What A Day - The Needle And The Doses Done

Episode Date: February 2, 2021

The daily pace of vaccinations is picking up, with some states working faster than others. We talk about states that have given the most shots per capita, and what’s led them to succeed relative to the country at-large.Following the 2020 election, Republicans at the state level are doing all they can to pass laws to suppress the vote, particularly vote-by-mail. It’s also a redistricting year. We explain.And in headlines: police in Rochester pepper sprayed a Black 9-year-old girl while she was handcuffed, Facebook and Apple feud over data privacy, and Robinhood got 2.4 billion in funding yesterday.Show Links:Subscribe to Hysteria! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hysteria/id1399025196"After Record Turnout, Republicans Are Trying to Make It Harder to Vote"https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/30/us/republicans-voting-georgia-arizona.html

it's tuesday february 2nd i'm gideon resnick and i'm aaron ryan filling in for akilah hughes and this is what a day reminding you that groundhog day is canceled because time has lost all meaning yeah maybe he sees a shadow maybe he doesn't i still only vaguely know what day of the week it is. Honestly, that rat should be inside. On today's show, the newest efforts at restricting voting rights after the election, then some headlines. But first, the latest. Variants remain a great concern, and we continue to detect them in the United States with at least

33 jurisdictions reporting 471 variant cases as of January 31st. Yikes. That was CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky at a White House COVID briefing yesterday. She was talking about the unfortunate topic we've been hearing about for weeks now, variants. Goddamn variants. One way the administration is trying to halt variants from spreading is through more and more vaccinations. And so we're going to do a little status update on how vaccinations are going overall in the U.S. and in different states. So, Gideon, get us started. Yes. So the good news here, a good place to start, is that the Daily Pace is picking up nationally. As of Sunday, the CDC reported that over 25 million people have gotten at least one dose,

so around 7 to 8 percent of the U.S. population, slowly but surely moving in the right direction. Some experts say that we should now aim to have most Americans vaccinated by late spring or early summer, especially given those gosh darn variants. That's a tall order, but hopefully can get done. And so far, some states have been faster than others. One example that we've heard quite a bit about is West Virginia, which according to the New York Times, has given at least one dose to almost 11% of its population and is fully vaccinated almost 4%. And that's much higher than bigger states like New York and California, which have only vaccinated about 1 to 2%. Yes, not good numbers there. And West Virginia has also used something like 85% of their delivered doses, according to the CDC data. So that's a big part of this as well. They're seemingly being

efficient. And in some ways, it's all the more laudable because the perception going in was that West Virginia could have problems due to its rural areas and elderly population. In fact, last year, the Kaiser Family Foundation ranked the state as the one with the biggest population of adults at risk of serious illness from COVID-19. Okay, so let's talk about how they're doing things in West Virginia and why they might be having more early success. It's all Joe Manchin. 100% Joe Manchin. I'm just kidding. Our buddy Joe. Yeah. One of the things that people are pointing to is that West Virginia decided not to go with the federal vaccine plan in nursing homes.

So according to reporting that's in The Times and elsewhere, the state basically said that the federal plan, which relied on CVS and Walgreens to administer those doses in nursing homes, just didn't really make sense for them. People might live far away from those places, and the state has a lot of independently owned pharmacies versus these chain pharmacies. So instead, they paired a lot of the long-term facilities in the state with a network of the local pharmacies and just started to lap other states. They were really getting them in fast. Now, that's not to say West Virginia hasn't faced its share of problems overall. And there are reportedly other keys to their early success, like using the National Guard. I guess a somewhat unique situation there. But let's talk about a few of the other states that are also doing better than average. Yeah, so another one is Alaska, actually. According to the Anchorage Daily News, they actually have the highest per capita rate

of vaccination in the country. And this report says that getting and distributing more doses via the Indian Health Service is a part of that, as well as deciding to get shipments monthly instead of weekly. That helps in the planning process. Also, case numbers in Alaska have gone down recently, and that means that healthcare workers have, by nature, had more time to focus on vaccinations instead of just dealing with a surge of cases.

