Poll: More than half of people in U.S. know someone with COVID-19


More than half of people in the United States know somebody who has, has had or has died from COVID-19, as people are seen wearing masks on Wall Street in New York City on Oct. 15 -- more than ten months after the pandemic started. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

More than half of all Americans have been personally affected by COVID-19 at this point in the pandemic, according to a new HealthDay-Harris Poll survey.

The national survey was conducted by The Harris Poll between Oct. 8 and 12. It found that 55% of U.S. adults now say they know someone in their immediate or extended network of family and acquaintances who's been infected, hospitalized or died from COVID-19.

About two in every five people said they'd had even more direct experience with COVID-19, with either themselves or someone very close to them falling ill, being hospitalized or dying.

"By now, we're all accustomed to regularly seeing the sobering figures for COVID infection and death rates, but these findings translate to something so much bigger in terms of the full and relentless impact of the virus on millions of Americans," said Robyn Bell Dickson, managing director of The Harris Poll.

These results come in the midst of a COVID-19 resurgence in the United States, with the nation averaging 59,000 new cases a day. There have been more than 8.3 million reported infections, and around 220,000 U.S. deaths caused by COVID-19.

The online poll of 2,021 U.S. adults also found that 39% reported a direct impact on their lives from the pandemic, including:

Having personally had COVID-19 (7%) or being hospitalized (4%) from their infection.
Residing in a household with someone who had COVID-19 (6%).

Having a close friend, family member or loved one who became infected with COVID-19 (34%), was hospitalized (19%), or passed away (13%).

Overall, more than one in 10 adults have a loved one who has passed away due to COVID-19, the survey found.

RELATED Effectiveness, politics impact public's willingness to take COVID-19 vaccine

Shifts in outlook

People who've been personally affected by COVID-19 tend to see the pandemic differently from those who've so far remained relatively untouched by the virus, the results showed.

Those who have direct experience with COVID-19, either personally or through a loved one, are more likely to be very concerned that they or a loved one will die from COVID-19. Nearly two-thirds -- 64% -- reported this high level of concern, versus 52% of those with no direct experience or whose only experience is through an acquaintance.

RELATED Fauci sees similarities between HIV, COVID-19 in public health response

Those without direct experience are also likely to be more optimistic that the pandemic will be under control by early 2021, 56% versus 49% of those with direct experience. Adults whose personal experience of COVID-19 was more severe, with either themselves or a loved one struggling for life in a hospital or dying, were also more likely to agree with these statements:
I wish more people took COVID-19 seriously -- 87%, versus 80%.
I am extremely worried about getting COVID-19 -- 78%, versus 59%.
I am very concerned that I or a loved one will die from COVID-19 -- 73%, versus 53%.

"It makes sense that people who have experience with the disease will carry a different outlook with them, given that at the beginning of 2020 no one knew much at all about the burgeoning threat of coronavirus," said Lynn Bufka, senior director of practice transformation and quality at the American Psychological Association.

"As people have more experience with COVID, they are finding the messages regarding the pandemic to be more consistent and mapped on to their own experience," Bufka said.

Anxiety and resilience

The growing number of people who have personal experience with COVID-19 is adding to the uncertainty that already disrupts the daily lives of all Americans, Bufka said.

"Collectively, we're all faced with this pandemic, not knowing when it will end. We have no way to put some predictions around it and feel comfortable with those predictions," she added.

"We're all sitting in a period of uncertainty with the pandemic, with the economic impact of it, and then you layer in other issues like grappling with systemic racism and the political discourse, there are just a lot of things that are elevating our levels of uncertainty," Bufka continued. "We know that uncertainty is connected to anxiety. It would not be surprising at minimum to see more individuals struggling with anxiety right now, because it's harder to feel safe, secure and in control when so much feels outside of your control."

People also are dealing every day with feelings of loss and grief, ranging from things as profound as illness and death down to the simple need for a regular routine, Bufka said.

"Routines help us in so many ways because they make our lives predictable. They make things less uncertain. They also free up our mental space for tackling the things that are novel," Bufka said.

"If your schedule changes dramatically or if the kinds of decisions you're having to make vary day to day, that takes mental energy, which is harder to deal with," she explained. "So we see people struggling with decision making, with handling novel problems, all of that because mentally, cognitively, their attention is taken with what they're dealing with in the pandemic."

It's also becoming harder to expect help from those around you, she suggested.

"People are remarkably resilient and can adapt to all kinds of things, but when it feels like everybody's in the same situation at the same time, you may not have the social support you need," Bufka said. "It's not like you can rely on your best friend who's doing OK. He or she might also be struggling."

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about COVID-19.

Copyright 2020 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Stay-at-home orders reduced COVID-19 cases, deaths, study finds


States issuing stay-at-home orders saw decreased COVID-19 case and death totals, a new analysis has found. Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo

Oct. 22 (UPI) -- Areas of that country that instituted stay-at-home orders to limit the spread of COVID-19 reduced case counts by up to 200%, according to a study published Friday by JAMA Network Open.

These measures also likely reduced deaths from the virus by more than 20%, the data showed.

"In the early days of COVID-19 in U.S., the stay-at-home orders that were put in place by many states likely helped prevent cases, infections and subsequent fatalities," study co-author Bisakha Sen told UPI.

"Public health experts who recommended stay-at-home orders, and political leaders who implemented them, seem to have gotten it right," said Sen, chair of the division of health economics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health.

