For the latest updates go
to “Trump Blows His Big Coronavirus Test: Part II.”
4/24/20: A quick check Friday morning shows that the U.S. has 887,622 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 50,283 Americans have died.
We
have four times as many cases as Spain, the next country on the list, and twice
as many dead as Italy, the next worst, and 32.2% of all cases worldwide.
Do
we dare mention President Trump’s famous prediction on February 26? On that
glorious day, we had only 15 confirmed cases, and the Science-Moron-in-Chief
predicted we’d be down pretty close to zero soon.
Canada
has 42,110 cases and 2,147 deaths, 57 deaths per million, roughly a
third the fatality rate in the United States.
Mexico has 11,633 and 1,069 deaths.
Russia, where Vladimir Putin has spent weeks denying there was a problem (sound familiar?) reported 5,849 new cases in just one day. But Putin is still Putin. That means if Russia has nearly 69,000 confirmed cases …
Mexico has 11,633 and 1,069 deaths.
Russia, where Vladimir Putin has spent weeks denying there was a problem (sound familiar?) reported 5,849 new cases in just one day. But Putin is still Putin. That means if Russia has nearly 69,000 confirmed cases …
Sure,
only 615 people have died. Because in Russia, the “Enemies of the People” say
what Putin wants.
Finally,
if you scrolled down to 32nd place, sandwiched in between Poland and
Romania, you had:
We keep citing this example. South Korea (which
has a population one-sixth the size of the United States) discovered it had its
first case of COVID-19 on the same day authorities in this country discovered
ours, a man who showed up at an urgent care facility in Snohomish County,
Washington.
And here we have the fatal difference. In South
Korea, government officials listened to the scientists. They took the threat
seriously from the start and ramped up testing and quarantining at once.
President Trump and the other loudest voices in
the Windmill Party (see: 4/22-23/20) downplayed the danger and let the
virus explode.
They weren’t worried.
It was just “the common cold, folks.”
___
4/22-23/20: Time to
face this simple truth. Our president is the leader of the Windmill Party. He
can tell rank and file members anything and they swallow his words whole. If he
says windmill noise causes cancer, they don’t blink. If he says climate change
is a “hoax,” they nod. If scientists at NASA and NOAA are sounding the alarms,
they tune them out. If they just believe in Donald J. Trump, there’s no need to
think for themselves.
Not
to deny that the Windmill Party includes many fine folks. Some of this
blogger’s friends, neighbors, and even favorite relatives are known to vote the
Windmill Party line.
 |
| Science is for sissies. |
That
doesn’t mean this party isn’t chock full of nuts. And those nuts drive Windmill
Party policy most of the time. You have the climate change deniers, of course. You
also have the professional deniers who make millions denying reality. Alex
Jones, peddler of both ridiculous conspiracy theories and dubious products,
including coronavirus-curing toothpaste, is one. In the denier world, Barack
Obama was never born in America. The bloody slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary
School was a “false flag.” The massacre of first graders and their teachers wasn’t
the work of a screwed up 15-year-old armed with his mother’s AR-15. It was
pulled off by the government, so Obama could have an excuse to seize all our
guns. The opinion makers in the Windmill Party aren’t even good with math—and
the rank and file are too busy with their lives to check the figures out. That
means when Sean Hannity claimed 95,000,000 Americans were out of work
when Obama left office, his listeners were justly outraged.
“Justly,”
that is, had that number been remotely
close to the truth.
At
a time in history when we need to understand the science of the coronavirus and
its spread, we have a political party led by people who believe the laws of
subtraction no longer pertain when they’re big guy is seated in the Oval Office.
In January, when Trump and his toadies were still bragging about the seven million jobs he had created since taking over,
the rank and file let out a raucous cheer. Trump never tired of pointing out
that the unemployment rate was the lowest level in fifty years—which, by the way, this
blogger admits was true. (This blogger believes in the immutable rules of math.)
The problem with Windmill science and math, figuratively, is that windmill
noises don’t cause cancer, and if you believe it does, you’re following a fool.
You can’t take 95 million (Candidate Trump put the figure at 93 million,
himself), subtract seven million jobs created, and come up with the lowest
unemployment number in fifty years.
That’s
not real math.
Now
we find ourselves swamped by trouble, in large part due to President Trump’s
ability to ignore science. The Windmill folks believed him when he claimed COVID-19
was like the flu. They weren’t worried, because their hero promised when it got
warmer in April the virus would go away. They believed all the loudest deniers in
their party. They listened when Rush Limbaugh said the coronavirus was actually
“the common cold, folks.” They believed Rush because Rush had warned them about the “four corners of deceit” for many
years. Those four were: government, academia, science and media.
On
an almost daily basis, Limbaugh and others like him worked to fire up the
Windmill Party base. And the base believed. They listened when Laura Ingraham and
Ainsley Earhardt and that whole goofy Fox News crew said there was no need to
be alarmed. They took comfort knowing the virus was no threat. The president
was nonchalant about taking any action to address the virus spread. Party
members assumed the nation was in good hands because they didn’t believe anyone
in the media who said it was not. But the nation wasn’t in good hands and Trump
was a bumbling buffoon.
The
four corners of “truth” for Trump and the Windmill Party turned out to be
superstition, simplification, bullshit and lies.
*
Nothing
this president—or any other—could have kept our country from suffering serious
pain. But there was a chance to blunt the spread and limit that pain in the
first weeks of the crisis.
That
chance was thrown away.
The
science was ignored—and now we must pay an astronomical price. Today, we
learned that 4.4 million more Americans had filed for unemployment. That brings
the total for the last five weeks to 26.5 million.
That
is what happens when you compare a virus with some of the characteristics of SARS
and MERS (my daughter, who works in infectious diseases at the CDC, just
explained the situation to me in a phone conversation) to “the common cold,
folks.” You don’t act with the urgency that you should.
And
you pay and pay and pay.
*
We
had fresh evidence of the damage that can result again yesterday. Dr. Rick
Bright, the director of the federal agency that was working on a vaccine to fight
the coronavirus, released a letter, announcing that he had been fired.
He said he refused to bend science to fit the president’s whims.
If you haven’t been
paying attention, because you’ve been busy trying to figure out how to pay last
month’s bills—let alone the bills for this month—you may not realize the president
has been
touting an almost magical cure for COVID-19, a drug
called hydroxychloroquine.
The drug has never been tested for the purpose, but Trump has said hydroxychloroquine
could be “a gift from god.” He had “a hunch,” he said, it would work to fight
off the virus and he began pushing hard for it to be used.
The
problem was that the Windmill Party folks were immediately sold. Ingraham made
it clear on her nightly show that the drug would be a “game changer” and we could
all thank Donald J. Trump. Hannity touted the drug. Tucker Carlson invited a
guest on his show who swore that hydroxychloroquine had a “100 percent” cure
rate in a clinical trial conducted by Stanford University.
Behind the scenes, Dr. Bright was making it clear he believed
the drug would not work—and would in fact do harm.
What, then, was the sin for which he was fired?
Dr. Bright says he was shunted aside because of his “insistence that the
government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the
COVID-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not
in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit.”
Scientific merit?
Bah, the Windmill people don’t trust science!
In his statement, delivered by his lawyers, Bright
said he was “speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science—not politics
or cronyism—has to lead the way. Rushing blindly towards unproven drugs can
be disastrous and result in countless more deaths,” he added. “Science, in
service to the health and safety of the American people, must always trump
politics.”
*
For now, we live in a free country, where Dr.
Bright can publish his statement and employ the word “trump” in a clever way. That
is, we still enjoy free speech. The New York Times can pick up the story.
We still have freedom of the press. Trump might not like it, nor his fans in
the Windmill Party. But we don’t live in China. Yet. In China, of course, they
silenced whistleblowers who warned that COVID-19 was a threat.
In this country, a reporter—a person President Trump
would tell his followers was an “Enemy of the People”—inquired during the daily press conference: Was Dr.
Bright fired for taking a stand?
And in this country, the leader of the Windmill
Party could only respond,
“Maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t; I don’t know
who he is.”
___
4/21/20:
Tuesday proves to be another depressing day. A few minutes before midnight,
Johns Hopkins updates its tallies and report that the United States has 825,041 confirmed
cases of the coronavirus. That would be four times as many as
Spain, the country in sad second place.
*
It’s
also illustrative to consider how the President of the United States starts his
day. His first tweet comes at 5:19 a.m., before the
sun has even cast shadows on the White House lawn.
Trump
isn’t thinking about how to get the country out of a giant hole—which he helped
dig, himself. No. He’s watching MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” hosted by Joe Scarborough
and Mika Brzezinski. And he’s pissed off. That means he’s going to lash out,
without the least bit of class.
This is
epic Trump. This is who he is. This is how he spends his precious time, during
a national crisis. ” No comforting “Fireside Chats,” for this fool.
He’d
rather tweed stupid shit:
Watched the first 5 minutes of poorly
rated Morning Psycho on MSDNC just to see if he is as “nuts” as
people are saying. He’s worse. Such hatred and contempt! I used to do his show
all the time before the 2016 election, then cut him off. Wasn’t worth the
effort, his mind is shot!
It is amazing that I became President of the
United States with such a totally corrupt and dishonest Lamestream Media going
after me all day, and all night. Either I’m really good, far better than the
Fake News wants to admit, or they don’t have nearly the power as once thought!
I’ve had great “ratings” my whole life, there’s
nothing unusual about that for me. The White House News Conference ratings are ‘through
the roof’ (Monday Night Football, Bachelor Finale, @nytimes)
but I don’t care about that I care about going around the Fake News to the
PEOPLE!”
When
the stock markets open for business a few hours later, oil prices fall below zero, as consumption plunges around
the world.
That should be the president’s focus, not what
he hears on television. That and thousands of deaths, and millions of jobs
lost.
(Prices
do rebound on Wednesday, with a barrel of oil selling for $15, still at historically
low levels.)
*
___
4/20/20: The
Marion Correctional Institute here in Ohio is a volcanic hotspot for COVID-19. After testing the entire
inmate population, officials discovered that 73%, 1,828 prisoners, were
infected. Throw in 109 guards and other staff members. Across the state, 2,400
inmates are sick and 244 staff. Those numbers represent more than a fifth of
all infections in Ohio (12,919).
The
economic and social costs, let alone the cost in lives, continues to cut in all
kinds of directions. The $15 billion youth sports industry in this country has been
snuffed. Softball players are no longer chasing flyballs. Lacrosse goalies have
no shots to stop. Elite boys and girls soccer players are reduced to playing
Scrabble at home. Thumb wrestling has replaced mats. More than 113 youth sports
organizations have signed on to a plea to Congress, asking for $8.5 billion in recovery funds.
At
his press briefing on Monday, of course, the president is feeling
sorry for himself. Here he is , stuck in the White House doing his job, and
he hasn’t left the premises, he says, “in months.”
White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor begs to differ, in
part because she knows how calendars work.
When Alcindor reminds the president
that he had campaign rallies in February and March, he seems…confused.
“You held rallies in February and
in March and there are some Americans...” she tried to say.
“Oh, I don’t know about rallies.
I really don’t know about rallies,” Trump replied. And we know that man loves
him some rallies. “I know one thing. I haven’t left the White House in months
except for a brief moment to give a wonderful ship, the Comfort.”
“You held a rally in March,” the
reporter insisted. “March 2,” to be exact, she added for emphasis.
“I don't know. Did I hold a
rally? I’m sorry. I hold a rally. Did I hold a rally?” the president replied. “Let
me tell you, in January, when I did this, we had virtually no cases and no
deaths.” So, as for holding rallies in
January, the president explained, “How could I not?”
That was fine, of course, but
Alcindor was asking about February and March. By that time the virus was exploding,
and Trump was likening it to the flu.
Plus, he spent the weekend of March
6-9 at his private resort in Mar-a-Lago, and even managed to get in some golf.
So, Mr. President, talk to a few nurses or doctors who have
been putting in sixteen-hour shifts, and risking their lives, on the front line
for weeks.
___
4/19/20: Most Americans
are not buying the bullshit Trump peddles in his daily press conferences. A new poll shows only 36% trust what the president says
about the coronavirus.
(If
people read this blog, that figure would drop to 3%. And that is assuming some would
have crippling comprehension issues.)
By
comparison, 69% trust Dr. Anthony Fauci
and 66% trust their governors. People are worried, too, with 73% saying they
fear that someone in their immediate family could end up being infected.
*
During
difficult days, a dose of comedy never hurts. I tuned in to John Oliver’s show
on Comedy Central, Sunday night. I assure you it was far more fun than watching
Trump drone on in another press conference.
Here’s
some of what I learned by watching a real comedian—rather than Trump, a comic
by mistake. I also did a bit of follow up myself.
1.
Many Americans are ignorant or incredibly dumb. According to a Gallup survey,
57% of people who indulge in a “conservative news diet” believe the coronavirus
is no more or less risk than seasonal flu.
2.
Other ignorant or incredibly dumb people believe
consuming boiled garlic will cure the virus.
