Netanyahu Is Harming Israel In Ways Its Enemies Were Never Able To

 

Israel has a population of 9,197,590-- 96th biggest population in the world. On Friday, Israel announced 5,784 new COVID cases. On Saturday it was another 9,201 cases and yesterday 3,926 more, bringing the total to 231,026 cases, 24th in the world. Israel has 25,118 cases per million Israelis, the worst in the industrialized world-- worse than the U.S. or Brazil or any European country-- by far. Israel is full-on into a second wave: the Netanyahu Wave, fully engineered by the Israeli prime minister for the sake of his tenuous political fortunes (and so as to keep himself and his wife out of prison for crimes unrelated to his pandemic crimes).

And by the way, that 9,201 cases announced Saturday? That would be equivalent to 300,000 new cases in one day here in the U.S., which most of the world considers the country that handled the pandemic worst of all. And the U.S. has never topped 80,000 in one day-- let alone 300,000.

What Trump has brought to the U.S., in terms of national disunity, Netanyahu-- a similar character of low moral standing and authoritarian proclivities-- has brought Israel. The country seems to be falling apart. It goes beyond just the way Netanyahu has handled the pandemic... but that's terrible enough for a country that rightfully prides itself as being one of the most scientifically and technologically advanced on the planet. But brilliant scientists can come up with whatever they come up with, only to run headlong into a Trump-like or Netanyahu-like government with politicians who have their own agendas. In Israel, like in the U.S., decisions about the pandemic were made not because of science or public health, but to serve the interests of Dear Leader. Period.

Times of Israel:

A key ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed on Thursday that the protesters against him were paradoxically happy about the virus surge that has resulted in almost 7,000 cases per day amid an increasingly stringent national lockdown that critics claim is aimed at preventing the demonstrations.

“The demonstrators are counting on this chaos, on this anarchy... They are quietly happy about the 7,000 patients [diagnosed per day],” Likud MK Miki Zohar told Army Radio, arguing that the protesters-- many of whom ostensibly oppose the government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak-- believe a severe health care crisis would bring about Netanyahu’s downfall.

“This is a serious accusation and it is authentic,” insisted Zohar, the coalition chief. “They think that if they stand up and demonstrate, they will cause everyone to break the guidelines and the disease will spread.”

“Of course the [government’s] idea is to get to a situation where people are praying in the open air in numbers that do not exceed 20 people,” Zohar continued. If the protests also ceased, “the worshipers would understand the situation” and accept the limitation on synagogue prayer, he claimed.

The interview came ahead of the implementations of tightened restrictions and after a day of acrimonious debates in the cabinet over whether to allow anti-Netanyahu protests during the lockdown, with the Blue and White party insisting a government could not order protests against it to disband. Ministers also argued over how much to restrict prayer gatherings, with Haredi parties Shas and United Torah Judaism pushing to leave synagogues open, even if new limits on numbers of worshipers are imposed.

Under a final compromise reached late Wednesday, synagogues will close beginning Friday, reopen in a limited capacity and with worshipers divided into small groups for the 25 hours of the Yom Kippur fast, then close again on Monday night. A similar compromise was reached on protests, under which demonstrators may gather within a kilometer (0.6 miles) from their homes. In both cases, gatherings may include no more than 20 people at a time who must stay two meters apart.

A special compromise was reached allowing for continued protests outside the Prime Minister’s Residence on Balfour Street in Jerusalem, where demonstrators have gathered regularly for months to call for Netanyahu’s resignation.

Analysts in the United States have cast doubt on the idea that demonstrations cause coronavirus surges, after analyzing protest rates and virus rates there. Research does appear to suggest that indoor worship has led to a number of so-called “super-spreader” events globally.

One of the organizing groups behind the anti-Netanyahu protests said Thursday that it would begin to demonstrate against the Blue and White party for the role it played in limiting the protests and in helping turn Israel “into a dictatorship.”

“We will go back to demonstrating on your head,” the organization said in a statement. “We hereby inform Benny Gantz, and the justice and foreign ministers [Avi Nissenkorn and Gabi Ashkenazi]: If you aid the destruction of democracy, we will persecute you, demonstrate against you, you will remember for a lifetime those who turned Israel into a dictatorship.”

Meanwhile... just another day in Netanyahu's Knesset:

Miki Zohar, the Likud Party whip and widely considered to be a crook and one of COVID's top allies in Israel: "I have argued in recent days that there are those who want these demonstrations to continue because they want there to be morbidity."

Eli Avidar, one of the most brilliant and accomplished members of the Knesset: "You are mentally ill!"

Zohar: "You’re one of the most idiotic people I’ve seen."

So, while Trump tries bribing Sudan's corrupt government to recognize Israel in return for being taken off the U.S. supporter-of-terrorism list, Israel marked Yom Kippur with 1,512 patients in the hospital with COVID. 749 of them are in serious condition, nearing the 800-patient threshold health officials have warned would lead to a collapse of the Israeli health system. Of those, 196 patients are on life support.

Can a collapse of the hospital system happen in the U.S.? Hospitals have been overrun in some of the states with Trumpist governors-- particularly in parts of Texas, Florida and Arizona-- but if the U.S. gets hit with a second wave comparable to the one Israel is in the midst of, the collapse of the hospital system-- if Trump is still in office-- is not just possible; it's inevitable.

