Michael Moore floats conspiracy theory that Trump may be faking Covid diagnosis
Graig Graziosi October 2, 2020
Documentarian Michael Moore suggests Donald Trump may be faking his coronavirus diagnosis to garner sympathy before the election. Trump political advisor Hope Hicks, as well as another White House staffer and two reporters working in the White House also have tested positive since Mr Trump was diagnosed. (Getty Images North America)
Documentarian and left-wing activist Michael Moore has floated a conspiracy theory on his Facebook page that suggested Donald Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis was faked.
Mr Moore justified his skepticism of Mr Trump’s diagnosis by citing the president’s many lies and incorrect statements.
“There is one absolute truth about Trump: He is a consistent, absolute, unrelenting, fearless, and professional liar. A serial liar. A factually proven liar. How many lies now has the Washington Post proven in these four years? 25,000? A lie at least twice during every waking hour? Think of all the bad people you’ve known in your life. Even the worst ones you couldn’t say that about.,” he wrote.
Mr Moore then asked “so why on earth would we believe him today? Has he earned your trust now?”
He pondered why Mr Trump would “all of a sudden just start telling the truth.”
“Why would you believe him now?” he asked. “…Trump has a history of lying about his health. His longtime New York doctor, Dr Bornstein, admitted a few years ago that Trump dictated his perfect ‘doctor’s letter’ during the 2016 campaign. Then there was the White House doctor who said Trump could live “200 years!” What about his lying about that emergency trip to Walter Reed “to complete his physical?”
Mr Moore said that Mr Trump may have the virus, but said the president lying about the virus had to be considered.
He went on to speculate as to why Mr Trump would fake having the virus after spending months downplaying its danger and publicly undermining guidelines meant to mitigate its spread.
Mr Moore believes the president is responding to polling data that suggests he is falling behind his campaign rival in the 2020 US election, Democrat Joe Biden. Under Mr Moore’s theory, Mr Trump hopes to change the media narrative and garner sympathy amoung the public by pretending to have the virus.
“Democrats, liberals, the media and others have always been wrong to simply treat him as a buffoon and a dummy and a jackass. Yes, he is all those things. But he’s also canny. He’s clever. He outfoxed Comey. He outfoxed Mueller. He outfoxed 20 Republicans in the GOP primary and then did the same to the Democrats, winning the White House despite receiving fewer votes than his opponent,” Mr Moore wrote. “He’s an evil genius and I raise the possibility of him lying about having Covid -19 to prepare us and counteract his game. He knows being sick tends to gain one sympathy. He’s not above weaponizing this.”
He then went on to claim that Mr Trump may use his potentially phony diagnosis to attempt to delay or otherwise postpone the election. Mr Moore notes that the US Constitution does not grant the president the power to move the election, but says Mr Trump and his administration will simply ignore it.
“He and his thug Attorney General Barr have no shame and will stop at nothing to stay in power. He may even use this as an excuse for losing,” Mr Moore wrote.
He concluded by admitting that Mr Trump “probably does” have Covid-19, and calling on voters to stick to their plans to vote and to be sceptical about what they read and hear. He then offered his well-wishes – mixed with a sizeable amount of indignation – to Mr Trump.
“Finally, on a personal note: Stay alive Mr. President. Your exit from public life must happen in the right and decent way. You have many years to live. You have a child to raise. Grandchildren who need you. A base that loves you,” Mr Moore wrote. “And the families of nearly the quarter-million dead who might be alive today had you done your job, had you cared, had you not played politics with people’s lives. Over 200,000 lost souls — and YOU KNEW! You told Woodward in February it was a plague. 200,000 dead because of decisions you made, because you denigrated science and ignored the doctors.”
Just before Mr Trump and First Lady Melania Trump announced their diagnosis, White House staffer Hope Hicks tested positive for Covid-19. Since their diagnosis, several other individuals in Mr Trump’s orbit over the past few days have tested positive as well, including the president of Notre Dame, a White House staffer, and two reporters who work in the White House.
White House struggles to understand the ACA case it supports
If the White House is going to fight to take health care benefits from millions of families, it should at least try to get the details right.
By Steve Benen, Repeated from June 30, 2020
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany speaks during a press briefing at the White House on May 1, 2020.Evan Vucci / AP
Last week, Donald Trump and his team asked the Supreme Court to tear down the Affordable Care Act in its entirety, despite the ongoing pandemic. If the president succeeds in getting what he wants, his own country’s health care system would be left in shambles, and tens of millions of families would lose benefits they’ve come to rely on.