RELATED WHO: Herd immunity through COVID-19 exposure will cause suffering, death

Following public health guidelines for pandemic infections from the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among others, many states across the country instituted stay-at-home orders when COVID-19 case numbers began to rise in March.

The measures were met with some resistance, given the economic consequences resulting from closed businesses and schools.

However, a modeling analysis using data from 131 countries published Thursday by The Lancet Infectious Diseases found the "least comprehensive" measures -- bans on public events and gatherings of more than 10 people -- cut disease transmission by nearly 30%, while more comprehensive, full-lockdown approaches led to a 52% reduction.

RELATED CDC: Arizona mask mandates, business closures slowed spread of COVID-19

For their analysis, Sen and her colleagues analyzed daily, state data on COVID-19 cases, tests and fatalities between March 1 and May 4 from the COVID Tracking Project.

States opting to not implement stay-at-home orders had 219% more cases and 22% more virus-related fatalities than those that did, the data showed.

In addition, states with higher Black American populations had more COVID-19 cases, whether or not they issued stay-at-home orders, the researchers said.

For every 1% of the overall population made up by Black people, a state could expect that total cumulative cases would be 5% higher and total deaths would be 7% higher, the data showed.

"We cannot say based on our findings what the impact of stay-at-home orders would be compared to a scenario of no orders, but everyone following ... recommendations on wearing masks, social distancing, avoiding crowds etc." Sen said.

"Stay-at-home orders come with real and painful economic costs, so I think it should only be considered in a worst-case scenario where the population is simply not adhering to the other safety measures and cases are climbing steeply," she said.

More than 90% of people in U.S. using masks, poll finds

COVIDIOTS ARE A TEENY TINY MINORITY OF TRUMPERS

A new poll found more than 90% of people in the United States are wearing masks to prevent spread of COVID-19, like the people pictured on a Madison Avenue Sidewalk in New York City September. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Here's good news for public health officials who've been hammering home the need to wear face masks: Your messages have been getting through.

A new HealthDay/Harris Poll shows that more Americans than ever are donning face masks to protect against COVID-19 infection.

More than nine in 10 U.S. adults (93%) said they sometimes, often or always wear a mask or face covering when they leave their home and are unable to socially distance, including more than seven in 10 -- 72% -- who said they always do so, the poll revealed.

"Compared to when we first asked this question in late August, our latest survey with HealthDay finds that more Americans are now consistently wearing a mask or face covering outside the home," said Kathy Steinberg, vice president of research for public release at The Harris Poll.

RELATED CDC updates definition of 'close contact' to individuals with COVID-19

Back in August, just 61% of U.S. adults said they always wear a mask, while 90% said they sometimes, often or always wear one.

"While differences in usage do persist -- for example, women, older adults and Democrats are more likely than their respective counterparts to wear a mask more frequently -- it's promising to see that the proportion who said they 'always' wear a mask has increased since August across the board," Steinberg said.

For example, Democrats are most likely to always wear a mask, with 82% reporting that level of use in October compared to 66% of Republicans and 69% of Independents.

RELATED Study: Masks can block 99.9% of droplets from speech, coughs

But the percentage who reported always wearing a mask in October has increased for all political persuasions since August: Democrat (82% versus 69%), Republican (66% versus 53%) and Independent (69% versus 64%).

Women (77%) are more likely than men (67%) to say "always," while men are more likely to say "often" (16% versus 10%) or "sometimes" (10% versus 6%), the survey found.

But again, more men and women now wear a mask always than in August -- 67% versus 55% for men, and 77% versus 67% for women.

RELATED Masks safe for most people with lung diseases, experts say

The percentage of folks who report always wearing a mask increases with age:
61% of 18- to 34-year-olds now say they always wear a mask, versus 50% in August.
83% of people aged 65 and older always don a mask, versus 73% in August.

The increased embrace of masking comes in the midst of a resurgence of the new coronavirus in the United States, with the nation averaging 59,000 new cases a day. There have been more than 8.3 million reported infections, and more than 220,000 U.S. deaths caused by COVID-19.

This acceptance of mask wearing probably has been fueled by studies showing that masks can prevent COVID-19 infection, as well as constant messages from trusted health officials, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, in Baltimore.

"I think more and more evidence that wasn't present at the beginning of the pandemic has amounted in favor of mask and face covering use by the general public," Adalja said. "It is becoming a societal norm and perhaps increasingly viewed as one way to more safely go about one's daily activities."

The online poll of 2,021 U.S. adults was conducted by The Harris Poll between Oct. 8 and 12.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about COVID-19.

Copyright 2020 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Saudi Arabia joins Trump-led coalition claiming women have ‘no international right to abortion’

October 22, 2020 By Julia Conley, Common Dreams

Filming of The Handmaid's Tale at the Lincoln Memorial (Victoria Pickering via Flickr and a CC )


Further distancing itself from longtime U.S. allies regarding reproductive rights, the Trump administration on Thursday joined 32 countries in signing a declaration claiming that pregnant people have “no international right to abortion.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attended the virtual signing ceremony for the so-called “Geneva Consensus Declaration” after the administration formed an international coalition comprised of countries where abortion care is banned or severely restricted, to counter the United Nations’ support for reproductive rights.

“It carries no legitimacy within the U.N. system―but the sentiments it represents are dangerous nonetheless. In contrast to what this declaration states, there is broad international consensus on the critical need for access to sexual and reproductive healthcare, including abortion.”

