WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – The following is Tuesday’s status check of developments in the U.S. that can influence economic, health and political outcomes.
- A day of settled routine, now that conspiracy theories, a raging president and edge-of-your seat apprehension about what comes next has become routine. Pres-Elect Joe Biden tried to keep to a reassuring regimen of introductions, picking a new surgeon general, a new CDC director, a coronavirus czar, a head of a virus “equity task force” and a secretary of the department of Health and Human services. Coming up, a defense secretary, Gen. Lloyd Austin, whose path to the Pentagon’s top job has to come via a waiver of the seven-year rule which several Democrats including Sen. Elizabeth Warren said – no offense to a fine nominee to be – weren’t going to extend. Seven years after active duty is supposed to be enough time to reinforce the principle of civilian rule of the military. And also coming up, Rep. Marcia Fudge as HUD director. Maybe, as attorney general, former U.S. attorney and defense attorney and senator, Doug Jones.
- Yet as he was welcoming his picks, Biden’s event was rivaled by the president’s virus “summit” under way at the same time during which he again reminded the participants that he actually won all the swing states and that Democrats have stolen the election. One of Biden’s speakers was his new chief medical adviser Tony Fauci. He had passed on the White House event because he also had to attend an observance of a colleague’s Nobel Prize win.
- Meanwhile the Supreme Court, with one dismissive line, refused to hear one of the challenges of the election results and at the same time was sent another challenge by Republican members of the Pennsylvania legislature. “Let’s see if they have the courage” to do what’s right, Trump said Tuesday, hopefully. And the beleaguered attorney general of Texas, who is under indictment himself and has a few other legal housekeeping loose ends, filed a lawsuit against legislatures of some swing states saying they illegally altered the law to permit mail-in ballots just because of Covid-19. So much hum-drum activity that’s become so typical of a capital where democracy is now under constant assault.
- In sharp contrast, the serious stuff was taking place in hospitals across the country, hospitals becoming more and more pressured by the national map of accelerating infections and deaths, a map that has become almost solidly red in just the past week. And that even before the Thanksgiving holiday surge sends many more patients their way. While the president took time to welcome the figure of 15%, the proportion of Americans now having been infected, as encouraging news apparently on the way to herd immunity, President-Elect Biden said he wanted 100 million Americans vaccinated in his term’s first 100 days. But some were thinking about the alternative outcome, if the uptake of vaccinations is not sufficient to build in enough immunity in the population.
- The lines of health care workers waiting to get their “jab” as UK vaccinations began Tuesday and the enthusiasm for vaccination among those old enough to have seen many friends die suggests there will be great momentum to the U.S. immunization effort. But it will take a similar enthusiasm among the general population to make the vaccination program an adequate response to the challenge. And that takes a big effort that has yet to make itself evident in the United States. Without a program that actually reaches into every rural nook and cranny and finds a majority of willing vaccine recipients the virus stays as a chronic debilitating presence that saps the vitality of commerce, education and entertainment.
- How many chronic debilitating presences can the country withstand? The virus, the malignant doubt of legitimacy among millions of Trump believers who day after day hear of stealing and fraud, the pervasive joblessness, the fear of eviction and hunger – it’s a bleak Christmas season even if so many want to avert their eyes and be calmed by the stock markets’ numbing balm.
- Upcoming economic data is on the light side, just that 7a ET MBA reading of the latest week’s mortgage applications and the 10a ET JOLTS report, the rich mixture of job market information the Bureau of Labor Statistics could never afford to speed up by a month so it could be far more relevant.
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Contact this reporter: denny@macenews.com.
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