1) Trump Takes on Chicago’s Death Squads
This weekend President Trump sent a letter to Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot calling for an end to the killing spree and “devastating violence in Chicago.” It should be required reading for every resident of the Land of Lincoln.
“More Americans have been killed in Chicago than in combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq combined since September 11, 2001, a deadly trend that has continued under your tenure.”
Here’s how bad the killing fields of Chicago have become:
“18 murders in 24 hours: the most violent day in 60 years in Chicago;
85 people were shot and 24 killed the previous weekend, the most in modern history in Chicago.” Children. Grandparents. High school students.
This was about 20 times more African-Americans than were killed by incompetent and racist police in Minneapolis. This is the deadly scourge in America that the left and the voices of Black Lives Matter will not deal with. Chicago has been run by a corrupt liberal machine for more than half a century.
As Trump put it: “Your lack of leadership on this important issue continues to fail the people you have sworn to protect.”
By the way, Chicago has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country.
2) Listen to the Science: Pediatricians Say Open the Schools Full-Time
In a pleasant surprise, the extremely risk averse (they want kids in car seats almost until they can drive!) American Academy of Pediatrics has come out for getting schools open. The group, which represents 67,000 American pediatricians, issued a detailed statement including:
· “The AAP strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school.” (They have this in bold.)
· “Lengthy time away from school and associated interruption of supportive services often results in social isolation, making it difficult for schools to identify and address important learning deficits as well as child and adolescent physical or sexual abuse, substance use, depression, and suicidal ideation.
· “SARS-CoV-2 appears to behave differently in children and adolescents than other common respiratory viruses, such as influenza, on which much of the current guidance regarding school closures is based. Although children and adolescents play a major role in amplifying influenza outbreaks, to date, this does not appear to be the case with SARS-CoV-2.”
· “The preponderance of evidence indicates that children and adolescents are less likely to be symptomatic and less likely to have severe disease resulting from SARS-CoV-2 infection.”
· “Evidence suggests that spacing as close as 3 feet may approach the benefits of 6 feet of space… Schools should weigh the benefits of strict adherence to a 6-feet spacing rule between students with the potential downside if remote learning is the only alternative.”
· “When developing policy regarding the use of cloth face coverings by students or school staff, school districts and health advisors should consider whether the use of cloth face coverings is developmentally appropriate and feasible and whether the policy can be instituted safely.”
The AAP school recommendations are vastly superior to the CDC guidelines. All school administrators should make this document their starting point.
3) Health Lesson from Japan: Go outside! Fresh air is the vaccine!
One of the mysteries of coronavirus is why Japan has been almost entirely immune from a disease that began in Asia. There are few more densely populated cities than Tokyo and Japan has an aging population. Yet this country with 126 million people has suffered less than 1,000 deaths. This is a death rate less than one-tenth ours.
What have they done right?
Start with what Japan didn’t do. There were no economic lockdowns. Let us shout that out in the hope that the governors, and mayors, and media might be listening: THERE WERE NO ECONOMIC LOCKDOWNS IN JAPAN.
The Japanese seemed to understand from the start that nearly all of the significant transmission events appear to be inside, typically in poorly ventilated spaces. This insight was part of the Japanese “3 Cs” strategy that saw less than a thousand total deaths in the whole country — with no lockdown.
An article in Science last month suggested that about 80% of people with coronavirus infect exactly zero others. Almost all the transmission comes from super spread events. “Probably about 10% of cases lead to 80% of the spread,” according to the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6493/808
Maybe instead of stay home orders we need to have go outside orders. (Just kidding: unlike the authoritarian left, we are opposed to the government ordering free people to do things!)
But we are paying a high price for the left’s obsession with energy efficiency in sealing up every building, store, and school with everyone breathing often poorly recirculated air. When is the last time you went into a building and you could actually open a window? Let people breath in fresh air? God no. That will mean more carbon emissions.
So there are three pretty simple and costless ways to reduce the risk of illness from coronavirus. 1) Get outside. 2) Open the windows. 3) For businesses and schools without windows to open, we need to think about how to significantly increase ventilation in their indoor spaces.
Oh and we would add to our wish list: 4. All newly constructed buildings should have windows that OPEN!!
4) Can We Also Get Rid of Woodrow Wilson’s Income Tax?
It was perhaps inevitable that progressive protesters would eventually start demanding that progressive icons be airbrushed out of history. Now Woodrow Wilson’s name will be sandblasted off of the school that bears his name at Princeton University.
There’s no doubt Wilson, one of America’s worst presidents, was a racist. While president of Princeton he once wrote “It is altogether inadvisable for a colored man to enter Princeton.” As President, he personally ordered the resegregation of the civil service and fired many black officials.
Former GOP Governor Bobby Jindal was on target when he tweeted:
5) Update: Cases Still Rising; Deaths Still Falling.
Three more days of the same story… the media is going crazy about that blue line and can’t be bothered to report the red one. Yet another new low in total deaths reported nationally yesterday, down to 273. That’s the lowest Sunday total since March 22 and lowered the seven-day average to 536.
But it’s a different story south of the border. As the chart shows. That could be because of the seasonal effect explained in the video we sent last week, which showed a later, flatter death curve is typical of respiratory viruses in tropical climates.
We can’t help but wonder if Mexico’s steep rise in deaths explains the surge in infections in border states. We note the following, from Johns Hopkins data:
Cases per 100,000 residents:
High population non-border counties
Maricopa County, AZ: 961
Los Angeles County, CA: 944
Santa Clara County, CA: 206
Border counties
Yuma County, AZ: 2,678
Santa Cruz County, AZ: 3,556
Imperial County, CA: 3,322
6) The Good News in Florida
Terrific summary from our friend Justin Hart making clear why most of the positives being captured by mass testing in Florida are unlikely to represent a New York like wave of severe disease.
7) Signs of the Apocalypse: Minneapolis Homeless Take Over
The Minneapolis City Council voted last week to begin the process of disbanding the local police department. But one left-wing neighborhood is already experiencing what the future may bring.
Powderhorn Park’s population of white progressives decided after the killing of George Floyd that they would no longer call police if they needed help or if crime threatened them. “Doing so, they believed, would add to the pain that black residents of Minneapolis were feeling and could put them in danger,” the New York Times reported.
If anyone is put in physical danger, they instead vowed to seek help from the American Indian Movement, which was founded in Minneapolis in 1968 to address issues of police brutality against Native Americans.
Over the weekend, a juvenile was sexually assaulted in the park.
“I’m not being judgmental,” Carrie Nightshade says. She no longer allows her children to play in the park. “It’s not personal. It’s just not safe.”
Fox News reported that “Another resident, Mitchell Erickson, said he regretted calling 911 when two black teenagers cornered him a block away from his home, held a gun to his chest and demanded his car keys.”
“Been thinking more about it,” Erickson said in a text message to a reporter. “I regret calling the police. It was my instinct but I wish it hadn’t been. I put those boys in danger of death by calling the cops.”
https://www.startribune.com/mpls-park-leaders-to-homeless-you-can-stay-in-our-parks/571355602/
8) Teacher Unions Holding Students Hostage
The Massachusetts Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers union, has issued a long list of demands before any teachers return.
Among the MTA demands are lots more spending (at a time when revenues have plummeted) and much worse, the permanent elimination of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exams, so no one can determine who the rotten teachers are.
Even the liberal Boston Globe has had enough: “Those exams are a foundational aspect of the sustained and bipartisan education-improvement efforts that have helped make this state’s public schools the best in the nation (sic),” the Globe notes. “Let’s call this MTA demand what it is: a transparent effort to use the pandemic to achieve a self-interested goal the union hasn’t otherwise been able to accomplish.”
With a close second prize comes from one of his Twitter followers:
