It Turns Out Crowded, Maskless Campaign Events Spread COVID. Who Knew?
Everything you need to know for Friday, Oct. 29: Carrboro will fly its BLM flag + Wake kids aren’t learning + the worst best economy EVER! + how to scam the FDA for billions
Friday, Oct. 29, 2020
4️⃣ days until the election.
🚨🚨🚨 1️⃣ DAY OF EARLY VOTING LEFT! 🚨🚨🚨
If you’re not already registered, you can do so when you vote at EV sites.
Find your EV site here. Find out how long you’ll have to wait to vote early in Wake County here and Durham County here.
Early voting ends at 3 p.m. on Saturday,
8️⃣ 2️⃣ days until the inauguration.
Today’s Number: 2,885
Number of new COVID-19 cases reported in North Carolina on Thursday—another daily record. So far, the state has confirmed at least 269,021 cases.
9,000,000
Number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S., as of Thursday.
ABOVE THE FOLD
—> Wait, So You Can Spread COVID at Campaign Events With No Masks or Social Distancing?????
I know, right?
Obviously, no one could have predicted this shocking, totally unforeseeable development. But it’s true! So weird.
According to the Gaston County Health Department, at least two people who attended Donald Trump’s 15,000-person superspreader rally at the Gastonia Municipal Airport on Oct. 21 have tested positive for COVID-19, while another case is connected to Dan Forest’s Burnsville rally on Oct. 15. Contact tracing is underway in both cases.
For Trump, this is nothing new.
As President Donald Trump jetted across the country holding campaign rallies during the past two months, he didn’t just defy state orders and federal health guidelines. He left a trail of coronavirus outbreaks in his wake.
The president has participated in nearly three dozen rallies since mid-August, all but two at airport hangars. A USA TODAY analysis shows COVID-19 cases grew at a faster rate than before after at least five of those rallies in the following counties: Blue Earth, Minnesota; Lackawanna, Pennsylvania; Marathon, Wisconsin; Dauphin, Pennsylvania; and Beltrami, Minnesota.
Together, those counties saw 1,500 more new cases in the two weeks following Trump’s rallies than the two weeks before—9,647 cases, up from 8,069.
Dan Forest, who has promised to reopen everything and end Governor Cooper’s mask mandate if he’s elected—which he won’t be—responded to the news by whining.
Andrew Dunn, a Forest campaign spokesperson, said in a statement that they wish a “speedy recovery” to the person who has COVID-19 but objected to the release of the contact tracing information.
From the N&O:
“We have had no communication from DHHS on this and only learned of it from what they leaked to the media,” Dunn said. “Dr. Mandy Cohen has repeatedly stated that all tracing and tracking is confidential and pandemics are not political, but I guess that does not apply to us six days before an election.”
Actually, Andrew:
The state health department has been releasing information on outbreaks and clusters of cases for several months, including at nursing homes, local detention centers, and day care centers. …
Forest has held several indoor and outdoor campaign events throughout the state with photos and videos showing him defying the coronavirus restrictions put in place by [Cooper]. The photos show few people wearing masks or social distancing.
A friendly reminder:
LOCAL & STATE
—> 4 Million Votes, 1 More Election Check-in
On Thursday, with a day and a half of early voting to go—it ends Saturday at 3—North Carolina passed 4 million early and absentee votes. To get a sense of just how crazy that is, consider:
It’s 53% of all registered voters
It’s 84% of the number of voters who voted in 2016
There are 273,000 absentee ballots yet to be turned in. (As long as you mail your ballot by Tuesday, you should be fine as long as it arrives by Nov. 12. But I don’t quite trust the Supreme Court, so if you’re able, I’d drop it off at the county board of elections office personally.)
We spent a lot of time digging through polling data yesterday, so I bother with that again. But another top-level pollster, NYT/Siena, published a North Carolina survey Thursday, so I’ll spent a moment on the toplines (same poll, two weeks ago in parentheses).
President: Biden 48–45 (Biden 46–42)
Senate: Cunningham 46–43 (Cunningham 41–37)
Governor: Cooper 51–42 (Cooper 51–37)
64% of likely voters (and 76% of likely Dems) say they’ve already voted
41% of Republicans say they are certain or “almost certain” to vote
Which is to say: The race hasn’t moved, and it’s consistent with other polling that suggests a small lead for Biden and Cunningham and game-set-match for Cooper.