The Netanyahu Pandemic-- Israel Becomes The World's First Country To Shut Down Again

On Thursday, Israel reported 4,429 new cases of COVID-19 in their Netanyahu Pandemic. On Friday it was another 3,038 cases and yesterday 3,961 more, bring the country's total to a horrifying 152,525. Why "horrifying?" Israel only has 9.2 million people. That number is very high for a small country and can be better understood when you compare Israel to five of the other countries that had handled the first wave relatively well by shutting down and then reopened:

• Israel- 16,583 cases per million residents
• Spain- 12,334 cases per million residents
• France- 5,726 cases per million residents
• U.K.- 5,374 cases per million residents
• Netherlands- 4,726 cases per million residents
• Italy- 4,737 cases per million residents
• Germany- 3,107 cases per million residents

Instead, Israel is rapidly catching up with the 10 U.S. states that have also botched their reopening worse than any advanced societies and-- whether they acknowledge it or not-- are headed towards shutting down again... probably after the election:

• Louisiana- 33,595 cases per million residents
• Florida- 30,803 cases per million residents
• Mississippi- 30,113 cases per million residents
• Alabama- 28,073 cases per million residents
• Georgia- 27,587 cases per million residents
• South Carolina- 25,245 cases per million residents
• Tennessee- 25,024 cases per million residents
• Texas- 23,764 cases per million residents
• Nevada- 23,772  cases per million residents
• Iowa- 23,412  cases per million residents

Like my grandmother-- an old school zionist-- and evangelicals-- no school zionists-- my pal Roland assumed Israel would be the first nation in the world to develop a vaccine. Israel assumed likewise and blared it widely. Instead this was the magic headline in yesterday's Times of London: Israel becomes first nation to announce a second coronavirus lockdown. Reporting from Jerusalem, Anshel Pfeffer, wrote that "Israel is passing milestones no other nation wants to reach, after repeated missteps by Binyamin Netanyahu’s government. Blighted by one of the highest levels of coronavirus infection, with more than 4,000 new cases daily, it is about to become the first country to go back into national lockdown." No one wants to say it, of course, but Israel has the burden of a large, extremely primitive and entirely above-the-law Hasidic population that is largely responsible for the Netanyahu Pandemic.

The decision taken by the cabinet in Jerusalem on Thursday to start a lockdown next Friday, on the eve of the Jewish new year, led to claims of political considerations trumping public health.

Details of the new lockdown have still to be finalised but are likely to include a ban on moving more than 500 metres from home, and limits on gatherings of ten people indoors and 20 outdoors. Schools will shut and teachers will switch to giving lessons online.

For a week Israel has had the highest new infection rate per person, according to data from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. The daily rate continues to rise and yesterday 4,429 new cases were recorded.

Despite this, mortality remains low, with 1,077 deaths since the pandemic began. Experts believe that the low toll is because Israel’s population has a young median age.

The health ministry says that there are 486 serious cases, some way off the “red line” of 800, the limit of Israeli hospitals’ capacity. However, these are not evenly spread. “We’ve long ago reached the red line,” said Professor Dror Mevorach, of Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem. “People are behaving without understanding the seriousness of the situation and the leadership isn’t giving any example. We’re in a slow collapse.”

In May Israel ended its first lockdown with daily new infections in single figures but it is clear that the recovery was poorly planned and hastily executed. Pressure from businesses led to an early return to schools and renewed spread of the virus. The government, meanwhile, failed to set up an efficient system to flag new outbreaks. This is still the case. Last month it gave the responsibility for contact-tracing to the military, which said this week that the system would not be fully operational until November.

[I bolded a few sentences because they apply equally to Trumpland.]

About two thirds of the infections are in the Arab-Israeli and ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities, which together account for almost a third of the 8.8 million-strong population. Experts attribute the levels of infection to both groups’ insistence, despite restrictions, on holding weddings with as many as 1,000 guests, and the resumption of study three weeks ago in the ultra-Orthodox seminaries.

Last week the cabinet voted in favour of localised lockdowns, which would have included about 30 “red” towns and neighbourhoods, all either ultra-Orthodox or Arab. However, ultra-Orthodox parties are key members of Mr Netanyahu’s coalition and after an outcry that they were being “singled out” the lockdown was rescinded on Sunday in favour of nightly curfews, which were judged ineffective by experts.

“Complete madness,” Yair Golan, a left-wing opposition leader, tweeted. “Where is the logic in a full lockdown on towns with barely any infections?” He accused the prime minister of deciding on a national lockdown to avoid angering his political partners.

The latest polling indicates that Netanyahu's political handling of the pandemic has talked his approval. 65% of Israelis disapprove of the way he's doing his job. Friday, the UN General Assembly approved a coronavirus resolution opposed by just 4 fascist-oriented countries: Trumpland and Israel voting NO and Hungary and Ukraine abstaining. The resolution also called on all UN member states "to enable all countries to have unhindered timely access to quality, safe, efficacious and affordable diagnosis, therapeutics, medicines and vaccines … as well as equipment for the COVID-19 response" and called for "intensified international cooperation and solidarity to contain, mitigate and overcome the pandemic and its consequences." It passed 169-2.

Religious Nuts Are Out Of Control In Israel-- Making Israel The Center Of A Catastrophic Second Pandemic Spike

On Friday, Israel reported 1,964 new COVID cases. On Saturday, it was 2,517 new cases. And yesterday... 1,708, bringing Israel's total to 130,644-- 14,204 cases per million Israelis. That number doesn't sound that terrible compared to America's numbers. Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi all have double that number of cases per million residents! With a population of just 9.1 million people, Israel has more total cases than all but 13 of the U.S. states, including states with bigger populations like Ohio and Michigan.

But it really starts looking bad when you compare Israel's numbers to the numbers in countries that don't have Trump and his puppet governors killing people-- like the western European nations. Israel's 14,204 cases per million residents is worse than even the hardest-hit European nations:

• Spain- 11,060 cases per million residents
• Sweden- 8,405 cases per million residents
• Belgium- 7,572 cases per million residents
• Ireland- 5,997 cases per million residents
• Portugal- 5,913 cases per million residents
• Switzerland- 5,124 cases per million residents
• U.K.- 5,109 cases per million residents
• France- 4,974 cases per million residents
• Italy- 4,593 cases per million residents
• Netherlands- 4,363 cases per million residents

Israel botched its school reopening really badly-- criminally actually, since it was all about politics-- and the country was thrown into a worse pandemic than it was originally. The pandemic has been turned into a full-blown scandal and tragedy in Israel and it was 100% about politics. Of 1,400 Israel's diagnosed with COVID in June almost half were infected in schools. By mid-July over 2,000 students, teachers and staff had caught it. NPR interviewed Jerusalem-based reporter Daniel Estrin noted that "what happened in Israel is quite a cautionary tale, I think. At first, the Israeli health professionals here urged the government, yes, let school resume again, but only let kids under the age of 9 go back to school, and keep it in small groups. And they said data around the world show that younger kids have a very low rate of infection and transmission. But instead of just letting the younger kids go back to school, there were these last-minute negotiations. Ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools wanted the older kids to go back to religious studies, and so they did. And then 11th- and 12th-graders also went back to school. And so very, very quickly, everyone was back. And then very quickly after that, there was a heat wave, so the government said, well, kids don't need to wear masks anymore during this heat wave. And then we just saw big outbreaks in schools, and a lot of schools shut down for several weeks... I think the lessons to be learned from Israel are listen to the health experts. The government here did not follow the health experts' guidelines to just open the younger grades and to have kids in small groups. They opened very fast, and there was no coherent policy. So listen to your health experts. Have a coherent policy."

