Red and blue
David Leonhardt: “The gap in Covid’s death toll between red and blue America has grown faster over the past month than at any previous point.”
“Vaccine-resistant Trump country”
Susan B. Glasser, writing in The New Yorker : “The current average of more than nineteen hundred dead a day means that a 9/11’s worth of Americans are perishing from covid roughly every thirty-eight hours.”
“Individually wrapped treats”
These guidelines call for considerable diligence on the part of the faculty member, who must monitor masking (a COVID-era form of “taking attendance”), place and pay for orders, and distribute gift certificates or individually wrapped treats, but not in the classroom. Or maybe the faculty member can palm the work off on a TA. I think of the absurdity of students lining up, six feet apart, maybe in the rain, to receive their individually wrapped treats. Here ya go.
Rural hospitals and COVID-19
I was startled to see a doctor from a local hospital on MSNBC’s The Week with Joshua Johnson. Jeremy Topin, MD, is respectful of local reality at every turn, but you can sense his exasperation about life here in COVID times.
What, no candy?
“The University of Texas at Austin told professors that they could offer nonacademic rewards, like cookies, to cajole students to wear masks. (A university spokeswoman, Eliska Padilla, said this was informal, not an incentive program.)”
Recently updated
More on an eighty-eight-year-old professor’s last day in a classroom.
Teaching the unmasked
An eighty-eight-year-old professor encounters a student who refuses to wear a mask.
Labor Day
A poster thanking healthcare workers.
Local lunacy
“Pass me the Robitussin DM, please.”
Misspelling in the news
An Illinois woman has been arrested for entering Hawaii with a fake COVID-19 vaccination card. It showed her as having received the Maderna vaccine.
Burying the lede
An odd headline in The Washington Post: “Four conservative radio talk-show hosts bashed coronavirus vaccines. Then they got sick.” They died.
Recently updated
A mid-June Christian youth camp in Illinois — no mask, no vaccination required — is now the source of 180 “confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19.”
Dying in the Name of Vaccine Freedom
A short film from The New York Times about American attitudes toward vaccination for COVID-19.
Ron DeSantis, whoops
Heaven forbid the thought of preventive measures, which could make early treatment for COVID-19 unnecessary.
“Back to square one”
Pam Keith on current events: “They desperately wanted to foil Biden’s recovery, and they succeeded.”
Casualties
Dear Ana Cabrera: Barack Obama’s birthday party is not a “casualty” of COVID-19. The casualties of COVID-19 are those whose lives have been ended or upended by the spread of a contagious disease.
Unforgivable
In downstate Illinois, a county fair refused to allow a pop-up site for COVID-19 vaccinations.
“Too late”
This account of hospital life from Alabama doctor Brytney Cobia needs to be widely shared.
Mary Miller won’t wear a mask
It’s still not known whether she has been vaccinated. If she has been, she’s keeping her (unmasked) mouth shut about it.
Dr. Jerome Adams makes a metaphor
He’s — what? — theologizing the vaccine?
Two Americas
Writing in The Atlantic, Sarah Zhang says that America’s vaccine future is fragmenting.
Camp COVID
From CNN: “More than 80 teens and adult staffers from a Central Illinois summer camp tested positive for Covid-19 in an outbreak that has impacted people across three states, officials said.”
Bad news, good news
People are playing bingo at the VFW, indoors, no masks, sitting side by side on both sides of long tables. And “A study finds that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines could offer protection for years.”
Rewards
Any teacher of teachers who needs to illustrate the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic rewards now has unbeatable examples courtesy of the efforts to persuade United States residents to get vaccinated.
Illinois-15, COVID-Central
Illinois-15, the congressional district represented by Mary Miller, has the lowest rate of vaccination in the state.
Out of practice
Elaine and I went out to visit friends last night, our first nighttime social effort in well over a year. And we didn’t remember to turn on the outside light when going out. We’re out of practice.
Field trips
Contra a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad skit from this past week’s SNL: talking with people in person felt wholly familiar and wholly wonderful. I think we talked about everything but our pandemic.
Another thought about vaccination
Now I realize, people here do need to say it’s better to put up with side effects for a day or two or three than to contract COVID. That’s not already obvious to everyone.
Vaccine, anyone?
My hopes for widespread vaccine acceptance in deep-red Illinois were ill-founded.
Back to the office
“To see March 2020 even though it’s 2021 kind of spooked me a little.”