Trump decided a few weeks ago that he could help his prospects for re-election if he could get schools across the nation to reopen fully, regardless of the state of the pandemic in their community, regardless of the risks to students and staff. He has threatened to cut off federal funding to schools that refuse to reopen fully, and he proclaimed that he and Pence were pressuring the CDC to weaken its guidelines.
At first, the CDC held firm, urging schools to practice social distancing, to require personal protective equipment, and not to reopen unless all safety precautions were in place.
But the CDC buckled to the White House pressure. It changed the tone of its guidance, now stressing the necessity of reopening over the importance of safety.
Now the CDC sings the song that Trump, Pence, and DeVos want to hear.
The top U.S. public health agency issued a full-throated call to reopen schools in a package of new “resources and tools” posted on its website Thursday night that opened with a statement that sounded more like a political speech than a scientific document, listing numerous benefits for children of being in school and downplaying the potential health risks.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published the new guidance two weeks after President Trump criticized its earlier recommendations on school reopenings as “very tough and expensive,” ramping up what had already been an anguished national debate over the question of how soon children should return to classrooms. As the president was criticizing the initial C.D.C. recommendations, a document from the agency surfaced that detailed the risks of reopening and the steps that districts were taking to minimize those risks [the document was incorrectly dated 2019].
“Reopening schools creates opportunity to invest in the education, well-being, and future of one of America’s greatest assets — our children — while taking every precaution to protect students, teachers, staff and all their families,” the new opening statement said.
The package of materials began with the opening statement, titled “The Importance of Reopening America’s Schools This Fall,” and repeatedly described children as being at low risk for being infected by or transmitting the coronavirus, even though the science on both aspects is far from settled.
“The best available evidence indicates if children become infected, they are far less likely to suffer severe symptoms,” the statement said. “At the same time, the harms attributed to closed schools on the social, emotional, and behavioral health, economic well-being, and academic achievement of children, in both the short- and long-term, are well-known and significant.”
While children infected by the virus are at low risk of becoming severely ill or dying, how often they become infected and how efficiently they spread the virus to others is not definitively known. Children in middle and high schools may also be at much higher risk of both than those under 10, according to some recent studies.
Beyond the statement, the package included decision tools and checklists for parents, guidance on mitigation measures for schools to take and other information that some epidemiologists described as helpful.
The new materials are meant to supplement guidance the C.D.C. previously issued on when and how to reopen schools, with recommendations such as keeping desks six feet apart and keeping children in one classroom all day instead of allowing them to move around.
The new statement released on Thursday is a stark departure from the 69-page document, obtained by The New York Times earlier this month, marked “For Internal Use Only,” which was intended for federal public health response teams to have as they are deployed to hot spots around the country.
That document classified as “highest risk” the full reopening of schools, and its suggestions for mitigating the risk of school reopenings would be expensive and difficult for many districts, like broad testing of students and faculty and contact tracing to find people exposed to an infected student or teacher.
An Associated Press/NORC poll this week found that most Americans said they were very or extremely concerned that reopening K-12 schools for in-person instruction would contribute to spreading the virus. Altogether, 80 percent of respondents said they were at least somewhat concerned, including more than three in five Republicans.
Thanks to Trump, the public can no longer trust the impartiality of the CDC. Under pressure, it revised its guidelines to please the president. Science will not “get in the way” of Trump’s political campaign. Any student or teacher or other school personnel who dies because of a premature opening will be blood on the hands of Trump, Pence, DeVos, and the CDC.
The CDC and its director, Dr. Robert Redfield, are hereby enrolled on the blog’s Wall of Shame.
I do not trust the CDC anymore. That is sad.
On Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 12:01 PM Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: “Trump decided a few weeks ago that he could help his > prospects for re-election if he could get schools across the nation to > reopen fully, regardless of the state of the pandemic in their community, > regardless of the risks to students and staff. He has thr” >
The CDC ruined their reputation when they initially said not to wear masks because they wouldn’t do any good, especially cloth masks. Then about a month later they completely reversed course and said they only said that because masks were in short supply and they wanted to save them for medical people. Okay, but why not say that upfront? “Well, yes, it would be good if everyone wore masks, but because of “just in time” supply systems developed to maximize the profits of already obscenely profitable companies, we don’t even have enough for medical people.”