Another state is North Dakota, which has used over 90% of the vaccines allocated to it so far. And then lastly, Connecticut has had some success with a system where unused doses are transferred to other facilities to house them at the end of the day, so they don't just sit on the shelf and rot. That's according to the AP. Again, a lot of caveats because there are still issues basically everywhere and specifically in Connecticut where

there have been complaints about long waits. And we're talking about places with comparatively smaller populations than the New Yorks and Californias of the world, but some interesting takeaways, at least for now. It doesn't help for states on the East Coast recently that that major snowstorm over the last couple of days is slowing things down as well. You know, it's never just one thing.

It's always like four things layered on top of each other. Now Joe Biden has been inaugurated, and it looks like there isn't a currently ongoing insurrection, but severe winter storms preventing us from protecting ourselves from the pandemic. Okay. Too much stuff. As we're keeping track of all this, there are still some key things that we don't know. For one, we're lacking good data on vaccinations by race and ethnicity. Yeah, that data is really incomplete right now. But the partial snapshots that we have seen in places like New York City, the early data shows a wide racial disparity in favor of white residents having gotten a dose. During the White House briefing yesterday, Dr.

Marcella Nunez-Smith, who is the head of Biden's Task Force on Health Equity, spoke to those issues saying that 47% of vaccinations so far were missing race and ethnicity data, so nearly half. Here's a clip. There are a few reasons why we are already behind on this, only a month and a half into the vaccine rollout. The lack of federal coordination previously, the uneven rollout among the states, inconsistent emphasis on equity in the early days of vaccination. But those dynamics, they don't just hurt our statistics, they hurt the communities that are at the highest risk and have been the hardest hit.

Dr. Nunez-Smith said the CDC is working to improve this data reporting and that without that data, they cannot ensure equity. One thing complements the other. And data, of course, has been a huge issue throughout the pandemic. At first, it was with cases, and now it's with vaccines. We have a crazy system on our hands, and, you know, even the best and the brightest need to get their hands around it. So we'll keep following that. But on to our second story today, voting rights. Voting rights. Yay. I know we just had an election, but it is not too early for us to talk about what's coming up in 2022 and beyond because lawmakers are already fighting about it

and none of us were meant to be happy. To boil it down, Democrats benefited at the national level from 2020's record turnout, and we'd like to make it easier for people to vote. But Republicans at the state level are now trying to pass laws to suppress the vote in order to make sure that this much democracy never happens again. And this is flying a little bit under the radar, especially with all the national attention on Trump's moves to undermine the election. But it's definitely linked. A lot of this comes from false claims about voter fraud that Trump has stirred up. Yeah. And also the record turnout benefited a lot of Republicans, especially down ballot. So weird to want to mess up a thing that helped you as well. But you know, it is in their DNA. So give us a sense. How big is the anti-voting push within

the GOP? The anti-voting push is large and the proposed laws are shameless. According to New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, there have been 106 bills filed to restrict voting at the state level. That's triple the number at this time last year. Many of the laws target absentee voting, making it more of a pain in the ass for voters to receive their mail-in ballots and to have their mail-in ballots count once they're sent back. One elected official in Arizona wants to make it mandatory for voters to have their ballots notarized. Have you ever met a person who's like, I'm a notary? Do you know where you would find a notary? I wouldn't know the first place to start, quite honestly. It might be easier to become a notary and just do it yourself than finding one, quite frankly. I mean,

I guess. What do I have but time to become a notary in the state of Arizona to help democracy continue? In Wisconsin, Arizona, and Mississippi, Republican legislators want to change their current winner-take-all approach to awarding electoral votes and instead award electoral votes based on which presidential candidate wins each congressional district. Okay, so on their current winner-take-all approach to awarding electoral votes, and instead award electoral votes based on which presidential candidate wins each congressional district. Okay, so on that topic of congressional districts, a lot of them have just been gerrymandered all to fuck. Yep, they sure have been, especially in Wisconsin. And that's another worrying detail about the current slap fight over voting rights. This year is a redistricting year, which means that new congressional districts will be drawn by state governments,

which could mean a whole new round of gerrymandering. And keep in mind that gerrymandering can create the kind of district where wild-eyed right-wing wackadoodles like the weird gun lady from Colorado and the weird QAnon lady from Georgia can win Republican primaries from the far right and coast to general election wins. It's by design to not have electoral consequences for the things that you say and do. So Democrats are, of course, trying to push back. So what does their effort actually look like so far? Democrats are pushing back. In 35 states, Democrats have introduced 406 bills designed to make voting easier. Their bills run the gamut from allowing people with felony convictions to vote to automatically registering people to vote when they get a driver's license. And then Democrats in the

