It's impossible for me to remain politically neutral on the egotistical idiocy of Trump that we are now seeing as he is going forward with his rallies while many states are seeing a sharp acceleration in infections. Now we hear that 6 members of Trump's advance team have tested positive for Covid-19 and yet he and his disciples, who have been lining up for days outside the arena, don't give a damn. If they could just infect each other I could care less but the ignorance, arrogance and selfishness of the whole lot of them is disgraceful.

I'm right there with you. The ego of the man to insist on holding a rally in the midst of a pandemic....just think about that and let those words sink in, a massive indoor campaign rally in the midst of a deadly pandemic in a location where cases are rising rapidly....it's truly incomprehensible. How much lower can they sink?

Much more. The sight of all those little kids in there at the rally with no masks, no distance just made me want to cry. So sad.

Just out. Trump people pulled off all the social distancing decals from the seats before the Tulsa rally began.Is SICK too mild a comment for this action?

Sick, perverse, incomprehensible, take your pick. I'm pretty much at a loss of words to adequately describe in actions of this administration. Just when you think they've reached to bottom of the barrel, they find a way to stoop even lower.

Hard to keep up with the MSM contradictions.

Churchgoers, Trump rallies = bad.

Burning churches, thousands of rioters & looters shoulder to shoulder for hours = good.

Last I read hospitalizations and deaths still consistently dropping. The virus appears to be weakening.

Very interesting article in the NYT today featuring Davis as a very attractive “college town” i.e. but how will they survive if the kids don’t come back? Also features Ithaca NY, Amherst MA and others. Wish I could cut and paste it but I dont know how.

