Dear Commons Community,

The future of One America News (OAN), which established itself as a powerful voice in conservative media by promoting some of the most outlandish falsehoods about the 2020 election, is in serious doubt as major carriers drop it from their lineups and defamation lawsuits threaten to drain its finances.

By the end of this week, the cable network will have lost its presence in some 20 million homes this year. The most recent blow came from Verizon, which will stop carrying OAN on its Fios television service starting Saturday. That will starve the network of a major stream of revenue: the fees it collects from Verizon, which counts roughly 3.5 million cable subscribers. In April, OAN was dropped by AT&T’s DirecTV, which has about 15 million subscribers.  As reported in The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/26/business/oan-troubles.html

OAN’s remaining audience will be small. The network will soon be available only to a few hundred thousand people who subscribe to smaller cable providers, such as Frontier and GCI Liberty, said Scott Robson, a senior research analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence. OAN also sells its programming directly to users through its OAN Live and KlowdTV streaming platforms, but those products most likely provide a fraction of the revenue generated by traditional TV providers.

“I really think this is the death blow for the network,” Mr. Robson said.

In its statement announcing the termination of its OAN deal, Verizon said only that it had been “unable to reach an agreement to continue carrying One America News,” and made no mention of the public pressure campaigns it faced from activist groups like Media Matters, which had been calling on cable providers to drop the network. A company spokeswoman declined to comment further on Tuesday.

DirecTV also did not elaborate on its reasons for dropping OAN, saying in January that the move was part of a “routine internal review.” On Tuesday, the company referred to the January statement.

While OAN doesn’t have the influence wielded by the much larger Fox News, the top-rated cable news network, the fees from its deals with Verizon and AT&T provided a substantial stream of income, about $36 million a year by some estimates. And once it is gone from millions of television sets, OAN will be in a weaker bargaining position with advertisers — fewer potential viewers most likely mean fewer companies willing to pay as much to promote their products on the network.

All this comes at a particularly bad time for OAN, which is based in San Diego. The company and the Herring family that backs it face defamation lawsuits over the network’s claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald J. Trump.

That coverage featured wild stories about supposed plots to steal votes from Mr. Trump. The voting technology companies Smartmatic and Dominion are suing OAN over false claims that their machines enabled Mr. Trump’s enemies to switch votes cast for him to President Biden. One employee of Dominion, Eric Coomer, is also suing the network. Mr. Coomer received death threats after OAN named him in a report as an alleged collaborator of antifa, the far-left movement.

Two election workers from Georgia sued OAN for reporting that they were part of an illegal plot to add fraudulent votes to President Biden’s totals in the state, which he narrowly won. OAN settled that case in April.

The cases are among a series of defamation suits against conservative media outlets and Trump allies that are pending before judges across the country. Dominion and Smartmatic are also suing Newsmax, one of OAN’s competitors, and Fox News.

Good riddance to OAN!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Chris Cuomo  announced yesterday that he’ll return to hosting a prime-time cable news show at the much smaller NewsNation network this fall.

The announcement came at the end of an interview with Dan Abrams on NewsNation’s “Dan Abrams Live.” The hourlong interview included discussions about his ouster from CNN after he was found to have inappropriately helped his brother, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), respond to multiple sexual harassment allegations.

NewsNation, launched in September 2020 by Nexstar Media Group, reaches a much smaller audience than CNN and other major cable news networks. This year, NewsNation has averaged 50,000 viewers in prime time, compared with 2.4 million for Fox News, 1.2 million for MSNBC and 762,000 for CNN, according to Nielsen data.

“I had decided that I can’t go back to what people see as the big game. I don’t think I can make a difference there. I think we need insurgent media. We need outlets that aren’t fringe and just trying to fill their pockets,” Cuomo told Abrams on Tuesday. “I’m going to go where the news is, and I’m going to try very hard to be fair, and I want to do it here.”

Cuomo filed a lawsuit against CNN and its parent company in March demanding $125 million in arbitration, saying he was wrongly terminated and had since suffered serious blows to his reputation.

We wish him luck with his new gig!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Public confidence in higher education’s ability to lead America in a positive direction has sunk steeply in recent years, falling 14 percentage points just since 2020.

