College Football’s Worst Fear in the Pandemic: The Death of a Player – Mourners at Jamain Stephens’ Burial

Dear Commons Community,

Jamain Stephens, a college football player, was buried last week after succumbing to a coronavirus-related blood clot.  Below is his story as published this morning in the New York Times.

Jamain Stephens did not need much of an introduction when he showed up years ago for his first day of practice at Central Catholic High School. His father, with the same name, was a former first-round draft pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

But Stephens made a memorable entrance anyway, wearing a white T-shirt, as was required by all freshmen, that happened to be dotted with red Kool-Aid stains. A fitting nickname was born: Juice.

Wherever Stephens went, through high school and then to California University, a small college in southwestern Pennsylvania, he brought juice to the room.

Stephens grew into a mountain of a young man, at 6-foot-3 and in the neighborhood of 350 pounds, playing defensive tackle. His feet were so enormous that his high school coaches went to the Steelers to find size 19 cleats. His hands were so immense that he carried a tablet in the palm of his hand as if it were a phone.

His personality was equally outsize. Juice always had a smile on his face — even, as a former teacher said, when he wasn’t smiling. At Cal. U., as the school is known, he was typically the first player to reach out to a new recruit. A professor could count on him to liven up discussions when night classes inevitably dragged. The campus minister said any father would be happy to have him date his daughter.

“If you see Juice as a human being, you see a very large human being,” said Garth Taylor, a youth football coach who had known Stephens since he was a young boy. “His spirit was twice as big as that.”

Stephens’s impact explains why so many people were left reeling earlier this month when the college senior died from a blood clot after being hospitalized with Covid-19 and pneumonia.

His death devastated many at his high school, where he had returned to work out this summer, and at his college, where he was the embodiment of the big man on campus, known for flashing his basketball skills in intramural games, rounding up friends for a weekly Krispy Kreme run and mentoring children back home.

But his death also rippled through the sports landscape, as he is believed to be the first college football player whose death can be traced to the virus.

The football team at Central Catholic High School, led by Coach Terry Totten, knelt in prayer for Jamain Stephens at the beginning of a practice.

Most colleges around the country, including Cal. U., which plays at the N.C.A.A. Division II level, have canceled or postponed fall sports because of the coronavirus pandemic. But some schools have forged ahead, hoping to salvage billions in TV revenue, and perhaps some ticket sales. The Big Ten Conference said last week that it would play football in October, reversing an earlier decision to wait until at least next year. The Pac-12 is considering a similar pivot.

Part of the rationale for playing is that young athletes, even if they carry and spread the virus, are highly unlikely to die from it. While that is largely true, the virus can have other serious effects, and the risks have been shown to be more severe for Black people and those with large body mass indexes, like many linemen.

So as cases among college football players persist — Louisiana State Coach Ed Orgeron said last week that “most” of his players had contracted the virus — Stephens’s death may not be the last. More than 10,000 players are expected to suit up this fall.

“This is a billion-dollar industry — I get that,” Kelly Allen, Stephens’s mother, said in an interview. “But not at the risk of these boys’ lives. Nothing is worth that.”

Allen spoke last week in a courtyard at Central Catholic overlooking the football field, just after visiting a funeral home to make arrangements for the burial of her only child. Even though Cal. U.’s campus has been closed since March, and football activities have been shut down since then, Allen said her son returned to school in mid-August so he could work out with his teammates in anticipation of a spring season. The players were not tested for the coronavirus or even given temperature checks upon their return.

Allen, who spent Monday — her son’s 21st birthday — visiting his grave site, said she had many questions for which she would seek answers.

“My heart is shattered in a million pieces,” she said. “I can’t even describe the pain I feel. But do I have fight in me? Absolutely. If it will save some parent’s grief, absolutely.”

Although California University has not allowed students on campus, the school reported six Covid-19 cases this month among students who returned to the nearby Vulcan Village, a sprawling, 770-bed student-housing complex where Stephens had lived since his freshman year.

A school spokeswoman, Christine Kindl, said the school is not responsible for testing or contact tracing of students at the complex because it is not on campus and is owned not by the university, but by a nonprofit that funds student organizations, Student Association, Inc. State health officials are responsible for contact tracing, she said.

The distance between the student association and the university extends only so far: students who live at Vulcan Village pay their rent to the university, as well as student fees that are routed to the nonprofit.

The university’s president, Geraldine M. Jones, declined an interview request to discuss the school’s coronavirus policies. Justin Schiefelbein, a manager at Vulcan Village, did not respond to a message.

