Pandemic
With all the Trumpsters around Pittsburgh, there just had to be a local angle on Donald Trump’s hydroxychloroquine Kool-Aid.[1] Well, here you go:
Residents of a Beaver County nursing home [Brighton Rehabilitation and Wellness Center] that is the site of one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the country were given an experimental drug [hydroxychloroquine] without approval from the [Pennsylvania] state health department, inspection records show.[2]
But you know, the elderly are expendable,[3] right? They’re just lining up to offer themselves[4] as human sacrifices to the capitalist god,[5] right? It’s apparently not known if the nursing home actually managed to kill anybody, though the drug is known to cause an irregular heartbeat.[6]
Oh, and about masks. The Washington Post records widespread opposition to wearing masks and notes that being Republican or a Trumpster has something to do with it. But the story really fails to explain the opposition,[7] with an earlier story claiming that “[a]ntipathy to masks is deeply ingrained in American culture, unlike in some Asian countries, where many people wear them whenever they are in public, as protection against bugs and air pollution.”[8]
Bullshit. Where is this history of antipathy to wearing masks? If this antipathy in fact exists, then how the fuck do we explain Halloween? And if it is indeed “cultural,” or as that earlier story suggests, rooted in opposition to the Ku Klux Klan,[9] then why is opposition most prominent among white supremacists and present only among conservatives assholes? The subject hadn’t even come up, probably since the Spanish flu in 1918. Psychopaths have pulled this out of their asses possibly since if we’re going to kill grandma,[10] we’d best get it done quickly—and I do hear suggestions that we should let the coronavirus “sweep through” the population from my passengers, as if “herd immunity” to COVID-19 was a thing[11]—so she isn’t an issue anymore.
And once again our neoliberal refusal to take care of human beings[12] rears its head as COVID-19 hits poor Latinx communities in California especially hard.[13]
Rong-Gong Lin, II, Melody Gutierrez, and Anita Chabria, “Coronavirus ravages California’s Central Valley, following a cruel and familiar path,” Los Angeles Times, July 28, 2020, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-28/coronavirus-ravages-californias-central-valley-following-a-cruel-and-familiar-path
Jamie Martines, “State: Brighton Rehab nursing home failed to get proper approval to use hydroxychloroquine on residents,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, July 28, 2020, https://triblive.com/local/regional/state-brighton-rehab-nursing-home-failed-to-get-proper-approval-to-use-hydroxychloroquine-on-residents/
Griff Witte, Ariana Eunjung Cha, and Josh Dawsey, “At the heart of dismal U.S. coronavirus response, a fraught relationship with masks,” Washington Post, July 28, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/at-the-heart-of-dismal-us-coronavirus-response-a-fraught-relationship-with-masks/2020/07/28/f47eccd0-cde4-11ea-bc6a-6841b28d9093_story.html
Protests
The often-armed anti-lockdown protests often had a white supremacist feel to them,[14] so it shouldn’t be at all surprising that armed groups are showing up in opposition to Black Lives Matter protests.[15]
Devlin Barrett et al., “Democrats seek to shame Barr over politics at the Justice Department,” Washington Post, July 28, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/28/bill-bar-testimony-live-updates/
Joshua Partlow, “Politics at the point of a gun,” Washington Post, July 28, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/28/conservative-armed-militias-protests-coronavirus/
Pittsburgh
Katie Blackley, “How The Pittsburgh Left Became Embedded In City Driving,” WESA, July 28, 2020, https://www.wesa.fm/post/how-pittsburgh-left-became-embedded-city-driving
Protests
Oregon’s governor has capitulated, promising a stronger state and local police presence around federal property in exchange for a promise to withdraw federal forces.[16] This is the sort of move that state and local officials will likely expect to enable them to return to their earlier plan of allowing the Black Lives Matter protests to fizzle while they implement the least possible amount of change in response to those protests.
Associated Press, “Oregon governor says U.S. agents will begin leaving Portland,” Los Angeles Times, July 29, 2020, https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-07-29/oregon-governor-says-us-agents-will-begin-leaving-portland
California Indians
This[17] sounds like good news, but there’s a point that confuses me:
Since the 1950s the property, known as Rancho Aguila, had been owned by Axel Adler, a Swedish immigrant. After his death in 2004, his family put it up for sale for $15m. After years-long negotiations, the Western Rivers Conservancy, a Portland-based environmental group, etched a deal to purchase the land and hand it over to the US Forest Service.
Working on behalf of the tribe, the conservancy secured a $4.5m grant from the California Natural Resources Agency to cover the land purchase and studies of the area.[18]
How does handing property over the U.S. Forest Service,[19] an agency devoted to forestry, return it to the Esselen Tribe?
Asaf Shalev, “Big Sur land returns to Esselen Tribe after 250 years,” Monterey County Weekly, July 27, 2020, https://www.montereycountyweekly.com/blogs/news_blog/big-sur-land-returns-to-esselen-tribe-after-250-years/article_b2713fdc-d058-11ea-9853-937ea5087e35.html
Mario Koran, “Northern California Esselen tribe regains ancestral land after 250 years,” Guardian, July 28, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/28/northern-california-esselen-tribe-regains-land-250-years
Paul Rogers, “Big Sur tribe regains land 250 years after being removed,” MSN, July 28, 2020, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/big-sur-tribe-regains-land-250-years-after-being-removed/ar-BB17g0NB