—Jenny Vanyur, Planned Parenthood Federation of America

The Trump administration has opposed the inclusion of language affirming that people around the world have inalienable “sexual and reproductive rights” in documents including the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The declaration introduced Thursday is aimed at “strengthening the family” and states that there is no “international obligation on the part of states to finance or facilitate abortion.” At the ceremony, Pompeo said the document “defends the unborn and reiterates the vital importance of the family,” while Planned Parenthood derided the declaration as a “farce” whose signatories are out of touch with public opinion regarding the right to abortion care.



“It carries no legitimacy within the U.N. system―but the sentiments it represents are dangerous nonetheless,” Jenny Vanyur, associate director of global advocacy for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told HuffPost. “In contrast to what this declaration states, there is broad international consensus on the critical need for access to sexual and reproductive healthcare, including abortion.”

According to Pew Research, 61% of Americans believe abortion care should be legal in all or most cases. Internationally, support is even greater, with Ipsos reporting last month that 70% of 17,500 adults surveyed in 25 countries support the right to abortion care.

Abortions have been recognized as a constitutional right in the U.S. since 1973, while the five countries that joined the U.S. as co-sponsors of the declaration—Egypt, Uganda, Indonesia, Brazil, and Hungary—impose severe restrictions on abortion access.

Other countries joining the U.S.-led coalition include Saudi Arabia, Belarus, and Poland, which on Thursday imposed a near-total ban on abortion, while longtime U.S. allies including France and the U.K. are steadfast supporters of the U.N.’s declarations affirming the right to abortion care.

As a constitutional tribunal in Poland handed down its ruling amid protests and the Trump administration celebrated the signing of the Geneva Consensus Declaration, Amnesty International issued a reminder on social media that outlawing abortion care does not stop women from obtaining abortions, but rather makes the procedure far less safe.

Abortion is a human right
It’s that simple. Everyone has the right to decide what happens to their body. Criminalizing abortion doesn’t stop abortion, it just makes it less safe.
— Amnesty International (@amnesty) October 22, 2020

Other critics in the U.S. condemned the Trump administration for leading the international effort to undermine women’s reproductive rights.

This is a cruel attempt to spread an anti-abortion, anti-women, & ultimately anti-health care agenda across the globe amid a pandemic. This "consensus declaration" contradicts broad international law regarding the health & rights of women & girls. https://t.co/FuqO1wgEgn
— Senator Patty Murray (@PattyMurray) October 22, 2020

Another day, another shameful move by the State Department and HHS to dismantle long-standing international human rights agreements and frameworks. https://t.co/l5jgH9rMN2
— Planned Parenthood Global (@ppglobe) October 22, 2020

The declaration was signed a month after the State Department proposed an expansion of the global gag rule, which would further strip healthcare funding from global organizations which provide abortion care or counseling, and as the Republican-led Senate moved toward confirming Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court. The judge has publicly supported a Christian fundamentalist group which espouses extreme anti-choice views and has suggested the Supreme Court will restrict abortion access.

“This administration doesn’t seem content to stop until it has fully trampled on the rights, autonomy, and dignity of women and girls everywhere,” said Tarah Demant, director of the Gender, Sexuality, and Identity program at Amnesty International USA. “Every person has a right to their individual personal and bodily autonomy, despite this administration wanting to prescribe otherwise.”

U.S. signs international anti-abortion declaration



Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday that "there is no international right to an abortion." Photo by Greg Nash/UPI | License Photo

Oct. 22 (UPI) -- The United States on Thursday joined Brazil, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia and Uganda as co-sponsors of an international anti-abortion declaration that was signed by some 30 United Nations members, most of which are widely seen as authoritarian, illiberal or both.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex M. Azar participated in the virtual signing ceremony of the Geneva Consensus Declaration that calls on the signatories to protect women's health, preserve life, strengthen the family unit and protect every nation's national sovereignty in global politics, especially concerning their right to make laws concerning abortion.


The declaration states the signing countries "emphasize that 'in no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning" and that "the child ... needs special safeguards and care ... before as well as after birth." It also says states have no obligation to finance or facilitate abortion.

Pompeo called it a "historic" signing as it was the first multilateral coalition built around the issue of "defending life."

"There is no international right to an abortion," Pompeo said in a press briefing.

Among the signatories are countries that have voiced to LGBTQ and reproductive rights, with many of the 32 signatories including Pakistan, South Sudan, Iraq, Democratic Republic of Congo ranked the worst countries for women by a study from Georgetown University's Institute for Women, Peace and Security.

The coalition stands opposed to the United Nations stance on abortion as a human right, and Azar described the Geneva Consensus Declaration as a "tool" for countries to defend their principles against multilateral organizations.

"We will denounce these organizations when they overstep their mandates by promoting positions that can never gain consensus," he said. "We will unequivocally declare that there is no international right to abortion. We will proudly put women's health first at every stage of life."

Amnesty International called the declaration a "giant step backwards" for the United States as it joins a list of countries that put the lives and health of people at risk.

"The United States' stance flies in the face of human rights and decades of health research," Tarah Demant, direct of the Gender, Sexuality and Identity Program at Amnesty International USA, said in a statement. "This is about people living full lives that are their own -- not the lives that the government has prescribed for them."

The non-binding declaration is a continuation of the Trump administration's stance against international organizations prescribing abortion as a human right.