3.
Others are purchasing (and drinking) mothers’
breast milk, believing it will serve as a tonic.
4.
Greg Rigano, “a Stanford University Medical
School Adviser,” was a recent guest on Tucker Carlson’s show.
5.
Rigano was there to tout the curative powers of hydroxychloroquine (an anti-malarial drug that President Trump
has been touting) for use against COVID-19.
6.
According to Rigano the
drug had been shown in one study to have a cure rate of 100%.
7.
As soon as I heard that,
even during a clip on Oliver’s comedy show, I thought, “This guy has to be a
fraud!”
9.
I knew Carlson was. And the guy was making
millions as a commentator on Fox News.
10. Tucker reminded me of a description Barry
Goldwater used to saddle a foe: “If he were any dumber, he’d be a tree.”
12. In the past, he had also
tried to raise money so he could work on ways to “cure aging,” or “cure cancer,”
or “end Alzheimers” and, even better, help people “live forever.”
13. Sean Hannity insisted on his March 19 show
that a study Rigano had been touting, was done in “consultation with Stanford
University School of Medicine, UAB School of Medicine.”
14. This was news to both schools.
15. Rigano also appeared on Laura Ingraham’s show
to trumpet the magical properties of hydroxychloroquine.
16. Ingraham also fell for Rigano’s
shtick. Did I mention Goldwater’s comment? It was like Fox News had a forest.
17. On April 6, Ingraham made
a special trip to the White House to see President Trump. She was there to convince
him the miracle drug would work. Miraculously, of course.
18. I actually think she
should have been pushing Trump to come out in favor of adults drinking mothers’
breast milk.
19. Last, but not least, I
learned that Pastor Kenneth Copeland, another Trump fan, had his own solution
to our coronavirus crisis.
*
I
also learned, by looking stuff up, that several governors thought
Trump’s claim that they had enough testing to start opening up their economies was
just more of the president’s franks and beans.
On
Friday night, Trump blew off governors’ concerns about problems with testing. In
fact, Trump simplified a complex issue—because, if you listen to the man, you
know he never really understands the issues. He said his administration was sending
out 5.5 million testing swabs to the states. And wasn’t he great! The swabs, he
continued, “can be done easily by the governors themselves. Mostly it’s cotton.
It’s not a big deal, you can get cotton easily, but if they can’t get it, we
will take care of it.”
Also,
I think he should have said, little sticks. He should have claimed, “We will get
the states lots of little sticks. Or doctors and nurses can break twigs off
trees and stick cotton balls on the end.”
Trump
even complained that Democratic senators were “rude and nasty” during a talk with
Vice President Pence. Trump really hates it when people are rude and nasty. I’m
sure you noticed that all along.
Sen.
Angus King, an independent, for one, described the Trump administration’s
failure to ramp up testing a “dereliction of duty.”
And
on the Sunday morning talk show circuit, governors were out in force, making their
concerns clear.
____________________
“But
to try to push this off, to say that the governors have plenty of testing and
they should just get to work on testing, somehow we aren’t doing our job, is
just absolutely false.”
Gov. Larry
Hogan
____________________
“That’s just delusional to be making statements
like that,” Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia said in response to Trump’s whining.
“We have been fighting every day for PPE,” Northam said. Some personal
protective equipment was coming in. True. But his state had been fighting to
get the necessary testing kits, and it wasn’t just testing kits that were in
short supply. “We don’t even have enough swabs, believe it or not. And we’re
ramping that up,” Northam explained. “But for the national level to say that we
have what we need and really to have no guidance to the state levels is
just irresponsible, because we’re not there yet.”
Maryland
Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, couldn’t agree with Trump either. On CNN he
explained that “lack of testing” was “probably
the number one problem in America and has been from the beginning of this
crisis.”
In
fact, Hogan all but labeled Trump a liar:
And I
have repeatedly made this argument to the leaders in Washington on behalf of
the rest of the governors in America. And I can tell you I talk to governors on
both sides of the aisle nearly every single day. The administration, I think,
is trying to ramp up testing and trying—they are doing some things with respect
to private labs. But to try to push this off, to say that the governors have
plenty of testing and they should just get to work on testing, somehow we aren’t
doing our job, is just absolutely false.
Governor
Hogan’s communication director tweeted soon after, saying that after lengthy
negotiations, Maryland had “acquired 500,000 COVID-19 tests from LabGenomics in
South Korea.”
LIBERATE
MARYLAND!
Gov.
Charlie Baker, of Massachusetts, another Republican, made it clear the federal
government needed to up its game. He said he had
talked to numerous officials and cited both the CDC and FDA as major players in
establishing “a far more significant testing capacity in the United States.”
LIBERATE MASSACHUSETTS!
A third Republican governor, Mike DeWine of Ohio, offered a similar
assessment. Troubles with testing were holding his state back. Reagents, chemicals
used to read test results, were in short supply. He “could probably double, maybe even triple testing in Ohio
virtually overnight if the FDA would prioritize companies that are putting a
slightly different formula together for the extraction reagent kit.” Ohio
didn’t have enough nasal swaps, or tubes for blood or necessary fluids to carry
out the thousands and thousands of tests that were needed. “We have a
shortage, worldwide shortage, of some of the materials that go into this,” he
told Chuck Todd in an interview on NBC. “So, we really need help—if anybody in
the FDA is watching, this would really take our, take our capacity up, literally
Chuck, overnight.”
LIBERATE OHIO!
California Gov. Gavin Newsom had the
same concerns. “We need more swabs, we’ve been very direct and pointed in terms
of working with our partners at FEMA to try to procure those swabs.” (Twigs, maybe?) If California had more reagent
and RNA extraction kits, they could much more easily slow the spread of the disease.
“We could be doing exponentially more....We’ll be looking for all the support
we can get private, public, federal, local, state.”
LIBERATE CALIFORNIA!
“Can’t do
the tests without those.”
My
favorite, though, would be the governor who requested
anonymity before he or she dared risk a petulant president’s puerile wrath.
(I am guessing this governor was also a Republican, and hoped to avoid getting slapped
with an insulting nickname by the head of his or her party.)
At
any rate, Jack Tapper, on CNN, read off what the anonymous source had written
to him. “Just wanted you to know how frustrating the
doublespeak is that’s coming from the White House,” the mystery governor
explained. “When the White House says there’s plenty of ‘testing capacity’ in
the states they are referring to the number of tests that could be run on
machines that exist in hospitals, commercial labs and doctor’s offices,” he or
she said. “So, why aren’t states using all the capacity? There’s a worldwide
shortage of swabs, VTM and reagent. Can’t do tests without all of those. And
they don’t come in a package—you have to buy each of those from multiple suppliers.”
LIBERATE
SOME STATE!
*
Nor
did it seem that most medical experts were sold on the idea that Trump had done
his job, and the governors could do plenty of tests, if they’d only show a
little initiative and go looking for some of those swabs.
Dr. Tom Frieden, the former
director of CDC, told CNN that the amount of coronavirus testing the United
States was currently doing—150,000 tests per day—was not nearly enough and that
it was “absolutely the federal government’s responsibility” to help boost test
capacity.
“We really need the federal
government, commercial laboratories, private sector hospitals to continue to
step up,” Frieden said. “The federal government has a crucial role to play in
ensuring the supply chain here and focusing on ramping up test capacity.”
Of course, Trump fans, if they
weren’t too lazy to think for themselves, could look it up and find that
Frieden had been head of the CDC under Obama (hated name; sound of Trump fans
loading guns). And, like me, they might discover that Frieden was arrested for groping a woman in 2018.
So they could maybe chalk his
words up to partisanship…
Except, Dr. Deborah Birx, Trump’s own
coronavirus expert, admitted that the U.S. needed to ramp up testing even more,
to 500,000 tests per day. Originally, it had been thought that 750,000 tests
per week would suffice. “We’ve long since passed that,” she told reporters.
Dr. Fauci, Trump’s other expert, explained that
we were doing 1.5 to 2 million tests per week. “We need a partnership between the federal
government and the local people, including the governors, to help them get to
things that they maybe not have any access to,” he said.
Late Sunday, Trump announced he would invoke
the Defense Production Act to compel companies to ramp up production of swabs.
Postscript: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi summed up Trump’s performance
herself. “We’re way late on it,” Pelosi said of widespread testing. “And that
is the failure. President gets an ‘F,’ a failure, on the testing.”
___
4/18/20: Life in
America remains on hold. Even Jehovah’s Witnesses are feeling the pain. Brenda Francis tells reporters she has
been knocking on doors for 47 years in an effort to spread the faith. Now she’s
idled. In mid-March, instructions came down from church headquarters. Members
should stop “witnessing,” going door-to-door and knocking on doors to win
converts.
Not
everyone will miss them and their pamplets.
*
“Partisan voices are trying to politicize the
issue of testing.”
President
Trump continues to stew in his bile. In his mind all critics are “sick puppies.”
All who question his decisions have nefarious motives. During his Saturday press
conference, which lasted over an hour, he attacked again.
A
reporter asked about complaints from governors that they didn’t have adequate testing
capacity.
“We have
tremendous testing capacity,” Trump snapped. “Unfortunately, some partisan
voices are trying to politicize the issue of testing.”
Trump, of
course, would never politicize the issue, and proved it by complaining because his
administration inherited “broken junk” from Team Obama and found the pandemic-fighting
“cupboard” bare. So, if the virus was spreading, it was really his
predecessor’s fault, and he wasn’t politicizing the story at all.
Trump
only wanted to make it clear. Thousands of Americans might be dying, but the real
victim in this tragic tale was Donald J. Trump. He had been faulted for sending
mixed messages. People should follow the White House guidelines, including
social distancing, he said. But he also supported protesters in several states,
who were calling on governors to reopen for business.
Reporters
also inquired about a series of three tweets the day before:
“LIBERATE MINNESOTA!”
“LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”
…and…
“LIBERATE VIRGINIA,
and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”
What
was the president really saying—and why had he singled out only Democratic
states?
“There is a lot
of injustice,” he scowled. “When you look at Virginia, where they want to take
your guns away, they want to violate your Second Amendment. I am getting along
very nicely with the governor of Michigan, but she has things [in her shutdown
order]—don’t buy paint, don’t buy roses, don’t buy—she’s got all these crazy
things.”
Trump
insisted he got along with the woman who ran Michigan, who he had labeled “Half”
Whitmer only a few days ago. And he and she had a great relationship, albeit
she was kind of crazy.
Trump continued—not politicizing the story at all, but saying
of Gov. Whitmer, “I really believe somebody sitting in their boat in a lake
should be okay. They shouldn’t arrest people. Some of them are being
unreasonable,” he said of the governors, who, did he mention were Democrats?
___
4/16-17/20: The brutal numbers pile higher and higher. Another 5.2 million Americans filed for
unemployment in the latest reporting period. That brings the four-week total
to 22 million.
As a former history
teacher, I can say, very soberly, that these are Great Depression-type
numbers.
The death toll stands at
35,353.
Another 13,369 Americans
are hospitalized in serious or critical condition.
 |
| Each dot represents a thousand new unemployment claims for the week. Top row: shaded dots represent the equal of the entire work force in Minnesota. Second row, shaded: equivalent of all of Arkansas and Iowa work force. Third row: Wisconsin. Bottom row: District of Columbia and New Mexico. |
*
Another interesting number for a Friday morning: It is now estimated
that 280,000 undocumented workers are manning the
healthcare front lines in this country, many in low-paid nursing home jobs.
That figure includes an estimated 62,500 Deferred Action Childhood
Arrival or DACA-eligible individuals. Anel Medina, a 28-year-old oncology nurse
for Penn Medicine in Philadelphia is one. At least 200, including Dr. Jirayut New Latthivongskorn, who came here from Thailand when he
was nine, were in medical school in 2019, or had already graduated.
(See, Trump fans: Not all undocumented workers came here to rape
or kill or join MS-13 and cut off your heads.)
*
ON A LESS SOBERING NOTE,
when your bailout check arrives in the mail, you will be thrilled to see
Trump’s giant signature jumping out at you from the memo line. This will be the
first time a Chief Executive’s name has ever appeared on a check issued by the
U.S. Treasury.
Because: Narcissism!
____________________
If you are a taxpayer, you
are actually mailing a check to yourself.
____________________
We should also note that if
you are a taxpayer, you are actually mailing a check to yourself. Your name
should appear twice.
To you, to be cashed.
From you.
Here’s how it works. Your
present tax-paying self decides to kite a check. You don’t have the money in
your account. You and all your taxpaying peers will, hopefully, spend the money
you send yourselves and kickstart the moribund economy. Your future taxpaying
selves will eventually repay the money through higher taxes, or by living with
drastically reduced government services, such as national defense and national
parks, and maybe no Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security for future generations.
Have we mentioned the projected
budget deficit for Fiscal Year 2020? Yes, we have. But let’s point it out
again. The deficit was going to be $1.2 trillion, even before COVID-19 hit.
