Atul Gawande on COVID-Vaccine Distribution and When Normalcy Might Return - The New Yorker staff writer assesses the vaccination campaign so far, new mutations, and when it might be possible to enter public spaces safely without a mask. - link
After Dark, Citizens and Myanmar’s Junta Face Off Across Ghostly Front Lines - Innovative grassroots resistance grows despite mounting regime intimidation. - link
How Rush Limbaugh Invented Donald Trump - By subsuming his conservatism into the cult of one man, Limbaugh finished his career less as a leader of the Republican Party than as simply another Trump follower. - link
Why Impeachment Doesn’t Work - Long before Donald Trump arrived, there was reason to be skeptical of impeachment’s power. - link
The Rural Alaskan Towns Leading the Country in Vaccine Distribution - In Native communities where tribal health organizations are in charge of distributing the vaccine, herd immunity is on the horizon. - link
From Vox
The US is about to surpass half a million Covid-19 deaths -
Dr. Christine Choi, a resident at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, one of four public hospitals in Los Angeles County, tends to Covid-19 patients in a specially constructed isolation area. | Al Seib/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
Dr. Anthony Fauci said the massive loss of life is “almost unbelievable.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, said Sunday that the death toll is “almost unbelievable.”
“But it’s true,” Fauci told NBC’s Chuck Todd on Meet the Press Sunday. “This is a devastating pandemic. And it’s historic. People will be talking about this decades and decades and decades from now.”
Today’s front page of the New York Times: Each dot represents one death from COVID-19 in the United States. pic.twitter.com/cmay3bFokb
The grim milestone comes after a bleak winter. For much of January, the US reported well over 3,000 Covid-19 deaths each day. Overall case numbers also exploded: Since early December, 14 million more people have tested positive for the virus, doubling the total number of US cases.
As of Saturday, the US is still reporting a seven-day rolling average of more than 1,900 deaths per day, though cases have fallen sharply to levels last seen in October 2020.
More than in any other country, the virus has been allowed to rage out of control in the US. According to the Johns Hopkins Covid-19 dashboard, the US has almost twice as many Covid-19 deaths as Brazil, which is second in deaths, and over 17 million more total confirmed cases than India, which is second in cases. Of the more than 2.46 million deaths from Covid-19 worldwide, the US has recorded slightly more than one-fifth.
In late March last year, Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, the former White House coronavirus task force coordinator, predicted that 240,000 deaths would be on the high end of the possible US death toll; the country hit that mark in mid-November, according to CNN’s Ryan Struyk, and the death toll has more than doubled since then.
As the New York Times pointed out on Sunday, half a million US deaths also exceeds the US death toll “on the battlefields of World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War combined.”
There are reasons to be hopeful as the US picks up the pace with vaccinations
As March approaches, however, an accelerating vaccination campaign and falling cases offer hope that things could improve soon — and maybe even return to something resembling normal by the summer.
Currently, according to CNN, the US is administering about 1.5 million doses of vaccine per day, but public health officials believe that number could pick up soon. On Sunday, Fauci told CNN’s Dana Bash that “of course you’d like to see” over 2 million doses per day being administered by the end of April.
Vaccine availability should also begin to open up in the late spring or summer, Fauci said earlier this week, and by July, the country would “likely have all 600 million doses that we contracted for to vaccinate 300 million people.”
As of Sunday, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracker, the US had administered more than 63 million vaccine doses. Because both of the vaccines authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use thus far require two shots to be fully effective, that’s not the same as the number of people actually vaccinated. But 17 million people have still received both doses of the vaccine, and many more have had their first of two shots.
Research suggests that even one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which was the first vaccine candidate to be approved in the US, can provide “robust immunity” from symptomatic cases of the disease. Additionally, Pfizer data first reported on Sunday indicates that the vaccine is almost 90 percent effective at preventing virus transmission outside a clinical setting, a hopeful finding for vaccines’ ability to keep infection levels low.
