FAIR: Corporate Media Team With Trump to Disparage Public Health Experts

View article on FAIR's website Corporate Media Team With Trump to Disparage Public Health Experts JULIE HOLLAR To the New York Times' Michael Powell (7/6/20), what's interesting about public health experts' recommendations about protests and Covid is not whether they were accurate, but what he saw as the experts' "conflicted feelings." Public health experts, unaccustomed to the spotlight, have really taken a beating lately. As they tirelessly work to unravel the mysteries of the Covid pandemic (and are increasingly burning out), the president of our country has constantly attacked and undermined them—and, lately, so have corporate media. In a July 6 report, the New York Times seemed bizarrely eager to cast doubt on those experts' intentions. "Are Protests Dangerous? What Experts Say May Depend on Who’s Protesting What," read the headline over Michael Powell's report. The subhead continued the framing of the experts as hypocrites: Public health experts decried the anti-lockdown protests as dangerous gatherings in a pandemic. Health experts seem less comfortable doing so now that the marches are against racism. Many readers wouldn't be terribly surprised at the story, since it's a curiously late addition to the small flurry of coverage around a letter circulated more than a month ago, signed by more than 1,200 public health experts, that supported the wave of anti-racist protests that erupted around the country after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The letter—which the Times notably did not link to, though it did link to two negative media responses to it—began by recognizing that many public health experts had condemned the white armed protesters who took over the Michigan State Capitol building, who were "protesting stay-home orders and calls for widespread public masking to prevent the spread of Covid-19." After explaining that "white supremacy is a public health issue that predates and contributes to Covid-19," they wrote that while they support staying at home, social distancing and public masking, they do not condemn [anti-racism] gatherings as risky for Covid-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States. The letter carefully distinguished this from the protests against stay-at-home orders, which "not only oppose public health interventions, but are also rooted in white nationalism and run contrary to respect for Black lives." It continued by offering guidance for protesters and allies to minimize transmission risk at protests, like wearing masks, maintaining distance where possible, staying home when sick and providing hand sanitizer to protesters. It seems pretty clear: Black people and other people of color are disproportionately hospitalized and dying of the disease, not as a result of some biological difference but because of the ways that systemic racism has put them at greater risk. Therefore, racism is a vital public health issue—both in general, as people of color suffer worse overall health outcomes than white people, and specifically concerning Covid-19. So it's clearly not a question of "who" is protesting, as the Times' headline suggests. It does matter very much "what" is being protested. In the case of the anti-lockdown protesters, the entire goal was to make government officials flout public health experts' recommendations for infection control. Obviously, those actions couldn't be supported from a public health perspective—not to mention that, given their agenda, most protesters were not wearing masks or keeping distance. It's worth noting, too, that experts' understanding of the novel coronavirus' transmission has played a role in shifting recommendations. Early on, less was understood about transmission, which is why full lockdowns were encouraged: If people aren't near each other, they can't pass the virus to each other, whatever its preferred mode of transmission. As more research has emerged showing that outdoor activities are far less dangerous, and that masks seem to make a big difference in preventing transmission, experts can make finer-grained recommendations about which activities are higher and lower risk. Since anti-racism protesters were largely compliant with mask wearing, moving around rather than staying in one place, and in many cases attempting to keep distance from others, many experts judged that their outdoor activities were relatively low risk, particularly when weighed against the potential benefits from any outcomes that worked to dismantle systemic racism. (Note that public health experts are not a monolith—they are individuals with individual perspectives and judgments—and not infallible. The public health experts at the WHO, in the most obvious example of both of these points, clung to their recommendation against universal mask wearing until well after the pandemic was underway—CNN, 3/30/20—and likewise refused to acknowledge mounting evidence pointing to airborne transmission until just this week, under pressure from hundreds of other health experts around the world—Reuters, 7/7/20.) But like many who came before him (FAIR.org, 6/10/20), the Times' Powell was eager to skim over all these nuances, erasing the public health distinctions between the two kinds of protests. He played up the political distinctions to paint epidemiologists and other health experts as hypocritical, feeding the media narrative that they were "politicizing science." At the time of the letter, other outlets similarly cried foul. "Suddenly, Public Health Officials Say Social Justice Matters More Than Social Distance," huffed Politico (6/4/20). "The Protesters Deserve the Truth About the Coronavirus; Public Health Experts Should Strive to Provide a Neutral Accounting of Risk," scolded the Atlantic (6/4/20). The right wing, which has been attacking public health experts since the beginning of the pandemic, went predictably nuts; Jonah Goldberg (Dispatch, 6/5/20) went so far as to accuse epidemiologists of "treason." Some on the left, too, offered up false arguments to condemn the public health