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Current as of July 6, 2020 at 8:00 a.m.
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COVID-19 Testing Sites - Florida
- Drive-Thru Testing sites available are listed by county. Each walk up site can test up to 200 individuals per day. Access the list here
Safe. Smart. Step-by-Step
The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity is now giving daily updates on Florida’s Reemployment Assistance program
Access the Florida Department of Health COVID Dashboard
Graphs, Charts, and Real Time Tracking of COVID-19
Data Sources
Data Sources on Social Media
Other Resources
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To date, more than 28 million COVID19 tests have been performed nationwide. Dr. Dean Watson, VP and Chief Integration Officer at TMH, is sharing more on the increase in testing, the importance of understanding hospitalization & mortality rates and why it's crucial to continue wearing masks.
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The Stanford Daily [TSD]: Could you tell me about your research on the trajectory of China’s outbreak?
Michael Levitt [ML]: I started studying the outbreak in China around Jan. 20. Everyone talks about viruses growing exponentially, and when you divide the number of deaths today by the number of deaths yesterday, you should expect to get the same number. But when looking at the outbreak in China, I noticed that in three or four successive days, the amount it was increasing was actually getting less. I think one day it was 30%, the next day it was 26%, then 22% and 18%. I thought “Wow, this is actually heading toward no increase.”
TSD: How did you make a prediction about when the outbreak would peak from this data?
ML: The [rate at which deaths had increased from the day before] looked like [it] fell in a straight line. Sure enough, there were some jumps in the numbers, but each day, there was a smaller percentage increase than you would have expected. From this, you could get a pretty good idea of when it would end, or if not end, when we’d reach a point where it would stop growing and start to slow down.
TSD: Could you tell me about how you went on to study outbreaks in other countries?
ML: Well, after China, it was then South Korea, and then Italy. And to my surprise, other countries actually looked a lot like China, even though China had very, very strict social distancing. I sort of said, well, social distancing might be very important. But the fact is, even without this, the virus seems to be working to flatten the curve. The virus seems to have this intrinsic property of not growing exponentially but actually growing slower and slower each day.
TSD: Why do you think coronavirus has this tendency?
ML: Imagine I had a confirmed case of COVID. Unbeknownst to me, a declared case, I’ve also infected my friends, my kids, people near me. And this means on the first day, I can infect people, but then the next day, I can’t find people so easily to infect. In some ways, what’s happening is that visible cases are having a hard time finding people to infect, because the invisible cases have already infected them. Since then, there’s been a lot of extra findings about maybe we have some natural immunity to the virus as well.
TSD: Would you describe this mechanism as populations achieving herd immunity?
ML: You don’t actually have to infect everybody, depending on how fast the virus grows. Some people say 80% [of the population needs to develop antibodies], some people say 60%. I personally think it’s less than 30%. And some people are saying we’re never going to get herd immunity. I don’t think so.
TSD: Why not?
ML: There have been maybe five or six situations where there was massive infection, including on the Diamond Princess cruise ship or provinces in Italy. You will find that the final death count is something like a tenth of a percent of the population. You could say that each of these places stopped because they had wonderful social distancing, or we can simply say they stopped because there was no one left to infect. We will know in a few weeks the answer to this question because of what happens in Sweden.
TSD: Sweden?
ML: If Sweden stops at about 5,000 or 6,000 deaths, we will know that they’ve reached herd immunity, and we didn’t need to do any kind of lockdown. My own feeling is that it will probably stop because of herd immunity. COVID is serious, it’s at least a serious flu. But it’s not going to destroy humanity as people thought.
TSD: What is your prediction for when the rest of the world will reach a peak number of deaths?
ML: Something between eight and 14 weeks. But even places like South Korea that have peaked, they’re still seeing deaths. Trying to predict the final death is still very hard.
The United States now has so few deaths due to COVID-19 that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday it is approaching the threshold for dipping below the level of an epidemic.
The CDC defines an epidemic as an outbreak from which the number of deaths per week exceeds a given percentage of total deaths within the nation. The number of deaths from COVID-19 has steadily declined since hitting its peak in early May after it began spiking in the second week in March.
That threshold death rate for COVID-19 and other diseases such as influenza and pneumonia fluctuates, ranging typically from 5 to 7 percent at the height of flu season. The CDC said the Wuhan flu death rate had, during the last week in June, become equal to the epidemic threshold of 5.9 percent, reaching its lowest point since the end of last year.
The agency warned this is likely to change as more death certificates from recent weeks are processed, but it could mean hopeful news for the upcoming weeks. The total number of deaths due to COVID-19 has been declining for 10 straight weeks, concluding with week 26 that ended June 27. This suggests the United States could be on the verge of not being considered in an epidemic.
“Based on death certificate data, the percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia, influenza or COVID-19 (PIC) decreased from 9.0% during week 25 to 5.9% during week 26, representing the tenth week of a declining percentage of deaths due to PIC,” according to the CDC’s website.
The prevalence of immunity to the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 may be much higher than previous research suggests according to an intriguing new study by researchers associated with Karolinska Institute in Sweden. In addition, a new German study by researchers associated with the University Hospital Tübingen in Germany reports that people who have been previously infected with versions of the coronavirus that cause the common cold also have some immunity to the COVID-19 virus. If these reports stand up to further scrutiny, it would be very good news because they suggest that the pandemic could be over sooner and ultimately be less lethal than feared.
First, a few caveats: Both studies are based on small sample sizes and neither have yet been vetted by peer review.
In the Swedish study, researchers not only checked 200 participants for the presence of immunological proteins called antibodies produced in response to COVID-19 infections, but also for T-cells which are another virus-fighting component of the immune system. Detecting and evaluating T-cells is a bit trickier than measuring antibodies.
The Karolinska researchers, according to the accompanying press release, "performed immunological analyses of samples from over 200 people, many of whom had mild or no symptoms of COVID-19." The study tested COVID-19 patients, exposed asymptomatic family members, healthy blood donors who gave blood during 2020, and a 2019 donor control group.
"One interesting observation was that it wasn't just individuals with verified COVID-19 who showed T-cell immunity but also many of their exposed asymptomatic family members," said Karolinska researcher Soo Aleman. "Moreover, roughly 30 per cent of the blood donors who'd given blood in May 2020 had COVID-19-specific T cells, a figure that's much higher than previous antibody tests have shown."