The data about virus transmission — which comes from an Israeli study — has yet to be peer-reviewed, but it’s still a promising early sign. According to Bloomberg, Pfizer and BioNTech “are working on a real-world analysis of data from Israel, which will be shared as soon as it’s complete.”
As vaccinations pick up, case numbers in the US are also falling dramatically. As the Atlantic’s James Hamblin points out, that could bode well for the summer.
If vaccination rates continue to rise and case numbers continue to fall, “it would mean that many aspects of pre-pandemic life will return even before summer is upon us,” Hamblin wrote Friday. “Because case numbers guide local policies, much of the country could soon have reason to lift many or even most restrictions on distancing, gathering, and masking. Pre-pandemic norms could return to schools, churches, and restaurants. Sports, theater, and cultural events could resume. People could travel and dance indoors and hug grandparents, their own or others’.”
Still, top public health officials are preaching caution as things begin to look up in the US, particularly as Covid-19 variants continue to spread in the country.
Last Sunday, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky warned that a more infectious — and possibly more deadly — coronavirus variant first seen in the UK could become “the dominant strain by the end of March.”
“Now more than ever, with continued spread of variants that stand to threaten the progress we are making, we must recommit to doing our part to protect one another,” Walensky said at a press conference Friday. “Wear a well-fitting mask, social distance, avoid travel and crowds, practice good hand hygiene, and get vaccinated when the vaccine is available to you.”
And mask wearing will likely be necessary for some time yet. Fauci told CNN on Sunday that Americans may still need to wear masks in 2022, and noted on Fox News Sunday that it could take until next year for children, particularly young children, to be vaccinated.
Florida Republicans want to impose new voting restrictions. They’re not the only ones. -
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a press conference about the opening of a Covid-19 vaccination site on January 6. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Gov. Ron DeSantis’s plan to make it harder to vote by mail, briefly explained.
At a news conference in Palm Beach on Friday, DeSantis, a Republican, announced a proposed slate of new voting restrictions that would make it more difficult for voters to receive and return mail-in ballots in future Florida elections.
In doing so, he joined a wave of state and local officials who have worked in the months since the 2020 general election to introduce new voting restrictions, arguing these policies will make voting more secure.
Specifically, DeSantis called on the Florida legislature to address “ballot harvesting” (when mail-in ballots are collected for delivery at a drop-off location) and ballot drop boxes, to ban mailing out ballots to voters who haven’t requested one, and to tighten the rules around requesting a ballot so that requests must be made every election year.
Currently, a request for a vote-by-mail ballot is valid for two general election cycles, according to the Florida ACLU; DeSantis’s proposed change would mean that voters have to do so more frequently, potentially raising the logistical barriers to voting by mail.
DeSantis also lauded Florida’s voting system in his speech, arguing the state had the most “transparent and efficient election anywhere in the country,” and pointing out that Florida — which went for former President Donald Trump in November — counted ballots far more quickly than some states. But he claimed the new measures are necessary in order to ensure election integrity.
“We need to make sure that we continue to stay ahead of the curve,” DeSantis said Friday. “We need to make sure that our citizens have confidence in the elections.”
It’s unclear, however, whether his proposed changes, if passed into law, would do much to aid those goals.
Many of the policies DeSantis proposed are essentially already in place in his state: Florida does not currently permit the mass mailing of unrequested vote-by-mail ballots, and the state also has substantial restrictions on “ballot harvesting” already in place, something which DeSantis admitted in his speech.
“We’re not a big ballot-harvesting state as it is,” he said. “But any type of loopholes, or any type of room where that could be abused, we want to make sure that we address it.”
Trump has previously attacked ballot harvesting as “rampant with fraud,” which it isn’t, and the practice is a frequent Republican hobbyhorse. According to NPR, however, Trump himself had his Florida vote-by-mail ballot submitted by a third party in 2020.
DeSantis also suggested Friday that Florida might need to find ways to tighten its existing signature match law, which requires the signature on an absentee or vote-by-mail ballot to match the voter signature already on file.
