Friday, August 28, 2020

In the news, Friday, August 21, 2020


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AUG 20      INDEX      AUG 22
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from Capital Press
The West's Ag Website

Much of Washington’s agritourism industry will be sidelined this year under COVID-19 rules released Aug. 20 by Gov. Jay Inslee. The agritourism rules went into effect immediately and apply in the 34 counties that have progressed past Phase 1 in Inslee’s four-phase plan to reopen Washington businesses. Any farm that breaks a rule can be fined $10,000. Agritourism customers must wear face coverings and keep at least 6 feet apart. The rules ban activities such as wagon rides, haunted houses, playgrounds, farm equipment “exploration,” animal viewing, petting areas, paintball and campfires.

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from Competitive Enterprise Institute

A recent article in National Review suggests conservative politicians would be smart to advocate a carbon tax, enabling them to show they care about the planet while offering an alternative to the growth-chilling mandates beloved of the climate left. That is naive. Conservatives are pro-growth; hence, pro-energy and anti-tax. Progressives are anti-growth, hence, pro-tax and anti-energy. Touting carbon taxes would blur a basic distinction that is a critical political asset for conservatives. My main concern here, though, is not that a carbon tax is bad conservative politics but that it is bad public policy.

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from Headline USA
RIGHT BIAS, Media/News Company

A Washington state free-market think tank caught the Washington Department of Health inflating its Wuhan virus statistics. Instead of admitting fault, though, Democrat Gov. Jay Inslee denounced the group for promoting a dangerous “conspiracy” theory. Now, newly obtained emails show Health Department bureaucrats acknowledged overblowing official stats, even describing the Olympia-based Freedom Foundation’s findings as “true” and “correct.”

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from HumanProgress.org  Education Website

Classical liberalism, as the economist Deirdre McCloskey argued in her trilogy The Bourgeois Era, was chiefly responsible for the Great Enrichment in Western Europe and North America. However its main tenets – including limited government, equality before the law, free trade and fiscal probity – are not the exclusive preserve of the West. Just look at the rise of Hong Kong. Another success story that speaks to the universal applicability and adaptability of classical liberal principles is Botswana. While by no means perfect, Botswana has outperformed the rest of Africa economically and, to some extent, politically. Other African nations would do well to learn from its experience.

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from KING 5 (NBC)
Broadcasting & Media Production Company in Seattle, Washington

Washington state says "belt-tightening" is essential as nursing homes struggle with coronavirus costs.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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In the news, Thursday, August 20, 2020


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AUG 19      INDEX      AUG 21
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from The Atlantic  Magazine

The viral youtube video was cued to begin at 42:23, the moment most likely to elicit incredulity. A webcam was tight on the face of Robin Broshi, a middle-aged white woman. She was upset. The edge in her voice sought to explain, to emphasize, to insist, that a wrong had been done. “It hurts people,” she said, “when they see a white man bouncing a brown baby on their lap and they don’t know the context!” ... I made a series of rapid assumptions about what I was watching. I surmised that Broshi was a college-educated, upper-middle-class progressive who sits on some sort of education council in the public-school system and owns copies of White Fragility and How to Be an Antiracist. I surmised that she was calling someone out. And I surmised that her white, male target was offscreen rolling his eyes. All of which turned out to be correct. But I also felt confused. Why would a New Yorker in 2020 see an adult holding a baby with a different phenotype and presume something nefarious was afoot? Until recently, I would have expected that sort of retrograde attitude from the alt-right. Beleaguered curiosity prompted me to burrow down an unlikely rabbit hole: extended footage from several NYC Community Education Council District 2 meetings. I wanted to understand what seemed to be the latest confounding addition to the rapidly changing code of elite, “anti-racist” manners.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

Claims of attempted voter suppression are unfortunately fueled by President Trump’s habit of stream of consciousness commentary. There are real problems with a precipitous switch to all-mail voting in states that haven’t prepared the way, but the U.S. Postal Service isn’t one of them. In an effort to tamp down catastrophizing voices like the ones at the Democratic National Convention this week, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy chose to postpone making any changes in postal service operations until after the election. This was immediately seized upon as proof of a voter suppression conspiracy in an election predicted to include a record-high number of mailed ballots. The post office conspiracy theory doesn’t hold up when put into context. Or more accurately, whether it holds up or not depends on your context.

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from USA Today

No list of incredible Idaho women is complete without a discussion of Sacagawea, the Shoshone teen who helped guide the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1805. Technically, this list doesn't include Sacagawea. It focuses on Idaho women alive between 1920 and 2020, as the USA TODAY Network marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment when women in the U.S. gained the legal right to vote. In commemoration, the USA TODAY Network is naming 10 American women from all 50 states and the District of Columbia who’ve made significant contributions to their respective states and country as Women of the Century. Even without Sacagawea, the list is rich with Idaho women who also trod adventurous paths. The 10 who made the list are American women with a record of outstanding achievement in arts and literature, business, civil rights, education, entertainment, law, media, nonprofits and philanthropy, politics, science and medicine and sports.

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In the news, Wednesday, August 19, 2020


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AUG 18      INDEX      AUG 20
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from Asia Times
LEAST BIASED, HIGH;  News & Media Website based in Hong Kong

Same old: US dollar down more, China yuan up more
The People’s Bank of China set yuan central parity against the fading US dollar at 6.9168 this morning, the strongest since January 23. If you think of the PBoC’s parity rate as forecasting the direction of the traded exchange rate, a 6.91 handle in the course of the day may have appeared ambitious, but it turned out just right and then some: the offshore yuan (CNH) stood at 6.9015 – up 0.07% for the day – at 6pm HK time. The US dollar keeps moving in the opposite direction under its own ever-heavier debt load and relative economic outperformance of major competitors.

