Category: Coronaplague

Karen’s workaround to a ban on checking vaccine papers

by philg

If you read the news, you might think that Floridians are protected from demands to show medical records, such as vaccine papers. A November 18 story about a new law (passed by the actual Legislature; unlike other states, Florida is not simply ruled by executive order under emergency powers):

  • Private Employer COVID-19 vaccine mandates are prohibited.
  • Government entities may not require COVID-19 vaccinations of anyone, including employees.
  • Educational institutions may not require students to be COVID-19 vaccinated.
  • School districts may not have school face mask policies.
  • School districts may not quarantine healthy students.

How can Karen work around the spirit of this law? From the Baker art museum in Naples, FL:

  • Guests ages 12 and over must provide proof of a professionally administered rapid antigen test taken no more than 24 hours prior to the performance date or a professionally administered negative COVID-19 PCR test taken no more than 72 hours prior to the performance date.
  • In lieu of a negative COVID-19 test, voluntary proof of being fully vaccinated against COVID-19 may be presented.
  • In all cases, a valid matching photo ID must also be presented.
  • Ticket holders who do not comply with these policies will not be allowed into The Baker Museum or events on the cultural campus and may be required to leave.

So you need to bring part of your medical record (recent COVID test) or show a different part of your medical record (vaccine card). Either way, it is all voluntary.

On the other coast, the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach:

  • The health and safety of our guests is a top priority for the Norton Museum. Beginning October 1, 2021, guests (ages 12+) visiting the Norton Museum of Art will be required to show proof of a negative COVID-19 professionally administered PCR test taken within 72 hours; or a negative COVID-19 Antigen Rapid Test conducted within 24 hours; OR voluntarily show proof of COVID-19 vaccination (together with a valid photo ID for ages 18+).
  • Masks are required at all times regardless of negative tests or vaccination status,

How about the pop-up Art Basel at the city-government-owned Miami Beach Convention Center?

  • Every visitor age 12 and older will be required to provide proof of a negative, lab-administered COVID-19 test in order to gain access to the halls. Alternatively, visitors may opt to voluntarily provide proof of a completed COVID-19 vaccination or documentation of recent recovery from COVID-19 – issued by a licensed healthcare provider or facility – to gain entry.
  • In compliance with the Art Basel Miami Beach policy and safety regulations, wearing a mask covering mouth and nose will be mandatory inside the venue for anyone age 2 and older, whether vaccinated or unvaccinated.

Some photos from a 2018 visit to Art Basel (mask-free and no medical records check):

And, for Joe Biden:

(The Leader of the Righteous: “Unless we do something about [busing for desegregation], my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some point. We have got to make some move on this.”)

Speaking of the Biden family, I wonder how many of Hunter Biden’s $500,000 paintings will be shown at Art Basel. It would be worth showing one’s vaccine papers to get a close look at these. Considering gallery fees and taxes, if Hunter Biden can sell only 20 works at $500,000 each, he will have recovered the $2.5 million that his child support plaintiff earned.

Maybe the requirements are looser back in Maskachusetts, since Covid has been controlled via universal vaccination, indoor mask orders for adults, school mask requirements for kids, and after-school sports mask requirements? (only 2,500 cases per day currently, compared to 2,400 in April 2020) From MassMoCA:

The plague-carrying unvaccinated cannot even think of entering, no matter how high the stack of PCR tests. Harvard has a similar policy for its museums, which were entirely closed for 1.5 years:

  • All visitors age 2 or older, regardless of vaccination status, are required to wear a face covering.
  • All visitors age 12 and older are required to provide proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test. Visitors age 17 and older must also present a valid driver’s license or government-issued form of ID, such as a passport.
  • Vaccination documentation must be authentic and reflect that visitors are fully vaccinated, having received their final dose at least two weeks prior to the day of their visit. Acceptable proof of vaccination includes a CDC COVID-19 vaccination card and vaccination records of COVID -19 World Health Organization-approved vaccines. We will accept photo of the card records or a digital vaccine record (such as may be displayed through an app like Bindle or a digital medical record like MyChart).