Two years ago, more than two-thirds of Americans said colleges were having a positive effect on the country, according to a survey conducted by New America. In the most recent version of the survey, barely half agreed.

As with other recent public-opinion polling, New America’s findings reveal a yawning partisan gap. While nearly three-quarters of Democrats saw higher education’s contributions in a positive light, just 37 percent of Republicans did.  As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Yet the think tank’s annual Varying Degrees survey found that a strong majority, more than 75 percent, thought that some education beyond high school offered a good return on investment for students. And public perception of online education improved markedly in the latest poll, with nearly half of Americans saying it was comparable in quality to in-person education, up from just a third in 2021.

Notably, 17 percent of current students said they thought the quality of online instruction was better than in-person teaching. Just 6 percent of non-students agreed with that perspective.

The greatly improved reputation enjoyed by online education could reflect the move to virtual and hybrid teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic and the ways in which both students and professors adjusted, according to a report on the survey findings. “I expected some shift, but I didn’t expect this substantial increase,” said Sophie Nguyen, a policy analyst with New America who is one of the report’s authors . “It is significant.”

In the report, New America raises alarms about the sudden shift, calling it “unexpected and particularly concerning from an accountability perspective,” given that many of the largest providers of online programs are for-profit colleges, some with a history of predatory practices. There are also questions about oversight as more nonprofit institutions contract with private-sector online program managers to help design and administer virtual programming, Nguyen said.

Despite the improved profile of online education, eight in 10 Americans think that the courses should cost less than those taught face-to-face.

In general, the survey found Americans are worried about college affordability. Only about half thought it was possible to get a high-quality education after high school that is also affordable. Concerns about cost are tied to age: Two-thirds of baby boomers said it was possible to find affordable postsecondary education, while 45 percent of millennials and Generation X agreed. Among Generation Z, a group that includes today’s college students and recent graduates, only 36 percent thought an affordable degree or credential was within reach.

Worries about affordability may be heightened as rising prices for gas and food elevate pocketbook concerns and inflation eats into Americans’ savings.

The New America findings echo other recent public polling on higher education. A survey released earlier this month by Public Agenda and USA Today found that only half of Americans think the economic benefits of college outweigh the costs. More than 80 percent said college expenses had made earning a degree out of reach for low-income students.

When it comes to who should pay for higher education — the government, because education is good for society, or students, because they personally benefit — a majority of respondents in the New America survey said the government should be more responsible.

The issue of college costs has been hotly debated in Washington, yet there has been little consensus on policy to improve affordability and access. Free-college efforts have stalled in Congress. The Biden administration has sought to cancel the student loans of some borrowers, such as those whose colleges defrauded them or graduates working in public-service jobs. But many would like to see the president follow through on a campaign promise and enact blanket loan forgiveness.

Still, the share of respondents who said government should be the primary funder has been shrinking in the New America survey in recent years, from 63 percent in 2020 to 58 percent in the new survey. And the partisan divide on the issue is deep and broad: More than three-quarters of Democrats agree that paying for college should be the responsibility of the government, whether at the state or federal level. By contrast, 63 percent of Republicans think students should mostly foot the bill, since a degree will help them individually get ahead.

Partisan divisions play out in other ways. Not only do Republicans question higher education’s broader societal good, slightly more than half think colleges are having a negative effect on their local communities. Seventy-seven percent of Democrats think colleges benefit their local communities.

Democrats are also more likely than Republicans to think that higher education is underfunded across all sectors, including community colleges, minority-serving institutions, and four-year public universities.

Nguyen points out that partisan differences are not unique to higher education: Republicans and Democrats are also divided on high-profile issues such as the economy, the environment, and gun control. Partisanship can make agreement on policy solutions seem elusive. “We haven’t bridged the gap,” Nguyen said.

One area where all sides agree: accountability. Strong majorities of Americans agree that colleges should lose some access to government funding if they have low graduation rates, low rates of graduates earning a living wage, or graduates with high rates of student-loan debt relative to their earnings.