Three Gorges Dam under threat again
Floods in mountainous southwest China have washed away roads and forced tens of thousands from their homes, with authorities warning Wednesday the giant Three Gorges Dam was facing the largest flood peak in its history. Footage on state broadcaster CCTV showed murky water lapping at the feet of the Leshan Giant Buddha – a 71-meter-tall figure carved into a cliffside in Sichuan province. CCTV said floods had not reached the Buddha’s feet since the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949. The rising tide washed over rows of sandbags installed to protect the statue – a UNESCO world heritage site and popular tourist destination that overlooks three converging rivers.

Turkey may get even more dangerous for women
When the Istanbul Convention against domestic violence came into being in 2011, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan proudly declared that his country was the first member of the Council of Europe to sign it. But it has proved to be an empty boast. Violence against women is not only rife in Turkey but the government now is talking about abandoning the international treaty and removing the protection it offers women.

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from BBC News (UK)

Before antiseptics were invented, a trip to the hospital might kill you – even if you survived the surgery. A handful of visionary doctors realised what the cause was.
By the 1860s, with a skilled surgeon in a modern European hospital you had about an eight-in-10 chance of surviving an operation. But your odds of leaving hospital alive were about 50/50. Infection and disease ravaged hospital wards. As surgeons moved between patients examining wounds and probing gangrenous tissue, they couldn’t understand why so many in their charge were dying. The condition became known as hospitalism – today we would call it sepsis or blood poisoning – and medical staff surmised it was caused by bad smells, or a miasma, permeating the air.

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from Christianity Today
Media/News Company based in Carol Stream, Illinois

As part of a project to reimagine theological education in the 21st century, theology professor Benjamin Wayman met with Rowan Williams, the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury and Master of Magdalene College at Cambridge University. Over a cup of tea at the Master’s Lodge, Wayman and Williams discussed the nature of theological education, which Williams likened to a strange landscape requiring new patterns and preparations for inhabitation. For Williams, Christian education and formation are like learning to camp in a new land, a new creation. "To do theology is, in some ways, to be taken back to that moment of bewilderment about the newness or the distinctiveness or the strangeness of being in this new Christian framework. So theological education is familiarizing yourself with how people have found their way around that landscape with the perspectives they’ve occupied and then learning to pitch your own tent, as one might say, in that territory."

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from The Guardian (UK)
LEFT-CENTER, HIGH, British daily newspaper published in London UK

Yorkshire church to be adorned with Chronicles of Narnia statues
Narnia’s mythical creatures and talking beasts, which have enchanted children for 70 years, have found a new home at a 12th-century parish church in east Yorkshire. Aslan the lion, the White Witch and Mr Tumnus the faun are among 14 handmade stone sculptures being installed on the outer walls of St Mary’s church in Beverley to replace medieval carvings that have crumbled away. The Narnia figures were blessed this week by Alison White, the bishop of Hull.

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from The Heritage Foundation
RIGHT BIAS,  MIXED  American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C.

The biggest focal point for online political drama today is an unlikely one; namely, the U.S. Postal Service. Make no mistake: The Postal Service faces real challenges that require congressional action to solve. The sooner we stop spreading unfounded rumors about the Postal Service, the more likely we will be to reach agreement on solutions.

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from HumanProgress.org  Education Website

Growth is a saving grace for the world’s poorest people, but it also has a major impact on the daily lives of Americans and the rest of the developed world, and that impact is especially important in the age of coronavirus. For example, continuous growth has led to lifesaving breakthroughs in medical technology and research, which has allowed humanity to fight COVID-19 more quickly and effectively than we ever could have in the past. Vaccines for certain ailments took decades to develop as late as the mid-20th century, but it is quite possible that a vaccine for COVID-19 will be widely available just one year after the virus’s initial outbreak.

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from KOMO News (ABC Seattle)

At least 41 Seattle Police Department officers have left the agency since the beginning of June, and sources in the department say several others are lining up to leave after a summer of street protests and attacks by City Council members that culminated recently with a vote to cut the police budget. The department is also preparing for the departure of Chief Carmen Best, who decided to retire after the council's decision to slash the department's funding. It has prompted many officers to reevaluate their jobs with the city and the police department.

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from ProPublica
LEFT-CENTER BIAS, HIGH, Non-profit newsroom in New York

What the Post Office Needs to Survive a Pandemic Election
This fall’s elections are the latest chapter in the slow-motion collapse of the U.S. Postal Service, one of America’s most venerated institutions. As November approaches, members of Congress and state election officials have grown increasingly concerned that the USPS will fail at a critical moment: a closely contested vote that will involve a record number of people casting a ballot by mail. That worry was fueled by President Donald Trump’s unfounded allegation that voting by mail leads to massive fraud and by reports from Postal Service employees that key equipment was being removed and overtime was being slashed. The newly appointed postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, responded to what he termed “areas of concern” by announcing that he would approve overtime “as needed” and delay the removal of mail sorting machines until after the election. But the problems at the Postal Service go well beyond those issues and predate DeJoy. Earlier this month, the USPS warned state election officials that it might not be able to meet deadlines for delivering ballots for the November elections.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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In the news, Tuesday, August 18, 2020


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AUG 17      INDEX      AUG 19
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from CNN

Wuhan hosts massive water park party as coronavirus concerns recede
It was ground zero in the coronavirus pandemic and underwent the world's first -- and arguably strictest -- lockdown. Now, the central Chinese city of Wuhan appears to have moved on from the virus, as thousands of revelers gathered in an open air water park for an electronic music festival -- without any masks or social distancing measures in sight.