Remember the “good old
days?” Like 2015 or 2018. It seems like only yesterday that Donald J. Trump
promised we’d get tired of winning if we elected him—and
he’d eliminate the federal deficit
if we gave him two terms—and Mexico would pay for the wall—and his tax cuts would pay for themselves—and the Dow Jones would soar—and repealing and replacing Obamacare would be “so easy”—and North Korea would no longer
be a nuclear threat—and he’d show us his taxes.
Well, don’t you have to
wonder, even if you like Trump? Will he show his taxes this time around?
Wouldn’t it be nice to know
what he paid in 2017, 2018 and 2019? Or does he pay no taxes at all? Does
Trump park his dough in offshore tax havens, like so many of the
Top 1%? Does he use all kinds of loopholes and accounting gimmicks to avoid
paying his share? Are his tax lawyers really slick? As a nation, we’re about to
tumble into the deepest financial hole we’ve tripped into since 1929.
Wouldn’t the MAGA crowd
like to find out? Does their tangerine-tinted hero help pay for his own big,
beautiful wall?
Does he send a check to
I.R.S. every April 15, like so many of us? Or does he just slap his signature
on the checks going out this week?
*
Let’s also revisit Trump’s famous prediction, offered up on February
26. On that auspicious day, we had only 15 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and our fearless
leader insisted that we were headed for pretty close to…
“ZERO” soon.
Now consider how fast this
virus spreads. Yesterday, the Washington Post reported
that 655 members of crew of the
aircraft carrier U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt had tested positive
for the coronavirus. Chief Petty Officer
Charles Robert Thacker Jr., 41, was the first to die. Six others were hospitalized, including one in intensive care.
 |
| Chief Petty Officer Thacker, 41. |
We learned Wednesday that more than 500 workers at a pork packing
plant in Sioux Falls, S.D. had been infected. Now the parent company has
closed two more plants, one in Missouri, where
six employees are known to be sick, another in Missouri where two have fallen
ill.
We know the virus spread disastrously at the Andover Subacute and Rehabilitation Center near Sparta, New Jersey. After receiving
an anonymous tip, police visited the center and found 17 bodies stuffed
in a morgue built for four. Andover Subacute, which has 700 beds, has had at
least 26 deaths from COVID-19. An additional 103 residents are infected.
On Thursday, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan had a
bit of good news. Almost 700 police officers were able to return to work “after
undergoing rapid coronavirus testing.” Abbott Labs, he explained, had provided
police and fire personnel with tests that could be read in fifteen
minutes.
Duggan added that around 200 city workers had
tested positive. Ten had died, including bus driver Jason Hargrove.
Hargrove succumbed after posting a viral video about a thoughtless
passenger who coughed on him. “He was everything good about public service,”
Duggan told CNN.
Hargrove’s widow could explain this all to the President of the
United States. That is: we were never headed for zero.
“Nothing should be left
unsaid.”
And in a poignant moment, during a press conference yesterday,
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker mused, “When you talk about where the numbers are going on this, what
I’m really thinking about is all those people who aren’t going to have
a chance to say goodbye.” With nursing homes closed to visitors, hospitals
off limits and funerals closed to all but a handful of mourners, Baker urged
people to tell loved ones how much they care, now, when they have a chance.
“Nothing,” he continued, “should be left
unsaid.”
This disease isn’t like the flu—although Mr.
Trump initially said it was—and repeated that claim.
It’s a killer.
*
Thursday, we also know the president decided to switch horses
midstream. Then, when he got to the other side, he shot the horse that carried
him over.
First, he and his allies continued to gin up blame for China. If
only China had told us more about what to expect…
And the World Health Organization. They blew it. Not President
Trump! Why…if only they had warned….
____________________
“When somebody is president of the United States,
the authority is total. The governors know that.”
President Trump
____________________
Now the president decided to deny he ever rode a horse across the
stream. On Monday, Trump had insisted, Mussolini-like, that he had “total
authority” to reopen the country and get everyone back to work. When pressed by
Kaitlyn Collins, a CNN reporter, who asked if he could cite a constitutional
basis for such a claim, Trump grew agitated. “Look, look,” he fumed, “When somebody is president of the United States, the
authority is total. The governors know that.”
Clearly, in the last few days, some White House aide has whispered
sweet nothings in Donald’s ear. “Mr. President,” he or she must have explained,
“if you claim total authority, you’re going to get total blame for everything
that goes wrong.”
So it was that on Thursday the president stepped before the
cameras again. Instead of touting his total authority, he settled for issuing
“guidelines” to get the country moving. “You’re
going to be running it, we’re going to be helping you,” he announced to
the nation’s governors. “We’re going to be supplying you as needed, if you need
something that you don’t have. You’re going to call your own
shots. We’ll be standing right alongside of you and we’re going to get our
country open and get it working and our people want to get working,” he said.
And, if anything went wrong, the buck would
definitely no longer stop with President Trump.
*
Last, but not least, for today, if you don’t already have enough
to worry about, Mr. Trump has been talking about adjourning both houses of Congress. He’s
miffed because he can’t have his way with every appointment that he makes to top
governmental positions. Senate confirmations! What a pain.
Here, we should note that the Founding Fathers included specific
provisions in the U.S. Constitution, and then lawmakers developed rules, to
make it nearly impossible for a president to close Congress on a whim. After
all, unlike the Big Orange Fool, the Founding Fathers knew their history. They
understood that English kings often managed to work around Parliament by
proroguing that body. They simply sent lawmakers home by decree and then didn’t
bother to recall them. James II, for example, sent Parliament home in May 1685.
In July 1687, he dissolved the body entirely and ruled by fiat, which he really
enjoyed.
Since lawmakers weren’t in session, they couldn’t even complain.
Trump would love it if he could do the same.
 |
| James II: Ruled by royal decree, until he was deposed in 1689. |
___
4/14-15/20: Today’s COVID-19 update has it all, starting with death and destruction, which isn’t funny in the least.
Amidst
suffering and pain, however, we have the president proudly comparing himself to
the villainous Captain Bligh. Throw in sex dolls, a Kellyanne Conway sighting (which
in no way relates to sex dolls) and a lesson on the Tenth Amendment for Donald
J. Trump and there you are.
First,
the pain: 2,072,269 confirmed cases of the COVID-19 virus, worldwide. The
United States with the most of any nation on earth: 640,185 cases. The U.S.
with the highest number of deaths: 28,306.
Ugly
numbers.
We
also have evidence of avalanching economic damage. The International Monetary
Fund warns that the coming downturn will be the worst
since the Great Depression. Retail sales in the U.S. plunged 8.7% in March, easily the biggest monthly
drop, going back to 1967. Tattoo artists don’t have anyone to tattoo. No one
wants pet sitters in their homes. Elvis impersonators and mimes have nowhere to
ply their skills. Oil has dropped below $20 a barrel—good news for drivers, if
we had anywhere that we wanted to go. Bad news for oil producing nations like
Russia and Saudi Arabia, as well as fracking operators in Eastern Ohio and
Western Pennsylvania. The city government of Tulsa, Oklahoma, an oil town, has
instituted a hiring freeze. Budgets are going to be busting in cities
and towns from Boston to Bakersfield, Seattle to Pompano Beach.
Most
shocking of all, the sex doll business is deflating. Normally, you might
expect a company like Silicon Wives to be doing a booming
business, what with millions of lonely guys stuck at home dreaming of silicon
babes. Sadly, China supplies most of the fake ladies that American men lust
over for fake sex. So even businesses that traffic in sex dolls are hurting.
The
question is who can save us—if anyone can. And here we have a Kellyanne Conway
sighting.
The
president has made no secret of his desire to reboot the U.S. economy, on or
before May 1. Most health experts, including his own top adviser, Dr. Anthony
Fauci, warn that will be too soon. But to be fair—not that Trump is ever fair
to political opponents—the president can’t win. He must choose between the
Scylla of a deadly virus and the Charybdis of
cratering commerce. And we all know where Trump’s true focus lies.
The jobs report that consumes him comes out on the night of November 3, when
the votes in the next election are tallied. With that report foremost in mind,
Trump is talking more and more about ditching social distancing and getting
America rolling again. And this is where Kellyanne comes in. “The most
important thing to recognize,” she said on the Fox Business Network yesterday,
“is that most suited, best person to juice the Donald Trump economy is Donald
Trump.”
The
problem, of course, is that while Trump might want to open everything back up
and start bragging about his job-creating magic again, most Americans (81%
in a poll taken this week) prefer to keep social
distancing rules in place, even if it means further damage to the economy.
Plus,
there’s that whole Tenth Amendment thing.
*
When
Trump insisted during a wild and wooly Monday press conference that he had
“total control” and could order states to open up, even many
conservatives realized this was an authoritarian bridge too far. Sen. Marco
Rubio said the final decision would rest with the governors of the
territories and states. Federal guidance might help them decide, Rubio
admitted. “But the Constitution and common sense dictates these decisions be
made at the state level.”
“The
federal government does not have absolute power,” Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming
tweeted in response to Trump’s announcement of “total control.”
Then
she quoted the Tenth Amendment, just to help the orange galoot in the White
House out.
____________________
The powers not delegated to the United States by the
Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States
respectively, or to the people.
Tenth Amendment, 1791
____________________
Blown
off course by powerful conservative winds, Trump made it plain he planned to
steer a bizarre new course on Tuesday. Inexplicably, he compared himself, in a
tweet, to the hated Captain Bligh:
After what had to be one of the epic
presidential temper tantrums of all time during Monday’s press conference,
Trump proved Tuesday that he was no more capable of introspection than a 90-pound
bag of cement. Faced with growing criticism as the virus spread, as Americans
died by the thousands, and the economy imploded, the president was implying
that he had what the governors needed. He had the medical supplies, the funds,
the personnel. And if they didn’t kiss his ass and tell him he was the greatest
president ever to sail the Seven Seas—well—it would be, “So easy.”
To deny them help? To deny the people
of certain states the resources needed to stop the spread of COVID-19?
This, then, was the essence of who this
president truly is.
*
A quick roundup of other important
developments: The president announces that the U.S. will be halting funding for the World Health
Organization. Typically, we provide between $400 and $500 million annually. Trump
insists he’s taking this action because the WHO was “pro-China” in how it
described the outbreak and played a “role in severely mismanaging and covering
up the spread of the coronavirus.”
See? It was WHO that screwed up! And
China.
Not Trump.
The stock market rose again Tuesday,
then fell Wednesday, with the Dow Jones settling at 23,504. But economists are
offering up dire predictions. A poll of voters under age 45 shows that 20% have lost jobs,
19% have had hours reduced, and 13% are on furlough. The headline
number for unemployment could hit 15% when April figures are compiled.
(The same experts predict an
“unprecedented” rebound in the second half of this year. Hopefully, they’re
right.)
Meanwhile, you might argue that
President Trump has been provided with a clear case study of what happens when prompt
action to arrest the spread of the virus is not taken. South Dakota has been
one of a handful of states that managed to avoid issuing stay-at-home orders.
Now the city of Sioux Falls is one of the hottest spots for the spread of the deadly
virus.
According to the Sioux Falls Argus
Leader, the outbreak of COVID-19 that forced closure of the Smithfield
Foods pork packing plant a few days ago has left 518 workers infected. Another
126 cases have been traced back to workers who spread the virus in the larger
community. An employee in the electronics department at Walmart is sick. Two
workers at StarMark Cabinetry are ill. An employee at O’Reilly Auto Parts is ailing.
A daycare worker at Truks-N-Trykes has tested positive—meaning that every other
employee, every member of every other employee’s family, every child who uses
the facility and every family member of every child at Truks-N-Trykes is at
risk.
And so it goes, while Captain Bligh
steers the ship of state.
___
4/13/20: The staggering economic damage from the coronavirus outbreak
continues to mount.
An added worry: A red ink tsunami.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
estimates that the federal deficit for Fiscal
Year 2020 will rise to $3.8 trillion.
The deficit for FY 2021 will likely add
an additional $2.1 trillion to the federal deficit.
We can also expect states and local
governments to be battered by huge unemployment payouts and sagging tax
receipts. Most states must, by statute, balance their budgets annually. So, they end up cutting jobs and services in hard times,
not the tonic needed when an economy is already struggling.
The number of confirmed
cases of the coronavirus and the number of deaths continue to rise by the hour.
A check at 4:30 p.m. Monday shows the U.S. has 583,411 confirmed cases
and 23,462 Americans are dead.
President Trump continued
yesterday to defend his lame response to the outbreak, insisting we are the
best country in the world when it comes to testing to find out who might be
sick and who might not.
But he’s wrong, for sure.
Or he’s lying again. We
have done the most tests of any country, although we stumbled badly at the
start and we’ve never been able to do anything since but chase the spread of
COVID-19. So, another 1,357 Americans died in the last
twenty-four hours. Whereas, in Germany, which has about one-fourth the number
of cases of the virus, but where they have tested at nearly double the U.S.
rate, only 21 patients succumbed during the same period.
