Dear Commons Community,

Just days after publishing significant new guidance on airborne transmission of the coronavirus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday withdrew the advice, saying only that it had been “posted in error” on the agency’s website.

The top U.S. public health agency stirred confusion by posting — and then taking down — an apparent change in its position on how easily the coronavirus can spread from person to person through the air.

But officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say their position has not really changed and that the post last week on the agency’s website was an error that has been taken down.

It was “an honest mistake” that happened when a draft update was posted before going through a full editing and approval process, said Dr. Jay Butler, the CDC’s deputy director for infectious diseases.

The post suggested that the agency believes the virus can hang in the air and spread over an extended distance. But the agency continues to believe larger and heavier droplets that come from coughing or sneezing are the primary means of transmission, Butler said.

Most CDC guidance about social distancing is built around that idea, saying that about 6 feet is a safe buffer between people who are not wearing masks.

In interviews, CDC officials have acknowledged growing evidence that the virus can sometimes be transmitted on even smaller, aerosolized particles or droplets that spread over a wider area. Certain case clusters have been tied to events in which the virus appeared to have spread through the air in, for example, a choir practice. But such incidents did not appear to be common.

Public health experts urge people to wear masks, which can stop or reduce contact with both larger droplets and aerosolized particles.

But for months, agency officials said little about aerosolized particles. So when the CDC quietly posted an update Friday that discussed the particles in more detail, the agency’s position appeared to have changed. The post said the virus can remain suspended in the air and drift more than 6 feet. It also emphasized the importance of indoor ventilation and seemed to describe the coronavirus as the kind of germ that can spread widely through the air.

The post caused widespread discussion in public health circles because of its implications. It could mean, for example, that hospitals might have to place infected people in rooms that are specially designed to prevent air from flowing to other parts of the hospital.

But the CDC is not advising any changes in how far people stay away from each other, how they are housed at hospitals or other measures, Butler said.

The CDC has come under attack for past revisions of guidance during the pandemic, some of which were driven by political pressure by the Trump administration.

Butler said there was no external political pressure behind the change in this instance. “This was an internal issue,. And we’re working hard to address it and make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he said.

In a statement released Monday, the CDC said the revisions to the “How COVID-19 Spreads” page happened “without appropriate in-house technical review.”

“We are reviewing our process and tightening criteria for review of all guidance and updates before they are posted to the CDC website,” the statement said.

At least one expert said the episode could further chip away at public confidence in the CDC.

“The consistent inconsistency in this administration’s guidance on COVID-19 has severely compromised the nation’s trust in our public health agencies,” said Dr. Howard Koh, a Harvard University public health professor who was a high-ranking official in the Department of Health and Human Services during the Obama administration.

“To rectify the latest challenge, the CDC must acknowledge that growing scientific evidence indicates the importance of airborne transmission through aerosols, making mask wearing even more critical as we head into the difficult fall and winter season,” Koh said in a statement.

As I have said in previous posts, the only person I believe when it comes to coronavirus is Dr. Anthony Fauci!

Tony

Amy Coney Barrett and Barbara Lagoa – Possible Nominees to Replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg

Dear Commons Community,

Donald Trump has committed to nominating a woman for the seat on the US Supreme Court held by the late Ruth Bader Ginsberg.  He has indicated he will name his nominee by the end of this week.

Below is a short list of possible contenders.

___

AMY CONEY BARRETT

Barrett, 48, is widely considered to be the front-runner. She was previously considered as a finalist for Trump’s second nomination to the high court, which eventually went to Justice Brett Kavanaugh. A devout Catholic mother of seven, she is a favorite of religious conservatives and considered a strong opponent of abortion.

Barrett was nominated by Trump to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit and confirmed by the Senate in October 2017 by a 55-43 vote. The 7th Circuit, based in Chicago, covers the states of Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.

In her nearly three years on the bench, Barrett’s judicial record includes the authorship of around 100 opinions and several telling dissents in which Barrett displayed her clear and consistent conservative bent.