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from Conservative Review
RIGHT BIAS

The media might keep it a secret, but the hospitals have quietly emptied out their beds of COVID-19 patients, as large swaths of the country appear to have hit a de facto herd immunity threshold. Meanwhile, no matter how much good news we see, those who treat us as subjects continue to create false panic, extend draconian and ineffective restrictions on liberty, and refuse to put out an exit strategy. They are rapidly turning this lockdown into our domestic Afghanistan. It’s now becoming clear, from every state and country that has reached saturation levels of the virus, that the virus burns out roughly around the 20% seroprevalence benchmark, not at the 80% threshold the fearmongers predicted. Whether it’s Sweden, New York, or Arizona, the virus is going to do what it does – meaning it spreads for about six weeks in a given region and then moves on. The only question is whether we will continue to destroy our society, mental health, and economy or achieve herd immunity without adding the man-made death toll. Herd immunity is going to happen, whether we aim for it or not.

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from KXLY 4 News (ABC Spokane)

Postal Service backs down on changes as at least 20 states sue over potential mail delays ahead of election
Embattled Postmaster General Louis DeJoy reversed course Tuesday, saying that all changes being made to the Postal Service would be suspended until after the November 3 election, just as 20 Democratic states announced plans to file federal lawsuits. At least 20 Democratic attorneys general across the country are launching a multi-pronged legal effort to push back on the recent changes that disrupted mail delivery across the country and triggered accusations that Trump and his appointees are trying to undermine mail-in voting. The Democratic attorneys general plan to argue that DeJoy is illegally changing mail procedures ahead of the 2020 election. DeJoy “acted outside of his authority to implement changes to the postal system, and did not follow the proper procedures under federal law,” according to a statement from Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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In the news, Monday, August 17, 2020


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AUG 16      INDEX      AUG 18
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from Competitive Enterprise Institute

Can You Have Worker Representatives without Unions? Uber Hopes So
Rideshare company Uber is trying to find a way to allow its drivers to collectively express any grievances or concerns they have without having those drivers form a union. The company is promising that it will meet with driver representatives to hear their concerns. That is very hard to do under U.S. law but Uber apparently thinks it can thread the needle.

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from Forbes

Democrats Say California Is Model For Climate Action But Its Blackouts Say Otherwise
At the Democratic National Convention this week, presidential and vice-presidential candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will make the case for spending $2 trillion, or $500 billion per year, to transition the U.S. away from fossil fuels toward renewables like solar and wind. Biden has said he would not “tinker around the edges” with his plan. “We’re going to make historic investments that will seize the opportunity.” In many respects, the Biden-Harris plan is even more aggressive than California’s. “The plan is very bold,” Leah Stokes of the University of California, Santa Barbara, told the Financial Times. “There is no [US] state right now that has a target this ambitious.” But California’s big bet on renewables, and shunning of natural gas and nuclear, is directly responsible for the state’s blackouts and high electricity prices. 

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from Gallup
Analytics and advisory services on the front lines of transformation

Trump Job Approval 42%; Below 50% on Seven Key Issues
President Donald Trump's job approval rating is 42% in the latest Gallup poll. This marks a slight improvement from two readings below 40% in June -- after nationwide protests on racial injustice -- but remains below his ratings prior to June, including several personal best readings of 49%.

25% in U.S. Say Neither Candidate Would Be a Good President
As both political parties prepare for their conventions, one in four Americans do not think either of the major-party presidential candidates would be a good president. At the same time, roughly equal percentages say only Joe Biden (36%) or only Donald Trump (33%) would make a good president, while 5% say both candidates would. Similar percentages of Democrats (75%) and Republicans (79%) think only their candidate is suitable, while a 37% plurality of independents do not think either would be a good candidate and nearly equal percentages say only Biden or only Trump would be.

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from The Heritage Foundation
RIGHT BIAS,  MIXED  American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C.

China, Open-Source Information, and Transparency
The U.S. government’s “Open Source Center,” formerly the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, has largely disappeared from the public discourse—in part because all of its information can now only be accessed on U.S. government-approved computers. This has meant that there is no real “single source” of good, open-source information about China. It also highlights the need for an “air traffic controller,” directing researchers to the best sources for various types of information and providing its own analyses along the way. Ideally, such a “traffic cop” would both bring to light less well-known institutions and centers of excellence or ones less known to Washington policymakers, while also signaling a more bipartisan/non-partisan approach. As the coronavirus pandemic has underscored, America and her partners need to better understand the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party.The U.S. government’s former role in translating Chinese documents has evaporated, leaving no single, generally available body of reliable, open-source literature.Given the growing focus on China, policymakers and thought leaders should increase mutual information-sharing and research across multiple lanes and areas.

End Birthright Citizenship for Illegal Families
For conservatives, one unfulfilled promise really stands out—ending birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants. President Donald Trump promised this during the 2016 campaign and on multiple occasions since then. Birthright citizenship automatically grants U.S. citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants. At least 5 million individuals in the USA have received birthright citizenship but should not have. This practice is due to a misapplication of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the interpretation of the language “subject to the jurisdiction.” Legislative history makes no mention of illegal immigrants being subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. Proponents of birthright citizenship often point to the 1898 Supreme Court case U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, but that case dealt with the children of lawful permanent residents, not illegal immigrants. The president doesn’t need Congress to end this practice. He could issue an executive order instructing federal agencies to issue passports and other government documents and benefits only to those individuals whose status as U.S. citizens meets this requirement. Trump’s 2016 campaign put out a policy paper saying that birthright citizenship “remains the biggest magnet for illegal immigration.” He was right then and would be right now to end it.