Senate are planning to introduce pro-democracy reforms designed to lower barriers to voting. Similar legislation called H.R.1 has already been introduced in the House. But that doesn't change the fact that Republicans control 23 state governments and Democrats only control 15 in this redistricting year. So redistricting might be brutal. Expect a lot of lawsuits and a lot of headaches. I don't like headaches. And, you know, I thought all the problems inherent in our democratic institutions were done last November. Solved. Boom. No, you're extremely wrong, Gideon. You're so wrong. You should be ashamed of reading the line that I wrote for you to read. Democracy is like a

garden, Gideon. It requires care and cultivation. You can't just throw a handful of random seeds at the dirt and expect to have an orchid garden in four months. And if you leave the gate open and go away on vacation, don't be surprised if when you come back, a woodchuck or Marjorie Taylor Green has eaten all your cabbage. We put a link in our show notes to read more on this, and that's the latest for now. It's Tuesday, WOD Squad, and today we are doing a quick film biz check-in. So two movies were reported to be in the works yesterday about last week's Wall Street Bets slash GameStop story.

One is from MGM, and it's based on a book called The Anti-Social Network that hasn't been written yet. It's by the guy who wrote the book The Social Network was based on. He's not really expanding his reach there. The other is from Netflix, and it will star Noah Centineo. So Aaron, from your professional perspective here, what are the pitfalls of starting work on a Wall Street Bets movie when Wall Street Bets is actively still happening at the very moment we are recording this podcast?

Well, Gideon, you're extremely online. You've heard of Milkshake Duck, right? Yeah. I feel like we are really teeing ourselves up for an epic milkshake ducking. Milkshake duck is a viral tweet that described the kind of fame cycle of somebody who becomes virally famous, like Ken Bone, who was the guy in the red sweater during a presidential debate last cycle. Yeah, basically somebody gets massively famous and becomes a meme. It won't be long before everything bad they've ever done will come to light and we will all be embarrassed for celebrating them.

I think that some of these people, among all the thousands and thousands that were using the message board, Wall Street Bets, and among the members of the hedge fund that got screwed, we will experience a few milkshake duckings and the movies will not age well. You have to wait until a story is done unfolding before you make a movie about it. It just seems like a real dumb idea. Anyway, same question for you, Gideon. Yeah, I agree. I think that, look, if we're going to have heroes and villains within our broader Wall Street Bets saga, we do need to know how it ends,

right? We need to have some sort of good character arc we are establishing for these people. It's also like if you're living through something at the moment, it's like when they're documentaries about the pandemic right now. As much as I think that that's good and it should be documented and discussed and viewed, et cetera, it's like hard on people to have to experience another thing that is happening in their actual lives that they might be participating in or, you know, having happened to them. Right. It's like watching the SNL that aired right after Trump won. Now it is didn't age well because everything was too raw and everything was too fresh. And Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton playing the piano is just a cringy, cringy moment. And I remember at the time people were like emotionally engaging with it.

And now it's just like, no, you got to give it some room, take a deep breath and then make art about it once you don't have feelings anymore. That's my take. Yes. Eliminate all feelings. That is the goal of WAD. And just like that, we have checked our temps. Stay safe. If you're going to make a movie about a thing that's happening right now, just let it play out, man. You'll get to it later. And we'll be back after some ads. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. a black nine-year-old girl while she was handcuffed. Disgusting. Officers were responding to a family disturbance call with information that the girl was suicidal and upset. In the video,

she is seen crying and asking for her father. At one point, an officer yells, telling her that she's acting like a child, and the girl responds that she is a child. Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren and the city's police chief have condemned the incident and say the officers will remain suspended until the conclusion of an internal investigation. New York AG Letitia James also announced that her team would investigate. And these events renewed the public scrutiny of the Rochester Police Department, which was also responsible for Daniel Prude's death in March. Prude was a black man with a history of mental illness who police injured fatally during the course of his arrest. The police department withheld the details surrounding his death until months afterwards. Something tells me the internal investigation isn't a great mechanism for ensuring police not being awful. It's just my prediction. Biden's administration is dealing with two major

