Halfway through January, Pima County is already on track to exceed the total COVID-19 case and death count of December.

With 17,932 cases reported Jan. 1-15, the first month of 2021 will likely exceed the 29,663 coronavirus cases reported in December, according to a memo from County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry.

The first two weeks of January also tallied 329 deaths—also on pace to exceed December’s total, the memo said.

Arizona continues to have the highest coronavirus transmission rate in the nation with an average of 117 cases per 100,000 of the population, according to the CDC.

“Arizona’s outbreak remains appallingly bad. A bit of good fortune (or preferably policy action) is needed to gain additional time to vaccinate Arizona’s most vulnerable citizens,” according to the most recent report by Dr. Joe Gerald, a UA professor who creates weekly coronavirus epidemiology reports based on Arizona Department of Health Services data. “Daily cases and fatalities could double, or perhaps quadruple, before declining under the weight of natural and/or vaccine-induced immunity later this winter.”

During the week ending Jan. 10, 8,274 Pima County residents were diagnosed with COVID-19, creating a new record for weekly case counts in the county and representing an 11% increase from the week prior, according to Gerald's report.

According to Gerald, throughout Arizona, the week ending Jan. 10 saw 60,283 new COVID-19 cases, a 7% increase from the week prior.

While the week of Dec. 20 still remains the state’s deadliest with 759 COVID-19 deaths, Gerald estimates this record will be broken in coming weeks as coronavirus deaths are on pace to exceed 700 a week “for the foreseeable future.”

Gerald reported that coronavirus test positivity declined 2% the week ending Jan. 10 from the previous week throughout Arizona.

“This indicates that viral transmission is now growing slower than testing capacity is increasing. Nevertheless, testing capacity remains woefully inadequate to the scale of the problem,” he wrote.

As of Jan. 15, 56% of the state’s general ward hospital beds were occupied by COVID-19 patients, a 1% decrease from the week prior.

Qui tacet consentit. The ancient legal adage expresses a deep wisdom about the nature of law and politics: silence is consent. Remaining silent in response to an assertion is to accept that assertion

This is why the absurd lie that the Presidential election was stolen has become so powerfully established among Republican voters. Half of Republicans polled indicate they believe the election was stolen. Many on the right sincerely believe the big lie and are actively supporting political terror and sedition out of ignorance and socially-biased reasoning. That is terrible, but eminently fixable if Republican act responsibly.

The lie that this presidential election was stolen is the foundation and justification for the political violence we are experiencing. More violence and more death will result unless this lie is stopped.

Republicans daily and hypocritically call for unity, decry division, and deplore the violence, but refuse to denounce and debunk the lie that is causing all of it.

Merely deploring the violence inspired by the lie is not enough; the lie must be stopped and denounced. Yet many Republicans, including leaders here in Arizona such as Governor Ducey, House Speaker Rusty Bowers, and Senate President Karen Fann, have remained quiet about the lies. Republicans' failure to denounce the lies publicly, explicitly, and loudly are aiding and abetting the very terrorist violence they hypocritically deplore.

The Republicans of the Maricopa Board of Supervisors have been the most public and unequivocal in denouncing and debunking the lies. They deserve our praise and gratitude. Though Speaker Bowers did refuse to call a special session for the illegal purpose of overturning Arizona's Electoral Votes for President, he doesn't get too much credit for quietly refusing to break the law and disenfranchise Arizona's electorate.

Many Republican leaders who know the election lie to be baseless have remained silent out of fear, and it must end.

Some Republicans are afraid to stand up to the lies because they fear violence from their own base. Not an irrational fear given the death threats and vitriol directed at those who do speak up for truth, but all the more reason they must do it.

Republicans rightly venerate and praise those who put their lives on the line to preserve our freedom in our military. But now those same Republican civilians have a chance to stand on the front line of freedom and hazard all for the preservation of our democracy and security.

Republican leaders have the chance to be warriors for truth. All they need do is denounce the lie that is tearing apart their own party and undermining American democracy in a fundamentally more dangerous and permanent way that any foreign adversary ever could. Yet too many refuse to do so.

British actor David Niven, who volunteered for active combat duty in the darkest days of World War II, related an encounter with Churchill. Churchill said to him, "Young man, you did a fine thing to give up your film career to fight for your country. Mark you, had you not done so − it would have been despicable."

It will be a brave and honorable thing worthy of praise for influential Republicans to stand up for truth in the face of the very lies and misinformation which have become a source of identity and unity in their own faction, and not to do so is despicable cowardice and craven self-interest.