For the first time, the six-year-old Varying Degrees survey asked respondents about test-optional admissions, as many colleges dropped standardized-test requirements for applicants amid the pandemic. While responses were mixed, there were clear divides by race and age: Higher proportions of Black and Latina/o respondents favored test-optional policies than those who were white or Asian. The youngest respondents were significantly more likely to favor doing away with requirements for applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores. Sixty percent of those in Gen Z supported test-optional policies. About 45 percent of Gen X and millennial respondents were in favor of test-optional admissions, while only a third of baby boomers agreed.

The survey is based on nearly 2,200 online and telephone interviews conducted in April and May.

Interesting results but not surprising given the loss of confidence that Americans have for most of our institutions!

Tony

Pope Francis Dons Traditional Indigenous People’s Headdress

Dear Commons Community,

Pope Francis issued a historic apology yesterday for the Catholic Church’s cooperation with Canada’s “catastrophic” policy of Indigenous residential schools, saying the forced assimilation of Native peoples into Christian society destroyed their cultures, severed families and marginalized generations.

“I am deeply sorry,” Francis said to applause from school survivors and Indigenous community members gathered at a former residential school south of Edmonton, Alberta. He called the school policy a “disastrous error” that was incompatible with the Gospel and said further investigation and healing is needed.

“I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples,” Francis said.

In the first event of his week-long “penitential pilgrimage,” Francis traveled to the lands of four Cree nations to pray at a cemetery and then deliver the long-sought apology at nearby powwow ceremonial grounds. Four chiefs escorted the pontiff in a wheelchair to the site near the former Ermineskin Indian Residential School, and presented him with a feathered headdress after he spoke, making him an honorary leader of the community.

Francis’ words went beyond his earlier apology for the “deplorable” abuses committed by missionaries and instead took institutional responsibility for the church’s cooperation with Canada’s “catastrophic” assimilation policy, which the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission said amounted to a “cultural genocide.”

More than 150,000 native children in Canada were forced to attend government-funded Christian schools from the 19th century until the 1970s in an effort to isolate them from the influence of their homes and culture. The aim was to Christianize and assimilate them into mainstream society, which previous Canadian governments considered superior.

Ottawa has admitted that physical and sexual abuse was rampant at the schools, with students beaten for speaking their native languages. That legacy of that abuse and isolation from family has been cited by Indigenous leaders as a root cause of the epidemic rates of alcohol and drug addiction now on Canadian reservations.

The discoveries of hundreds of potential burial sites at former schools in the past year drew international attention to the schools in Canada and their counterparts in the United States. The revelations prompted Francis to comply with the truth commission’s call for an apology on Canadian soil; Catholic religious orders operated 66 of the country’s 139 residential schools.

Reflecting the conflicting emotions of the day, some in the crowd wept as Francis spoke, while others applauded or stayed silent listening to his words, delivered in his native Spanish with English translations. Others chose not to attend at all.

“I’ve waited 50 years for this apology, and finally today I heard it,” survivor Evelyn Korkmaz said. “Part of me is rejoiced, part of me is sad, part of me is numb.” She added, however, that she had hoped to hear a “work plan” from the pope on what he would do next to reconcile, including releasing church files on children who died at the schools.

Many in the crowd wore traditional dress, including colorful ribbon skirts and vests with Native motifs. Others donned orange shirts, which have become a symbol of school survivors, recalling the story of one woman whose beloved orange shirt, a gift from her grandmother, was confiscated at a school and replaced with a uniform.

“It’s something that is needed, not only for people to hear but for the church to be accountable,” said Sandi Harper, who traveled with her sister and a church group from Saskatchewan in honor of their late mother, who attended a residential school.

“He recognizes this road to reconciliation is going to take time, but he is really on board with us,” she said, calling the apology “genuine.”

A bit late for the Vatican but Pope Francis keeps making right decisions!

Tony

Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings

Dear Commons Community,

At last, there’s a solution to the two-year question of which host — Mayim Bialik or Ken Jennings — will be the permanent emcee of “Jeopardy!” The answer: Both.  As reported by Variety.

Sony Pictures Entertainment has entered into long-term deals that will have the two hosts continue to split duties on the popular syndicated game show, according to a person familiar with the matter, while retaining Bialik to host primetime editions of the show as well as the new “Celebrity Jeopardy!” show expected to start up at ABC. With Sony eager to boost more versions of the program, this person says, more than one host was required. Bialik continues to work on the Fox sitcom, “Call Me Kat,” which has been scheduled for a second season.

