Texas progressives: Coronavirus, week 13

Let's call it lucky 13.

With Gov. Strangeabbott moving to Phase 3 of "reopen Texas," and more set for this Friday, the economy is in the lap of the gods the consumers who allegedly make a godlike, rational, quasi-divine invisible hand, per about all the modern GOP and too damn many Democrats. That's even as COVID cases continued to rise on a daily basis last week. (Here's Texas' numbers per Worldmeters.) Strangeabbott promised us he would watch deaths and hospitalizations. That's ALL he promised. He explicitly did NOT promise that potentially alarming trends would change any of his actions. Meanwhile, we're still behind the curve on contact tracing, and the company Abbott is having do it has a CEO who lied about having a PhD and whose name is Das Nobel. Both wingnuts and wingnuts lite in the Texas Lege are totally in an uproar over this and more, like privacy concerns.

I'll still do occasional updates, but this will likely phase out a weekly roundup. If a second wave is bad enough, I'll be here.


National

If you're a grocery store staffer at places like Kroger, I guess we're so thoroughly reopened that you are now, corporately, no longer a hero. Whole Paycheck and Star$$$ have also ended "hero pay." Others have extended it for a bit longer.

People are inhaling, washing food with straight bleach and other COVID home medical nuttery, the CDC says, in data from poison control centers, though it refuses to blame Trump.

Cases have surged again in Florida, and started a surge in Los Angeles.

We all who have some brains already knew that temperature checks weren't a lot more than some equivalent of virtue signaling. More here, especially about how true that is when people conducting them aren't trained.


World

Meet Dr. Bonnie Henry, British Columbia's provincial health head, who has made that province almost New Zealand-like on handling COVID, even as Quebec and Ontario continue to get clobbered. Given the federal nature of Canada's health care system beyond the bare bones nationwide structure of its national health care, this has lessons for American states today and tomorrow. Pretty Boy Trudeau, nationally, only looks good per the soft bigotry of low expectations of comparison with Trump. Reality here, from Macleans, Canada's Time/Newsweek/US News. (Trudeau also sucks, but looks good next to Trump, on Israel-Palestine issues.)

Anti-Bill Gates conspiracy theories have gone international. Abroad, they're often associated with population control. In China, there will probably be some state-controlled end we haven't seen yet.


Week 1 is here and week 2 is here. Week 3 is here and week 4, here. Week 5 is here. Ditto for Week 6. Here's Week 7. And, looking past this? Weeks 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13. And, after a three-week hiatus, but necessitated, week 14.