Barrett served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. She worked briefly as a lawyer in private practice in Washington, D.C., before returning to the University of Notre Dame Law School, her alma mater, to become a professor in 2002.

During her Senate confirmation hearing for the appeals court in 2017, Democrats pressed Barrett on whether her strong religious views would impact her potential rulings on abortion and other hot-button social issues.

Barrett responded that she takes he Catholic faith seriously, but said that “I would stress that my personal church affiliation or my religious belief would not bear in the discharge of my duties as a judge.”

She is married to Jesse Barrett, a former federal prosecutor who is a partner at a law firm in South Bend, Indiana. The couple have seven children, included two adopted from Haiti and one child with special needs.

___

BARBARA LAGOA

Lagoa, 52, is a Cuban American judge from Florida who was nominated by Trump to serve on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2019. Her name was on the White House’s list of potential high court contenders released earlier this month.

Raised in the heavily Latino Miami suburb of Hialeah, Lagoa is the daughter of Cuban exiles who fled the communist regime of Fidel Castro. She speaks fluent Spanish and has a solidly conservative judicial record. Lagoa’s potential nomination is being touted as a way for Trump to shore up flagging support in a crucial battleground state where recent polls have shown Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden with a narrow lead.

Lagoa also has the potential benefit of having been previously vetted by the Senate just 10 months ago, sailing to confirmation by a wide margin of 80-15 in a relatively rare bipartisan vote in November. The 11th Circuit covers Georgia, Florida and Alabama.

On Saturday, Trump said he had not yet met Lagoa but that “she’s Hispanic and highly respected.”

Lagoa is a graduate of Florida International University and went on the earn her law degree from Columbia University in New York in 1992. She then worked in private practice in Miami for about a decade.

In 2000, Lagoa gained notoriety as part of the legal team that represented relatives of Elián González, the young boy caught in a high-profile custody dispute between his father in Cuba and family members in Miami.

Lagoa is married to Paul Huck Jr., a Miami attorney. The couple have three children.

___

JOAN LARSEN

Larsen, 51, was a little-known University of Michigan legal scholar until 2015, when then- Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, tapped her to fill a vacant seat on the Michigan Supreme Court.

The following year, “Justice Joan” campaigned to fill the remaining term of her predecessor on the court by appealing to conservative voters, promoting an originalist interpretation of legal texts and pledging not to “legislate from the bench.” As a presidential candidate Trump included Larsen’s name on his first list of potential nominees to the nation’s highest court.

Trump carried Michigan that November and after becoming president quickly sought to elevate Larsen to the federal bench, tapping her in May 2017 to fill a vacant seat on the Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. Michigan’s two Democratic U.S. senators initially held up her appointment since the White House hadn’t consulted them on the nomination, as is customary. But after meeting with the senators, Larsen was confirmed by the Senate by a 60-38 vote the following November.

Larsen grew up in Waterloo, Iowa, and graduated from the University of Northern Iowa before going to Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago. After graduating in 1993, Larsen landed a coveted clerkship with Justice Antonin Scalia.

Following the election for President George W. Bush, she joined the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice, where she authored a still-secret 2002 memo that addressed detainees’ rights to challenge their detention.

Returning to teach law at Michigan, Larsen championed an expansive view of the powers of the presidency. She wrote a 2006 article defending Bush’s use of signing statements to interpret laws passed by Congress. At her 2017 confirmation hearing for the federal bench, however, Larsen assured senators she would have no problem ruling against Trump if the law demanded it.

Larsen is married to Michigan law professor Adam Pritchard, an expert on corporate and securities law. They live in Scio Township near Ann Arbor and have two children.

___

ALLISON JONES RUSHING

Rushing, 38, was confirmed just 18 months ago to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond. If elevated to the Supreme Court, she would be the youngest justice confirmed since the early 1800s.

She is a native of Hendersonville, North Carolina. Her potential selection is being championed within the White House by chief of staff Mark Meadows, who also hails from the mountains of the Tarheel State.