In May, the U.S. Agency for International Development criticized the United Nations in a letter for using the coronavirus for "promoting abortion" when it included sexual and reproduction health services within its Global Humanitarian Response Plan to COVID-19 guidelines.

In July, Pompeo was criticized over a controversial report unveiled by the State Department on human rights for listing abortion along with affirmative action and same-sex marriage as "divisive social and political controversies" where proponents commonly "couch. their claims in terms of basic rights."

On Thursday, the United States' top diplomat said the Trump administration has "defended the right to human dignity like no other administration in history."

"He had done it like no other president in history," he said. "We have mounted an unprecedented defense of the unborn abroad."

The Global Justice Center lambasted the Trump administration Thursday saying despite its rhetoric it has never put the health of women first.

"This administration has consistently [put] both women's bodies, here at home and abroad, last," Akila Radhakrishnan, president of Global Justice Center, said in a statement.

"Just because these regressive governments keep asserting that abortion is not a human right, doesn't make it true; the international human rights framework is clear on this issue," Radhakrishnan said. "There is a reason why none of the U.S.' traditional allies, nor countries with strong records on human rights, joined this declaration -- if flies in the face of decades of hard-fought victories for the rights for women."

Intervention is needed now more than ever as Trump puts America on the path to bloodshed and catastrophe

Published on October 22, 2020

By Madeline Taylor and Bandy X. Lee - Commentary

Trump supporters waiting for the arrival of President Donald J. Trump on Thursday 01/30/2020 at his Keep America Great Again rally in Des Moines, Iowa. (Shutterstock.com)

What is the role of media when the president of the United States promulgates falsehoods, sows division among the populace, demonizes duly-elected officials who disagree with him, gives a wink and a nod to armed White supremacists by telling them to “stand back and stand by,” but orders heavily-armed police to use tear-gas on non-violent Black Lives Matter demonstrators, marching to put an end to police brutality? How do media outlets cover a president who denigrates and dehumanizes whole sectors of the American public every time he speaks? That is, Muslims, Mexicans, women, immigrants, Democrats, “blue” states, Obama, Hillary, Kamala, and Biden…. We must not negate the psychological consequences.

In 1994, there was a terrible slaughter of Tutsis by Hutus in Rwanda. Hutus were given machetes and encouraged to rise up and murder their Tutsi neighbors because it was rumored that a member of the Tutsi tribe had caused the death of the country’s leader. This false allegation was purposely spread by a Hutu-favoring radio station. The massacre of Tutsis and moderate Hutus went on for three months with lasting physical and emotional trauma to the entire population.

That can’t happen here, we say, and we hope we’re right. But the elements that were present in Rwanda prior to the massacre exist here, right now:

A division in the population based on race, culture, or ideology that someone’s need for power has amplified and exploited;

A culture of machismo that encourages violence and intimidation as legitimate behavior;
The purposeful accumulation of weapons by one group; and
A biased communications outlet open to polarizing the country and broadcasting false accusations.

All that are needed now are the denigration and dehumanization of the “other” group, which has begun, and a precipitating event or rumor that is to be used as a rationale for attack.

It can already be argued that U.S. media played a role in the election of Donald Trump. In the run-up to the election on November 8, 2016, the major television networks afforded the candidate more than 2 billion dollars’ worth of free airtime. The CEO of CBS at the time, Les Moonves, said of Donald Trump’s candidacy: “It may not be good for America but it’s damn good for CBS…. The money’s rolling in.”

Four years later, we have a president who has told his followers: “the only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.” When asked about the peaceful transition of power should his opponent win the election he stated: “There won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.”

Donald Trump lives in a mental world where getting what he wants is all that matters, all that should and will matter, according to him. He cannot tolerate anything other than a world where he “wins”, and hence he will make that happen if it does not exist. He indirectly communicates this to his followers, the implication being that they must mobilize if the official decision conflicts with his world view. He binds, tests, and conditions them to an absolute loyalty, so that they would not accept any other result, even if that means giving their lives to it. This is what is happening when they pack into his rallies without masks or social distancing and accept that the election will be rigged, the news is fake, and they should be “tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots” but “not be afraid of Covid.”

So far, Donald Trump has been careful not to give direct orders to his followers, but from his position of power he does not have to. Henry II did not have to lift a finger to have his followers assassinate the Archbishop of Canterbury. All he said was: “What miserable … traitors have I nourished and promoted in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born clerk!” The interrupted plots to kidnap and kill the governors of Michigan and Virginia, as well as the mayor of Wichita, are the exact effects we would expect he would have when he tweets, “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” or shouts, “Get your governor to open up your state…. And get your schools open… Lock ’em all up.” He has also given his tacit approval of vigilante violence.

So what is the role of media in a society where the chief executive is sowing division and inciting violence by denigrating and dehumanizing whole swaths of American citizens, labeling them “enemies,” and protecting Second-Amendment rights to bear arms but not protecting Constitutional rights of peaceful assembly to redress grievances? How can the public remain safe, when peaceful protestors are called “terrorists” by a media outlet that has been set up to promote the values of the White, mostly male corporate ruling class? What can the public do to counter the rising violence and chaos?

The time between November 3, 2020 and January 20, 2021, may be the most dangerous for America. At what point should Twitter disable Trump’s account? When do more responsible media organizations refuse to air his comments or alert their audiences in real time that what they are hearing is false? When do the owners of large venues refuse to give the president access because his rallies spawn violence?