South Korea continues to be
the model of what might have been. Again, we note that South Korea
had more confirmed cases (8,320) on March 17 than the United States
(4,661). But aggressive testing by the South Koreans stopped the virus from
exploding. Today they have 10,537 cases. That’s an increase of 26.6%.
During the same five-week
period, the United States has suffered a catastrophic increase of 12,417%.
*
If you have any doubt about
what happens when people fail to “socially distance,” or aren’t in a position
where they can, look no further than the situation involving officers and crew
of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt. The first
infected sailor died Monday and 585 crewmen and
women have now tested positive for COVID-19.
Consider, too, the outbreak
at a pork packing plant in Sioux Falls, S.D. Smithfield Foods has announced it
is closing the mammoth facility after 293 employees out of a workforce of 3,700 tested
positive. That would represent more than 40% of all cases reported in South
Dakota.
Perhaps even more
ominously, for the nation as a whole, Kenneth Sullivan, CEO of Smithfield
Foods, warned,
The closure of this
facility, combined with a growing list of other protein plants that have
shuttered across our industry, is pushing our country perilously close
to the edge in terms of our meat supply. It is impossible to keep our
grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running. These facility closures
will also have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions for many in the supply
chain, first and foremost our nation’s livestock farmers.
Then again, you can’t say
Team Trump isn’t adept at coming up with novel new ways to make matters worse.
If you missed the story
last week, the White House is considering rule changes to allow farmers
to reduce the pay of roughly 250,000
“guest workers” who come to this country on special visas, so they could pick
the strawberries and pluck the apricots and pull up the lettuce that we enjoy
seeing in our grocery stores. Farmers are already reeling in the wake of
Trump’s tariff wars with China—which struck back by refusing to buy tens of
billions of dollars in American farm products. Now, Trump seems to be going for
a kind of “Grapes of Wrath” vibe.
Screw the people who toil
in the fields.
*
Other odds and ends: Canada
is pressuring 1,600 Ontario nurses,
who travel every morning to work in hospitals in the Detroit area, to stay
home.
Canada has 23,430 confirmed
cases of the virus—has been testing ambitiously—and, if we adjust for
population would have a third as many confirmed cases as the United States. So,
good job, Justin Trudeau!
Sunday the president
retweeted a post by a failed Republican candidate for Congress who included the hashtag “#fireFauci.” Today,
the White House had to spend time explaining that Trump was not going to fire
Dr. Fauci. But we all know the truth. If Trump thought he could fire anyone—for
any reason—and it would make him look good, he would.
He’d throw Fauci into
shark-infested waters if he though it would raise his approval rating, in fact.
In South Dakota, a
2,000-patient trial of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine has begun. President Trump has touted the
potential of the untested drug to halt the spread
of COVID-19.
If this trial proves a
success, you know he’s going to claim he came up with the idea all by himself.
If it fails, he’ll blame
Obama.
___
TRUMP AND THE CORONAVIRUS MESS
TO
UNDERSTAND THE TRAGEDY of the botched response to the COVID-19 crisis,
you must go digging for as many facts as you can.
This
blogger is retired and has the time to dig. As a former history teacher, he is
well aware that if one sets out to select only certain facts and reject certain
others, one can prove almost any case.
(See,
for example, Fox News.)
So,
let me say this. I don’t take quotations out of context. I don’t reject facts
because they fail to fit my purpose. The facts prove that no president in
history could have led us through this crisis and left a great nation unscathed.
But
the facts also prove that Trump—had you, for some inscrutable purpose, tried to
design such a man—is possibly the worst person in the world to lead anyone in time
of tragedy and peril.
 |
| Trump failed to see the danger because he didn't want to face reality. |
Blown Changes and Denials
December
8, 2019: Chinese doctors confirm the first case of a novel coronavirus. When
they warn colleagues, they are reprimanded. Chinese officials, like our
president, hate “Fake News.”
___
January
7, 2020: The Chinese confirm that a cluster of pneumonia cases in the city of Wuhan is
associated with a novel coronavirus, 2019-nCoV. This is not the nineteenth coronavirus, as fact-averse talk show hosts
will later claim. The virus is labeled COVID-19 because it is identified in
2019.
___
January
19:
A 35-year-old man visits an urgent care clinic in Snohomish County, WA. He has
a dry cough and fever. He tells doctors he has just returned from a visit to Wuhan.
The CDC Emergency Operations Center is notified.
___
January
20:
His case is confirmed. COVID-19 is present in this country. The CDC alerts clinicians “to be on the look-out for
patients with respiratory symptoms and a history of travel to Wuhan, China.”
___
January
22:
A reporter asks the president if he has any “worries about a pandemic.” Trump replies:
“No, not at all. We have it totally under control. It’s one person
coming in from China, and we have it under control.”
At
the time, Trump is focused on cutting a trade deal with China. That same day he
announces—success! “One of the many great things about our just signed giant
Trade Deal with China,” he boasts, “is that it will bring both the USA &
China closer together in so many other ways. Terrific working with President
Xi, a man who truly loves his country. Much more to come!”
Trump
has always seemed to love Xi. As he said last November, “He’s a friend of mine. He’s
an incredible guy.”
___
January
24:
President Trump assures everyone: “China has been working very hard to contain
the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts
and transparency….I want to thank President Xi!”
It
takes a rare form of ignorance to believe the Chinese communist
regime practices any kind of “transparency.”
*
Meanwhile,
the coronavirus jumps oceans and borders. Australia reports its
first four cases, Malaysia four, France one. Worldwide, 1,400 are sick,
forty-two dead. The outbreak has been traced to a “wet market” in Wuhan, where
live animals and seafood were available. Communist officials order a halt to all
transportation in and out of the city. The CDC reports a second case of COVID-19 in this country. The patient,
in Illinois, also reports travel to China.
The
following alert is issued:
CDC is
taking aggressive public health measures to help protect the health of
Americans. While CDC considers this a serious public health threat [emphasis
added, unless otherwise noted], based on current information, the immediate
health risk…to the general American public is considered low at this time.
___
January
27:
The coronavirus continues to spread. There are 4,000 cases worldwide.
That includes five in the United States. CBS News reports that “there have
been unconfirmed claims from anonymous health workers in
China that many thousands more than their government is acknowledging
could already be infected.”
The
World Health Organization (WHO) warns that the risk of infection is, “very
high in China, high at the regional level and high at the global level.”
(Here,
we should note for Trump fans that a free press, supported by whistleblowers,
and able to quote anonymous sources, is critical when one wishes to live in a
free society, and to be able to hold authorities accountable.)
___
January
28:
I decide to see what Citizen Trump thought about how President Obama handled
the Ebola threat in 2014. In those days, Trump was just an ordinary asshole (clearly, that’s opinion) with a
Twitter account. When I checked his Twitter archive, however, I was surprised
to see he had fired off 103 tweets and retweets on the topic.
Naturally,
he used most of those posts to stir up fear and hate, because that’s
what he does.
It
was too bad, he tweeted, if missionaries and doctors went to West African to
help and got sick. “The U.S. cannot allow EBOLA infected people back.
People that go to far away places to help out are great-but must suffer the
consequences!”
You
had all the typical Trumpisms. Obama was “stupid” to let sick Americans return.
“It’s almost like he’s saying F-you to U.S. public.”
“President
Obama has a personal responsibility to visit & embrace all people in the US
who contract Ebola!”
Citizen Trump
____________________
And
then, you had this nugget of unmitigated ignorance. Since it was
Obama’s “fault” that a doctor with Ebola returned to America, and a nurse in
Houston who treated him contracted the disease, Trump screamed, “Obama has a
personal responsibility to visit & embrace all people in the US who
contract Ebola!”
*
On
January 28, there are six cases of the coronavirus in the United States.
___
And,
honestly, I think, as tough as this negotiation was, I think our relationship
with China now might be the best it’s been in a long, long time. And now it’s
reciprocal. Before, we were being ripped off badly.
__
January
30:
Trump tells reporters that as far as COVID-19 goes, his administration is “working
very closely with China and other countries, and we think it’s going to
have a very good ending for it. So that I can assure you.”
A
total of 9,976 cases have been reported in at least 21 countries. It doesn’t
take a genius to see a pandemic is coming.
___
February
7, 2020: Trump continues to lavish praise on Xi Jinping. The Chinese leader
“is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack
on the Coronavirus.” Xi “will be successful, especially as the weather starts
to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker, and then gone…”
At
a business summit in North Carolina, Trump praises his Chinese counterpart once
more. “It’s a—it’s a very tough situation. But I think he’s going to handle it.
I think he’s handled it really well.”
(Trump
will completely change his tune once the virus explodes in the
U.S., as he tries to shift blame to China.)
___
February 10: Trump speaks to Trish Regan on the Fox Business Network. Trump loves to talk to people like Regan, who won’t press him with difficult questions. Regan asks, gently, about China and the virus.
[There are some] concerns that their economy is
really going to tank because of this and that that could have a spillover
effect here. What’s your sense of their transparency right now, whether they’re
being more accommodating in terms of telling us what’s going on and how it
affects our economy?
The
president replies:
I think
China is very, you know, professionally run in the sense that they have
everything under control. I really believe they are going to have it under
control fairly soon. You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter
weather. And that’s a beautiful date to look forward to.
___
February 13: The death toll in China rises to 1,310. A handful of deaths are reported
around the world. Japan has its first.
___
February 14: The Chinese government
is expert in handling “Enemies of the People” (as Trump calls members of a free
press). Two video bloggers, who were posting stories about the spread of
COVID-19 disappear.
(President
Trump has shown zero interest in protecting journalists, here at home or
abroad. He has called Prince Mohammed bin Salman his friend. The prince is famous for
ordering a journalist to be cut up in pieces.)
___
February
17:
A cruise ship, turned away at several ports, docks in Cambodia after
company officials assure Cambodian authorities no one aboard is carrying the coronavirus.
Nearly 2,000 passengers and crew debark and scatter, happy to be heading home
after a long, enforced isolation. An American passenger, tests positive almost
immediately after coming ashore.
The
threat of a pandemic is already disrupting supply chains and businesses around
the globe. The Tokyo Marathon bans all but elite runners, knocking out 38,000 participants.
Chinese factories are running limited shifts. Casinos in Macau close. Taiwan
reports 22 cases, Thailand 35. In China 1,700 healthcare workers have been infected.
Aboard the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship quarantined in Yokohama, 454 cases of COVID-19
have been identified. In Hong Kong, people are hoarding food, water and
supplies and hunkering down at home.
With
store shelves emptied, three knife-wielding men hold up a supermarket
deliveryman and steal fifty packs of toilet paper worth $220.
___
February
20:
President Trump isn’t worried! His administration asks for $2.5 billion to
fight the spread. Democrats in the House of Representatives put together a plan
to provide $8.5 billion.
___
February
22:
Trump insists—with a confidence born of cluelessness—that he won’t need $8.5
billion.
___
February
24:
“The Coronavirus is very much under control in the
USA,” the president tweets. “Stock Market starting to look very good to
me!”
(A terrible prediction.)
*
That
evening, “Doctor” Rush Limbaugh offers up a nutty diagnosis. “I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus,”
he assures listeners. “You think I’m wrong about this? You think I’m missing it by
saying that’s—Yeah, I’m dead right on this. The coronavirus is the
common cold, folks.”
Limbaugh
goes on to say that the survival rate for COVID-19 is “98 percent,” which
sounds pretty good, until you realize that would mean 1 in every 50 patients
dies. He goes on to claim that this is “a far lower death statistic than any
form of influenza, which is an annual thing
that everybody gets shots for.”
This
is not difficult to check. According to the CDC, the death rate for seasonal
flu in recent years has been:
Cases
Deaths
Deaths to Cases
2018-2019:
35.5 million
34,200
1 in 1,038
2017-2018:
45 million
61,000
1 in 738
2016-2017:
29 million
38,000
1 in 763
___
February
25:
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow isn’t worried about the virus. “We have contained
this,” he says during an interview on CNBC. “I won’t say air-tight, but
it’s pretty close to air-tight.”
Chad Wolf, President Trump’s acting head of Homeland Security,
isn’t sweating it, either. Quizzed by members of the Senate Appropriations
Committee, Wolf seems confused by basic science. What is the mortality rate
associated with this coronavirus, a Republican senator inquires? Is it worse
than the flu?
Wolf isn’t sure about much—but he’s sure about this. The mortality
rate from the new virus and the seasonal flu are about the same. For the coronavirus, he
says, it’s 1.5 to 2 percent. For the flu, he adds, “it’s right around 2%
percent as well.”
*
“The disruption of daily
life could be severe.”
That same day, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National
Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (an arm of CDC) presents a
starkly different picture. “It’s not
so much a question of if this will happen any more,” she tells reporters, “but rather more a question of exactly when this will
happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness.”
If strict quarantine measures become necessary, as in Italy, “The
disruption of daily life could be severe.”
