Joel Mathis

Photo by  Nataliya Vaitkevich  from  Pexels With boosters widely approved now, I'm planning getting a booster sometime in the next few days: Today is six months since my last shot, and I've got the comorbidities. But I don't feel great about it.  NYT : "As the United States prepares to offer Covid booster shots to tens of millions of people, representatives of the World Health Organization continue to sound the alarm over the disparity in vaccine access globally, with the world’s poorest countries struggling to get even a first dose into their citizens’ arms."  How can I justify benefiting from the disparity?  My local hospital has been slammed the last few months. Some -- not even close to a majority, but some -- of those patients were already vaccinated. I have friends on staff there. Yes, I'm eager to not get sick (and whispers about a possible new Delta sub-variant in the UK terrify me) but anything I can do to stay out of bed seems like a duty to my commu

Sarah Jones, New York : This happened to me recently when I lost my temper with a woman I’d known in college. She is a nurse and wrote on Facebook that she refuses to get vaccinated. I told her that people like her are the reason my grandfather is dead. That wasn’t exactly true — my grandfather died before the vaccines were available — but her indifference toward the virus had irked me. I don’t think I changed her mind. I felt better for an instant and then I went back to feeling angry, both with her and with myself. Whatever compelled me to comment on her Facebook post could have become much uglier if I had allowed it. On the r/HermanCainAward sub-Reddit, people post screenshots of comments from anti-vaxxers who later died of COVID. To some, death has become a spectacle at which they are entitled to gawk. That’s how demonic energy must feel. Right now, it’s everywhere.

AP has a piece today questioning the "pandemic of the unvaccinated" storyline that has emerged amidst the Delta-fueled COVID surge. Some hospitalized people are vaccinated, after all, but the broader concern seems to be that some medical observers worry about stigmatizing the unvaxxed. “It is true that the unvaccinated are the biggest driver, but we mustn’t forget that the vaccinated are part of it as well, in part because of the delta variant,” said Dr. Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California. “The pandemic clearly involves all people, not just the unvaccinated.” Branding it “a pandemic of the unvaccinated” could have the unintended consequence of stigmatizing the unvaccinated, he added. “We should not partition them as the exclusive problem,” Topol said. Instead officials should call out vaccine disinformation, said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. A s

AP : "Gov. Greg Abbott appealed for out-of-state help to fight the third wave of COVID-19 in Texas while two more of the state’s largest school districts announced mask mandates in defiance of the governor." And there you have the "vaccines/masks are a personal choice" argument in a nutshell. Clearly it's not -- if protecting yourself was purely a "personal choice," you'd personally bear responsibility for the outcomes. That's not the case. Your trip to the hospital affects that hospital, clearly, and if enough other people make the same choice, then that hospital in turn needs to call for help from out-of-state nurses. The ripple effects are plain to see. That's why stuff like this is so silly. Right now, Abbott is asking Texas hospitals to delay elective surgeries. If you're vaxxed, your choices are constrained by the decisions of the unvaxxed. It's not the worst problem posed by the surge in hospitalizations, of course, but it

 ...is that our healthcare system might be broken if and when we get to the other side of this . More than 900 staff members across the Midwest Mayo Clinic system have been diagnosed with Covid-19 over the last 14 days, a spokesperson told CNN "Our staff are being infected mostly due to community spread (93% of staff infections), and this impacts our ability to care for patients," Kelley Luckstein wrote to CNN in a Wednesday email.

 

...by proving his economic populism bona fides and putting real pressure on Sen. Mitch McConnell to do something about this . NYT : The Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research warned on Wednesday that there were “significant downside risks” to the nation’s financial stability from the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic and predicted that many households and businesses might be unable to recover without additional government assistance. The end of the pandemic may be in sight. But we'll get there faster, and with less damage, if we spend a lot of money now.

