Looking At The Next Six Months Of Pandemic Life | Morning Newsletter

The Eagles dropped their home opener to the Los Angeles Rams yesterday, 37-19. The franchise is now 0-2 for the first time since the 2015 season, the season before the team drafted quarterback Carson Wentz.

In other news, presidential candidate Joe Biden made remarks in Philadelphia yesterday about the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the city is set to approve a plan to open 17 locations where voters can request, receive, fill out, and submit a mail ballot in one step.

-- Josh Rosenblat (@joshrosenblat, [email protected])

What to expect over the next six months of pandemic life, according to Philly experts

Congrats, all. A half-year of COVID-19 is now behind us. My colleagues Tom Avril, Marie McCullough, Aubrey Whelan, and Jason Laughlin are now looking ahead, speaking to Philly experts about what the next six months of pandemic life might look like.

From treatments and vaccines to racial disparities and protective gear, the experts offer some trends to look for. One thread that connects many of them: masks.

In Philly, Joe Biden warns that confirming a new Supreme Court justice now would cause ‘irreversible damage’

“To jam this nomination through the Senate is just an exercise in raw political power. And I don’t believe the people of this nation will stand for it," Biden said during an address yesterday from the National Constitution Center, two days after the death of Justice Ginsburg.

For many folks in Philadelphia, Ginsburg’s death was met with tributes that lauded her as a legal and feminist icon.

The coronavirus has caused a coin shortage, and Philly’s mint is working overtime to make up for it

The Philadelphia Mint is the nation’s largest producer of coin currency. It has 14 presses that each produce 750 coins a minute while now running seven days a week in order to help with a pandemic-caused coin shortage. Right now, quarters, nickels, and dimes are rare commodities.

A Temple professor told my colleague Jason Laughlin that the shortage is disproportionately impacting those who are elderly and poor because they typically use the most coins. The professor, an expert in supply-chain management, also compared the shortage to some of the issues associated with a move toward a cashless economy.

What you need to know today

Here are the 17 early voting locations that are opening across Philadelphia.In at least four Pennsylvania prisons over the last few years, prisoners have accused a unit of prison staff that conducts special operations of destroying legal documents, smearing food or detergent into paperwork, and explicitly invoking hate symbols such as swastikas and racist and homophobic epithets, according to reporting from my colleague Samantha Melamed.My colleague Juliana Feliciano Reyes spoke with workers who are concerned about being defenseless when customers don’t wear masks.A political transformation has led Philadelphia’s suburbs to mobilize against Trump in the six weeks before the election and it might help Biden offset the president’s gains in Pennsylvania.The Proud Boys, a group the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified as a “general hate group,” planned a rally in Clark Park on Saturday. West Philly turned out in force to rebuke them.Some health experts are saying that it might be time for schools in the region to consider reopening for students this month because of recent coronavirus transmission rates.Through your eyes | #OurPhilly

These courts look good in color. Thanks for sharing, @kees2life.

Tag your Instagram posts or tweets with #OurPhilly and we’ll pick our favorite each day to feature in this newsletter and give you a shout-out!

That’s interesting

???You can become a poll worker for the election this November (and make up to $250 doing it).??A La Salle microbiology class offers scientific lessons about growing yeast, measuring density, forming hypotheses, and more through brewing beer.??While some Halloween attractions get socially distant, others are ghost towns.??Penn State got its Big Ten football schedule Saturday. And although the start was delayed, it won’t take long for the Nittany Lions to take on the best.??Starting today, last call for Pennsylvania bars and restaurants will be at 11 p.m.??Here’s what it’s like inside of Steak 48, a massive new steakhouse at Broad and Spruce Streets.Opinions

“But what made Justice Ginsburg a leader and jurist for the ages is not these individual accomplishments, remarkable as they are. Rather, it was her fight to make the paths she forged accessible to all Americans.” -- writes Serena Mayeri, author and law and history professor at Penn’s Carey Law School, about how Ruth Bader Ginsburg made the impossible look easy.

The selection of a Delaware waterfront proposal with no expectations of big public subsidies over the Sixers' arena-centered proposal shows that Philly’s master planning process that’s driven by the public is working and has lessons we can learn, the Inquirer Editorial Board writes.Should the size of the Supreme Court expand to change the ideological balance? In a Pro/Con, authors Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin debate with Michael H. McGinley, a partner at Dechert LLP who was a law clerk to Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and then-Judge Neil Gorsuch.What we’re reading

Billy Penn has an article that looks back at the Great Philadelphia Balloon Race. It doesn’t happen anymore, though.NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg offers her perspective on her five-decade-long friendship with Ginsburg.A Buzzfeed News investigation examines how Facebook knew leaders of countries used the site to manipulate voters, but didn’t do anything about it.Your Daily Dose of | Butter

Artists Jim Victor and Marie Pelton have worked with chocolate, cheese, and ice. But it’s butter that has brought them worldwide fame. The Conshohocken couple have created large butter sculptures for agriculture shows and fairs all over the country.

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