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This program was recorded on SUNDAY, MAY 24. Due to Covid-19, shows are being prerecorded beginning March 13th and until further notice. We miss our live call-in participants, and look forward to a time we can once again go live.

 

Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio), a listener call-in show  airing live every Monday night from 3-4 PM (CT) on KPFT-FM 90.1 (Houston). My co-host and Editor is Andrew Ferguson.

Listen live on the radio, or on the internet from anywhere in the world! When the show is live, we take calls at 713-526-5738. (Long distance charges may apply.)

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For the purposes of this show, I operate on two mottoes:

• You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts;
• An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.

SIGNOFF QUOTE[s]: “People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.” ~ Bill Clinton, Democratic Convention Speech (Wednesday, August 27, 2008)

 

 

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MAIN TOPICS: TOPIC: Voting Info, July 15 Tax Deadline, House coronavirus oversight panel asks five companies to return loans meant for small busines, SpaceX’s historic Demo-2 Crew Dragon astronaut launch: Full coverage, “This is a scam”: Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick calls it laughable for people under 65 to fear voting in person, The pandemic has already altered how tens of millions of Americans can cast their ballots this year, Texas unemployment rate hits worst on record at 12.8%,  They lost their jobs and insurance in the pandemic. Now they’re slipping through Texas’ health care safety net, Texas families filing for SNAP food assistance almost doubled in April, Houston ISD considering longer school day, year-round schedule, virtual learning for 2020-21, New study says Harris County might have drastic rise in COVID-19 cases in next few weeks, With restaurants closed, CDC warns of increasingly aggressive rodents looking for new food sources,

MORE.

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Make sure you are registered to vote! (Voting and election info are items 1 thru 6. Show information begins after Item 4.)

This program was recorded on SUNDAY, MAY 17. You will NOT be able to get on the air, so please do not call the call-in number. We love our callers, but unfortunately live call-in is one of the casualties of COVID-19.