When should the radio station have been shut down in Rwanda, and who should have shut it down?

In America, the people own the airwaves. They are part of “the commons” as stipulated by Congressional legislation in the last century. With the Supreme Court decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), speech “directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action” may not fall under the protection of free speech. We now have much better research on how rhetoric from an influential position directly leads to widespread epidemics of violence. This is why the World Mental Health Coalition issued its “Prescription for Survival” earlier this year. We do not have to give our airwaves to someone who means us harm. We can shut him down.


Madeline Taylor, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in Los Angeles and a member of the World Mental Health Coalition, of which Lee is president. They will be holding a special online conference, “Donald Trump’s Great Harm to America and the World,” on Saturday, October 24, 2020.

BLUE TSUNAMI
‘Republican bloodbath’: Journalists are haunted by Trump’s surprise 2016 victory — but many conservatives are convinced he’s doomed


Published on October 23, 2020 By Mario Almonte

Donald Trump (AFP)

For many political reporters in the mainstream media these days, the old adage, “Once bitten, twice shy,” accurately reflects the tone of their coverage of Donald Trump and the presidential race. While rival Joe Biden has consistently polled significantly better than Trump since entering the race in April 2019, much of the mainstream media can’t quit the feeling that Biden could still lose. They are haunted by the ghost of the 2016 presidential race, which was won by Trump despite nearly every poll indicating he would not.

A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, for example, shows Biden ahead of Trump by 11 points, 54 percent to 43 percent among likely voters. In covering the poll, reporter Domenico Montanaro details an impressive number of categories in which Biden leads Trump. Yet, Montanaro feels compelled to preface it all by reminding readers that Trump won with just 46 percent of voters in 2016 nationally – just 3 percent above his current standing. “It was enough for him to squeeze out a victory in the states key to the Electoral College,” he says, adding ominously, “Trump is within striking distance.”

The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof tells Yahoo Finance writers Max Zahn and Andy Serwer, “I think that it’s more likely that Joe Biden will win in a landslide, than that Trump will win at all.” Even so, he hedges, “There is a possibility that things will come together for (Trump).” Zahn and Serwer themselves share Kristof’s hesitations. They note that a FiveThirtyEight poll only gives Trump a 12 percent chance of winning, but FiveThirtyEight also gave Trump just a 13.5 percent chance of winning on the same date in 2016. There is still the “possibility of an ‘October surprise,’” they say.

You Can Go With This Or You Can Go With That

In dissecting its own survey showing Biden in front with double digits, FiveThirtyEight also seems to caution against breaking out the champagne just yet. Biden is leading in almost every category, they observe, “But that doesn’t mean that the demographic trends bubbling beneath the surface can’t have an outsized effect.” They add: “Take 2016. President Trump won in large part because he carried white voters without a college degree by a bigger margin than any recent GOP presidential nominee….”

Foreign news reporters aren’t immune to the sense of insecurity in the face of Biden’s overwhelming lead over Trump. UK’s The Independent’s John T. Bennett cites a new poll by JL Partners which gives Biden a 10-point edge over Trump. However, there’s “ample reasons for Mr. Biden and his campaign team to worry,” he cautions. “Note that the September poll showed Trump performing (only) slightly better than in 2016.”

But Wait, There’s More

A recent NBC News/WSJ poll found registered voters favoring Biden over Trump by an 11 point margin. Even so, writer Mark Murray remarks, “There’s…the memory of what happened in 2016: The October NBC News/WSJ poll from four years ago…showed Hillary Clinton with an identical 11-point lead over Trump.”

CNN’s Keven Breuninger takes stock of numerous national polls that show Biden with a “sizeable lead over President Donald Trump.” He nevertheless cautions, “But there are reasons for the Democratic nominee to worry…(Trump’s) lead in several crucial swing states is slightly lower than Hillary Clinton’s was at this point in the 2016 race.”

On the Other Hand

Ironically, Republicans and ardent Trump supporters don’t seem to share the same insecurities about Trump’s chances of winning the election. They are positively convinced he will lose.

The Daily Beast reports, “Rupert Murdoch Predicts a Landslide Win for Biden.” It says that Murdock is now “firmly of the mindset that the next president will be Biden.” Murdoch told his associates, “After all that has gone on, people are ready for Sleepy Joe.”

NBC News reports, “GOP senators voice fears of a painful Trump loss” that will spill into their senate races. They are hearing, “Pointed warnings of electoral defeat have come in recent days from Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. All are former critics turned allies who reliably vote with the president.” They note Sasse’s recent comment during a telephone conference call, in which he criticized Trump for kissing “dictators’ butt.” Sasse warns, “I’m now looking at the possibility of a Republican bloodbath in the Senate.”

And Trump himself, normally a fierce optimist about his ability to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, is showing signs of resignation about his potential loss. During a recent rally in Georgia, he muses that if he loses, “Maybe I’ll have to leave the country.”

Expert: Trump is treading dangerously close to tacking ‘to an almost explicitly QAnon narrative’




Published on October 23, 2020


By Meaghan Ellis, AlterNet

President Donald Trump is scrambling to maintain the hold on his support base with just two weeks left until Election Day and it looks like he’s going a step further to ensure QAnon believers have a voice.

On Tuesday, the White House issued a press release praising the president’s actions taken to combat human trafficking.

