From Federal Crackdown to Understanding Coronavirus Numbers

Donald Trump and his billionaire Christian fundamentalist education secretary Betsy DeVos are both pushing agendas by threatening to withhold federal funding from schools that don’t reopen in the fall due to concerns over the coronavirus.

Despite the Trump administration’s claims, reopening schools is unsafe without expensive precautions. Schools are likely high contact zones that can’t afford regular disinfection, many students and parents may object to wearing masks and observing social distance, and children can easily pass the virus to elders. Effective health-related renovations would cost an estimated $245 billion, which Republicans refuse to provide.

Truthout details how a hasty school reopening would create an illusion of normalcy bolstering Trump’s reelection chances while draining the public school system of funds and confidence so DeVos can privatize it.

With the coronavirus still disproportionately ravaging the health and employment of Black and Brown Americans, eviction moratoriums, a confusing patchwork of federal and state protections, are starting to expire. The federal moratorium lifts Saturday, and expanded unemployment benefits on July 31.

While the Senate is expected to take up a new stimulus bill this week, it’s unclear if it will extend these protections. Thousands of eviction cases have been filed since late March, mostly in low-income neighborhoods in Florida and Georgia, where cases are spiking.

As The Center for Public Integrity explains, this continues a trend of affordable housing crisis and racial disparity from long before the pandemic.

Since police officers appeared in public schools to ensure students’ safety, the school to prison pipeline has strengthened and school shootings have persisted. The 1999 Columbine shooting led to increased police presence in almost every school, but there have been 249 U.S. school shootings since then.

For years, and with renewed support after the murder of George Floyd, young Black and Brown organizers have been rallying to board meetings and the streets to fight for the removal of police from schools. Students are also protesting exorbitant police budgets diverting funds from education and the disproportionate rate of arrests of Black students, which creates an early harsh relationship with law enforcement.

Colorlines reports students in many cases, like in Milwaukee and Portland, are succeeding in severing schools’ ties with the police.

FAIR criticizes overly pessimist media coverage of COVID-19 vaccines.

Forbes and other outlets ran pieces fearmongering about the short-lived antibodies in COVID-19 patients after recovery: “only 17% of Covid patients in a small study still had ‘potent’ antibodies a few months after the onset of symptoms.”

But this assessment only quotes one scientist. It also fails to take a more nuanced approach of the kind offered by the New York Times and The Atlantic, which elaborate that existing studies only look at the immune system’s B cells. We don’t yet know if a T cell response will require as many antibodies to be effective.

Moreover, if natural immunity to the virus proves suboptimal, vaccines will be crucial—so papers needn’t undermine efforts to convince a wary public to participate in a vaccination program for clickbait.

Over a thousand National Academy of Science members have registered their personal concern with the Trump administration’s regular degradation of science, reports InsideClimate News.

The effort began in 2016 and gained support in 2018 in response to Trump’s motioning to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. Trump has since continued eschewing the urgency called for by climate science with rollbacks on climate protections.

Now, as U.S. COVID-19 deaths approach 150,000 and cases continue to rise in 43 states, the white house disparages leading epidemiologists. Climate scientists call the government’s handing a “teachable moment” for leadership in the future of climate action.

Leaders and laypeople alike cherry pick COVID-19 data to best serve their point, generating conflicting information across news and social media. ProPublica offers detailed tips from epidemiologists to sort through the noise for truth in numbers.

For instance, to best understand the condition of a state, observe three counts together: number of cases, case positivity rates, and number of deaths. The number of deaths tracks the virus’ ultimate impact, case count shows the general trajectory of transmission, and a case positivity rate below 5% indicates that enough tests are being conducted to provide an accurate case count.

The numbers currently show that cases and hospitalizations have been rising, there are tens of thousands of new infections every day, there are not enough tests, and each day brings the deaths of hundreds of Americans. For leaders to accomplish change, they’ll have to “stop using partial trends to tell their own narratives” and focus on the work to be done.