experts who supported the anti-racist protests, arguing that if they counseled everyone to stay at home in the face of the pandemic, at extreme economic and psychological cost, they certainly couldn't say it's okay for some to now go out and protest. In a widely-cited essay in the Guardian (6/8/20), Thomas Chatterton Williams (who later spearheaded a letter at Harper's decrying so-called cancel culture and the "vogue for public shaming" on the left) leaned on ideas of political correctness gone amok to argue that "two weeks ago we shamed people for being in the street; today we shame them for not being in the street." Public health experts, he wrote, are "politicizing science" and "have hemorrhaged credibility and authority." According to the Intercept's Glenn Greenwald (6/11/20), "People who left their homes for any reason other than officially approved 'essential' functions were—no matter how careful they were—publicly shamed if not fined and arrested." Glenn Greenwald in the Intercept (6/11/20) was similarly outraged, calling the letter's distinction between the two kinds of protests plainly political judgments, not scientific ones, and the shoddy, glaring conflation of them is nothing less than a manipulation, an abuse, of public health credentials. For scientists to purport to dictate which citizens can and cannot safely choose to leave their house — based not on health judgments but on their political ideology — is repressive, and certain to erode the credibility of their profession. Yet this is exactly what they are doing: explicitly and shamelessly. Again, it's not about "which citizens" can leave their house, it's about the purpose of the leaving: Why would public health experts not condemn efforts to pressure governments to rescind public health measures? And it expressly is about health judgments—both about the relatively low risks of sporadic, masked outdoor protests versus the high risks of people going about their normal business, and about the health judgment that protests against racism could improve health outcomes for people of color, during and beyond Covid-19. Moreover, Greenwald, like Williams, the Atlantic's Conor Friesendorf and others, seems convinced that public health ought to be somehow objective, scientific and neutral, not political. But public health can't avoid being political. Managing the health of an entire population is done through policy decisions, many of which people will disagree about. Gun control, smoking, obesity—so many of our major public health issues are highly politicized. If we want public health experts to tell us how to maximize our health, we can't at the same time insist that they only tell us about certain narrow kinds of health outcomes, or health outcomes for certain kinds of people. Williams and Greenwald appeared less concerned about hypocrisy concerning different kinds of protests and mostly upset about—as Greenwald put it—the apparently sudden deviation from the previous "dictate" from public health experts "that we could not go outside for any reason." Greenwald wrote: One of two things is true; either 1) these protests will lead to a significant spike in coronavirus infections and deaths, in which case public health experts should reconcile that outcome with how they could have encouraged and endorsed them; or 2) it will not lead to such a spike, in which case it will appear that the months of extreme, draconian lockdowns—which caused great suffering and deprivation around the world—were excessive, misguided and unwarranted. First of all, stay-at-home orders were not intended to keep people locked up inside; since the beginning of the pandemic, health experts have been recommending that people continue to get outdoor exercise while maintaining social distance (NPR, 4/1/20). Perhaps more importantly, the economic hardship caused by lockdowns does not happen in an apolitical bubble; as public health experts Julia Marcus and Gregg Gonsalves pointed out in the Atlantic (6/11/20), they and many other such experts have long been pushing for massive economic assistance to help forestall such fallout, as has been done quite successfully in many other countries. In other words, lockdowns do not have to lead to the kind of suffering and deprivation being experienced right now in this country, and no public health expert is advocating that. There’s now been more than enough time to judge the impact of the protests on infections—and, despite nefarious police tactics that raised risks of transmission (like kettling, using tear gas, and not letting arrested protesters wear masks while they were held for long periods in police custody), there is no evidence that the protests spurred outbreaks; no increases in infection rates in places that saw some of the biggest protests, like Minneapolis, New York City and Washington, DC, and in fact an increase in social distancing in places where protests took place, which presumably helped drive down transmission (NEBR, 6/20). On the other hand, in several US states that have relaxed their "draconian" lockdowns in a manner at odds with public health experts' recommendations, infections are beginning to escalate exponentially. So, in fact, neither of Greenwald's two things are true: Public health experts did not recklessly abet a spike in protest-related infections, nor have their recommendations for lockdowns in the face of increasing transmission been proven unfounded. Which brings us back to the Times article, which came a full month after the letter was first published, and well after the outcome was clear. Perhaps to justify the existence of his article, Powell left open a wide berth for alternate interpretations of the data: "There is as of yet no firm evidence that protests against police violence led to noticeable spikes in infection rates." But of course, it's not just no "firm" evidence—Powell offered no evidence, period. So why run this story, framed in this way, now? With nothing new to contribute, the article serves only to further erode trust in the very people we have to rely on to get us out of the disaster we're currently in.

