Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with showers and a high of sixty-nine.  Sunrise is 5:31 AM and sunset 8:10 PM, for 14h 39m 24s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 51% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1973, Skylab, America’s first space station, is launched.

Recommended for reading in full —

 Laura Hazard Owen reports Americans say there are two main sources of COVID-19 misinformation: social media and Donald Trump:

A majority of U.S. adults think that misinformation about the the COVID-19 pandemic is a problem, according to survey results released Monday by Gallup and the Knight Foundation. And who are its sources?

Asked to identify the two most common sources of misinformation, a combined 68 percent name social media and 54 percent the Trump administration, though more give the Trump administration as their first response (47 percent) than social media (15 percent).

“82% of Democrats, 79% of independents and 73% of Republicans” think coronavirus misinformation is a major problem — but, not surprisingly, Democrats were vastly more likely to identify the Trump administration as a major source of misinformation (85 percent) than Republicans (4 percent). Meanwhile, 75 percent of Republicans identified mainstream news organizations as the main source of false or misleading coronavirus information, compared to just 2 percent of Democrats. So what you’d expect.

Kiera Butler reports What negative interest rates would mean for your wallet:

Up until this point, the Federal Reserve has never brought its benchmark rate into negative territory and, according to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, the Fed is not considering going to negative interest rates now.

“The committee’s view on negative rates really has not changed,” Powell said Wednesday. “This is not something that we’re looking at.”

Yet, “on some level, negative interest rates are inevitable in the U.S.,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com. “It’s just a matter of when.”

President Donald Trump was advocating for negative interest rates well before the coronavirus pandemic brought the economy to a standstill, arguing that erasing borrowing costs would spur economic growth.

“Negative interest rates sound like fun but it’s nothing to wish for,” McBride said.

“It hasn’t even proven to be effective,” he added. “Parts of Europe have had negative interest rates for seven years and it hasn’t done anything — their economies were reeling then, they’re reeling now.”
And even if the federal funds rate, which is what banks charge one another for short-term borrowing, fell below zero, that is not the rate that consumers pay.

The prime rate, which is the rate that banks extend to their most creditworthy customers, is typically 3 percentage points higher than the federal funds rate.

Should Georgia Reopen? These Pastors Say No:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of sixty-three.  Sunrise is 5:32 AM and sunset 8:09 PM, for 14h 37m 20s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 60.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1864, Battle of Resaca begins with Union General Sherman fighting toward Atlanta.

Recommended for reading in full —

 Austin Horn reports This Editor Turned What A Sheriff Said Was ‘Not News’ Into A Pulitzer-Winning Series:

Jeffery Gerritt, editor of the Palestine Herald-Press in East Texas, hadn’t planned on writing a series about inmates who were dying in county jails.

But he thought the death of a woman in jail, and the local authorities’ silence on the matter, was worth pointing out to his town of about 19,000 residents.

“Her name was Rhonda Newsome,” Gerritt told NPR. “And the local sheriff would not give me any information about her. In fact, on one of the very few phone conversations I had with him when I first got here, he told me a death in the jail is not news.”

The story led to several others on Newsome’s death and the deaths of other people in county jails across Texas. That series of stories won Gerritt and the Herald-Press the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Writing.

Gerritt’s series, “Death Without Conviction,” shed light on flaws in Texas’ system of review for deaths in county jails, where inmates have not been convicted of a crime. Pulitzer Administrator Dana Canedy praised Gerritt, saying he “courageously took on the local sheriff and judicial establishment, which tried to cover up these needless tragedies.”

Kiera Butler reports Anti-Vaxxers Have a Dangerous Theory Called “Natural Immunity.” Now It’s Going Mainstream:

On April 26, two California physicians posted a video on YouTube about what they said was a potentially deadly side effect of social distancing: Our immune systems will get weaker because of lack of exposure to germs. They weren’t the only ones to make this argument. In a May 4 video, a controversial and outspoken Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai—an engineer who claims to have invented email—also embraces this idea. In a May 3 YouTube video, he announced, “Viruses do not harm or kill us.” Instead, he argues, “Your body is an amazing being—it knows how to take care of itself, and that’s how we get immune health. But these politicians, the CDC and the NIH—they’re not talking about any of this. Shame on them, it’s criminal.” An article from the Minnesota-based conservative think tank the Charlemagne Institute titled “COVID-19 Lockdowns May Destroy Our Immune Systems” is currently making the rounds, too.