Rushing graduated from Wake Forest University before attending Duke University, where she earned her law degree in 2007. She then clerked for future Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was then an appeals court judge, as well as at the Supreme Court for Justice Clarence Thomas.

As an appellate specialist while in private practice at the Williams & Connolly law firm in Washington, Rushing filed scores of briefs with the Supreme Court. But her comparatively short legal career included prior work with a conservative Christian legal group that is sure to stoke Democrats and their allies to fight her nomination.

While in law school in 2005, Rushing interned at Alliance Defending Freedom, a group known for its opposition to same-sex marriage and expanded rights for transgender people. That has led Democrats to cast Rushing as an “a young, ideological extremist.”

Rushing is married to Blake Rushing. The couple have a young son.

___

KATE COMERFORD TODD

Todd, 45, is the only lawyer on Trump’s potential shortlist for the Supreme Court who has never served as a judge.

A deputy White House counsel, her close connection to the Trump administration could give an opening to Democrats to attack her independence and relative lack of experience. However, her lack of a judicial record also leaves little paper trail for opponents to sort through for material to attack.

Todd graduated from Cornell University before attending Harvard Law School. She then clerked for Thomas at the Supreme Court. She worked in private practice before serving as the senior vice president and chief counsel for the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center, which is the legal arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Todd is married to Gordon Dwyer Todd, a partner at Sidley law firm in Washington specializing in white-collar defense and government litigation. The couple live in Northern Virginia with their four children.

Several news outlets are predicting that Trump will nominate either Amy Coney Barrett or Barbara Lagoa.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Back in late May, the United States reached a grim milestone: 100,000 lives lost to the coronavirus. The majority of those deaths occurred within a three-month time-frame. On average, over 1,000 people died every single day. Now, nearly four months later, the country has doubled that figure. As of last night, the official death toll had surpassed 200,000. It’s by far  the highest death toll in the world.

It’s an unfathomable loss. It’s also going to get worse before it gets better. According to data released by John Hopkins University, the number of new Covid-19 cases has increased by at least 10% since last week in 31 states. Multiple states including Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Utah experienced a record number of new daily cases over the weekend. According to the New York Times, 800 people are still dying daily.

With an approved vaccine not expected to be widely available until mid-2021 (depending on who you ask), and cooler temperatures forcing people to spend more time indoors, the numbers are unlikely to improve. According to the Associated Press, some experts think the numbers could double before the end of the year, bringing the death toll up to 400,000.

On Friday, Trump claimed that the situation could be much worse. “If we didn’t do our job, it would be three and a half, two and a half, maybe 3 million people.” But those numbers and his attitude are in stark contrast to what he said in March when he claimed that a death toll between 100,00 and 200,000 would indicate a job well done.

It’s clear that Trump is now trying to move the goal posts to make up for his fumbling of the pandemic ahead of a presidential election that will undoubtedly serve as a referendum on the issue. But doing so might be a lost cause: According to a new poll released by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, only 39% of Americans approve of how Trump is handling the outbreak.

President Trump is responsible for a portion of the coronavirus deaths especially in those states where he encouraged governors to open up too early and discouraged the wearing of masks and social distancing.

Tony

Michael S. Roth, President of Wesleyan University

Dear Commons Community,

Michael S. Roth. president of Wesleyan University, had an op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times entitled,  Colleges, Conservatives and the Kakistocracy.  It touches on a subject that many of us in the academy think about especially in the current sensitive era of hyper-polarized politics. 

I know that I caution students about what we say and how we say it but I don’t censor what is said unless it is blatantly hateful.  I have had experiences with this especially in my online courses where students have a lot of freedom to post to a discussion board or other community messaging system from the privacy of their homes or other non-classroom spaces.  I believe President Roth has important advice for us that is:

“Classic liberals and some conservatives often claim that only a commitment to a totally open platform for speech will enable the kinds of debate that will eventually lead to better ideas, even to truth. These folks don’t believe that speech causes harm, or they believe the harm it might cause is less dangerous than the harm caused by regulating the presentation of ideas.”