It was against this backdrop that White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany appeared on Fox News yesterday morning, and one of the co-hosts asked about the potential political fallout of destroying the existing system without having a replacement ready. The president’s chief spokesperson made the case that it’s actually Democrats who’ll have a political problem.
“Look, the American public looks at this and what they say is this: If Democrats passed an unconstitutional law several years ago, then it’s on Democrats to come forward with a solution.”
McEnany went on to argue that the Affordable Care Act represents a “government takeover of health care” (that’s not true), that the White House has “put forward solutions” (that’s not true), and that Democrats are moving toward “eliminating Medicare” (that’s not true).
There was, in other words, quite a bit wrong with the press secretary’s pitch. But let’s focus on two key elements.
First, to hear McEnany tell it, if Supreme Court conservatives agree to destroy the existing health care system, it will be because Democrats “passed an unconstitutional law several years ago.” She’s confused: the pending ACA case is not a test of the original law’s constitutionality. That case has already come and gone.
Rather, the current case relates to the Republicans’ 2017 tax plan and the GOP’s apparent belief that it altered the ACA in such a way as to render it unconstitutional. It’s the sort of detail the White House really ought to know while it tries to take health care coverage from millions of families.
Second, it’s almost amusing to hear McEnany insist that it’s “on Democrats to come forward with a solution.” In other words, if Republicans make a mess, the White House expects Democrats to clean it up.
In reality, however, it’s Democrats who’ve already “come forward with a solution” — it’s the ACA, and it’s working — which they continue to take steps to improve. Meanwhile, it’s Republicans who’ve spent more than a decade promising to craft an alternative to “Obamacare” that does more and costs less.
At least so far, McEnany’s party has failed to keep that promise.
Conspiracy-Theory Twitter Is Going Nuts Over Trump’s COVID Diagnosis
Barbie Latza Nadeau October 2, 2020
Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters
It took about two full minutes from President Trump’s tweet confirming that he and Melania Trump had both tested positive for COVID-19 for the Twittersphere to go quite literally crazy with conspiracies.
As some people speculated that the conspiracy theories would take hold come daybreak, the head of Instagram tweeted: “it’s already starting…”
A number of Twitter users have pushed the theory that the president is “faking” the diagnosis to get out of any more disastrous debates or to distract the world from his $750 tax scandal.
Author Linda Sarsour posed the question whether the debate played a role.
Others, like curriculum writer Jodi Austin, suggested that a full recovery will be an “added bonus of ‘proving’ that it’s just a mild cold when he doesn’t become catastrophically ill. It’s an insane strategy that could be their last hope.”
More sage posters, like author and self-described conspiracy-theory debunker Mike Rothschild offered this: “The galaxy brain take is that Trump is faking COVID to get out of the debates or distract from the tax stuff. But his image depends on being a bull god street fighter Adonis who outworks men half his age. He wouldn’t pretend to be sick and weak. If anything, he’d cover it up.”
Yet another camp of conspiracy theorists believes that the president is faking the diagnosis so he can say how quickly he recovered and how COVID-19 is not at all as bad as it seems. A poster named Catherine Kenyon theorizes that Trump needs to change the conversation for two or three weeks. “At which time, Trump can emerge hale and hearty and say that Covid barely laid a glove on him.”
The Hoarse Whisperer tweeted to the more than 314,000 followers that the diagnosis is, in fact, real. “To folks speculating Trump might be lying about having COVID as a ruse of some kind: 1) His narcissism makes him see being sick as being weak. He would never voluntarily make himself look weak. 2) He can’t campaign for two weeks. His narcissism needs that ego fuel. He has it.”
Many of those posting under Trump’s announcement wish him well, including several who say they cried at the news he tested positive. Others gave advice, including not to drink bleach or ingest disinfectants or inject daylight. Many more posted videos of him mocking his presidential opponent Joe Biden for wearing a mask and being cautious.
One Twitter user tweeting under then handle Mrs. Krassenstein, lectured the president on his behavior, telling him, “You should be ashamed of yourself for calling this virus a hoax and for holding rallies after you were exposed to Hope Hicks. I wish you well Mr. President, but you have no one to blame but yourself.” She added a followup post, “Now can you please stand up like a leader and stop downplaying the virus? Can you please stop mocking mask wearing? If you wore a mask, you would probably not have gotten COVID.”
Some posts, like WMM podcast and CNN political analyst Joe Lockhart, floated the idea that these cascading scandals somehow replace each other. “This is the world we live in. The Kimberly [Guilfoyle sexual harassment] story gave us a break from the Trump the racist story. The Melania tapes gave us a break from the Kimberly story. And the Covid diagnosis gave us a break from the Melania tape story. NUTS.”