And why the reversal on cloth masks? We went from “they won’t do any good and you’ll probably wear it wrong and touch your face too much and make it more likely you’ll get the virus” to “if you can’t get an N-95 mask, use whatever you can get your hands on – bedsheets, t-shirts, heck, your grandma’s old underwear.”
I do not remember the CDC saying “not to wear masks because they wouldn’t do any good, especially cloth masks”. I must have missed that one. Easy to do when the media is so focused on Trump’s next crap-shoot shocker.
Hi Dienne, I respond to you way down there in general comments 7/26.
If this is the Center for Disease Control, where is the “control” with a full opening? While the children may themselves be at a lower risk of the virus, what about all the adults? It only takes one…..I agree with Mindy W here….don’t trust the CDC.
Thirty percent of the children tested in Florida were positive for the virus, and we are learning that having it, even if the person is asymptomatic, can have devastating long-term effects, including bloodclots in organs throughout the body.
Unfortunately, almost half the likely voters in Florida have tested positive for Trump20
LOL Alas
The Moronavirus trumpinski orangii is particularly virulent here
Welcome to the CDCT, the world’s foremost institute of TRUMP SCIENCE, which is much better, of course, than ordinary science because it is based on the intuitions of Stable Genius Cognitively Superior Peerless Leader Descended from Heaven Who Shines More Orange Than the Sun, Donald the Trump.
The Center for Demonstration of Compliance with Trump (CDC-T), formerly the CDC, stands resolutely by whatever Peerless Leader thinks today!
Stalin, of course, had his secret police, the NKVD. And he had his Stalinist science, which rejected the grand synthesis of Darwinism and Mendelian genetics on ideological grounds. Peerless Leader Trump will not be surpassed by the eunuch’s shadows of these Great but Lesser Leaders of the past!
How many Americans will die because of this? A hundred thousand? two hundred thousand? No cost is too great in obedience to Peerless Leader!
The campaign to discredit the CDC has been enabled by Trump, Pence, DeVos, and the officials at the CDC who have caved on treating students, teachers, and parents with respect. These instigators of public policy have been aided by Republicans who are silent or cheering for the economy over the health and wellbeing of humans.
This is beyond sad and unethical. The stupid order to reopen schools “or else” has been accompanied by a promise of $105 billion for disinfectants, masks and the like…but only for schools fully opened. Funds not used will go the vouchers for parents (or students) to choice and education provider. There is no mention of the fact that vendors who accept vouchers also choose their students. They always want the most money for the least trouble from students. I have not seen any budget or legislation that makes the $105 billion a serious proposal. We do know that DeVos has misrepresented the virtues of vouchers and choice from the beginning of her job as Secretary of education and fleet commander of her ten yachts.
And 105 billion isn’t nearly enough to do this right.
Even his buddies don’t back him on that idea–
(CNN)Republicans in the Senate are roundly dismissing President Donald Trump’s call to withhold more federal aid from schools that remain shuttered during the coronavirus pandemic, the latest sign of a split between the White House and the GOP over their party’s response to the public health emergency (Wed)
The Republican Convention that was to be held in Jacksonville, FL, has been canceled. If it is unsafe to hold a convention, why is it safe for students and educators to return to schools? Florida has a positivity rate over 18% and a governor that is DJT’s water boy. The CDC, the federal government and red state governors should stop using public schools as political bargaining chip.
Thank you, good catch. Add to that: politicians’ & pundits’ pronouncements about the importance of reopening in-person schooling are uniformly issued either from the safety of home [via videoconference], or from a dais backed many yards away from masked reporters.
And then, of course, if anything goes wrong — and it will — XLV and the Republican Death Cult can always blame the CDC for the resulting disaster …
Either that or testing, cuz you know, without testing, there would be no new cases.
Maybe The Donald can begin a new career as a logician* after (if?) he leaves office.
*Foolean Logic.
Foolean Logic. LOL, SomeDAM. Good one!
None of them care about school staff. None of them. I was just talking to a wonderful second year teacher who is looking to get out because of the level of disrespect. And he’s a great teacher, the kind we need way more of. But we’ve probably lost him. Not this year, but in s year or two. And how many more are we going to lose to either death or disability from Covid, Or to the realization that no one cares a flying fig about teachers.
