The muddled and inconsistent information we got (and still get) from the government and public health experts about lockdowns and masks is a big reason people don’t trust it. But a recent review of 172 studies finds that wearing masks drastically reduces the risk of infection. The mask mandates that were implemented might have reduced infections by at least 230,000 in the U.S. Countries with early mask requirements had shorter outbreaks and fewer deaths. The point of a mask is not to filter out viruses. It’s 1) to stop the viral particles from traveling very far (which is why we wear them to protect others) and 2) to block the larger droplets in which the virus travels. Masks, in combination with social distancing (and shutting down when needed), are the key to slowing the pandemic.

OK. Off my soapbox. Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending July 5…

Missed From Previous Weeks:

1. Research shows that the surge in coronavirus cases across the U.S. started before any cases caused by the George Floyd protests could have incubated, so the uptick likely started with Memorial Day celebrations. In at least 14 states, numbers were on the rise.
2. The World Health Organization (WHO) expresses support for the George Floyd protests despite the pandemic, saying the agency rejects every kind of discrimination. At the same time, the WHO recommends protestors comply with safety guidelines as much as possible.
3. A federal judge orders the Department of Education to cancel student loan debt for over 7,200 students in Massachusetts alone. They had attended a branch of Corinthian College, which is no longer in existence.
4. A co-founder of Reopen Maryland, a lockdown protest group, tests positive for coronavirus and refuses to cooperate with contact tracers. He’s had a cough for months and only recently worsened.

Shootings This Week:

1. There were THIRTY-EIGHT mass shootings in the U.S. this week (defined as killing and/or injuring four or more people). Shooters kill TWENTY-SEVEN people and injure ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY more. Gun violence is at an extremely high level since the lockdowns started easing—it’s the worst since I started following it.
2. Some of the worst:

• • A gang-related shooting at the Lavish Lounge in Greenville, SC, leaves two people dead and eight injured.
  • An argument after a car hits a pedestrian in Atlanta escalates into a shooting and leaves two dead and 12 injured. Atlanta had six shootings resulting in four deaths and 22 people injured over the Fourth of July weekend, leading the governor to declare a state of emergency.
  • In Chicago, four men walk up to a group of people and begin shooting, killing four and injuring four. Three of the victims were children, including one who was killed.

Russia:

1. Remember how we found out last week that Russia placed a bounty on U.S. service members’ lives in Afghanistan? Well, it turns out that Trump received a written briefing on this in February and has continued to meet with Putin and hasn’t mentioned a word of dismay or disapproval about it.

• • In fact, Trump called Putin six times in just two months. How many other leaders does he speak with that often?
  • White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany continues to deny Trump was briefed, saying that it hasn’t been confirmed that Russia placed the bounties.
  • At the moment she’s saying this, administration officials brief House Republicans on the intelligence.
  • Taliban leaders confirm that Russia did, indeed, offer bounties on American troops’ lives.

2. Russians vote overwhelmingly in favor of changing the rules for Putin, allowing him to stay in power until 2036 should he continue to win the presidential elections.
3. Higher than normal radiation levels register in northern Europe, leading to speculation that Russia has had another leak. Putin denies it.

Fallout, Legal and Otherwise:

1. The Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney’s office charges Ghislaine Maxwell for recruiting and grooming underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein to abuse. Maxwell was Epstein’s former girlfriend and is now on suicide watch in jail.
2. According to reporting by Carl Woodward, several of Trump’s former top deputies think he’s often delusional in his dealings with foreign leaders and almost always unprepared for conversations with them.

• • They say strongman leaders outplay Trump all the time, and Trump is abusive to our allies.
  • They also say Trump never became any more skillful at dealing with leaders.
  • In his conversations with leaders like bin Salman and Kim Jong Un, Trump bragged about his own wealth and “genius” while trashing former U.S. presidents.