(Trump is reportedly furious, especially when Dr. Messonnier’s
warning seems to spook the stock market. The Dow Jones drops a thousand points. As far as this blogger
can tell, Dr. Messonnier has not spoken publicly since. Even her Twitter
account has been dormant since March 28, when I
check on April 19. As for the president, he will later claim no one could have
seen a pandemic coming, even though Dr. Messonnier clearly saw one coming
on February 25.
Kudlow will admit on March 23 that he had been proven
wrong in his February 25 comments, but insist he was right at the time. “When I
said that, it was true, factually,” he explains. “I’m as good as the facts. The
facts changed, of course I’ve changed my view.” “Nobody could have predicted or
expected this,” he adds.)
___
February
26:
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announces that the U.S. has
fifteen confirmed cases of the coronavirus. Trump promises
that “the 15, within a couple of
days, is going to be down to close to zero.”
A reporter asks if he’s worried about the disease spreading. “No.
... No, because we’re ready for it. It is what it is. We’re ready for it,” the
president replies. “We’re really prepared....We hope it doesn’t
spread. There’s a chance that it won’t spread too, and there’s a chance that it
will, and then it’s a question of at what level.”
“An echo chamber for
yes-men.”
None
of his top aides dare tell the president he needs to wake up to the growing
threat. As Time magazine puts it, the White House is “an echo
chamber for yes-men.” Later that day, the CDC confirms that there are 59 cases
in the United States. The virus is also spreading in Italy. Confirmed cases
rise from 124 to 374.
*
The New
York Post (owned by Rupert Murdoch) exclaims on
February 26: “The sad truth is that global
health bureaucrats use these outbreaks to push for greater funding, with utter
disregard for the truth.”
Fuck those global health bureaucrats!
(In
April, with the number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. approaching half a
million, Murdoch’s paper will shift position completely. Rudy Giuliani will make the headlines when he attacks China for failing to
tell the truth about the coronavirus outbreak and labels the WHO the “World
Death Organization.”)
___
February
27:
Trump downplays the threat of
COVID-19 again. “It’s a little like the regular flu that
we have flu shots for,” he says. “And we’ll essentially have a flu shot for
this in a fairly quick manner….It’s
going to disappear. One day—it’s like a miracle—it will disappear.”
*
On the evening of February 27, “Doctor” Sean Hannity chimes
in in support of his orange hero. “Tonight, I can report
the sky is absolutely falling. We’re all doomed. The end is near. The
apocalypse is imminent, and you’re all going to die. And…it’s all President
Trump’s fault,” he says. “Or at least that’s what the media mob and the
Democratic extreme radical socialist party would like you to think.”
“Doctor” Laura Ingraham follows up in the next
hour, and treats viewers to a second blast of Fox News bombast. She’s
even madder than Hannity:
If you’re worried about the spread of the
coronavirus, well, you’re obviously not alone. It’s unsettling to see doctors
and what looked like, you know, hazmat suits in China. People quarantined
hanging out of hotel windows in Italy. And, of course, your fellow airline
passengers wearing face masks. Yet more unsettling is something happening right
here in the United States. And it’s not medical. It’s political.
Democrats and their media cronies have decided to weaponize fear and also
weaponize suffering to improve their chances against Trump in November.
“The facts don’t matter to the Trump haters,”
Ingraham yelps, because “many of them are frankly so sick with their anti-Trump
fever that they actually consider this virus a political godsend.”
Like Hannity, Ingraham’s not at all worried.
Except about Democrats and their media cronies.
___
February
28:
Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney makes it clear. He thinks the media is causing a stock
market panic and it’s all part of a plot to
bring down President Trump:
At any particular time,
20 million people in this country are going to have the flu. The flu
kills people, it does. This is not Ebola, OK? And I’ll tell you what that
means in a sense. It’s not SARS. It’s not MERS. Why do we say that? When you
look at the severity of diseases, one of the ways you can look at it is looking
at the percentage of people who get it who die. I know that’s sort of
hard-hearted, but that’s sort of how we look at it.
The president is asked
about Mulvaney’s comments later. Trump
sticks with the narrative. CNN, he sneers, is a “very disreputable network.”
I think they are doing everything they can to instill fear in people, and I think it’s ridiculous. They are very disreputable. Some of the Democrats are doing it the way it should be, but some are trying to gain political favor by saying a lot of untruths. The fact is, I made one decision that was a very important decision, and that was to close our country to a certain area of the world that was relatively heavily affected, and because of that, we are talking about 15 who seem to be all getting better. One is questionable.
See!
Nothing to worry about! Fifteen cases. Fourteen are getting better.
*
Donald
Trump Jr. joins the fray. He’s outraged to find his father’s foes are
politicizing the story of COVID-19. “The playbook is old at this point,,” Jr.
fumes, “but for them to try to take a pandemic and seemingly hope that it comes
here, and kills millions of people so that they could end
Donald Trump’s streak of winning is a new level of sickness.” The Democrats, he
adds, are praying “for a disaster to happen in the economy.” They’re
“absolutely insane.”
(Don Jr. would never politicize the issue.)
___
February
29:
It’ a Leap Year. Trump has an extra day to figure this out. At what will turn
out to be one of his last big rallies for weeks to come, Trump fumes,
“Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that,
coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs…This
is their new hoax.”
____________________
The nation would have been better
served, had the president done nothing more than stand up in public and read
soup can labels.
____________________
At
this point, the entire month of February has been wasted because
Team Trump doesn’t take the COVID-19 threat seriously. They downplay the risk at
every turn. In doing so, they ensure that those foolish enough to believe what
they say won’t take steps that might slow the spread.
The
nation would have been better served, had the president done nothing more than
stand up in public and read soup can labels.
___
Addendum
An objective observer would not blame the president for all the problems
we face. But we know how twisted his attacks were when his predecessor
was dealing with an outbreak of Ebola in 2014.
Who, for example, can forget this “assessment” offered up by
Citizen Trump in October 2014, after Obama refused to block all flights from
Africa, where the disease had erupted, to this country?
____________________
“I am starting to think that there is something
seriously wrong with President Obama’s mental health. Why won’t he stop the
flights. Psycho!”
____________________
Chasing the Virus
March 1, 2020: The coronavirus continues to spread, disrupting the flow of
travel around the globe, cutting trade networks and rattling the world economy.
Rhode Island authorities announce they have a suspected case of COVID-19.
Researchers in Washington State warn that the virus may have been
circulating there, unsuspected, for weeks. An estimated 150 to 1,500 people
are likely infected or had been infected and didn’t show any signs.
COVID-19 is everywhere. Qatar and Luxembourg announce their first patients.
Two people in Azerbaijan are quarantined. The border with Iran is sealed. There
are dozens of cases in the United
Kingdom. Lebanon has three new cases, for a total of seven. By the time I
finish typing, the number rises to ten. France, with
more than 100 confirmed cases, goes on high alert. In Paris, the Louvre is
closed. Iran reports 978 cases and 53
deaths, a mortality rate of 5.4%. Italy reports 1,128 cases, up from 888 two
days earlier. Turkey has halted passenger flights to and from Italy, Iran, Iraq
and South Korea. Italy’s economy has “taken a body blow.” Tourism is dead. Restaurants are
deserted. South Korea reports 3,736 cases. Saudi Arabia has warned citizens not
to travel to Lebanon. Kuwait, with 45 confirmed cases, and Russia, with two, have advised
citizens not to travel at all.
*
Trump assures a rally crowd: “They’re going to
have vaccines, I think, relatively
soon.” The U.S. has 104 cases.
___
March 3: Donald J. Trump has his
stock market mojo back—and the Dow Jones soars 1,300 points.
Then again, the coronavirus “hoax” he insists Democrats are
pushing continues to spread in non-hoax-like fashion. Six Americans are dead.
Infections have been discovered in twelve states,
including New York, Nebraska, Florida and Arizona. If either of two cases in
Florida are within 100 miles of Mar-a-Lago, “Dr. Zero” (an honorific bestowed
on the president for his abysmal prediction on February 26) might be
forced to give golf a rest and stick around D.C. for a change. France,
Germany and Singapore all have at least a hundred cases. There are 1,500 in
Iran and 1,600 in Italy. Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Morocco and Jordan report their
firsts.
Trump talks to reporters about all the reasons
why he thinks the virus won’t spread. “Not only the vaccines, but the
therapies. Therapies is sort of another word for ‘cure.’”
(That
doesn’t even make sense.)
___
March 4: In
examining government purchase orders later, the Associated
Press discovers that Team Trump had only 13 million
N95 masks, critical for hospital staff and first responders who need to protect
themselves, on hand in January. Mechanical ventilators “and other equipment
needed by front-line health care workers” were also in short supply.
After the first
alarms sounded… hat an outbreak of a novel coronavirus in China might
ignite a global pandemic, the Trump administration squandered nearly two
months that could have been used to bolster the
federal stockpile of critically needed medical supplies and
equipment.
Finally, on March 4, the Department of Health and Human Services
orders an additional 500 million N95 masks.
___
March 5: Trump continues to show
almost no understanding of the science related to the coronavirus outbreak.
And, to make matters worse, he denies what experts are saying. This week, for
example, he insisted that the World Health Organization was wrong when it said
the death rate from the virus was
around 3.4%.
During a call to Sean Hannity, the president explained:
“Now, this is just my hunch...based on a lot of
conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot
of people will have this [virus], and it’s very mild.” Trump has a hunch
the death toll is only 1%. In fact, he suggests, this virus is so not a big
deal that a lot of people get better, “by, you know, sitting around and even
going to work.”
In other words, get your coughin’ ass back to the office!
Meanwhile a twelfth American dies. The number of known cases rises to 225. And
for some reason a cruise ship off the coast of California, with 20 suspected
cases aboard, is being kept offshore. People are so anxious not to be coughed
on by passengers and crew, that medical supplies are flown in by helicopter and
lowered to the ship with a winch. Dr. Zero seems suddenly more concerned
about this “very mild” virus than he has been before. He says if it was up
to him, he’d let the 3,000 passengers and crew just stay offshore on that boat.
Cough, cough.
Problems continue to mount, even if the president doesn’t care to admit it. South
Korea has 6,284 cases. China reports 80,500, with 3,042 deaths. The airlines
are seeing business evaporate. Costco reports sales are up as worried shoppers
stock up on hand sanitizer, baby wipes and water filtration systems—plus extra
food—so that when everyone else is dead, they’ll still have jumbo size bags of corn
chips to live on and survive. On Amazon, some scammer is offering eight-ounce
bottles of Purell hand sanitizer for the bargain price of $90. Cheap, when you
figure some sick bastard is going to show up where you work and cough in your
face.
Around the world there are more than 98,000 cases. There have been 3,386 deaths and 6,273 patients are in serious
or critical condition. There were only 580 known cases on
January 22.
The numbers since:
January 29:
7,813
February 5:
28,266
February 12:
59,285
February 19:
75,500
February 26:
81,820
March 4:
95,308
Postscript: No matter how many months or years (or decades) Trump spends in the White House, he’s going to blame his problems on President Obama. Last seen leaving Washington D.C. on January 20, 2017.
Speaking with reporters Wednesday, Trump said he and his
virus-fighting team had been slow getting test kits out to people who might be
sick, because the first kits they did send out didn’t work. That meant they had
to start over. “The Obama administration made a
decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we’re doing.,”
Trump whines. “And we undid that decision a few days ago so that the testing
can take place in a much more accurate and rapid fashion.”
ABC and other news outlets quickly point out,
1.
Trump had had three
years to change any rulings he wanted to change.
2.
There was no
“decision” made by the Obama administration that had to be changed.
3.
The Obama
administration suggested limits on testing, so doctors didn’t give
patients tests they didn’t need, and jack up their bills.
4.
No “decision” was
involved. A discussion paper was left behind for Trump and his team to consider
once they took charge.
As in 1,142 days ago.
___
March 6: Trump
stops by the Atlanta headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control. He’s on
his way to Mar-a-Lago, where he can hobnob with his superrich pals and squeeze
in more golf. An impromptu press conference turns out to be a cornucopia of stupidity
and lies. “Anybody right now and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a
test,” the president tells
reporters. “They’re there. They have
the tests and the tests are beautiful.”
Since
cameras are rolling, Trump takes the opportunity to brag:
You
know, my uncle was a great person. He was at MIT. He taught at MIT for, I
think, like a record number of years. He was a great super genius. Dr. John
Trump. I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I
understand it. Every one of these doctors said, “How do you know so much
about this?” Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that
instead of running for president.
While there, Trump poses a series of penetrating questions
for the experts. What did doctors think of a Fox News town hall he participated
in the night before? “How was the show last night?” he asked. “Did it get
good ratings by the way?”
____________________
“I told Mike not to be complimentary of the governor, because that
governor is a snake, okay, Inslee.”
Dr. Zero (Donald J. Trump)
____________________
Even better, Trump decided to lend CDC a hand by
talking about the spread of the virus in Washington State, where most of the
deaths in this country had occurred. He wanted reporters to spread the word. (Not
the virus!) He sent Vice President Pence out to the coast to study the
situation firsthand. Pence met with Gov. Jay Inslee to ask what he needed in
the way of help. “All of America’s hearts are with you,” Mr. Pence told him. To
make a point about safety, the two elbow-bumped rather than shake hands. The
governor said it was nice to know about all those hearts being with his
state, but doctors badly needed testing kits.