And where are all the people who said that we teachers should get raises? Why aren’t those people standing up for us now?
They’ll have to change their name to CPC: Center for Propaganda Control.
Teachers in Florida have to sue to keep their schools safe. California, on the other hand, requires that schools stay closed in hard hit areas. Appar-e-n-t-ly though, waivers are going to be granted in Los Angeles county to charter and private elem-e-n-t-ary schools if they get agreem-e-n-t from unions and par-e-n-t groups. Of course, most of them don’t have unions, but even if they do, the schools will be able to open with political agreem-e-n-t instead of scientific agreem-e-n-t. It’s Betsy DeVos’ dream come true, right here on the blue, left coast: Close the public schools and open up privatization. Privatization, deregulation, and death on a silver platter. Death for dollars.
Does anyone really think politicians anywhere in this greed driven country pay att-e-n-t-ion to scientific evidence rather than well heeled lobbyists and investm-e-n-t class campaign donors?
Do I see that the Happiness Engineers fixed the “ent” problem?
Yes. Thank you, Diane.
I thought Saruman was the problem, not the Ents
No, I fixed it.
I realized that almost everyone was put into moderation and guessed it was because of a change I made. That change occurred when “ent” went into moderation. I used her email instead of her alias, and that eliminated the automatic problem of putting every commENT into moderation that used ENT. It is hard to write sentences that don’t contain those three letters.
Apparently, Saruman came to the blog a few days ago by possessing an Ent. It’s the only explanation. Ents are trees, and trees do not like Faux News unless they are under a spell.
Ah, that explains it. I shouldn’t have been using the word “excrem-ent” so often when discussing statements by Don the Con and Kayleigh McInanity.
Weren’t The Ents a tree-like creature in Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings?
Yep.
Redfield was a Trump appointee. So what else needs to be said. Bow LOW if you want to keep your job.
Scientific evidence only applies to Trump. Nobody can get near him unless they are tested first.
GRrrrrrrr.
over and over we see the same response: get appointed by Trump, lose moral stance.
Trump’s pattern has been to appoint corrupt loyalists to lead the federal agencies like the CDC. His loyalists then start to fire people in the agencies they lead and for those that are not as easy to fire make life so miserable, they retire early or quit.
By the time the CDC capitulated, most of the people that resisted Trump were gone and the few that once resisted are now isolated and feel powerless. The ones that were left surrendered to Trump’s autocratic leadership out of fear for a job that comes with medical and losing a regular paycheck or they support replacing the U.S. Constitution with a dictator.
The right thing to do now would be for someone like Anthony Fauci to resign as Mattis did, but unlike Mattis who was silent for months after he left the White House, Fauci must hold a press conference condemning Trump in strong language for what he had done to the CDC and the rest of the federal government.
Trump will dismiss Fauci as an incompetent and a disgruntled employee and attack Fauci on Twitter to stir up his violent base and drive Fauci and his family into hiding out of fear that they will all be killed by Trump’s AR-15 totting loyalist future Gestapo.
I’m willing to bet that Mattis received death threats after he spoke out, and Trump complained about it on Twitter with his usual lies designed to stir up his supporters’ anger. But Mattis as a retired four-star general may live on a military base in quarters fitting for someone of his rank. There are also “Military Only Retirement Communities” where the other retired former military would respect Mattis and help to protect him from Trump’s thugs.
I do not think Fauci will have an option like that.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/retirement/101816/can-retirees-live-military-housing.asp
From what I have read this is happening throughout the federal government. While the media focused almost exclusively on Trump’s latest daily shocker, Trump’s administration was turning all of our federal agencies into empty husks that are incapable of doing the job they were created to do and every one of these agencies is now controlled by someone that hates the agency they lead and wants to destroy it.
Re: the linked NYT article, section detailing recent clusters tracing to “school-related events or gatherings of teenagers.” I’m guessing the list is not by any means comprehensive. They cite, e.g., a cluster of 20 15-19yo’s testing positive after a 7/11 party in Middletown NJ (Monmouth County). Right here in my Union County NJ town, a cluster of 12 teens was traced to parties around the same time. It was notable, as the town’s total positives at that point were only 42, total.
