Tag: Public Health

We Are F%$#ed

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It turns out that low relative humidity, of the sort that one would see as heating season starts in September, has a major impact on increasing the transmissivity of Covie-19.

This is common in Viruses (Viri?), and exactly the opposite of what one would see in bacteria.

We are in for a bumpy ride: (From the abstract)

There is growing evidence that climatic factors could influence the evolution of the current COVID‐19 pandemic. Here, we build on this evidence base, focusing on the southern hemisphere summer and autumn period. The relationship between climatic factors and COVID‐19 cases in New South Wales, Australia was investigated during both the exponential and declining phases of the epidemic in 2020, and in different regions. Increased relative humidity was associated with decreased cases in both epidemic phases, and a consistent negative relationship was found between relative humidity and cases. Overall, a decrease in relative humidity of 1% was associated with an increase in cases of 7–8%. Overall, we found no relationship with between cases and temperature, rainfall or wind speed. Information generated in this study confirms humidity as a driver of SARS‐CoV‐2 transmission.

This also explains why outdoor protests have not contributed in a significant way to the outbreak.

You don’t see the low humidities that you you do in at outdoor protests as you might, for example, in an indoor event facility like the Bank of Oklahoma Center where Trump held the rally that killed Herman Cain.

Herman Cain Dies of Covid Caught at the Trump Rally

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At Tulsa, No Mask

Where the former Presidential candidate actually caught the virus is not certain, but the timing of his infections strongly implies that he caught the virus at Trump’s Tulsa campaign rally:

Herman Cain, who rose from poverty in the segregated South to become chief executive of a successful pizza chain and then thrust himself into the national spotlight by seeking the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, has died. He was 74.

His death was announced on Thursday on his website and on social media accounts. It did not say precisely when or where he died. Dan Calabrese, the website’s editor, attributed the death to the coronavirus, which President Trump, in a White House briefing, later referred to as the “China virus” and a “horrible plague” in affirming it as the cause.

Mr. Cain had been hospitalized in the Atlanta area this month after testing positive for the virus on June 29.

………

Mr. Cain had attended President Trump’s indoor rally in Tulsa, Okla., on June 20 and had done “a lot of traveling” recently, Mr. Calabrese said.

“I don’t think there’s any way to trace this to the one specific contact that caused him to be infected,” he said at the time. “We’ll never know.”

I am not a fan of Mr. Cain, and the opportunity for meming this tempting, but I’m not going to go there.

Just wear your f%$#ing mask, OK?

Finally

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Good. To quote XTC, “People will always be tempted to wipe their feet, On anything with ‘welcome’ written on it.”

A revolt is brewing among Bernie Sanders delegates three weeks from the Democratic National Convention.

More than 360 delegates, most of whom back Sanders, have signed on to a pledge to vote against the Democratic Party’s platform if it does not include support for “Medicare for All,” the petition’s organizers told POLITICO. They argue that single-payer health care is an urgent priority amid a worldwide pandemic and the biggest unemployment crisis since the Great Depression.

“This pandemic has shown us that our private health insurance system does not work for the American people. Millions of people have lost their jobs and their health care at the same time,” said Judith Whitmer, a Sanders delegate and chair of the convention’s Nevada delegation who helped spearhead the pledge. “There’s people leaving the hospital now with millions of dollars in medical bills. What are we going to do about that?”

Good.  It’s rational to make this a fight on principle.

First, taking a stand on principles helps the progressives’ long game, and second, a fight over this at the convention, even if it is a sparsely attended remote event, is just the sort of flash that the press loves to cover.

Clearly, We Must Open up Schools Immediately

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For all those people demanding to open the schools, this is another indication that they are delusional as to the impact of this action:

In the heated debate over reopening schools, one burning question has been whether and how efficiently children can spread the virus to others.

A large new study from South Korea offers an answer: Children younger than 10 transmit to others much less often than adults do, but the risk is not zero. And those between the ages of 10 and 19 can spread the virus at least as well as adults do.

The findings suggest that as schools reopen, communities will see clusters of infection take root that include children of all ages, several experts cautioned.

………

Several studies from Europe and Asia have suggested that young children are less likely to get infected and to spread the virus. But most of those studies were small and flawed, said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute.

The new study “is very carefully done, it’s systematic and looks at a very large population,” Dr. Jha said. “It’s one of the best studies we’ve had to date on this issue.”

