theatlantic--2020-10-09--Why Trump’s Rapid-Testing Plan Worries Scientists

What everyone agrees on is that the tests were not deployed responsibly at the White House .
The president hosted dozens of guests at a ceremony honoring Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett , without masks , amid a raging pandemic , and rejected some of the most basic safety protocols .
As that event has demonstrated , testing must be an and strategy , not an or one .
Rapid testing and masking .
Rapid testing and social distancing .
Rapid testing and vaccines .
“ Testing is a belt-and-suspenders approach that adds incremental safety , ” Baird said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , though , when you are wearing pants.
” The president also seems to have personally rejected testing for himself .
Trump ’ s doctor has persistently dodged questions about when the president last tested negative .
The New York Times reported that Trump—who officials once claimed was tested “ multiple times a day ” —was not swabbed even once a day .
The debacle has accelerated preexisting concerns about the rollout of the Abbott tests .
Late last month , even the proponents of rapid testing worried about the plans to distribute @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , generally an advocate of rapid testing , warned that if the Abbott tests were not deployed the right way , with the proper safeguards and solid public education , they could further erode trust in the nation ’ s public-health systems .
The White House 's cavalier actions have now realized that fear .
These tests have the potential to create two problems .
One is commonly cited by critics and very easy to understand : False negatives will give people too much confidence that they are virus-free , just like the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ together without masks , even hugging one another .
Given a negative test result , many people chose to eschew the simple precautions that have helped slow the spread of the virus .
The other problem is that these tests will generate many false positives , especially if deployed in asymptomatic populations where relatively few people are sick .
It could very well be that , as in Nevada , the majority of positive test results are false .
Besides the risks of grouping healthy people with those who are actually sick , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from work unnecessarily and prompt people to seek “ confirmatory ” PCR tests , potentially overwhelming an already fragile system .
Mina and other proponents argue that rapid antigen tests could still be useful with their current performance , but that distribution and communication must be improved .
“ If these tests are not messaged appropriately , we run the risk of the whole program coming crashing down pretty much immediately , ” Mina told us .
Read : How we survive the winter The early signs are not encouraging .
The new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ received an emergency use authorization ( EUA ) based on results from just 102 samples .
The next day , the government spent $ 760 million to buy the entire supply of tests .
Notably , the FDA did not support the use of the test for screening asymptomatic people—which the most ambitious version of Mina 's plan depends on .
The emergency use authorization only covered testing for people within the first seven days of developing symptoms , when viral loads remain high .

The sun was beaming, the air was clear, and it seemed as if President Donald Trump was finally taking coronavirus testing seriously. Standing in the White House Rose Garden early last week, Trump announced to buoyant officials that a “massive and groundbreaking expansion” in testing was under way: The federal government had purchased 150 million new coronavirus tests from the company Abbott Laboratories.
These new rapid tests were “from a different planet,” Trump boasted. He was right. Each Abbott test cost only $5, one-20th the price of the most widely used test type. Instead of taking hours to deliver a result, the Abbott tests—which detect viral proteins—could provide an answer within 15 minutes. The government planned to send them to states, colleges, and nursing homes, a policy that would “more than double the number of tests already performed,” Trump said.
Every state could, “on a very regular basis, test every teacher who needs it,” he promised.
As Trump spoke, the coronavirus was already teeming through his body, information from his doctor now suggests. By the end of the week, the president, the first lady, and at least 23 of his advisers and staff were infected with the coronavirus. They had acted as if testing alone would protect them, but many of them seem to have been infected at a White House event where Abbott tests were used to screen visitors.
This series of events could have ended another way, with tests such as Abbott’s allowing Americans to recapture a shred of normal life. But it has instead opened to public view an already-ferocious debate among experts about the best way to defeat the pandemic—a fight with consequences that will outlast Trump’s symptoms.
Read: The president is not well
Since the spring, a group of experts led by Michael Mina, an epidemiology professor at Harvard, has called for the government to freely distribute tens of millions of 15-minute coronavirus tests a day. Never mind testing every teacher every day: Mina wants to test nearly every American every day, whether or not any given person shows symptoms of COVID-19. That’s impossible to do with the gold-standard reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, tests—they are too expensive and take too long to return results. Frequent, cheaper testing, Mina claims, could defeat the pandemic within weeks, as infectious people are identified and quarantined. (We wrote about his plan in August.)
Other experts are doubtful and have warned that cheap, rapid tests will not work as promised. If distributed en masse and used to screen asymptomatic people, these antigen tests will deliver hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of false results, they say. False negatives could lead to reckless behavior by people who don't know they're sick. False positives can also put people at risk: If a virus-free nursing-home resident with a false positive is placed in a COVID-19 ward, that person could become infected.
“The point I'm trying to make here, and I'll be blunt, is that antigen testing will not and cannot work for asymptomatic screening, and [it] will probably kill a lot of people,” Geoffrey Baird, the acting laboratory-medicine chair at the University of Washington, told us. His lab at UW developed one of the earliest accurate COVID-19 tests in the U.S., and is widely respected within the diagnostic-testing field. Alexander McAdam, the director of the infectious-diseases diagnostic laboratory at Boston Children’s Hospital, told The New York Times that deploying the current antigen tests to screen populations “is a bad idea, and I’ll die on that hill.”
The stakes of this dispute are not only how Abbott tests are used, but whether they should be used at all. It could shape federal policy next year and determine whether more money is spent on fixes to address the virus aside from a vaccine. Already, this conflict is playing out on the state level. In Nevada, public-health authorities have told nursing homes to stop using two models of antigen-test machines, which the federal government has sent to more than 14,000 facilities, after only 16 of 39 positive tests were confirmed by subsequent PCR testing.
Read: This overlooked variable is the key to the pandemic
What everyone agrees on is that the tests were not deployed responsibly at the White House. The president hosted dozens of guests at a ceremony honoring Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, without masks, amid a raging pandemic, and rejected some of the most basic safety protocols. As that event has demonstrated, testing must be an and strategy, not an or one. Rapid testing and masking. Rapid testing and social distancing. Rapid testing and vaccines.
“Testing is a belt-and-suspenders approach that adds incremental safety,” Baird said. “Belts and suspenders only work, though, when you are wearing pants.”
The president also seems to have personally rejected testing for himself. Trump’s doctor has persistently dodged questions about when the president last tested negative. The New York Times reported that Trump—who officials once claimed was tested “multiple times a day”—was not swabbed even once a day.
The debacle has accelerated preexisting concerns about the rollout of the Abbott tests. Late last month, even the proponents of rapid testing worried about the plans to distribute and use the Abbott tests. Mina, generally an advocate of rapid testing, warned that if the Abbott tests were not deployed the right way, with the proper safeguards and solid public education, they could further erode trust in the nation’s public-health systems. The White House's cavalier actions have now realized that fear.
These tests have the potential to create two problems. One is commonly cited by critics and very easy to understand: False negatives will give people too much confidence that they are virus-free, just like the White House attendees who drank and celebrated together without masks, even hugging one another. Given a negative test result, many people chose to eschew the simple precautions that have helped slow the spread of the virus.
The other problem is that these tests will generate many false positives, especially if deployed in asymptomatic populations where relatively few people are sick. It could very well be that, as in Nevada, the majority of positive test results are false. Besides the risks of grouping healthy people with those who are actually sick, false positives will keep well people home from work unnecessarily and prompt people to seek “confirmatory” PCR tests, potentially overwhelming an already fragile system.
Mina and other proponents argue that rapid antigen tests could still be useful with their current performance, but that distribution and communication must be improved. “If these tests are not messaged appropriately, we run the risk of the whole program coming crashing down pretty much immediately,” Mina told us.
Read: How we survive the winter
The early signs are not encouraging. The new Abbott test, the Binax NOW, received an emergency use authorization (EUA) based on results from just 102 samples. The next day, the government spent $760 million to buy the entire supply of tests. Notably, the FDA did not support the use of the test for screening asymptomatic people—which the most ambitious version of Mina's plan depends on. The emergency use authorization only covered testing for people within the first seven days of developing symptoms, when viral loads remain high.
In asymptomatic people, the tests will likely perform worse. The levels of virus are likely to be lower in any individual infected person, which would increase the false-negative rate. And in the general, symptom-free population, the expected levels of infection are actually quite low, so the false-positive rate could be very high.
Yet Admiral Brett Giroir, the administration’s “testing czar” and an assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has explicitly said that the tests could be used for asymptomatic screening, at schools perhaps.
That contradiction worries Baird. “One branch of the government is saying, ‘Use this test for asymptomatic people,’ and then on the other side, they are saying, ‘Use this test for symptomatic people,’” he said.
Baird is particularly anxious that the performance of tests will deteriorate in the field and when applied to asymptomatic people. That always happens with lab tests, he told us. “They haven’t published clinical-trials data,” he said. “You foist that test on the public after collecting evidence that it would work.”
False positives worry Mina, too. Among people tested within the first seven days of showing symptoms, the Abbott test will, according to its EUA, generate a false positive from roughly one in 50 tests. Because relatively few people test positive out of the whole population, those false positives could represent a large percentage of the positive results that a batch of the tests would generate. For now, the solution is supposed to be for people who test positive to get a confirmatory PCR test. But “saying that these tests need to be confirmed with a PCR test isn’t a good answer,” Mina told us. If a “quick” positive result then forces people to wait four days for a PCR positive, the first result stops meaning much.
Mina suggests that a cornucopia approach could provide the answer: If you take an Abbott test and get a positive result, then you would take another quick test, made by a different company, that detects a different viral protein, for confirmation. He said that such procedures were common in screening for relatively rare diseases, such as HIV, where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issues an “algorithm” for sequencing tests.
“People are just thinking about COVID testing differently for some reason, but imperfect screens are pretty common, so I am scratching my head,” says Dan Larremore, a computer scientist and an infectious-disease modeler at the University of Colorado, who has collaborated with Mina. “The perfect has really been the enemy of the good here, in many ways—except that we also know how to embed the good within follow-up systems to make it nearly perfect.”
Mina is running a trial comparing PCR and antigen tests in both symptomatic and asymptomatic people, in order to generate real-world data about false positives and negatives. “My hope is that six weeks from now, we’ll have a pretty good set of data to reflect the performance,” he said.
He still thinks these quick, cheap tests could help America overcome the pandemic. “The point people are really missing is: What is the alternative? The alternative is no testing. Most K–12 students are not getting tested,” Mina said. “Every time we can pull a positive person out of the population, we stop tens, hundreds, or thousands of cases.”
The alternative for Baird is obvious: keep going with the behavioral interventions that have helped at least slow the spread in the U.S. “I think the quintessential problem in the country is an imbalance of supply and demand of testing,” Baird said. “Mina’s solution is increasing supply. And I have a strong belief that decreasing demand will be the way to get there—masking, physical distancing, not having large events. And, unfortunately, absorbing the societal toll that all of those things take.”
While the surface of the debate is about the technological characteristics of these tests, the substance of it is about human behavior. As restrictions on daily life enter their seventh full month and winter draws near, will the countermeasures that have limited, but never contained, the virus’s spread remain in force? And if we add tests that generate imperfect information, will that embolden people to abandon commonsense safety precautions? No test—and no testing strategy—is perfect; we are living through a pandemic, and people will get sick. To believe that antigen testing can improve life in this country is to believe that people will understand the limits of a test result and act accordingly. With the right public messaging, perhaps they could.


