Missouri senator and presidential aspirant Josh Hawley, best known for giving a thumbs up to the January 6 rioters and trying to overturn the November election, has now joined Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott in furthering the spread of the pandemic. Hawley is sponsoring an amendment to the infrastructure bill that would restrict federal funding for K-12 schools that mandate Covid-19 vaccines for students or require students to wear masks.
We did a fascinating Inside Briefing this morning with Dr. Monica Gandhi discussing vaccines, different layers of the human immune system and what really counts as an infection. It’s really critical information when thinking about personal decisions about risk and about policies for society at large. Thanks to the Inside members who joined for the discussion. We’ll be publishing the full interview for all members either later today or at latest tomorrow. Don’t miss it.
At TPM, we’ve been harping on the fact that the whole bipartisan back-and-forth that unfolded over the last two months — and that might conclude early tomorrow morning — doesn’t really matter that much. It’s the reconciliation package that matters. If it passes in a form similar to what Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer outlined this morning, it would be the most significant progressive legislation in at least a decade.
It might also be the last significant progressive legislation for at least a decade.
As we’ve been discussing there is a paucity of information on the precise effectiveness of vaccines vs the Delta variant and the contours of the pandemic in the new circumstances of the last eight weeks or so. We know in general that vaccines continue to be highly effective at preventing severe illness. But the details are not as easy as they should be to come by. This seems to be both the product of very new facts which studies are only catching up with and a continued paucity of good national data from the CDC. That vacuum is filled by anecdotal information.