An astronomical 3,331 new cases in Israel today-- worst day ever!

Two months later and Israel still is not listening to public health experts and still does not have a coherent pandemic policy-- and it's still all about politics. Netanyahu's shaky government depends on support from completely deranged ultra-Orthodox sociopaths who personify the Greek meaning of the word "idiot." [Umair Haque wrote that "For the Greeks, 'idiot' carried a precise and special meaning. The person who was only interested in private life, private gain, private advantage. Who had no conception of a public good, common wealth, shared interest. To the Greeks, the pioneers of democracy, the creators of the demos, such a person was the most contemptible of all. Because even the Greeks seemed to understand: you can’t make a functioning democracy out of…idiots."]

Over the weekend, Haaretz reported that the ultra-Orthodox politicians threatened to blow up Netanyahu's coalition if he went through with plans to shut down their self-imposed ghettos.

The mayors of four predominantly ultra-Orthodox municipalities sent a letter Sunday to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, informing him that they plan to cease cooperation with government authorities in the fight against the coronavirus in light of an expected decision to impose a lockdown on their cities.

The mayors of Bnei Brak, Elad, Betar Illit and the council head of Emanuel blamed Netanyahu in their letter of failing to hear them out, to examine alternatives they've proposed, or understand their plight, and charged that he has intentionally led Israel down a path that would lead to a lockdown of Haredi cities during the holidays.

The Mayors wrote that since the coronavirus began to spread, they have been "at the forefront of the battle and leading the fight" against the virus. "We have all faced difficult struggles, at home and abroad, to take various steps to get patients out of our cities, to perform as many tests as possible, to maintain social distance, to locate and close places with potential for infection. We were able to change the equation by a considerable percentage, with personal initiative and a delicate fabric of rebuilding trust, in the face of the national erosion of trust and the implementation of the guidelines," they wrote.

However, they claim that Netanyahu did not try to listen to the public and understand their plight. "You did not bother to ask, understand and learn what characterizes a significant section of the population in Israel ... Unfortunately, you did not send anyone on your behalf to hear directly our working methods, and the set of steps that will be taken and succeed in constant and respectful dialogue with the spiritual leadership of this public," they wrote.

The Mayors concluded their letter by saying they would suspend cooperation with the government on everything related to the lockdown. Addressing Netanyahu, they wrote "we hereby inform you that the entire ultra-Orthodox public will not forget the injustice done to it. We will not forget who the man who signed with his hand, time and time again, on our becoming spreaders of diseases and enemies of the people, in the selective punishment of tens of thousands of families, members of the ultra-Orthodox sector."

"The decisions you have made, time and time again, have been made in the absence of logic and health expectation and are sharply and clearly directed against the ultra-Orthodox public. We see you as the sole culprit for these punitive measures, for humiliating the dignity of tradition and our dignity as legitimate citizens of this country."

Exactly one hour later, Haaretz reported that "Netanyahu decided to postpone the ministerial meeting scheduled to discuss the proposed lockdown on a number of municipalities, neighborhoods and two settlements, after ultra-Orthodox mayors sent him a letter saying they plan to cease cooperation with government authorities in the fight against the coronavirus in light of the expected decision" and a couple of hours later reported that the ultra-Orthodox are demanding that the whole country be shut down, not just their cities. "Interior Minister Arye Dery demanded during a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that instead of a targeted closure upon "red" cities, which include five ultra-Orthodox cities, that the entire country be locked down ahead of the Jewish New Year. According to Dery, who represented the ultra-Orthodox mayors in the discussion, if the infection rate remains high, the cabinet should convene on Thursday, the day before the holiday is set to begin, and approve a closure over all of Israel. Dery claimed that professionals have agreed that a targeted closure is not the solution and will not reduce the infection rate significantly."

In an editorial from the Jerusalem Post yesterday-- How Israel has failed in the battle against coronavirus-- the editors noted that "Israel went from being the country everyone in the world looked to as a role model, to one that everyone looks to now as an example of what you are not supposed to do."

Israel achieved an impressive and embarrassing statistic last week, becoming the leading country in infections per capita.

Based on data from Johns Hopkins University, the Jewish state averaged 199.3 new cases a day per 1 million people during the seven-day period ending September 2. That is higher than any other country in the world.

Wow.

It’s amazing since we can look back and listen again to the speech Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave in May when he declared that Israel had defeated the novel coronavirus.

It’s amazing to think how Israel went from being the country everyone in the world looked to as a role model, to one that everyone looks to now as an example of what you are not supposed to do.

There are many answers to what went wrong. First, was the reopening of the economy in May and June that went too fast. It should have been more gradual. Same with the reopening of the schools. There was no reason to bring older grades back to closed classrooms. They could have carried on studying remotely. When outbreaks were reported in high schools across the country, we all immediately understood why.

Then, there was the failure of the government to use the time that the nation was in lockdown to prepare for the day after. This was precious time wasted. Still today, six months into this pandemic, Israel fails at contact tracing. It still does not have enough investigators who can quickly and effectively cut the chain of infection.

It has increased testing to high numbers but people are still not able to just walk into a clinic and get a virus test, or a serological test to see if they have antibodies, meaning they have already had the virus.