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FAIR: 'Hate Speech and Disinformation Flow on Facebook'

View article on FAIR's website 'Hate Speech and Disinformation Flow on Facebook' JANINE JACKSON Janine Jackson interviewed Free Press’s Jessica González about Facebook promoting hate for the July 3, 2020, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript. MP3 Link Washington Post (6/28/20) Janine Jackson: Civil rights and social justice groups have been grappling for years with ways to address hateful speech, harassment and disinformation on Facebook. The issue is on the front burner again, as major companies like Unilever and Starbucks are pausing their ads—the platform's source of revenue—as part of a coordinated effort to get Facebook to change policies that allow politicians and others to make false and incendiary claims. A Facebook security engineer quit in disgust when the platform refused to take down a post from Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro that said, “Indians are undoubtedly changing. They are increasingly becoming human beings just like us.” That would seem to be a clear violation of internal guidelines against “dehumanizing speech,” but as revealed in a recent Washington Post exposé, the engineer was told that it didn't qualify as racism, and “may have even been a positive reference to integration.” That sort of casuistry has marked Facebook's actions, and activists have heard enough. The group Free Press has been one of those working for change; we're joined now by Free Press co-CEO Jessica González. She joins us by phone from Los Angeles. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Jessica González. Jessica González: Hi, Janine. Thanks for having me. Stop Hate for Profit JJ: It's worth stating at the outset that Free Press, like FAIR, opposes censorship, believes in the free flow of ideas and in debate. That doesn't require acceptance of the promotion of dangerous medical misinformation, Holocaust denial or instigations to violence against people protesting police brutality. We have to grapple with the tremendous influence of social media somehow. So that said, tell us about the Stop Hate for Profit campaign, which companies from Adidas to Williams-Sonoma are taking part in. What are the problems that the campaign is looking to address? JG: You're right, Janine; Free Press stands for a free press. And we imagine a free press that frees people from oppression. We imagine a free press that holds the powerful accountable. So unlike calls for government to censor speech, the Stop Hate for Profit campaign is seeking for advertisers to vote with their feet. It’s seeking to hold up the really vast amount of hate, bigotry and disinformation that is happening on Facebook’s platform. Facebook has known about this problem. Our organizations have been in dialogue with Facebook for some time. We've been calling on them to institute a comprehensive change, to keep people safe on the platform, because we understand that when hate speech and disinformation flow on Facebook, that it puts people's lives at risk in real life, and that it also makes it harder for people from historically oppressed groups to speak out, when we speak out and face an onslaught of hate and harassment. So what the campaign is calling for is for all major advertisers on a global scale to drop their advertising on Facebook for the month of July. And we're now up to over 700 advertisers that have agreed to drop from Facebook, including Honda, Ford, Unilever, Coke and other major brands that have essentially called on Facebook to meet our requests. And the interesting thing here is that the companies came along really easily, because it's not good for their brands to be associated with the types of hate and disinformation that are running rampant on the platform. JJ: It isn't that Facebook just allows extremist or toxic content. There's something, isn't there, in the business model that encourages polarization? JG: You're absolutely right. Ninety-nine percent of Facebook's business model is advertising. And we are the product on Facebook: Facebook is selling access to us, consumers, individuals that use the platform. That's what they're selling to their advertisers. So how do they make the most money? By keeping us, their product, on the platform as much as possible. And we know that hate, harassment and wild disinformation are the types of content that garner high attention and high engagement, and keep us on the platform, even when we don't agree with those things and we're, in fact, fighting back against hate and disinformation, it's still generating time on the platform, engagement on the platform, and that is how they make their money. So, yes, this is built right into their business model. And until now, nobody's really been talking about that. Or we've been talking about it, but it hasn't received the widespread attention that it's receiving in this moment. Wall Street Journal (5/26/00) JJ: The Wall Street Journal, some may listeners may know, reported an internal Facebook report that executives got in 2018, that found that the company was well aware that its recommendation engine stoked divisiveness and polarization. But they ignored those findings, because they thought any changes would disproportionately affect conservatives, which is just, I think, mind blowing. So this is not a problem that they don't know about. And the Journal also cites a separate report in 2016, that said that 64% of people who joined an extremist group on Facebook only did so because the company's algorithm recommended it to them. So this is, as you're saying, it's not passive. JG: Right. It's absolutely not. This is intentional. They've known these things. This reminds me of how the tobacco industry hid information about the damaging health effects of cigarettes, back in the day. This is Facebook hiding information about the toxic effects of their own platform. And it's really shameful, frankly, that it's taken this much to get the attention on to what Facebook has been up to. JJ: It's not passive, but it's also not equal opportunity. It tends to go in one direction, right? JG: No, and this whole conservative bias red herring that gets thrown out there as a reason for not to do anything ought to be really offensive to conservatives. Last time I checked, they haven't said that conservatism and antiracism are opposites. I think this is a nonpartisan issue, or at least it should be. We all have an interest, regardless of political party, race, religion and whatnot, to end racism in our society, and to use this red herring as a reason not to is really immoral. Forbes (7/2/20) JJ: It seems relevant that a group of Black workers at Facebook just filed a class action with the EEOC, alleging that Facebook discriminates against Black workers and applicants in hiring, evaluations, promotions and pay. Black people are just 3.8% of Facebook's workforce; 1.5% of tech workers, and that hasn't increased, even as the company's gone from 9,000 workers to nearly 45,000. One wonders how that company culture has bearing on their decision-making about when is something racist. JG: Oh, absolutely. And I'm not surprised at all that workers are facing discrimination inside of Facebook, because the product itself is discriminatory. There's discriminatory algorithms at play, and there's a business model that is