Some screen shots capturing this most epic of web pages:

I am longing for the day when every American will be able to get the purely voluntary RFID chip in his/her/zir/their neck so that vaccine status can be checked efficiently and contact tracing can be performed after a variant outbreak is discovered. Nobody will be required to get a chip, of course, but the “chip-hesitant” person will find that he/she/ze/they cannot go to restaurants, museums, airports, etc. Or maybe a chip-hesitant American will have to wait in a 45-minute line for a paper document check if he/she/ze/they wants to do anything outside his/her/zir/their home.

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Florida is a blue state, according to the Federales

by philg

From the #Science-following experts at the CDC:

I hope that everyone is inspired to come visit in the near future, just in case our blue status does not last. Here’s the forecast for Jupiter, Florida (apologies to European readers for using the temperature units that God prefers):

#Science proves that you should be in Florida in the winter! (but, if the raging plague of summer 2021 is any guide, try to be somewhere else in July and August)

Separately, where in the above map can we see the effect of differential vaccination rates among states? If vaccination rate doesn’t affect transmission rate, why are we so obsessed with harassing the hesitant?

Related:

  • Optimum COVID-19 American lifestyle: Florida in winter; Maine in summer? (November 2020, just prior to availability of the vaccines that we were assured would halt transmission): Would the optimum lifestyle right now therefore be to live in a single-family home in a low-density part of Florida during the winter and in a single-family home in a low-density part of Maine during the summer? [Now that I am here in Florida, I realize that one need not be a single-family home to avoid public indoor spaces. Unlike in Manhattan or Boston, the typical apartment here is accessible without walking through an indoor lobby.]
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Covid testing success story from Holland (the South African 61)

by philg

“The Netherlands finds 61 Covid cases in air arrivals from South Africa, and is checking for the variant.” (NYT):

Sixty-one people from two flights from South Africa to the Netherlands have tested positive for the coronavirus, Dutch health officials said early Saturday. It was unclear as of late morning local time if the cases were linked to the newly discovered Omicron variant.

The health officials tested 600 passengers who arrived on Friday morning at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. Those who tested negative were allowed to leave the airport and quarantine at home, or to continue their journeys.

In other words, 10 percent of the folks who arrived in Holland tested positive for plague. Why should that be surprising in a world crammed with 8 billion tempting human hosts for a virus? 100 percent of these people would have tested negative for plague shortly before getting on the two planes. The Dutch require a negative COVID-19 test result for anyone coming in from outside the EU (and also for many of those arriving from within the EU):

You must show a negative COVID-19 test result if you are travelling to or returning to the Netherlands from outside the EU/Schengen or a COVID-19 risk area within the EU/Schengen. This requirement applies to everyone aged 12 or over. There are some exceptions. For example: people travelling within the EU who can show proof of vaccination or proof of recovery (a Digital COVID Certificate) do not have to show a negative COVID-19 test result.

The requirements are detailed on a separate web page:

(Maybe some virtuously vaccinated folks could have skipped the pre-flight test if they were simply changing planes in Amsterdam, but most countries now seem to require a negative test and therefore the number who were pre-tested would be close to 100 percent.)

Does the news from Amsterdam give us any reason to question our faith in testing?

Didn’t our heroine Elizabeth Holmes actually do better than this at Theranos? And yet she, despite being a victim of rape, is being prosecuted for the low quality of the Theranos tests.

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Stop 20 COVID illnesses by hassling 178,322 people

by philg

“Revisiting the Bangladesh Mask RCT” covers the one “gold standard” paper looking at the question of whether ordering the general public to wear masks has any effect on coronaplague. The previously touted conclusions were that cloth masks were useless, but that ordering everyone to wear surgical masks could reduce plague by 11 percent. “Revisiting the Bangladesh Mask RCT” gives us some actual numbers:

In the Bangladesh Mask RCT, there were nC=163,861 individuals from 300 villages in the control group. There were nT=178,322 individuals from 300 villages in the intervention group. The main end point of the study was whether their intervention reduced the number of individuals who both reported covid-like symptoms and tested seropositive at some point during the trial. The number of such individuals appears nowhere in their paper, and one has to compute this from the data they kindly provided: There were iC=1,106 symptomatic individuals confirmed seropositive in the control group and iT=1,086 such individuals in the treatment group. The difference between the two groups was small: only 20 cases out of over 340,000 individuals over a span of 8 weeks.