"Our results indicate that roughly twice as many people have developed T-cell immunity compared with those who we can detect antibodies in," noted Karolinska Center for Infectious Medicine researcher Marcus Buggert.
Study co-author Hans-Gustaf Ljunggren told The Telegraph that if the study's findings are replicated, they would apply to any country. London, for instance, might have about 30 percent immunity and New York above 40 percent. If so, some parts of the U.S. are much closer to herd immunity than population-wide antibody testing currently suggests.
Leading epidemiologist Dr. John Ioannidis of Stanford University estimates that about 150-300 million or more people have already been infected by COVID-19 around the world, far more than the 10 million documented cases.
In an interview with Greek Reporter, the Greek American scientist warns, however, that the draconian lockdowns imposed in many countries may have the opposite effect of what was intended. “Globally, the lockdown measures have increased the number of people at risk of starvation to 1.1 billion, and they are putting at risk millions of lives,” he says.
It was just three months ago, soon after the onset of the coronavirus outbreak in the US, when Dr. Ioannidis wrote an article for the journal STAT excoriating the US and other countries for not conducting enough testing, and deploring how little real evidence there was of true infection rates, which he feared might soar and create widespread societal unrest.
Now, after the world has experienced approximately 490,000 deaths from the virus, Greek Reporter contacted Dr. Ioannidis to ask the professor for his opinion on several points he made in his March 17th article, and what he has observed in the fight against the virus as it has progressed around the globe.
If the press suffered a nervous breakdown after the 2016 election — and they did — they are experiencing a full-on psychotic break amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd protests.
It is as if the lockdowns and nationwide demonstrations caused media executives to snap, leaving them in a wide-eyed, obsessive frenzy to cleanse society of all problematics, screaming all the while, “Out, damned spot!”
CNN, for example, engaged in explicit political activism this week when it sought to shame companies that have yet to pull ads from Facebook over CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s persistent refusal to censor problematic speech.
“These are the big brands that haven't pulled ads from Facebook yet,” reads the headline. The report then goes on to name and shame the businesses that have had the temerity to continue to advertise on one of the biggest social media platforms in the world.
This is not news reporting. This is activism. It is a poorly disguised effort by a major newsroom to pressure companies into boycotting a social media platform that is too committed to political neutrality and too opposed to political censorship for the media's taste. In any other time and place, the press would have mocked and condemned the CNN article. But these are unusual times. Many journalists today agree with CNN's shaming tactics and the reasons behind them, and so the Facebook report came and went this week with barely a whimper of objection from our brave Fourth Estate.
Over at the New York Times, the occupied opinion section, which claims to have standards against “needlessly harsh” commentaries that fall “short of the thoughtful approach that advances useful debate,” published an especially unhinged article this week titled “America’s Enduring Caste System.”
“Throughout human history, three caste systems have stood out,” writes contributor Isabel Wilkerson. “The lingering, millenniums-long caste system of India. The tragically accelerated, chilling and officially vanquished caste system of Nazi Germany. And the shape-shifting, unspoken, race-based caste pyramid in the United States.”
She adds, “Each version relied on stigmatizing those deemed inferior to justify the dehumanization necessary to keep the lowest-ranked people at the bottom and to rationalize the protocols of enforcement. A caste system endures because it is often justified as divine will, originating from sacred text or the presumed laws of nature, reinforced throughout the culture and passed down through the generations.”
Yes, it seems a bit off for Wilkerson to lump the U.S. in with Nazi Germany, but that is not even the craziest part. That distinction goes to her exceptionally ignorant assertion that 2 of the 3 most notable caste systems in history come from the last 250 years. Several ancient empires would beg to differ. Then again, if your viewpoint is the right one, New York Times editors will not be sticklers for facts.
Elsewhere at the New York Times, the news section decided this week that now is a good time to remind its readers that Mount Rushmore is very problematic.
The recent day-over-day increases in reported COVID-19 cases have generated public reactions that range from COVID fatigue to cautiousness to outright panic. In many places, the number of new cases being reported each day even eclipses the numbers seen at the prior peak of the pandemic in the U.S. this spring. Nationally, on June 26th, there were 40,588 new cases per day reported, compared to a peak of 44,726 on April 26th. The increases are being driven by certain states and regions. Two states that exemplify this increase are Texas and Florida. In Texas, on June 26th, there were 5,799 new cases compared with a previous peak of 1,801 on May 16. In Florida, the reported number of new cases per day increased from 673 to 8,942 over the same time period.
However, rising case numbers only paint part of the picture. Case numbers alone do not provide sufficient information on whether there is a true accelerating spread of infection or just greater detection through increased testing. Case numbers alone cannot reliably inform policy-makers whether the new cases will have the same impact on the health-care system and COVID-related deaths as cases detected earlier in the pandemic in previous hotspots such as New York City and Boston.
In order to know if there is truly increased spread, we need to supplement case data with information on the percentage of tests that are positive — the positivity. In an ideal world where we knew the infection status of the whole population, we would only need to monitor the percentage of the population who were infected each day to determine whether the spread of infection was accelerating. In the absence of these data, the most practical approach to assess true spread of infection is to look at the percentage of tests that are positive, and from this to infer the percentage of the population that is infected. Indeed, one of CDC’s gating criteria for opening the country is declining positivity over a 14-day period at a time when testing rates were stable.
However, the validity of any inference about the spread of infection based on changes in positivity depends on the degree to which the characteristics (e.g., age, severity of illness) of the people being tested do not change over time. The more the characteristics of people being tested change, the harder it is to determine whether changes in positivity are due to changes in the spread or changes in who is being tested (e.g., testing a higher percentage of symptomatic people).
There is good reason to believe that some of the decline we saw in positivity over the course of the pandemic was due to a change in those being tested. We know that, early on in the pandemic, when testing was very limited in the U.S. (~170,000 tests per day at the end of March), individuals with symptoms of COVID were prioritized in testing and many of those tested positive (~20 percent positivity). Earlier this month, as testing became much more available (~550,000 tests per day) the positivity rate was only about 5 percent. We assume that, with expanded testing, more asymptomatic people and people with milder illness were now making up a greater percentage of those tested than earlier in the pandemic. This is consistent with recent reports from several states showing that more younger people are being tested now than previously.