1. SPRING FUNDRAISER IS HERE.
   1. THANK YOU EMILY FROM SPRING TX for your generous donation to Thinkwing Radio and KPFT!
2. Next Harris County election is a runoff, originally scheduled for May, and is now scheduled for July 14, 2020 – Primary Runoff Elections (at HarrisVotes.com)
3. PRESS RELEASE (In Part): “(Houston, Texas) –… The Harris County Clerk’s Office is currently working on a plan to continue to make voting accessible for the upcoming elections.”
   1. General business for county Clerk: https://www.cclerk.hctx.net/ and indirectly via com
   2. The city of Friendswood Updated at 12:34 p.m. March 27: At the board of trustees special meeting on March 23, the board voted to postpone the district bond election to November.
      1. https://communityimpact.com/houston/pearland-friendswood/government/2020/03/19/city-of-friendswood-friendswood-isd-elections-postponed/
4. Make sure you are registered to vote!
   1. For a personalized, nonpartisan voter guide visit vote411.org (DO NOT!! go to 411Vote!!
   2. If you are denied your right to vote any place at any time at any polling place for any reason, ask for (or demand) a provisional ballot rather than lose your vote.
   3. HarrisVotes.com  (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965) Dr. Diane Trautman, Harris County Clerk
   4. VoteTexas.gov
   5. HarrisVotes.com – Countywide Voting Centers
      1. HARRIS CTY – IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR VOTING: Do not possess and cannot reasonably obtain one of these IDs?
      2. Fill out a declaration at the polls describing a reasonable impediment to obtaining it, and show a copy or original of one of the following supporting forms of ID:
      3. A government document that shows your name and an address, including your voter registration certificate
      4. Current utility bill
      5. Bank statement
      6. Government check
      7. Paycheck
      8. (a) A certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes your identity (which may include a foreign birth document)
   6. You may vote early by-mail if
      1. you are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
      2. Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
      3. you are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
         1. Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
         2. Sick or disabled;
         3. 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
         4. Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
         5. Make sure you are registered:
   7. Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
      1. CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
         1. CLICK How to register to vote in Texas
      2. POLL LOCATIONS & BALLOTS: Find your ballots with simple information entries
   8. Outside Texas, try Vote.org.
5. IRS Announces New July 15 Tax Deadline For Expats, Trusts, Estates And Corporations, Includes June 15 Estimated Payments Fix, By Ashlea Ebeling, Senior Contributor | FORBES.COM| Apr 9, 2020,06:54pm EDT
   1. … Notice 2020-23 confirms get … until July 15 to file and pay federal income taxes. …
6. SpaceX’s historic Demo-2 Crew Dragon astronaut launch: Full coverage. By Mike Wall | SPACE.COM | 5/23/2020 13 hours ago
   1. On that date, Elon Musk’s company is scheduled to launch its first crewed mission, a test flight called Demo-2 that will send NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station aboard a Crew Dragon capsule.
   2. Mission Photos | Step-by-Step Guide | Crew Dragon| SpaceX Spacesuits
   3. If all goes well with Demo-2, Crew Dragon and SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will be validated for operational crewed missions, the first of which is expected to launch later this year. 
7. “This is a scam”: Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick calls it laughable for people under 65 to fear voting in person – Texas is locked in a legal battle over whether it must expand voting by mail. by Matthew Watkins | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | May 22, 2020 Updated: 4 PM
   1. Gov. Dan Patrick said Friday that efforts to expand mail-in voting during the coronavirus amount to a “scam by Democrats to steal the election” and claimed that people under 65 are at more risk of dying in a car wreck on the way to vote than they are from dying from the new coronavirus because they voted in person. …
   2. … Democrats and multiple voters have sued the state, saying it’s dangerous to require people to wait in line and cast ballots on machines shared with other voters while the virus is spreading. GOP state officials have opposed the effort, however, saying that mail-in voting is vulnerable to fraud. …
   3. [Patrick said] “This idea that we want to give you a disability claim because I am afraid to go vote — if you are under 65 — is laughable. You have more chance of being in a serious auto accident if you are under 65 on the way to vote than you do from catching the virus and dying from it on the way to voting. This is the greatest scam ever.” …
