1 trillion would risk fragmenting the GOP. Senator Mitch McConnell said that $2.2 trillion is "outlandish." Senate Republicans had initially offered $1 trillion for the next stimulus package, but then voted on a $300 billion deal. McConnell was quoted as "begrudingly" saying that he could get enough votes to approve the $1.6 trillion offer by Treasury Secretary Munchin, but a McConnell spokesman disputed that McConnell had made that claim.

ADDENDUMS:

*After stopping negotiations on a stimulus package until after the election, Trump called on Congress to pass relief for airlines, small businesses, and stimulus checks in a piecemeal fashion.

*A Pew Research Center survey published on June 25, 2020, found that 63% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said masks should always be worn in public, compared with 29% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. "While 43% of Democrats told Pew in 2019 that they had a 'great deal' of trust in scientists, only 17% of Republicans said the same.

*Amy Davidson Sorkin, "Failing Schools," The New Yorker, August 17, 2020. - "In Israel, the reopening of middle schools and high schools with relaxed social distancing preceded outbreaks [of the coronavirus] in the wider community." "In Los Angeles alone, a quarter of a million households with school-age children lacked a computer with broadband."

*Tom Philpott, "Playing Chicken," Mother Jones, September/October 2020. - "By late May, rural counties that had meatpacking plants with COVID-19 outbreaks had average infection rates five times higher than the rest of rural America. As of mid-July, at least 167 meatpacking workers had died from the disease."

*The GOP-controlled Senate report "admits that it couldn't conclude that Hunter Biden's employment with Burisma had any material effect on U.S. policy."