“President Donald J. Trump has prioritized fighting for the voiceless and ending the scourge of human trafficking across the Nation,” the White House said in its statement, later adding, “Since taking office, the President has signed nine pieces of bipartisan legislation to combat human trafficking, both domestically and internationally.”

While the Trump administration has vowed to take a “whole-of-government approach” to combatting the issue of human trafficking, it is not as cut-and-dry as it seems.

With so many QAnon followers believing there is a secret pedophilia ring run by high-ranking Democrats, Trump’s latest actions may serve as yet another signal for QAnon followers to continue their plight to combat a non-existent pedophilia ring instead of focusing on the real issues of human trafficking.

According to This Week, QAnon’s disturbing beliefs and the president’s subliminal acknowledgement of their beliefs could be problematic. The publication explains:

QAnon’s founding myth holds that our society has long been in thrall of a “deep state” cabal of Satan-worshipping, cannibalistic, Democratic pedophiles with whom Trump is locked in secret battle — and Trump is closing out his re-election campaign with near-confirmation of exactly that. He’s treating QAnon as a significant part of his base and sending a hearty dog whistle in their direction.

Just in—

White House out with a press release praising @realDonaldTrump's work "combating human trafficking and protecting the innocent."

Issues that absolutely need to be addressed, of course. But also issues that will rally Qanon followers. pic.twitter.com/f0e610ZKi5
— Zach Everson (@Z_Everson) October 20, 2020


Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, weighed in with his concerns about the Trump campaign treading dangerously close to the QAnon conspiracy theories.

“We’re seeing the Trump campaign tack closely to an almost explicitly QAnon narrative,” Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, told The Washington Post in an August report. “I don’t expect to hear the president talking about pedophilia or Satanism, but I expect to hear almost everything else.”

The White House’s statement came just days after Trump claimed to have no knowledge of QAnon and what they believe.

“I know nothing about QAnon,” Trump told NBC moderator Savannah Guthrie during his town all special on October 15. “What I do hear about it is they are very strongly against pedophilia… I do agree with that, and I agree with it very strongly.”

Whoops, Trump did it again

Published on October 22, 2020 By Amanda Marcotte, Salon
- Commentary

President Donald Trump (left, via Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons) and FBI Director Christopher Wray (right, via Wikimedia Commons).

Back thousands of years ago, in February of 2020, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a “moderate” Republican, justified her vote to acquit Donald Trump at his impeachment trial — despite the mountains of evidence of guilt — by claiming that Trump had learned his lesson.

“I believe that the president has learned from this case,” Collins told CBS news anchor Norah O’Donnell at the time. “The president has been impeached — that’s a pretty big lesson.”

That excuse was preposterous at the time, making it sound like Trump was a child who had his hand in the cookie jar, not a 73-year-old man caught abusing his powers of office to blackmail the Ukrainian president into propping up conspiracy theories about Joe Biden. But it was also hilariously predictable that Trump, who is incapable of learning or growing as a person, would absorb any moral lessons from being impeached.

Trump didn’t learn anything. In fact, he’s only escalated the very same botched conspiracy that got him impeached, only this time around he’s abusing his power on the home front, instead of in a distant nation most Americans couldn’t find on a map.

Truth told, Trump demonstrated his failure to learn within days of his acquittal, first by bragging about it and then pivoting to lying about the Democrats. Since then, he’s gone right back to abusing his power to fabricate lies about his opponent. He and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani — along with Giuliani’s buddy Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian legislator with ties to Russian intelligence — eventually returned to the very scheme that got Trump impeached in the first place: an attempt to counterfeit evidence that Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, had somehow dragged his father into a corrupt scheme. It’s a claim with literally no evidence to support it, no matter how much Trump and Giuliani repeat the accusation.

On Wednesday evening, Devlin Barrett and Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post reported that Trump has threatened to fire FBI Director Christopher Wray — who, lest we forget, was appointed by Trump after the firing of James Comey — unless Wray announces a phony investigation into Biden that Trump can use as last-minute ammunition in the presidential campaign.

“Trump wants official action similar to the announcement made 11 days before the last presidential election by then-FBI Director James B. Comey,” Barrett and Dawsey write, referring to Comey’s infamous announcement that “he had reopened an investigation into [Hillary] Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state after potential new evidence had been discovered.”

That investigation resulted in no damning information about Clinton, which was entirely predictable. Clinton had been thoroughly investigated for years without a speck of meaningful dirt turned up on her. But that announcement did help turn an election Clinton should have won to Trump’s favor: It caused a surge of undecided voters to break for Trump at the last minute, allowing him to win several important swing states by razor-thin margins.

So there’s one thing Trump was capable of learning: The value of fake scandals to distract from serious issues, such as his own corruption and incompetence. And he’s hoping for a repeat, which is why he’s pressuring Wray to pull a Comey against Biden.

But in doing so — and in “considering” whether to fire Wray if he doesn’t — Trump is doing the exact same thing that got him impeached: Pressuring a government official to announce a phony investigation into his opponent, and threatening to use the powers of his office to punish that person if they don’t comply. This time Trump is targeting a Senate-confirmed official who leads a federal law enforcement agency rather than a foreign leader.

For those who have grown hazy on the details of Trump’s impeachment — which is understandable, since there have been dozens, if not hundreds, of Trump-caused crises since then — a quick recap: In the summer of 2019, Trump called the newly elected president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, and told him that the U.S. would withhold military aid (which had been authorized by Congress) unless Zelensky did Trump “a favor.” That favor was to announce an “investigation” into Biden aimed at propping up the convoluted conspiracy theory about Hunter Biden, a Ukrainian gas company and a fired Ukrainian prosecutor that Giuliani and Trump were trying to push into the mainstream media.