   4. … [P]ublic health experts are encouraging people of all ages to limit their social interactions. While older people are generally at more risk of dying from the virus, young people can transmit it and endanger people of all ages.
   5. A federal judge on Tuesday ordered to allow anyone who seeks “to vote by mail to avoid transmission of the virus” to do so. But an appeals court put the ruling temporarily on hold a day later.
   6. S. District Judge Fred Biery said in his order, “Citizens should have the option to choose voting by letter carrier versus voting with disease carriers,” “‘We the People’ get just about the government and political leaders we deserve, but deserve to have a safe and unfettered vote to say what we get.” ~ U.S. District Judge Fred Biery a San Antonio federal judge agreed that voting by mail should be opened up, in a colorful opinion
      1. In a separate case pending before the Texas Supreme Court, multiple medical professionals said in a court filing that the nature of voting in person — including standing in line, interactions with others in close proximity and “communal touching” of voting equipment — would facilitate a “heightened danger” for transmission of the coronavirus. …
   7. Patrick warned that “this will be the end of America if we allow [a mail-in voting expansion] to happen.” He said fraud related to mail-in voting can “swing the balance easily” in an election.
   8. “There will be Democrat activists going out there to find people and say, ‘Hey, by the way, you got your ballot. Pay you 10 bucks. Can I handle it for you? This will destroy America if we allow it to happen,” Patrick said.
8. The pandemic has already altered how tens of millions of Americans can cast their ballots this year, By Elise Viebeck| WASHINGTONPOST.COM | May 23, 2020 at 1:52 p.m. CDT
   1. The coronavirus pandemic is rapidly transforming this year’s elections, changing the way tens of millions of people cast ballots and putting thousands of election officials at the center of a pitched political fight as they rush to adapt with limited time and funding.
   2. In a watershed moment for American voting, nearly 30 states have changed rules or practices for this year’s primaries or the general election in response to the public health threat posed by covid-19, according to a tally by The Washington Post. The new policies affect roughly 86.6 million registered voters — including more than 40 million people who now have the temporary right to cast an absentee ballot because of the virus.
   3. This striking shift in the voting landscape encompasses nearly every part of the country, red and blue states alike. But with November less than six months away, the largely bipartisan wave of change has been hit by political turbulence as President Trump raises unfounded doubts about the security of voting by mail and threatens to punish states where Democratic leaders are facilitating it.
   4. Battles over voting in the age of the coronavirus are defining the 2020 presidential cycle, with intense partisan fights over the rules erupting in states such as Wisconsin and Texas. The outcome will shape how easy it will be for people to cast their ballots in November — and in some cases, whether certain mail-in votes will be counted. …
   5. The shift toward absentee voting has been rapid and widespread over the past two months since the coronavirus began to claim thousands of lives throughout the country. …
   6. Since then, state leaders from both parties have announced decisions to facilitate absentee voting for people who fear contracting the coronavirus by casting ballots in person. This national shift has drawn comparisons to other periods of large-scale transformation in U.S. voting, such as the overhaul that followed the 2000 presidential election debacle, which set new minimum standards for election administration and provided federal funding to replace aging voting equipment. …
   7. Another high-stakes legal drama is now playing out in Texas, where Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton is fighting to maintain strict limits on who may vote absentee this year.
   8. [Texas] State law limits absentee voting to people who are age 65 or older, traveling, in jail or disabled. Paxton has argued that fear of exposure to the coronavirus is not a valid excuse, a position being challenged in federal and state court by the Texas Democratic Party. The state has approximately 15.2 million registered voters. …
   9. Earlier this month, a federal judge granted the Democratic Party’s request for a temporary injunction, saying the state’s restrictions are unconstitutional.
   10. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily stayed the lower court’s ruling Wednesday after Paxton appealed. The case could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. …
   11. As they wait for the next development, election administrators in Texas’s 254 counties are already coping with a higher-than-average number of absentee ballot requests ahead of the July 14 primary runoffs. …