3. Senator Tammy Duckworth threatens to hold up the promotions of 1,123 senior military officers until she gets confirmation from Defense Secretary Mark Esper that he hasn’t blocked and won’t block Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s promotion to full colonel. There’s suspicion that the delay in getting the promotions list from the DOD is because Trump won’t approve it with Vindman’s name on it.
4. The Commerce Department blocks the release of a report on whether the department pressured the head of NOAA to support Trump’s false claim that Hurricane Dorian would hit Alabama.
5. Former national security advisor Michael Flynn posts a bizarre video of him including the QAnon slogan “Where we go one, we go all” in a bizarre fireside oath on the Fourth of July. He tags the video with a QAnon hashtag. You might remember he was deep into conspiracy theories by the time he joined Trump’s campaign.

Courts/Justice:

1. The Supreme Court rules that Trump can fire the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau even though it is supposed to be a non-political post confirmed by the Senate.
2. Mitch McConnell, who held up a record number of Barack Obama’s federal court confirmations, brags that there isn’t a single circuit court vacancy for the first time in at least 40 years. Most of these conservative judges are in their 30s and 40s and will shape the judicial system for decades to come. 70% of them are white and male.
3. Adding to the shakeup in U.S. Attorney offices, Rickard Donoghue, the U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn, steps down to take a higher position at the Department of Justice.

Coronavirus:

1. Some interesting and geeky COVID info found from autopsies:

• • COVID-19 and dengue fever affect similar cells. Dengue fever destroys platelet-producing cells, which causes uncontrolled bleeding. The coronavirus amplifies those cells, producing dangerous clotting.
  • The virus attacks the lungs the most ferociously.
  • Medical examiners found the virus in the lungs, brain, kidneys, liver, gastrointestinal tract, spleen, and blood vessel lining.
  • They found blood clots in the heart, brain, kidney, liver, and especially the lungs.

2. Dr. Anthony Fauci expresses concern that we’ll start seeing 100,000 new coronavirus cases per day unless we take drastic action.
3. As Fauci testifies again before the Senate, Rand Paul asks him why we should listen to experts. Paul says the experts keep getting it wrong and that they should stop pretending they know it all and embrace a little humility. It shocks me that this man studied any kind of science.

• • Experts have been very clear that they’re working with the best knowledge they have and that it’s rapidly evolving.
  • Experts have also given us guidelines, which some states have embraced and some have not. So it’s not like the experts are giving any ultimatums.

4. Having clear and consistent guidance on wearing masks, social distancing, and staying home is what some scientists credit for the success of some countries and states at controlling the pandemic.
5. Mike Pence extends federal support for testing in Texas for two weeks due to the high rate of infections there. Meanwhile, the federal government has provided little testing support to Arizona, which is having a major outbreak as well.
6. At long last, Pence says that Americans should all wear masks in public to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Even Republican Senators Lamar Alexander, Mitt Romney, and Mitch McConnell, as well as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), start to recommend masks.
7. Sweden’s Prime Minister orders an investigation into their lax lockdown policy. The country has the fifth-highest death rate per capita.
8. Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is hospitalized with COVID-19. Cane recently traveled to Arizona and Tulsa, OK, for Trump’s rally. It doesn’t appear they’re doing any contact tracing as people he was in close contact with at the rally were never notified.
9. The new messaging from the White House is that we need to learn to live with the coronavirus. Unless it kills us, I guess. Amid the rapidly rising number of cases, Trump again says the pandemic will just disappear.
10. A new prediction model from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) shows that if most everyone wears masks, we could prevent 20,000 to 30,000 deaths by October.
11. Scientists urge the WHO to take the airborne spread of the coronavirus more seriously.
12. More than 800 Georgia professors protest plans to reopen the Georgia Institute of Technology without requiring masks.
13. Jim Yong Kim led the WHO’s HIV response under George W. Bush and led the World Bank for parts of the Obama and Trump administrations.

• • On a conference call in May about infection containment strategies (like testing, contact tracing, and isolation), he was incredulous that the U.S. is so lacking in a coordinated strategy to deal with the pandemic.
  • He says the planned standard response to an outbreak is apparently “something that we’re just not going to do” He asks why we’ve given up on any attempts at containing the pandemic, and points out that we’re world’s richest nation and couldn’t stop the virus from paralyzing us as other countries have.