“If there needs to be ways to bolster the signature verification,” DeSantis said, “then we need to do that as well.”
Signature verification laws, however, can be problematic: Signature mismatches can be highly subjective, as the Atlantic’s David Graham reported last year, and voters of color, among other demographics, often have their ballots rejected at a far higher rate than white voters.
“Fraud is exceedingly rare,” Graham points out. “The much greater danger is that legitimate ballots will be thrown out.”
Overall, Florida’s 2020 election — like the elections held by all other states — proceeded without any unusual irregularities or sweeping fraud; it is unclear how DeSantis’s proposals would improve on the current system.
It is clear, however, that they fit squarely with a national trend in the aftermath of the 2020 election cycle: After losing control of not just the presidency, but the Senate, Republicans across the country are moving to make voting more difficult.
The Republican solution to losing an election is to make it harder to vote
In the months since the presidential election, Republicans state legislatures have leaned into Trump’s baseless election fraud rhetoric and moved quickly to impose new voting restriction.
Specifically, according to a February report from the Brennan Center for Justice, “Thirty-three states have introduced, prefiled, or carried over 165 restrictive bills this year (as compared to 35 such bills in fifteen states on February 3, 2020).”
Some of those bills, such as a measure in Georgia that would end early voting on Sundays, unabashedly target Black voters, who played a major role in Democrats claiming control of the Senate. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution explained Friday, the change “would be a blow to Black churches that host ‘Souls to the Polls’ get-out-the-vote events” on Sunday, in which parishioners are transported by church leaders to polling places after services.
Others, such as a Republican-backed bill in Arizona that would require all vote-by-mail ballots to be notarized, would make it harder for anyone to cast an absentee ballot.
Many of the states where Republicans are pushing new voter restrictions, including Arizona and Georgia, will be sites of competitive Senate races in 2022.
Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly will be seeking a full six-year term in 2022 after winning a special election in 2020, as will Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, who won his seat in a special election runoff in January this year.
And Republicans will be defending seats in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Iowa — all three states where Republicans have moved to implement new voter restrictions — as well as Florida, where Sen. Marco Rubio will be up for reelection.
Despite the flurry of new bills, however, it’s not a sure thing that Republicans will succeed in passing new voter restrictions into law. In some states, such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Democratic governors could veto any such changes.
And even in Georgia, where Republicans control the governor’s mansion as well as the legislature, one anonymous Republican strategist told the Washington Post that such measures could backfire. “There’s still an appetite from a lot of Republicans to do stuff like this, but it’s not bright,” he said. “It just gives Democrats a baseball bat with which to beat us.”
At the national level, Democrats also have their own plan to expand voting rights and protect voters: the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which is named for the late civil rights activist who represented a Georgia district in the House until his death last year.
According to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the bill would restore major swaths of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — portions of which were struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013 — in order to “protect all Americans’ right to vote.”
There’s also the For The People Act, which was reintroduced on the first day of the new Congress in 2021. If passed, the bill would expand early and mail-in voting, make it easier to register to vote, and put an end to partisan gerrymandering, among other changes.
“You know that our work is far from finished,” Lewis said in 2019. “It makes me sad. It makes me feel like crying when people are denied the right to vote. We all know that this is not a Democratic or Republican issue: It’s an American one.”
SNL tackles #FreeBritney, the Ted Cruz Cancun saga, and Andrew Cuomo’s scandals in its new cold open -
Will Heath/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images
Aidy Bryant plays a cornrowed, drink-toting Ted Cruz in a “Cancun Family Vacation 2021” T-shirt.
This week, Saturday Night Live’s cold open took aim at Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for his trip to Cancun, Mexico while millions of Cruz’s constituents were without power or water in freezing conditions after a winter storm struck Texas.
A shamefaced Cruz, played by Aidy Bryant, joined Chloe Fineman’s Britney Spears on a talk show called Oops, You Did It Again to apologize for the trip, which spiraled into a full-fledged scandal after the senator was photographed at the airport on Wednesday.
