The Washington Post reported today:
In the hours before President Trump’s rally in Tulsa, his campaign directed the removal of thousands of “Do Not Sit Here, Please!” stickers from seats in the arena that were intended to establish social distance between rallygoers, according to video and photos obtained by The Washington Post and a person familiar with the event.
The removal contradicted instructions from the management of the BOK Center, the 19,000-seat arena in downtown Tulsa where Trump held his rally on June 20. At the time, coronavirus cases were rising sharply in Tulsa County, and Trump faced intense criticism for convening a large crowd for an indoor political rally, his first such event since the start of the pandemic.
As part of its safety plan, arena management had purchased 12,000 do-not-sit stickers for Trump’s rally, intended to keep people apart by leaving open seats between attendees. On the day of the rally, event staff had already affixed them on nearly every other seat in the arena when Trump’s campaign told event management to stop and then began removing the stickers, hours before the president’s arrival, according to a person familiar with the event who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
In a video clip obtained by The Washington Post, two men — one in a suit and one wearing a badge and a face mask — can be seen pulling stickers off seats in a section of the arena. It is unclear who those two men are. When Trump took the stage on Saturday evening, the crowd was clustered together and attendees were not leaving empty seats between themselves.
The actions by Trump’s campaign were first reported Friday by Billboard Magazine.
As rally preparations were underway, Trump’s campaign staff intervened with the venue manager, ASM Global, and told them to stop labeling seats in this way, Doug Thornton, executive vice president of ASM Global, told the magazine.
“They also told us that they didn’t want any signs posted saying we should social distance in the venue,” Thornton said. “The campaign went through and removed the stickers.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Comment on Fox news Facebook:
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Murderer!
Stupid is as stupid does.
This will be the death of his campaign if not his foolhardy supporters.
Hi Diane. I spent many hours documenting the struggles that just one school district is going through regarding school reopening. I hope that you get a chance to look at it.
David Kristofferson: I’m very impressed with all the work that you did. I have one comment to make, however, on one sentence.
“Having only studied French and Bahasa Malaysia, I unfortunately do not know what she said.”
YOU studied Bahasa Melayu? How and when did you do that?
I studied it for three months on the big island of Hawaii while preparing for Peace Corps as a teacher at Dragon School and then Batu Lintang College in Sarawak, East Malaysia.
Years later, I taught beginning band and elementary classroom music for 8 years at the international School of Kuala Lumpur.
Apa Khabar?
I was a Peace Corps volunteer from 1975 to 1977 at a high school in Segamat, Johor, and taught physics and math!
David Kristofferson: I LOVE it. I worked in Peace Corps from 1967-68. Did you train in-country? [I’m impressed. Physics and math are definitely not my high points.]
Yes, from October through December 1975 in Alor Setar. Then we were sent off to our respective assignments. I was the only orang puteh around for 20 miles.
David Kristofferson: When I worked in Borneo, 24 miles from Kuching the capital of Sarawak, there was an Australian family and a Canadian fellow at Dragon School who lived on campus. [Dragon School was a boarding school for form 6-12.] The Australian family would have the Canadian and me over for dinner at least once a week. The Canadian guy had a motorcycle and we’d ride the 24 miles into Kuching each weekend to get a good meal in the open market.
I have a photo that he took of me bathing in a river when visiting a Land Dyak family who lived 16 miles from Kuching. The head of the Dyak family was a musician who played the violin. He wrote Dyak music that was played on Radio Sarawak. One time I went with him to the radio station and played my clarinet with him and it was recorded and played on Radio Sarawak. On weekends, I quite often would sleep on the floor at his bamboo house that was on stilts. He’d light a kerosene lamp and we’d play songs that he wrote.
On Easter Sunday, I’d walk with the family through jungle to get to the oldest Christian church in Sarawak. [Using flip-flops.]
Congratulations on being the only orang puteh.
Hi Carol.
I taught forms 9 and 10 which was called “sekolah menegah” or middle school as opposed to “sekolah tinggi” or high school, but it was more like the lower years of high school here – I taught everything from basic algebra through calculus plus physics! 7 daily classes of about 45 kids each, so I am not so moved when I hear current teachers complain about 5 classes of 35, not that either situation is even close to ideal, of course.
I could go on for hours with Peace Corps stories. My wife usually says something like “There you go again!” when I get started, so I will only mention one, and then I have to get back to work.
Our school was built on a former battleground between the Japanese Army and an Australian rear guard trying to halt the Japanese advance down the peninsula towards Singapore. Many soldiers died there.