The airport was also not dealt with correctly. While the skies were shut down and El Al came to a halt, no one thought to use the time to build a testing station so people coming and going could be tested. The earliest such a station will open there will be in October or November.

Add to all of this the politicization of the virus. Most citizens today seem to understand what was clear from the outset of the management of this pandemic-- that it has not being fought by leaders, but by politicians, more interested in what the virus can do for their political careers and less interested in how they can really eradicate the virus.

What is happening with Uman is a classic case in point. People should not be allowed to travel there. Period. That is the position of Health Minister Yuli Edelstein and coronavirus commissioner Ronni Gamzu. That was also Netanyahu’s position until the ultra-Orthodox parties in his coalition started to threaten to bring down the government if a solution was not found. Now he’s instructed his ministers to come up with a compromise.

The accusations leveled by members of Netanyahu’s own party against Gamzu-- that he is stoking antisemitism and should step down-- does not help the fight. Instead, everyone seems to be doing what they want. Some people abide by the rules and hold weddings with under 50 people and others hold weddings with hundreds of guests as if there isn’t a virus raging here.

And why should people listen to Gamzu when they hear how politicians talk about him? If the elected officials don’t heed his guidelines, why should the average citizen?

For this to change, the government has to either start working or get out of the way. Since the government is not functioning, its incumbent upon each and every one of us to do his or her part. Wear a mask, social distance, clean your hands, stay home and away from public events and warn others when you see them not adhering to the rules.

Unfortunately, Israelis can no longer count on their elected leaders to do their job and steer the country to safety. In their absence it is up to us to fill the role, and we can do that by following the rules.

What Is Trump Really Up To? It Sure Isn't Helping The GOP Suckers Who Enabled Him All This Time

On Wednesday, Brookings published a report by Jon Valant, School reopening plans linked to politics rather than public health, which is bound to be more than concerning for millions of parents and teachers. "One of the most enduring-- and maddening-- aspects of Betsy DeVos’s legacy as secretary of education will be the way she has politically charged complicated issues in education. By reducing nuanced issues to a simple directive or judgment, she has attached her reputation-- and President Trump’s reputation in turn-- to those positions, making the issues as polarizing as the two of them... [W]e need to be clear-eyed that national politics-- and the strings attached to federal resources-- can affect the decisions of local and state leaders. Politicization has become an immediate concern for the COVID-19 relief package, which now threatens to withhold funds from school districts in severely affected areas that need to build remote learning capacity. As Sarah Reber and Nora Gordon have argued, Congress needs to move quickly and generously, without playing games with school reopening politics. Now is a time for local and state policymakers to focus on the best interests of their communities, apart from how that relates to matters of ideology and national politics. Of course, better leadership from the federal government would take us a long way in that direction. How can the Republicans be rushing headlong into this minefield right before an election when the vast majority of Americans are skeptical-- at the minimum-- about reopening schools willy nilly, the way Israel did, much to its chagrin as the pandemic exploded across the country causing a worse shutdown than the first one-- as well as a case total of 70,970, the 33rd worst total in the world for a tiny country with the 96th biggest population? Because of the totally botched school reopening, Israel now has more cases than European countries with much bigger populations, from Holland, Belgium and Portugal to Poland, Greece and Czechia.

Is it possible that Trump just doesn't care that he's dragging the entire Republican Party down the toilet with him? The #NeverTrump conservative Republicans at The Bulwark have a theory about that. Although they assert that not losing is Trump's top priority, none of his other priorities include helping any Republicans below him on the ballot. In an intro to the theory, they quoted Bob Dole-- an institutional conservative Republican who very much did care about the well-being on the GOP, even as he was losing his 1996 election bid-- who more recently said of Señor Trumpanzee: "This man, in addition to his general bad character and unfitness for office, has no interest in the Republican party as an institution and will burn it to the ground if he thinks it will profit him one iota. Ceding control of the party to a person whose incentives have previously, and may in the future, wildly diverge from the party's incentives is an invitation to disaster."

That leads one to wonder about what Trump is doing for the party as election season approaches-- aside from tweeting out his lame and utterly insincere one-size-fits-all Twitter endorsements. This is how The Bulwark columnist sees Trump's hierarchy of priorities right now

(1) Win the election.
(2) Avoid blame for losing the election.
(3) Bind his voters more tightly to his own person.
(4) Establish a framework for his next venture.

You will note that "Protecting Congressional Republicans" is not on that list.

It is becoming clear-- even to Trump-- that barring extreme outside events, his primary goal is off the table. While it remains possible that some event intercede-- a meteor strike, a shooting war, a health crisis-- there is nothing that Trump himself can really do to change the outcome of the election.

And so as you move down Trump's incentive structure, he has pivoted to items (2), (3), and (4).

In furtherance of those goals, we should expect Trump to be more erratic and outlandish, more openly racist, and to flirt even more openly with outright delegitimization of the election.

Why? Because these actions will shift blame away from himself, activate and validate the bitter-enders who are part of the Trump cult, and provide him with a launch pad for his post-presidential scheme, where he can promise to give people the real story of what happened with the election. (For just $9.95 a month.)

All of this will be-- just objectively speaking-- good for Trump. It will make him money, enhance his hold on the Republican party, and pave the way for him to be the decider on the party's 2024 nominee.

It is unlikely to be good for the Republican Party.

In all the hand-wringing about how the awful, no-good Never Trumper types want to "burn it all down" you rarely see any Republicans complaining about how it's Trump who's doing the actual burning.

Which only proves my point. The party made a deal with a man they did not fully understand. And now they're trying to pass the bill to someone else.

They deserve Trump and I have no tears for them. They inflicted Trumpism on the rest of us with, in most cases, eyes wide open. No tears when I see careerist hacks like Susan Collins, Steve Daines, Joni Ernst, Dan Sullivan, Martha McSally, Cory Gardner, Michael McCaul, Roger Williams, Donald J. Bacon, Fred Upton. John Katko, Ken Calvert and dozens and dozens more out on their asses after the first of the year. My eyes will be dry.

