State Auditor Rob Sand is examining the no-bid contracts Iowa has signed to procure personal protective equipment (PPE), which has been in short supply across the country during the novel coronavirus pandemic.

A one-sentence statement released by the State Auditor’s Office on May 18 quoted Sand as saying, “Prior to last week’s coverage of a vendor whom has never before sold PPE receiving a $7 million no-bid contract for PPE, we had already begun collecting information about both no-bid contracts and the state’s PPE supply.”

For the fourth time in less than two months, President Donald Trump has fired an inspector general who had stirred up trouble for him or his political allies.

Iowa’s senior Senator Chuck Grassley has championed whistleblowers and inspectors general for decades. Yet just like last month, he declined to condemn Trump’s retaliatory move. Grassley didn’t mention State Department Inspector General Steve Linick’s dismissal on his widely-viewed Twitter feed this weekend. Meanwhile, his office released a statement that dinged Linick for not looking into “the State Department’s role in advancing the debunked Russian collusion investigation.”

Ira Lacher: “For better, or God forbid, much worse, America has decided on a path: Reopen, urge common-sense caution, and come what may.” -promoted by Laura Belin

My friend’s daughter caught COVID-19. Experiencing high fever and labored breathing, she visited an emergency room of a New York City hospital, where she spent several days in intensive care, before finally being allowed to go home, where milder symptoms continued for weeks. But physical symptoms gave way to mental health symptoms, specifically, severe panic. Those same symptoms have befallen her father, hundreds of miles away from her.

The effects of the pandemic have been duly reported: physical symptoms, sometimes leading to death; economic symptoms, careering the world toward financial collapse; societal symptoms, including increasing disregard for civil authority. Now, the United Nations is adding another effect: mental health symptoms.

Racial disparities continue to widen as the number of novel coronavirus cases grows in Iowa.

Data published on the state’s COVID-19 website on May 17 indicate that Latinos make up 25.1 percent of Iowa’s 14,651 confirmed COVID-19 cases. That’s more than four times the share of Latinos in the state population (6.2 percent according to the latest Census Bureau estimate).

Another 57.1 of Iowans who have tested positive are not Hispanic or Latino, while the remaining 17.8 percent of cases are pending further investigation of the person’s ethnicity.

Susan Nelson of Floyd County offers a great tutorial on how to make a face shield, which is more protective than a cloth mask. -promoted by Laura Belin

“Remember when the public health community and all ID docs said we could eliminate HIV with testing and contact tracing and we didn’t need to distribute and encourage condom use? Me neither #FaceShieldsForAll” ~ @eliowa

I am going to show you how to make a face shield that costs a couple of dollars, but first I’ll explain why you should want one.

An essay by Herb Strentz inspired by Caliban, “the original strange bedfellow.” -promoted by Laura Belin

As we approach Iowa’s primary election on June 2, here and elsewhere, Republican and Democratic Party slates often reflect the observation “Politics makes strange bedfellows.”

The “bedfellows” adage goes back more than 400 years, attributed to Act 2 Scene 2 of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which premiered in 161l, probably in The Globe Theatre.

Iowa’s two first-term members of the U.S. House were among fourteen Democrats to oppose the latest bill drafted to address the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The so-called HEROES Act cleared the lower chamber on May 15 by 208 votes to 199 (roll call). It called for an estimated $3 trillion in spending, including “nearly $1 trillion in aid to battered states, cities and Native American tribes, and another round of bolstered jobless benefits and direct government payments to Americans.”

Republicans in control of the U.S. Senate oppose the bill, so its passage in the House serves primarily to communicate preferred Democratic policy.

Days after announcing the Test Iowa program last month, Governor Kim Reynolds described the expanded capacity to test for coronavirus infections as a “significant advantage” for Iowa compared to other states, and a “tool that allows us to make evidence-based decisions about how to mitigate and manage the virus with precision.”

The governor revealed on May 14 that only a few thousand Iowans had been tested for COVID-19 through a program that was supposed to provide 3,000 tests a day.

Staff at Iowa’s State Hygienic Laboratory have been working around the clock to process tests that reveal the scope of the novel coronavirus epidemic. Governor Kim Reynolds has often lauded their “yeoman’s work” at her daily news conferences.

But as former Vice President Joe Biden famously said, “Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” In real terms, state support for a facility critical to Iowa’s COVID-19 response dropped considerably over the last decade.

The Iowa legislature hasn’t increased dollars allocated to the State Hygienic Lab since 2013, when Senate Democrats insisted on doing so. Not only has state funding failed to keep up with inflation since then, the laboratory’s annual appropriation has yet to recover from a mid-year budget cut in 2018.

If you venture into wet wooded areas in the springtime, there’s a good chance you’ll find some bright yellow flowers. Buttercups can be difficult to distinguish from one another, and multiple sub-species are commonly known as swamp buttercup. I believe the pictures enclosed below are Ranunculus hispidus (hispid buttercup or bristly buttercup).

Some sources refer to a closely related plant as Ranunculus septentrionalis (swamp buttercup), while other sources no longer distinguish between Ranunculus septentrionalis and Ranunculus hispidus. Both species are native to most of the U.S. and Canada east of the Rocky Mountains.

The Illinois Wildflowers website says of swamp buttercup,

This species often grows in soggy areas of woodlands that are too wet for some invasive species, such as Alliaria petiolata (Garlic Mustard). Therefore, populations of Swamp Buttercup remain reasonably secure. This plant is also able to tolerate some degradation of its habitat from other causes.

Incidentally, now would be a good time to pull up garlic mustard if you come across any in nature.