Because of this gruesome history, the school was considered haunted, and we had occasional outbreaks of daemonic possession when students would become hysterical and some students would begin speaking supposedly perfect Australian English (I never personally witnessed the English speaking incidents – I am just relating that story from other Malay teachers; all of the kids did study English in school, though it was a singe foreign language class. All other classes were in Bahasa Malaysia.).
These incidents would coincidentally happen around exam times due to the greater stress levels. A small number of students would freak out and just start shrieking and thrashing around uncontrollably. One never knew what prompted the first victim, but one could immediately see the palpable fear in students faces after the first wailing was heard from another class.
I was in the same classroom three times when the wailing started. Each time the same little girl in the back of the room panicked, and a couple of the braver female students would grab her and escort her down to the teachers lounge where the Islamic religion teacher would chant verses from the Koran and burn incense to calm students down.
The second time, however, this girl immediately ran up to the front of the class while I was working a math problem at the chalk board, grabbed my desk (it was just a table actually; we moved from class to class while the students stayed seated; classes were all sorted by national exam scores taken after the first eight years of schooling.) and started dragging it towards the door. The walls were made of rough hewn concrete blocks and I was worried that she might slam her head against them, so I grabbed her by the arms to restrain her.
Malaysia being a conservative Islamic country this elicited surprise from the class, but once again two other girls then came up and escorted her to the teachers lounge.
Surprisingly I was in the class a third time when the hysteria erupted (it never started in my classroom, just propagated from elsewhere). I looked back at the girl. She smiled at me, and I smiled back at her, and she never had a problem again!
Sadly, rural Malay girls and women led a very sheltered life because of their religious tradition, staying at home indoors for extended periods of time, and this probably was a big factor in coping with stressful situations outside of the home. I could be cynical and say that the hysteria outbreaks were due simply to kids not wanting to take a test, but, given the fear that I would see in their eyes when this happened, I don’t think the explanation was that simple.
Time to get back to pandemic issues 😦 ! Nice chatting with you!
David Kristofferson: Nice chatting with you! 🌹🌸‼️I still have two books: Buku Kursus Bahasa Kebangsaan level 1 and 2.
Nama says Carol. Saya ta ada rumah besar. [Spell check is having a field day.]
I wonder if keeping children in the same classroom and having teachers change classrooms would help in today’s really bad situation? Kids could file out at the end of the day under supervision of social distancing.
I’d like to see the classrooms not bigger than 15 children, 10 being even better.
There could be no electives then unfortunately. Every student in the room would have to take the same classes.
David Kristofferson: I’m thinking more about doing this in elementary school.
Can’t middle and high school teachers put their teaching materials on a cart and bring them to a different room? It might not be ideal but is it possible?
In high school there are far too many schedule variations between students due to AP, non-AP, electives, athletics, etc.
PS – you just missed the horrific events on 5/13/69 then fortunately (I hope)!
David Kristofferson: After Peace Corps I traveled for 5 months with two lady friends, one a Canadian and one from England. We spend 2 months traveling through India and then hitchhiked/got rides traveling through Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and to Turkey. We then hitchhiked from Turkey to Paris.
Great trip. I actually got to sleep on a cow dung floor in India. We would buy first class tickets on the trains in India and sleep on our sleeping bags in the luggage racks. Don’t think I’ll try that today.
Eventually arrived home in Boise in July 1969.
Oh, and it’s been years but “Khabar baik” if I remember correctly!
I taught directly using Bahasa Malaysia for two school years after going through the intense Peace Corps language program.
“Khabar baik” YES!!!
Fortunately, I got to teach using English. Some of my former students became teachers and really didn’t like having to teach in Bahasa, a language that was foreign to them. [It came from the Malay dominance on the mainland and they rebelled but really had no choice.]
I was fairly fluent when I left at the end of 1977, but it is just about all gone now unfortunately. Learning Malay also unfortunately screwed up my French which I studied from elementary school through freshman year of college.
Nama saya….NOT says.
I will.
Thank you!
All I can day in response to this article is gagme[vomit].
Still it’s good to get the nitty-gritty details.
Obviously Trump personnel could flip bird at arena rules since ticket-buyers had to hold all parties harmless.
Well, those waivers people signed are now null and void, just sayin’. You can be indemnified against participants being harmed by unforeseen yet possible risks beyond your control but not against wanton acts of negligence and endangerment that there is no excuse for you having committed.
Speaking of death campaigns, I think that that’s what moves to reopen schools this fall are.
Yes, distance learning is subpar. Everyone knows this. The only people who refuse to recognize how problematic it is are those who benefit financially from distance learning.