Inslee explained later that his state would pick up the cost of testing for
those who lacked insurance. State workers’ compensation rules would be adjusted
to provide for healthcare workers and first responders who were forced into
quarantine as a result of the risks of their jobs.
Dr. Zero was ready with his own heartfelt response. “I told Mike
not to be complimentary of the governor,” Trump told reporters trailing him,
“because that governor is a snake, okay, Inslee. I said if you’re nice to him
he will take advantage...Let me just tell you, we have a lot of problems with
the governor, the governor of Washington...so Mike may be happy with him, but I’m
not.”
Dr. Zero was having a tough
week—and people weren’t calling him the greatest president ever. He kept
venting:
If we came up with a cure today and tomorrow everything is gone
and you went up to this governor, who’s not a good governor by the way,
if you went up to this governor and you said to him, “How did Trump do?” He’d
say, “He did a terrible job.”... it makes no difference.
I told Mike that would happen, I said no matter how nice you are,
he’s no good, that’s the way I feel.
Having vented his wrath, the good, kind, empathetic Mr. Trump was
off to Mar-a-Lago (yet again).
*
All
around the country, the situation grows increasingly dire. Gov. Roy Cooper of
North Carolina weighed in on the virus threat. “It’s clear,” he said, that,
“North Carolina and other states need more test kits from the CDC.” He labeled it “a
critical need.” Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut, where 18 people had been
tested—and 13 cleared—with five more cases pending—said Connecticut needed more kits. Health officials in New York City pleaded
for kits, warning that a shortage was impeding their
ability to “beat back” the spread of COVID-19.
On the
other hand, Trump adviser Larry Kudlow, tells reporters everything is going
pretty great! “I don’t want to downplay anything,” he says during an appearance on CNBC. “Worry about the effect on
human beings, for heaven’s sake. But I’m just saying, let’s not overreact. In
many ways, America should stay at work.”
For good
measure, he adds, “We don’t actually know what the
magnitude of the virus is going to be, although frankly so far it looks
relatively contained.”
*
On his evening show Sean Hannity again downplays
the threat of the virus. For fun,
he bashes President Obama again. He mentions the H1N1 virus, which in 2009,
“killed 13, 14, whatever thousand people.” Obama “never implemented the travel
ban. They never quarantined anybody.”
“Am I correct?” Hannity asks his guest.
That
guest is Dr. Marc Siegel—a regular Fox News medical contributor—so you know
he’s going to provide an answer Hannity likes.
Slinging old-fashioned Fox News horse
manure
“Absolutely,”
he replies. “And over 300,000 deaths in the United States alone when
all the figures were counted.”
No
telling what “figures” he means. When I do some checking, I find the CDC says 60,800,000
Americans were infected by
the H1N1 flu.
And
12,469 died.
Is
Dr. Siegel slinging old-fashioned Fox News horse manure? I check again. It turns out 284,000 people did
die…worldwide. Or, maybe more…worldwide. Because I check a third time. So, either Dr. Siegel is lying, or
he’s confused. Only 12,469 Americans died, a death rate of 1 in 4,876 cases.
“And
let me tell you something,” Dr. Siegel continues, “this virus should be
compared to the flu. Because at worst, at worst, worst case
scenario it could be the flu.”
___
3/7/20: The
president is plunked down at Mar-a-Lago for the weekend. Saturday night is
devoted to a birthday bash for Don Jr.’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, who
(naturally) used to be a broadcaster on Fox News.
Standing next to President Jair Bolsonaro of
Brazil, Trump is asked if he’s concerned that the virus is spreading.
“No, I’m not concerned at all….No, we’ve
done a great job.”
As of Saturday, the COVID-19 virus has reached thirty states. Washington has 102 cases, California 79, New York
76, Texas 19, Nebraska 14. The District of Columbia reports its first case. A
“critically ill” American passenger, and that passenger’s companion, are taken
off the Grand Princess, the cruise ship parked off the California
coast. The other 3,000 passengers and crew remain stranded in a giant,
floating petri dish. Another ship bobs on the waters of San Diego harbor.
No one aboard is allowed to come ashore, while one passenger is tested. Israel
is considering quarantining visitors from parts of the United States, the first
such ban aimed at the U.S.
According to Johns Hopkins, the U.S. has 401 confirmed cases. South Korea has passed
the 7,000 mark, Iran is heading for 6,000, and Italy has an additional 1,247 cases confirmed in the last 24 hours. France has 949 cases, Germany 799. Five
days earlier both were reporting only 100. COVID-19 has long legs to run. Two
Maldives Islands resorts report employees have tested positive after contact
with an infected Italian tourist. Two French tourists have been infected at
other resorts and each new infection opens up more pathways for the spread.
The dominos continue to topple in every direction.
And not even Dr. Zero can predict when they might stop falling, or how deadly
they’ll be. Amtrak cancels nonstop service between New York City and Washington
D.C. A U.S. sailor in Italy is infected. The University of Washington says it
will cancel in-person classes for 50,000 students until further notice. A
Starbucks employee at a downtown location in Seattle has the virus. Stanford
University is ending in-person classes on Monday and exams will be changed to a
take-home format.
New rows of dominos are lined up every hour and
knocked down. In London, thugs attack a college student from Singapore. “I
don’t want your coronavirus in my country,” one shouts. In Denmark, officials
advise people not to shake hands. A church group from Alabama, hoping to visit
sites in the Holy Land, is quarantined outside Bethlehem. The cruise ship Costa
Fortuna has been turned away from ports in Thailand and Malaysia. The South
by Southwest music and technology festival—which last year attracted 400,000
visitors to Austin, Texas—is canceled. The Vatican has a confirmed case and
several of Pope Francis’s “signature public events” are suspended.
That made 264 days, since taking office, spent in golf spikes,
baggy white polo shirt, khakis and red MAGA cap.
 |
| Another round of golf...at a time of crisis. |
___
March 8: On the Sunday edition of “Fox & Friends,” Dr. Siegel is a guest
again. “I feel like the more I learn about this [virus], the less there is to
worry about,” Pete Hegseth, one of the hosts says.
“I was about to say the same thing,” Siegel replies. Hegseth and
Siegel are parroting the Fox News line.
Nothing to worry about, folks!
___
The
Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything
within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the
CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant. Surgeon
General, “The risk is low to the average American.”
Three TSA agents at an airport in San Jose,
California test positive. An Uber driver in New York City likewise.
___
March 10: Trump isn’t
worried. The U.S. has “about 600 cases,
it’s about 26 deaths, within our country,” he tells reporters. “And had we not
acted quickly, that number would have been substantially more….And we’re
prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away.”
Asked
during a press conference how he thought he was doing in addressing the crisis,
Trump went high for once instead of low. He gave himself a “10,” on a scale of
1-10, 10 being highest.
*
During her afternoon show on the Fox Business Network,
Trish Regan attacks Democrats
for spreading a false narrative. The whole COVID-19 story,
is impeachment all over again. And like with
the Mueller investigation, like with Ukraine-gate, they don’t care who they
hurt. Whether it be their need to create mass hysteria to encourage a
market sell-off unlike anything we’ve seen recently, or whether it be to create
mass hysteria to stop our economy dead in its tracks, don’t kid yourself. They
told us how much they crave a recession as a way to get rid of Donald
Trump.
A graphic appearing beside her on the screen reads: “Coronavirus
impeachment scam,” lest viewers miss the point.
Regan claims the left is as
resorting to “melodrama” to scare people. She says SARS and Ebola were “far
more deadly,” and why didn’t the media stir up panic then! The problem with her
analogy is that while those diseases did have a much higher mortality rate,
only 8,098 people (worldwide) contracted SARS.
In the U.S. a grand total
of eleven people had Ebola, including seven Americans who were brought back
from West Africa.
Two died.
*
Sean Hannity is also fuming that evening. This coronavirus threat?
Bah! Democrats were “pedaling conspiracy theories and hoaxes.” He promises to
“lay out some key facts, because truth matters, context matters, especially
when you’re talking about a disease that puts fear in the hearts of people.”
“We want the truth. We’re not the media mob,” he
adds, while waving a metaphorical noose. The graphic for his nightly broadcast
reads: “Coronavirus Hysteria.”
Those who were accusing the president of
downplaying the crisis are sick, Hannity says. They are sick with “Trump rage
psychosis.”
Besides, he fumes, there have been only 31
deaths from COVID-19, and “the average age of mortality in this country is 80.”
Also, 26 people were shot in Chicago over
the weekend! “I doubt you heard about it,” Hannity howls. “You notice there is
no widespread hysteria about violence in Chicago, and this has now gone on for
years and years and years, and, by the way, in Democratic-run cities we see a
lot of that.”
*
Here, we should point out the obvious for Trump
fans, because listening to Hannity can make viewers demonstrably stupider. (Okay,
liberal humor, not factually correct.) The reason there would be no “widespread
hysteria” involving Chicago shootings would be that bullets can’t travel all
the way to—say—Brownsville, Texas. Or Cincinnati, where this blogger resides.
In the real world, however, problems continue to
multiply. The Coachella Festival in California, which drew 600,000 music fans
last year, is pushed back from
April to October. “The whole live music industry,” says one executive, “is
really being shaken and challenged by this.”
March 11: A cluster of more than a hundred COVID-19 cases has been identified in New
Rochelle, New York. The town is cordoned off by
the National Guard. Kentucky churches are asked to
cancel services. Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden cancel rallies.
*
Rush
Limbaugh is at it again, befuddling listeners with blather. “This coronavirus, they’re just—all of this panic is just
not warranted.” Once again, he says, “this virus is the common cold.”
At one point, he seems mystified by the term “lethal.” “Ten
times more lethal?” he asks rhetorically. “Lethal than what? What does lethal
mean? Does lethal kill you? Does lethal infect you? Does lethal give you a
temperature of 102 versus 100? What does it do to you? It’s a meaningless
comparative.”
Okay, this is an easy one to answer. “Lethal” means it can kill
you. Ten times more lethal means you should be ten times more concerned. The
Bubonic Plague is more lethal than acne. By day’s end, the U.S. has 1,263 confirmed cases of COVID-19.
*
Trump speaks to the nation that evening, in an attempt to calm any
worries Americans might have. He butchers the presentation. First, he says he’s banning all
travelers from 26 European nations. But he’s going to let people from Great
Britain and Ireland come—because he says those countries are doing a great job
controlling the outbreak. (That quickly proves wrong.) Second, he says health
insurers will cover the costs of treatment for anyone who gets sick. (They
won’t.) Third, he says the travel ban will affect trade and “cargo.” (Strike
three.)
Americans
traveling throughout Europe, who have to get home, panic. All travel is about
to be banned! Some pay as much as $20,000 to
get on “last flights” allowed before the order takes effect. Trump aides are
forced to tidy up the mess. American citizens, permanent residents, and a few
others, they explain, will be allowed to fly home whenever they can.
Trump
himself has to tweet: “cargo” will not be banned.
(Three days later Great
Britain and Ireland are added to the travel ban.)
(Trump reveals his real feelings after he thinks the camera is off.)
That same evening, an NBA game between the Utah
Jazz and Oklahoma Thunder is canceled at the last moment. Rudy Gobert, a Jazz star,
who is warming up on court, has a positive test result confirmed. The team doctor races out and
orders both teams to their locker rooms. The NBA suspends all games.
___
March
12:
Trump can’t stop boasting about what a superlative job he’s doing, meeting this
challenge. “The United States,” he tells reporters,
“because of what I did and what the administration did with China, we have 32
deaths at this point…when you look at the kind of numbers that you’re seeing coming
out of other countries, it’s pretty amazing when you think of
it.”
As of Thursday morning, Johns Hopkins reports there
have been 126,660 confirmed COVID-19 cases, worldwide, including 4,641 deaths. Italy’s
caseload jumps to 12,462, with 827 deaths. Iran has 9,000 cases, but only 354
reported deaths. That number hasn’t changed for days—which may have something
to do with authoritarian censorship, not miraculous feats of medicine.
France, Germany and Spain all surpass 2,000 cases. Harvard suspends all in-person classes. Florida
colleges tell students to leave early for spring break. Mark Emmert, president
of the NCAA, announces that
all March Madness games will be closed to the general public. The virus
continues to find avenues to spread. A Chinese citizen who traveled to the
United States brings the virus back from our shores. And it would seem we’re
in for wild and wooly days ahead. If Tom Hanks and his wife can be infected, who among us can be safe?
Bowing to reality, even the Trump 2020 Campaign
announces it will be canceling all large rallies.
Postscript: If
you don’t believe in scientific evidence and facts you can always contact
either of these two big fans of the president: Mr. Alex Jones of Infowars,
recently arrested for DUI, or Pastor Jim Bakker, who will always pray if he can
profit.