Of major concern is that, over the past few weeks, national positivity has increased from about 5 percent to more than 6 percent. According to the CDC, the number of tests conducted each day over the past three weeks has been relatively stable at between 500,000 and 600,000 tests per day. This suggest that the characteristics of those tested are not changing significantly, allowing inferences about the nature of the spread of infection to be more valid.
This is a game that’s been going on since the earliest days of the COVID-19 outbreak. Since we’re (correctly) under the impression that it’s overwhelmingly a disease of the elderly who also have pre-existing conditions, notwithstanding claims that it’s “posing a universal risk,” the MSM sees it as a solemn obligation to find outliers and twist numbers. It ghoulishly crawls through obits to find someone, anyone who doesn’t fit that category. And beyond. The New York Times wrote of a 27-year-old “COVID-19 death” on its front page. The guy was murdered. Far from his young age being a red flag, it made it too priceless for fact-checking. And, no, he hadn’t even tested positive for COVID-19, as has been the excuse for listing other homicide victims and, infamously, the death of a man who died of alcohol poisoning.
This has been a popular game dating back to the fake “Heterosexual AIDS breakout” when again obits were combed for non-gay, non-drug using victims who, it so often turned out, were either gay or drug-users. When John C. Holmes, the, um, very well-endowed porn star had become a straight cause célèbre for the dangers of “straight sex” in the porn industry, I went to a porno shop and saw a videotape movie box showing him having anal sex – on the receiving end.
We also saw lots of attention given to, as a Washington Post headline put it, “Young and middle-aged people, barely sick with covid-19, are dying of strokes.” Turns out it was essentially based on a study comprising five (5) people. A later wider analysis concluded (translated from Spanish) “Stroke does not appear to be a major manifestation of Covid-19.)
As testing has expanded from the clearly sick to persons with no symptoms, we’re getting more headlines like: “Coronavirus is infecting more young people in their 20s and 30s.... ” Right. That’s the way it works.
And the game continues. Now the Florida Sun-Sentinel breathlessly informs us that two people who tested positive for COVID-19 have appendicitis. With “only” 250,000 Americans getting that disease annually and 2.3 million positive for coronavirus, it cannot possibly be sheer overlap.
hould we be concerned about the total number of COVID-19 deaths or COVID-19 cases that do not result in death? On June 29, 2020, former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson, and an important alternative voice on COVID-19, received a note from a managing partner of the medical care facilities CompleteCare in Texas. The author tells of what’s happening on the ground, and it differs dramatically from the headlines driving Texas officials to once again close up the economy in a panic over a rise in cases.
Recall that the original idea of “flattening the curve” was not to make the virus go away but to slow the spread of infections to prevent hospitals from getting overwhelmed in the short run (this was never an issue in Texas). The stay at home order for two weeks was meant to buy time for hospitals to get enough equipment and deal with patients over time rather than all at once. The good news is the hospitals were never overrun.
It also turns out that COVID-19 deaths were a fraction of the most alarmist predictions that drove public policy, and over time that COVID-19 deaths continue to decrease.
But now we hear about rising cases – not deaths – and that is introducing more calls for lockdowns and travel bans.
What the letter reports will not shock anyone who has followed cases during the reopening period. The cases are mostly young people who are in very little danger from the virus. What should be considered good news – that the case fatality rate is falling each day – is being misinterpreted by the press.
As for this gentleman’s willingness to speak out, it is a heroic act in these strange times. He worries of becoming a target and it is a legitimate concern. Even so, the truth needs to come out. AIER gives the letter, originally posted on Berenson’s twitter feed, a full airing.
Seeking auguries of the future, people in the past probed the livers of sheep, observed the flights of birds, gazed into crystal balls, read tea leaves, cast I Ching coins, and traced patterns on burnt bones. Modern prognosticators resort to statistical models.
For example, the initial public health and policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic were driven by models that predicted imminent catastrophic rates of infection and death at the beginning stages of the novel coronavirus outbreak. Notoriously, the Imperial College (I.C.) infectious disease model projected that as many 2.2 million Americans could eventually die of COVID-19 if no action to stymie it was taken. Later, the I.C. model projections for infections and deaths were drastically reduced once it became evident that the public was adopting measures—lockdowns, social distancing, frequent hand washing—that would greatly slow the spread of the disease.
The I.C. model and its principal investigator, epidemiologist Neil Ferguson, received well-deserved scathing criticism when he initially refused to publish the source code for the model for other researchers to evaluate. However, outside researchers recently reported that they have been able to independently rerun the I.C. simulation and have reproduced its results. That just means that if other researchers use the same assumptions that the I.C. team did, they will get the same results.
Last week, a global team of researchers issued a compelling manifesto in Nature outlining five ways to ensure that models serve society. Modelers, they argue, must take care to frankly assess the uncertainties and sensitivity of their models; avoid obfuscatory complexity; make clear the normative values chosen by the models' developers; avoid spurious precision, and acknowledge their ignorance. "Mathematical models are a great way to explore questions. They are also a dangerous way to assert answers," write the authors. "Asking models for certainty or consensus is more a sign of the difficulties in making controversial decisions than it is a solution, and can invite ritualistic use of quantification."
Since the beginning of the pandemic six months ago, researchers have been trying to figure out how deadly the coronavirus is; that is, what percentage of infected people die of the disease? This infection fatality rate (IFR) is calculated by dividing the number of deaths into the total number of people who come down with the disease. However, it has become increasingly clear that most people who become infected are never officially diagnosed because their illnesses are so mild that they never seek medical care and also because many infected people exhibit no symptoms.
Last week, a team of modelers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management released a preprint of their study that calculates that total global cases and deaths through June 18, 2020, are estimated to be 11.8 and 1.48 times greater than diagnosed cases and officially counted deaths, that is, respectively, at 88.5 million cases and 600,000 deaths as of that date. On the basis of those estimates, they reckon that the global average IFR is just under 0.7 percent.
The MIT researchers further calculate that the infected percentage of each individual country and their IFRs and note that these estimates "vary substantially, e.g., Ecuador (18%; 0.61%), Chile (15.5%; 0.57%), Mexico (8.8%; 0.69%), Iran (7.9%; 0.44%), USA (5.3%; 0.99%), UK (5.2%; 1.59%), Iceland (1.65%, 0.56%), New Zealand (0.1%, 0.64%), but all nations remain well below the level needed for herd immunity."