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from New York Post
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, MIXED,  Newspaper in New York

President Trump has told aides he would like to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin before the November election, according to a report. The summit would be focused on promoting the two nations’ progress toward reaching a new nuclear arms control accord, NBC News reported Sunday. Four people familiar with talks on the potential meeting told the network that various times and locations were being considered, including one option next month in New York City. At the reported summit, the two leaders would sign a general blueprint outlining how they would move forward on a new arms treaty, also known as New START.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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In the news, Sunday, August 16, 2020


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AUG 15      INDEX      AUG 17
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from Forbes

Separating Fact From Fiction On Trump And The Post Office - And Why It Matters
If this new perception of the Post Office is now mainstream, that it is a “subsidized government service” rather than a quasi-private entity expected to cover its costs, that’s a substantial shift and something we need to talk about.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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from The Washington Examiner
RIGHT BIAS,  MIXED, News & Media Website in Washington, DC

A reality-based look at Trump and the post office
The news is filled with reports of President Trump's "assault" on the U.S. Postal Service. The president, Democrats and some in the media say, is deliberately slowing mail delivery and crippling the Postal Service so that it cannot handle an anticipated flood of voting by mail in the presidential election. Former President Barack Obama said Trump is trying to "actively kneecap" the Postal Service to suppress the vote. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called the House back into session this week and has set an "urgent hearing" for Aug. 24, demanding Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and the head of the Postal Service Board of Governors testify "to address the sabotage of the Postal Service."

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In the news, Saturday, August 15, 2020


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AUG 14      INDEX      AUG 16
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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

President Donald Trump’s younger brother, Robert Trump, a businessman known for an even keel that seemed almost incompatible with the family name, died Saturday night after being hospitalized in New York, the president said in a statement. He was 71. Robert Stewart Trump was born in 1948, the youngest of New York City real estate developer Fred Trump’s five children. Before divorcing his first wife, Blaine Trump, more than a decade ago, Robert Trump had been active on Manhattan’s Upper East Side charity circuit. In early March , he married his longtime girlfriend, Ann Marie Pallan. The eldest Trump sibling and Mary’s father, Fred Trump Jr., struggled with alcoholism and died in 1981 at the age of 43. The president’s surviving siblings include Elizabeth Trump Grau and Maryanne Trump Barry, a retired federal appeals judge.

When Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen put up $125 million in seed money for a Seattle institute focused on human immunology shortly before his death in late 2018, no one had any inkling a viral pandemic would strike within a year. The Allen Institute for Immunology’s emphasis was on cancers and diseases linked to a haywire immune system – like irritable bowel syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple myeloma. Allen himself died of complications of another immune-related cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma. But now, the fledgling institute has taken on a new challenge: Unraveling the immune response to the novel coronavirus in hopes of speeding development of treatments and vaccines. Another goal is understanding why infection is mild for many people but fatal for others. Only a handful of research facilities in the U.S. have the capability to take such a deep dive into immune response, said Dr. Jim Heath, president of the Seattle-based Institute for Systems Biology. ISB is among them and is conducting a similar study with Swedish Health System.

Shawn Vestal recently wrote about a proposed cultural trail on Riverside Avenue highlighting “our coolest buildings” (notably featured in the 2012 National Trust for Historic Preservation National Conference), other cultural institutions and arts. The most significant section of the trail is framed by two buildings, the Chancery and Spokane Club, each Kirtland Cutter designs. The Chancery is at risk for demolition due to a design for a new city block proposed by the Cowles Real Estate Company. This would be a huge loss for Spokane on many levels. The Cowles family deserves credit for saving Spokane’s downtown by building River Park Square, repurposing Macy’s and the Chronicle Apartment building, as well as other contributions. They now have a opportunity to repurpose the Chancery, and work it into their larger downtown plan.

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Wednesday, August 26, 2020

In the news, Monday, April 19, 2010


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APR 18      INDEX      APR 20
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from The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, WA)

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from ZDNet
Computers & Internet Website

The USPS is in serious trouble. Given the rise of the Internet, email, Twitter, Facebook and Gmail, should the USPS just give up?


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Saturday, August 22, 2020

Dexter Dam


Dexter Dam is located at river mile 18 on the Middle Fork of the Willamette River, about 22 miles southeast of Eugene, Ore.

Dexter is an earth and gravel-fill embankment dam with concrete gated spillways. It was completed with Lookout Point Dam in 1954 by the US Army Corps of Engineers at a cost of $88.2 million. Since then, it has helped prevent more than $5.3 billion in potential flood damages. Dexter Dam is located three miles downstream of Lookout Point Dam, and is used to regulate power-generating water releases from there.

Dexter Dam impounds a small reservoir, 27,500 acre-feet of water at full pool, and has one generator capable of producing 15 megawatts. Dexter's authorized primary purposes are flood risk management, hydropower, water quality improvement, irrigation, fish and wildlife habitat and recreation.




Built in 1954. Dexter Dam creates electricity and helps mitigate flooding.


Owyhee Dam


The Owyhee Dam generates electricity and also helps provide farmers with irrigation water. Built in 1932, it created Owyhee Reservoir.
The Owyhee Dam generates electricity and also helps provide farmers
with irrigation water. Built in 1932, it created Owyhee Reservoir.