In the places pushing hardest to open schools, areas where infections are exploding, opening schools will be a complete disaster.

Another Consequence of Covid-19

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I’m pretty sure if we weren’t in the middle of a pandemic, ti would have gone the other way:

Oklahoma is poised to become the 37th state to expand Medicaid to cover more low-income residents after voters narrowly approved State Question 802 on Tuesday.

………

State Question 802 passed by 6,488 votes, making Oklahoma the fifth state expand Medicaid through a ballot initiative.

The question will enshrine Medicaid expansion in Oklahoma’s constitution — effectively preventing Oklahoma’s GOP-controlled Legislature or Republican governor from limiting or undoing the expansion.

After nearly a decade of waiting on politicians to act, Oklahomans decided on Tuesday to take health care into their own hands, Yes on 802 campaign manager Amber England said in a statement.

“In the middle of a pandemic, Oklahomans stepped up and delivered life-saving care for nearly 200,000 of our neighbors, took action to keep our rural hospitals open, and brought our tax dollars home to protect jobs and boost our local economy,” she said.

The campaign for SQ 802 was launched after years of legislative inaction on Medicaid expansion. The Yes on 802 campaign turned in a record number of signatures to qualify the question for the ballot.

Good politics and good policy.

Today in Evil

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It’s Amazon’s turn, and Amazon has been so bad about protecting its workers, and giving any information to its employees about outbreaks at warehouses, that its employees have set up trackers so that they can know when they are being endangered by the company:

Usually Jana Jumpp works nights loading trucks at an Amazon facility the size of 28 football fields in Jeffersonville, Ind. Now, she spends them shut in her room, clacking away on her sluggish computer.

The emails and Facebook messages from Amazon workers at warehouses across the country tumble in.

………

Jumpp has a counterpart at Amazon-owned Whole Foods, Katie Doan, who has been collecting cases since April 2. The two women have never spoken, but they describe nearly identical work fielding a torrent of private messages, searching Facebook groups, Reddit, Twitter and news outlets for reports of infections, and meticulously updating Google documents with the numbers.

Jumpp and Doan, who until this week worked at a store in Tustin, a city in Orange County, say they do this because their co-workers don’t feel safe; they aren’t able to gauge the risk of reporting for work to their warehouse or store because Amazon won’t tell them how many people are believed to have gotten infected there.

As of Wednesday, 343 Whole Foods workers had tested positive, according to crowdsourced data in a publicly available Google document. Of those, 44 cases are in 24 store locations across California. At least Four Whole Foods employees have died, including a manager at a store in Pasadena.

Amazon’s response is typical corporate bullsh%$

………

Yet Amazon has challenged the notion that it should be providing fuller data. An Amazon spokesperson said the company does track the information at a site level but does not release the aggregate numbers because those numbers might contain outdated information — cases that were resolved weeks or months ago — and thus are not informative to workers.

………

Dr. David Eisenman, director of the Center for Public Health and Disasters at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, disagreed. He said that type of data, correctly gathered, is crucial for reducing future infections of employees and understanding which kinds of job sites and occupations carry elevated risk of contracting COVID-19.

“Saying aggregate data is not useful is like pulling wool over your eyes. Of course it’s useful, we’re using it to open the country up again,” Eisenman said.

Yet another reason to hate Amazon.

Oh, Now I Get It

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I wondered why Andrew “Rat Face Andy” Cuomo sent all those Covid-19 patients to nursing homes.

It turns out that it may have been all about the proverbial Benjamins, send the patients to the nursing homes and the nursing homes make big bucks, and there is no downside for them, because Cuomo inserted immunity provisions into pandemic legislation, because their executives gave big donations to Cuomo’s primary challenge in 2018.

This is an awfully convenient turn of events:

As Governor Andrew Cuomo faced a spirited challenge in his bid to win New York’s 2018 Democratic primary, his political apparatus got a last-minute boost: a powerful health care industry group suddenly poured more than $1 million into a Democratic committee backing his campaign.

Less than two years after that flood of cash from the Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA), Cuomo signed legislation last month quietly shielding hospital and nursing-home executives from the threat of lawsuits stemming from the coronavirus outbreak. The provision, inserted into an annual budget bill by Cuomo’s aides, created one of the nation’s most explicit immunity protections for health care industry officials, according to legal experts.