9. Texas unemployment rate hits worst on record at 12.8%, by Mitchell Ferman | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG |May 22, 2020

   a.    Until now, the state’s worst-ever monthly unemployment rate was 9.2% in November 1986, as Texas reeled from the last big oil bust. A combination of the coronavirus pandemic and a contracting energy industry are expected to slow Texas’ economic recovery. Full Story 

10. They lost their jobs and insurance in the pandemic. Now they’re slipping through Texas’ health care safety net. by Shannon Najmabadi and Edgar Walters | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | May 22, 2020
    1. Texas had the highest uninsured rate of any state before the outbreak. It’s also among a minority of states that have declined to expand Medicaid coverage to people with incomes near or below the poverty line. Full Story 
11. Texas families filing for SNAP food assistance almost doubled in April. by Stacy Fernández | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | May 21, 2020
    1. Texas received a staggering 417,468 applications for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program last month, a sharp increase from March’s already high number of requests. Full Story
12. Houston ISD considering longer school day, year-round schedule, virtual learning for 2020-21, By Matt Dulin | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 1:03 PM May 15, 2020 CDT | Updated 1:03 PM May 15, 2020 CDT
    1. Houston ISD is prepared to continue virtual learning throughout the 2020-21 school year, but it is also looking at extended school days, block scheduling, a year-round calendar and other options, interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan told reporters May 15.
    2. A decision could be shared [by mid-June], Lathan said. …
    3. If the district ends up not pursuing an extended calendar, Lathan said an academic boot camp would be held starting Aug. 1 for students targeted for additional support.
    4. For the 2020-21 school year, the district is evaluating a possible A/B block day scheduling and allowing parents the option to keep their children at home for part or all of the year. …
13. New study says Harris County might have drastic rise in COVID-19 cases in next few weeks, By Roxanne Bustamante | ABC13.COM | Friday, May 22, 2020 6:23PM
    1. An expert says Harris County was an outlier among other U.S. counties for an increase in COVID-19 cases. He also said this increase can be prevented.
    2.  
    3. HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — A new study from the University of Pennsylvania shows Harris County could see a projected surge of COVID-19 cases in June.
    4. Public health officials are concerned that Memorial Day weekend could cause a wave of new cases if people are not taking precautions.
    5. Professor Jeffrey Morris, PhD, who used to live in Houston for many years, said the numbers are alarming.
    6. “The most alarming thing to me is, of all the counties in the whole United States, Harris County jumped out as an extreme outlier,” he said. “No other county had this type of this major growth projected, so that was what was very striking to me.”
    7. He said the model suggests that Houston and Harris County is in the right situation for a surge, but that it can be prevented.
    8. “If people recognized what a danger this really was and voluntarily started following these (CDC) guidelines, it could be controlled, and you wouldn’t have a surge, and businesses could be open to a larger extent,” Morris said.
14. With restaurants closed, CDC warns of increasingly aggressive rodents looking for new food sources. By Meryl Kornfield| WASHINGTONPOST.COM | May 23, 2020 at 4:38 p.m. CDT
    1. MIKE: Urban rats are having the Donner Party moment.
    2. … Some rats that miss feasting on [restaurant] scraps are becoming increasingly brazen to find new food sources, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned
    3. … many restaurants and cafes are closed or limited to takeout and delivery, and with the reduced sales, the restaurants’ trash bins are no longer overflowing with scrumptious leftovers hordes of rodents subsisted on. Finding slimmer pickings, critters have become more aggressive, prompting the CDC to issue guidance on how to deter them.
    4. Since the start of the pandemic, there have been increased reports of rat cannibalism and infanticide in New York, as well as more rat complaints in residential areas … as humans produce more food-waste at home. Roving rat armies, including one caught on camera scavenging New Orleans’ empty streets, are concerning to the CDC, which says rodents can carry disease. …
    5. … The CDC advises home and business owners to cover garbage cans, put bird and pet food out of reach and seal small holes rodents could access in buildings. If people follow established cleaning guidelines, they can avoid exposure to rodent-borne diseases, according to the agency.
    6. “Some jurisdictions have reported an increase in rodent activity as rodents search for new sources of food,” the CDC said. “Environmental health and rodent control programs may see an increase in service requests related to rodents and reports of unusual or aggressive rodent behavior.” …
