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Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 3.31.20

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of forty-three.  Sunrise is 6:36 AM and sunset 7:21 PM, for 12h 45m 07s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 40.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1998, the Milwaukee Brewers play their first game as a National League team (away against Atlanta).

Recommended for reading in full —

Rick Barrett and Jeff Bollier report Coronavirus has hit Wisconsin dairy farms especially hard — some farmers may even have to dump milk:

Dairy has been hit the hardest from the loss of business from restaurants, schools and the hospitality industry. About one-third of Wisconsin dairy products, mostly cheese, are sold in the food-service trade.

“The coronavirus outbreak has caused milk prices to drop down to unprofitable levels this spring, right when we need money to buy supplies for the spring planting season,” said dairy farmer John Rettler of Neosho, president of FarmFirst Dairy Cooperative in Madison.

….

In February, farmers’ milk prices were slowly returning to profitable levels after having  been stuck in the basement for more than five years.

“Since the coronavirus pandemic began, all of that optimism has disappeared,” Rettler said. “Now, farmers are simply looking for ways to ensure their milk continues to get picked up in the coming weeks as the situation continues to play out.”

From dairy barns to grain fields, farmers have endured a long stretch of low commodity prices, partly brought on by a glut in world production. About 820 Wisconsin dairy producers called it quits in 2019 alone, a rate of more than two per day, and the trend hasn’t slowed in recent months.

 Conservative evangelical Michael Gerson writes Jerry Falwell Jr.’s coronavirus response shows his staggering level of ignorance:

After learning of Jerry Falwell Jr.’s decision to partially reopen Liberty University, my thoughts turned to the biblical account of Balaam’s ass.

According to the Hebrew scriptures, the children of Israel were on the verge of engulfing another Bronze Age tribe. Lacking recourse to the United Nations, the Moabites turned to a diviner named Balaam to curse the Israelis. But on the way to the cursing, Balaam’s conveyance, an ass, saw an angel blocking the path ahead, turned hard into a wall and crushed Balaam’s foot. Unable to see the celestial creature himself, a frustrated Balaam beat his ass. But God permitted the wounded animal to speak, mock her rider and explain the divine roadblock. The eyes of a chastened Balaam were finally opened and he took the Israeli side. And the rest is Middle East history.

Students at Liberty University are more likely than most to understand the specialness of this biblical lesson. It is one of the few stories in which Falwell should not be assigned the part of an ass. For that matter, he does not even deserve the role of Balaam, who at least was open to instruction. Instead, Falwell has charged the angel straight on and — in defiance of nearly all public health experts — reopened the Liberty dorms in the middle of a pandemic. Now, according to the New York Times, at least one student has tested positive and several more have shown coronavirus-like symptoms.

 Open Source Textbooks Save Students $1 Billion:

Coronavirus, Medicine, Military, Public Health

USNS Comfort Arrives In New York Harbor

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Via Reuters:

The USNS Comfort, a 1,000-bed U.S. Navy hospital ship, arrives in New York Harbor and docks on Manhattan’s west side after departing Norfolk, Virginia.
The Comfort will treat non-coronavirus patients, including those who require surgery and critical care, the Navy said.

Hospitals in New York City have been overrun with patients suffering from COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus.

Coronavirus, Economics, Public Health

‘Come Meet the Biggest Fool in America’

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Conservative Jonathan V. Last, writing at The Bulwark, invites readers to Come Meet the Biggest Fool in America. In part of an email newsletter sent to subscribers today, Last rightly excoriates economist Richard Epstein for minimizing the risks from the coronavirus pandemic.

Last writes (yes, a pun) that

I mention all of this as a wind up to this extraordinary interview in the New Yorker with the Hoover Institution’s Richard A. Epstein.

On March 16, Epstein published a piece arguing that all existing COVID-19 models were fundamentally flawed because they failed to talk into account “standard Darwinian economics.” The result, Epstein concluded, was that the total number of deaths from the outbreak in the United States would be of the order of magnitude of 500.

I am not going to link to his original piece, because it is one of the most irresponsible essays I’ve ever seen from a serious person.

What I want to push you to, instead, is his interview, because in it he betrays a truly astonishing combination of ignorance and confidence.

He talks about “weak” and “strong” forms of the coronavirus. There is no “weak” or “strong” version of this virus.

He claims that the novel coronavirus “[tends] to weaken over time.” There is no evidence for this. None.

He claims there are no known examples of viruses which do not “weaken” over time. To pick just two: Neither SARS nor ebola have mutated over time in such a way as to weaken.