I read CDC’s “new guidelines.” They really don’t differ much from their previous missives. They tacked on a political, pro-reopening-in-person intro. They “backed it up” w/cherry-picked studies that include none of those studies’ caveats, & left out the glaring contradiction, S Korea’s huge, vetted study showing 11yo’s & up transmit at the same rate as adults.
All that is REPREHENSIBLE, & falls in the same category as Trump’s months of unmasked, duct-taped-health-experts’ press events [& his anti-mask & anti-virtual-ed tweets].
However. All the same basic guidance is there. Reopening where covid is rising will increase community spread– not advised. Safe reopening means social distancing, masks, no shared stuff, frequent sanitizing– & good ventilation [mentioned more often this time]. New additions: recommended “cohorting”/ pods, outdoor venues where possible, & several exhortations for locals to corral unused/ rarely-used community spaces to add to school space/ enable distancing.
Nutshelling: recommendations have not changed. States/ locals still have left in their lap a bunch of reqts they can’t meet w/o a huge increase in funding. They can ignore at their own risk, or proceed w/ remote learning.
As Laura points out, whatever paltry funds fed comes up w/will provide far less than what’s needed for the intended grantees, i.e. the fools who go straight to full reopening & risk widespread covid increase– the rest to private alternatives for those forced to choose between a rock & a hard place.
& left out the glaring contradiction, S Korea’s huge, vetted study showing 11yo’s & up transmit at the same rate as adults.
Key fact
This is pathetic.
1. That a medical, scientific, research, evidence-based, professional, disease expertise office of the United States would modify one word of a report that was criticized by this president or any president is egregious.
Science is science. Research is research. Analyzing data utilizes vetted regulations and protocols. And yet a bully with zero knowledge and refusal to listen to a report can scuttle and then change a report.
That this entity would pull the initial support because oh gee the president doesn’t like it is as egregious.
If this White House any sense of how an organization or government works – and they didn’t like the report just like they might not like the options of military experts in the situation room – they have the arguments and discussions and put the facts on the table BEFORE decisions are made and reports are delivered.
b
This is a keystone cops reality show White House – a WH that whose inaction and ignorance and lack of any organization is responsible for thousands and thousands of deaths and millions of cases that could have been prevented.
Commenters on this blog recently had a good laugh at publishers producing textbooks with labels like “Florida Algebra.” Well, here we are. Trump Science.
“That a medical, scientific, research, evidence-based, professional, disease expertise office of the United States would modify one word of a report that was criticized by this president or any president is egregious.”
RIGHT ON, WaitWhat!! I’m getting angrier & angrier about this.
At first I was relieved to read the “modified” CDC guidelines, as the scientific basis is intact. “All” CDC did was allow Trump’s lackeys to… tack on a misleading political interpretation?!? WTH?!
It’s a blatant move aimed to undermine the public’s trust in its own govtl institutions. A project It-45 has been working on since Day#1.
Politicization of science has been happening for some time now.
Unfortunately it’s not new under Trump, although it has been taken to new extremes.
“Rick Piltz spent 14 years in various positions in Washington closely following how global warming science is misused by the government and special interest groups. From 1995, he served in senior positions in the Climate Change Science Program, before resigning in March 2005. In his resignation letter, he wrote, “I believe the overarching problem is that the [Bush] Administration…does not want and has acted to impede forthright communication of the state of climate science and its implication for society.”[4]
Within months, the New York Times exposed White House operative Philip Cooney for editing government climate documents to increase uncertainty about the science. Cooney resigned and joined Exxon Mobil.
Piltz also states that forces within the Bush Administration have sought to hide the results from the National Assessment on Climate Change.[5]”
From wikipedia
More than anything else, ignoring or dismissing science spells the end of our country.
As Richard Feynman noted ” reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled”
It’s really too bad that the first letters of the paragraphs of the new CDC document don’t spell out,
Help, the remaining responsible scientists at the CDC are being held captive by Trump’s Secret Police.
This kind of trick has worked in other similar situations in which documents were produced under duress.
LOL
Of all the atrocities that we have had to endure since election day 2016, this might be the most distressing. When one destroys the credibility of the CDC (or the NIH), an institution that has NEVER succumbed to political pressure–although there have been examples of it being preempted by Congress, statistics gathering on gun violence as Exhibit A–it once again demonstrates how much the Idiot has irreversibly damaged this nation.