theatlantic--2020-10-09--How a Bizarre Claim About Masks Has Lived on for Months

Aside from the fact that few bureaucrats speak this plainly and concisely , there are a number of obvious signs that this information is false .
Every kind of face mask has been proved , in study after study , to slow the spread of COVID-19 , with N95s being the most effective .
To name just one example , two stylists worked at a hair salon in Missouri while infected with the coronavirus , but none of the 139 clients they saw got sick , because everyone wore a mask .
Mainstream experts dismiss the idea that wearing a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you never wash the mask or have a health condition that makes breathing difficult .
“ The way that masks are being recommended is perfectly safe , ” says Angela Rasmussen , a virologist at Columbia University .
Cloth masks don ’ t offer complete protection against the coronavirus , she says , but they reduce the risk enough that they ’ re worth wearing whenever you ’ re going to be around people .
Though the latest public posts mentioning the supposed OSHA inspector date from September , the idea that masks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for months now , even after various fact-checking sites debunked the claim .
I emailed Facebook to ask for more information about this type of post , but the company did not respond .
One instance of the OSHA post was taken down after my email .
But others live on , circulating among mask-haters and affirming what they perceive to be their righteousness .
The post is an especially bizarre example of the “ infodemic ” scientists have been battling alongside the coronavirus pandemic , in which the internet is a giant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ imaginable .
In late July , the “ masks make you sick ” claim was already circulating in prominent conservative circles .
In a video , the conservative activist Charlie Kirk said , “ Some doctors think that masks actually make you sicker and have you less likely to be able to get oxygen.
” ( I reached out to Kirk on Twitter , but he did not respond . )
The OSHA connection also came up in an anti-mask video made by a conservative chiropractor with 3,000 Facebook followers .
But the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ already been widely debunked .
Snopes wrote an article on June 18 refuting a near-identical version of the Facebook post that was still bouncing around in September .
Not only does the post have its science wrong—people wearing cloth masks are in no danger of breathing in too much carbon dioxide—but it also refers to an OSHA certification that does not exist .
“ The author of the Facebook post claimed to be ‘ OSHA 10 & 30 certified , ’ ” the Snopes article says .
“ We reached out to OSHA @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these courses ‘ do not include COVID-19 topics , ’ nor does OSHA ‘ certify ’ trainers.
” [ Read : The Most American COVID-19 Failure Yet ]