I agree. 

Mr. Roth’s entire op-ed is below.  And by the way, a kakistocracy is a system of government that is run by the worst, least qualified, and/or most unscrupulous citizens. The word was coined in the seventeenth century.

Tony

—————————————————————-

New York Times

Colleges, Conservatives and the Kakistocracy.

By Michael S. Roth

Sept. 19, 2020

For the last several years I have been disputing overblown claims that political correctness is running amok on college campuses. Given my job as the president of Wesleyan University, well-known to be (happily) a bastion of left-leaning protest, this probably isn’t very surprising.

But at the same time, I’ve been actively urging colleges and universities to create greater intellectual diversity by ensuring that conservative voices and viewpoints can flourish along with progressive ones. These might seem like opposing missions, but they are not. You can do both. In fact, if colleges are to maintain their status as places of real learning and growth, they must do both.

Lately, one hears a lot about threats to freedom of expression posed by the intolerant left. And not all of these complaints are coming from the right. Intellectuals who think of themselves as moderate liberals are using their platforms to complain about threats posed by “wokeness” or “cancel culture.”

Those critics do have a point. On college campuses, students sometimes denounce those with whom they strongly disagree as unworthy of being heard at all. That “canceling” can be (but is not always) a problem. It’s one thing to see speakers who advocate hateful violence canceled; not everything is permitted. It’s another thing to cancel speakers just because their ideas are unpopular.

In July, the more than 150 signatories of the much-discussed Harpers letter on freedom of expression noted: “[R]esistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion — which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting.” The “intolerant climate that has set in on all sides,” they write, undermines democracy.

In some quarters the letter was greeted with derision, since these were writers with large megaphones grumbling about being silenced, and the idea that there are “intolerant people on all sides” recalled one of President Donald Trump’s most egregious statements.

Similar complaints are also coming now from academics who say that they are afraid of being canceled because they aren’t fully in accord with the leftist cultural climates of their campuses. The linguist John McWhorter wrote in a recent article in The Atlantic that he’s received hundreds of messages expressing a “very rational culture of fear among those who dissent, even slightly, with the tenets of the woke left.” Professor McWhorter describes this as a “new Maoism” because of the tendency to demand public confessions and to adhere to an ideological dogma. He knows, of course, that Maoism killed tens of millions of people in the name of its dogma, so why resort to this overheated rhetoric? People living under the Maoist regime had a “very rational culture of fear” of being deported, tortured or killed. It seems that the academics who write to Professor McWhorter are afraid of being mocked, vilified or perhaps of having their careers disrupted.

These professors don’t see themselves as snowflakes, but they do crave some protection from students and colleagues demanding ideological conformity. On-campus or social media vilification is emotionally damaging, even if it doesn’t involve being shipped to a re-education camp. Prof. McWhorter himself isn’t afraid, it seems, and he has found the courage and intellectual resources (along with the protections of tenure) to stand against vilification. Perhaps he will inspire others, and the institutions that employ them, to do the same.

It is no secret that the faculty at most schools leans left, and it’s not unreasonable for students and educators to ask how this tilt affects teaching — particularly how students are introduced to a broad range of ideas on enduring questions in the humanities and interpretive social sciences.

At Wesleyan in 2017, I called for (and then put into practice) an affirmative action program for thinkers and courses rooted in traditionally conservative ideas. Not a few students, alumni and faculty objected to my approach (as well as my use of the term “affirmative action”), and we have had intense arguments about it. Such arguments themselves, I’d like to think, further intellectual diversity.

These days when I make a plea for greater intellectual diversity, I’m asked not about teaching Aristotle, but whether I want to invite fascists and racists to campus. My answer, of course, is no: As I have argued before, universities should be “safe enough” places for all students. But when hearing the call for teaching a broad range of ideas, many students and professors immediately worry about providing a platform for notions parroted by Trumpians meant only to protect the privileges of white supremacy and wealth.