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Sweeping reforms signed into law by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday will loosen or abolish occupational licensing regulations across more than 30 professions, cutting red tape for potentially thousands of workers in the state.
The Occupational Freedom and Opportunity Act, which cleared the state legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support earlier this year, "will save thousands of Floridians both time and money for years to come," DeSantis said in a statement announcing his signing of the bill.
State Rep. Blaise Ingoglia (R–Spring Hill), the bill's sponsor, called it the largest license deregulation effort in Florida history. According to the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm that advocates for licensing reform and sues states over unfair licensing laws, Florida's House Bill 1193 (H.B. 1193) might be an even bigger deal. In a statement, the institute said the bill "repeals more occupational licensing laws than any licensing reform ever passed by any other state."
The bill fully repeals some of the state's most unnecessary licensing laws, including those that previously governed interior designers, hair braiders, and boxing match timekeepers. It loosens the state's cosmetology licensing laws to allow a wide range of hair and nail styling activities to take place outside of licensed salons—a particularly timely reform in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, as it will pave the way for stylists to make house calls.
Dieticians and nutritionists will be able to work without fear of being targetted by sting operations and threatened with jail time simply for the supposed crime of giving out tips about healthy eating. The new law will allow "any person who provides information, wellness recommendations, or advice concerning nutrition" to do so without a license as long as they do not provide those services to individuals under the direct care of a physician for medical reasons, or advertise themselves as medical professionals.
The bill also eliminates separate business licenses for architects, geologists, and landscape architects who already hold individual licenses in those fields. (Although that does raise the question of why geologists and landscape architects need to be licensed in the first place; hopefully DeSantis will get around to fixing that next.)
Importantly, the new law follows on some reforms passed by Arizona last year to expand the recognition of out-of-state licenses. Barbers and cosmetologists licensed in other states will be allowed to practice their trades in Florida without having to get re-licensed, and the law instructs the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation to begin the process of identifying other professions where similar reciprocity could be offered.
The new law also clears up a longstanding disagreement over whether state or local officials control the licensing process for food trucks by placing health and safety issues under state authority. Local officials will still be able to keep food trucks out of certain areas with zoning laws, but they won't be able to pile additional licensing requirements on top of existing state rules to block vendors from operating. Florida is just the third state to pass such a law, according to the Institute for Justice.
"Florida's reform will fuel economic growth and open up opportunity to entry-level entrepreneurs throughout the state," says Scott Bullock, president of the Institute for Justice.
Licensing reform is on the agenda in many state capitols. More than 1,000 licensing reform bills were introduced last year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which tracks state-level legislation. But lawmakers everywhere are now chasing Florida, which has raised the bar for what should be considered achievable.
Congratulations taxpayer! You just bought a trucking company. Well, not an entire trucking company but you did get 30% of the equity in a trucking company. Via the WSJ:
U.S. Treasury to Lend $700 Million to Trucking Firm YRC Worldwide
Government will take a 29.6% equity stake in the company, Treasury says
WASHINGTON—The U.S. government plans to lend $700 million in coronavirus stimulus funds to trucking firmYRC Worldwide Inc.,in exchange for a 29.6% equity stake in the company, the Treasury Department said Wednesday.
The Treasury said publicly traded YRC qualified for the loan under a provision ofthe $2.2 trillion lawCongress enacted in late March that authorized$17 billion for companiesdeemed essential to national security. (emphasis added)
Let's ignore for a minute that bit about "essential to national security" because we know that wasn't the real reason for this loan. There is no way this trucking company is essential to national security. This thing was headed for zero even before the virus hit and if the Treasury didn't have CARES Act money burning a hole in its pocket, it would have been reorganized in bankruptcy court. This company has been operating with a heavy debt load for years and a re-org is exactly what it needed to shed some obligations - read pension liability - so it could compete. Service to the government would have likely continued uninterrupted through bankruptcy. Even if it was liquidated, there are plenty of trucking companies out there that do less than truckload hauling all the time. Here's one right here, a little smaller but consistently profitable with less debt.
So, why did we lend $700 million to a company that already had $1.1 billion in debt it couldn't pay? Why did we only get 30% of the equity when we could have bought all the equity yesterday for less than $100 million? Why didn't we let this thing go bankrupt and buy it then? It could have come out the other side with less debt and at least a chance of succeeding and taxpayers being made whole.
The loan to YRC will mature on Sept. 30, 2024, and consists of two $350 million tranches. The funds will allow the company to cover obligations including three months of missed pension and health-care payments at “roughly $40 million a month,” Mr. Hawkins said. The company will also use the money for equipment and property lease payments, and to make capital investments in its fleet.
Is this just a backdoor bailout of the pension plan? Why would the Treasury do that?
One of the most frustrating aspects of the novel coronavirus pandemic is how many early warning signs and response plans for just such an event were waved away by public health officials, the president, governors, and just about everyone else who could have made a difference. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates warned about a pandemic in a 2015 TED talk that's been viewed over 29 million times. The George W. Bush administration nearly put in place a pandemic preparedness plan in 2005 before letting it drop. So when President Donald Trump said on March 6 that the coronavirus "came out of nowhere," it wasn't quite accurate.
It's important to underscore that all the death and economic wreckage COVID-19 has caused didn't just "come out of nowhere" because there's another totally predictable crisis that promises to be even more damaging to our way of life: The national debt—the amount of money the federal government owes—is already choking down economic growth, but in the future, it could lead to "sudden inflation," and "a loss of confidence in the federal government's ability or commitment to repay its debts in full." "Such a crisis could spread globally" causing some "financial institutions to fail." That's all according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which has been warning Americans about the long-term consequence of the ballooning debt for years.
Like the coronavirus, the debt problem has the potential to seemingly appear out of the blue and turn our world upside down in a matter of weeks. There's plenty we can and should do to avoid or minimize the potential shock to our system, but Congress and presidents from both major parties have accepted Dick Cheney's false maxim that "deficits don't matter." Instead, they just keep spending more than we take in during good times and bad, even though being so deeply in hock will make us less able to deal with a future crisis.
The amount of money the government owed to the public was 79 percent of gross domestic product at the end of 2019, up from 31 percent in 2001. The COVID-19 lockdowns and subsequent emergency spending will push the curve above 100 percent of GDP by the end of 2020, and it's expected to keep rising.