Cal. U., a public school whose enrollment last year was 6,842, is wedged into a bend in the Monongahela River, an hour south of Pittsburgh. Allen drove her son there on Aug. 17 and checked him into his ground-floor apartment at Vulcan Village, which is popular with football players because it is adjacent to the school’s football stadium.

When they arrived, Allen wiped down the furnished, two-bedroom suite, which shares a kitchen with another unit, with disinfectant. She left her son with a bag of masks, plenty of Lysol and a reminder to stay away from parties, which have been linked to outbreaks at schools around the country.

Stephens had wanted to return so he could work out with his teammates, even if it were in small groups, his mother said. He was determined to make the most of his senior season, no matter when it might happen. He had lost 15 pounds over the summer with the help of a nutritionist and had wanted to drop another 45 by the start of the 2021 season. To help, his mother dropped off prepared meals.

Sports had taken root early for Stephens.

When he was barely big enough to sleep in his own bed, Stephens wrapped his hands around a baseball at night, and propped up a football and basketball behind his pillow. Even though he rarely saw his father, who settled in North Carolina after a five-year N.F.L. career, Stephens began playing tackle football by age 6. He was so big that, because of weight limits, he was required to play with children twice his age.

“For five years, he was basically a tackling dummy,” said Taylor, one of his youth coaches. “He got his butt whipped, but his spirit was such that he came back the next day.”

Stephens befriended Taylor’s son, Erick, and they became so close that they told people they were cousins. Juice loved to ask people what position they thought Erick, who is 6-foot-4 and 265 pounds, played. They would guess lineman, linebacker or tight end, and Juice would chuckle, revealing that Erick played quarterback at West Liberty University.

The inside joke also carried a message: Don’t prejudge me.

Juice fancied himself as more than an immovable object on the defensive line. When he played catch, he’d pluck passes out of the air with one hand, like Odell Beckham Jr. On the basketball court, he played like a rotund Stephen Curry, mesmerizing a hapless defender with his dribble and footwork, then bouncing back and draining a 3-pointer.

He understood how sports could connect.

When the Chain Gang — the nickname for his high school defense — convened each Thursday for an open forum in the locker room, it was Stephens who was the first to console a teammate whose mother had breast cancer and another whose father had just died, said Dave Fleming, the defensive coordinator at Central Catholic.

Kurt Hinish, a defensive lineman at Notre Dame who played with Stephens at Central Catholic, cherished the talks they would have when he drove Stephens home after practice. “It didn’t matter where you came from, the color of your skin, your religious affiliation or who you associated with,” Hinish said. “Juice was going to interact with you in a genuine way.”

That empathy also was at the root of an improved relationship in recent years with his father.

“My son and I had a great relationship,” the elder Stephens said in a phone interview. “That’s not to say there wasn’t strain over the years; that’s not to say there wasn’t separation over the years. As far as the time I wasn’t there as frequently as I should have been — as they say, there’s two sides of every story. My side is simply that I love my son and my relationship with him was improving. I’ll tell you this: Jamain Allen Stephens was the best part of me.”

If the younger Stephens eagerly opened his heart to others, his eyes were open, too.

He watched as his mother helped others qualify for housing assistance in her job with Pittsburgh’s housing authority. And how she took on two other jobs — working as a bank customer service representative at night and a tax preparer on weekends — to help pay tuition. He also noted how the men who ran the Garfield Park Gators, his youth program, taught more than football to young, mostly Black boys, helping them navigate difficult circumstances at home, at school or in other parts of their lives.

Juice and Erick had visions of one day opening a high school so that it wasn’t only the select few who ended up at a place like Central Catholic, where they could flourish academically, socially and athletically.

“We’ve lost about 15 different childhood friends due to gun violence and things they shouldn’t have lost their lives to,” Erick Taylor said. “It was our dream to open up a school in Pittsburgh where everyone could be exactly what they’re meant to be in this world.”

Erick last spoke with Stephens two days before he died. They were continuing a longstanding ritual: watching their favorite athlete, LeBron James. Usually they watched together, but this time they spoke by phone as James’s Los Angeles Lakers blew a big lead but recovered for a playoff win over the Houston Rockets. “He said, ‘They’re about to kick me out of the hospital, I’m going so crazy about this game,’” Taylor said.

By then, it had been a little over a week since Stephens had begun to feel ill.

When his mother spoke to him on the phone on Friday, Aug. 28, she asked if he was congested. He told her his allergies were acting up. But he also said his roommate, Josh Dale, had been fighting what he thought was a cold.