And even some far-right Twitter users—already prone to conspiratorial thinking—seemed to indulge the idea that the president would fake a positive coronavirus test to change the news focus. Kurt Schlichter, a conservative media star who frequently fantasizes about killing Democrats in a new civil war, wrote: “I’m not saying that Donald Trump is pretending to have Covid to cause the left to freak out in a frenzy of murder wishes and to wash all the garbage stories off the front page, but I’m not saying I’m not saying that.” The take was so hot that he retweeted himself to boost it again for his audience.
Among other memes, jokes about the Trump couple actually kissing each other, and wishes of ill-will and speedy recovery, one user sought to wish the president “Thoughts and prayers for a quick recovfefe.”
‘It’s Just F*ck-Up After F*ck-up’—Trump’s COVID Advisers at Their Breaking Point
Erin Banco, Asawin Suebsaeng October 2, 2020
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/AP
The announcement that President Donald Trump, his wife, and a top White House aide contracted coronavirus threatened, on Friday, to bring unprecedented levels of tumult to the federal government.
But even as the president was rushed to the hospital at Walter Reed, for what the White House said would be days of observation, rest and testing, officials inside the administration said they didn’t anticipate much of a shakeup in their approach to combating COVID. There would reportedly be no official revised mask policy, which remained encouraged but not required. The White House’s COVID task force would not take on an enhanced role, after operating for months on fumes.
“It’s business as usual,” as one White House official put it, even as the pandemic had come bursting through their front door.
The approach may have seemed odd considering the stakes: the leader of the free world, silent and out of sight, helicoptered to a hospital to deal with a deadly virus. But, to a degree, it merely echoed the science-skeptical mindset that has gripped Trump and his team as it has approached a likely spike in COVID cases this fall. By Friday, even some of the president’s top boosters were wondering if it was all insane.
“I support [the president’s] re-election, I think he’s done an amazing job, I think he’s Ronald Reagan on steroids. But one thing I personally don’t understand is why people don’t wear masks. I don’t understand it. Why don’t they wear masks? The president should tell people to wear them!” businessman Shalabh “Shalli” Kumar, a Trump and GOP mega-donor and chair of the Republican Hindu Coalition, said on Friday afternoon. “I hope [the infection] is very minor, and I hope that there’s no negative impact on him or the first lady at all, or anybody else associated with them. I’m very concerned about this.”
Elsewhere in Trumpworld, there was anger and internal frustrations over how the virus in general and the president’s infection in particular had been handled. Among White House staff and the re-election effort, some advisers were furious that Trump wasn’t talked out of attending a high-roller fundraiser at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club on Thursday night, after the White House already learned of his exposure to the virus, two administration officials said. The senior official was also exasperated that the way the White House bungled the information rollout in the past couple days left the administration wide-open to allegations of yet another disastrous cover-up.
“It’s just fuck-up after fuck-up,” said a senior administration official who works with the coronavirus task force. “I don’t have much more to add [beyond] that.”
The anger expressed in some corners of Trumpworld on Friday was similar to the frustrations those inside the administration have come to feel. For weeks the president’s medical advisers have been increasingly on the outs. But in recent days officials have grown increasingly resigned to the idea that keeping the public informed about the threats the virus poses while maintaining favor with the president is an impossible task.
In the hours leading up to the president’s announcement of a new coronavirus testing initiative last week in the Rose Garden, officials at the Centers forDisease Control were left in the dark about the initiative’s actual details. Earlier in the day, Vice President Mike Pence and Adm. Brett Giroir, the administration’s coronavirus testing czar, had hosted a call with the nation’s governors, during which they said that the federal government planned to send states batches of Abbot BinaxNOW point-of-care tests, free of charge, with the hope that they use them for the reopening of schools.
But neither Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, nor CDC Director Robert Redfield were on the call. And when Trump ultimately unveiled the initiative at the Rose Garden, neither Redfield, Fauci nor Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, appeared alongside him. (Birx has been traveling across the country to work with colleges to slow community spread). Instead, the president turned to Pence, Giroir and Scott Atlas, an adviser to Trump on COVID-19 issues, to promote the new testing plan.
For those who continue to warn that the virus will infect and kill more Americans without serious attention paid toward stopping community spread, the frustrations have hit a boiling point.