However, a recent study suggests that children 10 years old and older are just as likely to contract Covid-19 as adults are. See this: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31304-0/fulltext
In addition, we now know that even among people who are overtly asymptomatic, contracting the SARS-CoV-2 virus can have severe, long-term consequences not limited to the lungs, but affecting other bodily organs and systems, the heart, brain, liver, nerve function, and so on.
I think that a lot of people who don’t work in schools vastly overestimate the ability that schools will have to enforce rules for social distancing and the wearing of masks. “Johnny, please don’t wear your mask over your eyes and pretend to be Batman. What? You accidentally blew your nose in your mask, Chandra? Do you have another one? Yolanda, please pick up your mask and don’t shoot it at Hector again.” LOL. And we now know that small, confined, usually windowless environments LIKE CLASSROOMS are ideal for transmission of the virus. Kids, at all levels, touch everything, as every teacher knows. I recently taught high-school in an upper-middle-class environment. I cleaned my classroom regularly. The bottoms of desks were covered with kids’ gum and BOOGERS. If you think that kids are going to be careful about this stuff, you simply don’t know kids. They have very short attention spans, they aren’t clean, they don’t follow rules consistently, and there is no way, short of insanely draconian measures, to make them follow the supposedly sufficient rules consistently, even if they were sufficient, which they clearly won’t be.
The only way to be able to reopen schools SAFELY is to be able to test every person in the school regularly, track all contacts, and isolate those infected or exposed. Until we can do this, the fact is that talk about reopening schools “safely” is just magical thinking on the part of people who don’t know schools and kids but would like the kids out of their hair again so that they can easily go about their lives. If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.
If we reopen schools under these conditions, we will see vast surges in infections, and lots and lots of teachers, administrators, staff, and parents and other relatives will die who didn’t have to die. And some kids will as well. How many of these deaths are you willing to accept? And how many other SARS-CoV-2-related health problems later on?
Look. There’s a freaking pandemic going on involving an easily transmissible, DEADLY disease that can cause severe consequences in the long-term even for people who are overtly asymptomatic. We are faced with these choices:
Simply call off school until there is a vaccine.
Send kids back to school and watch the infections and deaths soar.
Accept that we are going to have to continue doing distance learning, as bad as it is, until we have sufficient testing, tracking, and isolation capabilities to test every person in school regularly OR have a universally available vaccine.
Option one is not acceptable. IMHO, option two is Trump-level psychopathic (who cares about those deaths or about infections with long-term consequences?) or involves magical thinking. It’s BY FAR the worst choice. I’ll take option three, thank you.
Bob Shepherd: I’m very concerned about public schools opening. I don’t have an answer. Online virtual schools don’t work for the homeless or the poor. This makes the inequality in education even worse.
School don’t have the resources to do what should be done: 10 kids to a classroom with plenty of distance between desks. [I’ve seen photos of classrooms in Denmark where there were 10? in the room. I’ve never seen a US classroom with so few students unless it was for special classes.]
20% of the number of teachers are quitting. The scarcity of teachers was bad before the pandemic. How is this shortage going to play out in each school?
Underfunding and not caring for education is making things harder than ever. How will teachers survive if they depended upon 2-3 jobs when now no jobs are available? If they are working at another job, teachers are once again putting themselves at risk. Teaching in a classroom and going home to make online lesson plans is a killer.
Indiana’s governor has bragged about not cutting K-12 school funding. What isn’t being said is that Indiana puts less money into education that all of the states in the midwest.
Underfunding of everything has never been a problem with a Republican run state that brags about having a budget.
Speaking of death camps, the court has ruled that ICE must remove children from detention centers. Children will be placed with parents or relatives. This should have happened when the virus first hit.
Schools and senior teachers will have some big decisions to make. It is impossible to enforce social distancing or masks in elementary schools.
FYI Here’s an experiment in socially distanced classrooms.http://blogs.whitman.edu/countingfromzero/2020/06/19/an-experiment-in-the-socially-distanced-classroom/
“It is impossible to enforce social distancing or masks in elementary schools.” Exactly, RT.
But magically, all high-school students are going to become completely responsible and compliant. Just ask anyone who wants things to reopen. And limiting a closed classroom to 10 students is going to ensure that no one gets ill even though the virus is airborne and can quickly travel over large distances and kids move to and from their desks, the white board, the pencil sharpener, etc. And of course, classrooms are going to be perfectly, completely sanitized before every class, which makes the aforementioned booger-spreading a nonissue. Aie yie yie. Magical thinking. Wishful thinking. Not thinking. But hey, it’s just the lives of teachers and kids we’re talking about here.