“The next day, he said, ‘Oh, I think I caught Josh’s cold,’” Allen said.

That night, Stephens attended a party in his building, but left after a short time because he was tired, according to one of his teammates. School officials would not say if any of the six reported coronavirus cases at Vulcan Village stemmed from the party. But in an email to residents two days later, Schiefelbein, the complex manager, said the party exceeded a 10-person limit on gatherings and warned that similar parties could lead to dismissal.

When Allen called her son on Aug. 31, Stephens was uncharacteristically asleep at 10 a.m. She started reading a list of Covid-19 symptoms to him: headache, sore throat, loss of taste and others. “It was no, no, no, no,” Allen said. “And when I got to the bottom of the list, I said ‘diarrhea’ and he said, ‘Mom, when I got up this morning, I did have diarrhea.’”

Allen picked Stephens up, and he was hospitalized later that day after he tested positive for the coronavirus. A chest X-ray revealed he had pneumonia.

Stephens let some friends know he was in the hospital, sending a Snapchat photo of a hospital bootee that covered only three toes on his enormous feet. Doctors moved him into intensive care for several days to increase his oxygen. He was moved out of intensive care and told friends he hoped to be released soon. But he was sent back the next day after he said he had become lightheaded while taking a shower.

“And mind you, this whole time he’s talking, he’s laughing, we’re bantering back and forth like we normally do,” Allen said.

But the next morning, Allen received a call from a physician assistant: an ultrasound had revealed a blood clot in one of Stephens’s lungs.

Allen called her brother to tell him what was happening, and went upstairs to get dressed and head to the hospital. As she did, a nurse called again with an urgent message: Come now, he’s gotten worse.

“I drove like a bat out of hell,” Allen said, pausing to hold back tears.

“When I got there, they pulled me in the office for the doctor to talk to me, and I just remember screaming, ‘Where’s my child?’ And then when the chaplain came around the corner and told me he was gone, I just remember screaming. The rest is just a blur, honestly, after that.”

For nearly a week, Allen did not go back to her home. She stayed with her sister and was comforted by her brother and other relatives, with her son’s death coming four months after the death of her mother.

She wants to make clear that she does not blame Dale, her son’s roommate, even if she has had that urge.

“I don’t want that young man to torture himself, because I’m sure he feels a certain amount of guilt already,” she said. “This pain that I feel, I don’t wish this on anybody.”

In an interview outside his apartment the day after Stephens died, Dale said they had spoken less than 48 hours before he died. “It’s so surreal that I’m going to be here by myself and he’s just gone,” Dale said. “I’m still in shock. I still don’t want to believe it.”

He added: “He was the first person I met when I transferred here, the first who took me around campus. ‘Hey, bro — I’m going to show you — do this, don’t do that, eat here, don’t eat here.’ That’s who he was 24-7.”

Dale said then that he was awaiting coronavirus test results, but he did not have any symptoms. The New York Times followed up with Dale several days later, and a man who identified himself as Dale’s father, James, returned the message. He disputed Allen’s account that her son said he had gotten sick from Dale: “It was the other way around,” he said before hanging up.

Allen called that version a lie.

“Josh knows that he was sick,” she said.

Stephens was buried on Friday. The funeral procession from Pentecostal Temple Church of God in Christ wove through the city’s serpentine streets until it arrived at Allegheny Cemetery, where he was laid to rest under a maple tree.

As the college football season begins, few university presidents or conference commissioners have invoked Jamain Stephens, at least publicly.

His father, as much as anybody, understands why.

“As a competitor, as a parent with children in sports — there’s an energy and excitement that go with that,” the elder Stephens said. “It can cause us not to think straight about something we don’t know enough about.”

Stephens said his son’s autopsy showed the right side of his heart was enlarged because of Covid-19. The effect, one of several linked to the virus, elicits echoes to his time in the N.F.L., when the league played down the severity of concussions.

“It’s about money,” he said. “We’re going to make it happen regardless of how it happens. So what if we lose a few lives?”

Stephens was speaking just before Thursday’s viewing. It drew more than 500 people, including dozens of his son’s former teammates.

Some went off to play at universities like Penn State, Pittsburgh, Notre Dame and Clemson. They are big, strong and imbued with the sense of invulnerability that football requires, but after Stephens’s death they were as shaken as anyone else who had lost someone to the coronavirus.

That night, Allen said in a phone interview that many players, as they had shared their sorrow, over and over again expressed what they would likely not admit to anyone else — an uneasiness about playing football during the pandemic.

“This makes Covid seem really real,” Allen said, “having to look at their friend and teammate in a casket.”