Is it any wonder? The administration in Washington has appropriated the conservative moniker even as it means to break down the remaining norms of civil society and political culture. But there is little that is conservative about the current kakistocracy.

When I talk about the tradition of conservative thinkers, I have in mind those who were skeptical of the powers of a central government, those who felt that a well-ordered society depended on a notion of transcendence, and those who were concerned that even well-intentioned policies to improve peoples’ lives could have unintended consequences that are ruinous. I have in mind traditions of natural law and of religious belief. I have in mind thinkers who point out that theories of how people should organize society often depend on frightening powers of organized violence.

These streams of thought offer powerful, alternative perspectives on enduring questions. Given the current makeup of the academy, we can’t just hope for them to get a hearing. We have to proactively bring them into the mix, when they are not already there.

Classic liberals and some conservatives often claim that only a commitment to a totally open platform for speech will enable the kinds of debate that will eventually lead to better ideas, even to truth. These folks don’t believe that speech causes harm, or they believe the harm it might cause is less dangerous than the harm caused by regulating the presentation of ideas.

It should go without saying that educators must resist calls for ideological conformity: Learning requires that students (and faculty) be exposed to ideas they might find offensive but from which they can learn, and that students (and faculty) be protected from the expression of ideas that aim at intimidation or harassment. Sometimes the lines of protection won’t be clear, and there will be contentious discussions. The pragmatist approach I recommend works against indoctrination and against prejudice, but it doesn’t appeal to a foundational or procedural answer to the questions of how much intellectual diversity or how much free speech one should cultivate in an educational institution. There isn’t a single answer that always works. These questions require open-ended conversation in which people can practice intellectual humility as they realize the fragility of their own preconceived notions and knee-jerk responses.

These discussions lead to creative outcomes when the people involved don’t all have the same notions. Intellectual diversity is essential if the conversations on campus are to amplify inquiry rather than orthodoxy — if they are to enhance our ability to live with ambiguity rather than reinforce our need for certainty. Teachers can create safe enough environments that are also challenging contexts for considering enduring questions and contemporary issues, so that students learn to appreciate the stimulation of disagreement and depend less on the comforts of conformity.

In higher education, there is no contradiction between standing up to the fascist tendencies of racist authoritarianism and working for greater intellectual diversity. In both cases, we are defending the opportunity to learn through inquiry and discussion.

Michael S. Roth (@mroth78) is the president of Wesleyan University

Dear Commons Community,

My colleague, David Bloomfield, has a short, sublime suggestion for Joe Biden in a letter to the New York Times that was printed this morning.  See below.

Tony

——————————————————————————————

New York Times

To the Editor:

September 20, 2020

Joe Biden should immediately announce Barack Obama as his choice to add a worthy new justice to the Supreme Court and ensure record Democratic turnout in the presidential and Senate elections.

David C. Bloomfield
Brooklyn

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times opinion columnist, Pierre Bouie, had a piece yesterday entitled, Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World, that begs the question:  How much longer are we going to allow this platform to foment hatred and undermine democracy?  He makes the point that Facebook has evolved into the platform of choice among hate groups and others seeking to sway opinion and incite violence. 

Bouie focuses first on examples of dictators in developing countries who have used Facebook to engage in genocidal behavior.  He then comments on  how here in the United States, Facebook has been the chief vector for QAnon, a byzantine conspiracy theory in which President Trump struggles against a global cabal of Satan-worshipping, life-force sucking pedophiles and their enablers.  QAnon supporters believe Trump will eventually go public in an operation that ends with the arrest, internment and execution of that cabal, which conveniently includes many of his Democratic political opponents.

Bouie’s piece also includes a reference to a memo written by  Sophie Zhang, a former data scientist at Facebook, that shows the company’s refusal to take action against governments and political parties that use fake accounts to spread propaganda, mislead citizens and influence elections.