‘We Could Be Feeling This for the Next Decade’: Virus Hits College Towns
Opening bars and bringing back football teams have led to new outbreaks. Communities that evolved around campuses face potentially existential losses in population, jobs and revenue.
By Shawn Hubler
June 28, 2020
Updated 6:18 p.m. ET
DAVIS, Calif. — The community around the University of California, Davis, used to have a population of 70,000 and a thriving economy. Rentals were tight. Downtown was jammed. Hotels were booked months in advance for commencement. Students swarmed to the town’s bar crawl, sampling the trio of signature cocktails known on campus as “the Davis Trinity.”
Then came the coronavirus. When the campus closed in March, an estimated 20,000 students and faculty left town.
With them went about a third of the demand for goods and services, from books to bikes to brunches. City officials are expecting most of that demand to stay gone even as the economy reopens.
Fall classes will be mostly remote, the university announced last week, with “reduced density” in dorms. Davis’s incoming vice mayor, Lucas Frerichs, said the city was anticipating “a huge impact” with a majority of the university’s 39,000-plus students still dispersed in September.
For “townies,” rules require congregation to remain limited, too, as confirmed coronavirus cases continue to climb in California. One of the Davis Trinity bars has closed, with no plan to reopen. On a recent Sunday, downtown was filled with “takeout only” signs and half-empty, far-flung cafe tables. Outside the closed theater, a lone busker stood on a corner playing “Swan Lake” on a violin to virtually no one.
Efforts to stem the pandemic have squeezed local economies across the nation, but the threat is starting to look existential in college towns.
Reliant on institutions that once seemed impervious to recession, “town and gown” communities that have evolved around rural campuses — Cornell, Amherst College, Penn State — are confronting not only Covid-19 but also major losses in population, revenue and jobs.
Where business as usual has been tried, punishment has followed: This week, Iowa health authorities reported case spikes among young adults in its two largest college towns, Ames and Iowa City, after the governor allowed bars to reopen. And on campuses across the country, attempts to bring back football teams for preseason practice have resulted in outbreaks.
More than 130 coronavirus cases have been linked to athletic departments at 28 Division 1 universities. At Clemson, at least 23 football players and two coaches have been infected. At Arkansas State University, seven athletes across three teams tested positive. And at the University of Houston, the athletic department stopped off-season workouts after an outbreak was discovered.
Sports are not the only source of outbreaks in college towns. Mississippi officials tied several cases to fraternity rush parties that apparently flouted social distancing rules. In Baton Rouge, La., at least 100 cases were linked to bars in the Tigerland nightlife district near Louisiana State’s campus. And in Manhattan, Kan., home to Kansas State, officials said Wednesday that there had been two recent outbreaks: one on the football team, and another in the Aggieville entertainment district just off campus.
For the cities involved, the prognosis is also daunting. In most college towns, university students, faculty and staff are a primary market. Local economies depend on their numbers and dollars, from sales taxes to football weekends to federal funds determined by the U.S. census.
Students at Ohio University represent three-quarters of the usual population of Athens, Ohio. In Ithaca, N.Y., every other person in town is — or used to be — connected to Cornell or Ithaca College.
The local economy in Ann Arbor, Mich., takes in nearly $95 million a year in discretionary spending from the University of Michigan’s 45,000-plus students. Ari Weinzweig, cofounding partner of Zingerman’s, a landmark bakery and deli, said sales have been down 50 percent, and the company has had to furlough nearly 300 of its 700 employees since the pandemic.
The town’s Literati Bookstore launched a GoFundMe campaign to keep from going out of business, and created a virtual site for its famed “public typewriter” so customers could keep leaving anonymous typed messages, a company tradition. (“Oh how I wish for a coffee not made by my own hands,” someone typed online in May.)
In State College, Pa., an estimated 65 percent of the community is made up of students at Penn State’s main campus, a local juggernaut that enrolls 46,000 students, employs more than 17,000 nonstudents and injects about $128 million a year into rural Centre County.
The university has announced plans to reopen with double-occupancy dorm rooms and at least half of its classes in person, but it is still not known how many students will return. Also in question is the future of Penn State football, a local economic linchpin that generated $100 million in 2018-19 for the university alone.
Local governments are bracing, too. Amherst, Mass., is scheduled to vote this week on a proposal to increase annual water and sewer fees by an average of $100 per household, a result of a precipitous drop in water use as students have abandoned Hampshire College, Amherst College and the University of Massachusetts in that New England college town.
Ithaca’s mayor, Svante Myrick, said his city was preparing to cut its $70 million budget by about $14 million, and has furloughed a quarter of its employees, including his assistant. He personally has taken a 10 percent pay cut. A resolution passed earlier this month asked the state to let him authorize blanket rent forgiveness for three months.
Unemployment in the Ithaca metropolitan area has soared to 10 percent from 3 percent before the pandemic. Sales tax receipts have tanked as about $4 million per week in student spending has disappeared along with Cornell’s students, Mr. Myrick said. About two-thirds of the land in his jurisdiction is university-owned, he said, and therefore exempt from property tax.
“We’re going to be looking at Hoovervilles — or maybe Trump Towns — all over the country,” said the mayor, a Democrat who clashes frequently with his upstate area’s Republican congressional delegation. “It’s bad. It’s really bad.”
Compounding the concern is the 2020 census. Conducted every 10 years, the national head count determines the distribution of federal funding for a vast number of local and state programs, including transit, public safety and Medicaid.
Because the window for responses has coincided with campus shutdowns, college towns are reporting significant undercounts of students living off-campus, with dire financial implications.
A census without Ohio University students could knock the official population of Athens from 24,000 down to as few as 6,000 people. With an Oct. 31 deadline approaching, responses in student neighborhoods are currently running some 20 percentage points lower than in 2010, with response rates in some tracts of less than 31 percent.
Mayor Steve Patterson of Athens estimates an undercount could cost his small city up to $40 million over the next 10 years “for things like community development block grants, jobs and family services and senior services that rely on a strong census count to get a full funding.”
“We could be feeling this for the next decade,” Mr. Patterson said.
In California, where Democrats have prioritized the census, the city of Davis and its surrounding county partnered long before the pandemic with the university to maximize its response rate, which is now higher than the state average. But the exodus of students has cut sales tax revenues by 50 percent, Mr. Frerichs said.
lashed hotel occupancy from 90 percent to 10 percent during the local hospitality industry’s usual peak season. Bookings have since rebounded slightly, Mr. Frerichs said, but only to about 25 percent, substantially denting hotel occupancy tax revenues.
Transit ridership has dropped so precipitously, he said, that local authorities have been using the buses to transport supplies to and from food banks. The city has begun reaching out to unions and identifying budget cuts in case the economy does not quickly bounce back.
Already, Mr. Frerichs said, the council has opted to leave three open positions for police officers vacant. “That’s three sets of eyes and ears on the street,” he said, “but this is a legitimate concern. Long term, this could be on par with the great recession for us.”
Or maybe worse than the recession, he added, because in 2008 at least the town could still gather.
Now the bike traffic is scant, the farmers market socially distanced, and the baristas working reduced hours at coffee shops ask customers to alert them when they leave so maintenance can disinfect their tables. The virus even canceled Davis’s annual town-and-gown party, Picnic Day.
“Part of me is enjoying reclaiming the community,” said Mr. Frerichs, who attended the university and has lived for 24 years in Davis. “But one of the things that makes a college town so wonderful is the vibrant young population.”
“They’re the lifeblood, and without them — well, the squirrels are having a field day,” he said. “But for the rest of us, it’s just so quiet.”