14. The Global Health Security Index, which rates countries’ readiness to handle an outbreak, rated the U.S. as the best-prepared country overall in 2019. But they didn’t take into account political inaction and political ineptitude. Experts criticize the U.S. for not having the political will to meet the moment.
15. San Quentin State Prison in California is having one of the largest coronavirus outbreaks, and a group of COVID-positive inmates starts a hunger strike in protest of the conditions there.
16. The WHO says the pandemic is speeding up and that the worst is yet to come.
17. Scammers advertise fraudulent COVID-19 testing as a way to get personal information. Go to an official site for testing!
18. The people who are testing positive for coronavirus now are largely younger. People in the 18 to 49 age group make up 35% of the hospitalized population, up from 27% before. More than half of known cases in California are now in this age group.
19. The CDC says that the coronavirus is spreading too rapidly and too broadly for us to contain it in the U.S. I guess that’s why the administration has given up and says we just need to learn to live with it. Good strategy.

Shortages:

1. Facing a scarcity of resources, some Arizona hospitals request approval to use “crisis standards” to determine who gets treated when they are overwhelmed with patients. This includes things like allocating resources to patients with the best chances of survival or the best outcome. These standards are rarely invoked. Medical facilities are delaying nonessential procedures to free up beds and personnel. ICU beds are nearly 90% full across the state.
2. The Strategic National Stockpile had more ventilators than it ended up distributing to medical facilities so far during the pandemic. They started with 16,660 ventilators and loaned out 10,640.
3. The U.S. has bought up nearly the entire world’s supply of the anti-viral drug remdesivir, which makes experts wonder what will happen when a vaccine becomes available. There won’t be more available until after September, except 10% of the production in August and September.

Exposures:

1. Pence changes his travel plans to Florida and Arizona because eight Secret Service agents who were there preparing for his trip test positive.

• • At least 15 agents tested positive a few weeks ago while preparing for Trump’s campaign rally in Yuma, AZ. They ended up having to drive back to DC.
  • Some agents complain that Trump and Pence trying to keep up a normal travel schedule is unnecessarily putting them at risk. According to the agents, it’s one thing to take a bullet to protect them; it’s another to get sick for no good reason.

2. Don Jr. has to miss the Fourth of July rally at Mount Rushmore because his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, tests positive after arriving.
3. Scientists find a new mutation of the coronavirus that came from Europe to the U.S. The new version is more infectious but doesn’t seem to be any deadlier or cause worse sickness. This is the form that is mostly infecting Americans right now.
4. Studies suggest that super-spreader events have been a large driver of coronavirus infections. They estimate that 10% of the people are causing around 80% of the infections.

Closures:

1. At least 14 states slow down their reopening or backtrack on them.
2. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis says Florida will not go back to any of the lockdown orders, even as Texas Governor Greg Abbot and Arizona Governor Doug Ducey put reopening on pause and even backtrack a little on opening. Florida did stop allowing people to consume alcohol at bars.
3. Abbot issues an executive order requiring Texans to wear face coverings in public, but only in counties with 20 more COVID-19 cases. A group of conservatives files a lawsuit to stop the order.
4. Some states start closing businesses back down, and those businesses lay off workers again.
5. Crowds pack beaches and parks to celebrate the Fourth of July, despite growing coronavirus cases. In some states, officials close beaches and parks and cancel fireworks displays.
6. And congratulations, Americans! You can’t travel to Canada, parts of Mexico, or the European Union now that the EU confirms it will block travel from America when it reopens.
7. Residents of Puerto Peñasco, a beach town in Mexico, block all southbound traffic from Arizona with their cars. The town’s mayor doesn’t want Americans visiting Mexico right now.

Numbers:

1. Daily new coronavirus cases in the U.S. surpass 50,000 for the first time. Daily cases have increased by 80% in two weeks.
2. Cases worldwide surpass 10,000,000 and deaths surpass 500,000.
3. Eight states post record single-day highs: Alaska, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Montana, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Previously stable states like Ohio, Kansas, and Louisiana also see some of their highest daily numbers.
4. Here are the numbers by the end of the week:

• • 2,839,542 people in the U.S. are infected so far (up from 2,510,323 last week), with 129,676 deaths (up from 125,539 last week).
  • 11,240,740 people worldwide have been infected (up from 9,953,229 last week), with 530,581 deaths (up from 498,550 last week).

