Alone among peers.

Friday, August 7th, 2020

Late Friday night, after a pleasant evening of shared content consumption, I paged through the Friday online papers. Or online representations of the print front pages of the…well, you get it.

The Columbus Dispatch, which is now printed, I understand, in some state which is not Ohio, had stale reporting on the Ohio Governor testing positive for Covid-19. (This very blog had the same stale reporting, but hey, I went to bed early that night, and, besides, I am not a reporter.)

Governor DeWine tested positive on the rapid-answer, you’re about to see the President test, but then later that day the Ohioans went for some more maybe-more-thorough, maybe-more-specific testing.

The Governor’s office then issued a statement that said:

“A PCR test was administered to the Governor and members of his staff this afternoon. The PCR test looks for the specific RNA for the SARS CoV-2 — in other words, the genetic material specific for the virus that causes COVID-19. The PCR test is known to be extremely sensitive, as well as specific, for the virus. The PCR tests for the Governor, First Lady, and staff were run twice. They came back negative the first time and came back negative when they were run on a second diagnostic platform.”

Well, OK then. If I had a bit more energy, I might point out that the confidence most Americans have in the quality of the testing results is about as variable as these results.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution had a big story bannered “School hallway photos cause stir.” This refers to the Paulding County students who posted pictures of crowded hallways. In one interview, student/photograher Hannah Watters, suspended at one point for the act of photoing and posting, said “this is some good and necessary trouble.” The spirit of John Lewis lives on in northwest suburban Atlanta. The school district subsequently “erased” the suspension after a sufficient level of shame had swirled around the administrators.

And the Washington Post had a story on the New York AG’s legal efforts to dissolve the NRA. The New York Times said (to quote the headline) the US is alone among its peers in failing to contain the virus.

And with those notes, the first week in August shambles to a close.