—> RELATED: Mysterious super PACs are flooding the airwaves with last-minute ads to remind us all that Cal Cunningham had the world’s dullest affair.
From Policy Watch:
A super PAC financed tens of thousands of dollars worth of digital ads in late October soliciting allegations that North Carolina Senate hopeful Cal Cunningham engaged in extramarital affairs.
But because of a loophole in campaign finance laws that were written in the era of typewriters, voters won’t know who paid for the ads until after the election. That’s because the money came from a so-called “pop-up PAC,” a political action committee created so late in an election cycle, it won’t have to disclose who funds it until after Nov. 3.
—> ALSO: The Charlotte Observer takes a look at four “bellwether” counties to watch in North Carolina.
But this trio of North Carolina counties—Jackson, Hyde and Caswell—has something in common that could offer hints about who will win North Carolina in next week’s presidential election.
All three are “bellwether” counties.
That is, each of them voted the same way North Carolina as a whole did in the last three presidential elections: For Democrat Barack Obama in 2008, for Republican Mitt Romney in 2012, and for Republican Donald Trump in 2016.
It’s a record none of the state’s 97 other counties can claim. …
And a fourth one: Robeson County. It’s a national bellwether. In the three presidential elections since 2008, it has picked the candidate who ended up winning the White House—Obama, Obama, and Trump.
Coincidences are fun, but I’m not sure what happens in Jackson, Hyde, or Caswell will tell us much. Here’s what I’ll be looking for Tuesday:
how many Trump voters in the exurbs and rural areas show up on Election Day;
how big a turnout Dems get in the metros;
how big a margin Dems run up among indies (in the NYT poll, Biden’s up 15);
and how well Trump fares in “countrypolitan” areas.
—> Carrboro Will Keep Its BLM Flags Flying
Yesterday, the state elections director asked the town of Carrboro to remove Black Lives Matter lives from the Town Hall, which is also an early voting site. After a closed town council session, the town declined.
From the N&O:
“After consulting with the town attorney, the Mayor and Town Council have chosen to leave the flags in place,” [town spokesperson Catherine] Lazorko wrote in an email.
The council voted unanimously on July 14 to fly the Black Lives Matter flags, she wrote, and they were first flown on July 20. …
How did this become a thing, you ask?
Waddy Davis, chairman of the Orange County Republican Party, said Thursday he had received 15 to 18 written complaints about the flags and many more by word of mouth.
Town Hall is an early voting site, he said, and some poll workers have been reluctant to staff the site.
“Sometimes a voter comes over there and says, ‘I’m not comfortable with that,’ “ Davis said. “’Why aren’t they American flags?’”
So odd how Republicans see a flag affirming the worth of Black people as a political attack. 🙃
—> Is Remote Learning Harming Wake Students’ Performance?
Grades are down for the first two months of the year—two months where Wake schools had remote instruction. That might not be a coincidence, the N&O reports.
The Wake County school system is reviewing the grades from the first quarter of the school year amid concerns that student performance was lower than expected. The review comes after some schools had warned families that more students than normal were in danger of failing unless they improved their grades. …
Wake Superintendent Cathy Moore said the review will allow them to determine how widespread the grading issues may be in North Carolina’s largest school district. …
The drop in grades isn’t surprising to some parents who complain that the all-virtual environment isn’t a fit for all students. … “Many kids are doing well in virtual, but there’s a certain percentage who thrived on social interaction and they’re not doing well because nothing is motivating them now,” Julea Danielson, a Cary parent of a high school freshman, said in an interview.
—> Maybe Renegotiate Your Office Lease Now
The pandemic has made the Triangle a renters’ market, according to the Triangle Business Journal. But that doesn’t mean rents will go down.
Office tenants around the Triangle are cashing in as landlords boost concessions amid rising vacancy and uncertainty due to the pandemic. … To compete for tenants, office landlords around the area have boosted concessions such as free months and construction allowances in a play to keep rental rates steady, even as competition for tenants continues to rise. Landlords generally prefer to give concessions rather than lower rental rates to keep property values up.
—> The Local
Tropical Storm Zeta left at least 415,000 without power in the Carolinas yesterday.
A locker-room attendant sued a Cary country club, alleging that he was fired because he had multiple sclerosis.
Amazon, having done its best to destroy local retail through out the world, is opening a brick and mortar shop in the Crabtree Mall.