“We used to meet seven days a week. Then five days a week. We’re now meeting one day a week and at most two times a week,” Fauci said during an interview with AIDS & LGBT rights activist Peter Staley last week. “The way things have evolved at the White House is that there has been a pivot away from the reliance on a daily type of a task force discussion… on policy making and policy implementation… more towards how are we going to get this country open again economically. There is another science person— Dr. Atlas— who is much more with the president than any of the other task force members particularly Debbie Birx who used to be in that position. This is a unique situation.”
At the heart of the matter is Trump’s belief that his election hinges on convincing the public that the virus is not the threat his own science advisers say it is.
The president and his team have traveled across the country, greeting voters and other supporters without masks. Some of those events have been inside—including rallies—while others were held outdoors. And during the presidential debate on Tuesday, Trump publicly questioned the analysis of his own coronavirus officials, saying he did not agree with a timetable that a coronavirus vaccine would not reach the American people until well into next year.
But the current delta between Trump’s political objectives and scientific reality is, sources say, even worse than it appears publicly.
Over the last several weeks, officials within the CDC, including several working with the White House coronavirus task force, have grown increasingly frustrated with the president, who they say has sidelined the nation’s top scientists and health representatives in an effort to control the narrative around the pandemic’s spread. While most admit the CDC has made mistakes, including accidentally posting guidelines about COVID-19 aerosol transmission, officials say the president has pushed aside top health officials throughout the administration primarily because they have questioned his approach to responding to the virus.
Central to the dysfunction, officials say, is Atlas, a Rasputin-like figure who has increasingly gotten hold of the president’s ear.
Several officials who interact with the neuroradiologist expressed frustration that President Trump had put his trust in an individual who has little experience working on infectious disease outbreaks. Increasingly, those frustrations are bubbling to the surface in ways that would have been unheard of in past administrations.
“He’s doing things that you would do if you wanted to tear apart the task force,” one senior Trump administration official, who works closely with the group, said of Atlas. “The president was already doing a fine job ignoring much of the counsel coming out of the task force, but [Atlas’s ascension] has made it even worse.”
This official referenced several times this summer, during which the United States had seen coronavirus surges in various areas, when Trump was being briefed on virus data or worsening situations, and would reply, “What does Scott have to say,” or “What does Scott think?”
Trump had told senior officials in recent weeks he doesn’t see Atlas on TV enough and wants him booked on more programs and cable-news shows representing the administration’s policies, said a source with direct knowledge of the president’s wishes. But even Fox News—whose airwaves initially drew Trump to Atlas—has grown wary of putting him on some programs, owing to his policy prescriptions that are deemed by many to be out-of-touch with mainstream scientific and public-health opinion.
And within the administration, trust in Atlas is even lower. In the interview with Stanley, Fauci called out Atlas for undermining an assessment by Redfield that 90 percent of Americans are still susceptible to the virus.
“I thought it was extraordinary inappropriate for him [Atlas] in a press conference like that to contradict the director of CDC as opposed to saying ‘you know, it is a complicated issue and I think I’d like to sit down and discuss this with the people from the CDC’,” Fauci said. “And then what has happened, he’s a smart guy, no doubt about it, but he tends to cherry-pick data.”
Redfield has also been quoted speaking critically about Atlas, saying—in comments overheard by NBC last week, that “everything” Atlas “says is false.” Multiple officials working with the task force, meanwhile, have said that Atlas, the president and other advisers have downplayed case numbers and complicated their efforts to inform the public about how local communities can stop the spread of the virus by issuing public health ordinates, such as mask mandates, and by recommending stricter lockdown measures.
On Friday, hours before Trump was flown to Walter Reed, Atlas was quoted as predicting the president would make “a complete and full and rapid recovery.”
Ready or not, here comes Borat. Amazon has premiered the official trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen’s comedy sequel, officially titled “Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm.” No, the rumored title of “Borat: Gift of Pornographic Monkey to Vice Premiere Mikhael Pence to Make Benefit Recently Diminished Nation of Kazakhstan” was not true. The film picks up with Cohen’s Kazakh journalist Borat following the blockbuster success of the 2006 movie as he returns to America with his daughter hoping to “gift her to someone close to the throne” (aka someone in the orbit of Donald Trump’s White House).
Cohen shot the “Borat” sequel in secret over the summer. Fans of the comedian started to wonder what he was up to after news broke in June that Cohen crashed a far-right rally in Olympia, Washington, and convinced the crowd to sing a racist song with him. Cohen appeared dressed in overalls and a fake beard and sang about injecting kids with the “Wuhan flu.” The event was for the Washington Three Percenters, a far-right militia group known for its gun advocacy.