….

But the coronavirus is not a chronic immune condition; it’s a novel virus that attacks the body’s systems in ways not yet completely understood. Experts roundly reject the idea that social distancing will dangerously weaken the immune system. “A broad-based immunity weakening because of social distancing? Definitely not,” said Saad Omer, a Yale University epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist. Jennifer Reich, a sociologist who studies the spread of misinformation about health, agreed. “In order for our immune systems to be harmed by social distancing, we would have to live in sterile settings for a long time in which no bacteria or germs could affect us,” she wrote to me in an email.

 Billion Oyster Project Aims to Restore NY Harbor Reefs:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of fifty-nine.  Sunrise is 5:33 AM and sunset 8:08 PM, for 14h 35m 12s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 70.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

 Whitewater’s Public Works Committee  meets at 6 PM via audiovisual conferencing.

 On this day in 1949, the Soviet Union lifts its unsuccessful blockade of Berlin.

Recommended for reading in full —

Charlotte Butash writes Supreme Court Oral Argument Preview: Trump Financial Documents Cases:

On May 12, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Trump v. Mazars and Trump v. Deutsche Bank, the consolidated cases concerning whether President Trump’s business and personal financial records are subject to subpoenas from congressional committees. These cases were linked with a third, Trump v. Vance, which concerns whether a New York state grand jury can subpoena the president’s personal financial records and also is scheduled for oral argument on May 12. The outcome of these three cases could have significant implications for congressional power, the Trump family’s business dealings and the transparency of the president’s reelection campaign.

The court is livestreaming the audio of the arguments, under its new policy that governs arguments during the coronavirus pandemic. Argument in Mazars and Deutsche Bank will be divided among attorneys for the congressional committees, attorneys for the president and attorneys from the Justice Department. Argument in Vance will be divided among attorneys for the New York County District Attorney’s Office, attorneys for the president and attorneys from the Justice Department. You can listen here at 10 a.m.

Dr. Leana S. Wen writes of Six flaws in the arguments for reopening:

It’s worth the sacrifice if some people die so that the country has a functioning economy. This is a false choice; there are ways to safely reopen, and consumer confidence depends on the reassurance of public health protections.

Another flaw with this argument is that those making it are committing others to a sacrifice they did not choose. Covid-19 has disproportionately affected people of color, who are more likely to be essential workers, as well as to have chronic health conditions that make them more susceptible to severe illness. Minorities and working-class Americans of all ethnicities unable to shelter at home will continue to bear the brunt of infections, illness and death. Individual liberty cannot take precedence over the health and well-being of the less privileged.

We’ve been in lockdown for more than a month and cases aren’t declining; social distancing doesn’t work. Actually, social distancing has worked in places where measures were applied early and consistently. The two states with earliest known community transmission, California and Washington, avoided surges. New York was able to “flatten” its curve, and the number of cases at this epicenter is declining.

U.S. case numbers have not declined as much as case numbers in other countries because we have not applied the aggressive measures that some Asian and European countries have. At best, the United States has had a piecemeal approach. Some states never issued stay-at-home orders. Social distancing was intended to buy time to prepare hospitals and scale up capacity to test, trace and isolate coronavirus infections. Hospitals are better prepared than they were two months ago, but the country still lacks the resources for mass testing and contact tracing/isolation on the scale needed to tamp down infections.

How Coronavirus Antibody Testing Works:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of fifty-two.  Sunrise is 5:34 AM and sunset 8:07 PM, for 14h 33m 03s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 79.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater School District’s distinctions committee meets at 10:30 AM via audiovisual conferencing.

 On this day in 1997, Deep Blue, a chess-playing supercomputer, defeats Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, becoming the first computer to beat a world-champion chess player in a classic match format.

Recommended for reading in full —

Aaron Davis report In the early days of the pandemic, the U.S. government turned down an offer to manufacture millions of N95 masks in America:

It was Jan. 22, a day after the first case of covid-19 was detected in the United States, and orders were pouring into Michael Bowen’s company outside Fort Worth, some from as far away as Hong Kong.

Bowen’s medical supply company, Prestige Ameritech, could ramp up production to make an additional 1.7 million N95 masks a week. He viewed the shrinking domestic production of medical masks as a national security issue, though, and he wanted to give the federal government first dibs.

