Viral News: The head of the Centers for Disease Control told Congress yesterday that the best way to stop the coronavirus right now is wearing masks and that a vaccine may not be ready for wide distribution until next summer.

  “I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against Covid than when I take a Covid vaccine,” said Dr. Robert Redfield. “Vaccines are not 100 percent effective, whereas masks, worn properly, do what they are designed to do.”

  President Trump, who has promised a vaccine within weeks, immediately contradicted Dr. Redfield  saying, “Under no circumstance will it be as late as the doctor said.” Trump added,  “I think he made a mistake when he said that. It’s just incorrect information.”

  Dr. Redfield said a vaccine could be available for limited use by the end of the year, but not for widespread administration until the middle of 2021. And he said it could take six to nine months to get enough Americans vaccinated to create widespread immunity.

  Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said yesterday, “Scientific breakthroughs don’t care about calendars any more than the virus does. They certainly don’t adhere to election cycles, and their timing, their approval, and their distribution should never, ever be distorted by political considerations.”

   Trump, who rarely wears a mask and neither do supporters at his rallies said, “The mask is not as important as the vaccine.” He conceded, “The mask, perhaps, helps.”

  Also worth noting, the  top spokesman at Health and Human Services took a leave of absence yesterday after a Facebook rant about Covid conspiracies.

The Day After: Hurricane Sally dropped as much as 30 inches of rain in parts of the Gulf Coast, creating floods as much as five feet deep in some areas. Hundreds of people had to be rescued from homes and cars.

  Boats and barges floated away. The Associated Press reports that a replica of the Nina, one of Christopher Columbus’s ships, has vanished from its dock on the Pensacola waterfront.

That Was Then: The latest unemployment figures come out this morning and the White House is touting that “American households saw their best economic gains in half a century” — last year. Down at the bottom of their release, the White House admits that, “The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted this historic progress in 2020.”

  Yeah, it did. From March 14^th through last week, 51,205,679 Americans lost their jobs, according to the Labor Department. Unemployment is at 8.4 percent, federal aid is running out, thousands of Americans face eviction from their homes and the White House says, “This standard can be achieved again as America safely reopens from the Coronavirus pandemic.”

Un-American: Attorney Gen. William Barr told prosecutors in a conference call last week that they should consider charging political rioters with sedition, according to The Washington Post. Sedition is the act of urging others to topple the government.

   So it seems Barr thinks spray painting slogans and breaking windows in Portland, Oregon is an attempt to overthrow the federal government.

  Barr has been the government’s tough guy dealing with protests. He personally ordered the police to clear Washington’s Lafayette Park so President Trump could walk out there and hold up a Bible.

  A major in the DC national guard testified before Congress yesterday that the defense Department had stockpiled 7,000 round of ammunition in the district and had sought a heat ray to deploy against protesters.

  Barr is kind of out there. In a speech yesterday he said the of the prospect of a national Covid-19 lockdown: “Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history.”

The Bulletin Board: The federal Reserve says it plans to leave interest rates at near zero to revive the economy through at least 2023. — Forbes reports that President Trump’s campaign has paid his private companies $2.3 million for rent, food, lodging, and other expenses, — Smoke from the Western wildfires has reached the East. A haze is hanging over upstate New York. — NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” has recruited the rubber-faced comedian Jim Carrey to play former Vice President Joe Biden this fall.

The Obit Page: Noted social critic, essayist, and devotee of jazz Stanley Crouch has died at age 74. 

  Crouch was a black man who was not afraid to criticize other prominent black Americans if he thought they were full of BS, particularly if they defined themselves by their race. He called the Rev. Al Sharpton a “buffoon,” Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan “insane,” and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison “as American as P.T. Barnum.” 

  He said, “I affirm whatever I think has the best chance of working, of being both inspirational and unsentimental, of reasoning across the categories of false division and beyond the decoy of race.”

Scholastic Aptitude: Forget the pandemic. Evidently America needs big time college football. Knuckling under to pressure from coaches, players, parents, and fans, The Big Ten Conference has reversed its decision to cancel its football season.

  The Big Ten, which is really 14, plans to kick off the first games on October 23^rd.

  The league promises daily testing of athletes. They say any player who tests positive will be barred from games for at least 21 days. A positivity rate of more than 5 percent would also require a team to stop practicing.

  After hearing the announcement by the Big Ten, the Pac-12 conference announced that it is also moving toward playing football this fall. 

  Colleges and universities have turned out to be epicenters of coronavirus spread as students return to school and throw big parties and gatherings. But football is the important thing. The University of Georgia, a member of the Southeastern conference, is going to allow its football team to play, but won’t allow on-campus voting. It’s about the money.

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