Critics say Cuomo removed a key deterrent against nursing home and hospital corporations cutting corners in ways that jeopardize lives. As those critics now try to repeal the provision during this final week of Albany’s legislative session, they assert that data prove such immunity is correlating to higher nursing-home death rates during the pandemic — both in New York and in other states enacting similar immunity policies.

………

And then came Cuomo’s annual budget — which included a little-noticed passage shielding corporate officials who run New York hospitals, nursing homes, and other health care facilities from liability for COVID-related deaths and injuries.

………

Prior to the budget language, Cuomo had already temporarily granted limited legal immunity to doctors and nurses serving on the medical front lines. But the carefully sculpted passage buried in the state’s annual spending bill expanded that by offering extensive immunity to any “health care facility administrator, executive, supervisor, board member, trustee or other person responsible for directing, supervising or managing a health care facility and its personnel or other individual in a comparable role.”

Every time you turn over a rock in New York state you find a trail of slime leading back to the Governor’s office.

This Is a Definition of a COVID-19 Hero That I Was Previously Unaware Of

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We already know that Andrew “Rat Faced Andy” Cuomo waited to long to respond to the pandemic, and now we learn that he dumped over four thousand virus positive patients on nursing homes throughout the state.

He figured out of sight, out of mind, I guess.

Not so much:

More than 4,500 recovering coronavirus patients were sent to New York’s already vulnerable nursing homes under a controversial state directive that was ultimately scrapped amid criticisms it was accelerating the nation’s deadliest outbreaks, according to a count by The Associated Press.

AP compiled its own tally to find out how many COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals to nursing homes under the March 25 directive after New York’s Health Department declined to release its internal survey conducted two weeks ago. It says it is still verifying data that was incomplete.

Whatever the full number, nursing home administrators, residents’ advocates and relatives say it has added up to a big and indefensible problem for facilities that even Gov. Andrew Cuomo — the main proponent of the policy — called “the optimum feeding ground for this virus.”

“It was the single dumbest decision anyone could make if they wanted to kill people,” Daniel Arbeeny said of the directive, which prompted him to pull his 88-year-old father out of a Brooklyn nursing home where more than 50 people have died. His father later died of COVID-19 at home.

………
Cuomo, a Democrat, on May 10 reversed the directive, which had been intended to help free up hospital beds for the sickest patients as cases surged. But he continued to defend it this week, saying he didn’t believe it contributed to the more than 5,800 nursing and adult care facility deaths in New York — more than in any other state — and that homes should have spoken up if it was a problem.

“Any nursing home could just say, ‘I can’t handle a COVID person in my facility,’” he said, although the March 25 order didn’t specify how homes could refuse, saying that ”no resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the (nursing home) solely based” on confirmed or suspected COVID-19.

This is all a part and parcel of Cuomo trying to cut doctors and hospitals from the Medicaid program, literally to the point of his turning down billions of dollars in federal aid because it would not allow him to hurt poor people.

One of the ways that Cuomo is planning to cut Medicaid is by cutting hospital beds.

If his administration did not force infectious patients back into nursing homes, then it would appear that there was a shortage, and not a surfeit of beds, and so the budget could not be gutted.

Speaking of Vaccine Efficacy………

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5 sailors on the USS Theodore Roosevelt who tested positive for Covid-19, were quarantined, recovered, and returned to service, have tested positive for Covid-19:

Five sailors who returned to the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt have tested positive for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), said Navy spokesman Cmdr. Myers Vasquez.

The sailors had previously tested positive for the disease but they had spent more than two weeks in isolation, showed no symptoms for at least three days, and they all tested negative for the disease twice before being allowed back on the aircraft carrier, Vasquez said on Thursday.

“The five sailors developed influenza-like illness symptoms and executed their personal responsibility by reporting to medical for evaluation,” Vasquez said in a statement. “The sailors were immediately removed from the ship and placed back in isolation, their close contacts were mapped, and they are receiving the required medical care.”

Increasingly, there is evidence that, at best, any Covid-19 vaccine would be of VERY limited effectiveness, perhaps granting immunity for only a few weeks or a few months.

This is not good.

An Elegant Solution

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Dean Baker, an economist who not only predicted the housing meltdown, but put his money where his mouth was, and sold his home and moved into rental housing in the early 2000s, has a solution to the “problem” of the Chinese “stealing” US vaccine research.