For $90, Jones will sell you a vial of 120 pills of his fine product DNA Force, which he swears will protect
you from the coronavirus.
Rev. Bakker, who once did five years in prison
for fraud, will sell you a “Silver Solution” guaranteed to cure COVID-19.
That’s assuming the Attorney General of Missouri doesn’t shut him down before Bakker can cash your check and send you
his fine product. For only $40 you
can have a 16-oz. bottle of Bakker’s elixir.
 |
| Alex Jones will sell you some good shit! |
___
March 13: A reporter
asks the president if he takes any responsibility for the slow rollout of coronavirus testing
in this country.
“No, I don’t take responsibility at all, Trump
replies, “Because we were given a—a set of circumstances, and we were given
rules, regulations and specifications from a different time. It wasn’t meant
for this kind of—an event with the kind of numbers that we’re talking about.”
He
says Mr. Obama is to blame, even though he left office 1,151 days ago.
Unfortunately, the president we’re stuck with
right at this time is finally forced by facts to admit we face a
National Emergency, “two big words,” as he puts it when making the
announcement.
In fact, the president has
been forced to admit that this virus is not just like the flu. He recommends
that if you don’t have to travel within the United States, you should
stay home.
____________________
“There are no good
choices, but there are good decisions.”
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan
____________________
Large swaths of the U.S.
economy are hamstrung. The stock market plummets 2,300 points on Thursday, but rebounds
2,000 on Friday. But the Dow Jones average ends Friday at 23,186, a drop of 6,365 points in a month.
Trillions in equity have been wiped from the books. Cancellations of all kinds are
drying up business. The local economy of Austin, Texas, suffered a $350 million hit when the South by
Southwest Festival was canceled.
Seattle Mayor Jenny
Durkan explains it best, after shutting down city schools for six weeks. “There
are no good choices,” she admits, “but there are good decisions.”
So,
what will Trump do or predict? We know he decided to take a “Victory Lap”
Friday, after announcing a National Emergency. What the perpetually-clueless
president did was sign a chart showing how the stock market soared in
the wake of his declaration of a national emergency. Then he sent it to all his
loyal followers.
The
accompanying note reads: “The President would like to share the attached image
with you, and passes along the following message: ‘From opening of press
conference, biggest day in stock market history!’”
*
Even
Fox News pundits are waking up. “Doctor” Hannity’s diagnosis
suddenly changes Friday night. “This
virus is serious,” he says. “We’ve been telling you that from day one.”
Nope.
___
March
14: If Hannity is finally “woke,” on Fox
& Friends, Ainsley Earnhardt is as
beautiful and dimwitted as ever. She isn’t worried about a little flu
bug! She suggests that viewers
take advantage of the crisis to take a trip. “It’s actually the safest time to
fly,” she exclaims. “Everyone I know that’s flying right now, terminals are
pretty much dead—ghost towns.”
Poor choice of words?
As of Saturday evening,
Johns Hopkins University has increased its totals for worldwide COVID-19
cases to 156,099. The death toll stands at 5,819, which would indicate a
mortality rate of 3.7%. As for the United States approaching “zero,” we stand
at 2,726 cases. Like Italy, we may be in for worse days to come. Despite
having shut down their entire economy, and telling everyone to stay home, the
Italians report 21,157 cases and 1,441 deaths. The situation in Iran is dire,
with 12,729 cases and 611 dead. Iraqi citizens returning home from Iran say the
situation is far worse and Iraq has sealed its border, except to its citizens.
Nor is there any end in
sight for the spread of the virus or the spread of the damage. Here in Ohio, starting
Monday, schools are shut for three weeks. Saturday morning, our youngest
daughter, Emily, a nurse living in Columbus, tells us the first confirmed case in the city has been
revealed, a 49-year-old man who had traveled on a Carnival cruise ship,
the Valor. He left the ship on March 5 and has probably been
infecting others since. The State of Ohio has 26 confirmed cases. Seven are hospitalized.
Spain sees a jump of 2,000 cases between Friday and Saturday and the government
announces it will implement a state of emergency and shut down the country for
two weeks. At least five flights from England, headed for Spain, are alerted in
midair and turn around. No sense going to Spain for vacation—only to spend two
weeks in quarantine. France, which had a hundred confirmed cases on March 2, now
has 3,672. The government has ordered closure of all
non-essential businesses, starting at midnight. Even war-torn Syria has
announced closure of schools and universities to stem the spread of disease—at
least all schools and universities that haven’t been blown to bits during a bloody
civil war.
There’s no end in sight
and anyone who said this was “just like the flu” was ill-informed or obtuse. President
Trump decides to get tested—even after the White House doctor says there is no need.
The fact that two people who visited Mar-a-Lago the previous weekend have
turned up positive apparently convinces Trump he should be checked. Attorney
General Bill Barr is in self-quarantine. So, too, are Rona McDaniel, chairwoman
for the Republican National Committee, and her family, after she began
experiencing fever and flu-like symptoms. The Pentagon has put all unnecessary domestic travel for service
members and families on hold through May 11. The Archdiocese of New York
announces it will cancel masses starting Sunday. The Boston Marathon has
been postponed till September, the first such
disruption in 124 years. The Masters Tournament is also postponed. Panic shopping has emptied shelves in groceries
across the U.S. Toilet paper, for some reason, has been a flash point.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, speaks with reporters Saturday morning. “We have not reached our peak,” he warns. “We will see more suffering and death, predominantly among the vulnerables in our society.”
The State of New York has issued a “cease and
desist” order to Alex Jones and Infowars. Officials warn Jones that
he may no longer sell toothpaste, claiming it will protect users from COVID-19.
Also receiving a “cease and desist letter” for
selling bogus products to protect against the novel coronavirus: Pastor Jim
Bakker.
___
March 15: While
you were tucked safely in bed, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the
U.S. spiked from 2,726 yesterday to 3,244 this
afternoon. In other words, we’re tracking like Spain and France. Both countries
have basically shut down, following Italy’s model.
Meanwhile, Trump sycophant Rep. Devin Nunes tells host Maria
Bartiromo, on Fox Business News, that this is, in fact, a perfect time to get out and mingle with humanity.
There’s a lot of concerns with the economy here
[in California] because people are scared to go out. But I will just say, one
of the things you can do if you’re healthy, you and your family, it’s a
great time to just go out, go to a local restaurant. Likely you can get in easily. Let’s
not hurt the working people in this country that are relying on wages and tips
to keep their small business going.
____________________
“I would
like to see a dramatic diminution of the personal interaction that we see in
restaurants and in bars. Whatever it takes to do that, that’s what I’d like to
see.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci
____________________
As for
being focused, the president is more interested in stock market reports than reports
on the sick and dying. The damage to the U.S. and world economies is going to
be acute. The $160 billion sports industry in this country is paralyzed. Even
the Golden Raspberries have been cancelled—which means Dame Judi Dench won’t get a chance
to “celebrate” a win in the category of “Worst Supporting Actor” in the
mega-flop, Cats. The governments of Great Britain and Hong Kong have
warned citizens against travel to the U.S. Israel has shuttered movie theaters,
cafes and restaurants. Morocco has canceled flights to and from 21 different
countries. Sudan has closed schools and universities for a month. The
government of Austria warns that freedom of movement will be “massively
restricted.” The governor of Ohio says it’s “absolutely possible” that
schools could remain closed for the remainder of the
school year. Hoboken, New Jersey has responded to the crisis by
instituting a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew, excepting people who have to go to
work. We learn the virus can spread rapidly, with 27 residents and 25
healthcare workers at one nursing home in Kirkland, Washington infected.
Dr.
Anthony Fauci, voice of the Trump administration on the topic of containment
(until he tells too many truths?), makes it clear this morning. “I would
like to see a dramatic diminution of the personal interaction that we see in
restaurants and in bars. Whatever it takes to do that, that’s what I’d like to
see.” Indeed, Dr. Fauci says he cannot rule out a temporary lock-down across the country.
___
March 16:
No matter how fast Trump tries to run from reality, reality and the COVID-19
virus continue to catch him. According to Johns Hopkins
University, as of today, the U.S. has 4,287 confirmed cases.
He goes on to say, “Each
and every one of us has a critical role to play in stopping the spread and
transmission of the virus. With several weeks of focused action, we can turn
the corner and turn it quickly.”
Americans, he says,
should stay away from bars, restaurants and not gather in groups larger than
ten.
For precious weeks, Trump has dawdled. But governors
and mayors made hard choices. Trump didn’t want to do anything drastic because
the stock market might dive and he couldn’t boast about it going up, up, up. Now
it’s diving, regardless. Schools have been closed in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana,
Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North
Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota,
Utah, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Washington D.C., Washington, West Virginia
and Wisconsin.
On Sunday, the Federal Reserve made an emergency
decision to slash interest rates to nearly zero and take a number of steps to
prop up the U.S. economy, which will stagger in weeks ahead.
Trump speaks for several minutes, as part of a
news conference, and says he’s “thrilled” by the Fed’s decision. He says Wall
Street will be very happy. The president really cares about Wall
Street.
“No easy
decisions left to make.”
With the number of infected persons rising dramatically,
the economy suffers blow after blow. New York City shuts down its school
system, largest in the country. The governor of Ohio orders bars and
restaurants to close starting Sunday at 9 p.m. A patron at the Tailgate Grill
in North Canton, Ohio leaves a $900 tip, to be split between the nine people working at the time he stops in
for a last drink. California and Massachusetts follow suit in closing bars and restaurants. The
governor of California orders “entertainment venues” to shut down and asks
people over age 65 to “self-isolate.” Connecticut shuts down casinos, gyms and theaters.
Thousands gathers for a St. Patrick’s Day parade
in Chicago on Sunday. By nightfall Illinois has joined the list of states closing bars and restaurants until
further notice. “There are no easy
decisions left to make as we address this unprecedented crisis,” Gov. J.B.
Pritzker explains. “As your governor,” he tells the people of Illinois, he cannot
allow the “gravity of these decisions” to dissuade him “from taking the
measures that the science and the experts say will keep people safe.”
Gov. Charlie Barker of Massachusetts explains a
similar decision to close many businesses down, saying the virus is “incredibly
contagious.”
NBA star Karl-Anthony Townes does his part
and donates $100,000 to the Mayo Clinic to assist with
coronavirus testing.
Meanwhile, Trump focuses, during his talk on
Sunday, on how unfair the free press is to him.
The country finds itself in uncharted territory.
And the president is whining, not winning. Fort Lauderdale and Miami Beach have
closed their beaches. The Kennedy Space Center has shut down. Chick-fil-A announces it will close dining room seating. The price of Brent crude oil,
the benchmark, has fallen to $31.83 per barrel. Many drilling operations in the
U.S. will be halted because that’s below the break-even point. Two ER doctors
in the U.S. are ill with the coronavirus and in critical condition. Even Mar-a-Lago has been closed for a
deep cleaning, after several people who partied with the president, weekend
before last, tested positive.
*
WORLDWIDE, THE NEWS is equally grim. Italy saw a spike of more than 3,500 COVID-19
cases Sunday, bringing the total to 24,000, then spiked again today, to 28,000.
Iran has almost 15,000. French health officials warn the situation is
“deteriorating very quickly.” British Airways plans to cut flights by 80
percent. Massive layoffs in the airline industry are coming. Germany seals its
borders. The Minister of Economics warns that the German economy will surely contract.
The Czech Republic, Cyprus, Poland and Slovakia join a growing list of countries banning foreign travelers. The
number of confirmed cases in Spain soars to 9,400. Switzerland, a nation of
less than nine million people, has 2,200. Russia has only 90—although you know Vladimir
Putin would never allow the truth to emerge if there were more.
China, South Korea and Singapore seem to
have stemmed the tide. So there’s hope. But now those nations are worried
that citizens returning from Europe and the U.S. might bring the infection
back.
And there’s this worrisome sign. The Chinese
economy is expected to contract in the first quarter of the year, for
the first time since 1989. Retail sales for the first two months fell a
staggering 20.5%. That was much worse than a predicted 4% drop. Industrial
output also fell 13.5%.
Significant economic damage can also be expected
in this country. And we can be sure the president will say it isn’t his
fault.
And he still won’t show any empathy.
(Correction, 3/17/20: Georgia schools were not
closed, as indicated above. Schools in Atlanta and select districts are. We
regret the blunder.)
___
March 17: Schools in 38 states are closed and individual districts in
other states have turned out the lights. Added to yesterday’s list, we have
Alaska, Georgia, Hawaii and Oklahoma closing all schools.
According to Education Week, more than 74,000 of the
nation’s 98,000 schools have been told to stay home.
*
When reporters ask the
president why he has suddenly adopted a more sober tone, Trump denies his tone has
changed. “This is a pandemic,” he says. “I felt it was a pandemic long
before it was called a pandemic.”
(For variety, Trump will
also occasionally insist no one could see the pandemic coming, so how can
anyone blame him?)
