Letter to Senator Toomey Regarding the COVID-19 Relief Bill

Dear Senator Toomey

I appreciate that three times this year, you have voted your conscience rather than follow Republican dogma. Please do something to help the average Pennsylvanian more than your support of the Trump "detax-the-rich" tax bill did in 2017 - vote FOR the COVID-19 relief bill. The stimulus payments are very important to the unemployed and the under-employed. Any stimulus we get will go to our local food bank and other charities because we know how much the money is needed by so many.

There have been many complaints about the move to have the over-indebted college graduates' college loan debt forgiven or reduced. A $15 minimum wage would help graduates with loans and minimum jobs to pay off more of their loans. It would lift millions of families out of poverty the way that Reganomics never did.

It's your choice. Can you vote your conscience one more time?

Laurie Mann
Pittsburgh, PA

COVID-19 Spread After 9/22 Trump Rally in Moon Township, PA, Part 3

  How many of his own voters does a maskless, crowded, shoutfest called a Trump rally sicken or even kill?

Three weeks ago, Trump had large rally in Moon Township, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. A few thousand attended from western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio & the panhandle of West Virginia.
So far, there's no evidence that #COVID has increased much in these areas:

                                    October 13 map

                                    October 1 map

                                    September 24 map

While there are some increases in Western Pennsylvania, the main hotbed for spread in Pennsylvania over the last month has been the Centre county area, home to Penn State.  Centre county is the reddish county in the upper right hand corner of the map (it really doesn't show up much on the 10/1 map).

So I'm glad to have been wrong about Trump's 9/22 rally in Moon Township.  It might have contributed slightly to COVID-19 spread, but there's no evidence it was yet another super-spreader event.

                                    October 13 map

                                                October 1 map

                                              September 23, 2020

Sadly, Pennsylvania "turned orange" in its COVID-19 outbreak over the last few weeks, probably mostly due to the Penn State Surge.  It has been yellow most of the year, and Allegheny county is still yellow.

                                    October 13 map

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COVID-19 Spread After 9/22 Trump Rally in Moon Township, PA, Part 2

 How many of his own voters does a maskless, crowded, shoutfest called a Trump rally sicken or even kill?

A week ago, Trump had large rally in Moon Township, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. A few thousand attended from western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio & the panhandle of West Virginia.

So far, there's no evidence that #COVID has increased much in these areas:

COVID-19 spreads gradually. It can take a couple of days to a couple of weeks for the number of cases to increase by much. Here's are detailed Allegheny County maps for 9/23 and 9/30:

So far, there's no evidence that COVID-19 has increased much in the Allegheny County as a result of Trump's recent maskless rally. Which is good so far. Will double-check again next week.

COVID-19 Spread After 9/22 Trump Rally in Moon Township, PA, Part 1

How many of his own voters does a maskless, crowded, shoutfest called a Trump rally sicken or even kill?

Trump had large rally in Moon Township, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania on 9/22. I don't have numbers; no news outlet made any estimates. Saw some photos and I'd guess maybe around 5,000 (unless the crowd was photoshopped as the famous Inauguration photos were).

Allegheny County has had fairly low spread since March.  We've usually been a "yellow" county; we were briefly "orange" after the bars were opened up more in July, but the spread has decreased some since then  when bar hours were restricted again.

Moon Township is in the Western central part of Allegheny County and is home to the Pittsburgh International Airport.  It tends to vote red, but just barely.  I worked in a Moon county district for 3 elections including 2016.  While the red candidates usually won, they never won by much.  Amazingly in 2016, both Hillary Clinton and Katie McGinty won by a few votes in that district, but lost at the state level (though not by much).  Location of Moon Township:

Here's current COVID19 info from Allegheny county & COVIDACTNOW stats. Will update at least weekly. Had low spread so far. Moon Township has had 92 Coronavirus cases/10,000 & 9 deaths. North Fayette Township has had 69 cases/10,000 & 3 deaths.

Probably worth noting - Beaver county is just north of the airport, Washington county is about 10 miles south of the airport.  The West Virginia panhandle is about 15 miles west, and Ohio is about 20 miles west.

At least once a week over the next few weeks, I'll update COVID county case information to see how many people Trump has made sick as a result of his 9/22 rally in Moon Township.

But I wondered - is there a pattern for counties to have a higher-than-average COVID-19 spread?

Here's a Johns Hopkins University map from 9/24, showing the COVID-19 spread in counties in southwestern Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, the panhandle of West Virginia and a bit of northwestern Maryland. The one dark-colored county indicating higher COVID-19 spread is Columbiana County in Ohio south of Youngstown. Interestingly, Pence spoke in Columbiana County 3 weeks ago (September 4).

The dark-ish county northwest of Allegheny County, adjacent to Columbiana County, is Beaver County. Beaver is very close to Moon Township (where Trump spoke on 9/22). Trump has spoken there a few times, but not since last June. However...when VP Pence went to Ohio on 9/4, he also stopped in Beaver County the same day. Not that you see masks at Pence rallies either.

So it will be interesting to see whether the COVID-19 rates start to go up in Allegheny County, in Washington County (which is also quite close to Moon Township), in the WV panhandle (Weirton area), and in an eastern Ohio like Jefferson County in the weeks following the maskless, loud Trump rally in Moon Township on 9/22.