“We still have four like-new N95 manufacturing lines,” Bowen wrote that day in an email to top administrators in the Department of Health and Human Services. “Reactivating these machines would be very difficult and very expensive but could be achieved in a dire situation.”

But communications over several days with senior agency officials — including Robert Kad­lec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and emergency response — left Bowen with the clear impression that there was little immediate interest in his offer.

“I don’t believe we as an government are anywhere near answering those questions for you yet,” Laura Wolf, director of the agency’s Division of Critical Infrastructure Protection, responded that same day.

“We are the last major domestic mask company,” he wrote on Jan. 23. “My phones are ringing now, so I don’t ‘need’ government business. I’m just letting you know that I can help you preserve our infrastructure if things ever get really bad. I’m a patriot first, businessman second.”

In the end, the government did not take Bowen up on his offer. Even today, production lines that could be making more than 7 million masks a month sit dormant.

Don Lee reports Coronavirus sends unemployment rate to 14.7%:

Large-scale layoffs since mid-March have affected every major sector of the economy, with restaurant, retail, health services, manufacturing and local government all taking big hits in April. Unemployment rates rose sharply higher for Latinos, blacks, teenagers, part-time workers and those without any college education.

“Clearly, less-educated and low-wage workers have been crushed by this downturn, even more than usual,” said Harry Holzer, a former chief economist at the Labor Department and now a public policy professor at Georgetown University.

Holzer said that besides the 16 million workers who became unemployed last month, another 6.4 million people dropped out of the labor force. In addition, almost 6 million workers went from full time to part time due to the falloff in economic demand.

When such workers are included, a broader government measure of joblessness reached 22.8% last month — close to the peak unemployment of 25% at the height of the Great Depression in 1933.

(Emphasis added.)

 Jupiter looks like a ‘jack-o-lantern’ in high-res infrared views from the ground:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of forty-eight.  Sunrise is 5:35 AM and sunset 8:06 PM, for 14h 30m 53s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 87.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1865, Confederate President Jefferson Davis is captured. The 1st Wisconsin Cavalry was among the units that captured him.

Recommended for reading in full —

David Corn writes Trump Says There’s Plenty of PPE. So Why Did This Union for Nurses Have to Find Its Own?:

On Wednesday, President Trump held an event at the White House to salute nurses. But the gathering turned awkward when Sophia Adams, a nurse who heads the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, said that the supply of personal protective equipment for nurses during the coronavirus pandemic had been “sporadic.” Trump took issue with her statement and insisted, “I have heard we have a tremendous supply to almost all places.”

But Trump was wrong—and one union that represents a large chunk of the nation’s nurses recently had to spend millions of dollars and navigate the chaotic supply-chain world to procure millions of pieces of PPE for its members. This episode shows, yet again, how the Trump administration has not adequately assisted the nation’s front-line health care workers.In late March, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, was on a call with the heads of about 40 of her union’s locals that represent health care workers. Approximately 200,000 of the AFT’s 1.7 million members are health care workers, most of them nurses. This slice also includes physicians, technicians, and maintenance workers in medical facilities.

On the call, these local leaders described how they and their members were coping with the coronavirus crisis. “It was one horror story after another about the lack of PPE and the working conditions,” Weingarten recalls. The level of fear—fear for their own lives and the well-being of their family members—was shocking for Weingarten: “These are people who are normally used to situations where they can risk their health.”

Michael Gerson writes The moment when Trump’s schtick finally failed:

The president recently took the side of “very good people” carrying guns, swastikas and nooses in Michigan. But didn’t he already take the side of “very fine people” carrying guns and Confederate flags in 2017 in Charlottesville? Perhaps there is a list of diversionary tactics in the top drawer of the Resolute desk. Is it time to go after a black athlete or a black mayor or a black legislator? How about complaining of rigged elections and hinting at a third presidential term? Or is the moment right to attack Muslims or Mexican migrants?

Trump’s repertoire is not only stale; it now represents the dishonoring of sacred responsibilities. It is increasingly evident that our Neronian president fiddled while portions of America burned. He preferred to live in a land of hopeful dreams and happy talk for several weeks while a pandemic spread, cough by hacking cough. He ignored warnings in the expectation that a virus would respect his political strategy and cooperate in attempts to talk up the stock market. It was a risk he was willing to take — though the consequences have fallen on others.

 How a Bakery is Restoring Hope in an Appalachian Mining Town: