Dear Commons Community,

According to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll, Americans believe by a 16-point margin that they are better off with Biden in charge of the pandemic than they would have been with the alternative: Donald Trump.

They also give Biden’s Democratic Party much higher marks on COVID-19 leadership than they give Republicans.  As reported by Yahoo News.

The survey of 3,201 U.S. adults, which was conducted from Sept. 14 to 20, represents a warning sign for Republicans like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who have doubled down on their opposition to public health precautions such as indoor mask and vaccine requirements in the face of the hypercontagious Delta variant, which is now killing more than 2,000 Americans each day — a tragedy that few experts thought possible at a time of free, safe and effective vaccines.

As Delta ripped through undervaccinated red states this summer, DeSantis and a number of other GOP governors prohibited local jurisdictions, local businesses and even local school districts from implementing mask and vaccine mandates.

In contrast, Democratic leaders such as Biden and California Gov. Gavin Newsom — who just defeated a recall effort amid high approval of his COVID response — focused on masks and vaccines as the best way to slow the spread of Delta and keep schools and businesses open.

Partly as a result, California now has the one of  lowest coronavirus rate in the country. Meanwhile, counties across the U.S. that voted for Trump by 10 or more points in 2020 are recording far more new coronavirus cases than counties that voted for Biden by the same margin.

Americans appear to have noticed the discrepancy. According to the new Yahoo News/YouGov poll, just 30 percent of U.S. adults think the coronavirus situation would be better if Trump were still president. Far more — 46 percent — say it would be worse.

Notably, the share of 2020 Biden voters who say things would be worse with Trump in charge (88 percent) is nearly 20 points higher than the share of Trump voters who say things would be better (69 percent), suggesting that even some of the former president’s fans are not confident he would have handled Delta well.

That lack of confidence extends, in turn, to the rest of the Republican Party, particularly the leaders who have spent the past few months insisting on a less-is-more approach to Delta in their states. When asked who’s responsible for the current surge in COVID cases, far more Americans assign a “great deal” of blame to Republican governors (34 percent) than to Democratic governors (19 percent) or the Biden administration (24 percent). The number of fully vaccinated Americans who say Republican governors deserve a great deal of blame is even higher (45 percent).

The upshot is that nearly half of Americans (47 percent) now disapprove of how Republican leaders have handled the coronavirus, while just 28 percent approve.

Meanwhile, the share of Democratic voters who approve of their leaders on COVID (75 percent) is significantly higher than the share of Republican voters who approve of theirs (61 percent). Asked specifically about how GOP leaders have handled the Delta variant in particular, even fewer Republicans (57 percent) approved. The public’s growing discomfort with GOP leadership on COVID is not simply a partisan phenomenon.

Which isn’t to suggest that polarization is no longer playing a major part in U.S. pandemic politics. In general, “Democratic leaders” are barely breaking even on their handling of COVID (at 39 percent approve to 39 percent disapprove), and Biden is performing only slightly better (at 47 percent approve to 44 percent disapprove). Most Republicans will continue to insist that Democrats are mishandling COVID, regardless of how much higher the daily death rates are in Trump states than Biden states. And vice versa.

Yet Delta has sharpened the divide between red and blue on both pandemic policy and real-world suffering — and the public now seems to prefer the Democratic emphasis on prevention over the Republicans’ “let it rip” approach.

Earlier this year, Americans were optimistic that so-called herd immunity was on the horizon and that vaccines would soon vanquish the virus. In that context, DeSantis’s hands-off vision looked alluring. No indoor mask mandates. No vaccine requirements. No more stress on families or businesses. Just live your life as if the pandemic was already over, and soon it would be.

Then came Delta, which is twice as transmissible as the original virus and can spread among the vaccinated. DeSantis and other conservative Republicans, such as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, didn’t budge. But Democrats did, pushing precautions such as indoor masking instead of defending the right of unvaccinated Americans to do whatever they please.

It turns out that’s not just sound public health policy. It also appears to be good politics. Why? Because two-thirds of U.S. adults are now fully vaccinated, and more than twice as many of them approve of how Democratic leaders are handling COVID (52 percent) than approve of how Republican leaders are handling it (24 percent).

That gap could widen in the months ahead. Asked whether they favor a rule that would require all businesses with 100 or more employees to make sure their workers either get vaccinated against COVID-19 or get tested each week instead — a rule that Biden is now putting in place — most Americans (52 percent) say yes. Just 36 percent say no. Again, this result isn’t solely partisan: more independents (48 percent) favor the rule than oppose it (41 percent), and there’s even some support from Republicans (28 percent).

