States in the red zone – Congressman Louie Gohmert – The Facebook founder interrogated about Twitter – Deaths in California and Florida – The scope of the virus in Iran – Evening statistics
An uneventful day for me, but far from uneventful for the nation at large.
At this point 21 states are in the “red zone,” meaning that more than 10% of test cases in each have come back positive: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin.
Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert, who has repeatedly denied the need to wear masks, tested positive for the virus at a pre-screening for a planned trip to West Texas with the President. He has a theory about how he contracted it: he has bowed in to peer pressure on certain occasions and, to use his own words, “in the last week or two I have worn a mask more than I have in the last four months. I can’t help but wonder if by keeping a mask on and keeping it in place, if I might have put some germs, some of the virus onto the mask and breathed it in.” There is the other possibility that having attended numerous crowded meetings on Capitol Hill without a face covering of any kind before that period and only sporadically within these past two weeks might have something to do with it; but he never mentioned it.
I am not the only person to express disbelief about Stella Immanuel having become Trump’s medical expert of choice. Joe Biden said that Trump should “stop tweeting and start doing something about it, damn it” and “stop talking about this crazy woman he talked about last night, who’s an absolute disgrace.” The episode had further ramifications when a House Judiciary subcommittee interrogated Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. It would appear that many of Trump’s allies are as confused about social media as he is about medical matters. Jim Sensenbrenner, the ranking Republican on the subcommittee, asked Zuckerberg to explain why the tweet on Donald Trump Jr.’s account was deleted and why the account was placed on hold for 12 hours. Zuckerberg was understandably surprised as he replied “I think what you might be referring to happened on Twitter so it’s hard for me to speak to that.” He was more restrained than I would have been under the circumstances; I don’t think I could have managed a response without the use of terms such as “bonehead” and “high-priced ignoramus” and other polite expressions of that kind.
Both Florida and California have had a record number of deaths today. If California were to be categorized as a separate country, its case count would be surpassed only by the U.S. (the other 49 states), Brazil, Russia, and India. Florida’s position is further complicated by being forced to suspend virus tests temporarily as it prepares for oncoming tropical storm Isaias, which is supposed to make landfall late Friday or early Saturday.
The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Iran is officially just short of 300,000; but President Hassan Rouhani cited a study by Iran’s Health Ministry a few days ago claiming that the actual case count could be as high as 25,000,000, or nearly 30% of the country’s population. Whether such a figure is valid remains uncertain, but there is little doubt that both cases and deaths are under-reported. Iran has a recognized shortage of reliable testing, which means numerous persons infected with the virus are currently undetected. The death toll is calculated from the people who have succumbed in the coronavirus wards in hospitals. But it seems probable that many more died at home. Some families have asked doctors not to report such deaths as due to the virus, on account of the stigma associated with COVID-19. It seems likely that several countries under-report their figures for similar reasons, but the Iranian government has been unusually forthcoming in acknowledging the deficiencies in their data collection.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 17,162,549; # of deaths worldwide: 669,096; # of cases U.S.: 4,560,071; # of deaths U.S.: 153,581. Another five-day period with a global case count increase of over 1,000,000. Another day in the U.S. with a case count increase of over 60,000 and a death toll of over 1,000.