White House staff wrote the new CDC report, not the CDC. See Rachel Maddow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCdAZET6E10
He’s in love with the desk. Bone head. HUH? that dump: “…kings, queens, dictators, and oh…the president…rambles on.” all don’t wear masks.
President Donald Trump explains why he won’t wear a face mask despite CD… https://youtu.be/dn_8kR_E9jA via @YouTube
That dump is a traitor, a moron, and totally immoral. Think: Epstein.
Remember when the CDC released their first guide to school reopening but it was shelved because the science conflicted with Trump’s obsession with reopening at any cost? Then, just like traitor Barr with the DOJ, the CDC was made to conform to Trump’s narrative and as a result hemorrhaged credibility. Thus law and science in the US are being remade into propaganda tools of Trump’s dystopic reality TV government. Facilitating this transformation is the culture war that Trump has stoked which has effectively cleaved the nation into two incommensurable halves. Trump’s denigration of scientific knowledge (think of the “Dr. Fauci created Covid” conspiracy theory airing all across the country this week on Sinclair Broadcasting stations) is yet another troubling sign of an anti-constitutional Russia-backed incipient fascist dictatorship now forming in the US.
It’s not a stretch to envision Trump & his sycophantic toadies in the White House, like Stephen Miller & nepotism heirs Ivanka & Jared, leading the loyalists and claiming,'”we can say whatever we want to say, because no one can stop us since we ARE the government, so whatever we decide is truth. And we can even get away with selling swampland in Florida or beans right here in the WH and be successful (the Hatch Act be damned)!’
Scanning the transcript of the telebriefing press call Friday (find at cdc.gov)… Actually found this in Asst Secy of Ed Mitchell Zais’ opener:
“Too many government schools already failed their students this past Spring. It can’t happen again this Fall.”
The context makes it clear: either you’re fully open in the midst of a raging pandemic, or you’re a FAILED GOVERNMENT SCHOOL.
Where did DofEd dig up this dittohead slime? We can read this kind of kneejerk remark from any of the anonymous Dimbart trolls on comment threads of WaPo ed articles. As Chiara says, why are taxpayers footing the bill for folks set on destroying the schools our children attend?
Because Trump is president and the dittoheads are drawn to him like metal filings to a magnet. These are not career employees. They are political appointees.
Lapdog Pence doesn’t have an original thought in his measly brain. What was Dr. Birx doing at this meeting with Pence and DeVos? She must be giving in to the lame brained idea that kids going back to school is great.
……………………………………….
Pence says schools reopenings ‘best thing for our kids’
July 24, 2020
Indianapolis – Vice President Mike Pence kept up the Trump administration’s push for reopening schools and universities, insisting Friday that it can be done safely even amid public worries about the health risks posed by the coronavirus.
Pence told a small audience at Marian University in Indianapolis that having children back in classrooms was a necessary step to seeing more parents returning to jobs. The remarks came even as President Donald Trump on Thursday acknowledged that some schools in virus hot spots may need to delay their reopening this fall.
“Opening up our schools again is the best thing for our kids,” Pence said. “It’s also the best thing for working families.”
The former Indiana governor heard administrators at the private Catholic university describe their safety steps toward starting the fall semester next month.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus coordinator, joined Pence at the event.
Pence discussed the importance of in-person learning for at-risk students, citing resources for counseling and special needs and children who rely upon school lunches.
“The risk of the coronavirus to healthy children is very low,” Pence said. “It’s also important to remember that there are real costs, far beyond academics, to our kids if they’re not in school.”…
Check out this story on detroitnews.com: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/nation/2020/07/24/pence-says-schools-reopenings-best-thing-kids/112369024/
What Trump, Pence, and DeVos are doing unwittingly is to make themselves responsible if and student or staff member gets COVID after returning to school on their advice. And any deaths will be on them.
Trump Will Eventually Disappear
By Al Franken, Al Franken’s Website
25 July 20
Until the coronavirus hit, Trump had not faced a real crisis in the Oval Office. A global pandemic is a doozy of a crisis. Still, it is inconceivable that anyone could possibly have handled the coronavirus any worse.