essentially hate profiteering. So this isn't much different than things I've thought about in the past with hate radio, for instance, some of these really hateful pundits that are often on iHeartRadio, that you hear a lot of complaints about hate and harassment within. This is a pervasive cultural issue at companies that trade in hate. JJ: This June 28 Washington Post piece charts how Facebook shifted its policies to accommodate Trump. The engineer who quit in disgust, David Thiel, is quoted saying, “The value of being in favor with people in power outweighs almost every other concern for Facebook.” For Trump, that's meant that everything he says is newsworthy just because he said it, no matter how false or racist or inflammatory, and that carveout for politicians is galling to people, but it's not, of course, the only problem. But that does seem to be a serious thing, to simply say that because someone's a politician, they can say whatever they want. JG: Right. This really speaks to the question of, “What are we talking about when we talk about a free press?” When I think of a free press, I think of the Fourth Estate, one that holds the powerful accountable. And he's done just the opposite. There's a set of content moderation rules that users have to follow, that the president doesn't, [or] other powerful leaders. That's an incredibly big problem. The free press is supposed to hold power accountable; it's not supposed to give them a free ride. And, frankly, it shows an appalling lack of awareness about the moment we're in, the cultural moment we're in, where we are reckoning with racism across the government, in our society, in our businesses, and in our own organizations and minds. All of us need to be thinking about anti-blackness in particular. And it shows that he's really not thinking about that, or if he is, he's made a calculated decision to put profit over morals. JJ: Let's talk about some of the recommendations or next steps that the campaign has put forward. What would you like to see happen? What are some of the elements? JG: We have a number of recommendations that are on our website, StopHateForProfit.org, but I'll highlight a few of them. Facebook needs a permanent civil rights infrastructure and accountability system inside the company. They need to comply with regular third-party audits that track how they are doing in complying with the civil rights infrastructure that needs to be built, and they need to overhaul their content moderation system. The Change the Terms Coalition, which is a coalition of over 55 civil rights and racial justice organizations, has put forth a comprehensive set of model policies aimed at Facebook and other social media companies. And we're asking them to ban hateful activities, to ban white supremacists, and to significantly invest in enforcement, in transparency about their content moderation process, in rights of appeal, so that people of color and religious minorities and others who are protesting racism and hate are not the ones that get taken down, but, in fact, it's actually the hate and proliferation of racism and recruitment into white supremacist groups that gets taken down. We're calling for Facebook to ban all state actor bot and troll campaigns that trade in hateful activities. And so we have a larger set of policy recommendations on StopHateForProfit.org, including a call for Facebook to develop a hotline, so that its users who are experiencing hate and harassment have somewhere to call, to take care of when they're experiencing hate, much like you might call your internet service provider or your water company if you are having a problem there. So those are some of the policy changes that we’re calling for from Facebook. JJ: At the end of this Washington Post piece, we see Mark Zuckerberg saying Facebook is going to start labeling problematic newsworthy content. I read somewhere they're talking about commissioning research on polarization. Does this look like genuine engagement with the problems that you're talking about to you? And I wonder,  you've been working with them for so long, do you think that they have evolved? Or has your way of engaging with them changed over time? And how real, how seriously do you think they're taking this right now? JG: I think this is more chipping away at the edges and failing to do comprehensive reform. So if they think they're done, they're sorely mistaken. And while I think it's a step in the right direction, we're super tired of steps in the right direction. I don't know whether or not this is sincere; I think not. I think it's a response to all the bad PR that they're experiencing and all the dissent they're feeling, even inside the company. And while there are some things that I'm interested in tracking--for instance, they've claimed that they are going to ban hateful activities aimed at people based on immigration status. They've claimed they're not going to allow hate in ads, they claim they're going to apply the rules towards politicians. I frankly don't believe them, because they've made a lot of promises over the years and failed to enforce them. JJ: What, finally, comes next? What if they do the same kind of hand-waving that they've done in the past and nothing really changes? Where do we go from there? Jessica Gonzalez: "There's a real question over whether Facebook is just too damn powerful, and whether we need further regulatory and legislative interventions to hold this company accountable to the people." JG: That's a really good question. Right now, we are continuing to organize to move this campaign to the global level. So we will continue to levy advertiser pressure. And, listen, there's a real question over whether Facebook is just too damn powerful, and whether we need further regulatory and legislative interventions to hold this company accountable to the people. And those are not off the table as far as Free Press is concerned. We've already called, at Free Press, for an ad tax on Facebook, taxing 2% of their profit, and reinvesting that money back into quality local and Independent news production, to support reporters who are going to have to do the hard work of putting Facebook's hate in context, and correcting the record on the disinformation that runs rampant on their sites. We've also called for robust reform in the privacy realm, and we have a piece of model legislation that we are recommending the US Congress adopt, to make sure that Facebook is not violating our privacy rights, our civil rights, and that the power about the kind and the ways that Facebook collects data about us, and then monetizes our data, is in the control of us, the people, and that we have more transparency about what they're collecting, and that we have a private right of action when Facebook is violating our rights. So I think, at a minimum, those need to be seriously considered now, and I think there's probably further interventions that need to happen in Congress. If Facebook refuses to comply with these demands, and perhaps even if they do comply, this really shines a light on just how powerful they are. JJ: We've been speaking with Jessica González, co-CEO of the group Free Press. They're online at FreePress.net, and you can learn more about this campaign at StopHateForProfit.org. Jessica González, thank you so much for joining us today on CounterSpin. JG: Thank you for having me, Janine.