If we assume that the authors got everything right, and this isn’t simply statistical noise, we’re left with the result that 178,322 poor souls had to be hassled by pubic health Karens in order to eliminate roughly 20 cases of COVID-19 (to be completely fair, a little more than that since the treatment group was larger).

Related (predictions of #Science versus outcomes, albeit not randomized controlled trials):

Motivation to visit Bangladesh:

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Thankful that life insurance rates are still down

by philg

In COVID-19 is sure to kill you, but life insurance rates haven’t changed (August 21, 2021), I cited a December 2020 study of life insurance rates from 100 different companies. COVID-19 was killing so many healthy folks in their prime that the insurance companies hadn’t bothered to raise rates.

It’s been almost a year. Vaccines are available for the faithful. Every day we read about an unvaccinated person getting his/her/zir/their just deserts, gasping for breath and then dying on a ventilator in an overcrowded ICU.

What’s happening in the life insurance market? As Phil Connors found out in Groundhog Day, it is easy to talk to life insurance agents. I chatted with one outside Loxahatchee Ice Cream Company and learned that rates remain about the same or slightly lower than in 2019. Business was good. Consistent with “Your Vaccination Status Won’t Affect What You Pay for Life Insurance — for Now” (Money), the agent said that carriers were not interested in whether an applicant for insurance had been or would be vaccinated.

The second agent with whom I chatted was at the Stuart Air Show. He agreed that rates were flat-to-down compared to 2019, but his business had changed dramatically. “It used to be difficult to get people to focus on a plan,” he said, “but people have been sitting at home with plenty of time on their hands. It’s easy to get them on the phone and easy to sell them policies.” None of his carriers are interested in COVID-19 vaccination status (i.e., the elixir that we’re constantly reminded will determine whether we live or die is of no interest to the folks who have to pay $500,000 in the event that we die).

So… if we believe that life insurance actuaries are competent at their jobs and correctly pricing risk, we should be grateful that, despite the deaths we read about in the media, the world has not, in fact, become more lethal.

Speaking of the air show, here are some folks on whom I would not be in a hurry to write a policy (12 cylinders, 1,500 horsepower, 75+ years old; what could go wrong?):

Related:

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Perfect illustration of risk compensation rendering COVID-19 vaccines ineffective

by philg

“Benefit of COVID-19 vaccination accounting for potential risk compensation” (Nature, by Stanford Medical School professor John P. A. Ioannidis) points out that our current crop of COVID-19 vaccines won’t slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2 infection if humans who are vaccinated change their behavior as a result of having been vaccinated.

Tailor-made for Prof. Ioannidis: “Getting Back to Normal Is Only Possible Until You Test Positive” (The Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal). Some relevant excerpts:

I was ultracareful for 18 months. Then I got COVID.

When I first received the invitation to the wedding where I would eventually get COVID, I was on the fence about attending at all. My best friend had gone through a tough divorce and was remarrying. I was thrilled for him. His wedding had been put off repeatedly because of COVID, and this was the couple’s second try at a real ceremony. As a bonus, the wedding would take place in New Orleans, where my friend lives. I hadn’t seen him since before the pandemic. New Orleans is a miraculous place, and my favorite city to visit in America. The notion of a trip there shone out of the fog and dreariness of this whole era of history.

The downside, of course, was the risk of exposure to COVID. Sure, I’m vaccinated—two shots of Pfizer—and the wedding’s other attendees would all be vaccinated too. But breakthrough cases happen, and we’d be in New Orleans in October, a place where cases were still high and vaccination was inconsistent. One could not expect to not get exposed to COVID.

But then I reasoned both with myself and with my wife. COVID was unlikely to kill me, a vaccinated 39-year-old endurance athlete. I would be fine, and even if I gave the coronavirus to any of my family members, they too would almost certainly be fine. My wife is vaccinated, and our young children’s risk of serious illness, while not nonexistent, is very low.

Filled with a surge of love for my friends and New Orleans and a sense that, you know what, I’m ready to nose out into a new tier of risk, I booked a flight; I’d be going solo.

As the day approached, my wife and I had not run through every scenario. I still was not precisely sure how the wedding would work, COVID-wise. My friend is a doctor, and I knew the crowd would mostly be New York and California people. There would be no anti-vaxxers among the guests, and the invitation said they’d follow the local public-health protocols.

