Middleboro Review 2: 06/07/22

Tuesday, June 7, 2022

POLITICO NIGHTLY: How scared to be about monkeypox

Presented by the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living

A medical laboratory technician picks up from a fridge a bucket with suspected monkeypox samples to be tested. | Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images

ELECTION NIGHT — For tonight’s primary results, POLITICO has you covered from analysis to elections tallies. You can find live results on our pages for California, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota. And to fill in the gaps, our campaigns reporters and editors will be breaking it all down in real-time in our live chat, starting at 11 p.m. ET. They’ll wrap up the evening results and talk California for an hour.

DON’T PANIC — After our experience with Covid, it’s hard not to feel uneasy about monkeypox.

New outbreaks of monkeypox have led to more than 1,000 cases in at least 29 countries. The CDC has said people who travel to places with a lot of cases, work with animals or men who have sex with men are at highest risk for infection. The risk to the public is low, the agency says.

But how low? POLITICO’s Daniel Payne and Carmen Paun wrote a helpful Q&A with everything we know about the virus right now. Nightly had a few more questions for our in-house experts, so we talked to Daniel over Slack today. This conversation has been edited.

Should I be freaking out?

There’s no reason to freak out about monkeypox at this point. Concerns about the unexplained spread may seem a lot like what we were hearing about Covid-19 in March 2020, but monkeypox is far less transmissible — and we already have vaccines and treatments at our disposal. Still, public health leaders are concerned about the new outbreaks that are popping up around the world.

Do you feel there’s an overreaction because of the Covid pandemic? Or are people responding more to the fact that it’s kind of a spooky name?

Experts keep telling me that there’s more interest in infectious diseases now than ever because of the pandemic. More people plugged into the subject probably does mean more people are reacting to this news. The name probably freaks people out a bit, too — as does the characteristic symptom, skin lesions.

What are the theories for why it’s spreading?

Much of the spread in the new outbreaks seems to be between humans — and that’s also true for many endemic cases. Monkeypox mostly spreads through close contact, researchers believe, so this is very different from a virus like Covid-19.

Many cases seem to come from sexual contact, particularly in men who have sex with men. But because transmission is now more widespread than experts thought possible, it’s important to emphasize that there are a lot of unanswered questions about how monkeypox spreads.

This isn’t a new virus. But is the level of spread, these case numbers we’re seeing, unprecedented?

Right — some researchers believe this virus has been around for centuries. And several countries have been treating cases for decades, but because it was mostly contained in endemic countries, in West and Central Africa, there hasn’t been much concern about global implications.

That’s what’s unprecedented here: It’s very unusual to see so many outbreaks outside of that region, and experts now believe there is widespread community transmission in new places.

Why is it endemic only in parts of Africa — how does that work?

There are now a lot of new questions about that, given the outbreaks in new places. There are some links to certain animal species that live in endemic regions. It’s still unknown exactly which species are responsible for spreading the virus. Not all those animals are primates, by the way — many of them are rodents. It can also just be generally hard to stamp out transmission once it’s started.

How do the experts you’ve talked to rate the government response so far?

Some immediate government responses so far have made sense, like making large orders for therapeutics and new generations of vaccines for outbreaks.

But there has been a decent amount of criticism that the world did not collectively deal with this problem earlier. We have known this disease is a problem in some countries for decades, and there have been plenty of opportunities to study and develop responses to it. But those opportunities largely weren’t taken until now — until wealthier nations in Europe and the Americas found themselves with cases, some researchers pointed out.

And now, as governments are stocking up on vaccines and therapeutics, there are questions of inequities in supplies — especially because most cases are still where they were last year and the year before: West and Central Africa.

What are the biggest unknowns here — as a health reporter who follows this closely, what’s your biggest concern?

The big question seems to be: Why is this happening? There’s a lot more spread — including in places where there hasn’t been much before — and researchers are racing to understand why that is.

There are other questions, too, about how well our current tools will work in this new context and how exactly transmission works — but I think public health officials (and reporters like me) will be focusing on the reasons for the new outbreaks and what measures will be needed to stop them.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at mward@politico.com or on Twitter at @MyahWard.

A message from the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living:

Congress: Invest in frontline care workers who protect America’s seniors.
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WHAT'D I MISS?

— FDA advisers vote to recommend Novavax Covid-19 vaccine: The Food and Drug Administration’s independent vaccine advisory committee voted 21 to 0, with one abstention, to recommend that regulators authorize the Novavax Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use in adults, finding the benefits of its two-dose primary series outweigh the potential risks. Advisers signaled interest in making available a vaccine made with a technology different from the messenger RNA shots that have dominated the U.S. immunization arsenal against the disease, in hopes of convincing unvaccinated holdouts to change their minds. An older vaccine technology formulation could be an option for those who are allergic to components of the mRNA shots.

— Dems’ big bet on guns: Senate Democrats acknowledge bipartisan gun safety talks will fall far short of what they want. They’re desperate for a deal anyway — and seem willing to take whatever the GOP will give them. Whatever the negotiations among a handful of members in both parties amount to, this much is already assured: There will be no assault weapons ban and no universal background checks. Expanded background checks are a long shot, as is raising the age needed to buy firearms to 21. It’s a pragmatic turn, reflecting how differently the guns issue plays among a 50-member Democratic caucus that’s tried to attract GOP support to gun legislation for nearly a decade now.