When I first waded into the latest mask conspiracy theory, I was literally wading.
About a month ago, I was in my local pool when I overheard a middle-aged woman in the next lane whisper it to her friend, in the way you vaguely assert something that you’re pretty sure is true but don’t fully understand. “Masks don’t even do anything,” she said. “In fact, they can make you sicker. Because you’re breathing in all the ... stuff ... you breathe out.”
“OK Boomer,” I thought. I dismissed her as a random neighborhood conspiracist and swam my laps.
But then I started to see this false notion appear more frequently on Facebook. It wasn’t the typical argument anti-maskers use, that mask mandates infringe on people’s freedoms. It was that the masks themselves are causing illness. The horror of the idea was apparent even to me: the feds, in their hall-monitor stupidity, forcing you to do something that’s actually bad for you.
Most recently, this surfaced in the form of “copypasta”—a post copied and pasted by many people onto social media, rather than shared as a link—from a purported “OSHA Inspector.” “I have worked in a clean room for 23 years and 10 years on submarines before that,” it reads. The inspector, supposedly from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, goes on to debunk each type of mask. N95s won’t “filter your air on the way out,” so they don’t reduce the risk of catching COVID-19 from someone who has it. Surgical masks, the post claims, are rendered useless by the moisture from your breath and the “amount of particles” on them. Cloth masks, meanwhile, trap carbon dioxide, risking the health of the wearer. “I know, facts suck,” it concludes. “They throw a wrench into the perfectly (seeming) packaged pill you are willingly swallowing.”
Read: Trump’s gold-plated health care
Aside from the fact that few bureaucrats speak this plainly and concisely, there are a number of obvious signs that this information is false. Every kind of face mask has been proved, in study after study, to slow the spread of COVID-19, with N95s being the most effective. To name just one example, two stylists worked at a hair salon in Missouri while infected with the coronavirus, but none of the 139 clients they saw got sick, because everyone wore a mask.
Mainstream experts dismiss the idea that wearing a mask can make you sick, unless you never wash the mask or have a health condition that makes breathing difficult. “The way that masks are being recommended is perfectly safe,” says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University. Cloth masks don’t offer complete protection against the coronavirus, she says, but they reduce the risk enough that they’re worth wearing whenever you’re going to be around people.
Though the latest public posts mentioning the supposed OSHA inspector date from September, the idea that masks make you sicker has been spreading online for months now, even after various fact-checking sites debunked the claim. I emailed Facebook to ask for more information about this type of post, but the company did not respond. One instance of the OSHA post was taken down after my email. But others live on, circulating among mask-haters and affirming what they perceive to be their righteousness. The post is an especially bizarre example of the “infodemic” scientists have been battling alongside the coronavirus pandemic, in which the internet is a giant telephone game reverberating with the weirdest stuff imaginable.
In late July, the “masks make you sick” claim was already circulating in prominent conservative circles. In a video, the conservative activist Charlie Kirk said, “Some doctors think that masks actually make you sicker and have you less likely to be able to get oxygen.” (I reached out to Kirk on Twitter, but he did not respond.) The OSHA connection also came up in an anti-mask video made by a conservative chiropractor with 3,000 Facebook followers.
But the previous month, the OSHA claim had already been widely debunked. Snopes wrote an article on June 18 refuting a near-identical version of the Facebook post that was still bouncing around in September. Not only does the post have its science wrong—people wearing cloth masks are in no danger of breathing in too much carbon dioxide—but it also refers to an OSHA certification that does not exist. “The author of the Facebook post claimed to be ‘OSHA 10&30 certified,’” the Snopes article says. “We reached out to OSHA, and a representative told us that these courses ‘do not include COVID-19 topics,’ nor does OSHA ‘certify’ trainers.”
Read: The most American COVID-19 failure yet
It’s not clear how OSHA got roped into this. Part of the Department of Labor, the agency primarily concerns itself with safe working conditions, rather than pandemic responses. People who don’t want to do something, like wear masks, will often glom onto quasi-scientific rationalizations, says Matt Motta, a political scientist at Oklahoma State University who studies online misinformation.
Outside of Facebook, a June 18 article on a site called GreenMedInfo claims that “OSHA says masks don’t work—and violate OSHA oxygen levels.” The article consists mainly of a video by Peggy Hall, the founder of an anti-mask site called thehealthyamerican.org, explaining how “the U.S. Department of Labor Occupational and Safety and Health Administration’s guidelines clearly show cloth and surgical masks don’t work to reduce transmission of COVID-19, and how they deplete the body of oxygen, causing adverse health effects.” (In response to a request for comment, an OSHA spokesperson told me that this is not true, and that masks do not compromise oxygen levels or cause carbon dioxide buildup.)
The video is no longer available, and when I emailed Hall, she said it had been taken down. “My now-banned videos simply explained that OSHA, the FDA and the CDC all have no evidence of masks preventing the spread of this virus,” Hall wrote. (They do.) “Since they are making the claim, the burden of proof is on those agencies to show that the masks DON’T make anyone sick.” This is, of course, a completely different statement than the one made in the article. And indeed, a few days later, the fact-checking site PolitiFact debunked Hall’s article, too.
Before that, anti-mask articles and advocates would occasionally claim that masks made people sick, but they rarely invoked OSHA. A Chattanooga, Tennessee, news station in early June claimed, “Wearing a fabric mask for long periods of time—or for several days at a time—can allow bacteria to build up and actually make you sick,” but didn’t cite any research or experts to back the claim. In May, a group of filmmakers released a video titled Plandemic, which traveled widely on social media. It featured the discredited researcher Judy Mikovits saying, among other things, that masks can make people sick. Plandemic was viewed millions of times before Facebook and YouTube removed it. (Mikovits did not respond to a request for comment.)
These videos and articles all came months after government officials had begun encouraging—and then mandating—that people wear masks in public. But crucial to understanding the spread of this particular piece of misinformation is that, for many weeks early in the pandemic, everyday people were told not to wear masks. Back then, prominent experts claimed masks were needed for health-care workers and were borderline ineffective for the general public. Versions of this advice also suggested that masks could raise the risk of illness. On March 12, Jenny Harries, England’s deputy chief medical officer, claimed that masks could “actually trap the virus.” Therefore, she said, “for the average member of the public walking down a street, it is not a good idea.” (Harries did not respond to a request for comment.)
In fact, the earliest instance of a “masks make you sicker” claim I could find was in a February 27 news article published on a Utah radio station’s website. (Its author did not return a request for comment.) Though the article has since been updated, the original contains the subhead “Wearing a face mask incorrectly might put you at greater risk of getting sick.” The article then quotes a doctor named David Eisenman as saying, “I think people see a mask and they see an illusion of protection.” Though Eisenman’s quote does not quite support the subheading on the article, I reached out to him to see whether he still stands by his interview.
In short, he does not. “These things come back and haunt you,” Eisenman, a professor-in-residence at UCLA, told me. “Science recommendations have evolved. Now I would say that the evidence is very much in favor of masks as an important protector in the spread of COVID-19.”
Eisenman says the article was widely read. People occasionally tweet at him asking how he can be recommending masks now when he didn’t six months ago. He explains that the science changed, and so did his advice, but according to him, “it doesn’t seem to satisfy anybody.”
The “masks make you sicker” idea underscores how online misinformation is like an ocean liner: Once it’s headed in one direction, it’s difficult to turn around. The advice on masks changed seven months ago, but some people have stuck with what experts were saying in the confusing early days. One doctor’s criticisms of masks—which he now recants—live on in Twitter threads. And as people find new ways to share incorrect information, through posts, photos, and videos, social-media platforms are struggling to catch and remove all the hokum. Before long, the conspiracy theories break free of Facebook and infect reality.


theatlantic--2020-10-11--How Churches Are Failing Black Parishioners

What she saw on video one Sunday dismayed her .
As the camera panned over the congregation , she noted that some people had masks on and some didn ’ t .
The church did not require them .
What ’ s more , the pastor , who is white , scolded the missing members over live-stream : “ Why are y ’ all not here today ?
You scared ?
” Read : The unofficial racism consultants to the white evangelical world Delisha was appalled .
“ That blew me away , ” she said .
“ I am @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That ’ s why I ’ m not there.
” She felt like the pastor was failing to empathize with parishioners who had been dealt staggering blows by the pandemic .
Then , as the George Floyd protests began later in the spring , Delisha waited in vain for her church ’ s leaders to express their concern over his killing .
She received no church email , no newsletter , no pulpit address on racial injustice—just silence .
She ’ s decided that she will not return to her place of worship @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hasn ’ t terminated her membership officially , she ’ s no longer attending services virtually .
It ’ s not uncommon for people of color who attend multiracial churches to hear very little about racism , says David Swanson , 43 , the founding pastor of New Community Covenant Church in Chicago .
Instead of supporting systemic change , some white Christians view racial reconciliation as a matter of fellowship among churchgoers of different races—something that can be achieved through interpersonal relationships .
As a result , churches may not perceive the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Others might hesitate to endorse Black Lives Matter , because of ideological differences with the national organization and its founders .
But Black parishioners ’ desire for recognition doesn ’ t mean they ’ re ideologically aligned with the national group—they just want to know that their congregation values them .
If more Black Christians leave their church , their absence threatens to tilt congregations ’ demographics toward the segregated status quo .
Swanson has framed the stakes of churches ’ silence in stark terms .
“ A multiracial church which never @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” he tweeted in April .
By that , he meant it ’ s a church “ still mostly interested in white people ’ s comfort , ” Swanson explained to me over the summer .
Put another way : A church ’ s silence on police killings communicates almost as clear of a message as All Lives Matter on the marquee .
Amber Wright , 39 , felt a jolt of recognition when she read Swanson ’ s tweet this spring .
The absence of a church-wide stand against police brutality @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I remember there was no comment or commentary [ at my multiracial church ] about Trayvon Martin [ or ] the series of Black people slain in the streets , ” she told me .
By the time of Floyd ’ s killing , on May 25 , Wright knew she was done .
“ It ’ s important to us that we go to a church where we feel the leadership can call these issues out in a way that speaks to the worth of my life and the life of my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said .