    7. Rats can transmit food-borne illnesses such as salmonella, and their urine can also worsen allergies and asthma, especially in children, Jim Fredericks, chief entomologist at the National Pest Management Association, previously told The Post.
    8. Rats pose an additional threat to those working from home: they can devour cars. Rats gnawing at car engines and tires have caused fires, cost car owners fortunes and goaded officials to seek do-it-yourself solutions. …
    9. [Urban rodentologist Bobby Corrigan] told The Post that a pest expert sent him a photo after a gruesome rat battle in Queens: A nest of rats had left to scrounge for food at their usual city block of restaurants but turned on each other when they couldn’t find enough scraps, Corrigan believes. A pile of rat limbs on the sidewalk was all that remained.
    10. “Many of these rats in our cities depend on their nightly food, which is the restaurants and hotels and bars and doughnut shops and everything that we consume on the go,” Corrigan said.
    11. Corrigan said rats are “opportunistic foragers,” so as many rats’ reliable sources of food have vanished, the rodents seek new menu options. To keep rats from dining at your home, he advises following CDC guidance, securing food properly so rats can’t get to it. He recommends people avoid inhumane traps or poison.
    12. “Deny them the opportunity, and you’ll never even know they’ve visited your property,” he said.
15. Republicans are realizing the crisis is pulling them toward disaster, By Paul Waldman, Opinion writer | WASHINGTONPOST.COM | May 21, 2020 at 12:14 p.m. CDT
    1930. “The worst is behind us,” declared Herbert Hoover in 1930. Two years later, Franklin Roosevelt won the presidency by an 18-point margin, capturing 42 states.
    1931. Now, nearly 90 years later, at least some Republicans are starting to worry that President Trump could meet a fate similar to Hoover’s, and drag them down with him.
    1932. The latest weekly employment figures, released Thursday, show the magnitude of this economic catastrophe: Another 2.4 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, bringing the total to 38.6 million over nine weeks. Analysts are now predicting that the unemployment rate will soon top 30 percent. The highest it reached during the Great Depression was 25.6 percent.
    1933. And what’s on the minds of the Republican leadership? They’re worried that we’re coddling the unemployed:
    1934. At issue is the enhanced unemployment aid Congress approved in late March, which includes an extra $600 in weekly payments to out-of-work Americans. On Tuesday, President Trump articulated his reluctance to extend those benefits during a closed-door lunch with Senate Republicans, many of whom share his concern that the expanded federal payments deter people from returning to work. The enhanced benefits expire in July. …
    1935. … CNN reports that the number of Republicans coming around to some kind of further rescue package is growing:
    1936. Publicly and privately, Republicans are signaling that they believe the Senate will have to move beginning in June on another recovery package, calls that many believe will intensify next month after senators hear concerns about the deteriorating economy in their states during next week’s Memorial Day recess.
    1937. And some are quietly urging President Donald Trump to get more involved.
    1938. Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he’s pushing Trump to get behind a plan to pump more money into infrastructure projects — even though that idea has gotten an icy reception from McConnell so far. …
    1939. … So here’s the situation. In one corner you have Trump, who is opposing further rescue packages not because of firm ideological convictions but because he’s gripped by magical thinking. … In another corner you have Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who remains adamantly opposed to any further rescue bills. His opposition is a little hard to explain, though he may have concluded that Trump will lose, so Republicans might as well hold the economy down so President Biden can suffer the consequences.
    1940. Then you have these other Republicans, many of whom are up for reelection, beginning to come around to the idea that doing something — even if it’s not in line with their small-government principles — is far better than doing nothing, if the latter means defeat in November. …
16. Hertz Files For Bankruptcy, Raises Fears It May Flood Market With Hundreds Of Thousands Of Used Cars – Hertz has filed for bankruptcy after being dealt a devastating blow by the coronavirus. BY Michael Gauthier | CARSCOOPS.COM | Posted on May 23, 2020
    1. … Despite the bankruptcy filing, it’s business as usual as Hertz and its subsidiaries remain open. As a result, “all reservations, promotional offers, vouchers, and customer and loyalty programs” should continue as planned. The company also noted they have more than $1 billion (£821,959,400 / €917,010,700) in cash to support its continuing operations.