— Pentagon chief heads to an Asia on edge: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin lifted off this morning for a 10-day visit to Asia, with a final stop in Brussels on the tail end of the trip, as Pacific allies are increasingly on edge over China’s provocative moves and a record number of North Korean missile launches this year. This is Austin’s fourth visit to Asia as defense secretary, and reflects the Biden administration’s continued focus on the Pacific even as the war grinds on in Ukraine, a senior defense official told reporters ahead of the visit.

— Jan. 6 committee interviews head of Trump’s Secret Service detail: The Jan. 6 select committee has interviewed the top Secret Service agent on then-President Donald Trump’s protective detail during the Capitol attack, according to three people familiar with the probe. Robert Engel was the special agent in charge on Jan. 6, 2021, meaning he was responsible for protecting the president from “socks on to socks off” — the whole work day. In that role, he rode from the White House to that day’s “Stop the Steal” rally with Trump in the presidential armored car called “The Beast.” A Secret Service spokesperson said the agency has cooperated fully with the committee probe.

— Black applicants half as likely as white applicants to get pandemic unemployment benefits in some states: The Government Accountability Office findings are on track with a preliminary report GAO released a year ago , which warned that it had found “potential racial and ethnic disparities” in the administration of jobless benefits.

— Mass. Dems rally to Healey in governor’s race: Massachusetts Democrats are facing their best prospects for retaking the governor’s office in a decade, and they’re not taking any chances. Instead of a crowded primary dominated by liberal policy debates, party activists are overwhelmingly supporting state Attorney General Maura Healey. The progressive all but cleared the field for the open seat with a message that effectively says if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. She holds commanding leads in fundraising and polling and secured the party’s endorsement for governor at last weekend’s state convention with a resounding 71 percent support from delegates. Republicans have held the governor’s office in deep blue Massachusetts for most of the past 30 years. Only one Democrat, Deval Patrick, has managed to break that streak.

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AROUND THE WORLD

YELLEN DOES OIL — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said today that the U.S. is conducting “extremely active” negotiations with European countries to find a way to limit the amount of money flowing to Russia in payments for oil.

Yellen, acknowledging that “it’s virtually impossible” for the U.S. to insulate itself from global oil shocks, told the Senate Finance Committee that it was a desirable strategy to implement a cap on prices for Russian oil. She said the U.S. and its allies were still working through the best approach, writes Victoria Guida.

“What we want to do is keep Russian oil flowing into the global market to hold down global prices and try to avoid a spike that causes a worldwide recession and drives up oil prices,” she said. “But absolutely, the objective is to limit the revenue going to Russia.”

Her comments underscore the difficulty both the Biden administration and its allies face in trying to cripple Russia’s military as it continues its invasion of Ukraine without leading to excessive costs for consumers. Soaring prices at the gas pump have already contributed to the highest U.S. inflation in more than four decades.

A message from the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living:

NIGHTLY NUMBER

$7 million

The amount of money Indivisible, a network of local progressive organizing groups that sprang up during the Trump administration, is spending in the 2022 midterms to help elect Democrats by emphasizing “MAGA extremism,” according to plans first shared with POLITICO.

STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today.

PARTING WORDS

MCCONAUGHEY ON GUNS — Matthew McConaughey, in an emotional speech at the White House today, called for lawmakers to act on bipartisan gun reforms — two weeks after a mass shooting at a school in the actor’s Texas hometown left 19 students and two teachers dead, writes Kelly Hooper.

“We need to invest in mental health care, we need safer schools, we need to restrain sensationalized media coverage, we need to restore our family values, we need to restore our American values and we need responsible gun ownership,” McConaughey said at the daily White House press briefing.

The actor stressed the need for gun restrictions, such as background checks, red flag laws, raising the minimum age of purchase and a waiting period for guns such as AR-15 rifles. Before his speech, he met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to discuss gun legislation. He also met with President Joe Biden at the White House.

McConaughey recounted stories of some of the victims of the Uvalde shooting whose parents he met when he and his wife, Camila Alves, visited the town last week. He appeared to choke up multiple times throughout the speech as he spoke about the young victims and their dreams.

At one point, McConaughey slammed the podium after he showed the green Converse sneakers one girl wore that were later used to identify her.

“Where do we start?” McConaughey asked. “... We start by making the loss of these lives matter.”

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Long term care is facing a historic workforce crisis due to chronic Medicaid underfunding and pandemic burnout that continues to become more dire. It’s time to build back our workforce and invest in the frontline heroes who are dedicated to caring for America’s seniors.
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RSN: FOCUS: You Can Ignore Elon Musk

07 June 22

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FOCUS: You Can Ignore Elon Musk
Ross Barkan, New York Magazine
Barkan writes: "Once again, Elon Musk kicked up a news cycle after declaring that he felt 'super bad' about the economy and would cut 10 percent of the workforce at Tesla, the electric carmaker he owns."