On the flip side, just 31 percent of Americans favor prohibiting local school districts from requiring masks; 55 percent oppose such prohibitions. An even greater number (63 percent) say students and staff should be required to wear masks in school while Delta is surging. Wide majorities plainly disagree with GOP governors like DeSantis on this issue, which may partly explain why his approval rating appears to have fallen in Florida over the last two months.

If Delta continues to surge this fall and winter, as most experts expect, Republican leaders are likely to dig themselves an even deeper hole if they continue to resist basic public health precautions.

In that scenario, few Americans would favor further lockdowns (29 percent) or closing indoor drinking and dining (32 percent) — measures that not even Democrats are proposing at this point. But most U.S. adults would support predominantly Democratic policies such as mask requirements in public indoor spaces (60 percent), “encouraging” as many people as possible to get vaccinated (67 percent) and even “requiring” as many people as possible to get vaccinated (54 percent). Support for requiring proof of vaccination inside bars, restaurants and gyms is lower (50 percent) — but it’s still 10 points higher than the opposition (40 percent).

For now, Delta appears to have passed its summer peak; nationwide, new cases have plateaued around 150,000 a day — still a dangerously high level — as they finally decline in the hard-hit South and start to tick up in the Midwest and Northeast. Colder weather will likely speed the spread of the virus, as will holiday celebrations. According to the Yahoo News/YouGov poll, 43 percent of Americans now say they “plan to gather with family and/or friends from other households for Thanksgiving” (up from 34 percent last year), while just 29 percent say they will not do so (down from 43 percent last year). 

Given higher vaccination rates and greater safety measures in blue states, it’s unclear if any winter wave in the North will be as severe as this summer’s Southern surge. It’s also unclear how current pandemic politics will affect the 2022 midterm elections, if at all. What is clear is that so far, Democrats and Republicans have responded to Delta in very different ways, with very different outcomes — and most Americans do not think the Republican approach is working.

________________

The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 3,201 U.S. adults interviewed online from Sept. 14 to 20, 2021. This sample was weighted according to gender, age, race and education based on the American Community Survey, conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, as well as 2020 presidential vote (or non-vote) and voter registration status. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. adults. The margin of error is approximately 1.9 percent.

The results of this survey make a good deal of sense.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A lawyer for Donald Trump’s indicted corporate finance chief told a judge yesterday he has “strong reason to believe” more indictments are coming in an ongoing New York investigation into the former president’s real estate empire.

Lawyer Bryan Scarlatos made the remark (see video above)  during Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg’s first court appearance since his July 1 arraignment on tax fraud charges. Scarlatos did not say what led him to believe more people would be charged in the closely watched case.  As reported by the Associated Press.

In recent weeks, a pair of Trump Organization executives have testified before a grand jury, which is continuing to meet behind closed doors to hear testimony and review evidence in the case.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office declined comment. 

“Mr. Weisselberg is separate from the Trump Organization. He is the only individual here whose liberty is at stake,” Scarlatos said. “What I am concerned about is that he will become collateral damage in a larger fight between the Trump Organization and the DA’s office.”

Scarlatos raised the issue of more possible indictments while arguing for adequate time to review up to 6 million pages of documents that he said prosecutors are turning over as evidence, calling it “a herculean task” and saying new indictments would create a ”moving target.”

Prosecutors said Weisselberg is “no stranger” to many of the documents because they include Trump Organization business records that the executive likely produced or reviewed as part of his job.

Judge Juan Manuel Merchan gave both sides until next spring to file motions and responses. He said he’d decide on motions at a July 12, 2022, hearing, the next time Weisselberg is due in court.

Merchan said he expected to set a trial date at that time and would likely schedule it for the end of August or beginning of September next year.

“The reason I mention it now is that it’s on everybody’s radar,” Merchan said. “I don’t have an exact date yet.”

Weisselberg has pleaded not guilty to charges he collected more than $1.7 million in off-the-books compensation, including apartment rent, car payments and school tuition.  Trump’s company is also charged in the case, which prosecutors have described as a “sweeping and audacious” tax fraud scheme.

Weisselberg sat quietly next to his lawyers at Monday’s brief hearing and didn’t speak to reporters on his way to and from court. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, everyone wore masks and the courtroom had clear plastic partitions between various parties. 

Trump himself has not been charged with any wrongdoing. He has condemned the case, the first to arise from New York authorities’ two-year investigation into the former president’s business dealings, as a “political Witch Hunt.”