The entire piece is below.

Tony

——————————————————————————–

New York Times

Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

By Jamelle Bouie

Opinion Columnist

Sept. 18, 2020

For years, Myanmar’s military used Facebook to incite hatred and genocidal violence against the country’s mostly Muslim Rohingya minority group, leading to mass death and displacement. It took until 2018 for Facebook to admit to and apologize for its failure to act.

Two years later, the platform is, yet again, sowing the seeds for genocidal violence. This time it’s in Ethiopia, where the recent assassination of Hachalu Hundessa, a singer and political activist from the country’s Oromo ethnic group, led to violence in its capital city, Addis Ababa. This bloodshed was, according to Vice News, “supercharged by the almost-instant and widespread sharing of hate speech and incitement to violence on Facebook, which whipped up people’s anger.” This follows a similar incident in 2019, where disinformation shared on Facebook helped catapult violence that claimed 86 lives in Ethiopia’s Oromia region.

Facebook has been incredibly lucrative for its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, who ranks among the wealthiest men in the world. But it’s been a disaster for the world itself, a powerful vector for paranoia, propaganda and conspiracy-theorizing as well as authoritarian crackdowns and vicious attacks on the free press. Wherever it goes, chaos and destabilization follow.

The news from Ethiopia comes at the same time as a report about a memo, written by Sophie Zhang, a former data scientist at Facebook. Obtained by BuzzFeed News, the memo shows the company’s refusal to take action against governments and political parties that use fake accounts to spread propaganda, mislead citizens and influence elections.

“In the three years I’ve spent at Facebook, I’ve found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own citizenry, and caused international news on multiple occasions,” Zhang wrote. “I have personally made decisions that affected national presidents without oversight and taken action to enforce against so many prominent politicians globally that I’ve lost count,” she continued.

The most disturbing revelations from Zhang’s memo relate to the failure of Facebook to take swift action against coordinated activity in countries like Honduras and Azerbaijan, where political leaders used armies of fake accounts to attack opponents and undermine independent media. “We simply didn’t care enough to stop them,” she wrote. In a statement, a spokeswoman for Facebook said that “We investigate each issue carefully, including those that Ms. Zhang raises, before we take action or go out and make claims publicly as a company.”

Zhang’s memo only adds to what we already know about the ease with which bad actors use Facebook to further violence and authoritarian politics. “There are five major ways that authoritarian regimes exploit Facebook and other social media services,” Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media scholar at the University of Virginia, writes in “Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy.” They can “organize countermovements to emerging civil society or protest movements,” “frame the public debate along their terms,” let citizens “voice complaints without direct appeal or protest” and “coordinate among elites to rally support.” They can also use social media to aid in the “surveillance and harassment of opposition activists and journalists.”

We’ve seen such activity in places around the world. In Russia, Vladimir Putin’s allies use Facebook and other social media to harass critics and spread disinformation on behalf of the regime. In India, Vaidhyanathan notes, Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party used Facebook to “rile up anti-Muslim passions and channel people to the polls” as well as “destroy the reputations of journalists, civil society activists, critics of anti-Islam policies, and political enemies.” And in the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte leveraged Facebook for “virulent character assassination, threats, and harassment” as well as propaganda in service of vigilantism and violent nationalism.

Here in the United States, Facebook has been the chief vector for QAnon, a byzantine conspiracy theory in which President Trump struggles against a global cabal of Satan-worshipping, life-force sucking pedophiles and their enablers. QAnon supporters believe Trump will eventually go public in an operation that ends with the arrest, internment and execution of that cabal, which conveniently includes many of his Democratic political opponents.

Facebook, according to the company’s own investigation, is home to thousands of QAnon groups and pages with millions of members and followers. Its recommendation algorithms push users to engage with QAnon content, spreading the conspiracy to people who may never have encountered it otherwise. Similarly, a report from the German Marshall Fund pegs the recent spate of fire conspiracies — false claims of arson in Oregon by antifa or Black Lives Matter — to the uncontrolled spread of rumors and disinformation on Facebook.