    2. That’s a pretty significant cash reserve, but the company is drowning in approximately $17 (£13.9 / €15.6) billion in debt. The coronavirus has also ground travel to a halt, virtually eliminating the need for rental cars.
    3. In the bankruptcy announcement, Hertz said “The impact of COVID-19 on travel demand was sudden and dramatic, causing an abrupt decline in the company’s revenue and future bookings.” …
    4. It remains unclear how the bankruptcy will pan out, but there have been fears the rental company could liquidate part of its fleet of roughly 570,000 vehicles. If this were to happen, it could flood the used car market and drag prices down significantly. …
17. Weight Watchers fires thousands of employees over Zoom: Report – Audio-only Zoom call reportedly lasted only a few minutes. By Ann Schmidt | FOXBusiness | 2020-May-22
    1. WW International — formerly called Weight Watchers — reportedly fired thousands of its employees last week over Zoom, according to recent reports.
    2. Last week, an anonymous post on com claimed thousands of WW service providers were laid off.
    3. On Friday, HuffPost reported the audio-only call lasted just a few minutes.
    4. According to the website, the manager who fired the employees read from a script and had everyone else muted so they couldn’t ask questions. Some employees who were fired had even worked at the company for “decades,” HuffPost reported.
    5. By the weekend, employees’ emails had reportedly been shut down and they no longer had access to WW employee websites.
    6. According to a report by com, some employees claim that up to 4,000 workers were fired in the call.
18. Babies born to surrogate mothers in Ukraine are trapped there because Covid-19 travel restrictions prevent their parents from taking them home. By Jonah Fisher, BBC Kyiv
    1. Click link to see video: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/embed/p08d7zmf/52721154
19. Ukraine: Dogs auctioned to pay owners’ debts – Thoroughbred dogs that were confiscated under a court order in Ukraine to pay for their owners’ debts have been put up for auction online. COM | 22 May 2020
    1. … The auction, highlighted by an opposition MP, has drawn criticism. Many initially thought it was a joke when two dogs were put up for auction on a state-owned online site for confiscated goods. But it soon became clear the dogs were real. One has not yet been sold but one has a potential buyer. …
    2. … There was indignation on social media, and one opposition MP, Oleksiy Honcharenko, said bailiffs should not be seizing innocent dogs.
    3. “We really have to confiscate pets from their owners,” Justice Minister Denis Malyuska told BBC Ukrainian. “Even though they are taken because of their former owners’ insolvency, often it turns out for the best when pets have been badly treated.”
    4. Daily life for many Ukrainians is expensive, with pensions failing to keep pace with the steep rises in gas bills in recent years. Earlier this year, an MP in the ruling party of President Volodymyr Zelensky apologised after advising one struggling pensioner to sell her dog. …
    5. … Confiscated pets were often bought back by the owner or their relatives for a symbolic sum, the minister said. …
20. The Yeast Supply Chain Can’t Just Activate Itself – There’s a reason the ingredient is still missing from stores. By Aaron Mak | SLATE.COM | April 15, 20206:47 PM
    1. Bread making is enjoying a pandemic-driven renaissance right now, but it’s hitting one hitch: No one can find any yeast.
    2. Shortages of dry yeast have been a consistent complaint since business shutdowns and stay-at-home orders have kept most Americans eating in—and hoarding many dry and canned goods to prepare. While some supply chains have begun to catch up with demand surges for certain products, yeast has been one area where they’re struggling to keep up. Robb MacKie, president and CEO of the American Bakers Association, said the industry was unprepared for the run on yeast because there’s usually a lull in demand for bread products and ingredients in the first quarter of the year, while the peak typically comes during the November and December holidays. The pandemic has flipped that schedule on its head, he said, with demand surpassing what producers would expect even in the busy season.
    3. … [T]he supply chain issues may not have anything to do with these ingredients. Instead, a major problem seems to be getting all that yeast packaged.
    4. Heilman, who oversees three Fleischmann’s Yeast plants in the U.S., has been trying to ramp up production by staffing facilities to max capacity and asking workers to hold off on vacations. … “Where we wound up maxed out is our ability to package.” The facility in India where the company gets its jars was shuttered, and materials for paper packets have also run low. The extra staff that the plants are recruiting will mostly be aiding this packet packaging effort, as well as drying the yeast.
21. Program Eligibility by Federal Poverty Level for 2020