Another Cohen prank leaked after New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani revealed in July that Cohen ambushed his interview at the Mark Hotel in New York City. During the middle of Giuliani’s interview, a man believed to be Cohen stormed in “wearing a crazy” outfit that included “a pink bikini, with lace, underneath a translucent mesh top.” Giuliani called the prank “absurd.”
In addition to far-right groups and Giuliani, Cohen is also expected to take aim at Mike Pence, Donald Trump, and Jeffrey Epstein in “Borat 2.” Deadline reported in September that Cohen risked his life on multiple occasions to film the “Borat” sequel, including wearing a bulletproof vest on at least two full days of filming.
The original “Borat” was a box office winner in 2006, grossing over $260 million worldwide. Cohen won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Comedy or Musical, and the film went on to land an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 79th Academy Awards. The film is often referred to as one of the best comedy films of the 21st century.
“Borat 2” will be released October 23 on Amazon Prime. Watch the official trailer for the comedy sequel in the video below.
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Why do Trump supporters ignore the ruin he inflicts on the country? Try viewing it through the lens of addiction.
By Neil Steinberg September 20, 2020
Drug use on Lower Wacker Drive in late 2016. Using drugs on a street off Lower Wacker Drive in late 2016. Neil Steinberg/Sun-Times
Almost four years ago I was tagging along with medical workers from the Night Ministry. We found ourselves standing before three people sprawled in a nest of blankets and sleeping bags off Lower Wacker Drive.
At first I held back. Then, I gingerly nudged forward, afraid they’d clam up as soon as I took out my notebook. But they didn’t. They answered whatever question I asked — their names, what drugs they were taking. I could take pictures. They weren’t embarrassed. They didn’t care about anything except getting those drugs inside themselves.
Addiction does that. You are locked into feeling that pleasure, or relief, or passing sense of normality. End of the story. You don’t care about the damage you’re inflicting upon yourself or others. You don’t care that the addiction is killing you. You could shake this emaciated woman and ask what her younger self would think of what she’s become. She’d stare back at you, hollow-eyed and uncomprehending. She doesn’t bother to eat food; what does she care about lost dreams?
That’s why I have to laugh when my somehow still idealistic friends wonder when Donald Trump’s base will abandon him. When they will finally see the ruin his presidency has caused this country and regret their role in supporting it. That’s easy: never. They’ll never give him up, just as many addicts never quit their substances, except by dying.
The concept of addiction is the best way to make sense of our country today. Trump makes his followers feel good. He soothes the ache in their broken parts. Like heroin, he makes them feel safe and secure even while doing the exact opposite. They’re not safe and secure, but on the street, endangered, living in a country wracked by a pandemic that their drug of choice trivializes and ignores. They’re teetering on an economic cliff, while shivering at pipe-dream fears about socialized medicine.
What do they care of deterioration of American democratic institutions? They’re in denial. That’s like asking a drunk driver whether his tires are properly inflated. All he cares about is how much is left in the half pint.
Sure, change is possible. I got sober 15 years ago next week, for those keeping score. But it took a life-jolting crisis. As to why 200,000 Americans dying from presidential incompetence isn’t such a crisis, and why his supporters don’t turn from his confused chaos, well, they’re still lost in their addiction. Anything can be rationalized away. Your friend shoots up, walks into the bathroom and dies. You’re sorry, but you’re still going to shoot up yourself in two hours, because that’s what you do.
Crowd members cheer toward cameras before the arrival of President Donald Trump to a Make America Great Again rally on September 19, 2020 in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
A crowd waits for President Donald Trump to arrive for a rally Saturday in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Getty
Trump fans can still brush away the whole pandemic: no worse than the flu, numbers exaggerated, whatever Fox News told them last night, lodged in their brain and vibrating. I don’t try to tell Trump fans they’re dupes suckered by a fraud. Why bother? Interventions usually fail. Al-Anon teaches relatives of the addicted to disengage. Let the sufferer figure it out. The addict has to want to change, and for that, they usually have to hit bottom.
Has our country hit bottom yet? I sure hope so, though hope is of very little value here. There are hells below this one, and we may be heading there.
Unless we’re not. If Joe Biden manages to both win the election and keep Trump from holding onto power anyway — and I can’t say which is the greater challenge — Trump supporters won’t automatically reform. Just the opposite. They’ll spend years smearing their faces against liquor store windows, gazing at their lost passion, licking their lips and wishing for just one more slug of Make America Great Again. Hating those who took away the man who made them feel alive. Give them time. Meanwhile, we must care for ourselves, and the United States, and look forward to the day when our fellow citizens may recover clear-eyed love of country and rejoin us at dinner. That day may never come.
