In other news, investment analysts estimate that Americans owe about $21.5 billion in past-due rent that will now come due because eviction moratoriums are expiring. Republicans wasted the entire summer left Washington without passing anything.
Meanwhile, housing experts say up to 40 million people could be evicted from their homes soon, a significant number of whom (up to 25 million) could lose their homes in just the next month. Republicans wasted the entire summer and left Washington without passing anything.
Finally, officials say the Trump regime has scant planning in the works for actually distributing a vaccine once one is finally ready.
Health officials and lawmakers say they worry that without thorough planning and coordination with states, the vaccine distribution could be saddled with the same sort of disruptions that led to chronic shortages of coronavirus diagnostic tests and other medical supplies. [...]
Some state public health officials, meanwhile, say their entreaties to the Trump administration have been unanswered.
“We have not heard anything from the federal government since April 23,” Danielle Koenig, health promotion supervisor for the Washington State Department of Health, said in an email.
Immunization experts along with state and local public health officials sent a letter here to Operation Warp Speed on June 23 pleading for fresh guidance.
States need to know promptly if the federal government will pay for the vaccines, as it did during the H1N1 outbreak in 2009, the letter says. Will alcohol swabs, syringes and personal protective equipment be included? What about record-keeping and refrigeration to store the vaccine and who will deliver it?
So far, there’s been no official response, said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers, one of four organizations that signed the letter.
If we don't replace Trump with Biden in November, I don't expect to personally receive a vaccine until 2022 if ever. I wish I were joking.
Like virtually every other girl over the age of 30, I've been in my feelings with Taylor Swift's Folklore album for the past week.
This specific song, in which Swift sings about a childhood friend with an abusive father, made me recall my own childhood friends with dysfunctional families. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a stable home (Thanks Dad if you're reading this), but most of my best friends didn't.
My best friend in high school lived with my family for half a year because his parents got divorced and both of them moved out of their house but left the kids at home alone to stay in the same school. One of my friends stayed with us for a month once because his step-father was caught abusing his sister. And my high school girlfriend lived with us for one summer because her father was unstable and she had to get a job where I lived to help her mother. I had several other friends who never lived with us, but did come from unstable homes.
Everyone has similar stories from their childhoods, of course, but I will say being transgender makes the rabbit hole go much deeper these days. I think I still would have had many of the same friends if I was born differently, but I can't say for sure. Thinking about these things -- all the possibilities and missed opportunities of living in the wrong body for most of your life -- used to be very difficult for me and was a major source of trauma in the last year, but it has gotten easier over time. Now I can even write about it. Coming out publicly and actually starting hormone replacement therapy allowed me to start healing and build something new.
Transition is mostly associated with physical changes, but the truth is the emotional changes that you can't see with your eyes are much bigger.
These have been my random thoughts. Have a good weekend!