Healthcare:

1. Health scientists are monitoring a new H1N1 flu strain, which is popping up in people working on pig farms in China. It hasn’t yet made anyone ill, but scientists are concerned about another pandemic. In one year, H1N1 killed between 151,700 and 575,400 people worldwide (compared to COVID-19’s over 530,581 in half a year).
2. Oklahoma voters pass Medicare expansion, which would extend health benefits to nearly 200,000 low-income adults. This makes Oklahoma the fifth state where the voters overrode their Republican officials who have refused to expand Medicare under the Affordable Care Act. Why do voters keep electing people who go against their wishes?
3. The Supreme Court strikes down Louisiana’s restrictive abortion law requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital because it puts a severe burden on access to legal abortion.

• • Chief Justice Roberts was the deciding vote. He ruled this way because of a precedent set in a Texas abortion case even though he thinks that the case was wrongly decided.

International:

1. Iran issues an arrest warrant for Trump for murder and terrorism charges over the killing of General Qasem Soleimani.
2. At the UN Security Council’s virtual meeting, the U.S. is the only country that refuses to express support for the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA). Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calls it “flawed.” Most diplomats on the call criticize the U.S. for leaving the agreement and criticize Iran for the moves it’s taken in violation of the agreement since.

Legislation/Congress:

1. House Republicans have skipped every House Intelligence Committee meetings since March.
2. Senate Republicans force changes to the National Defense Authorization Act, removing the requirement presidential campaigns report offers of foreign assistance in an election.

• • Trump, in turn, threatens to veto the act if it includes requirements to change the names of military bases currently named after Confederate soldiers.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

1. Racial justice protests continue, though they’re quieter and the media isn’t as interested in them anymore. Sigh.
2. Cities around the country continue to amend their use-of-force policies, and they create unarmed response teams for certain types of 911 calls.
3. Mississippi will take down all their flags and create a task force to design a new one without the cross of the Confederate battle flag. The new design will be on the ballot in November.
4. With the recent toppling of statues honoring the Confederacy and slave ownership, the Department of Homeland Security creates the Protecting American Communities Task Force to protect historic landmarks from anarchists and rioters. How does this fall under their jurisdiction?
5. The Department of Housing and Urban Development under Ben Carson announces a plan to roll back protections for transgender people in need of HUD programs, including homeless shelters. At a time when people are experiencing economic pain and health concerns, HUD prioritizes putting people who are already in the most danger in even more danger. Got it.
6. The CEO of Reddit bans over 2,000 of their communities for promoting hate speech, and that includes the largest pro-Trump community, r/The_Donald. Reddit has long resisted moderating posts.
7. Twitch temporarily suspends the Trump campaign‘s channel for hateful conduct.
8. The mayor of Seattle disbands the Capitol Hill Organized Protest area, which had been set aside for protestors in a police-free zone.
9. At least 70 people have died in police custody after saying, “I can’t breathe.” Most were stopped for nonviolent infractions, and more than half were black. It’s a varied group of people who died, including a chemical engineer, a nurse, a doctor, an Iraqi war vet, and others.
10. A federal judge strikes down a Trump administration rule that would require asylum seekers who pass through multiple countries to reach the U.S. to apply for asylum in one of those countries first in order to be eligible for consideration here.

Climate/Environment:

1. The House Select Committee on Climate Crisis releases its vision for solving the problem of climate change. It calls for 100% clean energy by 2040, similar to what several states have enacted. The legislation is unlikely to pass this year.
2. The dust cloud from the Sahara that blanketed many of the Gulf states has largely moved on, but some haze remains and a second plume is on its way.
3. Energy companies have long been fighting for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, but abandon their efforts this week. The tunnel would’ve gone from West Virginia through Virginia and ended in North Carolina. Environmental, religious, and property rights activists joined in opposing the pipeline. Even though the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the pipeline last month, other court rulings related to the Keystone XL pipeline make the project seem too risky.