    2020. FROM HEALTHCARE.GOV: Federal Poverty Level (FPL): The 2020 federal poverty level (FPL) income numbers below are used to calculate eligibility for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). 2019 numbers are slightly lower, and are used to calculate savings on Marketplace insurance plans for 2020.
    2021. How federal poverty levels are used to determine eligibility for reduced-cost health coverage: Income between 100% and 400% FPL: If your income is in this range, in all states you qualify for premium tax credits that lower your monthly premium for a Marketplace health insurance plan.
    2022. The Federal Poverty level in California for a family of four is $103,000, according to this chart from com.
    2023. MIKE: Think about that, and the overall ramifications on health and opportunity. And what about other states?
    2024. Ramifications:
          1. Minimum wage
          2. Executive pay disparity with workers
    2025. Impact on public health, the economy, and more.
22. Will empty middle seats help social distancing on planes?, By John Walton | COM | 22nd April 2020
    1. As more countries mull lifting Covid-19 lockdowns, airlines are examining what flying might look like as travel restrictions start to be relaxed. Carriers are haemorrhaging money and it’s very much in their interests to get planes back in the air. Passenger confidence will be one of many hurdles to overcome, however, with many worried about keeping a reasonable distance from their fellow travellers.
    2. Several airlines are exploring the idea of keeping middle seats empty, to avoid passengers sitting directly beside each other. …
    3. … Removing the unloved middle seat option would lead to a hearty hooray from the travelling public. Sit by the window and you get a view, plus a bulkhead to snooze against. In an aisle seat, you can pop to the toilet or stretch whenever you like. The middle seat has no such benefits, unless you’re one of those people who strikes up conversations with their seatmates.
    4. But would blocking middle seats actually help us maintain proper social distancing and if so, how long could airlines keep doing it? Is it a realistic option beyond the very short term? …
    5. …Planes are very much not set up for social … Billions of dollars have been spent in recent years in particular to fit as many people as possible into smaller spaces. For example, when the big wide-body, twin-aisle, twin-engine Boeing 777 started flying in the 1990s, most of them had nine seats per economy row on long-haul flights. Today, almost all airlines flying the plane – whether long-haul with the likes of Emirates or short-haul within Japan – have 10 seats, meaning narrower seats and narrower aisles. …
    6. …LIFT Aero Design’s Daniel Baron points out that there are a number of other measures that airlines can use to try and make travel safer. “Let’s not forget that cabin air circulation is on par with operating theatres,” he says. “A combination of pre-flight screening, thorough cabin sanitising, smart seat assignments and masks will likely be the way forward in the short to medium term.”
    7. … Delta Air Lines has changed the way it boards aircraft, and is now boarding them strictly from the rear to the front, so passengers sitting at the back don’t have to pass those sitting at the front. The airline is also boarding fewer people at a time to improve physical distancing of passengers.
    8. Many airlines are also cancelling or reducing inflight food and beverage service to reduce interactions on board: Southwest is serving individual cans of water rather than its usual full drinks round, for example. Some airlines are offering to-go bags in the gate area instead.
23. What went wrong with the media’s coronavirus coverage? And can we do better?, By Peter Kafka | VOX.COM | Apr 13, 2020, 7:10am EDT
    1. … Much of the mainstream media amplified [the] slow and muddled reaction to the rapidly spreading virus. Since alarming reports about Covid-19 began to emerge from China in January, the media often provided information to Americans that later proved to be wrong, or at least inadequate.
    2. For instance: While President Trump has been correctly pilloried for describing the coronavirus as less dangerous than the flu, that message was commonplace in mainstream media outlets throughout February. And journalists — including my colleagues at Vox — were dutifully repeating exhortations from public health officials not to wear masks for much of 2020. …
    3. … [I]t’s worth looking back to ask how the media could have done better as the virus broke out of China and headed to the US.
    4. Why didn’t we see this coming sooner? And once we did, why didn’t we sound the alarm with more vigor?
    5. If you read the stories from that period … you’ll find that most of the information holding the pieces together comes from authoritative sources …: experts at institutions like the World Health Organization, the CDC, and academics with real domain knowledge.
    6. The problem, in many cases, was that that information was wrong, or at least incomplete. Which raises the hard question for journalists scrutinizing our performance in recent months: How do we cover a story where neither we nor the experts we turn to know what isn’t yet known? And how do we warn Americans about the full range of potential risks in the world without ringing alarm bells so constantly that they’ll tune us out? …