Once again, Elon Musk kicked up a news cycle after declaring that he felt “super bad” about the economy and would cut 10 percent of the workforce at Tesla, the electric carmaker he owns. Joe Biden, inevitably, had to respond. Musk did not elaborate on his feelings — he’s not the sort for astute analysis or introspection — and he eventually backtracked on the vow to slash jobs. This came just as he had already ignited another media firestorm by telling his workers he could terminate workers who didn’t return to the office 40 hours a week.

It was all very exhausting and quite typical. Musk, who has attempted (or not really attempted) to spend an absurd amount of money to buy Twitter, had commandeered the spotlight for himself with stray pronouncements and gestures, infuriating many of his observers, much of them on the left who reside on Twitter no less. One of the great favors left-liberals and Democratic Party activists could do for themselves is to think less about him. Ire should be focused instead on the billionaires actually causing substantial damage to the nation.

Attention and outrage are not exactly zero sum, but they are somewhat close; energy and scrutiny reserved for Musk can mean far less for the more dangerous American oligarchs. Jeff Bezos’s Amazon is attempting to crush unions wherever they might breathe. The Koch family remains one of the greatest obstacles to combating climate change worldwide. Ken Griffin underwrites numerous right-wing causes at a degree far beyond whatever Musk can try to do. Even Bill Gates, now somewhat beloved by liberals, cut his teeth as a ruthless monopolist and now fuels the creeping privatization of American public schools.

The Gates example is instructive. One of Musk’s recent controversies concerned an incredibly vulgar and sophomoric tweet about Gates. In such a clash, it is easy to view Gates with sympathy as the benevolent ideal of what a billionaire should be: refined, genteel, seemingly committed to the public good. For much of the left, the Gates aesthetic is much more acceptable. He does not behave like a classic internet troll as Musk does. The mere difference between Musk, of course, and your run-of-the-mill troll is almost 100 million Twitter followers.

Such global fame hasn’t altered Musk’s behavior. He embodies a certain kind of early-21st-century internet culture that won’t quite die. The brash, misogynistic keyboard warrior has his patron saint in Musk. On certain issues, he’s been in lockstep with conservatives, including downplaying COVID-19 entirely. His bid to take control of Twitter, liberals fear, would unleash new waves of misinformation and allow banished conservatives to return to the platform, including Donald Trump. Yet Musk’s politics are not extraordinary for a man of his class. His businesses, relative to those of others who occupy his tax bracket, are fairly benign. Yes, SpaceX is doing what NASA should be doing and there are looming concerns about the privatization of space. We’d all be better off driving Teslas instead of gas-guzzlers if the automobiles ever became affordable for working-class people. The initial source of Musk’s wealth, spinning off PayPal to eBay, would be a forgettable transaction of the dot-com era if it hadn’t led to the creation of the Musk that grates today.

Is Musk wrecking the American political system? No. The closest he came, perhaps, was in purchasing Twitter, but few made the cogent case for why Musk’s takeover of one social-media platform used by relatively few Americans would pose a threat to democracy or even how we conduct our discourse already. Twitter matters only because a large number of influential people — academics, activists, journalists, and certain celebrities — congregate there. Musk, not surprisingly, never articulated a serious vision for the company. And if he delivered on what liberals most feared — reinstating Trump—it’s unclear how this would have altered a political firmament where right-wing Republicans are poised to make huge gains this year in Congress anyway. The Trump wing of the GOP has certainly not diminished since his 2021 banishment from Twitter.

As the Musk black hole consumes every inch of column space left, men like Griffin, the Chicago hedge-fund manager, are actually pumping millions into the resurrection of the Trump-led Republican Party. Griffin gave more than $28 million to Republicans in 2021, outstripping any single GOP donor. He gave $5 million to Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s PAC. He funneled $11 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund and $5 million to the Senate Leadership Fund. In Illinois, Griffin is expected to unload millions in the attempt to defeat the center-left Democratic governor, J.B. Pritzker, a fellow billionaire.

Griffin is not logging any hours on Twitter or making ugly jokes at the expense of Gates. He is surgically plowing his personal fortune into the Republican Party in a bid to support regressive taxation, lax environmental regulations, and the classic suite of conservative elite causes. Musk favors much of this, but he is not so focused or invested. He’d rather pop off and move on.

In one sense, Musk offers cover for the billionaires actually spending enormous sums to influence federal policy. If Democratic heat comes against him, there’s less of it to go elsewhere. More average voters and pundits are outraged at the stray Musk tweet than Gates’s belief that vaccine formulas shouldn’t be shared with the developing world. Musk is an easy mark, and he seems to like it this way. Like a professional wrestler, he revels in his heel status. This doesn’t mean, however, the left should give him what he wants. Heels are nothing without an audience.

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Melanie Stansbury is a proud New Mexican who has spent her career working to protect our lands and waters and address the critical issues facing our communities. Serving in the New Mexico House of Representatives, Melanie has been a leader in tackling the pandemic and protecting our natural resources. Now, as a Member of Congress, she is in Washington D.C. to lift up the voices of New Mexicans.