If he/she/ze/they hadn’t gotten vaccinated, he/she/ze/they never would have gotten on the packed flights nor would he/she/ze/they have attended the wedding of the righteous (“no anti-vaxxers”) at which “at least a dozen people” contracted COVID-19. I myself exhibited the identical behavior. Not being a believer in the efficacy of facerags for the general public, I avoided getting on a commercial airline flight until after getting vaccinated (and the flights that I took ended up being packed and mostly unmasked).

Separately, the rest of the Atlantic article is a great reflection of Bay Area zeitgeist:

I spent hours in an N95 mask in the Las Vegas airport and on planes before arriving in Louisiana and heading to the welcome drinks.

My kids were so happy to see me, and after my negative result came back, to hug me. Was I actually safe? No, I knew I was not. I should have quarantined. But I had stuck my wife with the kids for four days, and I wanted to get back in the mix and help. That seemed like the right thing to do.

Moms are heroic on the one hand, but on the other hand it is unreasonable to expect a mom to be able to take care of two children for four days,

On Monday, I felt fine, but I took an antigen test anyway (negative). I scheduled a PCR test for the next day. By the time my appointment arrived, I’d started to have some postnasal drip and what felt like a possibly psychosomatic tickle in my throat. Tuesday night—four days after the wedding—my PCR result came back negative, and despite having what felt like a cold, I figured I was pretty close to being in the clear.

The next day, my symptoms were about the same. I did an intense Peloton workout and it felt fine, though maybe my legs were a little slow. I wasn’t eager to test again; a negative PCR test seemed good enough. But my wife heard me cough—one of only maybe 20 coughs throughout my whole sickness—and said, “Couldn’t you take another antigen test?”

I was on the phone with a young geographer, talking about doing research at Bay Area libraries, and kind of absentmindedly did the swabbing. When I looked down a few minutes later, I had tested positive. Maybe a false positive? I immediately took another antigen test and the little pink line was practically red, it was so dark. Wrapping up the call, I packed my things quickly, texted my wife the result, walked outside with an N95 mask on, and waited for all hell to break loose.

Like my dentist friends, he/she/ze/they has a whole closet full of N95 masks! Also note the persistence in test, test, testing until positivity is achieved!

But the real worst-case scenario was everything that happened to the people around me. My kids had to come out of school and isolate with my wife. A raft of tests had to be taken by everyone I’d had even limited contact with. (I was one of at least a dozen people at the wedding who got sick.) I had been with several older people, including my mother-in-law. For my wife and children, the tests went on for days and days, each one bringing a prospective new disaster and 10 to 14 more days of life disruption or worse.

But for me, the very worst part was my children. They knew, cognitively, that I was vaccinated and unlikely to get really sick. That said, COVID-19, for them, is a terrible thing. The past year and a half of their lives has been disrupted by this virus. They take precautions every single day not to have this happen.

Even the kids know that if you’re vaccinated it is safe to party! How old are these kids?

My nonbinary 8-year-old was so mad and maybe so scared that they could barely look at me. My 5-year-old daughter proved her status as the ultimate ride-or-die kid. She brought a chair down the street so she could sit 20 feet away from me outside in her mask, as I sat on the porch in an N95.

Five and eight and they are already experts on a disease that kills 82-year-olds.

Despite his/her/zir/their vaccine, the 39-year-old author gets about as sick as the sickest unvaccinated New Yorkers and Europeans whom I talked to back in spring 2020:

I felt pretty sick, like when you have a cold, but I’ve probably been sicker 15 times as an adult.

In other words, a bad cold/flu. The kicker, though, is that he/she/ze/they imagines that he/she/ze/they would have died without the sacrament of vaccination:

These vaccines are amazing. I was and am fine. [emphasis in original]

I understand that my scenario is far better than could or would have played out in a pre-vaccination world.

What about the people infected with SARS-CoV-2 in 2020, pre-vaccines, who never had any symptoms at all? (81 percent of cruise ship passengers who tested positive, for example; or at least one third, if you believe the other side of the #Science coin) They were and are fine. If the 39-year-old endurance athlete author was seriously ill despite vaccination, shouldn’t he/she/ze/they actually suspect that his/her/zir/their vaccine was, at best, laughed at and ignored by the virus?

Readers: I hope that you enjoy the Thanksgiving flights and gatherings that you probably wouldn’t have risked if you hadn’t been vaccinated!