A spokesperson for Sony Pictures Entertainment, which has for months been navigating the ultimate succession for Alex Trebek, the longtime “Jeopardy!” host who died in 2020, did not respond to queries for comment.

The dual-host solution speaks to ambitions behind the venerable game show, which originally debuted on NBC in 1964 before evolving into the current early-evening version 20 years later. “With all of our plans for ‘Jeopardy!’ — which is more ‘Jeopardy!,’ not less, more versions — we’re going to need multiple hosts to represent the entire audience, to represent the entire country, in order to take this franchise forward,” executive producer Michael Davies told Variety in June.

But the search for a host has been a laborious one. Producers initially relied on a parade of celebrity guest hosts that ranged from Katie Couric to LeVar Burton to complete the show’s 2020-2021 season. The final answer was supposed to be Mike Richards, an executive producer, but he stepped down after just two weeks due to the discovery of controversial remarks he had made in the past.

Maybe two is better than one.  We wish them both good luck!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Results of a new survey paint a grim picture for higher ed’s hopes of retaining staff members: More than half of them are considering leaving their job in the next year.

That’s according to staff members polled in May by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR); initial results of the survey were released this month.

About 35 percent of the 3,815 staff members surveyed by CUPA-HR said they were either likely or very likely to seek a new job in the next year, and 22 percent said they were somewhat likely to do so. That’s an increase over last year, when those proportions were 24 percent and 19 percent, respectively.

The results of the CUPA-HR survey, and another one recently conducted by The Chronicle, serve as yet another reminder that colleges are facing large-scale dissatisfaction within their work forces.  As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Campus staff members’ reasons for considering an exit are fairly clear-cut — and familiar. Two-thirds said they sought a salary increase, and remote-work opportunities and flexible schedules were also high on their wish lists. At their current institutions, staff members said, they’re not given enough latitude in their work arrangements. Thirty-seven percent of respondents reported having a totally remote or hybrid setup, but 71 percent said most of their work could be done remotely.

Those proportions varied by job type. A quarter of respondents in fiscal and business affairs, for instance, said they were working mostly or completely remotely, while only 1 percent of dining employees were doing the same. And while 83 percent of financial-aid employees said most of their duties could be done remotely, only 11 percent of them were actually working primarily remotely, and two-thirds were working either mostly or completely on-site.

Burnout, too, factored into staff members’ desire to switch jobs. Two-thirds of full-time employees said they were working more hours than what their institution considered full time, with 10 percent working 16 or more extra hours each week. That was, they said, a necessary evil: 58 percent said that their duties required more hours. And the pandemic has only worsened that imbalance. About three-quarters of employees reported taking on more responsibilities as a result of the pandemic, and 63 percent of employees said they’d assumed duties of colleagues who left during the pandemic.

Employees’ responses also indicated their institutions were doing a poor job on several key aspects of retention. Nearly half said they didn’t have opportunities to advance, while 39 percent said their institution was not invested in their career development and a quarter said their contributions weren’t recognized.

Campus leaders and hiring managers are aware of those shortfalls, according to the survey The Chronicle conducted with support from the Huron Consulting Group. Seventy-seven percent of those officials said that higher ed is a less appealing place to work today than it was a year ago.

The top three changes they said they’d made in the past year to retain employees were adding remote- and hybrid-work flexibility, increasing base salaries, and adding training and development opportunities.

The CUPA-HR survey, too, contained some bright spots. Sixty-two percent of staff members in the survey said they were satisfied with their job. Two-thirds would recommend their department as a place to work, and 60 percent said they’d recommend their institution. Three-quarters said they felt their work had purpose, while two-thirds said they felt valued, such as being able to bring up problems, and had a sense of belonging.

And those looking for a new job aren’t set on leaving higher education entirely. About two-thirds of respondents said they’d look for work at another higher-ed institution, while 43 percent would look within their own institution. For that population, retention efforts could still succeed, the authors of the CUPA-HR research brief on the survey point out. Half of employees said they’d seek work at a nonprofit organization, and nearly two-thirds are open to working in the private sector.