He suggest that all research be released as free and public information, which would mean that there is nothing to “steal”.

What’s more if all this information were publicly exchanged, we would have a vaccine that much sooner (assuming that a vaccine is possible, but that is another blog post).

The only people who would lose, would be the big pharma guys who want to charge thousands of dollars a dose.

To them, I say, “Go Cheney yourself.”

In the last couple of weeks both the New York Times and National Public Radio have warned that China could steal a vaccine against the coronavirus, or at least steal work in the U.S. done towards developing a vaccine. Both outlets obviously thought their audiences should view this as a serious concern.

As I wrote previously, it is not clear why those of us who don’t either own large amounts of stock in drug companies, or give a damn about Donald Trump’s ego, should be upset about the prospect of China “stealing” a vaccine. Concretely, if China gained knowledge from labs in the United States that allowed it to develop and produce a vaccine more quickly, this would mean that hundreds of millions of people might be protected against a deadly disease more quickly than would otherwise be the case. If China made this vaccine available to people in the developing world, then the numbers could be in the billions.

Sounds pretty scary, right?

It is amazing that neither the reporters writing these stories nor their editors apparently gave much thought to the implications of China “stealing” a vaccine. Or perhaps, even worse, maybe they did. Anyhow, I suspect that most of the audiences of these outlets would not consider it a terrible thing if people in China or other countries could get vaccinated more quickly against the coronavirus.

But the issue of this potential theft is just the beginning of the story. If China can in principle develop a vaccine more quickly if it has access to data from labs in the United States then it must also be the case that researchers in the United States could develop a vaccine more quickly if they had data from labs in China and elsewhere. This raises the question of why we are not researching a vaccine collectively, with researchers all over the world posting their findings as quickly as practical so that teams of researchers everywhere can benefit from them?

There is a bad answer and somewhat less bad answer to this question. The bad answer is that the goal of the researchers is to get a government-granted patent monopoly so that they can charge lots of money for a vaccine and get very rich. The less bad answer is that we rely on grants of patent monopolies to finance research. If companies didn’t have the hope of getting a patent monopoly, they would have no way to recoup the costs they are incurring paying researchers and undertaking the trials necessary to establish the safety and effectiveness of a vaccine.

………

However, in a context where the whole world is struggling to deal with a pandemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of people, it might be reasonable to just do the research and worry about the cost-sharing later. It would make sense for governments to fund their own research to the extent practical and require that everything be fully public as soon as possible.

If we went this route, our leading news outlets could put aside their fears that China would steal the vaccine. If they take advantage of U.S. research and rush ahead and develop an effective vaccine before our own researchers, then the whole world will benefit from having a vaccine sooner than would otherwise be the case.

………

We have a huge amount of potential gain from going the route of open research and very little to lose. And our leading news outlets would be able to stop worrying about China stealing our vaccine.

Now, is the absolutely worst time to allow big pharma to loot the rest of us though thoroughly undeserved patent rights.

How Convenient

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Remember that Stanford study that showed that the Covid-19 rate infection levels were much higher than previously noted, and so the mortality rate was much lower?

In addition to it being bad science, the antibody test that they used was grossly inaccurate, it turns out that their study was founded almost entirely by the founder of JetBlue, who had an interest in getting the shutdown relaxed as quickly as possible.

The big take-away here is that when ordinary people distrust “experts” and “scientists” they are not rejecting science or expertise, it is that they believe that the “Technocrats” are just as corrupt as every institution in our society:

A highly influential coronavirus antibody study was funded in part by David Neeleman, the JetBlue Airways founder and a vocal proponent of the idea that the pandemic isn’t deadly enough to justify continued lockdowns.

That’s according to a complaint from an anonymous whistleblower, filed with Stanford University last week and obtained by BuzzFeed News, about the study conducted by the famous scientist John Ioannidis and others. The complaint cites dozens of emails, including exchanges with the airline executive while the study was being conducted.

The study — released as a non-peer-reviewed paper, or preprint, on April 17 — made headlines around the world with a dramatic finding: Based on antibodies in thousands of Silicon Valley residents’ blood samples, the number of coronavirus infections was up to 85 times higher than believed. This true infection count was so high that it would drive down the virus’s local fatality rate to 0.12%–0.2% — far closer to the known death rate for the flu.