© 2020 Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. All rights reserved. Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting Our mailing address is: FAIRNESS & ACCURACY IN REPORTING 124 W. 30th Street, Suite 201 New York, NY 10001 FAIR's Website FAIR counts on your support to do this work — please donate today.

POLITICO NIGHTLY: It’s everywhere

BY DAN GOLDBERG

Presented by

With help from Myah Ward

YOU’RE NOT SAFE — Vice President Mike Pence has often said that the latest surge in infections is a function of only a few hotspots, select counties in certain states that can be targeted and extinguished.

In reality, the virus is raging out of control in regions across the country. It isn’t a function of more testing, as President Trump claims. And it isn’t confined to one region, or places governed by one political party.

While Arizona, Florida and Texas are in the spotlight, several other states are reporting alarming numbers, begging residents to change their behavior and warning of dire consequences if they do not.

State officials in Oregon asked residents today to avoid indoor gatherings of more than 10 people and said at the rate the virus is spreading, daily infections could triple in the next month. If that were to happen, “we’d quickly fill hospitals across the state,” said Dean Sidelinger, state health officer.

Oregon’s reopening began on May 15 but the date is less important than people’s behavior, said Patrick Allen, director of the Oregon Health Authority. Too little social distancing and mask wearing has helped fan the spread.

In South Carolina, nearly half of all infections have occurred in just the last two weeks and more than 17 percent of tests are now coming back positive.

In Alabama, state health officer Scott Harris said Thursday he is “extremely concerned” about hospital capacity. The state of 5 million people has fewer than 200 ICU beds available, less than at any time since the pandemic began. “This is not sustainable for very long,” Harris said.

Problems are also growing in the Midwest. Ohio reported a record number of new infections today and the number of patients in ICU beds has reached new highs. Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, who has been praised for his deliberate handling of the pandemic, mandated masks for the state’s three largest counties.

