The Russian vaccine is terrifying

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

"I know that it works quite effectively, forms strong immunity, and, I repeat, it has passed all the needed checks." — Russian President Vladimir Putin, announcing that Russia has approved the Gamaleya vaccine against the coronavirus, even though it has not completed large-scale clinical trials.

WHAT'S HAPPENING

Primaries today in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Georgia, among other states. The two most interesting races: Squad member Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota faces a well funded primary challenger. And a QAnon supporter, Marjorie Taylor Greene, could win the Republican primary for a safe seat in Georgia.

Joe Biden still hasn't named his running mate. But he's expected to any day. He has said he's choosing a woman, and he's being urged to select a Black woman.

Uber and Lyft must treat drivers as employees under California law. A California state judge ruled against the gig economy giants, saying they have to stop treating drivers like independent contractors. Drivers would be entitled to minimum wage, unemployment insurance, and sick leave. Uber and Lyft will surely appeal the ruling, which takes effect in 10 days.

Neck fleeces may be worse than no mask at all. Researchers at Duke have ranked the effectiveness of 14 kinds of masks, and say multi-layer cotton masks are almost as good as N-95 masks. Bandanas, neck fleeces, and knit masks are bad.

VIEWS OF THE DAY

The early Russian vaccine is scary.

Every day without a vaccine degrades and immiserates the world. Massive amounts of economic activity is lost and thousands of people die every pandemic day. Anything that can be done to stop the disease should be done as quickly as possible.

So why criticize the Russians for approving an experimental vaccine before widespread testing of its safety and efficacy? If Russia accelerates the distribution of a safe vaccine, the world will be better off, right?

If it works perfectly, the Russian vaccine will be a blessing for the world. But if it doesn't, it could make it much harder for any nation to develop and distribute an effective vaccine.

The Russian vaccine may be fine, but Putin clearly sped up approval to get a public relations win. (The program is named Sputnik V, in a callback to the last time Russia won a scientific race.)

There's an adage: Vaccines don't work. Vaccinations work. It doesn't matter if a vaccine is effective if people won't take it. For us to stop COVID, we'll need widespread vaccination with a trusted and effective vaccine. If the Russian program goes awry, people around the world may rebel against any vaccine, even a great one.

The Russian acceleration puts pressure on other vaccine trials to hurry up. It may encourage regulators in other countries — such as, ahem, at Trump's FDA — to shortcut safety testing to get a homegrown vaccine to market. If nothing goes wrong, great!

But what if the Russian vaccine barely works, and outbreaks continue there? What if, even worse, the skimpily tested Russian vaccine causes horrid complications or deaths? What if the American programs, having sped up to match the Russians, produce shoddy vaccines?

Vaccine skepticism is already rampant and growing in the US and worldwide. If the first COVID vaccines fail, public trust in science will collapse, vaccine adoption rates will plummet, and the pandemic will rage on longer. Even if there is a safe and effective vaccine, it wouldn't matter, because not enough people would trust it.

So all of us should hope that the Russian vaccine is fantastic. — DP

The real reason Trump wants to bar citizens with COVID from entering the US

Robert Frost, who knew something about neighbors and border fences, wrote that, "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."

But maybe not, if the Trump administration gets its way. There's an incipient Trump proposal to ban American citizens and permanent residents from entering the country if they have COVID.

It's not that a president should never be allowed to bar citizens and permanent residents from reentry. You can imagine a truly urgent public health crisis — zombiefication! — where the president should ban citizens from returning.

But as is depressingly familiar, Trump is stretching executive power here for no compelling reason. The virus is racing through the US unassisted, and there's no evidence that Americans toting the virus back from other countries are worsening the epidemic. Banning (or at least delaying) Americans from reentering the country won't improve the nation's health.

So the proposed ban is a pretext. But for what?

First, this is a Stephen Miller special. In his not-at-all subtle campaign to undermine non-whites living in the US, Miller seeks to stop all immigration and motion from Latin America. This measure is aimed at the American citizens and permanent residents who live lives straddling the southern border. If these Americans fear they won't be able to reenter the US if they go back and forth to Mexico to work or to see family, their lives will get worse; their fears will increase; the bonds between the US and Mexico will weaken; and the border will harden.

Second, this move may help the administration shift discussion about the pandemic from government incompetence to immigration. That's a good reframing for Trump. "Protecting the border" delights Trump's base. It also signals that he's doing something about the virus, even though it actually won't limit the disease at all.

Finally, it expands executive power. It manufactures a false emergency — false because these travelers aren't worsening the pandemic — to increase Trump's power and spread fear. And that is how fascism works.  — DP

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The Tea Party is still ruining everything

If you feel like recent salvo of negotiations for coronavirus aid are going more slowly (and stupidly) than the last ones, it's because they are. And according to the Washington Post, a lot of that is because of White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

During the last round of talks in March, Democrats were mostly dealing with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who seems to be practical when it comes to propping up the economy during this escalating crisis. Now they're also dealing with one of the loudest voices of the Tea Party movement, and even in this precarious moment that voice is caterwauling about limiting federal spending.

Meadows is a stunt queen. He didn't spend his time in Congress building consensus, that's not what people like him do. Instead they cause scenes.

For example, according to WaPo, Meadows held up a meeting with Democrats because he refused to surrender his phone like everyone else. (You know, to avoid those pesky leaks the White House is always dealing with). He said he had an important call and he needed to keep his phone with him to receive it. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that was unacceptable.

Pelosi offered that perhaps an aide could hold his phone outside and alert him when the phone call occurred. Nope, Meadows wanted his aide in the meeting taking notes. Finally Mnuchin offered a Treasury aide to hold the phone and Meadows agreed.

I feel like I write this three times a week about something going on in the Trump administration, but it always bears repeating: No one has time for these pointless shenanigans and vacuous stunts. Americans don't care. This is our money you're holding hostage, Mark. It belongs to the American public — us. And overwhelmingly Americans want aid like the extra $600 on unemployment checks to continue — even in your precious swing states.

Leave your petty dramas outside with your phone. — Linette Lopez

Cuomo doesn't want an independent investigation into his COVID nursing home disaster. That's exactly why we need one.

In the early days of the pandemic, on March 25, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients. More than 6,000 of them died, according to the state.

However, Cuomo's own administration released a report in early July which said nursing home deaths were not a "significant factor" in New York's largest-in-the-nation death toll, and blamed nursing home employees for spreading the coronavirus.

After the report's release, Cuomo scoffed at the idea nursing home deaths were preventable as "a political conspiracy," and "ugly politics." He blamed conservative-leaning news outlets like the New York Post for daring to tread on his "hero" image, ignoring the fact that several prominent New York Democratic lawmakers have also called for independent investigations.

In a conference call yesterday Cuomo again shot down the prospect of any more investigations, saying, "I think you'd have to be blind to think it's not political … Just look at where it comes from and look at the sources and look at their political affiliation and … look at what publications raise it and what media networks raise [it]. It's kind of incredible."

But Cuomo can't reasonably lump the Associated Press — which reported that health experts believe the state's already-shocking toll of nursing home COVID deaths could be wildly undercounted — into a basket of his conservative media enemies.

If Cuomo wants to prove deserving of his "hero" narrative, then he should demand full transparency of his administration's coronavirus response. Denying that anything went exceptionally wrong — also denying that what went wrong could have been prevented —  is an inherent contradiction.

Hiding behind "politics" to avoid accountability is a cowardly insult to the public's intelligence. — Anthony Fisher

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LIFE

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