Almost immediately, the study became a flashpoint in the increasingly politicized debate over whether and how to reopen the economy. Although many scientists assailed its methods, leading the authors to post a revision nearly two weeks later, it was trumpeted by conservative media to support a growing theory: that fears of the coronavirus are overblown.

“Most of the population has minimal risk, in the range of dying while you’re driving from home to work and back,” Ioannidis said on the Fox News show Life, Liberty & Levin, a few days after the study’s release.

………

And emails cited within the complaint also suggest that the study’s authors disregarded warnings raised by two Stanford professors who tried to verify the accuracy of the antibody test used. The pair of scientists ultimately refused to put their names on the study because, they told the lead researchers, they could not stand by the test results. The complaint suggests that Neeleman “potentially used financial incentives to secure cooperation from” one of these scientists, who told colleagues by email that she was “alarmed” by aspects of the antibody test’s performance.

Asked if Neeleman donated to the study, Ioannidis said he was “not personally aware” he did. “David Neeleman has a particular perspective and some ideas and some thoughts,” he told BuzzFeed News. “I don’t know exactly who were the people who funded the study eventually. But whoever they were, none of them really told us it should be designed in a given way or done in a given way or find a particular type of result or report a particular type of result.”

………

But according to Neeleman, the authors did know he’d given money to fund the study. Neeleman confirmed that he made a $5,000 donation to Stanford to be given to these researchers and that he was in communication with them while they were conducting their research. He denied, however, that he influenced their process or results in any way, saying they had “tremendous integrity,” and said that he was not shown the results prior to release. He also rejected the accusation that he put financial pressure on the researcher who expressed misgivings about the test.

………

In response to a detailed set of questions about the whistleblower complaint, Stanford Medicine spokesperson Julie Greicius said: “Stanford Medicine is aware of serious concerns related to the Santa Clara County seroprevalence study. The integrity of Stanford Medicine’s research is core to our mission. When we receive concerns such as this, they are taken extremely seriously. This matter is being reviewed by the appropriate oversight mechanisms at Stanford.”

As one of the world’s most-cited researchers and a “godfather to the science reform crowd,” Ioannidis helped elevate the study to national news. In a landmark 2005 paper titled “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False,” he called out the factors that incentivize shoddy scientific work, from personal bias to tenure systems that reward quantity over quality. In doing so, he spurred a movement to root out bad science.

The whistleblower complaint alleges, however, that the coronavirus study was rife with some of the pitfalls Ioannidis has famously lambasted, from a sloppy statistical analysis to an apparent conflict of interest. In the COVID-19 era, as science and politics become increasingly intertwined, the Stanford study is perhaps the highest-profile instance of a hotly contested scientific finding fueling arguments for policies with life-and-death stakes.

………

And as for Neeleman, Lipsitch added, “This has nothing to do with science. This is wanting his airlines to thrive.”

………

Days prior to the op-ed, those scientists had overseen their massive antibody, or serological, survey in Santa Clara County. On April 3 and 4 in sunny Northern California, more than 3,300 people drove through pop-up testing sites at two parks and a church and stuck out their fingers to be pricked. If their blood turned out to have antibodies to the virus, that could indicate they’d recovered from an infection.

Many participants had learned about the test from Facebook. Others had received an email from Bhattacharya’s wife, falsely claiming that an “FDA approved” test would definitively reveal if they could “return to work without fear,” as BuzzFeed News has reported.

………

But so far, the coronavirus appears to be much more lethal than the flu. According to a preliminary analysis of more than a dozen recent studies, including Stanford’s, the infection fatality rate worldwide ranges from 0.49% to 1.01%. That would be 5 t0 10 times higher than the flu’s death rate from confirmed cases, at about 0.1%. (And the flu’s infection fatality rate is likely even lower, given the unknown number of people who don’t report having it.)

………

The whistleblower complaint alleges that Neeleman “sought out the study authors for their congruent policy views” on the pandemic and funded their work. The complaint is based on a series of screenshotted emails — some timestamped around early April, others with truncated dates and email addresses — and does not specify the value or nature of Neeleman’s funding.

Screenshots of two such emails came into the complainant’s possession by April 11, the complaint states. One undated screenshot shows the email addresses of Bogan, the investor and coauthor, and of David Neeleman. In another, undated message, “Andrew” expressed gratitude to “David”: “Thanks again for your willingness to help me and my friends in Silicon Valley support this groundbreaking and timely research work financially.”