Trump supporters will howl, but I’ll share a secret: When you’re an addict, you stop mattering, eventually. That’s the worst fate. You sit there with your barfly friends, complaining about the raw deal you got, or take your drugs huddled in some grimy lower rung of hell, while your far-off family picks itself up and goes on without you.
Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer at Facebook.
“Women belong in all places where decisions are being made.”
When Ruth Bader Ginsburg graduated from Columbia Law School in 1959, she was first in her class – and she couldn’t find a job. So she did what brilliant, ambitious women have done throughout history when the doors of power slammed in their faces: she found another way.
Thousands of state and federal laws treated women like second-class citizens. Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, I will change that, even if I have to do it one case at a time.
She argued and won FIVE landmark gender equality cases before the Supreme Court. So many women have been able to pursue our dreams and exercise our rights as equal citizens because of her.
As a Supreme Court justice, she went even further. LGBTQ equality. Voting rights. The rights and dignity of immigrants. Access to healthcare. Protecting the environment. She was principled, passionate – and she fought to the end.
I don’t know what my life would look like without Ruth Bader Ginsburg fighting for me and all women. More than anything else, tonight, I am grateful.
Thank you, Justice Ginsburg.
Democrat’s War Room
Bruce Lindner
When the announcement came that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed away yesterday, my iPad went berserk. Over a hundred Facebook friends sent me private messages within the first few minutes. They ran the gamut from “We’re so screwed now,” to “It’s all over for America,” to “It was nice while it lasted.” I read the first few and decided that I needed a few hours of space, lest I lose a few friends. So I played some music. I still haven’t even read most of them, and probably won’t for a few days. I have little appetite for negativity.
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg led a life of constantly swimming upstream. Everything from institutionalized sexism, misogyny, ignorance, bigotry, anti-Semitism, and for her final curtain, five bouts with various types of cancer. FIVE.
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Throughout it all, never did she throw up her hands and say; “That’s it, I’m so screwed.” or “My life was nice while it lasted.” To the contrary, she never, EVER complained. Instead, she fought. Because she knew the ultimate beneficiaries of her battles weren’t just herself. They were us.
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I realize these are depressing times, and I confess that I get depressed too. But I have ZERO tolerance for defeatism. Do *NOT* message me to tell me how bleak your world is. What makes you think I want to hear it?
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If RBG showed us anything, it’s that defeatism is for the meek. And the meek are the lambs that conservatives eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
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Don’t be meek. Be like RBG. Be STRONG. She was all of 5’1” tall, and maybe 110 pounds soaking wet. Yet never in her eighty-seven years did she say to herself or anybody else; “It’s pointless to fight on.”
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Now is the time for Democrats to assume the role of the wolf. No more lambs. And Goddamnit, don’t you DARE message me with your “woe is me” attitude.
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Be like Ruth. If for no one else’s sake, do it for our daughters.
Doctors alarmed by surge in hospital visits as toxic smoke engulfs west coast
Erin McCormick in Berkeley, California
Photograph: Philip Pacheco/Getty Image
A month after hundreds of wildfires started spewing toxic smoke along the west coast, doctors are seeing the alarming health effects of air pollution.
In northern California’s Stanford Health Care system, hospital admissions have jumped by 12% in recent weeks, including a stunning 43% increase in cerebrovascular conditions such as strokes. In Oregon, health officials reported nearly one out of 10 people visiting the emergency room had asthma-like conditions due to the smoke. And in San Francisco, doctors had to cancel their clinics for recovering Covid-19 patients, because the air was so unhealthy that just getting to their appointments could make patients more sick.
A growing body of scientific evidence paints a dire picture of the effects of wildfire smoke on the human body. Experts told the Guardian earlier this month that the smoke can have an almost immediate effect on people’s health, causing asthma, heart attacks, kidney problems and even mental health issues to surge.
Now, as the west coast reckons with an unprecedented stretch of hazardous air, scientists and health experts are growing even more concerned about the immediate and long-term consequences of continuous exposure to the harmful pollution.
In the Bay Area, despite firefighters gaining control of the nearest blazes started by lightning strikes in August, smoky conditions have persisted, turning the sky orange and keeping people inside their homes.
“We’re on the 30th consecutive day of our ‘Spare the Air’ alerts,” said Kristina Chu of the Bay Area air quality management district on Wednesday. “That’s an all-time record,” she explained; the previous longest was 14 days.