Zuckerberg clearly wants the public to see him and his company as partners in the defense of democracy. Earlier this month, he announced steps to limit election-related misinformation and stop voter suppression and to support efforts to help Americans register and cast a ballot. “I believe our democracy is strong enough to withstand this challenge and deliver a free and fair election — even if it takes time for every vote to be counted,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We’ve voted during global pandemics before. We can do this.”

He is right that our democracy can survive a pandemic. It is unclear, however, if it can survive a platform optimized for conspiratorial thinking. Like industrial-age steel companies dumping poisonous waste into waterways, Facebook pumps paranoia and disinformation into the body politic, the toxic byproduct of its relentless drive for profit. We eventually cleaned up the waste. It’s an open question whether we can clean up after Facebook.

Dear Commons Community,

Journalist Bob Woodward pushed back during an  interview Thursday on Fox News after host Dana Perino confronted him about his personal political judgments about President Donald Trump.

In Woodward’s new book, “Rage,” which is partly based on 19 interviews with the president, the journalist ultimately concludes that Trump is not fit for the Oval Office, a judgment he has repeatedly said is based on overwhelming evidence. This includes his conversations with Trump, other top White House and government officials, and Trump’s deliberate downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic that, as of Thursday, has killed more than 197,000 people in the U.S. 

Perino questioned Woodward’s journalistic authority to make that call and asked for his judgment on Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. 

“What I did in the last 4½ years is report on Trump, I think as much as any outsider, get close to him and his operations, so I’m able to make the judgment, as I do, that I believe ― with overwhelming evidence ― he is the wrong man for the job,” Woodward said. “I have not reported in depth on Joe Biden. I am not endorsing anyone.” \

Perino also asked her guest what Ben Bradlee, the legendary Washington Post editor whom Woodward credits with teaching him journalism, would have thought of him weighing in on Trump’s fitness for office. Woodward had said that Bradlee always told him to be “tough on everyone … we’re not in the political game.”

“Dana, if you’ve been able to read the book, the evidence is overwhelming,” Woodward answered. “It’s one of the saddest moments for this country to have a leader who has failed to tell the truth, who has failed to warn the people.”

“The confusion in the message for somebody trying to figure this out: Should I send my kids to school? Can I go to the grocery store? … The president has that megaphone, and people look to him as the one who is going to say, ‘Here’s the reality.’ And if you distort the reality, you have failed in your job, and you’re the wrong man for that job,” he said.

Watch the entire interview above.  Good stuff especially the last six minutes.

Tony

But will it be so easy? The cultural ecosystem, and the fever swamps of social media that amplify Trump’s craziness, will remain. Fox News and Facebook will continue to validate the biases and conspiracy theories of a nation that’s increasingly proud of its ignorance, anti-intellectualism and denial of science.

Dear Commons Community,

Two companies, Moderna and Pfizer, revealed details about how participants are being selected and monitored, the conditions under which the trials could be stopped early if there were problems, and the evidence researchers will use to determine whether people who got the vaccines were protected from Covid-19.  By doing so, the companies hope to earn the trust of the public and of scientists who have clamored for details of the studies. As reported by The New York Times.

“Moderna’s study will involve 30,000 participants, and Pfizer’s 44,000.

Companies typically share these documents after their studies are complete. The disclosures while the trials are still underway, a rare move, are aimed at addressing growing suspicion among Americans that President Trump’s drive to produce a vaccine before the election on Nov. 3 could result in a product that was unsafe.

The plan released by Moderna on yesterday morning included a likely timetable that could reach into next year for determining whether its vaccine works. It does not jibe with the president’s optimistic predictions of a vaccine widely available to the public in October.

Pfizer’s plan does not appear to estimate when its results could be available. Its chief executive has said repeatedly that the company hopes to have an answer as early as October. Moderna has said only that it could have a result before the end of the year.