If You Saw A Rabid Dog You Might Shoot It, But You Can't Shoot Someone Who Refuses To Wear A Mask

I doubt Senor Trumpanzee and his Death Cult are going to be happy about this, but in a JAMA interview yesterday, CDC Director, Dr. Robert Redfield said and wrote that universal masking would stop the pandemic. "I really do believe that if the American public all embraced masking now... rigorously... over the next 4-8 weeks we could bring this epidemic under control.

Covering mouths and noses with filtering materials serves 2 purposes: personal protection against inhalation of harmful pathogens and particulates, and source control to prevent exposing others to infectious microbes that may be expelled during respiration. When asked to wear face coverings, many people think in terms of personal protection. But face coverings are also widely and routinely used as source control. For instance, if given the choice between having surgery performed by a team not wearing some covering over their mouths and noses vs a team that does, almost all patients would reject the former. This option seems absurd because it is known that use of face coverings under these circumstances reduces the risk of surgical site infection caused by microbes generated during the surgical team’s conversations or breathing. Face coverings do the same in blocking transmission of SARS-CoV-2.

Early in the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that anyone symptomatic for suspected coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) should wear a face covering during transport to medical care and prior to isolation to reduce the spread of respiratory droplets. After emerging data documented transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from persons without symptoms, the recommendation was expanded to the general community, with an emphasis on cloth face coverings that could be made more widely available in the community than surgical masks and to preserve personal protective equipment such as N95 respirators to the highest-risk exposures in health care settings. Now, there is ample evidence that persons without symptoms spread infection and may be the critical driver needed to maintain epidemic momentum.

While community use of face coverings has increased substantially, particularly in jurisdictions with mandatory orders, resistance continues. Some have raised concerns that homemade face coverings made from household fabrics may be inferior compared with commercially manufactured products. Cloth face coverings can substantially limit forward dispersion of exhaled respirations that contain potentially infectious respiratory particles in the 1- to 10-μm range that includes aerosol-sized particles, and recent research of household textiles’ performance when used as source control suggests cloth face coverings may be able to do so with acceptable efficiency and breathability. Others may think it is premature to promote community masking until research has been completed that measures the effectiveness of cloth face coverings to prevent exposure specifically to SARS-CoV-2. Laboratory studies will be difficult and costly because they require capacity to safely manage this biosafety level 3 pathogen. Any type of community-based randomized trial will be complex to deploy in the right setting (a community with active infection) at the right time (when infections are increasing) to produce actionable results quickly. In the absence of such data, it has been persuasively argued the precautionary principle be applied to promote community masking because there is little to lose and potentially much to be gained. In this regard, the report by Wang et al provides practical, timely, and compelling evidence that community-wide face covering is another means to help control the national COVID-19 crisis.

Other than to walk in the lonely Griffith Park hills in my neighborhood, I haven't been out of the house without an N-99 mask since February. [And when I walk in the hills I wear a surgical mask.] In February, when I first started going to stores to stock up, with my mask-- and other paraphernalia-- on, people looked at me strangely, some giving me aggressive looks, others just running away from me (which was even more than I could have hoped for). But I told Roland that it wouldn't be more than a month or so that everything would change and the aggressive looks would be directed at people not wearing masks. I've since seen two men beaten up for not wearing masks on lines in front of two different grocery stores. I don't like violence or vigilantism but I'd be lying if I were to tell you these two assholes didn't deserve what they got.

All the videos you can see of Trumpist imbeciles idiots-- some elected officials-- screaming about not wearing masks makes my blood boil. They're prolonging the pandemic and endangering the rest of us. I suppose that eventually they will be shot down like rabid dogs as a last ditch effort to save the country. I won't be shooting anyone; nor will I cry.

America isn't the only country with violent right-wing anti-social idiots refusing to wear masks. Last week, in Bayonne, France, near the Spanish border, two men in their 20s murdered a bus driver who asked passengers to wear masks on the bus, which is the law. Both assailants were arrested as were others on the bus who didn't help the driver. In the U.K. masks will become mandatory in all indoor businesses as of July 24, which will bring England into line with Scotland and other European nations like Spain, Italy and Germany. Those who fail to comply with the new rules will face a fine of up to £100, which is not an effective deterrent  Foolishly the new rule does not apply to retail staff. A far right-wing member of Parliament from southern England, notorious racist, Sir Desmond Angus Swayne, described the rule as a "monstrous imposition" that would make him less likely to go shopping. That probably makes retailers happy since the only thing Swayne is known for-- other than his racism-- is that he's a thief and has been caught repeatedly stealing money on his expenses.

Yesterday, L.A. Times reporters Rong-Gong Il and Maura Dolan wrote that Masks offer much more protection against coronavirus than many think. They noted that many people have been led to believe that masks don't protect the wearer; they protect other people from the wearer's germs. And many selfish people don't care about protecting others, only themselves. Well, as anyone with two brain cells to rub together figured out, by April, the government-- hoping to protect the mask supply-- was lying and that masks do protect the weare. "If you're unlucky enough to encounter an infectious person," they wrote, "wearing any kind of face covering will reduce the amount of virus that your body will take in. As it turns out, that's pretty important. Breathing in a small amount of virus may lead to no disease or far more mild infection. But inhaling a huge volume of virus particles can result in serious disease or death."

That's the argument Dr. Monica Gandhi, UC San Francisco professor of medicine and medical director of the HIV Clinic at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, is making about why-- if you do become infected with the virus-- masking can still protect you from more severe disease.

"There is this theory that facial masking reduces the [amount of virus you get exposed to] and disease severity," said Gandhi, who is also director for the Center for AIDS Research at UC San Francisco.

The idea of requiring mask-wearing in public has become an increasingly pressing and politicized issue as California and the rest of the nation see a surge in new cases as the economy reopens.

...[E]xperts say masks are essential for people to wear when they go out in public, such as to shop or go to medical appointments, and to get exercise like heading to the beach or park.

California has mandated face coverings in public settings since June 18, and a growing number of communities say they will ticket people who disobey the rules. But there remains resistance to the government mandating wearing masks in some corners of the state, including Orange County.