Another serious issue for our colleges and universities in this almost post-COVID period.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

On July 25, 1972, Jean Heller, a reporter on The Associated Press investigative team, then called the Special Assignment Team, broke news that rocked the nation. Based on documents leaked by Peter Buxtun, a whistleblower at the U.S. Public Health Service, the then 29-year-old journalist and the only woman on the team, reported that the federal government let hundreds of Black men in rural Alabama go untreated for syphilis for 40 years in order to study the impact of the disease on the human body. Most of the men were denied access to penicillin, even when it became widely available as a cure. A public outcry ensued, and nearly four months later, the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male” came to an end. The investigation would have far-reaching implications: The men in the study filed a lawsuit that resulted in a $10 million settlement, Congress passed laws governing how subjects in research studies were treated, and more than two decades later President Bill Clinton formally apologized for the study, calling it “shameful.”

Today, the effects of the study still linger — it is often blamed for the unwillingness of some African Americans to participate in medical research.

In observance of the 50th anniversary of Heller’s groundbreaking investigation, the AP is republishing the original report and a recent interview with her and others on how the story came together.

For 40 years the U.S. Public Health Service has conducted a study in which human guinea pigs, denied proper medical treatment, have died of syphilis and its side effects.

The study was conducted to determine from autopsies what the disease does to the human body.

PHS officials responsible for initiating the experiment have long since retired. Current PHS officials, who say they have serious doubts about the morality of the study, also say that it is too late to treat syphilis in any of the study’s surviving participants.

But PHS doctors say they are rendering whatever other medical services they can now give to the survivors while the study of the disease’s effects continues.

The experiment, called the Tuskegee Study began in 1932 with about 600 black men mostly poor and uneducated, from Tuskegee, Ala., an area that had the highest syphilis rate in the nation at the time.

One-third of the group was free of syphilis; two-thirds showed evidence of the disease. In the syphilitic group, half were given the best treatment known at the time, but the other half, about 200 men, received no treatment at all for syphilis, PHS officials say.

As incentives to enter the program, the men were promised free transportation to and from hospitals, free hot lunches, free medicine for any disease other than syphilis and free burial after autopsies were performed.

The Tuskegee Study began 10 years before penicillin was discovered to be a cure for syphilis and 15 years before the drug became widely available. Yet, even after penicillin became common, and while its use probably could have helped or saved a number of the experiment subjects, the drug was denied them, Dr. J.D. Millar says.

He is chief of the venereal disease branch of the PHS’s Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and is now in charge of what remains of the Tuskegee Study. Dr. Millar said in an interview that he has serious doubts about the program.

“I think a definite serious moral problem existed when the study was undertaken, a more serious moral problem was overlooked in the post-war years when penicillin became available but was not given to these men and a moral problem still exists,” Dr. Millar said.

“But the study began when attitudes were much different on treatment and experimentation. At this point in time, with our current knowledge of treatment and the disease and the revolutionary change in approach to human experimentation, I don’t believe the program would be undertaken,” he said.

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study is a heinous example of science research gone awry!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Eight New York Times opinion columnists revisit their incorrect predictions and bad advice — and reflect on why they changed their minds.

They hope that in doing so, they can be models of how valuable it can be to admit when you get things wrong.

“I did my research. I read, watched, I talked to the experts. I formed an opinion, and I wrote about it. I was wrong!” 

Below are links to their confessions.

Tony

————————————————————

I was wrong about inflation by Paul Krugman

I was wrong about Al Franken by Michelle Goldberg

I was wrong about capitalism by David Brooks

I was wrong about the power of protest by Zeynep Tufekci

I was wrong about Trump voters by Bret Stephens

I was wrong about Chinese censorship by Thomas Friedman

I was wrong about Facebook by Farhad Manjoo

I was wrong about Mitt Romney by Gail Collins

Dear Commons Community,

Editorial boards at both the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal slammed former President Donald Trump in Friday editorials, with the former calling him “unworthy” to hold office again following his “damning” silence surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

“As his followers stormed the Capitol, calling on his vice president to be hanged, President Donald Trump sat in his private dining room, watching TV, doing nothing,” the editorial begins. “For three hours, seven minutes.”