Trump has said his company’s actions were standard practice in the business and in no way a crime.

According to the indictment, from 2005 through this year, the Trump Organization and Weisselberg cheated tax authorities by conspiring to pay senior executives off the books by way of lucrative fringe benefits and other means.

Weisselberg alone was accused of defrauding the federal government, state and city out of more than $900,000 in unpaid taxes and undeserved tax refunds.

The most serious charge against Weisselberg, grand larceny, carries five to 15 years in prison. The tax fraud charges against the company are punishable by a fine of double the amount of unpaid taxes, or $250,000, whichever is larger.

Weisselberg’s lawyers, Skarlatos and Mary Mulligan, said in a statement after Monday’s hearing that the indictment is “full of unsupported and flawed factual and legal assertions.”

“We look forward to challenging those assertions in court,” the lawyers said.

The 74-year-old Weisselberg has intimate knowledge of the Trump Organization’s financial dealings from nearly five decades at the company. The charges against him could enable prosecutors to pressure him to cooperate with the investigation and tell them what he knows, but so far there have been no signs of that.

The case is being led by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both Democrats.

The Trump Organization is the entity through which the former president manages his many ventures, including his investments in office towers, hotels and golf courses, his many marketing deals and his TV pursuits.

Trump turned over day-to-day operations of the company to his sons Donald Jr. and Eric after he was elected president.

According to the indictment, Weisselberg paid rent on his Manhattan apartment with company checks and directed the company to pay for his utility bills and parking, too.

The company also paid for private school tuition for Weisselberg’s grandchildren with checks bearing Trump’s signature, as well as for Mercedes cars driven by Weisselberg and his wife, and gave him cash to hand out tips around Christmas.

Such perks were listed on internal Trump company documents as being part of Weisselberg’s compensation but were not included on his W-2 forms or otherwise reported, and the company did not withhold taxes on their value, prosecutors said.

Trump’s company also issued checks, at Weisselberg’s request, to pay for personal expenses and upgrades to his homes and an apartment used by one of his sons, such as new beds, flat-screen TVs, carpeting and furniture, prosecutors said.

What a legal mess.  This investigation, trial, appeals, etc. will go on for years.

Tony

Data provided by The New York Times

Dear Commons Community,

The known death toll from COVID-19 in the United States surpassed the number of dead from the Spanish Flu yesterday  according to the most recent data – although a direct comparison between the raw numbers doesn’t give the whole story.

What is clear is that the sheer numbers are a heavy burden.  COVID-related U.S. deaths as of yesterday were over 676,000 according to New York Times data (see chart above) .  California, Texas, Florida, New York a and Illinois are the states with the most deaths.

The 1918 Spanish Flu took an estimated 675,000 lives in the U.S.  Before COVID, the Spanish Flu pandemic was the most lethal since the United States was formed.  

There are differences between the two scenarios. In 1918, the U.S. population was just over 100 million, whereas it’s 330 million today, as The Washington Post points out. That makes the death rate 1 in 500 Americans as opposed to the 1918 toll of 1 in 150.

Globally, the number is 4.7 million dead so far, which is much lower than the worldwide 50 million who died in 1918 and 1919 from the Spanish flu, as Fortune noted. But unlike the two-year period that the Spanish flu ravaged humanity’s ranks, COVID is not even close to quitting.

“The fact that deaths surged at the end of 2020, nine months after the pandemic reached the United States, with the highest daily death tolls in early January 2021, is perhaps the most discouraging comparison to the historical record,” Virginia Tech historian E. Thomas Ewing told The Washington Post.  “We ignored the lessons of 1918, and then we disregarded warnings issued in the first months of this pandemic. We will never know how many lives could have been saved if we had taken this threat more seriously.”

The number of deaths in our country will go down in history as an American tragedy that was preventable!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Earlier this summer, I read Helgoland:  Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution by Carlo Rovelli (see https://apicciano.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2021/08/20/new-book-helgoland-making-sense-of-the-quantum-revolution-by-carlo-rovelli/   Rovelli is a theoretical physicist, who has written several successful books on physics and quantum theory. I have been impressed with his writing style and his way of explaining scientific and mathematical concepts.  I have just finished reading, Anaximander, about the sixth-century BC Greek philosopher, who understood that the Earth floated in space;  that all animals came from the sea; and that natural (not supernatural) laws control change in the world.  Rovelli considers Anaximander the world’s first scientist, and uses him as the starting point of scientific thinking.