The fact is that no matter who was president (Hillary Clinton comes to mind) we still would have faced a pandemic in the United States. What we did not have to do is face a completely out-of-control pandemic.
There were the six weeks to two months that Trump assured us that everything was “totally under control.” That our cases would soon be down to zero. That the coronavirus would magically disappear.* All this was in direct contradiction to what he was being told by his team. On January 18, when Health and Human Services Secretary Azar warned Trump about the grave threat posed by the virus, Trump called him “an alarmist,” and moved onto what he wanted to talk about – “that f*cking vaping thing.” That’s right – vaping. The president was very, very angry that he had been dragged into banning fruity and mint-flavored vaping products. Of late, he had been receiving a lot of political blowback from that decision, one that he bitterly regretted.
We know that there were similar warnings in the Presidential Daily Brief during that period. But, then again, this president doesn’t read the PDBs. Recently, Joe Biden announced that, as president, he will read the Presidential Daily Brief. And get this. He promised to read them daily!…
There are actual rational, intelligent, measured ways to approach these problems. But we have been held hostage by a malignant narcissist. And not just any malignant narcissist. This one. Yes, it would be nice if the president had empathy. But I’d settle for a malignant narcissist who couldn’t give a fig about anybody, but who at least was smart enough to understand that he (and the country) would be a lot better off if he had just followed the science. Who knows? Maybe that malignant narcissist would have had a good shot at being reelected.
https://alfranken.com/uncategorized/trump-will-eventually-disappear
Cases are rising in Nigeria. [My primary care doctor and my dentist come from Nigeria. Both are brilliant people. My primary care doctor’s brother is a lawyer.]
Trump’s awful comments about Africa are demeaning of HIM. He’s turning the U.S. into a shit-hole country. Poverty causes all sorts of problems and he has no compassion nor any understanding of what it means to be poor.
President Trump described Haiti, El Salvador and parts of Africa as “shithole countries” in a meeting with lawmakers in the White House.
……………………………………………
Nigerian schools are being forced to rethink their digital limits and education models in a pandemic.
Despite the easing of stiff coronavirus lockdown measures, Nigeria’s enduring ban on large public gatherings means schools remain shuttered. In Lagos, Yomi Kazeem explains, it’s a reality that’s forcing private and government schools into a hasty overhaul of their age-old processes.
…But with a new school term approaching, like many other schools around the world, the Sowoles’ Lagos-based private school faced the risk of making no income despite mounting overheads, including rent and salaries. The solution was to hire a rapid-action team to digitize the entire term’s syllabus, across all subjects in the six grade levels, converting the lessons into videos that the school’s 350 pupils could access online. Put another way, Sowole’s solution meant the team had to transform all of the term’s planned classes into about a thousand 20-minute long video lessons within a month…
https://qz.com/africa/1882896/
These are followers of Trump. There is NO need to wear a mask even when the numbers of infected are rising. Yeah, give children the freedom to play and have a childhood. Then complain when your child, or someone else’s gets ill or dies. Maybe teachers or other adults in the school don’t count if they get sick and die. FREEDOM and LIBERATE!! /s
What are these crazy people thinking? Why not sue Pritzker because he is looking to protect children and adults in Illinois?
………………………………………………….
William Kelly, host of the Citizen Kelly Show spoke about suing Gov. JB Pritzker over COVID-19 restrictions.
The “Million Unmasked March,” which took its name from the social-justice march a quarter-century ago, drew about 250 people.
By Associated Press Jul 25, 2020, 6:09pm CDT
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Just weeks away from the ringing of the schoolhouse bell, scores of people rallied at the state Capitol Saturday against the state’s requirement that schoolchildren must wear face coverings this fall to discourage transmission of the highly contagious and potentially deadly coronavirus.
In a state where the numbers of cases of COVID-19 are rising, if not as quickly as they are surging in several other states, the protestors took aim at Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s broadside this week that people who forego face coverings are “the enemy.”
“I don’t think all this pressure needs to be put on the kids,” said Adam Dunn of Decatur, whose kids are out of school. “They need freedom to go play, have a childhood.”