Emergency spending and plunging tax revenues are making a bad situation worse. CBO forecasts that the budget deficit this year will be 17.9 percent of GDP, meaning that the government is running much larger deficits, racking up significantly more debt, than it did even at the height of the financial crisis of 2007-2008.
Economists such as Nobel Prize-winner Paul Krugman and proponents of modern monetary theory (MMT) look at the absence of inflation and higher interest rates so far as justification for ever-more spending and borrowing. While it's true that the cost of paying interest on the debt is still dwarfed by other expenditures, that's because historically low interest rates have made government borrowing cheap.
But there's no reason to believe that interest rates won't rise over time. According to conservative estimates from the CBO, as the total budget grows as a percentage of GDP, the cost of paying interest on the debt will increase faster until, by 2050, it accounts for about 24 cents of every dollar spent. And these estimates don't take into account emergency spending for COVID-19, which will make servicing the debt even more costly over time. Like a monthly credit card payment that eats into a household budget, federal debt means less money to buy other things.
And when governments run large, persistent deficits, it also has a devastating impact on economic growth over time. Our current debt levels could reduce GDP by about one-quarter over 23 years, according to research by Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. It's a case of what French economist Frédéric Bastiat referred to as "the unseen" because we'll never get to experience how much wealthier we otherwise would have been had the federal government practiced fiscal prudence. Anemic growth will impact the poorest Americans most of all, causing their material progress to slow considerably. It means less leisure time, smaller homes, older cars, and less health care.
In the short-term, there's no question that the government can and will be able to borrow massively, and interest rates are likely to stay low for the time being as the world shifts into recession. But there's also the specter of investors here and abroad refusing to buy U.S.-issued debt as our economy flattens, China flexes its economic and political might, and alternative instruments such as bitcoin and gold offer safe refuge. Like a global pandemic, a debt crisis seems impossibly off in the distance until it's the only thing you can see. Even the most hubristic economist or president would have to admit that there will come a time when the U.S. dollar is no longer the world's reserve currency. That change won't necessarily be as dramatic as when German paper marks became worthless after World War I, but it will massively reduce purchasing power even as it increases the cost of everything.
Spending proponents sometimes cite World War II when talking about battling COVID-19; the analogy is apt for reasons they may not intend. Between 1940 and 1945, federal spending increased tenfold from $10 billion to over $100 billion to pay for the war effort. But when victory was won, the government immediately cut military spending. Once peacetime growth resumed, the debt-to-GDP ratio fell quickly. Then, starting in the 1970s, with the exception of a five-year dip during the economic boom of the 1990s, the federal government has been growing the size of the debt in relation to GDP.
As I said in a recent column about getting through tough financial times, the current crisis is impacting millions of hard-working and responsible Americans who suddenly find themselves in a financial crunch they could never have imagined only a few months ago.
My heart goes out to every one of you, especially those of you who are single parents. But although things can feel like they're spinning out of control now, the key is to stay positive and take action. Here are some concrete steps you can take right away to help you both financially and emotionally.
File for unemployment
If you haven’t already, do it now. The state you live in and the amount you made over the past year will determine how much you get. It won't replace your entire paycheck, but can certainly help. Also, the federal government has increased benefits due to COVID-19, by adding an extra $600/week for up to four months. Check with your state for details. Careeronestop.org is a good resource for unemployment updates and linking to your state's unemployment insurance website.
Look into COBRA
If you work for a company with at least 20 employees, you may be able to continue your group health insurance through COBRA for up to 18 months. The catch is that premiums can be a lot higher than you paid as an employee.
Contact the benefits department at your previous employer and get the facts including the cost and the process for making the switch. Then do some comparison-shopping before you elect COBRA. You may be able to find a lower-cost policy through your state's or the federal ACA exchange at healthcare.gov. You may qualify for a Special Enrollment Period if you lose health coverage through your employer or the employer of a family member.
Whatever you do, health insurance is a must for you and your children. You don't want an illness or injury to jeopardize you or your family—especially now.
Do some careful personal accounting
With a reduction in income, it's more important than ever to get a handle on your expenses. Here's what I suggest you do first:
Focus on essentials—List what you spend on your mortgage or rent, utilities, phone/internet, groceries, insurance premiums, debt payments—anything you have to pay each month. This will help you decide where you can most easily cut back for a while.
Prioritize your debts—Debts can't be ignored, but they can be prioritized. Once you have your essentials covered, consider temporarily paying only the minimum on mortgage/rent, car loans, student loans and credit cards. Be proactive and contact creditors if you’re struggling before they reach out to you.
Look at your budget in light of your resources. With this information in front of you, calculate how much money you have on hand and how long you can get by. Include your severance, unemployment benefits, child-support if you get it, and any emergency savings. Don't forget to include the stimulus payment you may qualify for under the recently passed economic relief plan.
Review your 401(k) options
I’m glad you mentioned having 401(k) savings, because that will be a very valuable resource down the road. You basically have four options:
Leave the 401(k) with your employer plan.
Roll over to a new employer.
Roll over to an IRA.
Withdraw or cash out the 401(k).
It’s important to understand differences in fees, taxes and risks with all options. Discuss your situation with a tax and financial advisor if you need more help.
July 1 will go down as an important day for American workers seeking to reenter the workforce. It is the date the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, replaces the decades old North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.
President Trump was determined to replace NAFTA from the day he took office. NAFTA reflected the old way of doing trade agreements, under which our trading partners shirked labor protections while American companies shipped operations—and jobs—to cheaper foreign locations. U.S. factories were shuttered, our manufacturing base shrank, and we grew more dependent on foreign suppliers.
Before President Trump, trade policy ceded our manufacturing strength to foreign nations. So it was that in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, we had to turn to China for medical supplies to contain the virus that China had unleashed on the world. The USMCA marks a new era for American trade policy. Between strong labor protections and robust support for the American auto industry, the agreement places our nation’s manufacturers at the center of a blue collar comeback.
One key provision of the USMCA requires that 40 percent to 45 percent of auto content be made by workers in North America earning, on average, at least $16 an hour. a rate that’s multiple times the typical manufacturing wage in Mexico. Another rule requires that at least 75 percent of a vehicle’s content originate in North America, a threshold significantly higher than NAFTA’s.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative expects the USMCA to create as many as 76,000 new U.S. automotive jobs over five years. And altogether, the nonpartisan International Trade Commission estimated the agreement is expected to create as many as 500,000 new U.S. jobs, and add as much as $235 billion to the economy.