The original title of this book was, The First Scientist:  Anaximander and His Legacy in 2007.  The English translation entitled simply Anaxiimander was published in 2011.

I have to agree with one reviewer who commented that “on its face, it seems to be a historical study of the place of Anaximander in the development of modern science. And, for the first half of the book, it really is that. But from there, Rovelli takes off into a much more loosely bound discussion of truth, reality, relativism, religion, language, and the fate of the world.”

I was not at all familiar with Anaximander’s legacy and found Rovelli’s treatment illuminating.  At 181 pages plus notes, it is a quick read and written in a most accessible style.

If you are at all interested in Anaximander and his contributions, I recommend Rovelli’s book.

Below is a brief review that appeared in Publishers Weekly.

Tony

Publishers Weekly

The First Scientist: Anaximander and His Legacy

Rovelli (Quantum Gravity), a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Marseille, presents the scientific work and life of Anaximander, whom he ranks as “one of the intellectual giants of the ages.” Born in the Greek city of Miletus in 610 B.C.E., Anaximander investigated the nature of the physical universe, treating physical processes, such as the hydrological cycle and thunder, as separate from religion and the intervention of the gods, and recognizing that the earth floats in space. In Rovelli’s view, Anixmander was unique in questioning accepted hypotheses and results, such as the idea that the earth needed support to keep from falling. Rovelli sees a connection between the independence of mind that allowed Anixmander to pursue scientific investigation and the political freedom characteristic of the Ionian states that allowed discussion among equals. This fostered the search for truth through successive approximation and error, versus the “top down” modes of thought imposed in imperial states. This welcome addition to the popular science bookshelf, winner of the Prix du Livre Haute Maurienne de l’Astronomie, highlights the quality of thought which has shaped man’s institutions so profoundly over the millennia. (September 2011)

Dear Commons Community,

The U.S. Treasury issued a report last week entitled, “The-Economics-of-Childcare-Supply,” that  characterized the U.S. child care system as “unworkable.”  The report commented that:

“The average American family with at least one child under age 5 uses 13% of their income to pay for child care, according to the report, nearly double the 7% that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services considers affordable.

Additionally, less than 20% of the children eligible for the Child Care and Development Fund — a federal assistance program for low-income families — are getting that funding.”

“Child care is a textbook example of a broken market, and one reason is that when you pay for it, the price does not account for all the positive things it confers on our society,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement upon release of the report . “When we under invest in child care, we forgo that; we give up a happier, healthier, more prosperous labor force in the future.”

One failure, according to the report, is that parents must pay for care early in their careers when they are earning less and shouldering student loan and mortgage payments. Additionally, child care providers are challenged by low revenue and high turnover of low wage workers.

“The United States has a severe child care shortage,” Yellen said. “The child care centers that do exist are often in disrepair, operating on razor-thin margins, with workers whose wages keep them at the edge of poverty.”

‘An overdue, and critical investment’

Over half of Americans live in so-called child care deserts, or areas where there are three children per every child care opening, according to the Center for American Progress (CAP). Low-income and rural families are more likely to live in such areas.

“There’s a massive supply problem underpinning this,” Laura Dallas McSorley, senior director of Early Childhood Policy at CAP, told Yahoo Money. “There’s no meaningful access for children and families to access high quality childcare, much less affordable childcare.”

To address these issues, the Biden administration and Democrats propose a major investment in the child care system as part of the $3.5 trillion infrastructure package moving through Congress. Those include universal preschool and child-care subsidies for low-income families.

“What’s in front of Congress right now is an overdue and critical investment in building an early childhood system that will work for kids and families,” Dallas McSorley said. “We really haven’t had as broad of an investment, given the opportunity.”

‘Contribution to economic growth’

The universal preschool proposal would increase access to free, high-quality child care for all 3- and 4-year-olds. The program would also include higher wages for early childhood educators.

As a way to cut the cost for child care, the plan suggests upgrading existing facilities and building a supply of child care in high-need areas as well as boosting compensation for child care workers.

The two main proposals would cost $450 billion in total over a decade.

“In many states, you have to be very low income to be eligible for childcare assistance, and frequently it doesn’t even actually cover the full cost,” Rasheed Malik, associate director of research for Early Childhood Policy at the Center for American Progress, told Yahoo Money. “The legislation is a total change there.”

On top of those two proposals, the infrastructure package includes a national paid family and medical leave program as well as permanently extending the expansion of the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) that allows taxpayers to deduct expenses incurred for child care.