Some leaders in Orange County have pushed back against requiring students to wear masks should they return to classrooms in the fall.

In policy recommendations approved by the Orange County Board of Education on Monday, a document stated that "requiring children to wear masks during school is not only difficult-- if not impossible to implement-- but [is] not based on science. It may even be harmful." Individual districts will have the final say on how schools open.

Some health experts were appalled by that language.

"This anti-mask rhetoric is mind-blowing, dangerous, deadly and polarizing," said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, professor of medicine and an infectious diseases specialist at UC San Francisco. "There is no evidence that it is dangerous."

In fact, wearing masks can help prevent children from being infected and suffering serious consequences of infection, such as multisystem inflammatory syndrome, a rare condition that has been seen in children who have been infected with the coronavirus. "Kids not only transmit, but they can get sick as well," Chin-Hong said.

While children are less likely to develop severe illness from the coronavirus than adults, they can still be infected, be contagious and transmit the virus to other people, Gandhi said.

Wearing a mask at school would not only reduce their ability to transmit the virus to other classmates, teachers and administrators, but also protect the students from getting infected with a large dose of virus from infected people.

Transmission rates for coronavirus have been rising across the state. Nearly 1,000 of San Francisco's nearly 4,600 cases have been diagnosed in just the last two weeks, said Dr. Grant Colfax, the city's director of public health.

In San Francisco, nearly half of all those who have tested positive in the city are Latinos, he said, even though Latino residents make up just 15% of the city's population. Overall, the city has seen 7.8 new infections per 100,000 residents over the last seven days, far above its goal of no more than 1.8 new infections per 100,000 people.

"This, again, indicates that the virus is spreading throughout the city, particularly ... in the southeast part of the city,” Colfax said.

For every one person who contracts the virus, another 1.25 people on average are now infected, he said. “We really need to drive that down to 1 or below as quickly and as soon as possible.”

The transmission rate also rose above 1 in L.A. County in June, but has fallen back to 1. “The virus currently rages on in our community," Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said.

The reason why masks are so important in controlling the spread of the coronavirus is that it can be widely spread by people who are not visibly sick-- either because they haven't yet shown signs of illness, or they will spend the entire course of their infections with little or no symptoms at all.

...Masks don't filter out all viral particles, Gandhi said. But even cloth face masks filter out a majority of viral particles.

And even if a person wearing a mask gets infected, the mask-- by filtering out most of the viral particles exhaled by the infected person-- probably leads to less severe disease, Gandhi said.

The idea that a lower dose of virus when being infected brings less illness is a well-worn idea in medicine.

...So what happens if a city dramatically masks up while in public?

If Gandhi is right, it may mean that even if there's a rise in coronavirus infections in a city, the masks may limit the dose people are getting of the virus and result in them more likely to show less severe symptoms of illness.

That's what Gandhi said she suspects is happening in San Francisco, where mask wearing is relatively robust. Further observations are needed, Gandhi said.

There's more evidence that masks can be protective-- even when wearers do become infected. She cited an outbreak at a seafood plant in Oregon where employees were given masks, and 95% of those who were infected were asymptomatic.

...The protective effects are also seen in countries where masks are universally accepted for years, such as Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea and Singapore. "They have all seen cases as they opened ... but not deaths," Gandhi said.

The Czech Republic moved early to require masks, issuing an order in mid-March, Gandhi said; that's about three months before Gov. Gavin Newsom did so statewide in California. But in the Czech Republic, "every time their cases would go up ...their death rate was totally flat. So they didn't get the severe illness with these cases going on."

By May, the Czech Republic lifted its face mask rule. "And they're doing great," Gandhi said.

Israel is in the midst of a disastrous second wave they brought on themselves. On Sunday, Israel reported 1,206 new cases, 23rd highest in the world and Monday it was another 1,962 (17th highest in the world) bringing the national total to 40,632-- 4,418 cases per million Israelis, even worse than hard-hit European countries like the U.K. and Italy. Writing from Jerusalem yesterday, Noga Tarnopolsky noted that "Of 1,400 Israelis diagnosed with COVID-19 last month, 657 (47 percent) were infected in schools. Now 2,026 students, teachers, and staff have it, and 28,147 are quarantined.



NPR: Daniel, in Israel, it's been a little bit more of a complicated picture. School shut down because of the virus, and then it reopened. They did go back in May, and now it's out again. What happened?

Daniel Estrin: Well, what happened in Israel is quite a cautionary tale, I think. At first, the Israeli health professionals here urged the government, yes, let school resume again, but only let kids under the age of 9 go back to school, and keep it in small groups. And they said data around the world show that younger kids have a very low rate of infection and transmission.

But instead of just letting the younger kids go back to school, there were these last-minute negotiations. Ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools wanted the older kids to go back to religious studies, and so they did. And then 11th- and 12th-graders also went back to school. And so very, very quickly, everyone was back. And then very quickly after that, there was a heat wave, so the government said, well, kids don't need to wear masks anymore during this heat wave. And then we just saw big outbreaks in schools, and a lot of schools shut down for several weeks...

I think the lessons to be learned from Israel are listen to the health experts. The government here did not follow the health experts' guidelines to just open the younger grades and to have kids in small groups. They opened very fast, and there was no coherent policy. So listen to your health experts. Have a coherent policy.

This video is for Trump supporters because I have never met an intelligent Trump supporter. There may be intelligent Trump supporters-- though I doubt it-- but I never met one. So this is for you, who are, after all, Americans too:

What Will Congress Do About Annexation?

Historically, AIPAC has been aligned with the Democratic establishment-- and when progressive elements have rebelled and demanded even-handed policies towards Palestine, AIPAC has been able to successfully full smear campaigns-- unrelated to Israel-- against them and replace them with more malleable members of Congress. AIPAC, for example, destroyed the political careers of both Earl Hilliard (D-AL) and Cynthia McKinney (D-GA). Fear of AIPAC has kept Democrats in line. On Friday, The Forward wondered aloud if that is now over: AIPAC's Biggest Democratic Allies Break Ranks To Publicly Oppose Israeli Annexation.