Friday, August 21, 2020

In the news, Friday, August 14, 2020


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AUG 13      INDEX      AUG 15
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from Competitive Enterprise Institute

The Socialist Temptation: Why Don’t People Remember the Horrors of Socialism?
Iain Murray: One of the questions I get a lot when interviewed about my new book, The Socialist Temptation, is how people are still attracted to socialism when its history is plain for all to see. We know about the Holodomor, about the Cultural Revolution, and Cambodia’s Year Zero. We know how people were shot trying to escape East Berlin. We know that even in its less repressive forms socialism led to economic malaise and was rejected in places like Britain and Sweden. So why are people blind to this history?

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from FEE (Foundation for Economic Education)
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, HIGH, non-profit organization

The efficacy of face masks has been a subject of debate in the health community during the pandemic. Public health officials who use deceiving graphs only make things worse.

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from Mises Institute
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, MIXED


Trump Agonistes
Can Donald Trump, against all odds, still win in November? It would be a remarkable political feat, on par with his stunning upset in 2016. A global pandemic (however statistically dubious) ravages the country, while riots ravage major US cities. The US economy produces a third less than it did a year ago, 40 million people are out of work and dependent on federal benefits, and 60 percent of all restaurants may go under. Millions of Americans will not pay rent, mortgages, or credit card bills for the foreseeable future. Millions of their kids will not go to school at all, or will simply stare at their teachers on Zoom. Others wear face shields and sit behind plastic screens at their desks. College football, a religion in America, may well be canceled altogether. Trump's own Manhattan is a ghost town. And the media is intensely aligned against him. Yet amid all this mayhem Trump's poll numbers are no worse, and perhaps better, than they were heading into his contest with Hillary Clinton.

Jefferson on the Family and Liberty
Thomas Jefferson has valuable things to say about two key criticisms of the free market. I learned about these from reading C. Bradley Thompson’s America’s Revolutionary Mind (Encounter Books, 2019) Thompson has done an immense amount on research on the thought of the leading figures of the American Revolution, and I urge everyone to read this excellent book. Many critics of the free market say that it is unfair that some people are much wealthier than others. Isn’t it largely a matter of luck how well you do? If so, shouldn’t the state take steps to benefit those who aren’t successful? One of the standard criticisms of the free market point of view is that it treats individuals as isolated atoms who view other people only as means to the pursuit of their selfish ends. You can certainly find people who do adopt this view, but Mises and Rothbard do not.

A Brief History of the Gold Standard, with a Focus on the United States
To fully understand our current global monetary system, in which all of the major powers issue unbacked fiat money, it is helpful to learn how today’s system emerged from its earlier form. Before fiat money, all major currencies were tied (often with interruptions due to war or financial crises) to one or both of the precious metals, gold and silver. This international system of commodity-based money reached its zenith under the so-called classical gold standard, which characterized the global economy from the 1870s through the start of World War I in 1914.

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from National Review  RIGHT BIAS

The Party of Lincoln
The Lincoln Project is a farcical venture with little to no understanding of the man for whom they are named. Paradoxical as it might seem, the greatness of Abraham Lincoln has actually been obscured by his posthumous elevation to the rank of stone-hewn demigod. The man described by Leo Tolstoy is the one most Americans imagine when the name of our sixteenth president is invoked — the civic savior sent to water the soil of American liberty with the blood of his martyrdom: "Of all the great national heroes and statesmen of history, Lincoln is the only real giant. Alexander, Frederick the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, Gladstone, and even Washington stand in greatness of character, in depth of feeling, and in a certain moral power far behind Lincoln. Lincoln was a man of whom a nation has a right to be proud; he was a Christ in miniature, a saint of humanity, whose name will live thousands of years in the legends of future generations. We are still too near to his greatness, and so can hardly appreciate his divine power; but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us." This is all more or less true, even if Tolstoy gets a bit carried away with talk of “divine power.” Lincoln is not only the greatest ever American president, he is the greatest ever American, and the greatest leader in the history of world politics, to boot. The nations of the earth have reason to look with envy upon the United States when they reflect upon the providential and miraculous fact that we were led through our greatest trials and tribulations by such a man as this.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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from USA Today

What's the big idea? 4 proposals to reform America's immigration system
We cannot let divisive rhetoric prevent us from working toward a compassionate immigration policy that lives up to the ideals of the American Dream. The president has said that Congress needs to “do our job” and get a bill to his desk. Congress has failed to do such. We’ve made some progress — like when the House passed the Farm Workforce Modernization Act last year — but more is needed. Partisan bickering only delays progress. Let’s focus on areas of agreement rather than letting politics get in the way. While collaboration is key, we cannot fix our country’s immigration problems until we have a president who is willing to enforce in good faith the laws set forth by Congress. Our immigration system has been broken for decades, leaving millions of people contributing to our families and economy, and helping our communities survive the ongoing pandemic, with no opportunity to earn legal status. For conservatives, one unfulfilled promise really stands out — ending birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants. President Donald Trump promised this during the 2016 campaign and on multiple occasions since then.