A Wake County judge fined a New Jersey company $150,000 for price-gouging PPE.
—> Weather
Sunny, high of 65 ☀️ ☀️ ☀️
NATION & WORLD
—> The Lede: The Worst Best Economy Ever!
Yesterday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced that US economy grew at a record 7.4% in the third quarter, which is … good, right? Except, not really? It’s complicated.
From The Washington Post:
The data released Thursday morning by the Bureau of Economic Analysis was in line with expectations and stands in sharp contrast to the historic and devastating second quarter, when pandemic-related business closures sent it plummeting by 9 percent. As state shutdown measures eased over the summer and businesses brought people back to work, the economy and consumer spending looked vastly different, and much healthier, than they did between April and June.
Still, the economy in the third quarter remained 3.5 percent smaller than at the end of 2019, before the pandemic began. By comparison, G.D.P. shrank 4 percent over the entire year and a half of the Great Recession a decade ago. …
Already, there are signs that the recovery is losing steam. Industrial production fell in September and job growth has cooled, even as a growing list of major corporations have announced new rounds of large-scale layoffs and furloughs. Most economists expect the slowdown to worsen in the final three months of the year as virus cases rise and federal aid to households and businesses fades.
—> MEANWHILE: With COVID cases surging, France and Germany are going back into lockdown. Oil prices are plummeting, and Wednesday was the worst day for stocks since June, though the markets recovered some yesterday.
Oh, and: 730,000 people filed initial unemployment claims last week.
—> The Brief: 5 Stories to Read Today
The elderly are increasingly dying of social isolation. “The effort to shield elderly, frail and disabled residents from the coronavirus has created another wrenching health crisis: The confinement meant to protect the most vulnerable is also threatening their lives. ‘The isolation is robbing them of whatever good days they have left—it accelerates the aging process,’ Joshua Uy, associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, said.”
Forty-three thousand residents died of COVID in nursing homes that received a clean bill of health. “But the government inspectors deployed by CMS during the first six months of the crisis cleared nearly 8 in 10 nursing homes of any infection-control violations even as the deadliest pandemic to strike the United States in a century sickened and killed thousands, a Washington Post investigation found. … All told, homes that received a clean bill of health earlier this year had about 290,000 coronavirus cases and 43,000 deaths among residents and staff, state and federal data shows.”
STD rates are dropping, which isn’t a good thing. “[Experts] say the pandemic has seriously hindered efforts to mitigate sexually transmitted infections that can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, chronic pain, infertility and even blindness and death in newborns. Rather than showing sexually transmitted diseases are on the run, the upbeat numbers likely signal instead that they are now going largely undetected.”
High youth turnout would crush Donald Trump. “A new poll from Axios and SurveyMonkey-Tableau reveals that—despite our nation’s deeply ingrained regional political divisions—young Americans are rejecting conservatism from sea-to-shining sea, with only a few stray patches of red in between. In a survey of 640,328 likely voters across the country, Axios found voters under 35 backing Biden in 40 of 50 states. Young voters broke for Trump in five, and split their votes about evenly in the remaining states.”
Pharma company Gilead got the FDA to sign off on a COVID drug that doesn’t do anything, then banked mad stacks. Shot: “Gilead Sciences Inc. reported $873 million in third-quarter sales of its coronavirus therapy Veklury [i.e., Remdesivir], above analysts’ expectations, as the company transitions to commercial sales for the medicine.” Chaser: “These Remdesivir, Hydroxychloroquine, Lopinavir and Interferon regimens appeared to have little or no effect on hospitalized COVID-19, as indicated by overall mortality, initiation of ventilation and duration of hospital stay.”
—> Everything Else
Five months after George Floyd’s murder, hundreds of nonviolent protesters across the country are facing serious charges and potential prison sentences.
Another one down: The Twin Cities’ City Pages, the alt-weekly where David Carr got his start, has closed after 41 years.
The DOJ has quietly spiked the investigation into Tamir Rice’s death.
Jerry Falwell Jr. sued Liberty University, which ousted Falwell amid an adultery scandal, for damaging his reputation.
Glenn Greenwald very publicly quit The Intercept because he believes editing is censorship. He then posted a bazillion-word thing about Hunter Biden and an email thread with his editor, neither of which—to my mind—helped his cause.
Let’s end on a happy note. Belle & Sebastian is releasing a live album on Dec. 11.