The Massachusetts Democratic State Committee will be meeting next week to decide what actions to take regarding the State Nominating Convention scheduled to convene in Lowell’s Tsongas Center in late May. Given the current worsening medical crisis, it stands to reason that the convention should and will be canceled. Democratic leaders will not draw thousands of people together for no compelling reason.
If common sense prevails, the Democratic State Committee will also vote to temporarily scrap its 15% rule requiring a vote of all convention delegates to determine Democratic Primary election candidates. DSC members can vote to give State Chair Gus Bickford the authority to cancel the convention and to approve any candidate that fulfills all state and federal submission requirements to be on the MA Democratic Primary ballot.
The nominating convention does NOT choose the Democratic Party’s standard bearer for US Senate. The convention only determines which candidates can cross a 15% threshold of delegate support to get on the Primary ballot. Democrats who vote in. the September Primary decide with their votes which candidate will face a Republican challenger in November.
Candidates for US Senate must fulfill all of the Federal and State filing regulations and required certified signature submissions to get on the ballot. There is no doubt that both Ed Markey and Joseph Kennedy will certainly comply and qualify for the ballot placement. All Democratic voters across the state will decide the outcome of that election.
The State Committee is trying to figure out a way to cancel the convention but keep the nomination process going via mail-in balloting by convention delegates. About 2/3rds of the convention delegates were already elected. The caucuses for the other 1/3 were canceled/ postponed. So remaining caucuses would have to be conducted by a multi-step mail-in process. THEN an all-delegate nominating mail-in vote system must be implemented. What’s a quorum? Who counts the ballots? Are elected delegates and alternates still being charged $75 convention registration fee when all they will be doing is sending in a vote? Will the registration fees be returned? (They should.)
Seems like a needless and convoluted process to undertake when a simple vote next week by State Committee members to cancel the convention and temporarily scrap the 15% rule for this election season makes every kind of sense. We can count on all Democratic Primary voters to make their decision in September as they always do.
In these anxious times, people would rather use their resources and energy to help their families and communities make it through this terrible covid-19 health crisis.
There are ways to do this, but I favor delaying a cancellation decision as long as possible. Charter technically does require a convention every year. May 30th is still a ways off. I assume fees will be refunded if no convention and I believe the staff is working on a remote participation option even if we do go forward with an in-person gathering. The other thing we will do on April 4th is ratify the slate of add-on delegates.
Christopher, Going forward with an in-person gathering is irresponsible. Do you imagine anyone would want to come to a crowded Tsongas Center in May for no important reason? The DSC should show some real leadership at this time and take the steps necessary to cancel the convention and remove the 15% threshold convention vote for candidates who fulfill all required state and federal submissions to get on ballot. No one doubts that both Markey and Kennedy will do that. Needless time consuming, resource wasting process,. The DSC members can indeed vote to suspend any Charter rule temporarily given this emergency. They just need the will to do it. If they fail to do so, I fear that Democrats cannot legitimately criticize Gov. Baker and Trump for not doing everything possible to help during this pandemic emergency. A needless convention with a convoluted back-up process seems like small potatoes given what so many families are facing during this public health and economic crisis.
As a lifelong Democrat and elected pledged delegate, I urge the DSC to cancel the convention for public health safety, refund all delegate fees and mail-in delegate votes.
Speaking only for myself, I will not jeopardize the lives of my loved ones, friends and colleagues for ANY reason until this pandemic has passed.
I see you are a member of the sky is falling caucus, and also IIRC you never liked conventions anyway. May 30 is two months away. Whatever we decide we will get more info after the meeting this Saturday. I’m not aware of DSC authority to suspend the charter and it can only be amended by convention
Cases in Massachusetts alone are going to surge in the tens of thousands over the next two-three weeks. Two students have grandparents on ventilators in the ICU since the Jack Satter House in Revere became a hot zone. Over 100 cases in Revere alone, a few of them fellow RTA members and RPS parents. My wife had to get tested on Sunday and we are anxiously waiting for results. It’s not fun to be six feet away from her at all times in a 700 foot studio and I had to cancel taking my own father to Beth Israel on Wednesday morning for a follow up procedure from his December surgery. The risk I infect my parents was too great, even though there is a risk that they are going to a hospital. I think I also have to self isolate until she is cleared, so no more grocery stores or hikes for me. We all have to do our part. I doubt the national conventions are going to happen.
Dr. Fauci said over the weekend that the US will see 200,000 deaths “if we do everything perfectly”, There are 330M people in the US. The experts suggest that we’ll see 50-60% infection rate — something on the order of 200M people infected. The current mortality estimates are in the neighborhood of 1%. That’s about two million deaths from COVID-19.