Zelensky clearly felt uneasy participating in a scheme to smear an innocent man’s reputation, but Ukraine desperately needed the military aid to fight Russian aggression. Luckily for Zelensky, he was spared from this blackmail scheme by a whistleblower and Trump’s eventual impeachment for abusing his office.

Now Trump is doing to Wray what he did to Zelensky. The only difference is that Trump’s leverage in this case is limited: He can dismiss the FBI director at any time, having already done so once, but that’s about it. With Zelensky, Trump’s threats carried a lot more weight.

Either way, the basic story is the same: Trump is demanding that a government official abuse his powers and launch a completely phony investigation based on made-up charges, for Trump’s political benefit. In fact, Trump has reportedly made similar threats about Attorney General Bill Barr, because the Justice Department’s bogus special-counsel investigation of the Russia investigation evidently hasn’t turned up anything Trump can use to bolster his conspiracy theories about the Democrats. (If Barr, the most dogged and ruthless of Trump’s sycophants, is in trouble, things in the White House are getting really bad.)

There’s a word for all this: Blackmail.

Unfortunately, the media coverage about the attacks on Wray (and on Barr) or about the latest ridiculous wrinkles in Rudy Giuliani’s harebrained schemes all too often fails to provide the necessary context. It doesn’t remind readers that none of this is new, and that in fact all these developments are part of the same conspiracy that got Trump impeached. The Washington Post article on the threats against Wray fails to use the word “impeachment” or to mention that Trump is treating Wray exactly as he treated Zelensky. And although mainstream media has emphasized the most important aspects of Giuliani’s efforts to smear Biden — that Giuliani is not credible and is believed by U.S. intelligence to be spreading Russian disinformation — most articles don’t explain that Giuliani is still working the same plot that got his celebrity client (quite likely his only client) impeached.

It’s as if G. Gordon Liddy kept burglarizing various Democratic offices after the Watergate break-in, but the reporting on his later crimes failed to mention the first one. Our national situation is an ongoing catastrophe, no doubt. But is it really too much to expect journalists to explain that Trump keeps on doing the very thing he was impeached for doing?

Either way, the situation shows that Trump, despite all his chaotic crazy-uncle ranting, doesn’t actually have a lot of tricks in his bag. The only thing he knows how to do is cheat — and the only way he knows how to cheat is by threatening and blackmailing other people to do the work for him. Without that, he’s got nothing.

Trump’s ‘herd immunity’ advisor has been spreading his quackery behind the scenes for quite a while

 October 20, 2020
By Ray Hartmann
- Commentary



This is not Dr. Scott Atlas’ first rodeo.

It might seem like Atlas came out of nowhere after getting recruited by Stephen Miller at a QAnon meeting. Or you might have him confused with the Atlas who tried to kill Superman in #677 of the superhero series.

Atlas wasn’t famous until he got plucked by Trump from the farthest right reaches of the universe as a pandemic adviser carrying the flag for herd immunity. That, of course, is the theory that says, in effect, that saving the economy in an election year is certainly worth losing a few million lives.

But it turns out Atlas has been on the political scene as a foe of government health care for quite a while. As a creature of the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank uneasily affiliated with Stanford University, Atlas has left a bit of a paper trail

In 2008, for example, Atlas was the presidential campaign health adviser for one Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor–since turned vampire–who was running a crowded Republican-primary field that included Governors Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee and Senator John McCain. Romney’s signature issue was bringing Romneycare, the popular public health-care program he advanced in Massachusetts, to the national scene.

Here’s what Atlas had to say about that:

“Mitt Romney’s legacy is the creation of a multibillion-dollar government health bureaucracy that punishes employers and insists middle income individuals either purchase health insurance or pay for their own health care,” Atlas said to the Associated Press. “The former is a mandate, the latter is a tax, and neither one is free market.”

With Atlas’ assistance, Giuliani finished 8th in a field of 8 that year, the only candidate to stay in the race and receive zero delegates. Romney finished closely behind Huckabee. McCain, of course, won a landslide primary victory, only to lose to President Barack Obama, whose landmark Obamacare was modeled in part after Romneycare.

If that isn’t ironic enough, there’s this: On March 24, 2012, a reinvented Romney proudly announced his team of five healthcare advisers who would help him attack the horrors of the Affordable Care Act. First on the list: Dr. Scott Atlas.

Perhaps that honeymoon didn’t last after Romney went down to defeat in the general election. Atlas, was still snarky about Romneycare in 2014.

Researchers then reported, according to the Boston Globe, “that four years after Romneycare was implemented in 2006, death rates in the state dropped nearly 3 percent among young and middle age adults compared with similar populations in states that didn’t expand coverage.”

Replied Atlas, citing no facts: “I am skeptical that such an immediate and significant drop in mortality would occur after getting health insurance.”

Why, of course you’re skeptical, sir. That’s what has produced descriptions today from the likes of Dr. Robert Redfield, Trump’s director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who said succinctly “everything (Atlas) says is false.”