challenges abroad right now, which could provide early examples of how his team will handle international issues. The first is a military coup in Myanmar that happened earlier this week. President Biden released a statement condemning the country's military and suggested potentially reinstating sanctions. Under Obama, the U.S. waived sanctions against Myanmar because it seemed like the country was moving towards a democracy. Now that things have taken a sharp turn backwards toward military rule, sanctions could be on the table again, though critics say it might further isolate the country and make it more dependent on China. The White House is also working out its response to the ongoing widespread anti-government protests in Russia in support of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. New Secretary of State Antony Blinken said responses are being considered for the

government's violent crackdown on demonstrators, plus its role in election interference and a cyber attack on U.S. government agencies. Tic-tac-toe. Three in a row, Russia. Navalny is set to have his court hearing in Russia today. Man, it's just like you can't even have a single day on the job where all you got to do is put out a small fire, rescue a cat from a tree. I would not. I would not want the job.

The movie star stock app that democratized soaring financial euphoria and crushing financial defeat, Robinhood, has only grown bigger in the wake of last week's trading frenzy. They have raised $3.4 billion since last Thursday, with $2.4 billion coming in from shareholders just yesterday. That cash infusion will allow the app to more successfully weather any future Reddit and Bang Energy drink-fueled viral stock runs. The reported reason Robinhood had to restrict trading of GameStop and related stocks last week was that it didn't have enough collateral to cover the trades. But now the company says it will be in better shape to cover high collateral requirements. Robinhood was downloaded 600,000 times last week compared to 140,000 during its most active

day in March 2020. But not everyone is happy with the app. On the Google App Stores, it's been pummeled by negative reviews since last week and now boasts a single lonely star. Lady Gaga said it best, fame is a prison. You know, if you want to have a quick feeling of euphoria and not risk your entire life savings, I would recommend trying to get your hands

on some European Sudafed. That'll give you just like a few hours of being like, whoa, I'm up, and then it's done. Whereas trading in individual stocks is a great way to pave the way for financial ruin. I think it's a very bad idea. This is not going to end very well.

Okay, some words of affirmation for our listeners. You are loved. You are worthy. And your data is very valuable to computer companies. A cross-Silicon Valley feud is illustrating that last point very well, and it involves Apple and Facebook's competing goals to keep private or share users' browsing activity.

Facebook's business relies heavily on ads, and advertisers pay more money for ads that are targeted with user data. But Facebook has a problem, because with Apple's next iOS update, apps will start automatically asking whether users want to share their behavior online. And as people opt out, Facebook will lose money. Oh, no, not money. Facebook's move then is to roll out their own pop ups, which will tell users that it's actually good to share data so users can, quote, get ads that are more personalized and, quote, support businesses. I'm imagining a commercial with Sarah McLachlan singing and a bunch of sad corporate mascots crying

because they don't know everything about us anymore. The first of these pop-ups are already being tested on Facebook and Instagram. Personally, I know brands are my friends, and I feel honored that they even want to spy on me. I was, Gideon, I was actually complaining about this just this weekend. I logged onto Twitter and my targeted ad was a service that would enable me to send money more easily to my family

in Nigeria, which I don't have family in Nigeria. So I don't think the algorithm knows that much about me. At least study what you're liking and retweeting. And those are the headlines. One last thing before we go, make sure to check out this week's episode of Hysteria, where you can hear more from Erin and her co-hosts about millennial resentment for the super rich.

Yeah, eat them, eat them, eat them. Guillotines. Guillotines are flying on this episode and it drops on Thursday. So make sure you are subscribed to wherever you get your podcasts. That is all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, let brands into your life, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just Lady Gaga's thought-provoking posts like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter.

Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Erin Ryan. and not just Lady Gaga's thought-provoking posts like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Erin Ryan. I'm Gideon Resnick. And do one less Robin Hood movie. We don't need it yet. No. Keep it in the holster.

Keep it about the real Robin Hood. It's been since like the 90s. It is time. It's time for like the 90s. It is time. It's time for Kevin Costner to shine once again. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tan is our assistant producer. Our head writer is John Milstein and our executive producers are Katie Long,

Akilah Hughes, and me. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kshaka.