In Indiana, state health commissioner Kristina Box said Wednesday that she is concerned that the percentage of positive tests has steadily increased over the last week.

In Wisconsin, the percent of positive tests more than doubled over the last couple weeks, and a record number of daily infections were reported on Thursday and then again today.

The one constant message from public health and elected officials in all these states is that the variable that matters most is personal precaution. The virus is everywhere in the country, and it’s spreading at an increasing rate. No matter how careful your governor is, or what party is in charge, or what coast you live on, or if you’re nowhere near a coast, the advice about mask wearing and social distancing remains the same.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. The weekend's here, and so Renu's inbox, despite her well-deserved break. Drop us a line. Reach out: rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.

A message from PhRMA:

America’s biopharmaceutical companies are sharing their knowledge and resources more than ever before to speed up the development of new medicines to fight COVID-19. They’re working with doctors and hospitals on over 1,100 clinical trials. Because science is how we get back to normal. More.

FIRST IN NIGHTLY

MORE NETFLIX, LESS CHILL — Democrats and Republicans have responded to the pandemic quite differently, and that even extends to what people are doing in their bedrooms. Simply put, there’s a sizable partisan gap in how the coronavirus is affecting Americans’ sex lives.

The Kinsey Institute recently conducted a study to explore the impact of the pandemic and the resulting lockdown and social distancing measures on people’s sex lives and relationships. Starting in mid-March, just as widespread social restrictions began being implemented across the country, Kinsey surveyed more than 2,000 adults, writes Justin Lehmiller, a research fellow at the institute. Some were single, some were in relationships, some were married; some lived alone, some cohabited. Their ages ranged from 18 to 81.

Liberals were significantly more likely than conservatives to report a decline in their sex lives since the start of the pandemic. They reported less desire for sex in general, a lower frequency of sex with a partner and a lower likelihood of experimenting with new sexual activities at the time when most of the country was locked down. Conservatives, meanwhile, were significantly more likely than liberals to say the pandemic hasn’t affected their sex lives at all. And importantly, this holds true regardless of a participant’s relationship status or living situation: Single liberals were less sexually active than single conservatives, just as cohabiting liberals were less active than cohabiting conservatives.

HAPPENING TUESDAY 9 a.m. EDT - A PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW WITH AUSTIN MAYOR STEVE ADLER : As coronavirus cases continue to spike in Texas, the city of Austin is preparing to turn the downtown convention center into a field hospital. Join Playbook authors Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman for a virtual interview with Austin Mayor Steve Adler that will reveal how he’s navigating the rapid jump in the number of cases, how cities are working with state and local governments during the pandemic, and how a city known for its restaurants, bars and concerts is planning for what's to come. REGISTER HERE.

Commuters wearing face masks pass through Shinagawa train station in Tokyo. | Getty Images

COVID-2020

‘YOU GET MADE FUN OF’ — Inside the Trump campaign’s headquarters this week, a team of cleaners scrubbed down surfaces and disinfected equipment — a recognition that coronavirus has found its way into the heart of the president’s reelection bid, regardless of Donald Trump’s public dismissals of recent risk, health care reporter Dan Diamond writes.

The campaign’s headquarters — located on the 14th floor of an Arlington, Va., office building that shares space with multiple businesses — was shut down for its first deep cleaning in weeks after a senior campaign official tested positive for the virus. The decision to conduct the cleaning came after two months of flouting the Trump administration’s own public health guidance: There are no face coverings or temporary barriers between desks at headquarters, and leaders have limited efforts to implement social distancing.

The campaign’s lack of safety protections were visible during Vice President Mike Pence’s visit to the office last month, during which he posed for a photo with more than 70 campaign staff, closely packed together and without wearing face coverings — an image that infuriated local officials, who called on Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam to take action and enforce state public health orders on universal masking indoors and social distancing. But Northam, a Democrat, declined to do so.

Facing no threat of enforcement, the Trump campaign has continued to make its own rules on coronavirus protections, said the individuals, who requested anonymity to speak freely. For instance, staff have been told to wear masks outside the office, in case they’re spotted by reporters, but they’ve been instructed that it’s acceptable to remove them in the office, the individuals said, adding that staff also publicly joke about the risk of coronavirus and play down the pandemic’s threat.

“You get made fun of, if you wear a mask,” said one person. “There’s social pressure not to do it.”