It's worth mentioning that not all of AIPAC's biggest allies have broken ranks. Netanyahu's #1 ally in the House, Eliot Engel, chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee-- in the midst of a red-hot primary into which AIPAC is funneling over a million dollars for Engel-- has been silent. "Top congressional Democrats," wrote Aiden Pink, "have issued multiple public statements Thursday and Friday expressing their opposition to Israel’s plan to annex part of the West Bank. The pro-Israel organization AIPAC has publicly expressed its opposition to such statements, but some of the signatories include the lobby’s most prominent and longstanding Democratic allies."

Lockstep AIPAC shills Chuck Schumer, Bob Menendez and Ben Cardin released a joint statement opposing annexation:

As strong and dedicated supporters of the U.S.-Israel relationship, we are compelled to express opposition to the proposed unilateral annexation of territory in the West Bank.

A sustainable peace deal that ensures the long-term security of Israel and self-determination for Palestinians must be negotiated directly between the two parties. Real diplomacy via direct negotiations, while an arduous road, is the only path for a durable peace. For that reason it has consistently been the long-standing, bipartisan policy in Congress to oppose unilateral action by either side. Unilateral annexation runs counter to those longstanding policies and could undermine regional stability and broader US national security interests in the region.

We are committed to sustaining a US-Israel relationship based on shared democratic values and our important security assistance partnership. We are also committed to continuing to engage Israelis and Palestinians to find ways to live together with peace, freedom, security and dignity and achieve a two-state solution.

Netanyahu has been threatening to unilaterally begin the process of proclaiming sovereignty over parts of the West Bank in two weeks. Trump and Pompeo are encouraging him. 115 House Democrats sent their own letter, authored by Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Ted Deutch (D-FL) and David Price (R-NC)-- all mayor Israel supporters-- to Netanyahu, Gantz and Ashkenazi last week.

We write as American lawmakers who are long-time supporters, based on our shared democratic values and strategic interests, of Israel and the U.S.-Israel relationship. We firmly believe in, and advocate for, a strong and secure Jewish and democratic State of Israel, a state able to build upon current peace treaties and expand cooperation with regional players and the international community. We have consistently endorsed the pursuit of a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians resulting in two states for two peoples and a brighter future for the Israeli people and the Palestinian people. In that vein, we write today to express our deep concern that the push for unilateral annexation of territory in the West Bank after July 1st will make these goals harder to achieve.

Longstanding, bipartisan U.S. foreign policy supports direct negotiations to achieve a viable two-state solution that addresses the aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians, and their desire for long-term security and a just, sustainable peace. This position was twice reconfirmed by the U.S. House of Representatives last year. Our fear is that unilateral actions, taken by either side, will push the parties further from negotiations and the possibility of a final, negotiated agreement.

We remain steadfast in our belief that pursuing two states for two peoples is essential to ensuring a secure, Jewish, democratic Israel able to live side-by-side, in peace and mutual recognition, with an independent, viable, de-militarized Palestinian state.

Unilateral annexation would likely jeopardize Israel’s significant progress on normalization with Arab states at a time when closer cooperation can contribute to countering shared threats.  Unilateral annexation risks insecurity in Jordan, with serious ancillary risks to Israel. Finally, unilateral annexation could create serious problems for Israel with its European friends and other partners around the world. We do not see how any of these acute risks serve the long-term interest of a strong, secure Israel.

As committed partners in supporting and protecting the special U.S.-Israel relationship, we express our deep concern with the stated intention to move ahead with any unilateral annexation of West Bank territory, and we urge your government to reconsider plans to do so.

Pink wrote that "The list of 115 signatories 'runs the gamut from J Street Democrats to AIPAC Democrats,' a Democratic congressional source told Jewish Insider. Other members of Congress are reportedly expected to sign on before the letter is released to the public next week. The large number of AIPAC allies is surprising considering the lobby’s opposition to the letter. 'We have not taken a position on annexation,' an AIPAC spokesperson told Haaretz. 'However, we do not support this letter. It publicly criticizes Israel for potentially deciding upon a policy that would only be adopted with the approval of the U.S. government, it fails to reaffirm America’s full commitment to Israel’s security assistance, and it focuses only on what it sees as inappropriate Israeli behavior, while failing to note that Palestinian leaders have been unwilling to return to the negotiating table for nearly a decade.'"

A similar letter signed by 19 Democratic senators, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, was released two weeks ago. Individual Democratic senators, like Kamala Harris, have also written personal letters of their own to Netanyahu expressing their views.

“As the United States has repeatedly made clear, unilateral moves by either party, such as annexation, put a negotiated peace further out of reach,” wrote Harris, who is considered a leading contender for the Democratic vice presidential nomination. “Both Israel and the Palestinians must avoid unilateral moves in order to preserve prospects for an eventual peace.”

And how does Biden feel about annexation? He seems opposed, at least tepidly. One of his foreign policy advisors, Nicholas Burns-- an under secretary of state under George W. Bush-- told an Israeli foreign policy magazine that annexation "would greatly harm Israel, internationally and among its strongest supporters" and that annexation "is the one issue which could most harm the U.S.-Israel relationship."

Trump's foreign policy has been disjointed and chaotic... often influenced by bad actors with skin in the game happy to offer the notoriously corrupt Trump what amounted to bribes. Sunday night former national security advisor (#3), John Bolton, shared his thoughts about the disaster that is Trump with Martha Raddatz, just hours after announcing that he plans to vote for Joe Biden in November.

Everything Is Not Back To Normal Yet, But If We Pull Together And All Work Hard... Maybe Sometime In 2021

Death Of A Salesman by Nancy Ohanian

Americans so desperately want everything to go back to pre-pandemic normal that they're going to make the pandemic much worse. It's not a TV show with a happy ending; this reality could get a lot worse. In fact, it already is. There are still around 20,000 new confirmed cases in the U.S. everyday. With early frontline states New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Michigan, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland and Delaware starting to get the outbreak under control, focus has moved south and west and the new frontline states are California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, the Carolinas, the Dakotas, Arizona, New Mexico, Iowa, Nebaska, Arkansas and Wisconsin.

