Super Bowl = Super Spreader

The encouraging news is that the number of covid-19 infections and hospitalizations in the US seem to have started to decline, though the death rates are still high. Since death rates is a lagging indicator by about two weeks, we can hope that they too will begin to decline soon. This graph shows how super spreader events like Thanksgiving and Christmas caused spikes that are only just abating.

By The New York Times | Sources: State and local health agencies and hospitals

But now there is another potential super spreader event and that is the Super Bowl to be held this Sunday. A poll suggests that 25% of all Americans will be “gathering with other people that live outside of your home (i.e., with people that are not roommates/cohabitants, etc.,) to watch the upcoming Super Bowl.” 64% said no and 11% said they don’t know or have no opinion.

25% of the population is a lot. While I can sort of understand how some people feel the pull of family gatherings at Thanksgiving and Christmas to be so strong as to overcome common sense advice to just stay at home, risking one’s life to attend a party to watch a sports event on TV seems truly idiotic, especially since only half watch it to see the game with the other half split between wanting to see the commercials and the half-time show, both of which can be easily seen later.

AOC’s experience during the insurrection

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been scathing in her attacks of some House members and senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley for their roles in instigating and supporting the insurrectionists, calling for them to resign or be expelled from Congress. In her recounting of the details of what she personally went through, you can understand why. It is pretty harrowing.

In an account remarkably candid for an American lawmaker, Ocasio-Cortez recounted going into hiding as rioters scaled the Capitol on 6 January, hiding in a bathroom in her office while hearing banging on the walls and a man yelling: “Where is she? Where is she?” She had feared for her life, she told an Instagram Live audience of more than 150,000 people.

“I thought I was going to die,” she said. “And I had a lot of thoughts. I was thinking if this is the plan for me, then people will be able to take it from here.”
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QAnon, the Republican party, and the Know-Nothings

In a recent comment, Who Cares compared the current Republican party to the Know Nothings of days gone by. I had heard of the Know Nothings and was curious about them, mainly because it was such a weird name for a political party. But I knew nothing (Ha!) about them and decided to look into this and found this article by Zachary Karabell that took a deep look at their sudden emergence in the 19th century and their equally sudden collapse. He compares them more to the QAnon movement within the Republican party rather than the party itself, but that may be a distinction without much difference.
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The Republican bipartisanship gambit

Barack Obama spoke about the need for bipartisanship when he came into office in 2008 and the Republicans used that desire to thwart his election platform goals though Democrats had big majorities in both houses of Congress. Or at least that is the conventional wisdom. I was more cynical. I think he and Democrats used that bipartisanship ploy to escape having to follow through on their promises.

That scenario is being played out again. Joe Biden also made a big song-and-dance about wanting bipartisanship and now Republicans are whining that they need to be part of any policy decisions, although they and Trump gleefully rammed through their massive tax cuts for the rich and other moves while thumbing their noses at the Democrats. Ten Republican senators have demanded, in the name of bipartisanship, that Biden take seriously their ridiculously low offer of a $600 billion stimulus package which is much less than the $1.9 trillion that Biden has proposed. As part of their bipartisanship gambit, Republicans are now also shedding copious crocodile tears over the deficit, the very thing they cavalierly dismissed when their tax cuts for the rich sent it skyrocketing.
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The news about the vaccines is really, really good

I have had conversations with friends in Sri Lanka who ask me about the vaccines. They particularly want to know if I am going to get the vaccine and when I tell them that of course I will as soon as I become eligible, they are relieved because that country seems to be awash with all manner of false information that is scaring the hell out of people, such as that wearing masks can cause you to get sick and that the vaccine can give you HIV and even alter your DNA. This makes them apprehensive and I try my best to assure them that these stories are all false.
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The bleak future of the Republican party

Jane Mayer is an excellent reporter for the New Yorker magazine who has been following the career of Mitch McConnell for a long time. She has a new article examining his recent moves that seem to involve a distancing from Trump. The headline says that McConnell has dumped Trump but that was written just after he spoke in the Senate on January 6th saying that the election results should not be overturned. Since then, McConnell has edged back to Trump again.

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“Rudy come back!”

Just a couple of days ago I was reading how Trump had managed, after many, many top lawyers had refused his offers to become part of his legal team, to get a couple of reputedly competent lawyers to represent him during his impeachment trial where the oral arguments start on February 9th. Then news comes today that they too have bailed out.

The ability of Republican senators who plan to acquit Donald Trump at his upcoming impeachment trial to pretend to have weighed the case on the merits has been endangered by the mass resignation of Trump’s legal team at the weekend.
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But the trial schedule, and its substance, have been thrown into doubt with the departure of five lawyers on Trump’s defense team – apparently the entire team. The resignations were first reported by CNN, which said the lawyers and Trump disagreed over strategy.

A Trump spokesperson told the New York Times that there had been a strategy disagreement but denied it was over Trump’s insistence that his defense center on the wild, false accusations of election fraud that he has been peddling for months.
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The departure of Bowers and Deborah Barberi, two South Carolina lawyers, was described by a source familiar with the situation as a “mutual decision”.

Three other lawyers associated with the team, Josh Howard of North Carolina and Johnny Gasser and Greg Harris of South Carolina, also parted ways with Trump, another source said.

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