Across the country, Black Americans feel under siege from the coronavirus pandemic and raw from the police brutality fueling Black Lives Matter protests. But some are nursing another intimate wound: their church’s failure to acknowledge their pain. Many Black parishioners, especially those at multiracial institutions, bristle when they hear rhetoric from church leaders that ignores how health inequities and racism are affecting the Black community right now. Others are hurt by their church’s conspicuous silence on these issues. The result is a quiet but resolute contingent of Black church members leaving their congregation to seek spiritual healing elsewhere.
Leaving one’s church represents a personal loss for the individual, but the institution also suffers when parishioners decide to take their valuable perspectives away from the flock. It’s still too early to quantify exactly how many Black churchgoers nationwide have made such a decision, or how many might still leave their church if their concerns aren’t addressed. The parishioners who spoke with me, however, had very similar stories, pointing to a potential trend.
Like others I talked with, Delisha, 58, isn’t one to miss church. For the past seven years, she has made sure to be in the faithful number of a large, multicultural New Orleans congregation. But after the pandemic hit in March, she decided to attend services only via live-stream. Black people like her are disproportionately at risk for severe illness or death from COVID-19, and Delisha, who lives with her elderly mother and a daughter with asthma, has hypertension. (Delisha asked that I identify her using only her middle name, because she had not yet contacted the church about her concerns.)
What she saw on video one Sunday dismayed her. As the camera panned over the congregation, she noted that some people had masks on and some didn’t. The church did not require them. What’s more, the pastor, who is white, scolded the missing members over live-stream: “Why are y’all not here today? You scared?”
Read: The unofficial racism consultants to the white evangelical world
Delisha was appalled. “That blew me away,” she said. “I am a Black woman with preexisting conditions. That’s why I’m not there.” She felt like the pastor was failing to empathize with parishioners who had been dealt staggering blows by the pandemic.
Then, as the George Floyd protests began later in the spring, Delisha waited in vain for her church’s leaders to express their concern over his killing. She received no church email, no newsletter, no pulpit address on racial injustice—just silence. She’s decided that she will not return to her place of worship once the pandemic ends. While she hasn’t terminated her membership officially, she’s no longer attending services virtually.
It’s not uncommon for people of color who attend multiracial churches to hear very little about racism, says David Swanson, 43, the founding pastor of New Community Covenant Church in Chicago. Instead of supporting systemic change, some white Christians view racial reconciliation as a matter of fellowship among churchgoers of different races—something that can be achieved through interpersonal relationships. As a result, churches may not perceive the need to acknowledge or lament racial injustice. Others might hesitate to endorse Black Lives Matter, because of ideological differences with the national organization and its founders. But Black parishioners’ desire for recognition doesn’t mean they’re ideologically aligned with the national group—they just want to know that their congregation values them. If more Black Christians leave their church, their absence threatens to tilt congregations’ demographics toward the segregated status quo.
Swanson has framed the stakes of churches’ silence in stark terms. “A multiracial church which never confronts white supremacy is a white church,” he tweeted in April. By that, he meant it’s a church “still mostly interested in white people’s comfort,” Swanson explained to me over the summer. Put another way: A church’s silence on police killings communicates almost as clear of a message as all lives matter on the marquee.
Amber Wright, 39, felt a jolt of recognition when she read Swanson’s tweet this spring. The absence of a church-wide stand against police brutality had frustrated Wright for years. “I remember there was no comment or commentary [at my multiracial church] about Trayvon Martin [or] the series of Black people slain in the streets,” she told me. By the time of Floyd’s killing, on May 25, Wright knew she was done. “It’s important to us that we go to a church where we feel the leadership can call these issues out in a way that speaks to the worth of my life and the life of my husband and my children,” she said.
Many Black parishioners swallow their discomfort with churches’ lack of attention to racism, because they like the diversity of multiracial congregations. Although Wright has fond memories of growing up in a traditional Black Baptist church, she said she appreciates the contemporary culture of nondenominational multiracial congregations. Delisha said she feels more at home in a multiethnic church because it embodies her vision of racial harmony in heaven. But this value can’t make up for their churches’ failings, both women said.
Historically Black churches have ignored their congregation’s needs in recent months too. Some parishioners are angered by church leaders clinging to attendance as a barometer of faithfulness even during the pandemic. Pastors “keep wanting people to come to church based off of faith, but then [they] don’t even go see people in the hospital,” because of the risk, Terrance Thomas, 45, the pastor of Bethel AME Church in Champaign, Illinois, told me. This contradiction feels especially callous to those grieving losses from COVID-19.
Read: What the racial data show
The unrest in cities across the country also threw into sharp relief a schism between older clergy upset by property damage and those who believe, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, that “a riot is the language of the unheard.” Pastors who are politically more conservative than their congregation risk alienating their flock when they voice displeasure about looting.
They also risk losing parishioners if they stick to preaching only on matters of the soul. “In the middle of a social unrest, people don’t want to hear [about] the by and by … People will leave the church and they’ll leave the faith,” Thomas said. For many Black Christians, the Black church provides a sanctuary for both their culture and their faith; it’s where they were raised and where they want to raise their children. The decision to abandon it often means severing deep social ties.
Leaving the Church as an institution is the next step for Marie, a campus minister at a university who has boycotted her Methodist church’s services since Pentecost Sunday, in May. While providing remote support to students struggling with racism, the sudden loss of housing, and family bereavement, she lost more than five family members to COVID-19. But no one from her church reached out.
“As the only Black woman [in my local church administration], no one calls to say … ‘How are you doing?’” said Marie, who also requested that I use only her middle name, for fear of professional and personal repercussions.
Her frustration and sadness were compounded by the Church’s silence on the shootings of Ahmaud Arbery, Sean Reed, and Breonna Taylor this spring. After protests began to sweep the nation following Floyd’s death, a Church leader responded in a sympathetic letter to Marie’s region’s clergy and laity, but she felt that it failed to acknowledge the Church’s history of segregation.
“This is going to be my last year in the Church” entirely, she said. “I’m tired of the Church and their prayers and their silence on racism.” Going forward, she wants to build a “ministry of presence” to sit with the dying and the bereaved the way her fellow clergy did not sit with her.
Parishioners’ decision making has been shaped by the introduction of technology to their normal Sunday routine. Moving fellowship online during quarantine has allowed Black parishioners to closely scrutinize how Christian leaders react to COVID-19 and the protests via social media. In many places, socializing has largely relocated from the church lobby to Facebook comment sections, as pastors encourage online engagement to avoid a shrinking membership base. But many pastors who post about political issues become fodder for discussion on public forums and in direct messages. Not unlike during a physical church service, the congregation is trained on its leaders’ every word, but parishioners are now able to dissect their comments in new mediums.
Read: The relentlessness of black grief
Shutdowns also present a unique opportunity for parishioners to explore other churches virtually—without blowing their cover or being notably absent from their home congregation. Delisha, for example, observed another church’s live-stream, where the pastor expressed concern over Floyd’s death. For others, however, it’s still too soon to find a new church: Wright and her husband have decided to take a break from attending even online services.
Swanson and Thomas told me that churches’ failure to address Black parishioners’ fears and sadness means they’re neglecting a crucial area of ministry: helping people lament and heal from trauma. Thomas said that his fellow pastors must resist the empty catharsis of platitudes and affirm “brothers and sisters in the margin.” “As a pastor,” he said, “if you’re doing the work of checking in, if you’re doing the work of loving on your people, you’ll notice who’s missing.” Swanson said that he talks with his congregation about the effects of racism on Black Americans’ physical, emotional, and psychological health, and tries to mitigate the stigma associated with therapy.
Most of the parishioners I spoke with are optimistic about joining another fellowship after leaving their congregation. No house of worship will be perfect. But Wright is certain that her next church will be one where “the pastor has no problem saying ‘Black Lives Matter.’”


theatlantic--2020-10-11--The Church’s Black Exodus

The Church’s Black Exodus

What she saw on video one Sunday dismayed her .
As the camera panned over the congregation , she noted that some people had masks on and some didn ’ t .
The church did not require them .
What ’ s more , the pastor , who is white , scolded the missing members over live-stream : “ Why are y ’ all not here today ?
You scared ?
” Read : The unofficial racism consultants to the white evangelical world Delisha was appalled .
“ That blew me away , ” she said .
“ I am @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That ’ s why I ’ m not there.
” She felt like the pastor was failing to empathize with parishioners who had been dealt staggering blows by the pandemic .
Then , as the George Floyd protests began later in the spring , Delisha waited in vain for her church ’ s leaders to express their concern over his killing .
She received no church email , no newsletter , no pulpit address on racial injustice—just silence .
She ’ s decided that she will not return to her place of worship @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hasn ’ t terminated her membership officially , she ’ s no longer attending services virtually .
It ’ s not uncommon for people of color who attend multiracial churches to hear very little about racism , says David Swanson , 43 , the founding pastor of New Community Covenant Church in Chicago .
Instead of supporting systemic change , some white Christians view racial reconciliation as a matter of fellowship among churchgoers of different races—something that can be achieved through interpersonal relationships .
As a result , churches may not perceive the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Others might hesitate to endorse Black Lives Matter , because of ideological differences with the national organization and its founders .
But Black parishioners ’ desire for recognition doesn ’ t mean they ’ re ideologically aligned with the national group—they just want to know that their congregation values them .
If more Black Christians leave their church , their absence threatens to tilt congregations ’ demographics toward the segregated status quo .
Swanson has framed the stakes of churches ’ silence in stark terms .
“ A multiracial church which never @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” he tweeted in April .
By that , he meant it ’ s a church “ still mostly interested in white people ’ s comfort , ” Swanson explained to me over the summer .
Put another way : A church ’ s silence on police killings communicates almost as clear of a message as all lives matter on the marquee .
Amber Wright , 39 , felt a jolt of recognition when she read Swanson ’ s tweet this spring .
The absence of a church-wide stand against police brutality @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I remember there was no comment or commentary [ at my multiracial church ] about Trayvon Martin [ or ] the series of Black people slain in the streets , ” she told me .
By the time of Floyd ’ s killing , on May 25 , Wright knew she was done .
“ It ’ s important to us that we go to a church where we feel the leadership can call these issues out in a way that speaks to the worth of my life and the life of my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said .


theatlantic--2020-10-12--Can We Hang Out Inside Yet?

Can We Hang Out Inside Yet?