 

AROUND THE NATION

YOU DON’T HAVE TO GO HOME BUT YOU CAN’T STAY HERE — South Carolina’s Republican Gov. Henry McMaster issued a “last call” executive order today, banning the sale of alcohol at restaurants and bars after 11 p.m. starting Saturday. If the establishments are caught handing out booze once the local TV news starts, they could temporarily lose their liquor licenses, Nightly’s Myah Ward writes.

This small step toward curbing the spread of the virus is a fairly big one for McMaster, who was one of the last governors to shut down his state when the virus first raged across the country this spring. And he was among the first to begin reopening, on April 20.

South Carolina surpassed 52,000 positive coronavirus cases this week. In early May, when the state reopened its gyms, pools and restaurant dining rooms, cases were below 8,000.

In June as the count surged, McMaster refrained from walking back on reopening and said closing businesses “is not the answer.” Instead, he said the pandemic comes down to “individual responsibility,” and that South Carolinians need to “be smart.” He added, “There’s a lot of stupid floating around out there.” By the end of the month , McMaster was pleading with his citizens, “For goodness sake, wear your mask, keep that distance.”

It didn’t work. Tourists and residents hit the beaches and filled restaurants and bars in tourist destinations like Myrtle Beach and Charleston. Today, one in every 60 Charleston County residents are confirmed as having had coronavirus — nearly 7,000 cases. And West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice warned people to “think twice” before visiting Myrtle Beach.

“If you’ve gone to the beach, you’ve likely come in contact with somebody who is positive, but perhaps asymptomatic,” Joan Duwve, director of public health with the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, said on June 26.

Now, McMaster has found a new culprit for the spread of Covid-19: young people. “It’s time for our younger adults to behave like mature adults,” he said today. “This is very serious.”

He’s not entirely wrong: People between 21 and 30 represent 22 percent of the known cases in the state. And in recent weeks, the health department reported a 966 percent increase in cases among people from 11 to 20 and a 413 percent increase in people from 21 to 30.

Even so, McMaster isn’t following the example of Florida and Texas, which have closed bars. And he has yet to issue a statewide mask mandate.

None of this seems to bother Ryan Heath, POLITICO’s Global Translations author and a frequent Nightly contributor. He traveled to Charleston this week, and he’s staying put. Ryan talked with Myah about what he’s seeing on the ground. This conversation has been edited:

What’s it like in Charleston?

I headed down from New York. It really is like it just gets looser and looser as you go South. I flew in from Atlanta after having begun on Amtrak. My flight from Atlanta to Charleston was on Delta. The Delta Lounge required masks. The wifi password was “wearmask.” The rules could not be clearer, but I had trouble spotting a person wearing one. On the flight itself, the other passengers in Row 13 removed their masks after sitting down, prompting a rebuke from the female flight attendant, and a “whatever” and eye roll from the man next to me. He did eventually wear the mask, at the urging of his female companion.

And then once you get here, it’s a bit strange.

We arrived at a restaurant, and there was literally only one party in the entire restaurant, and they were like, “Oh my god, other people,” and made a joke about it when we arrived. We sat outdoors.

But then a nearby bar indoors was completely packed.

Did anything else stand out?

There are still a lot of people wearing masks. I don't want to say it’s like everyone’s running around like a frat party. But there is definitely the sort of situation where people wear it when they are told to wear it. There was an elevator that could fit eight people in it to go to a bar last night, and eight people got in it. We were just horrified. We just watched them, and were like, No we’ll take the stairs. And so people are quite OK with flouting whatever rules there are. So I can imagine that is going to bring more tension. If the numbers keep going crazy, then that is going to become a flashpoint.

The streets of Charleston are perceptibly empty most hours of the day and night this week. Typically, you couldn’t pay Southerners to move around outdoors in the heat of the day, but this feels different: It’s the lack of traffic, the lack of movement in general, the surprise at seeing a bustling shop, then realizing it’s a barber shop full of men only.

Men who won’t be told what to do — call it toxic mask-ulinity — seem likely to emerge as a fault line here in coming weeks.

How about the beaches?

Temperatures neared the 90s today, and it felt much hotter. Folly Beach was predictably busy, for miles. People were spread out in their groups — it’s easy to socially distance on a huge beach. Electronic billboards already advertise the governor’s new post-11 p.m. alcohol ban.

ASK THE AUDIENCE

Nightly asked you: How do you think schools and day cares should reopen this fall, if at all? Below are some of your lightly edited responses.