Comment on Huffington Post:
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John Putnam
“We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.” –Dr. Donald Trump of the Trump University School of Epidemiology. Feb 2, 2020
“In our country, we only have, basically, 12 cases and most of those people are recovering and some cases fully recovered. So it’s actually less.” –Dr. Donald Trump of the Trump University School of Epidemiology. Feb 11, 2020
““We think some of the states can actually open up before the deadline of May 1. And I think that that will be a very exciting time indeed.” — Dr. Donald Trump of the Trump University School of Epidemiology. Apr 15, 2020
US deaths: 128,000 lives lost.
Here is an example of leadership; of what responsible public figures do. Please indulge me here. This past weekend Liverpool FC won its first Premier League Championship in 30 years. For Americans who don’t understand soccer, Liverpool is one the storied clubs in European soccer (recently one of our readers posted a stirring rendition of the fans singing You’ll Never Walk Alone, arguably the most emotional sports fans experience in the world). They did so in overwhelming form, winning the championship with seven playing dates left. When the Premier league resumed its season a few weeks ago, it did so by quarantining players from their families and the public and playing in empty stadiums.
Winning the championship unleashed a large fan celebration, which defied COVID lockdown measures and horrified their German coach, Jürgen Klopp, who is recognized as perhaps the greatest motivator in sports coaching in addition to being a tactical genius. He is revered by the his players and fans, especially after having brought them back to the proverbial promised land after 30 years in the sports desert. He and his team celebrated in the isolation of his hotel and he urged his supporters to stay home. Their not do so prompted him to write the first open letter of his career, which was published today in a Liverpool newspaper. He wrote:
“What I did not love – and I have to say this – was the scenes that took place at the Pier Head on Friday. I am a human being and your passion is also my passion but right now the most important thing is that we do not have these kind of public gatherings. We owe it to the most vulnerable in our community, to the health workers who have given so much and whom we have applauded and to the police and local authorities who help us as a club not to do this. Please – celebrate – but celebrate in a safe way and in private settings, whereby we do not risk spreading this awful disease further in our community…
“I already knew and liked the German word solidarität before I came to Liverpool and now I have learned that the English word is solidarity because I have heard it used by our supporters during the last few months. For me, it is the word more than any other that captures what Liverpool people are about. It is why they have come together to make PPE, it is why they have delivered food parcels and medicines to people when they have needed it most and it is why they come together in so many different ways during such a difficult time.
“If we can keep on coming together by being separate we will hopefully play a big part in the fight against this disease. I know that we can do this because I have experienced what a difference can be made and the players and myself have benefited from it.”
Imagine if we had leadership like this in this nation. Here’s the full letter:
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/this-moment-jurgen-klopp-writes-18503972
Their not doing so…
The Texas Medical Association HOPES attendees at the GOP Texas convention will wear a mask. There is no fixing stupid, even in the medical profession. I wonder how many medical workers have died and yet this professional association still won’t demand the wearing of a mask.
Why are these medical professionals beholden to Trump and the GOP? Good grief. This convention is being held in Houston, a HOT-spot. When will Republicans learn that going without a mask can be a death warrant?
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The Texas GOP convention will gather thousands of people indoors without a mask requirement. One of its sponsors is the Texas Medical Association.
The Texas Medical Association, the state’s largest medical group, said it is hopeful convention attendees will wear masks and practice social distancing.
BY MEENA VENKATARAMANAN JUNE 29, 2020
The Texas Medical Association is encouraging Texans to practice social distancing, stay home when possible and wear masks to slow the spread of the new coronavirus. But despite the potential mixed message it may send, the state’s largest medical organization said Monday it is not reconsidering its sponsorship of the Texas Republican convention next month. Some 6,000 people from across the state are expected to gather indoors without a mask mandate at the convention in Houston, one of the nation’s fastest-growing COVID-19 hot spots.
A spokesperson for TMA, which represents more than 53,000 Texas physicians and medical students, told The Texas Tribune that it will honor its commitment to the event.
“The agreement will not be revisited,” Brent Annear said in an email Monday…
TMA is one of more than 30 sponsors of the Republican Party convention, according to a list on the party’s website that was taken down Monday afternoon. Other sponsors of the convention include Comcast, Verizon, Union Pacific and various Republican officials, including Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and Comptroller Glenn Hegar. At the Republican Party convention, delegates will decide on the party’s leadership, platform and priorities for the upcoming legislative session.
As the coronavirus surges across the country, Harris County — where Houston is the county seat — has the highest number of cases and deaths in Texas. The timing of the in-person convention and resistance to imposing a mask requirement have raised concerns among public health experts…
https://www.texastribune.org/2020/06/29/texas-gop-convention-coronavirus-harris/