Prelude <> Nov/Dec 2019 <> January 2020 <> February <> March <> April <> May <> June<> July <> August <> September <> Source Data
September 2020
September enters like a swirl of currents streaming in every possible direction.
We have the ongoing pandemic moving through different parts of the US like an incoming tide. Mixed with the pandemic tides are the increasingly louder thunderstorm warning of food insecurity and evictions for tens of millions of Americans due to loss of income. With the pending collapse of millions of small businesses, many jobs will never come back. Then there is the ongoing roiling tempest around re-opening schools, based upon hopes that masses of un-masked school children mixing with adult teachers will not spread the highly contagious Coronavirus.
We have the ongoing Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests constantly simmering in the background, erupting in violent protests every time a cop somewhere in America kills another unarmed Black person on-camera. Which seems to happen roughly once a week. These protests increase the number of people massing in public packed together with or without masks and deflect national attention from the increasing pandemic body counts.
We have the on-going corruption of the Trump administration, now kicked up a notch with his re-election campaign. The corruption of the
and continues, to the point the media is publishing articles questioning whether these institutions can even be trusted to deliver reliable medical information.This question of credibility also churns into the possibility that the
will approve a Covid-19 vaccine that has not been tested safe and effective by required medical standards. It is taken as given Trump will release an untested vaccine as means of improving this re-election chances. The tumescence presidential campaign adds yet another layer of swirling currents Americans need deal with.The quality of medical data used to define our pandemic continues to be questionable, with numerous states reporting (or being reported on) difficulties and drop-outs of their medical data. Near the end of August there were hints from the Trump Administration that they would return medical data collection back to the
from , but nothing since suggests that is occurring. It is possible those dropped hints were merely a way of deflecting heat the Trump administration was receiving from chaos of data reporting.Also, near the end of August new disinformation circulated on social media that the
‘s reports were falsely attributing ninety-four percent of American deaths to the Coronavirus virus. Dealing with this propaganda is forcing top medical professionals to spend time explaining basic math to Americans instead of dealing with the pandemic.The bottom line is, we still cannot rely on the accuracy of medical data being reported. A new medical advisor to President Trump, a doctor with no experience with infectious diseases, seems to have convinced Trump to just let the pandemic run its course. Working on the premise that they’ve tried nothing and are now out of ideas, “let it all burn” seems to be the new American approach.
Coronavirus Daily New Cases
Data Source: Our World in Data
Coronavirus Daily New Deaths
Data Source: Our World In Data
September 1
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September 2
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September 3
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September 4
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September 5
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September 6
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September 7
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Global Cases: 27,032,617 | Global Deaths: 881,464
September 8
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September 9
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Global Cases: 27,486,960 | Global Deaths: 894,983
September 10
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September 11
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September 12
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September 13
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Global Cases: 28,637,952 | Global Deaths: 917,417
September 14
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September 16
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Global Cases: 29,444,198 | Global Deaths: 931,321
September 17
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September 18
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Global Cases: 30,055,710 | Global Deaths: 943,433
September 19
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September 20
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September 21
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Global Cases: 30,905,162 | Global Deaths: 958,703
September 22
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September 23
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September 25
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Global Cases: 32,029,704 | Global Deaths: 979,212
September 26
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September 27
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September 28
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September 29
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Global Cases: 33,249,563 | Global Deaths: 1,000,040
September 30
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Contact Us
Meaning of Icons
Meaning of icons used in the main timeline narrative. All icons are linked to their source reference: General Information
Continuation of previous information, with a different reference
State-of-Emergency or Stay-At-Home Declared or Rescinded
Provides a video clip
Provides an audio clip
Provides a pop-up information window
– Move your mouse over a acronym, name, or term, used in this timeline for an explanation. Link for a Download File
Trump Twitter Tweets Defunct
This timeline cites a number of Twitter Tweets including those of then-President Trump. On January 8, 2021, Twitter deactivated President Trump’s Twitter account. This caused the citation links to become inactive.
Timeline Source Data
I built this timeline from a set of working notes in spreadsheet format. At present, my working notes have 1247 news entries, in addition to other references that form my “Additional Reading” sidebar entries, and other source references. Not all these news items are published in this timeline, for various reasons. My notes are freely available under a Creative Commons license (BY SA) to any writer or researcher who finds this work useful.