No indoor gathering will be perfectly safe .
Although many states have allowed indoor public settings such as gyms and restaurants to reopen at least in some capacity , experts don ’ t recommend spending a lot of time indoors with others , especially in situations where masking isn ’ t possible .
The odds of catching coronavirus are about 20 times higher indoors , and private , indoor gatherings have been linked to several coronavirus outbreaks .
In June , a surprise birthday party in Texas resulted in 18 coronavirus cases .
In July , a house party in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a family gathering in North Carolina led to 40 cases because the attendees “ went about their daily lives ” before they started showing symptoms .
In some places , in-home gatherings are now responsible for the majority of new coronavirus cases .
A recent CDC report showed how a chain of family gatherings in Chicago led to three deaths .
But it ’ s unrealistic to expect Americans to stay inside all winter without seeing anyone .
Even if people could do that without going batty , it ’ s likely that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stay-at-home order in place , people will take their chances .
“ Making a rule that says zero indoor gatherings until we have a vaccine is totally impractical , ” says Julia Marcus , an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School .
In the absence of such a rule , “ we have a mishmash of risk communication and guidelines from different entities , ” Marcus told me , “ and people are continuing to muddle through .
It ’ s funny , because now I ’ m sitting here thinking , What @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I actually don ’ t know.
” Beyond “ stay at home ” and “ it ’ s okay to go out now , ” government officials aren ’ t explaining the relative risks clearly and widely enough for everyone to understand .
Ever since states publicized their “ reopenings , ” some people have only seen unrelated people from a six-foot distance and outside .
Others are throwing indoor weddings .
Often , these people live in the same city .
Given this information vacuum , researchers like Ranney and some public-health @ @ @ @ @ @ @ help people decide what types of social activities are safe , based on where they live .
In a few phone calls , I too was able to figure out whether socializing indoors is okay .
But not everyone is a health reporter .
Here ’ s what to consider before you host that dinner party inside your dining room on a nippy October day : If you make it small , and primarily comprising people under 60 , that ’ s safer .
If your guests can stay six feet apart , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ likely to happen once they have had a few glasses of wine and the board games come out .
Perhaps the most important factor is the level of so-called community transmission : how many new COVID-19 cases are in your immediate area .
Caitlin Rivers , an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health , told me she wouldn ’ t be comfortable at an indoor dinner party right now , no matter what .
But if you were going to risk it , it ’ s safer in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 10 new cases a day per 100,000 people , and have a test-positivity rate less than 5 percent .
Tom Tsai , a health-policy professor at Harvard , puts this number slightly higher , at 25 cases per 100,000 .

For months now, Americans have been told that if we want to socialize, the safest way to do it is outdoors, the better to disperse the droplets that spew from our mouths whenever we do anything but silently purchase grapefruit. But in many parts of the country, this is the last month that the weather will allow people to spend more than a few minutes outside comfortably. And next month, America will celebrate a holiday that is marked by being inside together and eating while talking loudly to old people.
Federal and local officials have offered little guidance on whether and how people should be socializing this winter. That has left even medical experts confused about what’s safe, and what’s not. About a month ago, Megan Ranney, an emergency physician who teaches at Brown University, was trying to decide whether to take her son to his favorite restaurant for his ninth birthday. The family has not dined out since the pandemic hit the U.S. But Ranney’s son really, really wanted to go.
“And I was trying to think in my brain, Is it safe for us to go outside? What if we’re inside and we’re in a private room?” Ranney told me. “It’s just, it’s too complicated to figure it out on your own.”
No indoor gathering will be perfectly safe. Although many states have allowed indoor public settings such as gyms and restaurants to reopen at least in some capacity, experts don’t recommend spending a lot of time indoors with others, especially in situations where masking isn’t possible. The odds of catching the coronavirus are about 20 times higher indoors, and private, indoor gatherings have been linked to several coronavirus outbreaks. In June, a surprise birthday party in Texas resulted in 18 coronavirus cases. In July, a house party in Michigan led to 43 cases, and a family gathering in North Carolina led to 40 cases because the attendees “went about their daily lives” before they started showing symptoms. In some places, in-home gatherings are now responsible for the majority of new coronavirus cases. A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report showed how a chain of family gatherings in Chicago led to three deaths.
But it’s unrealistic to expect Americans to stay inside all winter without seeing anyone. Even if people could do that without going batty, it’s likely that, with January feeling endless and no stay-at-home order in place, people will take their chances. “Making a rule that says zero indoor gatherings until we have a vaccine is totally impractical,” says Julia Marcus, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School.
In the absence of such a rule, “we have a mishmash of risk communication and guidelines from different entities,” Marcus told me, “and people are continuing to muddle through. It’s funny, because now I’m sitting here thinking, What are the rules in my city? I actually don’t know.”
[ Read: America’s terrible internet is making quarantine worse ]
Beyond “stay at home” and “it’s okay to go out now,” government officials aren’t explaining the relative risks clearly and widely enough for everyone to understand. Ever since states publicized their “reopenings,” some people have seen unrelated people only from a six-foot distance and outside. Others are throwing indoor weddings. Often, these people live in the same city.
Given this information vacuum, researchers like Ranney and some public-health workers have launched their own efforts to help people decide what types of social activities are safe, based on where they live.
In a few phone calls, I too was able to figure out whether socializing indoors is okay. But not everyone is a health reporter.
Here’s what to consider before you host that dinner party inside your dining room on a nippy October day: If you make it small, and primarily comprising people under 60, that’s safer. If your guests can stay six feet apart, even better—though consider that this is not likely to happen once they have had a few glasses of wine and the board games come out.
Perhaps the most important factor is the level of so-called community transmission: how many new COVID-19 cases are in your immediate area. Caitlin Rivers, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told me she wouldn’t be comfortable at an indoor dinner party right now, no matter what. But if you were going to risk it, it’s safer in areas that are seeing only five to 10 new cases a day per 100,000 people, and have a test-positivity rate less than 5 percent. Tom Tsai, a health-policy professor at Harvard, puts this number slightly higher, at 25 cases per 100,000.
But this community-transmission number is hard for most people to keep track of. Part of the problem is that Americans no longer have a centralized source for news. Though interest in TV news has picked up recently, the three major evening newscasts get only about half the viewers today as they did in the 1980s. Some newspapers run transmission numbers on their front pages, but many Americans live in news deserts, and only 29 percent of Americans get a newspaper either digitally or in print. People tend to get news from social media, which will often circulate stories of national interest but not, say, the case numbers in a given county. Health departments can post things on social media, but how many people follow their local health department on Facebook?
Rivers told me that to find the community transmission rate and other information, people should be checking their local public-health department’s website. But after more than a decade of severe budget cuts, many health departments don’t have the money to make snazzy, user-friendly websites with constantly updating figures.
For instance, Wisconsin is currently erupting into a COVID-19 hot spot, and one county, La Crosse, had 41 cases per 100,000 people as of this writing—four times the rate Rivers said is safe for indoor gatherings. But La Crosse County’s health-department website is rudimentary, offering a link to a separate COVID-19 website in a small font. That site says, “Personal social gatherings are not recommended,” and notes that the “new case rate” is 97, with a red arrow pointing up. A layman in La Crosse County is unlikely to know the meaning of this rate. Another Wisconsin county, Kewaunee, which also had 123 new cases per 100,000 people, has a health-department website on which the number of cases is not displayed anywhere. (In a response to a request for comment, the Kewaunee County Public Health Department said it posts its total number of coronavirus cases on the county website. In an email, Maggie Smith, a health educator with the La Crosse County health department, said, “As a public health department, we are limited in both funds and capacity and rely heavily on free and low cost tools to support our communication efforts.” Smith added that the department has used Facebook, Instagram, and local celebrities in its outreach.)
“A lot of local health departments in the United States don’t even have an epidemiologist,” says Albert Ko, a professor at the Yale School of Public Health. “When a local health department doesn’t have the capacity to use 21st-century technology to disseminate important public-health information, that’s a real challenge. And that’s what puts us behind other countries that have had successful responses.”
A number of websites show the levels of community transmission by county, such as one Tsai worked on, at GlobalEpidemics.org, but they are not widely known among the general public. (According to this map, in the county where I live, for example, it would be safe to gather indoors according to Rivers’s standards, because there are only eight new cases a day per 100,000 people. But in my parents’ county in Texas, which has just over 10 cases, it would be less safe.)
To check these types of websites, “you have to be interested,” says Tara Kirk Sell, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “And if you’re already someone who thinks this is important, and you’re checking out your numbers of cases per 100,000,” you’re probably already doing all the right things when it comes to social distancing.
Some health departments are stepping up their communications, holding Facebook Live events and press conferences in which they urge people to avoid indoor gatherings. The Kansas City, Missouri, health department has produced videos showing how easily the coronavirus spreads. (Still, illustrating the limits of social media, the first reply to a tweet with one of its videos is: “Masks don’t do anything.”)
In Chicago, the public-health department has developed a tool that can help people decide whether a gathering is safe through questions such as “Is everyone healthy?” and “Can you always keep a 6-foot distance?” Commissioner Allison Arwady has also been hosting regular Facebook Lives in which she answers questions from the public, and she hosts a weekly press conference in which she often highlights stories of individuals who caught the coronavirus at a small gathering. She’s running focus groups with Black and Latino Chicagoans to test messages that might resonate with them. But, she acknowledges, not every health department has the money or manpower to do all this.
Read: Is there a safe way to be home for the holidays?
Together with her colleagues at Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital Health, Ranney has developed a free app called My COVID Risk that will allow users to input the type of activity they want to do, whether it’s indoors or outdoors, how many people will be there, what protective measures they’ll take, and where they live, along with other factors. The app will then generate a relative risk of catching the coronavirus during that activity—from “very low” to “very high”—using community-level data from The New York Times’ coronavirus map. People can modify their risk level by reducing the number of people, for example, or adding a mask requirement. “Given the lack of clear national guidelines on what’s safe and not safe, our hope is that this will fill a void for the average American who’s really struggling to judge the safety of various activities,” Ranney told me.
Still, Ranney says, this app is the kind of thing the federal government really should have developed by now. It’s odd that in a wealthy, industrialized country, a random researcher is the one designing a tool to keep citizens safe from public-health threats, using data she scraped from a newspaper.
These efforts are commendable, but experts agree that they should be publicized by officials at the federal level, so that all Americans know how to find and use them. Some have even advocated for a national system of COVID-19 risk levels that could tell Americans when it’s safe to, say, visit with friends outside, versus shelter in place, versus live normally. In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said that the agency “consistently educates the public on the three W’s, advising Americans to: Watch your distance, Wear a mask when you can’t watch your distance, and Wash your hands.”
Sell says the government should team public-health departments with influencers, faith leaders, and celebrities to make people aware of how to gauge the risk of indoor gatherings, before it’s too late. “Public health can make a message, but we want people to hear it,” she says. “It should be centrally led and pushed for by the federal government.”
Instead, Sell says, officials have veered between over-reassuring and over-worrying people. The Trump administration has undermined its own scientists, making people unsure whom to trust. “I’ve never had to deal with so much misinformation and, frankly, sometimes just unpredictability of the messaging that’s been coming out, especially at the federal level,” Arwady said.
With Americans befuddled as to which risks are acceptable, social media has overflowed with posts shaming people who appear to be in the company of other people. But these witch hunts miss the point that people generally don’t want to kill their friends and relatives. Most people want to do the right thing. But they can’t do it if they don’t know what it is.