A pedestrian walks past the Willamette Bridge and downtown Portland, Oregon, on Wednesday.Photograph: Don Ryan/AP
After a month steeped in orange-brown air filled with dangerous tiny particles emitted by the wildfires, patients with pre-existing lung or heart conditions were at particular risk for hospitalization or even premature death, health officials in California said.
“We’ve now had a month of severe exposure to smoke and the levels have been very high,” said Dr Mary Prunicki, director of research for Stanford’s Sean N Parker Center for Allergy & Asthma Research.
At Stanford’s health centers, doctors told the Guardian they had seen a troubling rise in overall hospitalizations, as well as an increase in specific conditions.
Bibek Paudel, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford’s asthma clinic, has been following the rise in hospitalizations. In the first two weeks after smoke pollution permeated the Bay Area’s air, he calculated an extra 500 people had been admitted to Stanford’s hospitals compared with what would normally be expected – 12% more than the two weeks before the fires. After three weeks of bad air, he could detect an 14% increase in the number of heart patients hospitalized, an 18% percent increase in kidney conditions and a 17% increase in asthma hospitalizations.
Fine particles go to the bottom of your lungs, then can cross over to the bloodstream and go anywhere in your body
Mary Prunicki, Stanford doctor
“The smoke and the number of intense fires has gone up and up,” he said, noting that the California fire season has just begun. “I expect it will go up even more.”
The most alarming finding was the 43% increase in strokes and other cerebrovascular hospitalizations, which could be related to inflammation brought on by the pollution, the researchers said.
The research also shows a 15% increase in hospitalizations for substance abuse disorders and a small uptick in other mental health hospital intakes.
“People were already dealing with the stress of Covid-19,” said Prunicki. “And I read that there has been an increase in alcohol use. This just may be a tipping point.”
Prunicki said researchers were just beginning to understand the many detrimental effects that the smoke ingredients, known as particulate matter 2.5, have on the body.
“Fine particles [in the smoke] go to the bottom of your lungs, then can cross over to the bloodstream and go anywhere in your body,” said Prunicki. She co-authored an earlier study that showed even healthy teenagers see an increase in the markers of inflammation in their bloodstreams during periods of wildfire smoke exposure.
“I don’t know that we have it figured out on a cellular level, but we see dysregulation and we know that pollution is causing inflammatory changes throughout your body,” she said.
Scientists are still working to understand the long-term effects of wildfire smoke exposures, but studies of firefighters have shown they face a higher rate of cancer than the general public, despite being otherwise healthier than the average person.
In Oregon, residents were facing air pollution so severe that the air quality index readings were “literally off the charts”, according to Gabriela Goldfarb, a spokesperson for the Oregon health authority, which has been monitoring an increase in people seeking emergency treatment for asthma symptoms. While any air quality index over 300 is considered “hazardous”, numerous communities bordering the wildfires near Salem and the Portland suburbs have experienced readings of over 500, she said.
Smoke from wildfires fills the sky over Pasadena, California, on 12 September.Photograph: John Antczak/AP
Goldfarb says the health authority has spent years studying how to combat the health toll of more frequent wildfires, which have been intensified by the climate crisis. Its recommendations have included proposals to distribute air purifiers to low income families and renters. But this year, legislation to do that was put on hold when the Oregon legislature disbanded early due to the pandemic. Now, she said, it is hard to recommend safe alternatives for the public, other than staying home – and people facing evacuation don’t even have that option.
“Traditionally people could go to their public library or a local shopping center to escape the smoke. But those aren’t available this year because of Covid,” she said.
Dr Neeta Thakur, a University of California, San Francisco, pulmonologist who heads both the chest clinic and the clinic for recovering Covid-19 patients at San Francisco general hospital, said the smoke pollution had presented a catch-22 for those concerned about the risks of the coronavirus.
She said one of her lung patients called the hospital complaining of breathing problems and was told to come immediately to the emergency room. But the patient, an older person, waited, fearing exposure to coronavirus. Two days later, the patient’s lung problems became so severe that they had to be brought in by ambulance and intubated in the ICU, she said.
“There was definitely a delay in seeking care because of fear of the pandemic,” said Thakur, noting that the patient was recovering at home.
“We could see more of this,” added Thakur, who has had to cancel recent clinics for people recovering from Covid and asthma patients because of the poor air quality. “Trying to navigate these two health crises and tell people what to do is very difficult.”
She said residents of low income communities bore the brunt of the health risks because of poor-quality housing.
“I can go inside and get clear air,” she said. “But when you live in poor-quality housing, the bad air outside can come inside.”
On Thursday, air quality experts predicted west coast residents would finally get a break as offshore winds blew the clouds of smoke inland, spreading them all the way to the east coast.