Mitch Smith contributed reporting from Chicago, and Lauryn Higgins from Lincoln, Neb.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/28/us/coronavirus-college-towns.html
© 2020 The New York Times Company

If you have access to the Times, there are some photos of the campus and downtown Davis.

There's also a photo of a lone deer crossing a deserted street in Athens, OH. We get a bear, Ohio gets a deer.

Thanks for the like to the article, it was a great read. I know it's got to be an odd time for you guys in Davis and other college towns. I saw a similar story on CNN that featured Ithaca and just how much the economy has been hurt by the absence of the Cornell students and how vital they are to keeping the local businesses afloat. I'm definitely wishing I was back there in Davis than in the middle of this huge spike here in Dallas. Scary times

Indeed an interesting paradox for some of the townies who want the students to drive the local economy but at the same time don't want the traffic, noise, etc. that their existence brings about. Will be interesting to see if the "open-ish" status of campus this fall keeps students living in town (presumably with some extra time for daytime consumption of Keystone Light) or if more people stay home and maybe commute to Davis once a week for necessary in-person labs. Jobs are a concern in all parts of the economy but perhaps acute among students-- if the ARC, Coffee House, etc. are closed or limited as likely necessary, that is a lot of student jobs evaporating which in turn might push enrollment down among those already on the financial precipice. Whenever we return to normal, it may well be a new normal. Continued quality distance learning options would be great for accessibility for people with careers, children, etc. who can't be in Davis at 11am three days a week. But I think there is still value in accessible residential college life-- I learned to live in 110 square feet with a jackass and how to tolerate an unshowered hippie slurping pungent pho soup in the back of Haring Hall -- so I hope that doesn't permanently go away or become only available to the wealthy because those are valuable experiences. I also suspect that the administration will try to use this opportunity to wipe away or remake things. I would not be surprised if Picnic Day, Whole Earth Festival, and the quirky factor of the Coffee House as we know them are permanently dead to reemerge in a couple years as highly branded and sanitized Learfield products under the thumb of a vice chancellor.

Doesn’t say who or what sport

Well that sucks but I'm not surprised since the number of new infections has been setting records just about every day recently.

Yes, asymptomatic positives... generally young and healthy. Deaths and hospitalizations consistently down in most areas.

Well, let us hope that this student athlete is lucky enough to be asymptomatic. I've had (young and healthy) friends develop really unpleasant symptoms that didn't necessarily put them in the hospital but certainly gave them a free month preview of hell.

Hospitalization numbers probably depend on where you're talking about and the time frame. What I've seen, there is a rise in hospitalization in Ca, Tx, Fl. As for the death rate going down, that's due to doctors having better treatments and, as you pointed out, younger healthier people getting it. The problem is that those young people will pass it along to their parents/grandparents. Hopefully we don't see a big increase in the death rate in the coming weeks, but it wouldn't be a surprise.

Coincidentally matches the timing of large, lengthy, packed like sardines BLM / Anarchist protests & riots.

Sorry but I can attest to the fact that deaths and hospitalization are most certainly NOT down in many areas around the county such as Dallas / Fort Worth where I'm located. The level of spread we're experiencing right now is down right scary, It's very difficult to know exactly where to go to test in a timely manner, and even when you can get tested, it's taking 5+ days to get results, at that point it's to late to be of much help. Hospitals and ICU's in the area are at over 80% capacity and that number creeps upward everyday. And yet WAY to many people are just ignoring it, seemingly totally oblivious to what's going on the just how bad it's getting.

I realize you think it's that because you're a racist Trump loving buffoon, but it actually, it matches the timing of lots of states opening things up. And that's not a red state thing either. California has seen numbers rise also.

If people would just sacrifice a couple weeks of their lives and do everything they can to stay super careful, we'd make significant progress. But we, as a society, have generally refused do that. Lots of people have, which has helped, but not as many as should be doing it. Just wear a damn mask for a few weeks. I get it. I don't like wearing a mask either. I'm young and healthy so I'm in the low risk category. If I get Covid, I'm almost certainly not going to die. I might not even need to go to a hospital. There's a decent chance I don't even suffer any symptoms at all. But you can be asymptomatic and still pass this thing on. But I still wear a mask when I go to a store because it's the right thing to do.