    7. … Journalists have been doing crucial reporting about what the US government got wrong as the pandemic advanced, and what US leaders could have done to prepare America. They provided analysis that put the news in context. And they have also provided important on-the-ground dispatches from places around the world that have been devastated by the disease — often at great personal risk — starting at its epicenter in Wuhan, China.
    8. But when it came to grappling with a new disease they knew nothing about, journalists most often turned to experts and institutions for information, and relayed what those experts and institutions told them to their audience.
    9. And given that the Covid-19 coronavirus is brand new, even the best-meaning experts and institutions gave conflicting information, some of which now has proven to be inaccurate or up for debate. That includes National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci, who is now the most trusted official in the federal government when it comes to the Covid-19 response, but as late as February was calling the risk from coronavirus “minuscule” and warning people to worry instead about “influenza outbreak, which is having its second wave.” …
    10. … Laura Helmuth, who was the health and science editor at the Washington Post and recently left to become editor-in-chief of Scientific American, says acknowledging gaps in knowledge is crucial but not easy.
    11. “One thing that science journalists have been getting better at is not just saying what we do know, but what we don’t know,” she says. “But most journalists aren’t accustomed to doing that.”
    12. … Mainstream journalists who know how to read and understand academic research reports are a select group and have been for decades. Many midsize newspapers once employed dedicated science journalists, but those jobs have been dwindling for years. …
    13. … In some cases, the screaming was there, but you had to work to hear it. You wouldn’t find it in a headline or the top of a newscast, but if you absorbed the whole thing, you’d find news that would scare you into some kind of action.
    14. My sort-of come-to-Jesus moment started on February 27 when I listened to Times reporter Donald McNeil on the paper’s Daily He said the worst-case scenario was a repeat of the 1918 flu pandemic, which killed 50 million people worldwide and at least 675,000 in the United States.
    15. In that version, McNeil said calmly: Everybody in the US would “know somebody who dies.”
    16. It’s most gripping in audio form, but I want to pull out a section here:
        1. Donald G. McNeil Jr. – Some big chunk of the country — 30, 40, 50 percent — are likely to get a new virus when it blows through. And if you don’t get it in the first wave, you might get it in the second wave.
        2. Michael Barbaro – And 2 percent lethality rate of 50 percent of the country. I don’t want to do that math. It’s really, really awful.
        3. McNeil – It’s a lot of people. It means, you know, you don’t die, 80 percent of people have mild cases. But you know somebody who dies.
        4. Barbaro – That’s pretty horrible … Okay. Now, the best-case scenario.
        5. McNeil – The best-case scenario is one of these drugs works, and basically everybody gets sick next year, but everybody who is hospitalized gets a drug that keeps them from dying and keeps them from going into deep, deep, deep respiratory distress. And we have the equivalent of a bad flu season. And then everybody says, ‘Oh, the media, they blew it out of proportion again.’ You know, it’s all ridiculous. And, you know, I get blamed.
    17. That was enough for me — sort of. I didn’t change my plans to travel to Los Angeles the following week, but I did start assuming that the rest of my spring plans were going to be up in the air. And I told my family that we should start buying food — not in panic, but slowly. And I wondered how The Daily’s millions of listeners would respond.
24. Program Eligibility by Federal Poverty Level for 2020
    1. FROM HEALTHCARE.GOV: Federal Poverty Level (FPL): The 2020 federal poverty level (FPL) income numbers below are used to calculate eligibility for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). 2019 numbers are slightly lower, and are used to calculate savings on Marketplace insurance plans for 2020.
    2. How federal poverty levels are used to determine eligibility for reduced-cost health coverage: Income between 100% and 400% FPL: If your income is in this range, in all states you qualify for premium tax credits that lower your monthly premium for a Marketplace health insurance plan.
    3. The Federal Poverty level in California for a family of four is $103,000, according to this chart from com.
    4. MIKE: Think about that, and the overall ramifications on health and opportunity. And what about other states?
    5. Ramifications:
       1. Minimum wage
       2. Executive pay disparity with workers
    6. Impact on public health, the economy, and more.