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How is the coronavirus pandemic affecting your life right now? Tell us about your experiences, feelings, and thoughts.

week of 8 October (Thurs) -- KEEPING COVID-19 RELATED PUBLIC ANXIETIES BOILING FRUSTRATION: S. went back to the pool in Waltham, and saw 3 women outside talking agitatedly, and knew immediately that they too were upset at the failure of the pool to post when the youngsters teams would be using the pool and how long a spacing after they would not allow others to use the pool. PLEASURE: We had a lovely garden gathering with A&R&D, welcoming A and daughter D to the US and coming out of their 14 day quarantine. They had been caught in Germany for months unable to travel to the U.S. although holding valid visas; and finally somehow finally got special permission to reunite with husband/father. The furniture from Germany arrived almost as quickly as they did, a surprise, apparently because there is so much unused capacity on the freight ships. My classes on zoom, and our Tuesday and Friday seminars continue to be engaging and two of the classes have the extra pleasure of being able to talk to people around the world. Also have been having some wonderful engagements on my Bacurau essay with my colleagues in Brazil (one by Face Time, the others by email), including today a Globo piece on the efforts by the American distributor to get the film into the Oscars -- a nice affirmation of my own sense of the film. Part of the essay is about COVID-19 in Brazil and connections with Black Lives Matter, and Indigenous Lives Matter. DISTURBING ANXIETIES. Three notable and disturbing public events kept the country in turmoil this week: (1) The President's COVID illness and wild erratic behavior. Admitting to COVID-19 symptoms beginning last Thursday (1 Oct), and being treated twice for alarming drops in blood oxygen levels, he was taken by helicopter to the Bethesda Naval Hospital (now known as Walter Reed, though somewhat distant from the historical Walter Reed campus) for 2 nights and his return to the White House after being infused with drugs both experimental and known to cause mania and mood swings, while claiming to be fine and it being a gift of God to have been able to lead the way in showing that COVID-19 can be cured, and showing off his "cure" by standing Mussolini like on the White House portico, taking off his mask, rigidly saluting, standing and visibly struggling for breath before heading inside without a mask, where he continued to infect anyone left inside. While at Walter Reed, he had himself paraded around in a black Secret Service car to wave at people and declare he felt younger and stronger than he had for twenty years (an effect of the steroids), waving like a caged king at his subjects. An anonymous irritated Secret Service person is reported to have comment that they signed up to take a bullet for the President, not to take one from him! Some thirty people of the President's staff and people attending tightly packed (no distancing, and no masks) events at the White House last week (e.g. the Rose Garden nomination of Amy Barret to the Supreme Court) have reported being infected, and the Mayor of Washington has urgently demanded meetings with the White House staff to arrange for contact tracing, which the White House so far has refused to pursue. Trump and/or the White House is being called a super spreader. In the following days after his return, his stream of (consciousness) tweets have become not only increasingly erratic, but alarming for national security (not only by having all the members of the Joint Chiefs being quarantined by COVID-19; but also by increasing his stoking of racist incitement to "liberate Michigan" and attacking Governor Gretchen Witmer and urging the state to "open up"-- see item 3 below). These erratic tweets have included demanding that his government stop negotiating ("until after the elections") with the Democratic leadership over desperately needed funds for people and small businesses struggling to find enough money for food, rent, and medicines; saying he would not participate in the second debate with Joe Biden unless the virtual town hall format (agreed to in June) was changed, and getting his doctor to issue a statement that he was well enough to return to public life; and to add insult to injury, he now blames Gold Star families (families of men and women in the armed forces who gave their lives in service to the country) of infecting him (they had been invited to the White House). Khizr Khan came on the Rachel Maddow Show and gave an extremely strong reprimand of Trump, Trump's "mute enablers", including for his doctors and spokespeople for claiming that Trump's medical records (including simply the date when he last tested negative) are "private." This is a violation of HIPPA rules that exclude privacy in the case of public health emergencies when information is needed for public health management. First son, Donald Trump Jr, headlined a rally today inside a closed hall where again people including himself refused to wear masks. The Commission of Presidential Debates cited the Trump family and supporters for arrogantly violating the rules of the Mayo Clinic and Case Western at the debate last week; enforced the placement, against the objection of the Pence team, of plexiglass partitions between the debaters at tonight's even (protective against direct