Too many Republican Party's leaders know that the stolen election allegation is a lie, and yet remain silent. That is contemptible and must stop.

But how to describe those Republican leaders who are actively promoting and repeating and defending that lie? They are engaged in and inciting sedition against our democracy. That is beyond contemptible. The punishment should be ostracism and civic death. They should be driven from any position of public trust or influence.

We at BlogForArizona.net live and work in Arizona, and our audience is primarily Arizonans, so we have a responsibility to shine the light of truth on Arizona's politics. Some Republican leaders here in Arizona are exploiting and promoting the lie to inspire more violence and intimidate their rivals and opponents. They are promoting the lie to enhance their own power and undermine our democratic tradition.

Let's name the names (not an exhaustive list, just the worst, most blatant offenders, their names below are linked to clear evidence of their promotion of the election lies):

• Representative Paul Gosar
  
• Representative Andy Biggs
  
• Representative Debbie Lesko
  
• Representative David Schweikert
  
• GOP Chairperson Kelli Ward
  
• AZ Rep. Mark Finchem
  
• AZ Rep. Walt Blackman
  
• AZ Sen. Wendy Rogers
  
• AZ Sen. Kelly Townsend
  
• AZ Sen. Sonny Borrelli
  

These leaders are seditionists and traitors. They are enemies of democracy, and thus of all Americans. They are all directly telling the lies about the election that are stoking and justifying violence.

Their careers in any political leadership capacity must be ended by Arizonans who value democracy. Arizona's responsible political leaders must not only denounce the election lie, but punish and denounce those who promote it. Governor Ducey, Speaker Bowers, and President Fann must affirmatively act to debunk the lie and discipline those who are amplifying and exploiting the lie.

But the press must also actually press every Republican in public life to denounce and repudiate the election lie. No policy or event matters more right now.

No Republican leader should be allowed to appear in public or address the public without a demand by the press to first denounce the election lie, as a prerequisite. Failure to do so should be the only story about that appearance, address, or event that matters. The press cannot allow it to become the new normal in our democracy to go about politics as usual while abetting those lies that are killing democracy, and killing Americans.

There must now be a clear division in our politics, not between left and right, but between those who stand for truth and those who use lies to maintain their power, mislead our citizens, and destroy the foundations of our Republic.

We need to know clearly who stands with the lie, so they may be destroyed before they destroy democracy. Democrats, and all American patriots, want unity and peace, but we will only stand together with those who stand beside the truth.

Since Pima County’s COVID-19 vaccine registration site went live Thursday morning, nearly 80,000 qualifying residents have registered. However, Pima County doesn’t have enough vaccines to administer to all registrants, said Pima County Communications Director Mark Evans.

Although demand for vaccines is outstripping the supply, Evans said more appointments will be added as the county receives its weekly vaccine allotment from the state.

Those in the priority 1B group—which includes individuals over 75, educators and protective service workers—can register at any time, but receiving an appointment depends on vaccine ability.

“People are able to register every single day. But it’s important to note that everybody who has registered, it doesn't mean they’re going to get an appointment that day, it’s going to take some time,” Evans said. “It’s essentially creating a line to get in.”

Those who qualify in the priority 1B group can register for a vaccine at www.pima.gov/covid19vaccineregistration or by calling 520-222-0119.

The county sends prioritized batches of registrations to their relative vaccine sites, but TMC and Banner’s registration sites work differently. TMC uploads registrations to its MyChart system, which notifies the registrant when an appointment is available, Evans said.

Banner registrants will make an appointment directly on the website if one is available based on the registrant’s priority group.

“The only way with Banner is you just have to keep going back in and checking strategically to see if there are appointments,” Evans said. “We are making sure there are appointments available every day because the system’s modulated because it’s based on priority systems. So it’s not like it’s first come, first serve.”

The registrations are filtered through Pima County, which grants vaccine appointments based on priority. The Banner and Tucson Medical Center sites will prioritize those 85 and older first, according to Evans.

The county is allowing school districts to prioritize which staff members will receive the vaccine first, while law enforcement agencies and the courts also choose which workers among their agencies will be prioritized.

Continued vaccine strain; 65+ population is now in group 1B

On the opening day of vaccine registration on Jan. 14, 20,000 Pima County residents registered for vaccines. All available appointments at TMC and the two Banner-operated sites were filled in two hours.

Even County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry was unable to make an appointment.