“I’m not tan,” a cornrowed, drink-toting Bryant tells Fineman as he takes a seat on stage with a suitcase in tow. “I just cried myself red over my fellow Texans. And that’s why I drink in their honor.”
The show also spoofed Cruz’s attempt to explain the trip Thursday by releasing a statement blaming his daughters, who he said “asked to take a trip with friends.” (Texts from Cruz’s wife, Heidi, obtained by the New York Times, cast some doubt on that story.)
“Let me ask you this,” Bryant says in the skit. “Would a coward have the cojones to blame his actions on his young daughters?”
Fineman’s Spears, understandably, doesn’t take that explanation well: “As someone who was often blamed for other people’s problems at a young age, maybe leave your daughters out of it because it could really mess with their heads,” Fineman says.
Spears has been in the spotlight this month after the release of the Framing Britney Spears documentary, which examines Spears’s personal struggles, her conservatorship, and the #FreeBritney movement.
Those struggles are referenced throughout the skit: The fictional talk show is sponsored by the Notes app, a reference to the apology posted by Spears’s former partner Justin Timberlake earlier this month, and at another point, Fineman stares intently at the screen while a #FreeBritney hashtag flashes on screen for a single frame.
“Are you looking to post a lame apology 20 years late?” Fineman asks in the ad. “Go through the motions with the Notes app.”
Joining Bryant, the next guest on a talk show apology tour is Pete Davidson’s scandal-plagued New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
After another question by Fineman, Davidson’s Cuomo then quickly launches into an attack on New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has called for a Justice Department investigation into Cuomo’s pandemic response.
“What did that bird bitch say about me?” Davidson rages. “I will bury him in the tallest grave this city has ever seen. I will hire a hobo to Rick Moranis him so hard he’ll think he’s back in universal pre-K.” (Moranis was punched by someone walking past him on the sidewalk in New York last year.)
Bryant also attempts to sympathize with Davidson, only to be shot down.
“Do not associate yourself with me,” Davidson tells Bryant. “We are not the same. I am a man, you are a clown. And if you mess with me, I will send you to a clown hospital. And when you die, I will not count your body.”
“Nor should you, thank you,” Bryant responds.
The show’s last guest is an indignant Cecily Strong as former The Mandalorian actor Gina Carano, who prompts Fineman to “explain what I did wrong.”
Carano was fired from the show earlier this month for transphobic and anti-Semitic social media posts, including one which compared the experience of “being conservative at this moment in time to being a Jewish person during the Holocaust,” writes Vox’s Emily VanDerWerff.
“Look, I never would have made that Nazi comparison if I had known everyone was going to be such a Nazi about it,” Strong says.
After one last attempt by Bryant’s Cruz to find someone to sympathize with — Strong shoots her down as “a pile of soup … if you compare yourself with me, I will blast you to the farthest deserts of Tatooine” — Fineman offers a prayer to close the talk show.
“I pray that all of you be sane and well,” she says, “and to be with people who make you feel loved. … And live from New York, it’s Saturday night!”
From The Hindu: Sports
1st T20 | Devon Conway’s unbeaten 99 sets up huge win for New Zealand against Australia - Australia was all out for 131 in reply to New Zealand’s 184-5
Boxing | Vijender Singh set for return to ring next month, opponent to be announced soon - This will be Vijender’s fifth fight in India, following successes in New Delhi, Mumbai and Jaipur
Looking at bigger picture, rotation policy has merit: James Anderson - ‘We’ve got 17 Test matches this year and the best way of getting your best players firing for as many of those as possible is to take little rest every now and then,’ says the England fast bowler
Man City earns 18th straight win, Spurs lose again in EPL - City has 13 straight wins in the premier league and looks unstoppable with 13 games left in its campaign.