On the other hand, that doesn’t keep Atlas’ weirdness from rubbing off on others. At a Senate Health Committee hearing in May, Romney posed the following question, according to the St. George News, of Utah:

“Should we let this run its course through the population and not try to test every person?” Romney asked Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. “I’m saying that a bit as a strawman, but I’m interested in your perspective.”

His response was unenthusiastic.

“Collins said the result would not be a disaster when it came to much of the population that is not at high risk of dying from the virus,” the paper reported, “but it could be deadly for the elderly and others with health conditions like asthma, diabetes and heart conditions.”

Deadliness is the sort of thing that troubles the likes of Atlas’ 78 medical faculty colleagues at Stanford University, who issued a statement condemning his idiocy.

“Many of his opinions and statements run counter to established science and, by doing so, undermine public health authorities.” For his part, Atlas brandished his Trumpish credentials by threatening those colleagues with a defamation lawsuit for speaking truth.

In response to that lawsuit, attorneys for the Stanford faculty members said, ““If [Atlas] cannot tolerate science-based criticism of his opinions and statements concerning this public health crisis, then he has no business advising anybody, let alone the President of the United States.”

But he is.

Melinda Henneberger: 

How could bloodthirsty execution of Kansas woman ever amount to justice?

2020/10/23

©The Kansas City Star

YURI GRIPAS/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

The selectively pro-life Trump administration has brought back the federal death penalty with what I think we can safely call a vengeance during this tough-on-crime campaign season. Did Attorney General William Barr, only recently honored at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast for his “Christlike behavior,” even flinch when ordering that a Kansas woman will be murdered in our name on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception?

Most of those who suffer great cruelty as children do not go on to brutalize others as adults. But Lisa Montgomery, the woman we’re killing by lethal injection on Dec. 8, isn’t one of those victims who never made the news.

In 2004, she strangled a pregnant 23-year-old, Bobbie Jo Stinnett, in Stinnett’s home in Skidmore, Missouri. The scene was so grisly that when Stinnett’s mother found her body, she told police that it looked like her stomach had exploded; Montgomery had cut Stinnett open with a kitchen knife and had stolen the baby girl she then tried to pass off as her own.

At her 2007 trial, a psychiatrist testified that Montgomery had for years “suffered from significant physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather.” Even when her mother finally caught him raping her, the doctor said, it was her daughter she blamed, and saw as “a seducer or home-wrecker.” Yet Montgomery “still strived for approval from her mother,” who was herself so violent that she killed the family dog in front of her children to punish them. At 18, Montgomery married her stepbrother at her mother’s urging. Her life did not get better.

The prosecution wrote all of this off as “the abuse excuse” of a “wicked” criminal who was only faking mental illness. “As a society, we can’t let people use the fact that they had bad parents or didn’t have a good childhood as an excuse to murder people,” said Matt Whitworth, the lead prosecutor in the case.

If even one juror had held out against her execution, she would have spent the rest of her life in prison. But no, it was unanimous, and jurors told reporters that they, too, saw her as the prosecution did, as a Star news story put it, as a “scheming, dishonest manipulator who used false pregnancies to gain advantage in her interpersonal relations.”

Now, all these years later, we’re going to do to Lisa Montgomery what she did to Bobbie Jo Stinnett. Which I’m sure is going to deter other victims of severe child abuse from being damaged in ways that we’ll then pretend are just an excuse for their crimes. And who is it who’s faking, again?

Skidmore, Missouri, population 284, where Montgomery knocked on Stinnett’s door pretending to want to buy a puppy, is really only known for two things: murder and mob justice.

Four years before Stinnett’s killing, in 2000, her 25-year-old cousin, Wendy Gillenwater, had been stomped to death by the “boyfriend” who’d left her with 14 fractured ribs, a punctured lung and lacerated liver. The next year, in 2001, another cousin, 20-year-old Branson Perry, disappeared and was never found.

There have been precocious murderers and elderly ones in surrounding Nodaway County: Benny Kemper was just 15 when he sneaked into his classmate’s basement, waited until the Merrigan family was asleep and killed them one by one in their beds in 1972. Lloyd Jeffress was 71 when he shot up Conception Abbey in 2002, killing two monks and wounding two others before ending his own life. A local farmer, William Taylor, made national news after he ran over his wife Debra with a combine in 1994.

But it’s the can-do vigilantism that sets this far northwest corner of Missouri apart.

In 1931, a crowd of thousands watched the Maryville lynching of Raymond Gunn, a Black man the mob tied to a pole on the roof of a one-room schoolhouse and burned alive. That’s where Gunn was suspected of having murdered a 20-year-old teacher, but there was no trial, and the local sheriff never called in the National Guard troops who were in town to protect Gunn. He didn’t want any of them to get hurt, he said later. The Gunn family’s home was burned, too, and many Black residents fled that day. Burned fragments of what had been the schoolhouse were pocketed as souvenirs.

Half a century later, in 1981, Skidmore pulled together again, for the broad-daylight murder of “town bully” Ken Rex McElroy. Dozens of people saw him shot in his truck on Main Street, with at least two guns, and yet no one was ever arrested.

Isn’t it in that same bloodthirsty spirit that we’ll call the death of Lisa Montgomery justice? Unlike Gunn or McElroy, she was at least convicted in court. And unlike Gunn, her guilt is not in doubt. But in taking the life of a woman who never had much of a chance of one, neither is ours.

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ABOUT THE WRITER

Melinda Henneberger is a columnist and member of The Kansas City Star’s editorial board.

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©2020 The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Mo.)