 It's interesting that this news : Attorney General William Barr drew criticism after calling lockdown measures aimed at controlling the spread of COVID-19 the worst infringement on civil liberties other than slavery. Came down at the same time as this news : William Barr told prosecutors to explore aggressive charges against people arrested at recent demonstrations across the US, even suggesting bringing a rarely used sedition charge , reserved for those who have plotted a threat that posed imminent danger to government authority, according to multiple reports on Wednesday. Barr's interest in civil liberties is ... situational, shall we say. There is no right to commit vandalism of and destruction to government property, of course, but there's a reason sedition charges are rarely used: They've often been used in American history to tamp down legitimate dissent. This was notoriously the case under President John Adams. Jill Lepore, in her book THESE TRUTHS, wrote about

 Remember this? History doesn't repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.

NYT : “I want people to understand, the face of the needy is different now,” said Ms. Cazimero, who has joined a new class of Americans who never imagined they would have to take a spot in a modern-day bread line. “Just because I have a car doesn’t mean I have enough money to buy food.” I don't have much to say about this, except the need for a more robust safety net seems both obvious and unreachable for America, and it's aggravating. And I'm old enough to remember stories like this . One in eight Americans receives food stamps One in four American children now depends on food stamps. Among all Americans, one in eight is receiving food stamps, and as unemployment drops middle-class people into poverty, 20,000 additional people are signing up each day. That's from 2009. Seems we should have learned a lesson during the Great Recession that we didn't.

  Millions of Americans face potential eviction. Businesses are failing. The COVID-19 death rate is now north of 180,000 souls. Racial unrest is percolating across the land. And this is President Trump's priority: Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren had a telephone call with President Donald Trump on Tuesday, after a White House representative reached out about having discussions concerning how the conference can return to playing college football as soon as possible. "I think it was very productive about getting [the] Big Ten playing again and immediately," Trump said. "Let's see what happens. He's a great guy. It's a great conference, tremendous teams. We're pushing very hard. ... I think they want to play, and the fans want to see it, and the players have a lot at stake, including possibly playing in the NFL. You have a lot of great players in that conference. How very small of him. How very bread and circuses of him.

 Just to follow up on this post:  I'm not sure I'm a believer in modern monetary theory , though I'd like to be -- the idea the federal government can just magically pay for everything forever without restraint is tempting! I can't escape the feeling, though, that the theory is ironic foreshadowing for the collapse of American finance. I admit to the possibility of being an economic simpleton. It's not one of my strong suits. That said: Even if I were a deficit hawk, I would not be one at the present moment -- I am not one at the present moment. America is facing a unique challenge to public health and prosperity. Battling it successfully will be quite expensive. The upside is that if we manage to do it, many lives will be preserved. The downside is that if we fail, many lives will be lost. So why the amount of money that's being thrown at this is huge -- a trillion here, a trillion there and pretty soon we'll talk about real money -- it sure seems that this

 My senator: (Sigh.)

Kristen McConnell writes at The Atlantic this morning that schools should reopen, because, well ... the title says it all: "I’m a Nurse in New York. Teachers Should Do Their Jobs, Just Like I Did." What I don’t support is preemptively threatening “safety strikes,” as the American Federation of Teachers did in late July. These threats run counter to the fact that, by and large, school districts are already fine-tuning social-distancing measures and mandating mask-wearing. Teachers are not being asked to work without precautions, but some overlook this: the politics of mask-wearing have gotten so ridiculous that many seem to believe masks only protect other people, or are largely symbolic. They’re not. Nurses and doctors know that masks do a lot to keep us safe, and that other basics such as hand-washing and social distancing are effective at preventing the spread of the coronavirus. Instead of taking the summer to hone arguments against returning to the classroom, administrat

Back in 1991, as the Iraqis were being routed from Kuwait by US and coalition forces, they set fires to a number of oil wells along the way. There was not strategic purpose to that action, as far as I can tell. It was simply a churlish and cruel decision that signaled: "If Saddam can't have this, nobody can." Which brings me, naturally, to Donald Trump. Big story in the NYT this morning asks: "Does Trump Want to Save His Economy?" It tries to explain the seemingly inexplicable -- while this president is dithering on getting a new economic package passed for Americans who have lost their jobs and face losing their homes because of the pandemic. Lobbyists, economists and members of Congress say they are baffled by Mr. Trump’s shifting approach and apparent lack of urgency to nail down another rescue package that he can sign into law. The president’s strategy to help the economy “is hard to decipher,” said Michael R. Strain, an economist at the conservative Americ