The email adds, “I think we all agree how critically important that is to better informing public health and policy leadership’s decision making across the nation.”

Neeleman confirmed receiving the email. Bogan did not respond to a request for comment.

These folks were corrupt as hell; bought and paid for, or specifically selected by those who were bought and paid for for their preexisting bias.

So Not a Surprise

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The AP has come across the original recommendations from the CDC for the pandemic, the ones that the White House suppressed, and they were far more extensive than what Trump and Evil Minions™ eventually released:

Advice from the top U.S. disease control experts on how to safely reopen businesses and institutions during the coronavirus pandemic was more detailed and restrictive than the plan released by the White House last month.

The guidance, which was shelved by Trump administration officials, also offered recommendations to help communities decide when to shut facilities down again during future flareups of COVID-19.

The Associated Press obtained a 63-page document that is more detailed than other, previously reported segments of the shelved guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It shows how the thinking of the CDC infection control experts differs from those in the White House managing the pandemic response.

Hoocoodanode?

I Want to See Elon Musk Frog-Marched out of His Offices in Handcuffs

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Tesla Factory Parking Lot Today

Alameda county officials have been insisting on maintaining a lock-down, and everyone’s favorite sociopath* Elon Musk has opened the factory anyway, putting thousands of his employees, and tens of thousands or their family members at risk.

What’s more, he dared authorities to arrest him.

Simply put, Elon is throwing mama from the train because he wants his stock options to vest.

To quote some anonymous California pol, “F%$# Elon Musk.”

Arrest everyone in the factory, and put Elon at the back of the line for processing, so that he spends 2-3 days in the slam incommunicado.

2 days of jail food should beat a little bit of humility into him.

It will be a learning experience for him, and a warning for the rest of the law-breakers who claim to be noble “disrupters” when they are criminals:

The fight between Tesla and local officials regarding the reopening of a manufacturing plant escalated Monday after chief executive Elon Musk tweeted his plans and mentioned the potential for arrests.

“Tesla is restarting production today against Alameda County rules,” Musk wrote on Twitter. “I will be on the line with everyone else. If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me.”

It is one of the most prominent examples of a powerful business figure defying local health orders amid the response to the novel coronavirus. Tesla on Saturday filed suit against Alameda County, where its Fremont, Calif., factory is located, seeking an injunction against orders to stay closed. The suit alleged violations of the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment.

Neetu Balram, a spokeswoman for Alameda County, said in a statement that the county hoped to work with Tesla to avoid any further escalation of the issue.

F%$# that.  Lock him up, and make sure that when he is arraigned, he is photographed in a prison uniform.

Just because he got lucky (and broke some banking regulations) and became a billionaire is no reason for authorities to allow him to arrogantly and openly flout the law.

*But I’m an engineer, not a psychologist, dammit!†
†I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!

Amazon is Evil, Part MMMMDCCCXXXVII

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A fish, as the saying goes, rots from the head, and Amazon is rotten from head to tail:

Amazon workers in southern California’s industrial heartland say the company’s policies are forcing sick employees to work and that warehouses are refusing to comply with a state paid sick leave law meant to prevent Covid-19 outbreaks.

………

On 1 May, Amazon ended a policy allowing unlimited unpaid time off, a measure adopted at the start of the coronavirus crisis that allowed workers to take time off for any reason. They would forgo wages, but if they were concerned about their safety or had new childcare responsibilities due to lockdowns, they could stay home without losing their jobs.

Without the policy, workers say they could now be fired if they miss shifts. They worry the reversal will result in sick and vulnerable people showing up for shifts because they can’t risk termination. The health concerns are particularly serious in the Inland Empire, which has some of the worst air quality in the US and disproportionately high rates of asthma and other respiratory illnesses.

Employees also shared emails showing that Amazon has dismissed some paid sick leave requests by claiming a California law intended to provide supplemental sick leave during the pandemic does not apply to the warehouses.

………

A labor spokesperson for the state, however, told the Guardian that the law does apply to warehouses such as Amazon’s centers, noting that the order has a broad definition of “food facility”, which includes any operations that store or package food for human consumption.

………

On 16 April, the California governor, Gavin Newsom, passed an executive order providing food sector workers two weeks of supplemental paid sick leave if they have to isolate due to Covid-19 concerns. The law covers “workers at warehouses where food is stored” and is aimed at protecting consumers from the virus and offering additional support to essential workers whose jobs involve the food supply.