The USMCA breaks ground in another way, with what the director general general of the International Labor Organization has called the “most comprehensive” labor chapter ever included in a trade agreement. Under NAFTA, Mexican companies undercut American prices in part because they weren’t held to the same labor standards we have for American workers. The USMCA changes this, with high standards that are now fully enforceable, putting American workers on a level playing field with our continental neighbors.
All three signatory countries have agreed to maintain the fundamental labor rights recognized by the International Labor Organization, and to enforce and uphold their own labor laws. We’ve already seen these promises turn into action by our southern neighbor
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If the press suffered a nervous breakdown after the 2016 election — and they did — they are experiencing a full-on psychotic break amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd protests.
It is as if the lockdowns and nationwide demonstrations caused media executives to snap, leaving them in a wide-eyed, obsessive frenzy to cleanse society of all problematics, screaming all the while, “Out, damned spot!”
CNN, for example, engaged in explicit political activism this week when it sought to shame companies that have yet to pull ads from Facebook over CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s persistent refusal to censor problematic speech.
“These are the big brands that haven't pulled ads from Facebook yet,” reads the headline. The report then goes on to name and shame the businesses that have had the temerity to continue to advertise on one of the biggest social media platforms in the world.
This is not news reporting. This is activism. It is a poorly disguised effort by a major newsroom to pressure companies into boycotting a social media platform that is too committed to political neutrality and too opposed to political censorship for the media's taste. In any other time and place, the press would have mocked and condemned the CNN article. But these are unusual times. Many journalists today agree with CNN's shaming tactics and the reasons behind them, and so the Facebook report came and went this week with barely a whimper of objection from our brave Fourth Estate.
Over at the New York Times, the occupied opinion section, which claims to have standards against “needlessly harsh” commentaries that fall “short of the thoughtful approach that advances useful debate,” published an especially unhinged article this week titled “America’s Enduring Caste System.”
“Throughout human history, three caste systems have stood out,” writes contributor Isabel Wilkerson. “The lingering, millenniums-long caste system of India. The tragically accelerated, chilling and officially vanquished caste system of Nazi Germany. And the shape-shifting, unspoken, race-based caste pyramid in the United States.”
She adds, “Each version relied on stigmatizing those deemed inferior to justify the dehumanization necessary to keep the lowest-ranked people at the bottom and to rationalize the protocols of enforcement. A caste system endures because it is often justified as divine will, originating from sacred text or the presumed laws of nature, reinforced throughout the culture and passed down through the generations.”
Yes, it seems a bit off for Wilkerson to lump the U.S. in with Nazi Germany, but that is not even the craziest part. That distinction goes to her exceptionally ignorant assertion that 2 of the 3 most notable caste systems in history come from the last 250 years. Several ancient empires would beg to differ. Then again, if your viewpoint is the right one, New York Times editors will not be sticklers for facts.
Elsewhere at the New York Times, the news section decided this week that now is a good time to remind its readers that Mount Rushmore is very problematic.
Two bullet-ridden bodies lay sprawled on bloodstained concrete steps. Alongside, relatives of the victims are wailing and collapse to the ground. In another part of the city, a gang of youths use spray paint to disable security cameras before robbing a corner store. Later, video footage captures police officers sitting helplessly in their patrol car as a baying crowd hurls glass bottles at them.
This is lawless New York – a city that was once America’s glittering crown jewel but which risks descending into mob rule.
Murder figures have skyrocketed and a combination of the coronavirus pandemic, Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests and weak political leadership is in danger of achieving what Osama Bin Laden never could: bringing the Big Apple to its knees.
The scenes described above took place last weekend. Chioke Thompson, 23, and his friend Stephanie Perkins, 39, had been gunned down on the steps of Chioke’s Brooklyn home. His schoolteacher mum Sophia wept as she said: ‘Even as he died, he was trying to shield her with his body. It makes no sense. Neither of them did anything wrong.’
With the gunman still on the loose and their families insisting neither victim had any links to drugs or gangs, the pair appear to be the latest grim statistics in a crimewave sweeping the city.
Exclusive from Gen. Flynn: If We Don't Act, 2% of the People Are About To Control the Other 98%
https://www.westernjournal.com/exclusive-gen-flynn-dont-act-2-people-control-98/
I was once told if we’re not careful, 2 percent of the passionate will control 98 percent of the indifferent 100 percent of the time.
The more I’ve thought about this phrase, the more I believe it. There is now a small group of passionate people working hard to destroy our American way of life. Treason and treachery are rampant and our rule of law and those law enforcement professionals who uphold our laws are under the gun more than at any time in our nation’s history. These passionate 2 percent appear to be winning.
Despite there being countless good people trying to come to grips with everything else on their plates, our silent majority (the indifferent) can no longer be silent.
If the United States wants to survive the onslaught of socialism, if we are to continue to enjoy self-government and the liberty of our hard-fought freedoms, we have to understand there are two opposing forces: One is the “children of light” and the other is the “children of darkness.”
As I recently wrote, the art and exercise of self-governance require active participation by every American. I wasn’t kidding! And voting is only part of that active participation. Time and again, the silent majority have been overwhelmed by the “audacity and resolve” of small, well-organized, passionate groups. It’s now time for us, the silent majority (the indifferent), to demonstrate both.
The trials of our current times, like warfare, are immense and consequences severe and these seem inconquerable.
As a policewoman from Virginia told me, “People don’t feel safe in their homes and our police force is so demoralized we cannot function as we should. In my 23 years with my department, I have never seen morale so low.”
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If being the leader of a country isn’t a difficult enough job, dealing with assassination attempts makes the workday even harder. But 67-year-old Andrew Jackson’s attempted assassin would end up regretting his attempt to mess with the surprisingly fit president.
The insane history of Andrew Jackson
Though his whole story is not well known, Andrew Jackson is arguably one of the toughest presidents in history. Jackson joined the Continental Army at the ripe age of twelve and fought vehemently for victory in numerous battles. The seemingly invincible former president also fought a substantial number of sword duels in his lifetime: 103! Think he can’t get any tougher? Wrong.
During one such duel, an opponent pulled a gun on him and shot him square in his chest. Like the true death-defying fighter that Jackson was, he touched the wound, wiped the blood away, and fired right back. Of course, Jackson lived, and after many more epic battles for honor, found his way to the presidency. After all of his incredible duels, its no wonder his assassination attempt took such a crazy turn!