Barring an unrealistic solution like literally everyone staying in their home for two weeks, this thing isn't going away any time soon. But we can significantly limit the damage if we just stay vigilant. But it takes a vast majority of people buying in. And that's where we're failing. Because too many people care more are selfish and don't care enough and it's going to cause shutdowns to go on much longer than necessary.

UnderArmour wants out of record setting 2016 $280 deal with UCLA
Oh how fortunes can change.The reasons are somewhat Covid related due to the shortened seasons this year, but the main reason is that UCLA’s major sports teams just are not performing well enough for UA. UCLA already has an $18.9 million shortfall in its ICA program now covered by a loan from the university. We all know about Cal getting a one time $25 million from the last state budget to cover part of its deficit. How many times will the state have to cover these Favored but losing programs, since we all are paying into the state budget? Not really a fair deal for the other UCs.

I knew you were young because you play The Race Card at the drop of a hat. Reason & Logic have been shown the door.

Let me guess, you never had to wrap your chops around intellectual giants Dr. Thomas Sowell and Dr. Walter Williams (economic historians) and contemporaries.

Many individuals now reporting our government - ta da! - changed CCP Covid reporting criteria mid stream! Hence, one confirmed case becomes 7, or 17. How hospitals are reimbursed possibly part of the changing criteria.

https://twitter.com/NicoleArbour/status/1278775717883514880?s=20

Result (graph) & date of changed criteria

https://twitter.com/TheLastRefuge2/status/1278934963933585408?s=20

Data seems to show the MSM is trying to drive Hysteria.

Brian Wesbury@wesbury: "US COVID testing has expanded from around 100k per day in March and April to over 600k now. If we had been testing 600k per day the entire time, and we use the previous positive test rate (which is an assumption), this is what it would look like. *** Today’s surge would be small. *** "

cmt, BTW, one of Dr. Sowell's books is the provocative "Black Rednecks & White Liberals". It challenges many false assumptions and mistaken racial and cultural beliefs.

Great News!

Despite trying to bury it, another study proves the effectiveness of HCQ. (Notice CNN dropped it in the middle of the night.) Cuts mortality by 50%.

Key: HCQ has to be used EARLY. Which has been reported for months.

https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1278964201789194240?s=20

https://www.henryford.com/news/2020/07/hydro-treatment-study

I know this conversation is on COVID, but I'd like to point out that the BLM movement is not generally seeking anarchy the way that say the Sovereign Citizen movement is. Granted, there is no central leadership, so sure there are some extremists (see Seattle) and opportunists on the fringes. I'll admit at one point I was confused with Black Lives vs All Lives Matter and wished people would handle this in a legislative session instead of the streets. But I have tried to listen to my Black friends. Turns out, most of these protesters want the same things everyone does; a safe and prosperous neighborhood where the schools are legitimate and the trash gets picked up on Wednesdays, all functions of a well-oiled government that aren't currently happening on every block. People have tried the sanctioned routes of using the ballot box and peaceful protest (like kneeling) and feel the wheels of change have been too little, too slow, too late. They take to the streets, sometimes rioting or looting and all the sudden city leaders and corporations start listening and making changes. So why wouldn't people riot since it has proved to be more effective at moving the needle? To date, the health department in my area says they not seen a big correlation between protests and infections, maybe because they were outside. Here, the outbreaks among young people seem to be more strongly linked to privately hosted parties and the restaurant/bar industry.

Any news like this is good news and offers some hope, but the Detroit study, like all emerging studies in any scientific field, is not without its critics:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/02/health/hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus-detroit-study/index.html

There is reportedly a second study from a Mt. Sinai??, but I haven't found it yet. Laura Ingraham had at least three doctors on her program who used it. I know, "anecdotal", but they had upwards of 100 patients on the drug.

Edit. The Youtube doctor in the UK has also been harping on Vitamin D deficiency, especially for people of color. It seems like an easy, cheap, safe fix.

I always look forward to your posts, FWIW. There appear to be several groups... protestors... hardcore BLM Marxists... and Anarchists / Antifa, hijacking some protests and taking them up another notch.