“I, myself attempted to register on the State system, qualified as essential and between the age of 65 and 74, and went through the laborious process to register, obtain an access code, develop a password, fill out all of the fields, including insurance and at the end was told there were no appointments available within 50 miles and no appointment would be available in the future,” he wrote in a memo.

As of 7 p.m. that day, more than 44,700 registrations were accepted, according to Huckelberry’s memo.

Individuals 75 and older, educators and protective service workers will be the first to receive COVID-19 vaccines as the county moves into phase 1B of vaccine rollout. Those 65 and older will be the fourth sub-group to receive the vaccine once the vaccination of the first three groups moves further along and more vaccine becomes available.

The county’s Accelerated Immunization Plan was amended to include the 65+ age group in phase 1B as the CDC changed its guidelines to include those 65 and older, according to the memo.

The 65+ population was originally under phase 1C of the county’s vaccination schedule, but the nearly 120,000 residents between ages 65 to 75 will now be in group 1B, Huckelberry wrote.

As of Jan. 17, Pima County administered 46,847 COVID-19 vaccines and holds the state’s top vaccination rate at 4,484 per 100,00 of the population, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services.

The county had received 81,550 vaccine doses as of Jan. 15. Vaccines administered were at 41,556, while 6,754 second doses were given and 34,802 second doses were needed for recipients to be considered fully immunized, according to the memo.

However, with the addition of those 65 and older in group 1B priority, nearly 400,000 individuals now qualify under phase 1B, adding further pressure to the already strained vaccination system.

The county usually receives about 12,500 doses per week, but has been expecting larger allocations from the state to keep up with demand.

Although the county is now expecting 28,000 weekly doses, Huckelberry wrote this “is inadequate to sustain our vaccination capacity.”

The county administrator said vaccine administration will “dramatically increase” this week as Banner’s vaccine site at the Kino Sports Complex opened Monday and the Tucson Convention Center and University of Arizona sites open Wednesday.

Further complicating the county’s ability to quickly administer vaccines, Huckelberry said the absence of help from the state in rolling out six county vaccination centers has left Pima County to deal with logistical issues on its own.

Meanwhile, with the help of the state health department, Maricopa County has created a 24/7 vaccination center at the State Farm Stadium in Glendale and is working on a second one at the Phoenix Municipal Stadium to open Feb. 1.

Some protective service workers didn’t wait their turn

Some prioritized groups successfully cut the line without the proper registration needed to receive a vaccine, demonstrating the ability to “introduce chaos into the registration system,” Huckelberry wrote.

The county administrator reported several public law enforcement agencies went to TMC and more than 250 police officers from the Tucson Police Department, the Pima County Sheriff's office, FBI, members of the courts and attorneys arrived at the vaccine site without registering for appointments.

“TMC was kind enough to oblige these individuals who failed to observe expected protocols regarding registration,” Huckleberry said. “It is unfortunate these individuals failed to understand the importance of observing established protocols and inserted their registration above those who are more critical.”

The county administrator said he’s instructed TMC to deny vaccines to anyone who has not registered for an appointment.

If you qualify to receive a COVID-19 vaccine under group 1B, visit: www.pima.gov/covid19vaccineregistration.

A map of COVID-19 vaccine and testing centers is available at https://pimatestcentersv3.netlify.app/vaccine-centers

Tucson-based Zoom Records had released a never-before-issued single by Pete Ronstadt and The Nightbeats, more than 60 years after it was recorded, and all proceeds support Youth On Their Own charity.

Pete Ronstadt (you may have heard of his sister, Linda) and The Nightbeats were a group of seniors at Catalina High School in 1959. They recorded a cover of "Sea of Love" at Audio Recorders of Arizona in Phoenix the same year with Grammy Award winning engineer Jack Miller. Now, that single is pressed in a limited edition of 300 7-inch vinyls by Zoom Records (credited as Tucson’s “first rock label,” also founded by Catalina High students.)

The track certainly has a full ’50s sound, with a pop structure accompanied by saxophone, piano and drums. One side of the 45 features the original song as recorded in 1959, while the opposite side includes the track with additional strings accompaniment.

For more information, and to purchase the vinyl, click here.

LOS ANGELES – Like music venues around the world, the Paramount ballroom has been forced to endure months of limited work, reduced revenue and a forced transition to the digital world – no easy task for the venerable Boyle Heights venue, which is nearly 100 years old and has a legacy of supporting underdog artists.

Live-streaming is one option, but the expense is prohibitive, said Vicky Cabildo, the ballroom’s booker and production manager. Determining a price for the tickets is another issue faced by venues across the U.S.

