Biden/Harris Inaugural Commitee Formed - 12/1/2020

On this episode, we go over what preventative steps for COVID you can take if you or someone you know ended up traveling for Thanksgiving. Also, we talk about Biden’s inaugural committee (bideninaugural.org) and nominations for his economic advisers. Then, we discuss Mark Kelly’s swearing in and our pet project: the Utah monolith. 

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Mostly accurate transcript:

IF YOU TRAVELED

I want to start out the show by sharing recommendations from experts about what steps to take if you or someone you know actually did end up traveling for Thanksgiving. I also want to make it clear, there’s no judging if you did, or if a close family member did; just make sure you or they take the proper precautions going forward. 

Dr. Deborah Birx, who’s sort of the head of the White House COVID task force since she’s a little kookier than Dr. Fauci, has several pieces of advice. First, if you traveled, assume you were exposed to the virus and that you’re infected. Second, make sure that if you develop any symptoms at all, you should get tested so that doctors can count it as a confirmed case. This isn’t some conspiracy theory to make the positive test numbers higher, it’s just so doctors can start treating you as a COVID patient; remember, the treatments we have now work best early in the disease, not when you’re about to go on oxygen. 

Admiral Brett Giroir is leading the federal government’s testing response, and he said that you need to be extra careful when you get home, but that you may not need to do a strict quarantine. He does say you should decrease unnecessary activities for a week, and get tested about 3-5 days after you get home. I’m going to step in here and say that if you can, just do the 10-14 day quarantine. We want to prevent as many infections as we possibly can. 

Dr. Abraar Karan from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical school pretty much agrees. He said if you traveled but don’t have known exposure (so exposure confirmed by someone testing positive), you should quarantine for 10 days automatically. If you have known exposure, then quarantine for two weeks. He also recommends getting tested when you get back from traveling, as well as 3-5 days later. This is because it might take the virus a little while to incubate and actually create enough of itself to show up on a test. 

Dr. Karan stresses that quarantining correctly is also important. You should stay in your room as much as humanly possible, and wear a mask and avoid other people when you have to leave it. 

Just some more general information about what we can expect: the incubation period for the virus in your body ranges from 2-14 days, and people usually start feeling symptoms around day 5 or 6. This means that we’ll start seeing the effects sometime between the first and third weeks of December, according to Dr. Tom Frieden, who used to be the director of the CDC. 

And, obviously, if you test positive for COVID, make sure to tell everyone you saw at a gathering, or make sure whoever tests positive tells you. 

By the way, the CDC is actually studying if they should shorten the quarantine period from 14 days down to maybe something closer to 7-10. Surprisingly, this is supported by a lot of the leading doctors, including that Dr. Frieden (he’s the one I trust most because he was Obama’s CDC pick). He says that the most risky time for asymptomatic people is in the 4-7 days after being exposed. They’re looking at this change because it’s easier for people to swallow one week away from their normal lives, as opposed to two, so in theory they’ll follow the rules. Dr. Fauci even said that this two week period discourages people from getting tested because if they come back positive, they have to miss work, and people are pretty concerned about losing that pay. 

BIDEN/HARRIS UPDATES

Let’s do a quick check in on the Biden/Harris Administration and what they’re working on. They announced yesterday that they formed the Presidential Inaugural Committee, which is a group that’s responsible for organizing inauguration-related activities. Delaware State University president Tony Allen was named the CEO, and Biden campaign chief operating officer Maju Varghese was named the executive director. Yvanna Cancela, a state senator from Nevada, and Erin Wilson, the Biden campaign’s national political director, will be the deputy executive directors for the committee. 

This group also announced the launch of their website, which is bideninaugural.org. They have a store with some cool merchandise in there (t-shirts, hats, water bottles, coasters, that sort of thing), and almost everything seems to be in the $20-$30 range, so it’s worth checking out. The website link is in this episode’s description. I’m actually pretty interested how this inaugural is going to be with COVID. It’s such an iconic moment to be sworn in on the steps of the Capitol, and there’s just Reagan’s second inaugural that looks different, in terms of the ones we have on video, since that had to be moved indoors because it was like 0 degrees outside. I would guess that everyone up there could be tested and cleared, but would you want to take that chance? And would that just be inviting crowds to gather? It’ll be interesting to see. 

As for their actual administration, I forgot to mention yesterday that Janet Yellen was officially announced as Biden’s nominee to be the Treasury Secretary, which was fun to see being made official. Wally Adeyemo was nominated to be her deputy after previously serving as the chief of staff of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as well as the deputy director of the National Economic Council and deputy national security adviser. If he’s confirmed by the Senate, he’ll become the first black deputy secretary of the Treasury. Just in general, it’s amazing how diverse President Biden’s administration will be. Especially since we just had four years of a cabinet that could have been from 1960. Every picture of meetings of the top leaders of government is like 96% old white guys with various stages of male pattern baldness. 

Speaking of inclusion, Cecilia Rose was nominated as the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. She would be the 1st black CEA chair, as well as the 4th woman to do so. She’s currently the dean at Princeton. Other members of the CEA that were announced were Jared Bernstein, Biden’s top economic adviser during the Obama administration, as well as Heather Boushey, who’s the co-founder of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. 

As for what this Council of Economic Advisers does, they’re like a think tank; basically, they’re experts who will give Biden guidance on economic policy.

MARK KELLY

Something cool to watch for tomorrow is Mark Kelly getting sworn in as a senator in Arizona. Since his race was technically a special election for John McCain’s old senate seat, not a regular election, he can get sworn in before January. If we look just a bit down the road, that’s sort of unfortunate because it means he has to run again in 2022, which could be tricky. Midterms are almost always best for the party that doesn’t control the White House, and in a state that usually votes Republican, it could get tough for him. However, he’s a really strong candidate (I mean, obviously he’s got great thoughts and ideas on the real issues, but he’s an astronaut for crying out loud), so maybe it’ll be easy for him. Let’s hope so. 

That swearing in ceremony is at noon eastern tomorrow, and I’m sure his team will stream it live on social media, but somebody out there will definitely have it live if you want to watch. 

MONOLITH

So, full disclosure, this story sort of breaks my rule of telling you only what you absolutely need to know, but I just can’t resist; it’s sort of a pet project for the show at this point. Of course, I’m talking about the monolith from the Utah desert. That one is still gone, but another one popped up in Romania of all places. This one might be a copycat because it’s located near one of the most famous mountains in Romania, it just got put up recently, it’s got swirling patterns on the sides, and it’s about 2 feet higher than the one from Utah. The ground around it also looks like someone was digging there recently, whereas the one from Utah was undisturbed, which is part of what made it so strange. My guess at this point is either someone in Romania saw this story online and wanted to make their own for some reason, or it’s part of some really bizarre marketing campaign by an indie movie, or something like that. It’s obviously getting a lot of free publicity, and I feel like some other movie did something like this where people found something that was strange, but then the director had to come out and fess up to it. Does that sound familiar to anyone? I’ll have to look that up later and see if I find anything, but email me at [email protected] if you can actually decipher what I’m talking about. 

Oh, by the way, the monolith was actually in the Utah desert since 2016, but nobody actually cared much about it until just recently.

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Sources:

So You Traveled Over Thanksgiving. Now What? : Coronavirus Updates 
Former astronaut Mark Kelly to be sworn in as a US senator Wednesday 
Biden, Harris form inaugural committee - POLITICO
Biden announces economic team, confirms Janet Yellen as Treasury nominee 
Utah monolith disappears but mystery remains as copy pops up in Romania 
The CDC is expected to shorten Covid quarantine time, something most everyone seems to agree on