theatlantic--2020-10-12--‘At Least You Get a Judge Out of It’

‘At Least You Get a Judge Out of It’

For the handful of conservative Republican lawmakers who have been at least somewhat willing to criticize Trump ’ s harms to democratic norms , Barrett ’ s nomination is a relief—a welcome return to rhetorical home turf , where they can talk about constitutional principles and the rule of law .
Barrett “ doesn ’ t think you slop applesauce on tablets and then call it law because it came from a judge , ” Sasse said , cheekily citing Scalia ’ s famous dissent in the 2015 Supreme Court decision upholding Obamacare , in which he called the majority @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But the rule of conservative politics in Washington has become clear : Those who want their lofty principles need to work through Trump ’ s patronage .
People working on the nomination indicated to me that they believe Democrats have turned judicial nominations into an all-out war , with their attempts to sink Brett Kavanaugh and question Barrett ’ s faith .
Their message to Democrats sounded distinctly Trumpian , albeit with a biblical flair : Live by the sword ; die by the sword .
Read : Biden and Harris need an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their movement will be hurt by the legacy of this era , especially when it comes to the battles over the courts .
“ We are in a race to the constitutional bottom , ” Longwell said .
If Republicans successfully confirm Barrett to the Supreme Court but lose badly in November , Democrats might attempt to pack the court with more justices who are favorable to their cause , which would invite further retaliation from conservatives in the future .
Forget lofty principles—we will “ find ourselves in an environment where it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down .
There are no more attempts at compromise .
There are no more attempts at finding common ground , ” Longwell said .
Others believe Supreme Court victories for the anti-abortion-rights movement could be Pyrrhic , prompting a cultural backlash that will tilt public opinion in favor of expanded abortion rights .
And because of the circumstances of Barrett ’ s nomination , her decisions might always be viewed through a partisan lens .
For now , conservatives are trying to relish the victory at hand .
“ I don ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Donald Trump ’ s narcissistic tweeting , ” Sasse said .
“ He is who he is , and everybody knows it.
” There ’ s a comic that ’ s become popular in the Trump era : A dog in a bowler cap sits at a table with a mug of coffee , assuring everyone , “ This is fine , ” while flames lick the walls of the room around him .
For conservatives who are skeptical of Trump , Barrett ’ s nomination is a little like that : They @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shore up the constitutional principles they hold dear while the house of American democracy burns down around them .
Sasse didn ’ t know the meme—he ’ s semiretired from Twitter , where he used to maintain a prodigious presence .
But he got the concept .
Most of Sasse ’ s first Senate term has been dominated by the Trump era .
He ’ s about to win his next six years in office , and he ’ d like to spend it governing—preparing America to compete with China , rebuilding public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ course , confirming more conservatives to the federal bench .
But , he said , these efforts at governing keep getting derailed .
“ We ’ re constantly doing your dog-with-coffee-mug-burning-down-house stuff .
”