Budget/Economy:

1. The U.S. has added 7.5 million jobs back in since the shutdowns started lifting two months ago, 4.8 million of those in June. Twenty million jobs were lost due to the shutdowns. While this is positive news, more stimulus from the government might be needed. For now, Trump isn’t on the stimulus package bandwagon.
2. The unemployment rate dropped from 13.3% in May to 11.1% in June, but those numbers still contain the pandemic discrepancy. I don’t know why BLS hasn’t been able to address that yet.
3. 1.4 Million Americans applied for first-time unemployment insurance last week.
4. The Congressional Budget Office predicts unemployment levels to stay above pre-pandemic levels for at least a decade. The office also predicts a federal deficit this year of $3.7 trillion.
5. Senate Democrats successfully push Republicans to approve extending the Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses to August 8.
6. Goldman Sachs estimates that a national mask mandate could save the U.S. economy $1 trillion. Wearing masks is hugely politicized, and I’m not sure if Republican leaders can turn that around with their late entry into embracing masks.
7. The update to NAFTA (called the USMCA) goes into effect, changing some of the trade rules between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico in the areas of automotive manufacturing, agriculture, and intellectual property.
8. Fed Chair Jerome Powell tells the House Financial Services Committee that the economy is “extraordinarily uncertain.”
9. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, on the other hand, touts the 18% increase in retail sales after businesses start to reopen and says that nearly 80% of businesses are partially open. This is before businesses start closing back down due to the surge in coronavirus cases.

Elections:

1. Several former George W. Bush officials form a new super PAC to rally disenchanted Republicans to help elect Joe Biden. This makes at least three high-profile Republican PACs that are working on getting Biden elected.
2. Now that the RNC changed their national convention from North Caroline to Jacksonville, FL, to avoid distancing and mask requirements, Jacksonville institutes a mask requirement.
3. Before Trump’s rally in Tulsa, the campaign removed the social distancing stickers placed on seats to keep people at a safe distance.
4. Trump holds a Fourth of July re-election rally at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. There’s no social distancing and masks are handed out but not required, but at least it’s outside so that’s safer.

• • Instead of a unifying speech celebrating the nation on the anniversary of its birth, Trump doubles down on the culture wars and gives a bleak speech about the state of America and the enemy within — people who don’t like Confederate statues and protestors fueling a “left-wing revolution. Except he calls them marauding bands of looters, angry mobs, and anarchists who threaten our heritage by tearing down our monuments to the side that lost the Civil War.
  • He paints a grim picture of the results of his 3-1/2 years in office, which is a weird way to run a re-election campaign.
  • He claims that 99% of coronavirus infections are harmless. In reality, 81% are mild but can still result in lasting damage to the lungs; 19% are serious, requiring hospitalization; and nearly 5% are critical.

Miscellaneous:

1. Former Secretary of Defense William Perry joins the chorus of military leaders decrying Trump’s politicization of our armed forces and his threats to use them again U.S. citizens.
2. I don’t mind a good conspiracy theory that doesn’t have any consequences, but the latest conspiracy theories connecting 5G with the coronavirus are causing real-world problems. People are harassing and threatening telecom engineers in real life and doxxing them online. Believers are also damaging 5G equipment and setting towers on fire.

• • How many more people will end up in jail because they believe a dumbass conspiracy theory?
  • Celebrities who were duped by these conspiracies include Woody Harrelson, John Cusack, M.I.A., and Wiz Khalifa.

3. And my favorite story of the week, an online troll starts rumors that Antifa protestors will gather at Gettysburg on the Fourth of July to burn flags – they’ll even give kids little flags to throw into the fire.

• • Hundreds of homegrown militia members, skinheads, bikers, and far-right groups converge on Gettysburg armed to the teeth only to find there is no one there but themselves.
  • Rumors like this have been going around for weeks, mostly about Antifa busing in protestors to some small town. Armed vigilantes have lined the streets to protect towns from these non-existent boogeymen.
  • How many times do these conspiracy theories need to fall flat before people stop falling for them?

Polls:

1. 87% of Americans are dissatisfied with the direction we’re headed.