And over and over Epstein talks about his “sense” of this or his “sense” of that while making iron-clad predictions and dismissing modeling and science that he does not understand.

But what marks Epstein here most deeply isn’t that he’s wrong about so much of the basics of how infectious diseases work. It’s his total confidence that he has full command of all the relevant knowledge—that he cannot possibly be missing anything and that it is the entire rest of the world—almost literally everyone else on the planet who does this for a living—who is wrong. The hubris is breathtaking.

Toward the end of the interview Epstein tries to bluster his way out by saying that he’s willing to bet “a great deal of money” on his claims and that he’s willing to debate anyone, anywhere, at any time.

The problem, of course, is that math doesn’t care about debates.

In his original piece, Epstein asserted that the world would see roughly 50,000 deaths, total, from COVID-19 and the United States would see 500.

He later revised that figure, saying that while the global 50,000 would hold, the United States would see between 2,000 and 2,500 deaths.

As of this morning, we have 35,019 confirmed deaths globally and 2,513 deaths in America. Both figures are still accelerating.

Epstein says he wants to wager “a great deal of money” on his predictions. Well, whether he understands it or not, he wagered his career on them. And he’s already lost.

Indeed, after reading Epstein’s interview with the New Yorker, economist Justin Wolfers writes of Epstein: “I have never seen someone demolish a scholar’s reputation as savagely as Richard Epstein demolishing his own.”

Epstein’s seventy-six; he should have stopped writing no later than at age seventy-five.

City, Demographics, Television

Broadband Gaps

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There’s a story over at Wisconsin Watch that reports on the broadband gap in rural Wisconsin communities. Peter Cameron reports Broadband gap leaves rural Wisconsin behind during coronavirus crisis (‘Wisconsin’s dearth of high-speed internet in rural areas makes virtual schooling, remote health care and working from home even more difficult’):

Already, Wisconsin lags behind the national average in broadband coverage. An estimated 43% of Wisconsin’s rural residents lack access to high-speed internet, compared to about 31% of rural residents nationwide, according to the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin.

“We have such a long ways to go,” said state Sen. Jeff Smith, a Democrat who has tried unsuccessfully to increase the state’s investment in broadband. “And now this is going to be one of the things that comes out of this (crisis) when we’re all done: ‘I guess we shouldn’t have dragged our feet for so long, and now we’d better get serious about it.’ ”

Whitewater from most rural communities because there is a university campus in town, and for many of the city’s residents who are students, broadband is simply an ordinary part of life. I’d guess – and only guess – that broadband is less common outside of the campus than some might think.

Some residents likely use mobile phones for internet access. The speed of local mobile connections, the data imitations on mobile plans, and the size of phone screens would mean that those residents’ internet experiences would look nothing that of others who use a dedicated broadband modem. I’m sensitive to this gap – there’s a profound difference between writing while using multiple connections & devices and thinking everyone else has that same experience. They certainly don’t. Whitewater is not a homogeneous community – it’s a small city of different, smaller communities, not all of whom have the same experiences.

There’s a way in which Old Whitewater likes to imagine – pretend, really – that they’re all of the town. They’re not – demographically, they’re not even all of the half of the non-student part of the town.

These years since the Great Recession have left many rural towns with uneven prospects, over-written statements from development men notwithstanding.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 3.30.20

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of fifty-one.  Sunrise is 6:37 AM and sunset 7:19 PM, for 12h 42m 14s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 30.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Unified School District’s board meets tonight at 6:30 PM briefly in open session, then entering closed session until returning in open session at 7:30 PM. The 7:30 open session portion of the meeting will be available via Zoom Online @ URL: https://zoom.us/j/887312491 and Meeting ID: 887-312-491.

On this day in 1867, the U.S. Sec. of State William Seward makes final the terms of the Alaska Purchase from Czarist Russia for $7.2 million, or about two cents per acre.

Recommended for reading in full —

Mike Baker reports Coronavirus Slowdown in Seattle Suggests Restrictions Are Working:

…seeing evidence that strict containment strategies, imposed in the earliest days of the outbreak, are beginning to pay off — at least for now.

Deaths are not rising as fast as they are in other states. Dramatic declines in street traffic show that people are staying home. Hospitals have so far not been overwhelmed. And preliminary statistical models provided to public officials in Washington State suggest that the spread of the virus has slowed in the Seattle area in recent days.

While each infected person was spreading the virus to an average of 2.7 other people earlier in March, that number appears to have dropped, with one projection suggesting that it was now down to 1.4.

The researchers who are preparing the latest projections, led by the Institute for Disease Modeling, a private research group in Bellevue, Wash., have been watching a variety of data points since the onset of the outbreak. They include tens of thousands of coronavirus test results, deaths, and mobility information — including traffic patterns and the movements of anonymous Facebook users — to estimate the rate at which coronavirus patients are spreading the disease to others.

The progress is precarious, and the data, which was still being analyzed and has yet to be published, is uncertain. Officials said that expansive social distancing policies will remain a key part of daily life for weeks to come.

(Emphasis added.)

Marc Fisher, Paul Schwartzman, and Ben Weissenbach report The Great American Migration of 2020: On the move to escape the coronavirus:

Back home in Oakland, Calif., Lisa Pezzino and Kit Center built a life that revolved around music and the people who make it — the musicians who recorded on Pezzino’s small label and performed in places where Center rigged the lights and sound equipment.

Where they are now, deep in the redwood forest near Big Sur, 140 miles south along the California coast, there is mostly the towering silence of isolation. A tiny cabin, an outdoor kitchen, just one neighbor. This is life in the flight from the virus.

They left town with four days of clothing and every intention of coming right home. And then the new rules kicked in, and state officials urged people to stay inside. There would be no concerts, no musicians wandering by to plan a recording session. Pezzino, a civil engineer who can work remotely, and Center, whose rigging work definitely cannot be done from home, decided to stay put in the woods, indefinitely. They joined the impromptu Great American Migration of 2020.

International Space Station has small pharmacy, well equipped to handle illness:

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 3.29.20

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see rain with a high of forty-four.  Sunrise is 6:39 AM and sunset 7:18 PM, for 12h 39m 20s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 22.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1865, the Appomattox Campaign begins.

Recommended for reading in full —

Ben Berwick, John Langford, Erica Newland,  and Kristy Parker write Trump Can’t Reopen the Country Over State Objections: 

In 2007, researchers published findings in the scientific journal PNAS showing how local governments mitigated outbreaks of the 1918 flu pandemic by aggressively limiting public gatherings. Cities such as San Francisco and St. Louis, which introduced restrictions early in one of the “waves” of the disease, fared much better than Philadelphia, which held a World War I victory parade that attracted tens of thousands of people to its famous Broad Street. Philadelphia was soon hit hard by the flu, while San Francisco and St. Louis were relatively spared.

“When multiple interventions were introduced early, they were very effective in 1918,” one of the researchers, Richard Hatchett, told the New York Times. “And that certainly offers hope that they would be similarly useful in an epidemic today if we didn’t have an effective vaccine.”

….

What happens if Trump tries to order or coerce states to relax their restrictions and put their residents at risk? Earlier this week in Lawfare, Robert Chesney described some limitations on the president’s power to “force changes if state and local officials won’t follow his lead.” He’s right. And if the president tries to force states to ease restrictions, they should resist. They have the Constitution on their side, and they will almost certainly win in court.

A triad of bedrock constitutional principles gives the states the upper hand. First, the Constitution and cases dating back to the founding era make clear that the power to make decisions about public health and welfare—for example, whether to close businesses and schools—lies primarily with the states, not the federal government. Second, to the extent that the federal government does have power in these areas, that power lies with Congress, not the president. Third, federal powers, even when wielded by Congress, are limited. And, as a practical matter, Congress is extremely unlikely to use its power to force states to roll back public health measures, even if it could do so as a formal legal matter. Under these principles, Trump lacks the legal authority to override orders from governors and other state and local officials that are designed to protect the public health and welfare of their citizens.

Julie Bosman reports Coronavirus Cases, Concentrated on the Coasts, Now Threaten America’s Middle

This week, cities and states that had no known cases of coronavirus not long ago have seen the infection’s sudden, intense arrival. In Detroit, more than 850 cases have been identified and at least 15 people have died. In New Orleans, public health workers have identified more than 1,100 cases, including 57 people who have died. Eight deaths and nearly 400 cases have been reported in Milwaukee County, Wis. And in Chicago and its inner-ring suburbs, there have been nearly 2,000 cases, as of Friday morning.

This Rare ‘Caviar’ Comes From Lemons:

Coronavirus, Public Health, Television

Frontline: Covering Coronavirus in Cremona, Italy

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A reporter’s emotional journey back to her homeland in Italy, now the global epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak. “I never thought that I would be making a film like this in Italy,” says FRONTLINE correspondent Sasha Achilli. “I feel immensely proud of the way that the Italian doctors are doing everything they can.” Italy’s doctors, she says, are looking at how America is responding now, and finding similarities with how their own country reacted weeks ago. “Doctors [here] are saying, absolutely self-isolate and do it in the interest of yourself. But in the interests of everybody else around you and who you love. Because this is very, very real.”

City, Public Health, Reasoning

Specific Numerical Claims Require a Citation

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During a public health emergency involving a contagious infection, it is possible – and so it is rational – to assume that some portion of that emergency lies hidden beyond one’s immediate view. This likelihood can be described simply, in this very way: some portion of this emergency likely lies hidden beyond one’s immediate view.

Update, 3.28.20: the original article linked below has been updated (with the remaining, substantially-cited portions helpfully still present). A personal note in this, sincerely offered: a thank you to the editor for the update. We find ourselves – as an entire country – in startling and difficult circumstances. We will make our way as best we can.

It is different, however, to write that “[c]omments on social media claim that reliable sources have confirmed that there are at least three persons in the city [Whitewater] who have been diagnosed.” Unlike a matter of editorial opinion, particular reportorial claims about specific public health statistics, for example, should be identified by the professional institution that offers them (a hospital, university, a government agency, etc.).

Specific numerical claims may be true, but if made, they should be made under citation.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 3.28.20

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will see thunderstorms with a high of fifty-two.  Sunrise is 6:41 AM and sunset 7:17 PM, for 12h 36m 26s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 14.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1862, in the Battle of Glorieta Pass, Union forces stop the Confederate invasion of the New Mexico Territory.

Recommended for reading in full —

Conservative Jonathan V. Last writes COVID-19 Is Not a Black Swan. Trump Is the Black Swan (‘The problem isn’t that America couldn’t plan for a pandemic. It’s that we couldn’t plan for a president so incompetent that he failed to follow the most basic protocols for fighting a pandemic’): 

See this section from the Atlantic’s big piece on what the COVID-19 endgame is going to look like:

As my colleagues Alexis Madrigal and Robinson Meyer have reported, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention developed and distributed a faulty test in February. Independent labs created alternatives, but were mired in bureaucracy from the FDA. In a crucial month when the American caseload shot into the tens of thousands, only hundreds of people were tested. That a biomedical powerhouse like the U.S. should so thoroughly fail to create a very simple diagnostic test was, quite literally, unimaginable. “I’m not aware of any simulations that I or others have run where we [considered] a failure of testing,” says Alexandra Phelan of Georgetown University, who works on legal and policy issues related to infectious diseases.

The testing fiasco was the original sin of America’s pandemic failure, the single flaw that undermined every other countermeasure. If the country could have accurately tracked the spread of the virus, hospitals could have executed their pandemic plans, girding themselves by allocating treatment rooms, ordering extra supplies, tagging in personnel, or assigning specific facilities to deal with COVID-19 cases. None of that happened.

Let me read the key part to you again:

“I’m not aware of any simulations that I or others have run where we [considered] a failure of testing,” says Alexandra Phelan.

People have been saying that you can’t plan for a once-in-a-century pandemic—there is no playbook for that kind of disaster.

This is not true. There is literally a playbook for pandemics.

What you can’t plan for is the possibility of a government seeing the pandemic coming and refusing to follow basic protocols for managing the crisis.

The black swan here isn’t COVID-19.

It’s Trump.

(Emphasis in original.)

Hannah Natansan reports After uproar, USDA says parents can pick up school meals without kids present:

The federal government is waiving a policy that required students to come in-person to pick up free meals during school closures, after legislators and advocates said the rule was imperiling the health and safety of children with compromised immune systems.

New guidance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, issued this week, allows school districts to distribute meals “to a parent or guardian to take home to their children,” according to a copy of the guidance obtained by The Washington Post.

Therapy Dog Visits Quarantined Senior Citizens Through Safety of Windows:

Meals, School District

Feeding Children: Free breakfast and lunch for children

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Originally posted 3.17.20. The Whitewater Unified School District’s website has information about feeding children, among other topics, during the coronavirus pandemic.

 

Updated afternoon of 3.27.20. It’s best to visit the district link directly (https://www.wwusd.org/covid-19) as needed for any updates:

Dear Families: The District is making important changes to our meal distribution during the Wisconsin Safer at Home order.. Starting Monday, March 30, a week’s worth of meals will be distributed each Monday. This includes five breakfasts and five lunches for each child. We will not distribute meals Tuesday through Friday. We will distribute at the same locations and during the same time frame (11:00 am to 12:00 pm). These meals are available to all children in the community 18 years old and younger. Children do not need to be physically present to receive the meal. Parents, guardians, and caregivers are able to pick-up meal bags for all eligible children in the household. Anyone with a fever or respiratory symptoms should not be picking up meals. When picking up a meal, you will now need to get out of your vehicle. The meals will be placed on a table to maintain social distancing. Location and additional information is available on the District’s COVID-19 website: https://wwusd.org/covid-19.