An astoundingly unprepared assassin
While most people imagine assassins as being highly-trained masters of firearms, Richard Lawrence falls far, far outside this trope. Lawrence was a troubled, unemployed house painter when he made his move to try to take out Jackson. However, despite Jackson’s paranoia that it was the Whig party’s doing, Lawrence wasn’t politically motivated.
Rather, he was mentally unstable and believed that Jackson had a personal agenda against him. He was convinced he was the heir to the British throne and that Jackson was withholding his fortune from him. As any faux-British royal might believe, he was certain that killing Jackson would restore his fortune. But at nearly 70 years old, Jackson wasn’t ready to go down without a fight.
Jackson’s jaw-dropping retaliation
On January 30th, 1835, Jackson was leaving the Capitol building when a gun-slinging Lawrence approached him. He lifted the weapon and pulled the trigger, but the gun didn’t fire. This gave Jackson (who was surprisingly fit after a lifetime of dueling injuries) a chance to fight back.
As Lawrence misfired a second gun he had brought along, Jackson used his walking cane to whack Lawrence senseless. Though bystanders jumped in to help, Jackson’s brute force is what truly subdued the delusional Lawrence. It’s certain that the assassin wasn’t aware of the president’s intense battle history. Jackson wasn’t phased by the attempt for long. All in a day’s work, right?
Here is the story in brief from ArmyHeritage.org:
During the Revolutionary War, one of the greatest threats to the Army came not from enemy bullets, but from disease. Perhaps the most dreaded disease was smallpox, caused by a virus that kills one out of every three infected people. Because smallpox was common in England, most British soldiers had already been exposed and were immune, but the disease was less common in America and the average Continental Soldier was not.
As early as 1775, General George Washington knew smallpox was a serious problem for his Army. Throughout the fall and into the winter of 1775, an outbreak raged in the city of Boston. Rumors abounded that the British were deliberately spreading the disease. When the British finally evacuated Boston in March 1776, only Soldiers who had already had the disease were allowed into the city. Washington ordered his doctors to keep a sharp watch for smallpox and to send infected men to the isolation hospital immediately.
Washington faced a difficult choice: whether or not to inoculate his Army. Inoculated Soldiers would develop a mild case of the disease which most would survive. They would then be immune. His other option was to do nothing other than isolate and treat the sick and hope the Army avoided a major outbreak. There were three problems with inoculation. The first was that inoculated Soldiers could transmit smallpox until fully recovered, so an inoculation program could trigger an uncontrollable epidemic. Secondly, the inoculated Soldiers would be unfit for duty for weeks while recovering, and as many as 2% of his Soldiers could die. If the British attacked while the men were out of commission the Army could be destroyed. The third was that the inoculation process was simple enough that the men could do it themselves in secret.
Smallpox struck the Northern Army at Quebec, where many officers and men were secretly inoculating themselves, thus intensifying the epidemic. According to General Benedict Arnold, some 1,200 of the approximately 3,200 Continentals in the Montreal area were unfit for duty, most of them sick with smallpox. By the end of May 1776, the situation of Northern Department patients was “almost Sufficient to excite the pity of Brutes, Large barns [being] filled with men at the very heighth of smallpox and not the least things, to make them comfortable and medicines being needed at both Fort George and Ticonderoga.”
Smallpox threatened the destruction of the entire Army. Major General John Thomas, Commander of the Army in Quebec, died of smallpox. “The smallpox,” mourned John Adams, “is ten times more terrible than Britons, Canadians and Indians, together.” By mid-July 1776, an estimated three thousand men of the Northern Army were sick, most with smallpox. Eventually the epidemic eased and General Gates wrote to Washington that “the Smallpox is now perfectly removed from the Army.” What exactly occurred has been lost to history, but sources suggest that the Northern Army proceeded with an inoculation program without authorization.
This was a risky move. Until mid-1776, the only authorized preventative measure was isolation of the sick. Inoculation was forbidden, though many Soldiers secretly inoculated themselves. When Washington moved his Army to New York, he established a smallpox isolation hospital on an island in the East River and ordered a halt to all inoculations. The general warned that “any disobedience to this order will be most severely punished.” The Continental Congress supported Washington, and when a private physician in the State of New York was caught inoculating soldiers he was jailed.
Despite these precautions, smallpox fear grew among the men of the Continental Army. Recruiting suffered, and by late June, official attitudes toward inoculation began to change. Despite precautions, the illness continued to spread. By August 1776, some troops were being inoculated in segregated camps.
Washington still feared triggering an epidemic, so he took careful precautions to ensure the isolation of soldiers undergoing inoculation, moving them out of Philadelphia and into nearby segregated hospitals. He suggested sheltering newly infected soldiers in houses in the remote countryside and urged that inoculated Soldiers remain in isolation until fully recovered, and then issued either new or “well washed, air’d and smoaked” clothing. He recommended that the individual states immunize their recruits before sending them to join the Army.
In February 1777, while encamped at Morristown, Washington became convinced that only inoculation would prevent the destruction of his Army. Emphasizing the need for secrecy and speed, Washington ordered the inoculation of all troops. Because Virginia forbade inoculation, Washington asked Governor Patrick Henry to support the program, writing that smallpox “is more destructive to an Army in the Natural way, than the Enemy’s Sword.”
In the end, the gamble paid off. Fewer than 1% of the Soldiers died from being inoculated, and the program was so successful in controlling smallpox that he repeated it in the Valley Forge winter of 1778
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It may feel odd to be thinking ahead to the next potential pandemic when the world is far from finished with the current one. But reports of a newly identified swine influenza virus that shows hints of being able to spread among humans have raised that specter — although public health officials say it’s not an imminent threat.
That virus, identified in pigs in some parts of China, has characteristics similar to a strain that caused the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic (SN: 12/18/09), a new study finds. But just identifying such a flu virus circulating in pigs does not mean it poses an immediate threat to people. Rather it signals to researchers that they should monitor sick people for similar viruses.
“It’s not an immediate threat where you’re seeing infections,” Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md., said in a U.S. Senate hearing on June 30. “But it’s something we need to keep our eye on, just the way we did in 2009 with the emergence of the swine flu.”