We've made substantial progress reducing police violence, this is a fact. But there is still a huge amount of violent crime in cities like Chicago, a large majority of it black-on-black. From what I have read, unprovoked white-officer-on-black-citizen violence is extremely rare. You make good points on one side, but there are other overwhelming facts.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of emotion and half truths, but not many facts. A few from a former Investor's Business Daily writer and author.

Writer Paul Sperry, @paulsperry_

Jun 1: "FACT: In 2019, 9 blacks, 19 whites, and 6 Hispanics were unarmed when killed by police in U.S. In 2015, by comparison, 38 blacks, 32 whites, and 19 Hispanics were unarmed when killed by police." "

June 4: " 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population."

June 4: "NEW STUDY: "We find no evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparities across shootings, and White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers. Instead, race-specific crime strongly predicts civilian race." "

June 4: "Recent studies show blacks are 4X as likely to resist a police officer than whites (based on RDO charges filed). This is the crux of the problem, not racism. Anyone who's watched "Cops" or "Live PD" knows what happens to white perps who resist: They get slammed to the ground, too."

June 4: "Activists demanding a "national conversation" on alleged "systemic racism" in policing don't want to talk about this horrifying statistic:

"A police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer."

Sperry points out, like Dr. Thomas Sowell and others before, that LBJs "War on Poverty" arguably destroyed the black nuclear family.

Sperry also points out that there are reportedly 885,000 African American Millionaires.

I’m confused. Did the protests increase the number of positive tests or are they inflated by doctors?

As for the number of tests we’re doing, if only we had increased testing in March rather than downplaying the virus and refusing to test as many people as possible. I can’t imagine the reason why testing didn’t increase sooner. If you’re going to blame the hospitals for artificially increasing the numbers (I don’t agree with this but we’ll go with it), then you need to acknowledge how many more cases we would have had Trump not held numbers down by not testing or how some states (Florida was one) weren’t reporting actual numbers because they didn’t want to look bad.

The numbers aren’t perfect. It’s almost impossible for them to be. But the bottom line is we’ve done a terrible job at containing this thing. Some of that is on Trump. But a lot of it isn’t. People refusing to wear masks for any number of dumb reasons or putting themselves in stupid situations unnecessarily. And it’s going to cost us in a number of ways.

Actually, a ton of that is on China and the WHO, who both lied. Our CDC and scientists also seemed all over the map. And the Governors of California (Jerry Briwn) and Cuomo made disastrous decisions regarding emergency preparedness. (Former Gov Schwarzenegger comes out looking good.)

There is a whole other argument that we need to build herd immunity. See Sweden.

And why did Cuomo, Newsom, and about five other big states send infected seniors back into nursing homes!!?? Some or many were likely still shedding the virus! Roughly 50% of our deaths?

Our obesity problem was also a factor in many deaths according to a New Jersey immunologist who appeared multiple times on the Laura Ingraham program. And it appears our medua-driven TDS pushed us away from a possible huge "save", HCQ & Zinc. Early adoption could have saved tens of thousands of lives.

Next virus we'll be better prepared, but your right, we may be less disciplined than some other countries. What are the lockdown costs? Doctors in Walnut Creek said suicides soared; and they were real suicides, not "calls for help".

Cmt. “Convince a man against his will and he will be of the same opinion still.” Movie will never be moved or convinced. Just leave it be. So sad, but so true. The above quote thanks to a long forgotten English professor quoting an English poet that I cannot remember..

A friend of mine often says, “Nothing goes unanswered in the age of smart phones and google,” however googling the quote leaves the answer clear as mud:

Often attributed to 20th century motivational writer and speaker Dale Carnegie, it has also been linked to Mary Wollstonecraft, an 18th century British writer and the mother of Mary Shelley who in turn wrote Frankenstein. Wollstonecraft possibly took the line from 17th century poet Samuel Butler. https://www.cliffsnotes.com/cliffsnotes/subjects/history/who-wrot-a-man-convinced-against-his-will-is-of-the-same-opinion-still

Of course the quote wouldn’t be worth a darn if someone didn’t credit it to Ben Franklin; https://medium.com/@viktorbezic/ben-franklin-quote-applies-here-a-man-convinced-against-his-will-is-of-the-same-opinion-still-aa3d71e38f35
and
https://agents2change.typepad.com/blog4/2013/10/a-man-convinced-against-his-will-is-of-the-same-opinion-still-or-the-art-of-persuasion.html

So I’m going to say it must be by Mark Twain.