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In the news, Thursday, August 13, 2020


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AUG 12      INDEX      AUG 14
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from The Atlantic  Magazine

Why the UAE Made Peace With Israel
This morning, Donald Trump announced the normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Israel is also committing to not annexing the West Bank. The agreement will shock those who thought the portion of the Jared Kushner portfolio devoted to peace in the Middle East consisted of a single briefing folder filled with printouts of Wikipedia articles. But there were signs that this agreement was coming, and that the Trump administration would be uniquely suited to making it happen. Saudi Arabia is not officially party to the agreement, but its relationship with the UAE is so fraternal that we should assume that it eagerly approved, and that the UAE will represent its interests in Israel as if they were its own. The Trump administration deals with these countries through the same personal channels, which look opaque and corrupt to us because they are. A few months ago, a Saudi academic told me that Trump was easier for him to understand than for me, because I live in a country where nepotism is a crime, and he lives in one where it is the system of government. The idea that a president would appoint his son-in-law to manage the most sensitive aspects of his administration offends me. To a Saudi, he said, it is just how things get done, and there is nothing mysterious about it at all.

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from HumanProgress.org
Education Website

Our ninth Center of Progress is ancient Rome during its Republican and early Imperial periods, when the Romans built infrastructure projects that were, at the time, unparalleled in their sophistication. Those projects ranged from aqueducts and sewers to bridges, amphitheaters, and bathhouses. The viae Romanae (“Roman ways”) or Roman road network, in particular, represented a breakthrough. While built in part to ease the transportation of soldiers and the delivery of military supplies, the roads greatly aided the free movement of civilians and trade goods. The Romans pioneered new concepts such as milestone markers, advanced surveying, and various engineering marvels, such as viaducts, to generate the shortest and straightest possible routes.

Uranium has been a relative newcomer to the story of human progress. Yet this element still has a vast amount of untapped potential to contribute toward global prosperity. We tend to think of uranium as a glowing green rock; however, pure uranium is a silvery-grey radioactive chemical element. The first pre-industrial use for uranium was as a coloring agent in the manufacture of pottery. Naturally-occurring uranium oxide was ground into a yellow powder and applied as a pottery glaze as early as 79 CE. The discovery of the element uranium has been credited to the German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth. Klaproth was the first to isolate an oxide of uranium and is responsible for naming the element. However, it would take another fifty-two years to isolate metallic uranium and a further 55 years before the French engineer and physicist Henri Becquerel would unlock uranium’s radioactive significance in 1896. 

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from The Living Church
Magazine of The Living Church Foundation (Anglican)

A DEADLY KIND OF CALLING
Augustine wept at his ordination. He had arrived in the ancient seaport of Hippo, in part, to avoid becoming a priest. The Catholic Church in North Africa was at that time a relatively small pond, and Augustine (354–430 AD) was a sizeable fish. Word travelled quickly that Augustine had relinquished a prestigious professorship in the big city of Milan and returned to his hometown of Thagaste, a small farming community 200 miles from the Mediterranean coast. What Augustine desired in retirement was time for study, writing, and enriching conversation, the pursuit of wisdom and holiness in a community of like-minded “Servants of God.” He thus carefully avoided visiting any town with an episcopal vacancy for fear of being enlisted for the role. His purpose for visiting Hippo was simply to gain a new recruit for his nascent community and to scout out a location for their monastery. The bishop of Hippo had other intentions. While Augustine was attending a service at the basilica, Bishop Valerius preached on the urgent needs of the church in Hippo and exhorted the people to provide a presbyter for their beloved city. The congregation eagerly obeyed, grabbing the unsuspecting Augustine and pushing him down the nave toward the bishop. Bishop Valerius ordained Augustine to the cheers of the congregation and the tears of their newly minted presbyter.

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from Mises Institute
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, MIXED


Why There's a Left-Right Divide among Libertarians
Amid the sociocultural convulsions and boutique displays of urban anarcho-tyranny that have taken place in America in recent months, there has been renewed discussion within certain circles of the liberty movement about how appropriate it is for libertarians and their intellectual brethren to self-identify as “right-wing” or “left-wing.” While libertarianism itself, which merely requires adherence to the nonaggression principle (NAP) and a desire to minimize or abolish state power, need not be considered a “right-wing” or “left-wing” political philosophy, I contend (from a decidedly right-wing perspective) that individual libertarians are almost certainly on the right or on the left. All too often, libertarian infighting and internecine squabbles come across as mere navel gazing, with many mainstream libertarians—especially Libertarian Inc.—insisting that they have heroically transcended the old left-right spectrum. (Strangely enough, some libertarians seem to believe that this spectrum primarily pertains to red/blue politics.) Nevertheless, in recent months there have been some important conversations touching upon rights, human nature, the left-right spectrum, and what being a libertarian actually means.

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from MSN  News & Media Website

Pompeo calls for joint US-EU effort on Belarus crisis
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday that Washington hoped to work with the EU to resolve the crisis in Belarus where veteran leader Alexander Lukashenko's controversial re-election has sparked unprecedented protests. Thousands have been arrested following mass peaceful protests that have been brutally quashed by police following Sunday's vote, which opponents say was rigged.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

Sue Lani Madsen: Civil righteousness seeks reconciliation through Christianity
An event with roots in Ferguson, Missouri, came to Spokane Saturday, Aug. 8, at 6:01 p.m., at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Division Street. It received little attention in the largely white and unchurched Pacific Northwest. “Pray on MLK Way” was a 2020 project of Civil Righteousness Inc., a Ferguson based nonprofit “dedicated to racial reconciliation and restorative justice through spiritual, cultural and economic renewal.” Events were held in all 50 states and nine countries, according to event organizers. Ellie Rae Hardy, youth pastor for Spokane’s Victory Faith Church, organized the local event. She first heard the founder of Civil Righteousness, Jonathan Tremain Thomas, speak at her church three years ago. It was the first time she’d heard someone talk about the realities of racism without politicizing the issues. Thomas has been described as a “chaos chaser” who sees his mission field as bringing reconciliation and revival in the face of the racial unrest roiling American cities.