Influenza viruses bind to a protein called sialic acid to break into cells. Birds and people have different types of this protein in their upper airway, but pigs have both. That makes pigs not only susceptible to swine-specific flu strains but also to flu viruses from birds and humans. As a result, the animals often become influenza mixing pots.
Once in pigs, bird, swine and human flu viruses can exchange genetic material — called reassortment — giving rise to new strains (SN: 2/12/10). If some of those new strains can infect people and make them sick, the virus might go on to cause larger outbreaks.
Like the 2009 H1N1 virus, a newly identified pig virus, called G4 EA H1N1, or G4 for short, can attach to the type of sialic acid that lines a person’s respiratory tract, and it can also replicate in human cells grown in a dish, researchers report June 29 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Infected ferrets — an animal commonly used to study influenza because ferrets exhibit similar symptoms as people — can also get sick and pass the virus to other ferrets. The findings hint that the virus has the potential to cause disease and be transmitted among people.
“It really points out the fact that we’ve got to keep watching influenza viruses,” says Marie Culhane, a swine veterinarian who studies influenza at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul and was not involved in the study.
Here are four things to know about the G4 swine flu virus.
Even without third-generation GPS technology, scientists have pinpointed the center of our solar system. Yes, we revolve around the sun, but it’s not as simple as the center of the sun. Instead, the shape and interacting gravities in the solar system place the center just outside the sun’s surface.
Scientists using the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) are using the regular signals put out by dying stars called pulsars to help them calculate the distances required to make their location estimate. A massive group of researchers worked together on this project. They used new and better information to help add nuance to an existing model: the ephemeris.
All of 'Em.
When scientists look at the rotation and orbit of planets and other bodies in our solar system, they use a tool called an ephemeris. This is a centuries-old idea: a document where each known item is listed, along with where it will be at a particular time. It’s a snapshot of the solar system, basically, which sailors used to guide ships using celestial navigation.
With a printed list in hand, they could compare what they saw in their instruments in realtime to where they believed the stars and planets should appear in the night sky at their position.
As technology has advanced, an ephemeris has gone from a handwritten table in a notebook to the “concentric circles” illustrations we’re used to seeing in books to computer models that react in realtime. Star Trek Voyager’s “astrometrics lab” uses ephemeris ideas. And for the group working with NANOGrav, the ephemeris was a great place to start.
“[R]ecent array data sets yield different gravitational-wave background upper limits and detection statistics when analyzed with different solar system ephemerides,” the group explains in its new paper, using the plural of ephemeris. “Crucially, the ephemerides do not generally provide usable error representations.”
So an ephemeris represents a best case with no wobbles—and the real solar system is packed with wobbles, because everything’s gravity pulls on everything else.
anytime astronomers figure out a new way of looking for magnetic fields in ever more remote regions of the cosmos, inexplicably, they find them.
These force fields — the same entities that emanate from fridge magnets — surround Earth, the sun and all galaxies. Twenty years ago, astronomers started to detect magnetism permeating entire galaxy clusters, including the space between one galaxy and the next. Invisible field lines swoop through intergalactic space like the grooves of a fingerprint.
Last year, astronomers finally managed to examine a far sparser region of space — the expanse between galaxy clusters. There, they discovered the largest magnetic field yet: 10 million light-years of magnetized space spanning the entire length of this “filament” of the cosmic web. A second magnetized filament has already been spotted elsewhere in the cosmos by means of the same techniques. “We are just looking at the tip of the iceberg, probably,” said Federica Govoni of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Cagliari, Italy, who led the first detection.
The question is: Where did these enormous magnetic fields come from?
“It clearly cannot be related to the activity of single galaxies or single explosions or, I don’t know, winds from supernovae,” said Franco Vazza, an astrophysicist at the University of Bologna who makes state-of-the-art computer simulations of cosmic magnetic fields. “This goes much beyond that.”
One possibility is that cosmic magnetism is primordial, tracing all the way back to the birth of the universe. In that case, weak magnetism should exist everywhere, even in the “voids” of the cosmic web — the very darkest, emptiest regions of the universe. The omnipresent magnetism would have seeded the stronger fields that blossomed in galaxies and clusters.
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On June 19, the mayor of Cottonwood, Arizona, unilaterally ordered city residents to wear face masks in public places. A week later, my family went downtown to grab some lunch at a favorite barbecue joint. The proclamation might as well have never been issued; we were among the very few people wearing masks on the street or in the stores.
The residents of Cottonwood aren't alone; compliance with orders from on-high is losing popularity across the country. One of the COVID-19 pandemic's legacies may well be an overwhelming public fatigue with being told what to do.
Truthfully, Cottonwood Mayor Tim Elinski couldn't have handled the mask order any more poorly. His order came after he lost a vote on the issue—which he admitted after the fact that he had held only because he thought he would win. The end result, then, was predetermined; he just didn't get the cover he'd anticipated from the city council. That annoyed people as much as the mask mandate itself.
It didn't have to be that way. A few days later I watched a woman stop in front of a sign posted in front of the local Safeway. She reached into her purse, pulled out a mask, and then entered the supermarket with her face covered as requested. As I watched, a steady stream of people mostly did the same. Asking nicely proved more effective than government commands at getting people to don masks.
But governments aren't about asking; ordering is what they do. And they're getting a lot of pushback.
Even at the beginning of the pandemic, when fear and uncertainty were at their height, many Americans worried that they would lose more to economic stagnation and social isolation than they gained from society-wide lockdowns. Closing businesses and banning gatherings might slow the spread of disease, but it also chokes off commerce, kills jobs, and sends people to the brink of despair.
"We're trying our best to stay afloat," the owner of a hair salon in Placer County, California, said at the end of April as she prepared to defy the state lockdown. "We had to open the shop because our families are depending on us."
That salon owner was joined by many others across the country who defied rules in order to put food on the table. And they're often willing to forcefully tell authorities where to get off.
"Frustrated small-business owners have turned to heavily armed, militia-style protesters … to serve as reopening security squads" to deter government officials from enforcing closure orders, The New York Times reported in mid-May. Disobedience morphed into open rebellion as people chafed against draconian commands and the resulting dwindling bank accounts.
It isn't only a matter of dollars and cents, either. In New York City, parents sick of confinement at home and unable to legally let their children blow off steam in playgrounds "cut the locks and chains on gates that had kept them closed for months," according to the New York Daily News.
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