A few days ago a piece at Axios by Felix Salmon caught my attention. Largely because of weak, confused anti-government Republican governance, Americans are abandoning whatever there was of mask wearing and social distancing. Salmon noted that we're "about to embark upon the most momentous social experiment in living memory: What happens when you take laissez-faire economic principles and apply them to public health?" The central tenet of capitalism is that when millions of people make their own individual risk/reward calculations, the result is superior to top-down decision-making by the government. But that isn't what epidemiologists are saying about the pandemic, not with America continuing to see tens of thousands of new coronavirus cases every day. And not with so few of them resulting in a comprehensive contact-tracing review. "Given the amount of virus in the population,"he wrote, "there's a non-negligible probability that any of us could be unknowingly infectious today. Americans react to this uncertainty in line with their own idiosyncratic risk appetite. Younger folks, in particular, tend to be happier making riskier decisions, as do people like undercover police officers. As businesses reopen, decisions about things like whether to step into a crowded elevator will be made on a bottom-up rather than a top-down basis. Some people will be willing; others won't. (Both sides will view the other group as outliers.) Governors can't simply decree that business is back to usual. So long as a significant proportion of society is unwilling to resume economic activity, employment and GDP will remain depressed. Countries with more forceful and effective government responses have been able to bring the rate of infection down to a level at which most citizens can reasonably feel safe from the disease. That's not going to happen here-- and it's not going to happen in places like Brazil, India, or Mexico, either."

The biggest daily spikes are no longer in Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Belgium or any of the European countries that were hit so hard right off the bat. These are the countries with the biggest one-day reports-- over a thousand-- Thursday (first number) and Friday (second number):

• Brazil +31,890... +30,136
• U.S. +22,268... +25,393
• India +9,889... +9,471
• Russia +8,831... +8,726
• Pakistan +4,801... +3,985
• Chile +4,664... +4,207
• Peru +4,284... +4,202
• Mexico +3,912... +4,442
• Iran +3,574... +2,886
• South Africa +3,267... +2,642
• Bangladesh +2,423... +2,828
• Saudi Arabia +1,975... +2,591
• U.K. +1,805... +1,650
• Colombia +1,766... +1,515
• Qatar +1,581... +1,754
• Egypt +1,152... +1,358
• Sweden +1,080... +1,056

Salmon noted that as bad as the global picture is-- and it is really bad outside of Western Europe and East Asia-- "the U.S. has failed to hammer down the rate of new infections, which remain around 20,000 per day even as most states begin to come out of lockdown. Some states, such as Arizona [plus Texas and Florida], are seeing new record highs, even as the National Institutes of Health warns that a warm and humid summer won't help dampen the spread of the disease.





I keep talking with people who want to end sheltering in place for themselves. Big mistake-- not just for themselves and their circles, but for society. There is a safe way to reopen and an unsafe way. Trump's excuse for "leadership" is guaranteeing that the U.S. is reopening in the least safe way possible. Look at the new cases in the original half dozen worst hit western European nations:

• Spain +318
• Italy +518
• Germany +491
• France +611
• Belgium +140
• Netherlands +210

Compare that to the half dozen Trump states that have most strenuously ignored social distancing and safe practices and safe reopening guidelines:

• Texas +2,080
• Florida +1,305
• Georgia +774
• Arizona +1,579
• Iowa +355
• South Carolina +448

Drew Jones wrote an interesting piece about airplane travel for the Washington Post yesterday. After having resumed flights just over a week ago, Lion Air just down again yesterday. The company said that did so because passengers refused to follow health protocols.

According to data from [Indonesia's] Central Statistics Agency, domestic flight volume was down 82 percent in April, with 838,100 passenger on flights, compared with 4.6 million in March. International travel numbers were worse, with a 95 percent drop in passengers leading to 26,000 fliers last month as opposed to 558,700 in the month of March.

Lion Air has promised to monitor the coronavirus outbreak to keep the company’s “flight operations under applicable provisions of safety and security aspects,” and to “continue to implement health protocols according to the provisions” that prevent the spread of covid-19, but for now there’s no date set for when air travel will resume.

This week, Business Traveller reported that American Airlines is resuming flights from Dallas to Dublin July 7 and from Charlotte, LAX, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Raleigh to London beginning August 5-- as well as flights from Charlotte to Munich, JFK to Paris and Madrid, Miami to Madrid Rio and Sao Paulo, Chicago to Athens, Barcelona and Dublin, and Philadelphia to Madrid and Zurich. There is already one daily flight from JFK to Heathrow operating. American is also restarting many domestic flights and reopening some of their Admirals Club lounges-- as well as offering double their virtually worthless AAdvantage miles for customers who are crazy enough to fly before September 30 (and book during June).

Turkish Airlines resumed domestic flights this week-- despite serious and ongoing COVID-spikes-- and will start flying to 40 counties this month. Although the pandemic is out of control in much of the Middle East, Emirati, Emirates and Etihad Airlines are all flying internationally again. New confirmed cases in the Middle East reported yesterday:

• Iran +2,886 (1,992 cases per million)
• Saudi Arabia +2,591 (2,753 cases per million)
• Qatar +1,754 (23,326 cases per million)
• Egypt +1,348 (304 cases per million)
• Turkey +930 (1,998 cases per million)
• Oman +770 (2,960 cases per million)
• Iraq +1,006 (245 cases per million)
• UAE +624 (3,809 cases per million)
• Kuwait +723 (7,183 cases per million)
• Bahrain +539 (8,155 cases per million)

Although Israel, which has been relatively strict about social distancing rules and has made some good progress in containing the pandemic, doesn't allow non-Israelis to enter the country, Air Canada, Delta, Lufthansa and Wizz (a neo-Nazi airline based in Budapest) have restarted flights to Tel-Aviv. (United never stopped flying there.) Israelis who fly into the country must self-quarantine for 2 weeks. Israel is considering allowing non-citizens to start flying into the country again June 15.