Practical Take-aways: (1) Don’t get more COVID-19 tests than you have to! With current test tech, regardless of what’s in your body, you will eventually test positive; (2) if you don’t want to get COVID-19, stay home (or move to Florida, currently the nation’s lowest-risk state, and stay outdoors!).

Recent group chat exchange:

  • friend 1: So i am in Poland and i got the f***ing flu. Have been coughing for 10 days. Question: Since everyone is in masks, how do I get the flu if masks work?
  • me: 10 days might just be cold, not flu
  • friend 1: And i didn’t have sex with any polish prostitutes
  • friend 2: YET
  • friend 1: Ok and cold is unaffected by masks? What is the science on that?
  • me: I think those who #FollowScience are ready for you! Coronavirus is spread by airborne particles, which is why we #MaskUpAndStopTheSpread On the other hand, every other disease is spread by surface contact, which is why kids still have colds
  • friend 1: I am so damn sick of all of it. Germany is on the rise despite compliance and FFP2 masks everywhere

Related:

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Karen orders two dozen beignets and a three-gallon Hurricane

by philg

One of the things that I have always appreciated about New Orleans is the city’s commitment to public health, e.g., ensuring that visitors are adequately hydrated (“This Trendy New Orleans Bar Serves Gigantic 3-Gallon “Hurricanes” Filled With Rum”) and provided with nutritious low-fat gluten-free vegan muffuletta sandwiches.

We told neighbors here in the Florida Free State about our plans for a family trip to New Orleans over the Thanksgiving school break (a whole week for young scholars in Florida). “You know that they’re checking vaccine cards before you can get into restaurants,” was the response. We had some trouble believing that New Orleans would follow San Francisco and New York, but our neighbors’ information was confirmed by “Vaccine mandate: Which places will require them; how will it be enforced?” (August 12, 2021):

New Orleans residents and out-of-towners will now require proof of vaccination to enter restaurants, bars, music venues and many more places.

In New Orleans, you’ll need proof of vaccine or a negative COVID-19 test to go to bars, restaurants, performance venues, stadiums and large outdoor events.

Proof of vaccine should be checked before individuals are allowed to enter the building. Businesses can use the LA Wallet App’s “VerifyYou Pro” function to scan patron’s digital vaccine cards.

Do I still need to wear a mask? Yes, the entire state of Louisiana is currently under a mask mandate and even with your proof of vaccine, you will be required to wear a mask while indoors.

That was August, in the midst of the southern “case” wave. What about now? “NOLA Bars and Restaurants Will Require Vaccine Proof for Entry Through Mardi Gras” (11/16/2021).

It is possible to do some sightseeing without showing papers. The art museum, for example, requires masks, but checks for vaccine status only if people want to get food. Nonetheless, the idea of showing papers several times per day turned out to be a deal-breaker for one member of our family: “Why don’t we just stay in our Florida bubble?”

Readers: What are your Thanksgiving plans?

(above photos: from LEGOLAND, Carlsbad, California, 2005)

Related:

  • “Florida Gov. DeSantis Signs Bills Limiting Vaccine Mandates Into Law” (NBC, 11/18): DeSantis signed the package of bills during a news conference at a car dealership in Brandon, Florida on Thursday. … “I think that Brandon, Florida is a great American city,” DeSantis said, as some in the crowd of about 250 supporters chanted “Let’s go Brandon.” … Additionally, it bars schools and governments in the state from having vaccine mandates and allows parents to sue schools with masking requirements. [See video below for the gal that Palm Beach County might not want to mess with.]
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Irish Vaccine Samizdat

by philg

A friend in Ireland sent me this meme, which is widely circulating on WhatsApp:

This is a counterpoint to Irish media pieces such as “Ireland will face severe Covid lockdown if people behave irresponsibly, O’Dea says”. See also “Irish Deputy PM says the 5% of the nation’s unvaccinated population is causing a problem” (CNN).

What has Ireland gained for its 21 months of trench warfare against SARS-CoV-2? On April 28, 2020, the New York Times used Ireland as a reference point for Sweden’s COVID-19-tagged death rate and they were roughly equal. On the COVID-19 death rate leaderboard, Ireland now sits 9 places below give-the-finger-to-the-virus Sweden. For folks who measure a society’s success by the single number of cumulative COVID-19 death rate, this makes Ireland’s 21 months of living under restrictions well worth it. The trend, however, is for Ireland and Sweden to converge on this grim statistic.