Follow me after the jump for images of swamp buttercup.

John Aspray: “This pandemic was not the first sign of vulnerability in our food system. It just widened the cracks that have been there all along.” -promoted by Laura Belin

Every Iowan is familiar with the catchphrase “Iowa feeds the world.” But new data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Food & Water Watch shows the consolidation of corporate agriculture in the Hawkeye state is causing far more harm than good.

Every five years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture conducts a Census of Agriculture, asking every farm to provide detailed information on its operations. The 2017 Ag Census data was released last year, and tells a troubling story of consolidation in our agriculture system—a story that Iowa’s rural communities already know well.

A company hired to ramp up Iowa’s capacity to test for novel coronavirus has been sending messages to sick Iowans that could discourage them from seeking a COVID-19 test.

Some people who reported respiratory symptoms when completing the Test Iowa online assessment, but did not qualify for an appointment at a drive-through site, received a message warning that COVID-19 testing “is quite invasive and uncomfortable” and that tests should be reserved “for those who need it the most.”

Neither Nomi Health nor state officials have clarified whether the Iowa Department of Public Health helped write or approved the wording.

Governor Kim Reynolds said on May 11 that it’s “too early” to decide whether to cancel this summer’s county fairs or the Iowa State Fair, which is scheduled to run from August 13 through August 23.

As much as I enjoy the fair, it would be reckless to bring Iowans from every county to mingle at the State Fairgrounds three months from now.

Iowa is among a dozen states picked to receive shipments of the antiviral drug remdesivir for use in treating patients hospitalized for novel coronavirus, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced on May 9. Our state will receive ten cases, which works out to 400 vials of the medication.

Governor Kim Reynolds implied at her latest news conference that when federal officials approved the shipment, they didn’t understand the reasons Iowa’s COVID-19 case counts have been rising. Publicly available information does not support that explanation.

Ira Lacher: Eugenics forces us to consider how Donald Trump first reacted to the COVID-19 threat, how he dealt with its onset, and how he wants to “reopen” America. -promoted by Laura Belin

Forced sterilization.

“Better baby” contests.

Social engineering.

Selective breeding.

These attributes pertain not to Nazi Germany but the United States. They are components of the white supremacist pseudoscientific movement known as “eugenics.”

The Iowa Department of Public Health launched a new version of the state’s website for information and statistics on novel coronavirus on May 7.

The updated coronavirus.iowa.gov replaces a dashboard officials rolled out less than a month ago. That site debuted a demographic breakdown of COVID-19 cases and more details than had previously been available about hospital usage by region.

At her May 7 news conference, Governor Kim Reynolds said the latest changes were designed to make it easier for Iowans to access data about the virus.

After the jump I’ve reviewed what struck me as the most significant changes, for better or worse. My list isn’t exhaustive, so I encourage readers to spend some time exploring the website.

The gaslighting was strong during Governor Kim Reynolds’ White House meeting on May 6 and Vice President Mike Pence’s Iowa visit two days later. Pence described Iowa as a COVID-19 “success story” on Wednesday. He elaborated in West Des Moines on May 8,

“Iowa has been leading the way with Governor Kim Reynolds […] From very early on, the strong steps and mitigation efforts have made a difference here. We grieve the loss of life here in Iowa, but the numbers speak for themselves. The outbreak in Iowa has not been like we’ve seen in other states and other metropolitan areas around the country. It’s a tribute to your early, strong steps.”

Meanwhile, Sioux City still tops a national list of “metro areas with the most recent cases and deaths, relative to their population, in the last two weeks.” Waterloo/Cedar Falls is fourth. Confirmed COVID-19 cases are rising rapidly in several smaller counties where Reynolds lifted restrictions on some business activities last week.

But that’s a topic for another day.

I was struck by Reynolds’ failure this week to follow best practices for slowing the spread of the virus.

James C. Larew is an attorney in Iowa City who served as general counsel and chief of staff for former Governor Chet Culver. -promoted by Laura Belin

Former Governor Chet Culver wrote to Governor Kim Reynolds on May 7, urging her to have an immediate and comprehensive performance audit conducted of Nomi Health’s COVID-19 testing services in Iowa. The Utah-based company is providing testing at drive-through sites under a $26 million no-bid contract with the state. 

Culver suggested that Reynolds ask State Auditor Rob Sand to perform such an audit, or order a comparable review by a competent and independent agency. His letter outlined serious problems already known to the public about the Test Iowa program. He warned that if not remedied immediately, by making Nomi Health’s performance fully compliant with all applicable federal and state laws, and with best pandemic practices, those difficulties will place the health of Iowans at great risk. The full text of the letter follows:

Iowa Republicans were too clever by half when they slipped language targeting Planned Parenthood into a budget bill last year. Instead of prohibiting state agencies from awarding sex education grants to all entities that provide abortions, GOP lawmakers wrote an exception into the law so that UnityPoint facilities could remain eligible for the funding.

For that reason, a Polk County District Court determined this week that the prohibition violated the Iowa Constitution’s equal protection guarantee.

Karl Keeler, president of MercyOne Central Iowa Medical Center, told staff during a May 5 information session that “We have a lot of work to do” to stay safe from novel coronavirus, since Iowa is among five states with the highest level of community spread. The hospital group has adopted new rules requiring patients and visitors as well as staff to wear masks at its facilities.

Keeler also said the 77 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 infections at MercyOne’s Des Moines and West Des Moines facilities as of May 5 was “the highest we’ve had.” The number of Iowans in the hospital because of coronavirus has steadily climbed, reaching a new statewide high of 414 on May 6.