Amazon warehouses in the industrial neighborhoods of San Bernardino and Riverside counties handle a wide range of packages, including food items. But employees say that when they have asked about Newsom’s order in recent weeks, the human resources department has ignored their questions or responded that the facilities are not considered part of the food sector.

………

The company says in addition to the time off it provided before the coronavirus pandemic, it now gives two weeks of paid time off for infected employees and those presumed to have Covid-19. But in one recent case, a worker who tested positive only received his pay after a BuzzFeed reporter inquired about it, and employees across the country have reported difficulties getting any sick pay during the pandemic.

California’s law also appears to be broader than Amazon’s policy, requiring paid leave for workers who have to isolate due to health concerns, including if they live with someone sick or exposed, and it says they are entitled to “immediately” start leave upon request.

Seriously, if there is a company that needs aggressive and over the top antitrust enforcement more than Amazon, I have not heard of it.

What a Whiny Baby

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In his continuing quest to maximize his convenience at the expense of the health and lives of his workers, Elon Musk has thrown a tantrum over Alameda County’s decision to maintain to its lock-down on the factory. 

He is threatening to move Tesla headquarters (maybe 50 people, big deal) and the factory (a multibillion dollar endeavor that would involve having to retrain an new workforce, and would take years, yeah right) to Texas or Nevada, because he isn’t getting what he wants precisely when he wants.

Why do people think that this wanker is a genius?

Elon Musk and local health officials in California clashed on Saturday over the timing of the reopening of Tesla’s factory in Fremont, with the company’s chief executive pushing for an immediate return and the county’s government seeking a delay of about a week.

In a series of tweets, Mr. Musk said he would move the company’s headquarters out of California to Texas or Nevada.

The tweets came a day after health officials from Alameda County told Tesla that it was not yet allowed to resume production of electric vehicles in Fremont because of fears that the coronavirus could spread among the company’s workers. Manufacturers have been allowed to restart work in other parts of the state that have had less severe outbreaks of the virus.

“Frankly, this is the final straw,” Mr. Musk said on Twitter. “Tesla will now move its HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately. If we even retain Fremont manufacturing activity at all, it will depend on how Tesla is treated in the future.”

In a separate tweet, Mr. Musk said Tesla would file a lawsuit against Alameda County.

………

Scott Haggerty, the county supervisor for the district in Alameda County where Tesla’s Fremont plant is located, said on Saturday that he had been confident that county health officials and Tesla executives were close to an agreement on reopening the plant on May 18. But, Mr. Haggerty said, that appeared to be unacceptable to Mr. Musk, who wanted to open the plant on May 8.

“We were working on a lot of policies and procedures to help operate that plant and quite frankly, I think Tesla did a pretty good job, and that’s why I had it to the point where on May 18, Tesla would have opened,” Mr. Haggerty said. “I know Elon knew that. But he wanted it this week.”

………

Things began to break down on Thursday, Mr. Haggerty said, when a Tesla executive called him and told him Mr. Musk was thinking about suing him.

………

“He could have spent time enjoying his new baby and given me and my staff a couple more days and his plant would have been open on May 18,” Mr. Haggerty said. “Am I somewhat sympathetic with Tesla? Yes I am. Am I sympathetic to the way Musk is treating people? No.”

………

Over the last few months, Mr. Musk has issued several strident calls to reopen the Fremont plant. After local officials ordered the plant closed, he tried to keep the plant open but was forced by the officials to shut it down in late March. In a conference call this past week to report Tesla’s earnings, he called the order “fascist.”

Seriously, this guy is so far along the path to being a Bond villain, it’s buggers the mind.

Why the Anti-Lockdown Rent-a-Crowd Should Have Been Arrested

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This Looks Like a Graphic from the Movie Contagion

Because when they were allowed to walk away, they brought Covid-19 back to their home towns and neighbors.

We are not talking a minor spike either.  We are talking about a 50%-200% spike in cases.

This is cops should have arrested these morons, and put them in quarantine for 3-4 weeks.

Remember the April 15th “Operation Gridlock?” in Lansing Michigan? In my piece on April 21st I said we needed to start tracking these protesters to show that they will spread the virus to other communities. Well, someone did.

