7/23/20: Today, we learned that in the last reporting period another 1.4 million Americans filed for unemployment. That’s eighteen weeks in a row with more than a million people losing jobs.
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31,802,715 claiming unemployment benefuits
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According to the Department of Labor, “The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending July 4 was 31,802,715, a decrease of 200,615 from the previous week.”
The unemployment rate in June was 11.1%.
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UNFORTUNATELY, the coronavirus is not going away, even as time to reopen school approaches. In one recent poll only 8% of Americans think schools should reopen like normal. Another 14% support reopening with minor adjustments. Even Barron Trump’s school will not fully reopen for in-person instruction. Today, the U.S. passed the four million-mark in total confirmed cases.
At the same time, the White House has placed Dr. Anthony Fauci in timeout, after he told reporters it would be unsafe to send everyone back to school unless strict guidelines were followed.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the one health expert Trump is not trying to muzzle (yet), says children with “underlying conditions” should remain home. Teachers with a variety of risk factors would also be unsafe. Older teachers, for example, would be endangered, in much the same way doctors and nurses have been.
As for getting the spread under control, we aren’t. On Tuesday, more than a thousand Americans died from coronavirus, the first time the daily toll had risen above that number since June 10. On Wednesday 1,135 Americans died. California reported a new high of 12,800 cases in one day. Texas hit new highs with 197 deaths and 10,893 patients hospitalized. Hidalgo County had so many dead, local officials were forced to use refrigerated trucks to store bodies. Thursday, at least 1,014 Americans died. The Florida Department of Health announced its highest one-day death toll, 173, and another 10,249 confirmed cases.
You figure tens of thousands of our fellow Americans are getting hit with huge doctor bills, even if they recover.
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WE HAD another truth-teller this week. The president has been boasting about acing an “intelligence test.” Joe Biden, he has insisted, couldn’t pass it. Neither could Chris Wallace, Trump said.
On Wednesday, the president was still touting his cognitive skills. “Person, women, man, camera, TV,” Trump repeated several times during a press conference. He wanted all Americans to know, he was asked to listen to those five words, and repeat them, in order, during his test in 2018.
And he nailed it!
Later, he said doctors asked him to repeat those words again. And he nailed it again! It was a great moment in American history.
“And you go: ‘Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.’ If you get it in order, you get extra points,” Trump claimed. “They said nobody gets it in order. It’s actually not that easy, but for me, it was easy.” Trump also wanted us to know, he got all 35 questions right. Doctors were amazed! No one had ever shown such mental acuity. He scored, like 105%, what with bonus points.
Only, he was lying, or exaggerating, as is his wont. The Canadian doctor who designed the test weighed in:
Dr. Ziad Nasreddine, who developed the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) in the early 1990s, told CTVNews.ca that the 30-question test is used as a screening tool to identify cognitive dysfunction [emphasis added], including early signs of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.
“The average score for normal individuals is 27, the cut off for normal is 26 so anything above 26 is considered normal. When [Trump] got 30 out of 30 on the test, it’s still considered to be normal performance,” Nasreddine said in a phone interview on Thursday.
It’s a bad sign if you’re taking the test; because it means someone is worried you might be showing signs of dementia.
(This would be the logical explanation for the last three years of the Trump presidency.)
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“Some problems that’ll all work out.”
THEN AGAIN, in terms of what matters, the president is as clueless as ever. A German shepherd puppy has a better handle on the pandemic crisis than the dope in the Oval Office. At a press briefing today, he stood in front of the map shown below and told reporters, if you ignored the red, where the virus was rampant, the United States was doing great fighting the coronavirus.
“You can see from that it’s in great shape, lots of it,” Trump said, turning to point at the map. “The northeast has become very clean. The country is in good shape, other than if you look south and west — some problems that’ll all work out.”
Trump was probably the only fool in America that believed the country was in “great shape, lot’s of it.”
How dumb is this guy?
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SPEAKING OF TRUMPIAN CLUELESSNESS, a new study, published in the Reviews of Geophysics journal warns that current rates of deforestation and burning of fossil fuels will have devastating ramifications.
A team of twenty-five researchers, working for four years, warns that unless we wake up, global temperatures will rise anywhere from 4.1° to 8.1°F in the next fifty years.
And we’re stuck with a dunderpate who thinks windmills cause cancer and says climate “changes both ways.”
FUN FACT: Mattel announces it beat sales estimates for the second quarter of the year. Kids stuck at home have been buying more Barbie dolls and families have been purchasing decks of UNO cards. Baby Yoda plush toys are popular. So, at least one company was thriving during the pandemic.
FUN FACT – FINES: The argument that we can always trust business leaders, and we never want more government regulation takes another in a lengthy list of hits.
Taro Pharmaceutical agrees to pay a $205.7 million fine and admit to conspiring to fix the price of generic drugs. A spokesperson for the Department of Justice notes that the company will “continue to fully cooperate with the government on its ongoing investigation into the generic pharmaceutical industry.”
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