“Wherever possible, I recommend staggered-day sessions, so students get at least a half-day of formal classroom instruction three or more days a week. I taught for four years on staggered sessions. It took planning, but by mid-September, it was running smoothly. It’s worth a try.” — Diane E. VanderHorn, retired teacher, Freehold, N.J.

“Eighty percent of time should be spent learning outdoors, until weather forces indoor classes. Then schools should use a hybrid model two days a week and every other Monday. Online learning and written assignments for the rest. This would work well in rural communities where the land surrounding schools can be used for outdoor classrooms, less possible in urban areas.” — Anne Haddad, consultant, Northfield, Minn.

“School needs to reopen with masks mandatory for both staff and students and with social distancing in place. School districts will need more financial support from the federal government to make reopening as safe as possible. My state and district have been developing plans to accomplish this. As a teacher, I know school is a safe space for my students. For some students, school provides their only meals of the day.” — Alex Ward, high school teacher, Champaign, Ill.

“It's very difficult to say what should happen now, even though it will make it tough on teachers and staff not to know until the last minute. But if a state is spiking in cases, then schools should not open. Within a month or so of opening, it will be flu season and it could turn into a catastrophic event.” — TERRY SNYDER, SCHOOL LIBRARIAN, NORWALK, OHIO

“They should not open until there is either a cure or a vaccine. If my 11-year-old got the virus, he could die.” — Gary Miller, retired, Juneau, Alaska

“Difficult question. As a school nutrition manager (read: glorified lunch lady), I know that these places provide necessary resources to many students in the form of meals, supervision, structured play, etc. However, I also see hundreds of students gathered simultaneously in an environment perfectly conducive to the spread of a virus. Socioeconomic status seems to be the deciding factor for success in an online format, so I guess a hybrid approach might be most fair?” — Logan Martin, nutrition services manager, Phoenix

“Reopen fully, with little to no restrictions. Society will pay a huge price in the future without reopening. Kids are the safest group in America.” — Bill Musolf, sales, Santa Clarita, Calif.

GET VIP ACCESS TO AN INTERVIEW WITH KERRY WASHINGTON: Women Rule Editorial Director Anna Palmer will host a conversation with star actress, producer and director Kerry Washington; Dale Ho, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project; and Brigitte Amiri, deputy director at the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project focused on "The Fight," a documentary that chronicles four cases that the ACLU brought against the Trump administration. Register here for exclusive access to the conversation next week before it's made available to the general public.

PUNCHLINES

‘AS IF 2020 WASN’T THROWING ENOUGH CRAZY AT US’ — Matt Wuerker takes us through jokes and cartoons on the latest tell-all Trump book, the national fight over statues, Covid-19, Kanye West and much more, in the latest Punchlines.

NIGHTLY NUMBER

67 percent The proportion of respondents in an ABC News/Ipsos poll released today who disapproved of “the way Donald Trump is handling the response to the coronavirus.” Only 33 percent approved — the widest gulf in public sentiment since ABC News and Ipsos started surveying on the pandemic in March.

PARTING WORDS

AIRPLANE! Renu, your vacationing host, emails from Atlanta:

I had been dreading the idea of traveling with two kids under the age of two during a pandemic. The last time I got on a plane was in 2019, for a solo work trip to Washington. As much as I love travel, I would have happily skipped a pandemic plane trip right now. But my brother is getting married on Saturday in a small, outdoor ceremony. Covid already canceled the 300-person Indian festivities. I couldn’t miss the wedding of my only sibling and best friend. So we flew.

I expected the worst, especially because it was the July 4 weekend: crowded planes, stressed-out staff and maskless travelers. But our journey was surprisingly smooth, though eerie. In Austin, there were only a few people to check us in and handle our luggage. I was allowed to bring a large tube of liquid hand sanitizer through security. People largely kept their distance during the boarding process and the plane wasn’t too crowded.

Once we landed, there were no signs of Atlanta’s distinction as the world’s busiest airport. The train to baggage claim was empty and our luggage arrived at the carousel before we did. The journey would have been pleasant, if the emptiness were not a reminder of the pandemic’s devastation.

A message from PhRMA:

America’s biopharmaceutical companies are sharing their knowledge and resources more than ever before to speed up the development of new medicines to fight COVID-19. They’re working with doctors and hospitals on over 1,100 clinical trials.

And there’s no slowing down. America’s biopharmaceutical companies will continue working day and night until they beat coronavirus. Because science is how we get back to normal.

See how biopharmaceutical companies are working together to get people what they need during this pandemic.

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Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam

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