The people at the Committee to Protect Medicare released data which shows the protesters dispersing to smaller communities across Michigan in the following days. The map above shows that cellphones that were in Lansing on April 15 scattered across the state. (Link)

Rob Davidson, executive director of The Committee to Protect Medicare said on Lawrence O’Donnell on April 30th that they saw a rise of 50-200% in COVID19 cases at the places those cell phones ended up.

For what it’s worth, many of the protesters were not just carrying, but brandishing their weapons, which is literally assault with a deadly weapon, so the cops should have arrested them and if they resisted, pried their guns from their cold, dead hands.

Literally Turning Down Free Money in Order to Hurt the Poors

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Once Again, Andrew “Rat Faced Andy” Cuomo, decides that pissing on the poor is more important than doing the right thing.

The Governor has decided that he’s going to cut Medicaid, even though it will cost the state $6.7 billion in federal aid.

Basically, this is some sort of twisted affirmation of manhood, and it’s poor women and children who suffer as a result.

Actually everyone suffers as a result, because by removing capacity from the New York healthcare system, the next epidemic would be even worse:

On Sunday, amid his regular coronavirus updates, inspirational slides, and Italian family dinner anecdotes, Governor Andrew Cuomo was asked to respond to New York Senator Chuck Schumer’s charge that the governor was rejecting billions in federal funding from emergency federal COVID-19 legislation simply because Cuomo wanted to tinker with the state’s Medicaid system. “It would be nice if he passed a piece of legislation that actually helped the state of New York,” Cuomo shot back.

Cuomo has been feuding with Schumer over the past couple of weeks, accusing the senator of trying to hamper his plans to make changes to Medicaid, the public health program that insures roughly a third of New Yorkers. Cuomo has made it clear that he is determined to cut Medicaid in the midst of a massive public health crisis—even if it means risking federal funds designated to provide relief.

New York stood to gain up to $6.7 billion through the federal legislation Schumer helped pass (that’s if the intervention program lasts a full year) but only under the condition that it didn’t put any new restrictions on Medicaid eligibility.

Andrew Cuomo is a profoundly evil son of a bitch.

Republicans Loot, Because Republicans Loot

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Remember that Republican political operative who terminated his fund raising business to start selling overpriced Covid-19 supplies, likely trading on his political connections, has now had his contract with Maryland terminated, and there has been a criminal referral to the state Attorney General.

It’s pretty clear that this guy was profiteering off of his political connections, but his connections were not sufficient to acquire N-95 masks and ventilators, so now it is revealed that he sold stuff he did not have, and that, my friend, is fraud:

Maryland’s governor is asking the attorney general to investigate a politically connected company that contracted to provide the state with millions of dollars’ worth of medical equipment that never arrived.

The state signed a $12.5 million deal April 1 with Blue Flame Medical LLC for 1.5 million N95 masks and 110 ventilators. The masks and ventilators were supposed to ship April 14, according to documents provided by the state.

The state paid half of the money up front, according to the documents.

The goods never arrived, and Maryland canceled the contract Friday.

“Unfortunately, despite numerous requests for information and order status, Blue Flame Medical has yet to deliver any items under this order, or provide any pertinent data as to a pending shipment,” wrote Danny Mays, the state’s director of procurement, in a letter sent to Blue Flame on Thursday.

Blue Flame Medical was founded just weeks ago by Mike Gula, a former Republican Party fundraiser and consultant whose resume shows no experience in the medical field.

A spokeswoman for Attorney General Brian Frosh confirmed receiving a referral about the contract. The office has a policy not to comment on pending or potential investigations.

………

Gula started Blue Flame in late March with John Thomas, also a Republican consultant and former candidate, according to multiple news reports.

When asked how political consultants could successfully switch to selling healthcare supplies in the midst of a global pandemic, Thomas told Politico in March: “It’s just relationship-based. I can’t say anything else.”

There really is no situation so dire that some Republican won’t look at finding a way to loot it.

Our society being what it is though, this guy will probably never see the inside of a jail cell.

Yes

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David Sirota asks, “Will Big Pharma Fleece Us On A COVID Treatment That We Helped Fund?“

This has been another episode of simple answers to simple questions.

On a more serious notes, extreme rent seeking is arguably the central tenet of the US economy these days.

If Remdesivir proves to be a good treatment for Covid-19, it will be sold for tens, if not hundreds, of times the cost of manufacture, and most of the development of the drug was paid for by the taxpayers.