AP : When it comes to states’ rights, President Donald Trump is all over the map. To battle the coronavirus , he’s told states they’re largely on their own. But when it comes to stamping out protests in cities led by Democrats, Trump is sending in federal troops and agents — even when local leaders are begging him to butt out. “After seeing Trump in the White House for three and a half years, anyone expecting to find classical ideological consistency is bound to be mistaken,” said Andrew J. Polsky, a political science professor at Hunter College. “All of this is done for partisan political purposes with an eye toward the election.” This is true. Trump does whatever maximizes his authority while avoiding responsibility.  But the other through-line in this is a characteristic Trump shares with a lot of conservatives: At his core, he believes the answer to most issues is being -- or, perhaps more precisely, being seen -- as tough. The virus is very difficult to be "tough" again

Oh boy: As I mentioned earlier today, we've already decided to keep our son at home this fall. You know why we made that decision? Well, it had nothing to do with Donald Trump. Taking this tweet at face value, it means that the president of the United States cannot conceive of reasons why schools and parents would not want to fill up the classrooms this fall -- unless it's to make him look bad. He is so self-centered that the idea that people don't want to die, or that schools don't want to risk their students or be liable for that risk. He can only conceive of how that reflects on him. Let me be clear: I wouldn't be sending my son to school this fall even if it meant that going or not going could guarantee Joe Biden's presidential victory. Again: Our decision had nothing to do with Donald Trump. But Trump cannot understand a universe in which he is not the center, in which people make decisions based on their own interests instead of how it affects his. His na

We officially made the decision this week: Our son -- a rising seventh grader -- will be learning from home this fall. We don't love this decision. The boy is better at learning in a classroom setting than in digital, distanced-learning environment. He would love to see his friends again. But despite President Trump's constant pressure on schools to reopen, I'm just not comfortable that sending him back to school is the best decision -- for his health, for the health of anybody working at the school, or for us in his family. And there's stuff like this : An overnight summer camp in rural southwestern Missouri has seen scores of campers, counselors and staff infected with the coronavirus, the local health department revealed this week, raising questions about the ability to keep kids safe at what is a rite of childhood for many. Missouri is one of several states to report outbreaks at summer camps. The Kanakuk camp near Branson ended up sending its teenage campers home.

WaPo: The goal is to convince Americans that they can live with the virus — that schools should reopen, professional sports should return, a vaccine is likely to arrive by the end of the year and the economy will continue to improve. White House officials also hope Americans will grow numb to the escalating death toll and learn to accept tens of thousands of new cases a day, according to three people familiar with the White House’s thinking, who requested anonymity to reveal internal deliberations. Americans will “live with the virus being a threat,” in the words of one of those people, a senior administration official. I believe President Trump's political prospects are being kept alive by two groups at this point: Racists and pro-life evangelicals. I have some sympathy for the latter group. I grew up with them, went to a conservative evangelical Mennonite college where almost everybody was pro-life. I knew four people on campus who admitted to voting for Bill Clinton in 1992, and

Slate's Joel Anderson offers up some chilling statistics : This week, players returned to campuses all around the country preparing themselves for a season that almost certainly shouldn’t be played. Just look at the early numbers. Two weeks ago at Oklahoma State, three players tested positive for the virus. Last week, the University of Houston suspended workouts after six players tested positive. And Thursday at the University of Texas, news reports emerged that 13 players tested positive — an uptick from the six reported the day before. I've long predicted that American sports leagues probably will try to resume playing soon, but that somebody will get sick, and everybody will shut down for the rest of the year. But it's ironic that efforts to resume sports are happening at the same time as the "Black Lives Matter" protests -- which started out as a policing issue, but have spread to hard discussions about racism and the exploitation of Black people in all sect