(Unlike Facebook, WhatsApp doesn’t seem to correct COVID-19 wrongthink. The 94% vaccinated stat above might look like it needs correction, but I think that, like many other Europeans, the Irish measure vaccination rate by looking at the percentage of people who are eligible for a vaccine, not by looking at the percentage of all humans, including those too young to be eligible, for example.)

Is meme consistent with official data? From the Google:

Note that “Irish lockdown” is pretty much the opposite of a Maskachusetts lockdown. In Ireland, schools remained open and generally unmasked while adults could not travel more than 2 km from their houses (enforced with police checkpoints), could not gather and drink alcohol, etc. In Boston, on the other hand, the public schools were essentially closed for 18 months while watering holes for adults, alcohol stores, and marijuana shops remained open. Adults could drive 30 miles from their homes at any hour of the day or night to meet a new friend from Tinder.

Related:

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Using #Science to reason with vaccine-hesitant 5-11-year-olds

by philg

I’m not a regular Facebook user anymore, but an MIT friend shared a screen shot of his interaction with a desk job physician who went back into scrubs to do some COVID-19 vaccine injections on 5-11-year-olds (requiring the skills of a veterinary technician, a dog breeder, and/or, according to a medical school professor friend, “a janitor”). This is in a rich white part of the U.S.

A discussion ensued:

  • Equestrian mom (profile w kid and horse pictures, but no husband): Thank you for your service!
  • New York mom: Can you pin down some of the ridiculous anti vaxx adults and stab them?
  • Various: #Grateful #ThankYou #You’veGotThis
  • Lady whose profile is packed with cats and “Love is Love” rainbow frames: My cousin’s kids screamed “like a slasher movie” he reported. Good luck!
  • Grey-haired lady with “Let’s Get Vaccinated/We Can Do This” Facebook portrait frame: Thank you, thank you thank you!
  • A mom: Brave man!
  • Male Karen: Just got my booster today at a drive thru. Easy peasey
  • Doc Friend (one who sees patients daily): Godspeed
  • The volunteer doc/original poster: 80% of the kids were easy. 15% were tough. 5% were seemingly impossible and put up a significant fight. The county would do well to have a private room or area to deal with those kids, rather than holding up everyone and creating a spectacle for those waiting.
  • MIT graduate (my friend): I would just reason with the kids and say if they don’t get the vaccine, they have a 1 in 20 million chance of dying from Covid.

(Is 1 in 20 million number correct? From the BBC (UK data are much better than U.S. data due to superior competence with electronic medical records over there):

Researchers estimate that 25 deaths in a population of some 12 million children in England gives a broad, overall mortality rate of 2 per million children.

Around 15 had life-limiting or underlying conditions, including 13 living with complex neuro-disabilities

Though the overall risks were still low, children and young people who died were more likely to be over the age of 10 and of Black and Asian ethnicity.

Six had no underlying conditions recorded in the last five years – though researchers caution some illnesses may have been missed

So 1 in 20 million might be a reasonable lower-bound estimate for a typical rich white 8-year-old.)

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Cost of all U.S. wars versus cost of coronapanic

by philg

It was Veterans Day last week, when we celebrated anyone who carried a gun, flew a desk, stocked shelves, or conducted gender reassignment surgery on behalf of the U.S. military. The United States Department of Veterans Affairs has a budget roughly comparable to what the formidable Russians spend on their active duty military. To what could we compare our military budget that would make it look like a bargain?

What’s the scope of the spending that we’re hoping to put into perspective? Let’s start by looking at a Congressional Research Service report, “Costs of Major U.S. Wars” (figures in 2011 dollars). According to the pointy heads, the U.S. spent $4.1 trillion on World War II, $728 billion on the Vietnam War, and roughly $1.1 trillion for the first 10 years of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our other wars were insignificant in costs by comparison.

What could have cost more than all of these wars? Coronapanic! Ignoring what cities and states might have spent, e.g., paying employees who weren’t working, the federal government alone has spent roughly $10 trillion so far (covidmoneytracker.org).

A Smithsonian National Museum of American History exhibit, November 2019:

Related:

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