Coronavirus roundup, week 24: Greg Abbott, COVID weasel

A "skinny" GOP-backed Senate bill for more coronavirus relief, which was skinnier than a previous GOP plan that Senate Democrats had rejected, failed, and Mnuchin for the White House is expecting nothing else to transpire. That's as the FEMA-funded $300 bump for unemployment has run out of money. (Oh, and contra Trump Train riders, including my one brother [and maybe the other two who are fellow travelers], such bumps reportedly have little to no real effect on job hunting.)

The more flags you have behind you, usually, the more hypocrisy behind your actions. 

At Texas Monthly, CD Hooks expands on a previous briefer piece noting that Abbott the career lawyer and judge, looking specifically at four coronavirus issues where Abbott was a hypocrite.

Stanford colleagues of his are calling out Trump's new wingnut point man, Scott Atlas.

The severity of COVID in younger adults becomes ever more real and clear.

I discussed Ed Yong's great new Atlantic piece about "magical thinking" and other things among Americans. I said that it was part of American cultural DNA, and not just on coronavirus. I said it was part of Merika's larger belief in "salvific techologism."

At the Texas Monthly, CD Hooks notes that Strangebbott's hokey "Back the Blue" push, with no Dems of note biting, is bullshit, hypocrisy, and probably unconstitutional. He also thinks that while it may be of marginal to modest effect in state House races, it wil be no more than that.

FDA head Stephen Hahn making impromptu visits to Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is, despite his protestations his agency will not put an unvetted vaccine on the market, the latest sign of him being a Trump toady. 

The Wall Street Journal, most notably Greg Ip, is stanning for Trump and Republican governors on "Reopen America," complete with multiple lies about other countries today and distortions about how the country addressed Spanish flu. That includes lies, contra the link above, about youth and COVID.

And, showing some brains, 62 percent of the country is worried that Trump will get such a rush to happen. 

Coronavirus is also increasing global hunger.

That executive order Trump wrote keeping meatpacking plants open as a "national emergency"? Uahh, actually, it looks like the meatpackers wrote it.