If mechanisms had been in place to perform early surveillance testing we may have been able to manage this pandemic more effectively. It doesn’t matter, it’s too late for that. Right now, our testing is so limited that only people who are symptomatic are tested. There is very strong evidence that COVID-19 is contagious before the patient is symptomatic. That means that each person that gets on our “infected” chart has likely infected a least a few and several sources say a hundred by the time their infection is diagnosed and confirmed.
With no surveillance testing, we are guaranteed to be days behind a boundary of expanding COVID-19 infections.
It’s very likely to get much worse before it gets better.
I respect Dr. Fauci, but he does seem to be overselling this a bit.
@Dr. Fauci … is overselling this:
You’re in denial, my friend.
He’s telling you the facts. They remain the facts even when they paint a more dire picture than you’re comfortable with.
One method people around here are using to be cautious is to carry a roll of bags normally used to pick up dog poop. If you get gas, push carts etc, put them on your hands (or sandwich bags) then discard safely. Open doors with your feet if possible.
Stay safe.
We were told two weeks ago that we would see the surge now. I remain in believe it when I see it mode regarding astronomical predictions while percentages are tiny (e. g. 100 cases in Revere out of a population of 53,821 is .1858%). A high percentage are asymptomatic and a tiny percentage are fatal. I’m starting to get confused about the 6-foot rule too because all the diagrams I’ve seen for transmission indicate the virus is propelled by a cough or sneeze, not simply being within a six foot radius.
@100 cases in Revere out of a population of 53,821:
What is the TESTING rate in Revere? What you’re observing is the criminally negligent scarcity of testing, not the extent of the virus.
We already know that a COVID-19 sufferer is contagious days before they are symptomatic. We only test those who are symptomatic. By the time an infected person has consulted a care provider and received a test, that person has unknowingly infected dozens — some data says hundreds — of others.
If you talk to a veteran cop, they’ll tell you that for every DUI arrest they make, there are hundreds of DUI operators that do NOT get stopped. That’s because the only time a DUI arrest happens is when a vehicle is operated erratically in the presence of a cop. There are many more operators than cops, and checkpoints are quite rare in the US.
@I’m starting to get confused about the 6-foot rule
Each time we breath, we exhale a vapor cloud of microscopic droplets. That’s why we “see our breath” on cold days (the vapor condenses on contact with cold air). Those microscopic droplets carry the COVID-19 virus to others, and that’s the purpose of the six foot radius.
I do assume there are several more cases, but when I said asymptomatic this time I meant those who remain so, as in the virus passes without ever manifesting symptoms in the individual. It may be that half of us end up exposed and get it to varying degrees, some negligibly, but I’m starting to wonder if we let this run its course as the thing going around this year. I just feel like we’re living in the type of fear we usually tell ourselves isn’t healthy. It’s as if I stopped substitute teaching because it’s been shown in other instances that a mass school shooting is possible. Schools have stepped up security in response, but have not stopped operating. The drastic steps we’re taking feel like the public health equivalent of security theater.
It’s a lot more than “several”.
While I have the same immediate gut response as you, the data leads elsewhere.
The immediate issue is that while many are asymptomatic, about 15-20% of those known to be infected end up needing acute care. If they don’t get it, they die. If they do get it, a large portion of them recover.
When we have an exponential spike hitting a region, we saturate ALL the hospitals in that region. That means there’s no capacity to treat any new patients. So in addition to new COVID patients, the other “routine” emergencies — heart attacks, strokes, playground trauma, whatever — suddenly become life-threatening.
The numbers continue to be in the range of a 1-2% mortality rate among those known to be infected. That’s several orders of magnitude more likely than the risk of being a victim of a mass school shooting.
We are talking MILLIONS of people dying if we do nothing. The CDC reports that a total of 2.8M people died in the US in 2018.
We are talking about TWICE that.
The drastic steps feel like security theater to me as well. Nevertheless, the data tells us that doing nothing produces catastrophic results.
I also feel like we aren’t seeing the positive effects. Today, Governor Baker announced the extension of the stay at home guidelines until May 4th. Since schools are already closed until then I can’t say I’m surprised (though it probably just killed any chances of my other seasonal job starting on time), but when will we be rewarded for our sacrifice? When will a leader come out and say, “Great job everyone – thanks to your efforts we will start easing restrictions this week.”? When will someone at least come out and tell us what we are looking for in terms of success or victory, something along the lines of, “We will feel comfortable easing restrictions when x, y, and z are true.”? It boggles the mind that in 21st century America we are being rendered as helpless as medieval Europeans trying to fight off the Black Death. (Yes, I’m frustrated – please forgive the rant.)
The sad truth is that, for whatever reasons, we actually are about as helpless as medieval Europeans hiding from the Black Death.