May Jamain rest in peace!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) received a sharp education lesson on virus immunity and prevention from Dr. Anthony Fauci during a Senate hearing yesterday when the Kentucky physician attempted to attribute New York’s dramatic reduction in COVID-19 cases to herd immunity instead of people following safety protocols.

During a heated back and forth, Paul, who has opposed mask mandates, criticized Fauci’s past praise of New York and its Democratic governor’s handling of the pandemic.

“New York had the highest death rate in the world,” Paul said. “How can we possibly be jumping up and down and saying, oh Gov. [Andrew] Cuomo did a great job? He had the worst death rate in the world.”

Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, responded with a fact check.

“No, you misconstrued that, senator, and you’ve done that repetitively in the past,” Fauci fired back. “They got hit very badly. They made some mistakes. Right now … the things that are going on in New York to get their test positivity 1 percent or less is because they are looking at the guidelines that we have put together from the [coronavirus] task force.”

Those safety guidelines include mask-wearing, social distancing, avoiding crowds, washing hands and participating in public gatherings that are outdoors instead of indoors whenever possible.

“Or they’ve developed enough community immunity that they’re no longer having the pandemic because they have enough immunity in New York City to actually stop,” Paul interrupted.

“I challenge that,” Fauci responded, before repeating the latest data presented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC’s director, Robert Redfield, was also testifying at the hearing.

“This happens with Sen. Rand all the time. You are not listening to what the director of the CDC said. That in New York it’s about 22%,” he said of the positivity rate. “If you believe that 22% is herd immunity, I believe you’re alone in that.”

To establish herd immunity, a large percentage of a community would have to contract the virus, or a similar one, and produce antibodies to it. Every disease’s threshold for herd immunity is different. In the case of the measles virus, which is one of the most contagious infectious diseases, it’s estimated that 94% of the population would have to be immune to it to achieve herd immunity, according to the Mayo Clinic.

“Experts estimate that in the U.S., 70% of the population — more than 200 million people — would have to recover from COVID-19 to halt the epidemic,” the Mayo Clinic’s website states.

Another report published in the medical journal JAMA in May estimates that to achieve herd immunity for COVID-19, between 55% and 82% of the population would have to have developed antibodies to the virus.

Sen. Paul went on to suggest that there may be people out there, about one-third of the population, that have “pre-existing immunity” to COVID-19. This idea is based on these people having what are called cross-reactive antibodies after successfully fighting similar viruses.

Fauci shot that suggestion down too.

“I’d like to talk to you about that also because there was a study that recently came out that pre-existing immunity to coronaviruses that are common cold do not cross-react with the COVID-19,” he said.

My wife and I are in our 70s and live in New York.  We thank Governor Andrew Cuomo for how he has led the state during the pandemic these past seven months.  We also are of the opinion that the only person we believe in Washington, D.C. about Covid-19 is Dr. Anthony Fauci.  There are too many  ill-informed officials like Rand Paul who attempt to politicize and to mislead the public about it.  It is also our opinion that many of the two hundred thousand Americans who have died from coronavirus in this country, were victims of the Rand Pauls in the United States government.

Tony

Cindy McCain

Dear Commons Community,

Cindy McCain, widow of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), has officially endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for president. 

“My husband John lived by a code: country first,” she wrote Tuesday on Twitter. “We are Republicans, yes, but Americans foremost.” 

Biden, she added, is the only candidate in the presidential race who “stands up for our values as a nation.”

As reported by The Huffington Post, though McCain’s statement represents the first time she’s explicitly endorsed the former vice president, she has gone to bat for Biden before. 

During the Democratic National Convention, McCain was featured in a clip that celebrated Biden’s friendship with her late husband, who died in 2018 of brain cancer.

“They would just sit and joke,” McCain said in the video of the two men, who developed a close friendship after meeting in the 1970s, when Biden was a young senator and John McCain served as his military aide during an overseas trip. 

“It was like a comedy show, sometimes, to watch the two of them,” Cindy McCain said at the DNC.

Like her husband, who’d been described as a “critic in chief” of the Trump administration, Cindy McCain has been similarly vocal in her criticism of President Donald Trump. The couple’s daughter, Meghan McCain, has also been an outspoken critic of the president, who has often expressed his dislike for the late senator, once exclaiming that he didn’t consider the former Vietnam prisoner of war a hero. 

“I feel like right now the president doesn’t have my back, he doesn’t take a stand on things that are really important and we have a time of crisis,” Cindy McCain told the Arizona Republic this week of her decision to back Biden. “I’m worried that this could go further than it should. My point in getting on board with Joe is that he’s proven — he’s been there. I’ve known him for 40 years. I know his character and his leadership and his honor and his integrity and those things are very important to me.”