Ben Sasse is worried. With 22 days to go before the election, the Nebraska senator and his colleagues are about to begin a showdown over the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, which he likened to the deadly 19th-century feuds between the Hatfields and the McCoys. Barrett’s confirmation hearings, which begin today, will likely become a spectacle of the intense partisanship—Sasse described it as “WWE slap-down tribalism”—that now characterizes all Supreme Court nomination fights. Perhaps most troubling, Barrett’s potential ascension is coming at a time of crisis for American democratic norms. President Donald Trump has consistently cast doubt on the integrity of November’s election by spreading conspiracy theories about mail-in ballots, suggesting that the election should be postponed, and refusing to say that he’ll agree to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses. “All of those are mistakes by the president,” Sasse told me. “Right now, I think there are a whole bunch of arsonists in Washington, D.C., who don’t think about the public trust.”
Among conservatives in Washington, Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination is almost universally viewed as a win. In their eyes, she’s everything conservatives could want out of a replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg: a respected legal scholar, a protégée of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, and a longtime student of judicial precedent who, they hope, might one day write the decision overturning Roe v. Wade. And yet, for all of the good these conservatives believe Barrett will do for America, at least some of them acknowledge that they paid a price for her nomination: Her name will always be tied to Trump’s, and to the erosion of democratic norms he has accelerated. For now, the Republican Party has largely accepted this trade-off. Although Sasse has some history of making skeptical comments about Trump, sentiments like his are rarely expressed on the record by Senate Republicans. But when Trump is gone, whether in four months or four years, conservatives will be left to wrestle with deep disagreements about how the movement got here, and what comes next. For those who loathe the fruit of the Trump era, Barrett makes some of the damage worth it. “The cake is already baked,” one senior Hill staffer told me. “At least you get a judge out of it.”
Read: The true victors of Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination
When Trump promised in 2016 to pick judges who uphold the “constitutional principles I value,” many conservative intellectuals simply didn’t believe him. “Lots of us did not think we could take him at his word on that,” Robert George, a professor at Princeton, told me. “He was not a man known for his fidelity.” Four years, more than 200 judges, and maybe soon-to-be three Supreme Court seats later, they’ve been proved wrong. “Perhaps what we failed to see was just how transactional the president is,” George said. Trump saw making judicial appointments in return for conservative support as a beneficial deal, and he’s kept his end of the bargain. “When I say that, my Trump-friendly friends, my pro-Trump friends, will say I’m being mean-spirited and refusing to confess error—that, really, these judges reflect Trump’s true convictions about the Constitution and the courts,” George said. “I wish I could believe that. And I don’t mean to be grudging, I don’t. But I also honestly don’t believe it.”
doubt Trump’s character are ecstatic about some of his victories. Trump’s character hasn’t changed since 2016—what George and the Catholic writer George Weigel Barrett’s nomination is a microcosm of a great Trump-era dilemma: Even conservatives whoTrump’s character are ecstatic about some of his victories. Trump’s character hasn’t changed since 2016—what George and the Catholic writer George Weigel decried at the time as “his appeals to racial and ethnic fears”; “his vulgarity, oafishness, shocking ignorance”; and his “demagoguery.” What has changed are some conservatives’ calculations about how much that matters.
The story conservative-movement intellectuals tell about the breakdown of democratic norms starts long before Trump became a serious figure in American politics. In their version of events, presidents have spent decades usurping power, bureaucrats have been given too much latitude to make policy, and courts have taken it upon themselves to unilaterally decide America’s most hotly contested issues. Many conservatives point to Roe v. Wade as the original antidemocratic sin, arguing that the Court stepped beyond its constitutional authority in forbidding states from regulating or banning abortion in the earliest stages of pregnancy. (Even some liberals are sympathetic to the idea that Roe is an example of judicial overreach. “Doctrinal limbs too swiftly shaped may prove unstable,” the late Ginsburg once said of Roe.) Most liberal critics don’t “quite grasp how the Court’s history of legislating has eroded the Court’s legitimacy while weakening the sinews of American democracy,” Weigel told me in an email.
Conservatives found the Court’s capacious decision making even more outrageous during the Obama years, when they believed the president wielded executive power to aggressively advance a progressive vision of America. Many in the conservative legal world despised Barack Obama’s use of executive orders, agency rulings, and memorandums to extend nondiscrimination protections to LGBTQ Americans, to defer the prosecution and deportation of immigrants illegally brought to the U.S. as children, and to discourage states from attempting to defund Planned Parenthood. The politician who famously said “there is not a liberal America and a conservative America—there is the United States of America” made full use of his partisan powers once he won the White House, conservatives believed.
This brought new urgency to conservatives’ massive project to remake the courts, which some conservatives cast as an effort to steady the wobbling ship of American democracy. “The conservative legal movement is pushing to appoint judges that will scale down the footprint of judicial decision making in our politics,” Adam White, an assistant professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, told me. To conservatives, Barrett embodies this principle. Her scholarship specifically focused on how judges should separate their politics from their jurisprudence, and when they should overturn precedents. At her confirmation hearing for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, she assured senators that it’s inappropriate for a judge to impose their own views when making a decision, and that she would follow the law where it leads her. “She’s the ideal justice for the moment,” White said.
Ideas: Will Democrats fail the Amy Coney Barrett test?
Trump complicated the story conservatives tell about themselves. He quickly perceived that Republican voters care less about philosophical concepts like originalism, the method many conservatives favor for interpreting the Constitution, than getting the Supreme Court to protect a checklist of right-wing views: “We need NEW JUSTICES of the Supreme Court,” Trump tweeted this summer. “If the Radical Left Democrats assume power, your Second Amendment, Right to Life, Secure Borders, and … Religious Liberty, among many other things, are OVER and GONE!” Some senators have openly adopted the president’s logic: Josh Hawley, a rising Republican star from Missouri, has said all Supreme Court nominees need to be on the record stating that Roe was wrongly decided. There’s evidence that ideology already shapes the way justices decide cases. Researchers have found that in 5–4 decisions, where each justice’s vote could change the outcome of a case, justices tend to side with their ideological wing of the Court. For conservatives who shy away from the open politicization of the Court, however, the suggestion that justices should privilege certain outcomes is wrong. “I like Josh Hawley personally, but I think his litmus test is a very bad idea,” Sasse told me. “I think it’s the right acting like the left.”
Although some conservatives offer up philosophical arguments to explain their efforts to confirm like-minded justices, Trump himself seems to approach the courts as an exercise in accumulating power. When Scalia died, Republicans refused to hold hearings on Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, arguing that voters should get to pick the president who fills vacancies in an election year. With just a few weeks to go until November’s election, Republicans are now racing to confirm Barrett. “It is the height of cynicism,” Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist and the publisher of the conservative website The Bulwark, told me. The move “just looks so transparently like, Hey, we’re about to lose the Senate majority, we’re about to lose the presidency, so we need to jam this thing through.”
For the handful of conservative Republican lawmakers who have been at least somewhat willing to criticize Trump’s harms to democratic norms, Barrett’s nomination is a relief—a welcome return to rhetorical home turf, where they can talk about constitutional principles and the rule of law. Barrett “doesn’t think you slop applesauce on tablets and then call it law because it came from a judge,” Sasse said, cheekily citing Scalia’s famous dissent in the 2015 Supreme Court decision upholding Obamacare, in which he called the majority’s reasoning “pure applesauce.” But the rule of conservative politics in Washington has become clear: Those who want their lofty principles need to work through Trump’s patronage. People working on the nomination indicated to me that they believe Democrats have turned judicial nominations into an all-out war, with their attempts to sink Brett Kavanaugh and question Barrett’s faith. Their message to Democrats sounded distinctly Trumpian, albeit with a biblical flair: Live by the sword; die by the sword.
Read: Biden and Harris need an answer on court-packing
Some conservatives worry that their movement will be hurt by the legacy of this era, especially when it comes to the battles over the courts. “We are in a race to the constitutional bottom,” Longwell said. If Republicans successfully confirm Barrett to the Supreme Court but lose badly in November, Democrats might attempt to pack the court with more justices who are favorable to their cause, which would invite further retaliation from conservatives in the future. Forget lofty principles—we will “find ourselves in an environment where it is raw political power all the way down. There are no more attempts at compromise. There are no more attempts at finding common ground,” Longwell said. Others believe Supreme Court victories for the anti-abortion-rights movement could be Pyrrhic, prompting a cultural backlash that will tilt public opinion in favor of expanded abortion rights. And because of the circumstances of Barrett’s nomination, her decisions might always be viewed through a partisan lens.
For now, conservatives are trying to relish the victory at hand. “I don’t spend a lot of my time on Donald Trump’s narcissistic tweeting,” Sasse said. “He is who he is, and everybody knows it.”
There’s a comic that’s become popular in the Trump era: A dog in a bowler cap sits at a table with a mug of coffee, assuring everyone, “This is fine,” while flames lick the walls of the room around him. For conservatives who are skeptical of Trump, Barrett’s nomination is a little like that: They see her as a last chance to shore up the constitutional principles they hold dear while the house of American democracy burns down around them.
Sasse didn’t know the meme—he’s semiretired from Twitter, where he used to maintain a prodigious presence. But he got the concept. Most of Sasse’s first Senate term has been dominated by the Trump era. He’s about to win his next six years in office, and he’d like to spend it governing—preparing America to compete with China, rebuilding public trust in institutions, and, of course, confirming more conservatives to the federal bench. But, he said, these efforts at governing keep getting derailed. “We’re constantly doing your dog-with-coffee-mug-burning-down-house stuff.”


theatlantic--2020-10-12--How to Tell If Socializing Indoors Is Safe

No indoor gathering will be perfectly safe .
Although many states have allowed indoor public settings such as gyms and restaurants to reopen at least in some capacity , experts don ’ t recommend spending a lot of time indoors with others , especially in situations where masking isn ’ t possible .
The odds of catching the coronavirus are about 20 times higher indoors , and private , indoor gatherings have been linked to several coronavirus outbreaks .
In June , a surprise birthday party in Texas resulted in 18 coronavirus cases .
In July , a house party @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and a family gathering in North Carolina led to 40 cases because the attendees “ went about their daily lives ” before they started showing symptoms .
In some places , in-home gatherings are now responsible for the majority of new coronavirus cases .
A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report showed how a chain of family gatherings in Chicago led to three deaths .
But it ’ s unrealistic to expect Americans to stay inside all winter without seeing anyone .
Even if people could do that without going batty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with January feeling endless and no stay-at-home order in place , people will take their chances .
“ Making a rule that says zero indoor gatherings until we have a vaccine is totally impractical , ” says Julia Marcus , an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School .
In the absence of such a rule , “ we have a mishmash of risk communication and guidelines from different entities , ” Marcus told me , “ and people are continuing to muddle through .
It ’ s funny , because now I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the rules in my city ?
I actually don ’ t know.
” Beyond “ stay at home ” and “ it ’ s okay to go out now , ” government officials aren ’ t explaining the relative risks clearly and widely enough for everyone to understand .
Ever since states publicized their “ reopenings , ” some people have seen unrelated people only from a six-foot distance and outside .
Others are throwing indoor weddings .
Often , these people live in the same city .
Given this information vacuum , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have launched their own efforts to help people decide what types of social activities are safe , based on where they live .
In a few phone calls , I too was able to figure out whether socializing indoors is okay .
But not everyone is a health reporter .
Here ’ s what to consider before you host that dinner party inside your dining room on a nippy October day : If you make it small , and primarily comprising people under 60 , that ’ s safer .
If your guests @ @ @ @ @ @ @ better—though consider that this is not likely to happen once they have had a few glasses of wine and the board games come out .
Perhaps the most important factor is the level of so-called community transmission : how many new COVID-19 cases are in your immediate area .
Caitlin Rivers , an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health , told me she wouldn ’ t be comfortable at an indoor dinner party right now , no matter what .
But if you were going to risk it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that are seeing only five to 10 new cases a day per 100,000 people , and have a test-positivity rate less than 5 percent .
Tom Tsai , a health-policy professor at Harvard , puts this number slightly higher , at 25 cases per 100,000 .


theatlantic--2020-10-12--How Conservatives Really Feel About Amy Coney Barrett


theatlantic--2020-10-14--Paging Dr. Hamblin: How Dangerous Are Woodwinds?