Download File
Data Source Change For COVID Charts and Daily Reports
My source data for the two charts I’ve been placing at top of each monthly page is Our World In Data, an excellent reference that also publishes their data under a Creative Commons license. Until August 26 I was using their following reports for source data:
– Daily New Confirmed COVID-19 Cases Rolling Three-Day Averages
– Daily New Confirmed COVID-19 Deaths Rolling Three-Day Averages
About August 27 Our World In Data discontinued those two reports. As a result, starting this month the two charts will be using slightly different data sets:
– Daily New Confirmed COVID-19 Cases Rolling Seven-Day Average
– Daily New Confirmed COVID-19 Deaths Rolling Seven Day Average
The curves are roughly the same. One caveat on the European Union data is that some European Union (EU) countries have recently changed methodology. These changes have an impact on the chart data.
I’m also only updating the global and US cases counts appearing under each daily box, on a weekly basis. This is due to my data source, The daily sitreps, moving to a weekly format.
Education Secretary Letter Announcing Standardized Testing Requirements
On September 3, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced that schools would be required to perform standardized testing for the 2020 – 2021 school year. This, despite the on-going difficulties with school closings and on-line education initiatives. This is the letter sent to all Chief State School Officers.
Download File
The Contagion Externality of a Super Spreading Event: The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and Covid-19
On September 5 San Diego State University, Center for health, economics, and policy studies, published a study on on the spread of Covid-19 and the August Sturgis, South Dakota, motorcycle rally. This study describes the rally as a
Download File
Prioritizing Wall Street: The Fed’s Corporate Bond Purchases During the Coronavirus Pandemic
An analysis by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis reveals that the CARES Act Federal Reserve bond purchasing program meant to prevent workers from losing their jobs amid the Covid-19 pandemic, instead bolstered companies who laid off more than one million workers while paying massive dividends to shareholders. This finding escalating concerns that the central bank’s behavior is “contributing to an economic recovery that benefits wealthy executives and investors but leaves behind American workers.”
Download File
Searchable Post Office Documents
On Aug. 21, 2020, the U.S. Postal Service released nearly 10,000 pages of records to American Oversight in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. On Sept. 17, 2020, after the documents had been posted publicly and had been discussed in multiple news reports, USPS requested that American Oversight remove the file from this website.
Following conversations with USPS, American Oversight has now reposted a copy of the file that includes redactions requested by the agency on a limited number of pages. Pages that relate to issues that were the subject of public reporting — such as the draft press release regarding the plan to mail face masks to every American household — remain un-redacted.
Link to Searchable US Post Office Documents
Trouble In Europe
On September 17, the issued a warning that coronavirus cases are surging alarmingly in Europe, as a “very serious situation” unfolds across the continent. As Covid-19 infections spike to record numbers, European governments are imposing strict local measures and weighing up further lockdowns in a bid to halt a second wave of the pandemic. But at a news conference regional director Hans Kluge said that the increase in cases should serve as a warning of what is to come. “Weekly cases have now exceeded those reported when the pandemic first peaked in Europe in March,” Kluge said. “Last week, the region’s weekly tally exceeded 300,000 patients.”
Additional Reading
An in-depth look at the factors that caused America to get trapped into a Pandemic Spiral of increasing numbers of cases and deaths with seemingly no way out.
America Is Trapped in a Pandemic Spiral
An in-depth article showing four key metrics in chart format that measure the level of disease control across the United States. Based on these four metrics, the authors conclude Covid-19 has reached epidemic levels across the United States. Published September 16.
Your state’s Covid-19 epidemic, explained in 5 maps. These maps show how your state is doing.
In April 2020, Max Kennedy, Jr., Robert F. Kennedy’s twenty-six-year-old grandson, tried to blow the whistle on the President’s malfeasance from an improbable perch—inside Trump’s coronavirus task force. Despite having signed a nondisclosure agreement, he sent an anonymous complaint to Congress detailing dangerous incompetence in the Administration’s response to the pandemic. Kennedy said, “If you see something that might be illegal, and cause thousands of civilian lives to be lost, a person has to speak out.” The Administration’s coronavirus response, he said, “was like a family office meets organized crime, melded with ‘Lord of the Flies.’ It was a government of chaos.” The New Yorker published September 21, 2022.
A Young Kennedy, in Kushnerland, Turned Whistle-Blower
Prelude <> Nov/Dec 2019 <> January 2020 <> February <> March <> April <> May <> June<> July <> August <> September <> Source Data