Country first!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Enrollment figures are beginning to be announced at colleges and universities around the country.  Some schools have seen increases and some decreases.  Early estimates were that enrollments at private colleges and universities would see declines.  As reported by The GW Hatchet, George Washington University President Thomas LeBlanc said at a Faculty Senate meeting on Friday that undergraduate enrollment fell by about 7.2 percent this year based on preliminary estimates, and would require a “second phase” of budget cuts in the coming weeks.

LeBlanc estimated that  11,000 undergraduate students are enrolled this fall, which fell short of last year’s figure by roughly 1,000 students. The loss in tuition revenue from decreased enrollment is largely driving GW’s budget shortfall, which is now estimated to be $180 million on an annualized basis, LeBlanc said.

He added that estimates will continue to change until the “benchmark date” in early October, which is used for official enrollment data and revenue statistics.

“Given the fluid nature of the pandemic and its effects on the University, as we expected and repeatedly tried to remind folks, our estimate will always be evolving until we finally get to the benchmark,” LeBlanc said. “But as of now, we have a much better idea of fall enrollment and tuition revenue because we’ve actually passed the deadline for paying your bills.”

Financial impact
LeBlanc said the enrollment drop, based on current estimates, would reflect a nearly $76 million budget impact. He said officials are projecting a decrease of undergraduate and graduate tuition dollars by $46 million and $17 million, respectively, and about a $10 million increase in financial aid.

GW’s financial projections assume classes remain online for the entire academic year, which removes about $100 million in housing revenue, LeBlanc said.

He said officials are completing the first phase of budget cuts, which will reduce expenses by roughly $100 million and be completed within two weeks. The cuts include a suspension of most capital projects and hirings, salary freezes and staff layoffs.

LeBlanc added that officials have laid off about 250 staff members, who had an average salary of roughly $75,000. At the meeting, Provost Brian Blake confirmed the layoffs include some Center for Career Services employees.

Officials have repeatedly declined to answer The Hatchet’s questions about layoffs in specific offices. The layoffs include dozens of employees in IT offices, the career center, facilities and event departments.

“Even with our revised enrollment projections as positive as they are today, it’s clear that we need to take additional mitigation steps,” LeBlanc said at the meeting.

He said officials will likely make final decisions about the second phase of cuts in the next week. The phase already includes suspensions of the University’s base and matching retirement contributions for employees beginning Oct. 1.

“I anticipate things could get better,” he said. “We built in fairly conservative projections so I don’t see it getting much worse than this.”

LeBlanc added that there have been no discussions among administrators about laying off tenured or tenure-track faculty. Officials have discussed temporarily reducing faculty salaries, he said.

“We talked to the senate leadership and Board of Trustees, but no decision has been made,” LeBlanc said.

Enrollment drop
Provost Brian Blake said non-degree registration – which includes exchange students – decreased by 31 percent. About 400 more students requested deferrals for enrollment and leave of absences compared to last year, and “hundreds” more students are now attending GW part time, he said.

LeBlanc said more than 600 upperclassmen chose not to return this fall amid the pandemic. He said 175 international students were not able to or chose not to enroll, and the University enrolled 220 fewer new domestic students this year based on current estimates.

Blake said the graduate population increased this year by 1.3 percent, which is just under half of the 3 percent increase officials had originally anticipated. Officials held graduate tuition steady this year, which led to an annual budget shortfall in graduate tuition.

“There is some gap there as well even though we had a higher enrollment than last year,” Blake said.

He added that the “biggest piece” to enrollment changes this year is a drop in the international population by 916 students – 253 undergraduates, 556 graduates and 107 non-degree students.

The drop marks another setback for the University’s goal of increasing international enrollment to 15 percent of undergraduates and 30 percent of graduate students by 2022.

“As a provost, there’s been some concern there because these shortcomings in our enrollment are likely to follow us, particularly when it comes from that particular population,” Blake said. “I honestly feel a certain way about this too because I know that body of students provides diversity and a real experience for the student body.”

As Fall enrollment figures are finalized, we will find a number of colleges in the same situation as George Washington U.

Tony

NOTE:  After this posting was made, the National Student Clearinghouse published a report indicating that preliminary enrollments among all undergraduate higher education sectors decreased 2.5 percent with community colleges experiencing the largest decline.  Details are available at: https://nscresearchcenter.org/stay-informed/

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

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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.