The editorial by the right-wing tabloid, controlled by longtime Trump supporter Rupert Murdoch, follows the Jan. 6 House select committee’s investigation into Trump’s inaction, which on Thursday laid out Trump’s unwillingness to call off the violence.

“Trump only wanted one thing during that infamous afternoon: to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to decertify the election of Joe Biden,” the editorial board said. “He thought the violence of his loyal followers would make Pence crack, or delay the vote altogether.”

On the same day, The Wall Street Journal ran a piece from their editorial board titled “The President Who Stood Still on Jan. 6.”

The Wall Street Journal is also owned by Murdoch.

“Mr. Trump took an oath to defend the Constitution, and he had a duty as Commander in Chief to protect the Capitol from a mob attacking it in his name. He refused,” the article read.

“In the 18 months since, Mr. Trump has shown not an iota of regret,” the editorial continued. “On Thursday he claimed to be vindicated by a bill to clarify the Electoral Count Act…Character is revealed in a crisis, and Mr. Pence passed his Jan. 6 trial. Mr. Trump utterly failed his.”

Last month, the Post’s editorial board called Trump a “prisoner of his own ego” for his inability to admit the 2020 presidential election was not stolen from him. The board added that the GOP should leave Trump behind.

Friday’s editorial was even more to the point.

“It’s up to the Justice Department to decide if this is a crime,” it concluded. “But as a matter of principle, as a matter of character, Trump has proven himself unworthy to be this country’s chief executive again.”

Unworthy indeed!  And how come Murdoch’s Fox News decided not to air the hearing the Congressional hearing last Thursday while all the other major networks did?

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

White House pandemic response coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha delivered a grim message yesterday about the ever-evolving coronavirus pathogen that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates has infected more than 140 million Americans.

“This virus is going to be with us forever,” Jha said during a press briefing otherwise devoted to an update on the president’s health. “It’s really, really important that people build up their immunity against this virus,” he added, emphasizing that vaccination is the best means of doing so.

It was a stark reminder that any hopes of fully eradicating the coronavirus are long gone. And while many Americans have sought a return to normal life, the coronavirus continues to cause economic and social disruptions.

In a separate interview, Dr. Anthony Fauci said;

“I think with a combination of good public health measures, a degree of global herd immunity and a good vaccine, which I do hope and feel cautiously optimistic that we will get, I think when we put all three of those together, we will get control of this, whether it’s this year or next year. I’m not certain,” he said.

But, he added, “I don’t really see us eradicating it.” 

As reported by Yahoo News.

“Dr. Jha is acknowledging the consensus among medical and public health experts — that COVID-19 is with us for our lifetimes and beyond,” Dr. Leana Wen, a public health expert closely aligned with the White House on the pandemic, told Yahoo News.

“But this is not the COVID-19 of 2020,” Wen said, pointing to the widespread availability of vaccines and treatments. “We now have many tools that allow us to live with this coronavirus.”

The several waves of the Omicron variant that have washed over the United States have suggested that the virus initially known as SARS-CoV-2 is becoming increasingly transmissible, though not necessarily more virulent. While that is good news for people who are vaccinated and boosted, it does mean that the virus will almost certainly find new ways to evade immune protections, if only to ultimately cause relatively mild illness.

Even as the BA.5 variant continues to drive new infections, a new, even more transmissible strain known as BA.2.75 has been detected in the United States.

“The dominant strains are so contagious that it’s extremely difficult to avoid infection,” Wen told Yahoo News.

But even if the coronavirus lingers for years to come, it is for the most part the unvaccinated and the unboosted who risk serious illness or death. More than 1 million Americans have died due to COVID-19 since the pandemic began.

“We’re at a point now where, I believe, where we can prevent nearly every COVID death in America,” Jha said. The week ended with about 400 people dying daily from COVID-19 across the country.

“I think with a combination of good public health measures, a degree of global herd immunity and a good vaccine, which I do hope and feel cautiously optimistic that we will get, I think when we put all three of those together, we will get control of this, whether it’s this year or next year. I’m not certain,” he said.

But, he added, “I don’t really see us eradicating it.” 

Two smart people saying the same thing.  We should listen.

Tony