“It’s past time that we treat child care as what it is – an element whose contribution to economic growth is as essential as infrastructure or energy,” Yellen said. “Enacting them is the single most important thing we can do to build a stronger economy over the next several decades.”

Good work by the Treasury Department!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday’s rally in Washington, D.C. to support the January 6th insurrectionists fizzled within a couple of hours.  Police and reporters outnumbered the several hundred Pro-Trump demonstrators.

The rally ended less than 90 minutes after it began around noon in Union Square, a small park just west, and in clear view, of the Capitol.

Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee said that the crowd was “about what we expected” and that the stepped-up police presence may have kept numbers lower. “I’m hopeful that had some impact on it,” he said in an interview before the rally.

In the afternoon, the U.S. Capitol Police estimated that, excluding law enforcement, 400 to 450 people were inside the protest area.

Conservative columnist George Will during an interview on MSNBC (see video above) commented on the rally.

Tony

NEW VIDEO: #FloridaIsVietnam

Under @GovRonDeSantis Covid Deaths in Florida will surpass American deaths during *ENTIRE* Vietnam war.

We need your RETWEET and QUOTE RETWEET. pic.twitter.com/u7K2zYiiwp

— Don Winslow (@donwinslow) September 16, 2021

Dear Commons Community,

Dear Commons Community,

A key advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration overwhelmingly rejected recommending Pfizer booster shots for most recipients of the company’s coronavirus vaccine, instead endorsing them only for people who are 65 or older or at high risk of severe Covid-19, and received their second dose at least six months ago.

The vote — the first on boosters in the United States — was counter to the Biden administration’s strategy to make extra shots available to most fully vaccinated adults in the United States eight months after they received a second dose.  As reported by The New York Times.

Committee members appeared dismissive of the argument that the general population needed booster shots, saying the data from Pfizer and elsewhere still seemed to show two shots protected against severe disease or hospitalization and did not prove a third shot would stem the spread of infection. Some also criticized a lack of data that an additional injection would be safe for younger people.

“It’s unclear that everyone needs to be boosted, other than a subset of the population that clearly would be at high risk for serious disease,” said Dr. Michael G. Kurilla, a committee member and official at the National Institutes of Health.

But the panel’s final recommendation left some room for the White House to argue that the core of its booster strategy remained intact. Depending on how “at high risk” is defined, tens of millions of Americans could conceivably wind up eligible for additional shots of the Pfizer vaccine.

The committee of largely outside experts voted 16 to 2 against a Pfizer booster for people 16 and older after a tense daylong public discussion that put divisions in the agency and the administration on public display. Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health joined infectious disease experts and doctors in voting against additional shots for such a broad swath of the population.

Dr. Paul A. Offit, a committee member and the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, questioned whether extra shots would do much at all to change the arc of the pandemic. “We all agree that if we really want to impact this pandemic, we need to vaccinate the unvaccinated,” he said.

But the panel unanimously embraced a fallback position to limit additional shots to older adults and others at high risk of severe Covid illness. Then, after an informal poll pushed by a senior F.D.A. official, committee members specified that health care workers, emergency responders and others whose jobs put them at special risk should also be eligible for the booster shots. The official — Dr. Peter Marks, who oversees the F.D.A.’s vaccine division — said the at-risk group would also include teachers.

Aides in the Biden administration noted that under the White House’s plan to offer booster shots eight months after the second injections, many in that same group would have been first in line because they were vaccinated earliest.

The F.D.A. has the final word on vaccine approvals, and while it is not obliged to follow the committee’s recommendations, it typically does. The agency is likely to issue a decision by early next week.

An advisory committee of the C.D.C. is scheduled to meet Wednesday and Thursday to discuss booster shots before that agency, which sets vaccine policy, issues recommendations on who exactly should receive them.

In a statement about Friday’s vote, Kathrin U. Jansen, senior vice president and head of vaccine research and development at Pfizer, said, “We thank the committee for their thoughtful review of the data and will work with the F.D.A. following today’s meeting to address the committee’s questions, as we continue to believe in the benefits of a booster dose for a broader population.”

Those who have criticized the administration’s booster strategy as overly broad or premature said the advisory committee acted as a necessary check on Friday.

The meeting “put the F.D.A. back in the driver’s seat,” said Dr. Luciana Borio, a former acting chief scientist at the agency. The expert panel, she said, “was allowed to maintain its scientific independence. It understood there were significant limitations with the data presented and that the F.D.A. needs to review the data carefully before making a decision.”

My wife Elaine and I are ready to take our booster shots! We advise all those who meet the F.D.A. recommendation to do so also.

Tony