Moderna’s 135-page plan, or protocol, indicated that the company’s first analysis of early trial data might not be conducted until late December, though company officials now say they expect the initial analysis in November. In any case, there may not be enough information then to determine whether the vaccine works, and the final analysis might not take place until months later, heading into the spring of next year.

Moderna’s timeline meshes with the cautionary estimates from many researchers, including Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who told senators on Wednesday that a vaccine would not be widely available until the middle of next year. Hours later, Trump sharply contradicted him, making unsubstantiated projections that a vaccine could become widely available weeks from now.

On Wednesday, Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic presidential nominee, said in Wilmington, Del., that the process used to evaluate and approve a vaccine would have to be “totally transparent” to win public confidence. He has said that Mr. Trump’s calls for companies and regulators to speed the process have shaken the public’s faith in vaccines and that politics has no place in vaccine development.

Researchers in particular have been urging vaccine makers to share the detailed blueprints of their studies so that outside experts can evaluate them. At least one expert, after reading the plans, has already raised questions about the way the trials were designed.

“I want to acknowledge a good deed done,” said Peter Doshi, who is on the faculty at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy in Baltimore and an editor with The BMJ, a medical journal. He previously requested the plans from Moderna and Pfizer. “They have opened up, for the first time, the ability for researchers not involved in the trial to form their own independent judgment about the design of this study.”

Until now, none of the nine companies that are testing vaccines in large clinical trials had released this level of detail.”

Without a doubt, we need this level of transparency with testing.  As I said in a previous posting, I will not take a vaccine unless Dr. Anthony Fauci says it is okay. He is the only person in the present administration who I believe when it comes to COVID-19.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Here is a sad case that exemplifies the dangers of not wearing a mask and practicing social distancing at a wedding  reception. Multiple outbreaks — including some over 200 miles from the wedding venue — have emerged in the last month.  As reported by the Bangor Daily News and The Huffington Post.

“At least seven people have died due to a coronavirus outbreak linked to a single indoor wedding reception in Millinocket, Maine.

One of those deaths occurred in a Millinocket hospital while six were at the Maplecrest Rehabilitation Center in Madison, a nursing home where 19 confirmed COVID-19 cases emerged last week. 

The nursing home is roughly 100 miles southwest of the Big Moose Inn, Cabins and Campground, where the wedding reception was held on Aug. 7. A spokesperson for the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention previously told HuffPost that one of the wedding guests was in the same household as an employee of the nursing home.

The wedding, which saw attendance from more than 60 guests who did not wear masks or socially distance, is now linked to 176 COVID-19 cases in Maine, including an outbreak in York County Jail, which is over 220 miles southwest of Big Moose Inn. One of the wedding guests worked at the jail, according to the Bangor Daily News.

Amanda Roy, whose mother Anna Littlejohn resides at Maplecrest Rehabilitation Center and tested positive for COVID-19, told the Bangor Daily News that she is angry at the wedded couple for the resulting virus spread.

“I’m glad they got the greatest day of their life,” Roy told the paper. “But it made a nightmare and probably the worst days of some other people’s lives.”

During a media briefing this week, Maine CDC Director Dr. Nirav Shah stressed that all Maine locals needed to remain vigilant to quell the spread of COVID-19. The state was facing over 4,400 confirmed cases and had seen 138 deaths as of Tuesday.

“COVID-19 right now is not on the other side of the fence,” Shah said. “It is in our yards.”

Shah also stressed the importance of face masks, pointing out that wearing masks had not been the norm in the York County Jail, likely contributing to the outbreak. 

“The one theme that runs through all of [these incidents] is mask wearing,” Shah said. “Face coverings both at a molecular level and now at a population level have been well associated at reducing the likelihood of transmission of COVID-19. Does it eliminate the likelihood? No, there’s no intervention in medical science that eliminates anything. But they greatly reduce the likelihood.”

The lesson here is to please wear a mask and practice social distancing!!!!

Tony