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from USA Today

No list of incredible Idaho women is complete without a discussion of Sacagawea, the Shoshone teen who helped guide the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1805. Technically, this list doesn't include Sacagawea. It focuses on Idaho women alive between 1920 and 2020, as the USA TODAY Network marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment when women in the U.S. gained the legal right to vote. In commemoration, the USA TODAY Network is naming 10 American women from all 50 states and the District of Columbia who’ve made significant contributions to their respective states and country as Women of the Century.

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from U.S. Department of the Interior

Trump Administration Outlines Comprehensive Strategy to Tackle $120 Billion Problem
Today, the Trump Administration released a draft strategic plan for combating an estimated $120 billion problem—invasive species. The Administration has taken significant actions to more effectively manage invasive species, which impact water supplies, impair hunting and fishing opportunities, interfere with energy production, exacerbate wildfires, damage America’s agriculture and drive native species to extinction. This plan provides a coordinated approach to further align programs and policies across the U.S. Department of the Interior and leverage more resources in addressing this important issue. In Fiscal Year 2020, Interior alone is investing an estimated $143 million to manage invasive species. To protect the Western United States from quagga and zebra mussels that annually cause more than $1 billion in economic impact and management costs, Interior launched numerous initiatives in 2017 in collaboration with western governors and federal, state and Tribal agencies. Under this Administration, Interior has invested approximately $41 million since Fiscal Year 2017 to identify and implement actions such as boat inspections with states, and early detection of and rapid response to mussel invasions.

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from The Wall Street Journal

The Post Office’s Problem Isn’t Trump
Democrats cry sabotage. But mail volume is way down, and the USPS is losing billions of dollars. Two months into his new job, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is being keelhauled by Democrats for alleged sabotage of the U.S. Postal Service. Nearly 200 House Democrats signed a letter this week accusing him of acting to “accelerate the crisis” at the USPS. Apparently they missed the post office’s news release last Friday, when it reported losing another $2.2 billion last quarter. Congress has only itself to blame for this mess.

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from Washington Policy Center
Educational Research Center in Seattle, Washington

An irresponsible silence about King County’s spike in COVID transmission
Soon after the beginning of protests related to the death of George Floyd, the rate of transmission of COVID in King County shot up to a level not seen since the earliest days of the pandemic. In early June, the Institute for Disease Modeling (IDM), which helps the state Department of Health (DOH) calculate the rate of transmission, noted the increase and said the protests might be a contributing factor. Then, suddenly, the issue was dropped. No explanation has ever been given for the spike. The failure to explain that spike indicates either a lack of seriousness about fighting COVID, driven by the politics of the protest, or a level of ignorance about disease transmission that undermines the claim that state policy and strict economic restrictions are driven by 'science.' Whether it is a lack of ethics or a lack of knowledge, the failure to honestly address the increased transmission rate is irresponsible and must be fixed.

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In the news, Wednesday, August 12, 2020


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AUG 11      INDEX      AUG 13
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from Conciliar Post

ON LIONS AND INJUSTICE
It seems to me that the simple and devastating command of Jesus, “love your neighbor as yourself,” was profound in the most personally difficult way. He asks how we treat ... the one nearest to us. I can post on Facebook or put a sign on my front lawn, but that is easy. How much harder is it to love that racist person or family member with whom we come into contact every single day. I need to do justice, and be just, to that person who is acting unjustly. That person who says all those terrible things and is just downright impolite in every circumstance. Jesus calls us to love our neighbor for a reason. It is so much harder to consider how I love that person right next to me, and if everyone responded to that call in the grace of the Holy Spirit all the hard work would already be done.

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from Gallup
Analytics and advisory services on the front lines of transformation

Listening to Residents' Voices to Build More Equitable Cities
People are drawn to cities because of the wide array of opportunities they offer, from employment to education to culture. The vast majority of Americans, approximately 84%, already live in urban areas and, before COVID-19, that percentage was expected to stretch to 89% by 2050. But with the pressure points of current urban design painfully exposed during the pandemic and recent protests for racial justice, cities will need to transform into more livable, sustainable and affordable environments. If leaders want to build more equitable and just cities, an Urbanova/Gallup study reaffirms they will have to do one thing first: listen.

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from Hoover Institution
Nonprofit Organization in Stanford, California

The State of This Union is (Remarkably) Strong
For years, I was a guest commentator on a business-news show whose host was surprisingly literate. We covered global affairs and shared useful exchanges. But this well-schooled, worldly man had a massive blind spot he shared with a significant number of conservatives: He detested the European Union (EU) obsessively and leapt on every shred of negative data from Brussels as proof that the EU was, finally, this time, at last, truly and belatedly doomed. In the early days of Brexit, the host declared that the EU would never survive the United Kingdom’s departure since other member states would soon follow suit. When I countered that, whatever the ultimate outcome for Britain, the EU would outlive us both, he put on an I-know-better mask and changed the topic. Now the EU is behaving better during a pandemic than the United States, with the former’s member states conducting themselves more responsibly and their societies more dutifully. There are many reasons why the EU will survive and, generally, thrive. First, it does more good than harm for its populations and, populist grumping aside, EU citizens know it. Argument and ingratitude are part of the human condition, but so is clinging to attained advantage. Besides, no beast is harder to slay than an entrenched bureaucracy, and the EU is a bureaucracy so sprawling it has become a continent-wide constituency of its own. Pre-Brexit, that bureaucracy had, indeed, become overweening, and Britain’s departure, however inept, inspired a soul-searching of the soulless in Brussels. The EU apparatus remembered that it had to please national capitals more often than it annoyed them. And unity mattered. Thus, in the pandemic’s depths, we have seen more cooperation and breakthrough fiscal compromises within the EU than would have been achievable pre-Brexit. The Brexit bogeyman rescued, at least for the moment, the sick-unto-death economies of southern Europe. London’s limping departure also functioned as a deterrent to other states, rather than becoming an inspiration. If the American dream mythologizes freedom, the European vision worships stability (and with good historical reasons).