particles but not more general aerosolization, but at least a partial precaution -- both Pence and Harris tested negative before the debate). (2) The COVID-19 focused Vice-Presidential debate between Senator Kamala Harris and Vice-President Michael Pence plus a robot which settled in on his white hair and became among the most interesting of subjects of commentary of the evening. One cartoon had the fly parachuting in on a parachute labeled "Joe Biden". As likely is my fantasy that it was a robot-fly sent in from the White to sit on his head and monitor and control his patronizing, rude-interrupting, and trampling on the agreed rules of debate. In his male-dominance performance Pence is no match for the totally out of control, logorrheic, raging Trump, but is sufficiently blatantly offensive to draw attention to his rudeness, particularly in talking over Harris during her time to speak, and refusing to attend to the moderator's repeated admonishment that he was over time. However, purely on the battle of body language, Sen. Harris held her own and then some, by repeatedly admonishing him that she was speaking, and often giving him "the look" of mothers towards lying children; and by smiling broadly both at his silliness and in her own joy at being able to get her agenda across. The primary agenda on which she kept the debate focused was the pandemic, the 213,000+ lives lost and 7.64 million people who have become infected. And secondarily on the economic disaster Trump has brought about, particularly through the trade war with China, which she pointedly looking at Pence, "you lost". At his claim that NAFTA had been a disaster and the new trade deal has restored the economy, she pointed out the devastation in the manufacturing sector due to the China trade "war". This was a debate, which Harris kept focused on the COVID-19 pandemic, on the lying and on the failures of the Trump Administration to be honest with the American people or to care much about deaths and infections. She also was strong on reminding people that the Affordable Care Act was under attack by the Trump administration, and is in the Supreme Court at the moment and will be in even greater danger should Amy Coney Barrett be confirmed, as would Roe v Wade. She was strong in reminding people of Trump's contempt for the veterans who have lost their lives (calling them losers and suckers). What she failed to do, in my view disappointing, was to prosecute Trump's (and his enablers, Attorney General Barr, Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and in fact all Republican senators) push into authoritarianism, the dismantling of the checks and balances in our system of government, the outright violations of his oath of office, the corruption of the cabinet, the effort to run the Administration with "acting" rather than Senate confirmed agency heads, and the effort to interfere with the Justice System. In response to Pence's charge that Democrats would pack the Supreme Court if Republicans make the court a 6-3 hard right wing court, she tried to remind voters of the Trump Administration's packing the Appeals Courts with right wing justices many of whom are declared by the ABA as incompetent and unqualified, and she gave a good for the moment of debate but eventually wrong history lesson to counter Pence's claim that in 29 cases of an election year Presidents in power always nominated. She used Lincoln's alleged restraint in not appointing someone until after the election, but both that Congress was in recess until December, so there was no point in announcing a nomination, and Lincoln was preoccupied in keeping his coalition together and so wanted to canvass opinion from around the country in the meantime, and although he disliked Salmon P Chase, he tempted him with the prospect of the appointment, and Chase then stumped for him during the election, and then after the election appointed him in the hope this would neutralize him within the Republican party (it didn't). Chase had been even more anti-slavery than Lincoln, and now replaced the deceased Chief Justice Roger Taney, who had authored the infamous Dred Scott decision with its lines that blacks were inferior and could never be American citizens. Today, Mitch McConnell says publicly that he has not set foot in the White House since early August because he disagreed with how the White House was handling conditions there, and his concern for his own health. Commentators suggest he is trying to create some distance for other Republicans in tight Senate races to distance themselves from Trump. Although the races are all unnervingly tight, it does seem there is a chance for heavy Republican losses, and hopefully the loss of the Senate as well as the Presidency. (3) Michigan Anti-COVID Precautions. The agitation against mask and social distancing, stirred up and abetted by Trump tweets, speeches, and interviews, and which today (8 October) exploded in the arrest and charging conspiracy and terrorism under both state and federal law of 13 men (who also had been in involved last April and May with storming the Michigan state legislature armed with guns during debates over Governor Witmer's request to extend "stay-at-home" order to slow the spread of the COVID-19. This time they were charged with planning to kidnap the Governor and try her for treason. Ironically, Michigan laws allow open and concealed carrying of guns, but not signs inside the Capitol.