9-17: How much worse off is America from COVID-19 than other rich nations? (Way!) Does Wearing Glasses Protect You From Coronavirus? UC Zooms until Fall 2021

✅10 days of distraction for Trump after early warning of virus threat
—WashPo
     The president told Bob Woodward he hid the true risk of the novel coronavirus to avoid public panic, but a key 10-day period shows he spent relatively little time on preparing the nation for its arrival.

✅Survey Sheds Light on Sexual Violence in Canadian Higher Ed
—Inside Higher Ed
     Eleven percent of women students and 4 percent of men enrolled in a Canadian postsecondary institution experienced a sexual assault “in a postsecondary setting” during the previous year, according to a 2019 survey by Statistics Canada that garnered almost 15,000 responses. A majority of students -- 71 percent -- said they had witnessed or experienced unwanted sexualized behaviors in their college setting in 2019, either on campus or in an off-campus setting involving students or others associated with their institution. Forty-five percent of women students and 32 percent of men said they personally experienced at least one such behavior in the context of their studies. The majority of women (80 percent) and men (86 percent) who experienced unwanted sexualized behaviors said the perpetrators were fellow students.

✅Trump’s Understanding of California Wildfires Is Way Off—Even for Him
—Mother Jones

     ...Experts who study climate change and wildfires say science, actually, does know, and the spike in wildfire prevalence is directly linked to global climate change. Earlier this week, Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the Oakland-based think tank Breakthrough Institute, told the LA Times, “What we’ve been seeing in California are some of the clearest events where we can say this is climate change—that climate change has clearly made this worse.” ....

From Rough&Tumble: 

✅Hiltzik: How much worse off is America from COVID-19 than other rich nations? Much, much worse -- Mapping America’s response to the coronavirus pandemic compared with other countries hasn’t been a simple task, not least because of the densely obscuring smoke issuing from the Trump White House. But a new analysis points to an inescapable conclusion. Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 9/16/20

     Here’s Holzer’s bottom line: “Both employment and health outcomes for the U.S. during the pandemic have been worse than in almost any other high-income country in the world.”
     Had the U.S. merely matched the average unemployment rate changes among the richest members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, “at least 8.6 million more Americans would be employed today.” An equivalent record on COVID-19 deaths per capita would have resulted in the saving of 112,540 American lives.

✅Californians support COVID-19 restrictions and remain worried about outbreak, survey shows -- The survey by the Public Policy Institute of California showed 74% of respondents favor restrictions on public activity to mange the pandemic, or want more aggressive limitations. Lara Korte in the Sacramento Bee$ -- 9/17/20 

✅New poll finds shaky support for Proposition 16 to restore affirmative action in California -- The Public Policy Institute of California poll released Wednesday night found that just 31% of likely California voters surveyed said they would vote for the proposal, Proposition 16, while 47% said they oppose it. The remainder, 22%, were undecided. Phil Willon in the Los Angeles Times$ Katie Orr KQED Emily DeRuy in the San Jose Mercury$ John Fensterwald EdSource -- 9/17/20 

✅Does Wearing Glasses Protect You From Coronavirus? -- When researchers in China were analyzing hospital data of patients with Covid-19, they noticed an odd trend: Very few of the sick patients regularly wore glasses. Tara Parker-Pope in the New York Times$ -- 9/17/20 

✅Coronavirus precautions at UC system likely until fall 2021 -- Zoom classes will need to stick around for at least another year at the University of California, according to the system’s top health official. Mikhail Zinshteyn CalMatters -- 9/17/20 

✅Trump contradicts his CDC director over masks, vaccine timeline -- President Donald Trump on Wednesday twice contradicted his own CDC director — on mask-wearing and vaccine distribution — saying the country’s top public health official misspoke while testifying under oath before a congressional committee earlier in the day. Robert Redfield told the Senate Appropriations Committee that wearing a mask could be more effective than a coronavirus vaccine at keeping the pandemic at bay. Brianna Ehley Politico -- 9/17/20