Sincerely, Lisa Griep Food Service Supervisor

—

Estimadas Familias: El Distrito está haciendo cambios importantes en nuestra distribución de comidas durante la orden Wisconsin Safer at Home. A partir del lunes 30 de marzo, se distribuirán comidas de una semana cada lunes. Esto incluye cinco desayunos y cinco almuerzos para cada niño. No distribuiremos comidas de martes a viernes. Distribuiremos en los mismos lugares y durante el mismo período de tiempo (11:00 a.m. a 12:00 p.m.). Estas comidas están disponibles para todos los niños de la comunidad de 18 años o menos. Los niños no necesitan estar físicamente presentes para recibir la comida. Los padres, tutores y cuidadores pueden recoger bolsas de comida para todos los niños elegibles en el hogar. Cualquier persona con fiebre o síntomas respiratorios no debe recoger comidas. Al recoger la comida, ahora deberá salir de su vehículo. Las comidas se colocarán en una mesa para mantener el distanciamiento social. La ubicación y la información adicional están disponibles en el sitio web COVID-19 del Distrito: https://wwusd.org/covid-19.

Sinceramente, Lisa Griep Supervisora de Servicio de Alimentos

Updated morning of 3.18.20. It’s best to visit the district link directly (https://www.wwusd.org/covid-19) as needed for any updates.

While schools are closed due to COVID-19, WUSD will be providing free breakfast and lunch for children.  Meals will continue as long as the closure lasts, as long as it is deemed safe to do so.  Meals will not be provided during the original spring break week (March 23 – 27). 

Meals will be available from 11am to 12pm, Monday through Friday.  One take-home breakfast and one take-home lunch will be distributed daily during this time.

Please practice social distancing when picking up meals and thorough hand-washing with soap and water before eating the take-home meals.  Distribution of meals is available for one hour at each location.  Please wait to approach the distribution vehicle if you notice many people waiting.

Locations:

  • Whitewater High School, in circle drive
  • N. Tratt Street, along Garden Apartments
  • N. Newcomb Street, along Whitewater Woods
  • N. Walton Drive, north of W. Bloomingfield Drive
  • N. County Line Road, into Wright’s Mobile Home Park
  • Fonda Street, along Washington Elementary
  • NEW LOCATION:  Lincoln Elementary, corner of S. Prince Street and W. Peck Street
  • NO LONGER SERVING AT W. Conger Street, between S. Whiton Street and S. Summit Street

Who is eligible for these meals?
All children 18 and under.

What community resources are available for other family members?
Please refer to the Community Resources page for more information. [https://www.wwusd.org/page/3414]

En Español

Mientras que las escuelas están cerradas debido a COVID-19, WUSD proporcionará desayuno y almuerzo gratis para los niños. Las comidas continuarán mientras estamos cerrados, siempre que se considere seguro hacerlo. No se proporcionarán comidas durante la semana original de vacaciones de primavera (del 23 al 27 de marzo).

Las comidas estarán disponibles de 11 a.m. a 12 p.m., de lunes a viernes. Un desayuno para llevar a casa y un almuerzo para llevar a casa se distribuirán diariamente durante este tiempo.

Practique la distancia social cuando recoja las comidas y lávese bien las manos con agua y jabón antes de comer estas comidas. La distribución de comidas está disponible por una hora en cada ubicación. Espere para acercarse al vehículo de distribución si observa que hay muchas personas esperando.

Ubicaciones:

  • Whitewater High School, en el círculo
  • N. Tratt Street, a lo largo de Garden Apartments
  • N. Newcomb Street, a lo largo de Whitewater Woods
  • N. Walton Drive, al norte de W. Bloomingfield Drive
  • N. County Line Road, hacia las Casas Móviles de Wright
  • Fonda Street, a lo largo de Washington Elementary
  • NUEVO LUGAR:  Lincoln Elementary, la esquina de S. Prince Street y W. Peck Street
  • YA NO EN:  W. Conger Street, entre S. Whiton Street y S. Summit Street

¿Quién es elegible para estas comidas?
Todos los niños menores de 18 años.

¿Qué recursos de la comunidad están disponibles para otros miembros de la familia?
Consulte la página de Recursos de Comunidad para obtener más información. [https://www.wwusd.org/page/3414]