As with pretty much every other activity right now , having the quintet gather outdoors is a great idea .
If any neighbors complain , explain that the backyard practices are part of a global effort to keep them from dying .
If anyone happens to be infected , any virus that emanates in the heat of performance will likely fade into the sky and disperse like the music itself .
Indoors , as any parent of a child who ’ s learning an instrument knows , everything is trapped and can echo around the room indefinitely .
Read : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sing together ?
Some instruments do seem to pose more risk than others .
Obviously , string instruments can be played without even opening your mouth , but it sounds like your daughter ’ s quintet is too far along to take kindly to a suggestion that they all learn new instruments .
Because the virus is sent into the air by talking , coughing , and singing—any forcible exhalation of air through the pharynx—playing a woodwind or brass instrument would logically pose a risk .
These instruments are effectively designed to amplify @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mouths and to carry the sound .
A 2011 study of vuvuzelas ( the long , straight plastic horns that people blow at soccer games ) found that their capacity for spreading infections could be tremendous .
Compared with shouting , blowing through the horn sent several hundred times more particles into the air .
Thankfully for everyone , kids don ’ t train for vuvuzela quintets .
Woodwind and brass instruments send air through a maze of twists and turns , and buttons create turbulent airflow patterns that don ’ t simply @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Breathing into a convoluted contraption such as a saxophone or a tuba , then , actually serves as a sort of filter that collects the larger droplets you might be spewing out .
This is familiar to anyone who has emptied a spit valve and seen what pours out .
The real question is the potential danger of smaller , aerosolized particles that can blast out of an instrument and linger in the air .
In May , the Vienna Philharmonic reported that it had conducted a study of the aerosols from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to musicians ’ noses , and as they played , they inhaled an aerosolized salt solution that could be visualized when it was exhaled .
The researchers mapped the clouds of air around musicians while they were playing and reported that none of the instruments sent respiratory droplets beyond the commonly recommended radius of six feet .
In most cases , no significant amount of the aerosolized salt particles were detectable coming out the end of the wind and brass instruments .
Flutes were the worst offender , passing a “ large amount @ @ @ @ @ @ @ two and a half feet .
In July , another study in Germany offered findings and hope similar to those from Vienna .
But neither study measured actual coronavirus particles , and the overall evidence is still thin .
Doctors at the University of Iowa have expressed concern about the rigor of both findings , given that they weren ’ t peer-reviewed , and raised additional variables that the research failed to take into consideration : “ Wind players buzz on their mouthpieces , blow out tone holes , blow out spit valves @ @ @ @ @ @ @ feathers , and might have leaking embouchures or nasal emissions during playing , ” they wrote .
“ How to mitigate these risks is not yet known .
”

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, James Hamblin takes questions from readers about health-related curiosities, concerns, and obsessions. Have one? Email him at paging.dr.hamblin@theatlantic.com.
Dear Dr. Hamblin,
My daughter is part of an accomplished high-school woodwind quintet. For two years, they practiced constantly and participated in competitions, becoming one of the best in the state. But the shutdowns in March put an end to it. They haven’t played together at all since. The group wants to start practicing again, and one of the parents volunteered to have them play in their backyard. My family has health conditions, so we have been very cautious about the pandemic. Would it be safe for her to play outdoors with her classmates?
Shannon Chapman
Henderson, Nevada
At first glance, it clearly doesn’t sound ideal: blowing forcefully through a woodwind instrument in close proximity to other people who are also blowing forcefully through woodwind instruments. Given what we’ve learned about how singing and even talking loudly can increase the amount of coronavirus in the air, a quintet could seem ill-advised.
But the danger of music is all in how you make it. I would let your daughter start practicing again. Although there are no clearly documented cases of coronavirus transmission via woodwind, there is a lot of evidence of the benefit of kids studying musical instruments, and taking part in team-based competition. Even during a pandemic, immersing kids in the arts isn’t an indulgence. It should be a top priority, right alongside that of opening schools. Playing an instrument is not absolutely risk-free, but if you keep a few things in mind, it could be close.
As with pretty much every other activity right now, having the quintet gather outdoors is a great idea. If any neighbors complain, explain that the backyard practices are part of a global effort to keep them from dying. If anyone happens to be infected, any virus that emanates in the heat of performance will likely fade into the sky and disperse like the music itself. Indoors, as any parent of a child who’s learning an instrument knows, everything is trapped and can echo around the room indefinitely.
Read: When will it be safe of to sing together?
Some instruments do seem to pose more risk than others. Obviously, string instruments can be played without even opening your mouth, but it sounds like your daughter’s quintet is too far along to take kindly to a suggestion that they all learn new instruments. Because the virus is sent into the air by talking, coughing, and singing—any forcible exhalation of air through the pharynx—playing a woodwind or brass instrument would logically pose a risk. These instruments are effectively designed to amplify what’s coming out of our mouths and to carry the sound. A 2011 study of vuvuzelas (the long, straight plastic horns that people blow at soccer games) found that their capacity for spreading infections could be tremendous. Compared with shouting, blowing through the horn sent several hundred times more particles into the air.
Thankfully for everyone, kids don’t train for vuvuzela quintets. Woodwind and brass instruments send air through a maze of twists and turns, and buttons create turbulent airflow patterns that don’t simply shoot everything out in a piercing plume. Breathing into a convoluted contraption such as a saxophone or a tuba, then, actually serves as a sort of filter that collects the larger droplets you might be spewing out. This is familiar to anyone who has emptied a spit valve and seen what pours out.
The real question is the potential danger of smaller, aerosolized particles that can blast out of an instrument and linger in the air. In May, the Vienna Philharmonic reported that it had conducted a study of the aerosols from various instruments. Researchers hooked tubes up to musicians’ noses, and as they played, they inhaled an aerosolized salt solution that could be visualized when it was exhaled. The researchers mapped the clouds of air around musicians while they were playing and reported that none of the instruments sent respiratory droplets beyond the commonly recommended radius of six feet. In most cases, no significant amount of the aerosolized salt particles were detectable coming out the end of the wind and brass instruments. Flutes were the worst offender, passing a “large amount” of aerosol in a cloud covering two and a half feet.
In July, another study in Germany offered findings and hope similar to those from Vienna. But neither study measured actual coronavirus particles, and the overall evidence is still thin. Doctors at the University of Iowa have expressed concern about the rigor of both findings, given that they weren’t peer-reviewed, and raised additional variables that the research failed to take into consideration: “Wind players buzz on their mouthpieces, blow out tone holes, blow out spit valves, clean their instruments with swabs and feathers, and might have leaking embouchures or nasal emissions during playing,” they wrote. “How to mitigate these risks is not yet known.”
Ultimately, the risk posed by playing a woodwind instrument should fall somewhere between talking softly and aiming a vuvuzela at someone’s face. This is a wide range, but much can be done to ensure that you’re closer to the former. Preliminary guidelines issued by a coalition of performing-arts organizations currently recommend that all musicians presume that aerosols are coming from the keyholes and bells of their instruments, and that everyone should use bell covers—or, in the case of flutes, “flute socks”—which are like masks for your instruments. They’re not ideal for sound quality, but they’re great for practice. Musicians should also wear masks with slits to insert the mouthpiece. And while playing, they should face in the same direction, to avoid sending woodwind emissions into anyone else’s face.
Read: How we survive the winter
Every musician should have a six-foot radius when outdoors. As it gets colder and the kids want to practice indoors, there will be new challenges: The six-foot rule isn’t sufficient when people are in an enclosed space with little ventilation. Airborne transmission isn’t a problem that can be solved with plexiglass, either. In fact, it might create ventilation “dead zones.” The larger and better-ventilated the space, the safer. All of the standard advice applies: Open windows, use HEPA air filters, and limit the time of exposure. The guidelines suggest that indoor rehearsals should last no more than 30 minutes, followed by 20 minutes to let the air in the room turn over.
Even though a woodwind quintet isn’t an ideal pandemic scenario, the opportunity for these kids to learn and develop artistically and socially is too great to abandon. The goal should be to find a way to come as close as possible to the old ways of practicing and playing music while avoiding any major or unnecessary risk. A little conscientiousness will go a long way.
Good luck to the quintet. I hope they destroy the competition.
“Paging Dr. Hamblin” is for informational purposes only, does not constitute medical advice, and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let The Atlantic use it—in part or in full—and we may edit it for length and/or clarity.