The “Million Unmasked March,” which took its name from the social-justice march a quarter-century ago, drew about 250 people, including a stalwart group of counter-demonstrators who periodically let loose their own shouted protests from across the street…
https://chicago.suntimes.com/coronavirus/2020/7/25/21338721/anti-mask-march-springfield-schools
Responding to an opening comment– Dienne77’s, 7/24 at 1:26pm
Dienne, sorry I wasn’t quick enough on the uptake, folks probably not reading here anymore. I really think this subject deserves its own thread! The “but-CDC-changed-its-mind-on-masks” argument could be called Exhibit “A” in the case “How a wealthy nation with 4.2% of the world’s population came to have 25% of its cases and 23% of its deaths.”
CDC Chair Redfield’s 2/27 statement was pretty clear– that there was no role for masks in the general community, that they needed to be prioritized for healthcare workers. It’s important to remember the context: “masks” at that point meant N95 & surgical masks, already nearly gone here.
Should he have passed along WHO’s Oct guideline “conditionally” recommending face masks for the asymptomatic in severe flu epidemics or pandemics? E Asians conquered SARS that way. However, their mask of choice for SARS prevention, daily pollution protection, and covid-19 — was the N95.
It was the Surgeon General, Jerome Adams, who immediately muddied the waters, tweeting 2 days later this completely nonsensical message: “[Masks] are not effective in preventing the public from getting coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!” [they only work when a med professional dons them?]. That’s Jerome Adams, presidential appointee– the very same guy who said attending large gatherings over the Fourth [like upcoming Trump rallies] was a personal decision.
CDC [and WHO] changed recommendation at the beginning of April to cloth masks in public for all due to (1) increasing evidence that a significant portion of asymptomatic & pre-symptomatic infected were spreading the virus, (2) two recent studies comparing protection provided by various mask types. There was some pushback from individual scientists: these were folks concerned about very recent info on aerosolized droplets, who feared cloth-mask-wearers might neglect distancing and hand-washing.
More to the point: CDC [/WHO] is ‘science’ and can only recommend. Govt mandates. Around the same date (early April), Italy’s viral epicenter, Lombardy, mandated face&nose coverings, & people made their own while awaiting more supplies.
Broad-brush, it’s science vs govt policy. The scientific knowledge of a novel phenomenon changes as rapidly as data develops– in the case of a viral pandemic, daily and hourly. Any population will have trouble keeping up w/changing scientific recommendations/ making “personal decisions.” Govt policy/ mandate is what counts. US sadly lacking there, even today. Whole lotta dithering & passing the buck. Our problem is distrust in govt institutions: it has a 40-yr history, goes from bottom to top, & has been exacerbated for nearly 4 yrs of direct, non-stop hammering by Trump admin against every branch of govt, every exec dept, & the press.
I read some European articles on mask-wearing mandates, behavior, attitudes. Surprisingly (to me) they are hardly a monolith. I’d thought we stood out as worst OECD example, but they are all over the map. For example, a strong North-South divide, w/Nordic countries barely getting to 10% mask-wearing in public, vs S Europeans 76-82%. E Europeans & Germany wonderfully logical: draconian mandates early on, lifted gradually as stats warranted. W Europeans much like us: internal squabbling [esp in France, nu ;-)], but strong uptick in mask-wearing when WHO recommended [early April] regardless of whether/ when govt mandated.
Am reading this on the 27th, bethree5, & will alert dienne 77 to read, too.
I have a brilliant friend who is an Orthopaedic Doctor (same as MD–years in med school, training, etc., but more whole-being based medicine), & she stated the same as dienne 77, in terms of what the CDC statement was (& why: this is known among some in the medical field).
I found it odd that, right before the IL shut-down, I was in the market, wearing a mask. The man behind me asked me if I was sick. I said, “No, I’m wearing this so I won’t get sick.” (I’d worn masks before, anyway–in airports & on planes–I’d gotten bad colds on at least 3 trips, from someone sneezing or coughing, & not face-covering/using tissue: ruined 3 trips). He laughed & said, “That won’t help.” I asked, “Are you a doctor?” He was, indeed, an eye doctor.
Ironically, a doctor travelling by plane developed covid-19 (& became extremely ill). He was wearing a mask the whole time, as well as gloves. He figured out that it got into his eyes, which were uncovered.
Buy those clear glasses (cheap: can be bought in hardware stores, Home Depot, Lowe’s) & wear them!