“Aside from the location, you still need sound people, you still need to clean,” Cabildo said. “We have to pay the bands; you can’t ask people who aren’t working right now to do stuff for free, it’s just not fair. It’s also like how do we charge for these things? Not everyone is Katy Perry or Pearl Jam.”

Politico looks at how the presidency of Donald Trump has damaged the Republican Party's fortunes in Arizona:

The Trump era did more damage to the Republican Party in Arizona than almost anywhere else. Over the past two years, Republicans lost both Senate seats. In November, the state flipped Democratic in a presidential race for the first time since 1996. The GOP state party chair is currently at war with the governor.

President Donald Trump’s fingerprints are on all of it, yet the state party will likely pass a resolution next week to officially “support & thank” the president. It’ll also vote on measures to censure three prominent Republicans who were deemed insufficiently beholden to Trump: Gov. Doug Ducey, former Sen. Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, the wife of the late senator.

The adulation is an expression of GOP grassroots loyalty to Trump, but it’s also a portrait of a party that’s run aground in service to him. His defeat has triggered attempts to adopt an even harder pro-Trump line, raising questions about the party’s ability to compete in an increasingly diverse state that’s edging leftward.

“The craziness from the state Republican Party … it’s pretty embarrassing,” said Kirk Adams, a former Republican state House speaker and former chief of staff to Ducey. “We have been fed a steady diet of conspiracy theories and stolen election rhetoric and, really, QAnon theories from the state Republican Party since before the election, but certainly after.”

He said, “What’s … consequential is the effect the state Republican Party is having on the Republican brand in the state of Arizona.”

The fallout has been swift. Several thousand Arizona Republicans have abandoned the party since the U.S. Capitol riot that Trump helped to incite, with the majority of the defectors re-registering without a designated party, according to state elections officials. Business leaders are publicly recoiling from the GOP after party officials thrust Arizona into the center of Trump’s failed effort to overturn the election results, further dividing an already fractured party.

“Let us be clear: we find the weeks of disinformation and outright lies to reverse a fair and free election from the head of the Arizona Republican Party and some elected officials to be reprehensible,” read a full-page ad in The Arizona Republic this week from Greater Phoenix Leadership, a group of CEOs. “The political party organization and these elected officials, which some of us have supported in the past, have again embarrassed Arizona on a national stage.”

Read the whole thing here.

Meanwhile, Libertarian-leaning Reason mag suggests the Arizona GOP has become "a Trump cult":

With 5,400 new cases reported today, the number of Arizona’s confirmed novel coronavirus cases topped 679,000 as of Monday, Jan 18, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services.

Pima County, which reported 681 new cases today, now has 90,765 of the state’s 679,282 confirmed cases.

A total of 11,265 Arizonans have died after contracting COVID-19, including 1,422 deaths in Pima County, according to the Jan. 18 report.

The number of hospitalized COVID cases statewide dropped slightly in recent days but still remains far above the peak levels of the summer’s first wave. ADHS reported that as of Jan. 17, 4,752 COVID patients were hospitalized in the state. The summer peak of 3,517 hospitalized COVID patients was set on July 13; that number hit a subsequent low of 468 on Sept. 27, or less than a tenth of the current count.

A total of 1,844 people visited emergency rooms on Jan. 17 with COVID symptoms, down from the record high of 2,341 set on Tuesday, Dec. 29. That number had previously peaked at 2,008 on July 7; it hit a subsequent low of 653 on Sept. 28.

A total of 1,097 COVID-19 patients were in intensive care unit beds on Jan. 17. The summer’s record number of patients in ICU beds was 970, set on July 13. The subsequent low was 114 on Sept. 22.

WASHINGTON – The Arizona Capitol is surrounded by two rows of chain-link fence and police presence has been increased, as authorities brace for possible violence in response to the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.

The preparations come amid reports that the FBI has warned of possible armed protests at all 50 state capitals, on the heels of the violent mob that breached the U.S. Capitol as Congress was certifying the election of Biden. Five people died in that attack, including a Capitol Police officer.

The FBI Phoenix office said Thursday that it “has not received any specific and substantiated threat to the Arizona state capitol or other government buildings,” but that it is working with state and local authorities to track security concerns.

Arizona Department of Public Safety spokesperson Bart Graves said in an email that the fences were installed around the Capitol complex “out of an abundance of caution” on Jan. 7, the day after the assault on the U.S. Capitol. Protesters also surrounded the state Capitol for hours the same day the U.S. Capitol was stormed, with some of the crowd in Arizona armed, according to news reports.