Still, “we do not feel we’re in the clear for this fire season yet,” said Goldfarb. She predicted rain storms might bring lightning and the prospect of more fires to Oregon; California air quality officials noted that the state might not see rain until November and smoke pollution could return as early as this weekend.
“If there are people who need to leave the house and get some fresh air, we recommend they do it now,” said Chu, of the Bay Area air quality district. “It’s a new normal that we’re getting used to.”
As smoke lifts on California’s coast, it lingers in Central Valley, where farm-workers have no refuge
David Knowles, Editor September 17, 2020
Scientists say satellite images show smoke from U.S. wildfires reaching Europe.
Hazardous smoke from wildfires across the West is presenting the latest danger for the men and women who pick America’s fruit and vegetable crops in a year when record heat and the coronavirus pandemic have already put their lives at risk.
On Thursday, while air quality improved in the San Francisco Bay Area, throughout much of California’s Central Valley it remained classified as “unhealthy” or worse. Under those conditions, residents are advised to stay indoors — but farm-workers don’t have that option.
“To be out in the fields, it’s like you can’t breathe,” Herman Hernandez, director of the California Farm-worker Foundation, told NPR.
The United Farm Workers, the nation’s largest farm-workers’ union, has been highlighting the poor working conditions caused by wildfires like the Basin Complex Fire, which has burned more than 162,000 acres near Big Sur, Calif.
The state requires employers to provide particle respirators or face masks when the air quality index reaches the “unhealthy” level of 151 parts per million, but thanks in part to the coronavirus pandemic, personal protective equipment is in short supply and many farm-workers have been going without it.
Oregon has no such mask regulations, but on Sept. 11 the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration sent a letter to employers urging them to halt outdoor work when the air quality index exceeds 151 and to allow “workers with underlying health conditions to stay at home.”
On Monday, the air quality index in Oregon topped 500 in many parts of the state, Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality said, prompting prompting Gov. Kate Brown to order the National Guard to distribute 250,000 Chinese-made KN95 masks to farm-workers and tribal communities, the Oregonian reported.
“Governor Brown’s goal is to make sure agricultural workers are protected from the health impacts of hazardous air quality, which is why she directed Oregon OSHA to issue guidance to employers last week,” Charles Boyle, a spokesman for the governor, told the Oregonian.
Farm laborers in California work in smoky conditions. (Courtesy of United Farm Workers)
The short-term health effects of breathing wildfire smoke include chest pain, headaches, sore throat, fatigue, asthma attacks and an elevated heart rate. The longer-term effects haven’t been studied yet.
“Smoke from wildfires contains chemicals, gases and fine particles that can harm health,” California’s Department of Industrial Relations says on its website. “The greatest hazard comes from breathing fine particles in the air, which can reduce lung function, worsen asthma and other existing heart and lung conditions, and cause coughing, wheezing and difficulty breathing.”
As in California, the majority of farm-workers in Oregon are Hispanic, a population that has been hit especially hard by the coronavirus.
“This makes this important and sizable population of our workforce potentially more vulnerable to the adverse effects of combined wildfire smoke and COVID-19 risks,” Dean Sidelinger, state epidemiologist at the Oregon Health Authority, said in a press release.
Since the wildfires began in Oregon, OSHA has filed 425 complaints on behalf of workers that allege working conditions in the fields are unsafe.
A farm in Colton, Ore., is engulfed by polluted air from the wildfires. (Stanton Sharpe/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
In May, California allocated $125 million in aid to undocumented immigrants, many of whom work in the state picking the nation’s crops.
“Whether it’s wildfire, pandemic, drought or storm, farm-workers are out in the field,” Lucas Zucker, policy and communications director for the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy, told the Guardian. “It’s largely an immigrant workforce, many undocumented. Many are from indigenous communities from southern Mexico who face even greater barriers to accessing services and reporting labor issues.”
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, 57 percent of farm-workers employed in the U.S. are Hispanic and of Mexican origin. The average total yearly income for farm-workers working full time is between $15,000 and $17,499, according to a report published by the U.S. Department of Labor.
In recent months, farm-workers have faced an unprecedented number of health risks, including the coronavirus pandemic and record-breaking heat across much of the West.
A July survey conducted by the California Institute for Rural Studies found that agricultural workers in Monterey County were infected with COVID-19 at rates three times that of the population at large, National Geographic reported.
California, which has more scorched acreage this year than in any year in recorded history, is little more than halfway through what is now regarded as “fire season.” That means farm-workers in the Golden State will likely be dealing with smoke for months to come.
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