Vote for Sportstar Aces Awards 2021 - The Sportstar Aces Awards 2021 celebrate consistency in performance and impact of sports stars in the decade between 2011 & 2020.The second set of
From The Hindu: National News
Maritime India Summit will be organised from March 2 to 4, says VPT Chairman - ‘Special session on investment opportunities in Andhra Pradesh is scheduled at 12.30 p.m, on March 3’
India committed to goal of non-discriminatory, verifiable nuclear disarmament, says Shringla - “We need to rise above our differences, and demonstrate political will,” the Foreign Secretary said at the Conference on Disarmament.
Green energy to power houseboats now - ALAPPUZHA: Houseboat cruise is one of the mainstays of Kerala Tourism. But the slow-chugging vessels are also blamed for damaging the Vembanad Lake ec
‘Toolkit’ case: Delhi court sends 22-year-old climate activist Disha Ravi to one-day police custody - Ms. Ravi was produced before the court on expiry of her three-day judicial custody.
BJP’s Girish Goutam unanimously elected Speaker of Madhya Pradesh Assembly - BJP MLA Girish Gautam filed his nomination for the post on Feb. 21
From BBC: Europe
Coronavirus: High Covid rates delay France and Germany easing - France and Germany struggle to get schools back to normal as infection rates remain high.
Italian ambassador to DR Congo killed in UN convoy attack - Luca Attanasio and two other people die after his UN convoy is attacked near Goma.
France row as Lyon mayor keeps meat off school menus - The French government said the move by Lyon’s mayor was an “insult” to farmers.
Edvard Munch wrote ‘madman’ graffiti on Scream painting, scans show - The words “Can only have been painted by a madman” are written in the corner of the famous painting.
Covid-19: Boris Johnson to unveil ‘cautious’ plan to lift England’s lockdown - All schools are expected to reopen on 8 March, with some outdoor socialising allowed from 29 March.
From Ars Technica
A curious observer’s guide to quantum mechanics, pt 7: The quantum century - Manipulating quantum devices has been like getting an intoxicating new superpower for society. - link
The AI research paper was real. The “co-author” wasn’t - An MIT professor found his name on two papers with which he had no connection. - link
New malware found on 30,000 Macs has security pros stumped - With no payload, analysts are struggling to learn what this mature malware does. - link
As coronavirus variants spread, the US struggles to keep up - Without federal strategy or enough funding, US sequencing superpowers don’t work. - link
What’s new in the first Android 12 Developer Preview - Lots of hidden features, and hints that the leak from the other day is true. - link
From Jokes Subreddit
A man scores a hot date -
Not wanting to disappoint his date in the bedroom, he goes to the doctor to get his penis enlarged. The doctor says, “we happen to have a new experimental procedure that uses muscle cells from an elephant trunk that should do the trick.” To which the man accepts.
Later on, the man and his date are having dinner. The man is in love with her, but is experiencing an increasingly uncomfortable pressure in his trousers. In an attempt to relieve the pain, he slowly undoes his fly.
Immediately, his penis lunges out onto the table, grabs a bread roll and vanishes back under the table.
His date, unsurprisingly shocked, slowly smiles and says, “could you do that again?”
The man, his eyes watering slightly, replies “probably, but I don’t think I can fit another roll in my arse.”
A man goes into his doctors after being assaulted by an elephant in the jungle. -
As the man explains what happened in the jungle the doctor is confused. “Well, I can’t see any injuries on you, so what happened?”
The man responds “Well you see Doc, the elephant knocked me down and…. Had his way with me.. I know it’s bad but can you have a look for me?”
The doctor is flabbergasted and says “ok of course, pull your trousers down and I’ll have a look”
As soon as the man’s trousers drop the Doctor recoils and exclaims “Oh god! Pull your trousers up! That’s awful!”
“You’re right, the elephant has done a number on you, but I do have a question. My brother works in a zoo, and I’ve seen an elephants penis, and its like this”
The doctor holds his hands to the width of a side plate
“And your arsehole looks like…” He holds his hands to the width of a dinner plate “What happened?!”
The man responds, “I know. The bastard fingered me first”