The Status Of The EU: A Frustrated Empire Built On The Wrong Assumption
As the Preamble to the 1957 Treaty of Rome stated, the purpose of the then European Economic Community was to “lay the foundations of an ever-closer union” among Europeans. This phrase became interpreted as a call for a progressively tighter political merger of the member states, with the European Union as the latest embodiment of this purpose. The problem with this progressive vision, however, is twofold: first, it is never fully achieved as the final objective remains always on the horizon and, second, it is grounded in the belief that a common market can create a unified polity. As a result, the EU is always in trouble because it is a perennially unfinished product built on weak foundations. It is a frustrated empire.

The Moribund EU
What is the point of the European Union? Only a few years ago such a question, especially coming from a British Brexiteer such as me, might have been written off as simply provocative rudeness from an ideological foe. Today, however, in the light of the EU’s incapacity to meet the strategic challenges posed by China’s aggressive foreign policy, the health challenges posed by COVID-19, the economic challenges caused by the global lockdown, and the budgetary challenges posed by Britain (its second-largest net contributor) leaving, it is legitimate to ask what the EU is really for at this stage of the 21st century.

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from Huffington Post

Sarah Palin Offers Words Of Wisdom To Kamala Harris: ‘Trust No One’ And ‘Have Fun’
“This IS the greatest country in the world and hopefully you’ll be blessed beyond belief,” the former GOP vice presidential candidate wrote.

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from Mises Institute
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, MIXED


Trump's Payroll Tax Order Is Good Politics, but Doesn't Offer Much Tax Relief
President Trump issued a new executive order on August 8 directing the Treasury Department to defer the 6.2 percent Social Security tax on wages for employees making less than about $100,000 a year. The suspension on collections will be in effect from September 1 through December 31. Unfortunately, the suspension on collections—which applies only to the employee share of payroll taxes—doesn't amount to an actual tax cut, since collections could resume at any time after December 31. Moreover, once the September-December deferment period is up, employees would still be responsible for their tax liability back to September 1.

Calculating GDP Correctly
While gross domestic product is considered by many to be the most important statistic regarding our economic well-being, Austrian and non-Austrian economists alike have criticized it as being an unsound representation of the health of an economy. Readers of mises.org are probably familiar with these arguments and I am not going to rehash these critiques. However, some of the criticisms of this statistic misrepresent how the statistic is determined. I think it would be instructive to explain how GDP is calculated.

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from National Review  RIGHT BIAS

How Houston Defied Doomsday COVID Predictions
Houston’s approach is a model for how hospital systems should handle intense case surges. As data out of Houston, the epicenter of Texas’s coronavirus outbreak, began to show a surge in cases and hospitalizations at the end of June, the doomsday projections began in full force. “Three weeks from now, if these trends continue, the city’s I.C.U.s will be overwhelmed . . . the storm has arrived in Houston,” a local doctor wrote in a June 26 piece for The New Yorker. “It’s Like New York ‘All Over Again,’” blared a July 4 headline in the New York Times. Two days later, science reporter Donald MacNeil warned during an episode of the Times podcast The Daily that “in Houston, doctors who knew the situation in New York are saying that what’s happening there looks like what happened in New York in early April.” And as the Texas Medical Center (TMC) reported 446 new coronavirus hospitalizations on July 5 — a record-high — the fear intensified. But, more than a month later, the numbers tell a different story. Following its record-high spike in daily hospitalizations, TMC has seen a steady decline over several weeks, with Monday’s 127 new COVID hospitalizations marking the system’s best day since June 14. Data from the Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council (SETRAC) shows that Harris County’s coronavirus bed census has been nearly cut in half, from almost 4,000 confirmed and suspected COVID hospital cases on July 15 to 2,083 on August 10. Why, then, were the comparisons to New York and the predictions of mass-hospitalization made in the first place?

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from seattlepi.com (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
LEFT-CENTER,  HIGH,  Online and former print newspaper in Seattle, WA

Fred Hutch: 80% of people infected do not spread COVID-19; super spreaders driving transmission
A new report from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center is giving researchers a better understanding of how and when person-to-person transmission of COVID-19 occurs, with findings showing that 80% of those infected will not spread the virus, laying the blame of transmission largely on gatherings. The preliminary research, conducted by epidemiologists and infectious disease physicians, shows that people with COVID-19 only shed enough viral load to be contagious for a brief period of time: one to two days. These brief periods when an infected person is most contagious is known as super spreading, and researchers believe that it is now driving the pandemic. However, that two day period when a person is most contagious and likely to spread the illness often occurs before the person is exhibiting any symptoms, meaning they are most likely to infect others before ever knowing they are sick. "The ethical thing to do as an individual is to walk around with the assumption that you’re infectious and contagious, and that it’s your responsibility to protect the public,” said Dr. Joshua T. Schiffer, an infectious diseases physician and author of the research.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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