We have become accustomed to quick solutions. This one doesn’t have any.
I think we need someone to rally around like FDR in 1933 or 1942.
If that figure is alive, we haven’t found him or her yet. So far as I can tell, Andrew Cuomo is the closest we’ve come.
Even with leadership, the best we can do at the moment is find the data needed to provide the assurances that we all seek.
It would be disastrous to relax the restrictions too soon. America tried that during the 1918 pandemic, and the resulting second wave was lethal.
When it safe Christopher. We are nowhere near flattening the curve. I will take the honesty of Cuomo over the false and dangerous optimism of Trump. I’m surprised your siding with the latters approach.
But what is safe? I’d like to know what the criteria are for lifting the restrictions. Somehow Cuomo sounds more reassuring than Trump.
70% of Americans will not be shot in a mass shooting. We are looking at 200,000 deaths as the conservative estimate and as high as 2-4 million. That’s way worse. It’s real. Our system has had ten cases or so far. Hundreds across the state. It’s way worse than school shootings. I share your frustration. My father in law and brother got laid off. I miss my students and colleagues who are fearful, anxious, and eager to go back to school. But staying home is the only way we beat this.
That’s still 1-2% of the population and I would think that getting out more would help slow it down a bit. That’s why the flu usually dissipates with warmer weather – not due to the weather per se, but because it causes people to get out more. In every other context fresh air is usually considered healthier.
@getting out more would help slow it down a bit:
No no no no no no.
“Getting out more” speeds it up. There are all sorts of reasons why the flu slows in warm weather, not the least of which is that our mucus membranes are less active when it’s hot.
The corona virus is spread by transmission. An infected person passes the virus to some number of that person’s contacts. The growth is exponential for the same reason that a friends-of-friend network quickly becomes huge.
The reason why there are not more than six links from a person to any other person is that each person knows about 50 people. The first degree is 5o^1 = 50. The second is 50^2, or 2500. And so on. 50^6 = 8.1 * 10^38. That’s a 10 with THIRTY EIGHT zeros.
With unchecked social contact and each person having contacts with 50 people, it only takes 4 degrees to expose 6.25 M people. Suppose each only contacts 10 people — that’s still 10,000 people exposed after 4 degrees.
Here are some ways this pandemic will slow:
1. Herd immunity: As the virus spreads and people recover, an increasing share of the population is immune (at least for a few weeks or months).
2. Vaccine: At some point a vaccine is likely
3. Mutation to a less severe strain: Viruses mutate rapidly. Like any other copying process, the risk of mutation increases with each copy. Some of those mutations may make the virus more threatening. Some of those may weaken it.
@ I’d like to know what the criteria are for lifting the restrictions:
The most important criteria is the daily new infection rate. The only effective way to measure that is to have widespread testing with fast turnaround time. Even after months of lies, we still have a critical shortage of tests. The most important kind of testing for the question you’re asking is surveillance testing — testing a random and representative sample of the population at a high enough frequency to get a statistical measure of the actual number.
It is ironic that we’re able to measure the demand for a given product to enormous precision — yet we are essentially blind for a matter of life and death like this.
But isn’t the coronavirus very similar to the flu in terms of symptoms and the methods and rates of contagion?
@ isn’t the coronavirus very similar….:
Not really. The virus appears to bind to lung tissue first, so that it’s main symptoms are fever and respiratory discomfort. For about 15-20%, the immune system attacks the lung tissue along with the virus and pneumonia results. For most of those, ventilators and similar measures sustain the patient until the virus is overcome — the patient then makes a full recovery. For about 1%, the ventilator isn’t enough and the patient dies (essentially of suffocation, because the lungs fail). There are recent reports of the virus causing only stomach discomfort.
Coronavirus differs from the flu in that the patient becomes contagious at least several days before being aware of any symptoms. There is evidence that many patients are never aware that they’re infected, yet they have still been contagious and therefore contributing to the spread of the pandemic.
The coronavirus seems to spread through exhaled vapor and through “fomites” — surfaces where the virus can linger for up to three days and still infect someone who comes in contact with the infected surface. The virus often enters the patient through mucous membranes (eyes, nose, mouth). So a common vector is to be transferred from a surface to fingers, and then from fingers to eyes, nose, or mouth.
As I understand it, all corona viruses are similarly contagious (the common cold is often a corona virus). This particular strain is distinguished by its aggressive mortality.
That actually may be the best succinct explanation I’ve seen – thank you.
5 deaths in one nursing home alone. It’s getting bad. A students grandfather is on life support on a ventilator.
Anyway my wife tested negative thank God. Hope it stays that way.
Close quarters with vulnerable population so less surprising.