The shills at Fox News
are now adjusting their views. On this fine morning, the three hosts of Fox
& Friends appear on split screens to
emphasize the need for social distancing. “We
have a responsibility to slow down this virus and to think of
other people during this time,” Ainsley Earhardt tells viewers, even though she
said it was a great time to fly, just three days ago.
___
March 18: The United States has 7,769
confirmed cases. Testing
is still ramping up and that number is sure to go higher.
____________________
“Perhaps that’s been the story
of life.”
Dr.
Zero
____________________
And if you wanted to encapsulate President
Trump’s approach to the crisis in a handful of quotes, here would be one to
include. When a reporter asked what he thought about reports that rich and
well-connected individuals were able to get tested, when sick patients who
might likely be infected could not, here was his reply. “You’d have to ask them
[those getting tested] that question,” he said. “Perhaps that’s been the story
of life. That does happen on occasion, and I’ve noticed where some people have
been tested fairly quickly.”
It was the verbal equivalent of a “not-my-problem”
shrug.
Then you had the typical Trumpian attempt to
dodge any criticism: “You’d have to ask them.”
*
With every passing minute, the health and economic
damage grow. The airline industry is running empty planes. Restaurants have
chairs piled atop tables and “Closed” signs on doors. Movie theaters have gone
dark. No popcorn is popped. ESPN is showing reruns of old college basketball
games. Except for bull-riding that’s about all they’ve got. Treasury Secretary
Steve Mnuchin warns GOP lawmakers that short of massive federal
intervention, unemployment could
spike to 20 percent.
___
March
19: Trump decides to start calling
himself a “wartime president,” and the novel coronavirus the “Chinese virus.”
He doesn’t want to be blamed for the spread, so it’s time to blame the
Chinese. “It could have been stopped right where it came
from, China,” he complains.
(Compare with his comments: Jan. 24 and Feb. 7, for example.)
At 11:13 a.m. today, the U.S. has 9,415 confirmed
cases. (By the time I checked before posting at 9:13 p.m., that number has surged
to 13,678.)
*
Flanked by leaders of his Coronavirus Task Force,
the president steps in front of the free press again in the afternoon. At one
point, he’s asked about shortages of safety gear across the country. He’s calling
himself a “wartime president.” He has invoked the Defense Production Act, which
allows a president to demand that manufacturers shift to meeting wartime needs.
Why isn’t he getting medical supplies to the people fighting on the front
lines?
“Governors are supposed to be doing a lot of this work,” Trump replies, dodging as much responsibility as
possible, “and they are doing a lot of this work. The Federal government is not
supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping. You
know, we’re not a shipping clerk.”
Rather than focus on getting bullets to his
troops, the “wartime president” wastes a good chunk of his press conference
blasting the free press, because the free press fails to praise him. His
irritation is clear when Kristen Welker of NBC asks why the White House was so
unprepared to implement widespread testing—since Trump is now claiming he knew a
pandemic was coming all along.
“We were very prepared,” the president tells her. “The only thing
we weren’t prepared for was the media. The media has not treated it fairly.
I’ll tell you how prepared I was,” he fumes. “I called for a ban from people
coming in from China long before anybody thought it was” necessary. “In fact,
it was your network—I believe they called me a racist because I did that. It
was many of the people in the room, they called me racist and other words
because I did that.”
At that moment, only fools would fail to notice. Being called a
“racist,” a “raconteur” or a “race car driver” would be irrelevant if the issue
was ramping up testing. You could ramp up testing no matter what anyone called
you.
Such as: “numbskull president.”
____________________
“Only 129 cases (40 Americans brought in) and
11 deaths.”
Dr. Zero
____________________
Sadly, Trump had failed to ramp up testing because he was the
greatest fool of all. As recently as February 26, he made it clear he didn’t
believe testing was going to be necessary. He had closed travel to and from
China. That was the magic bullet he needed to fire to end this war. We wouldn’t
need testing because we were headed for zero.
Another week went to waste, and Dr. Zero continued to pat himself
on the back. On March 5, he tweet-congratulated himself: “With approximately 100,000 CoronaVirus cases worldwide, and
3,280 deaths, the United States, because of quick action on closing our
borders, has, as of now, only 129 cases (40 Americans brought in) and 11
deaths.”
And let’s be crystal clear. The media couldn’t stop the
government from testing more people.
All the media did was report on the lack of testing.
Dr. Zero fucked up.
*
THE ECONOMIC DAMAGE continues build on itself.
The Big Three shut North
American automobile production lines. The New York City Metropolitan Opera lays
off chorus, singers and musicians. The film industry estimates 125,000 jobs
will be lost. Marriott International plans to furlough tens of thousands of
workers. A company in Seattle—a Starbucks competitor—is keeping on only 39 of
189 employees. The Carson’s Cookie Fix Bakery in Omaha cuts a number of bakers. A Minnesota cabinet-making company throws in
the hammer and saw and sends all 140 workers home. The Philadelphia International
Airport plans to lay off as
many as 1,000 of its 1,400 sub-contract workers. The Port of Los Angeles is
sending 145 truck drivers home, as shipments of goods from around the world are
halted. The port, says one worker, is like a “ghost town” with almost no
activity of any kind.
Postscript: In the wake of Trump’s
comments about the “Chinese virus,” The New York Times highlights a
“spasm of violence” directed at Asian Americans. Someone gets it through
Trump’s thick cranium. Words matter and, once again, he’s been stirring up
hate. He tries to rectify his mistake in a tweet:
It is very important that we totally protect our Asian American
community in the United States, and all around the world. They are amazing
people, and the spreading of the Virus is NOT their fault in any way, shape, or
form. They are working closely with us to get rid of it. WE WILL PREVAIL
TOGETHER!
___
March 20: The
U.S. has 17,935 confirmed cases. College and professional sports
have canceled all games.
Trump adviser Larry Kudlow, who once said the
administration had the disease under “pretty close to air-tight” control, says
a rescue package of $2 trillion may
be necessary to save the U.S. from recession.
When a reporter asks Trump if he has been
sending mixed messages about the nature of the threat, the president melts down:
___
March 21:
President Trump continues to flail away as the coronavirus spreads and the
economy tanks. He can’t lie his way out of this mess, although he’ll try. The damage
is omnipresent.
As of 11:43 a.m. on Saturday, the U.S. has
19,931 confirmed cases of COVID-19, which is 19,929 more than Trump
predicted on February 26. We don’t have a “pretty close to airtight” grip on
the disease as Larry Kudlow, White House economic adviser, said the same day.
This disease isn’t “the common cold, folks,” as
Rush Limbaugh claimed.
Dr. Zero can’t blame Obama this time—although
he has tried. He can’t brag about how the stock market is going up because of
him, and if we elect Democrats, the market will tank. The market has tanked.
And he’s in charge. The ghost of Herbert Hoover is rattling its chains.
*
Might we also take a moment here to mention the
hypocrisy of our friends on the right? When it looked as if Bernie Sanders was
going to be the Democratic nominee for president, we heard the howling of Tucker
Carlson, Judge Jeanine Pirro and the whole zany Fox News crew. The U.S. was
going to end up like Venezuela! All socialists were homicidal maniacs and socialism
would rot our children’s brains. Only Mitch McConnell and Donald J. Trump could
save us from a fiscal fate worse than death.
Now, McConnell thinks we need to pass out checks to most Americans, “socialism” by any other name. Most taxpayers will
get checks for $1,200. Married couples, filing jointly, will receive $2,400.
Some adults will get only $600. A family of six, with four children age 17 or
younger, would get an extra $2,000 ($500 per child). If you made more than
$75,000 last year and you’re single, or more than $150,000, and you’re married,
you’ll get less—and at some point, depending on how much you made, you’ll get
zero.
*
So far, what are the damages? First, the
coronavirus caseload: worldwide, as of 3:43 a.m. on Saturday morning, there were
275,452 confirmed cases. Less than ten hours later, that number had grown
to 287,239. Italy has 47,021 confirmed
cases and 4,032 deaths. Spain has 25,374 and 1,375. And those mortality rates
rattle healthcare experts around the world. By comparison, Germany, with 21,652
confirmed cases, reports only 73 deaths. The United States is in sixth place in
a race no one wants to run.
Worst-case predictions one day prove too rosy
the next. A headline Saturday, from Newsweek, sums it up:
GOVERNORS LOCKDOWN A QUARTER OF THE U.S.
ECONOMY AS AMERICA HURTLES TOWARD RECESSION.
Some experts fear the U.S. will have
lost two million jobs in one week. “Recession is now unavoidable,” analysts
at ING Bank warn. “Our current best guess is for the economy to contract by
around 10 percent in the second quarter although even this figure is looking
increasingly too optimistic.”
As Newsweek notes, California,
New York and Illinois are locked down. If they were nations, they would represent
the fifth, twelfth and twenty-second largest economies in the world.
Florida, where tourism brings in $40 billion annually, is set to sustain a
massive hit. Gov. Ron DeSantis has ordered “all
beaches, movie theaters, concert houses, auditoriums, playhouses, bowling
alleys, arcades, gymnasiums and fitness studios to close in Palm Beach County
and neighboring Broward County.” Here in Hamilton County, Ohio, jury trials have been halted.
The Kentucky Derby is likely to be postponed or could be run without
spectators. That would put a huge dent in the Big Hats for Ladies industry.
Home sales—which hit a 13-year high in February—have been slowed by, among
other problems, a bottleneck in the supply of marble countertops, which often come
from Italy. Walmart is handing out small cash bonuses to employees. The company
that runs Olive Garden and Outback Steakhouse has promised to pay all 190,000
hourly employees two week’s wages if they are laid off.
The Trump Organization itself has laid off workers at hotels in Washington and New York and at golf courses across
the land. In Washington D.C., where occupancy had tumbled to five percent, 160 Trump
employees were handed pink slips. In New York, the carnage was not as severe,
but 51 were let go.
With Trump heavily invested in tourism-related
hotels and resorts, and many of his properties carrying significant debt, it’s
possible he will be in a position to order the federal government to bail
himself out.
Postscript: South Korea seems to have slowed the spread of COVID-19 by means of
aggressive testing: 300,000 tests so far. The U.S., with six times the
population has tested only 170,000 individuals.
Asked yesterday, if the U.S. had the testing
capacity needed in this crisis, Dr.
Fauci admitted, “We are not there yet.”
March 22:
The U.S. has 26,997
confirmed cases.
Governors in several states have ordered citizens to “shelter in place.”
___
March 23:
U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams warns, “This
week it’s going to get bad.” To start the morning, the U.S. has 33,276
confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus. That includes Sen. Rand
Paul, who knew he might be infected, but decided to use the Senate
gym the day before.
Four other senators are
self-isolating. During a press conference, the president hears the news. Told
that one of the four is Sen. Mitt Romney, we get Trump at his empathy-challenged
worst.
Yet, in some incomprehensible way, Trump’s approval
numbers are improving. Could it be the American people are excited to be
getting their April bailout checks?
Let’s take a moment to point out the glaringly
obvious. We don’t have the money in the federal checking account to pay for the
Trump COVID-19 Big Bailout. What we have is a plan for taxpayers to bail
themselves out. This is not to say a bailout isn’t necessary. But we shouldn’t delude
ourselves. When Donald J. Trump found himself in a deep hole—and finally threw
down the shovel he was using to dig it—he and Mitch McConnell decided a GOP brand
of socialism wouldn’t be a bad idea. “Checks for everyone,” they shouted with
glee.
The original sin was that President Trump and
his aides, supported by some of the loudest voices on the right, downplayed,
dithered and delayed in the face of a growing threat from the virus.
And now we find ourselves in a deep, deep fiscal
hole. The federal checking account is already overdrawn.
Deficits under Trump have
already doubled.
FY 2017:
$666 billion (much of this deficit was cooked into the books before Trump took
charge).
FY 2018:
$779 billion.
FY
2019: $984 billion.
FY
2020: $1 trillion, estimated (and this was before the
COVID-19 outbreak).
For comparison, we have the “pie in the sky”
thinking of the first budget submitted by the Trump administration. The federal
deficit was predicted to fall by 2021 to only $456 billion. Current projections
from the Congressional Budgeting Office project deficits averaging $1.3
trillion annually, until 2030.
California
Connecticut
Delaware
Illinois
Indiana
Louisiana
Massachusetts
Michigan
New Jersey
New York
Ohio
Oregon
West Virginia
___
March 24: Trump
says he hopes to have the country back up and running by Easter, April 12.
___
March 25: The spread of the coronavirus is unabated. Johns Hopkins University has the U.S. passing 66,000 cases.
___
March 26: The awful
news is official. In one week, 3.28 million Americans have filed for unemployment.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the
worldwide death toll from
the coronavirus stands at 23,067—or 4.5% of known cases—basically 1 death for
every 22 patients.
That level of lethality, if sustained, would be
crippling to human society; but some countries are doing better than others. In
Italy, 1 in 10 patients has died. In Germany the toll is 1 in every 200.
The U.S. is likely to overtake both Italy and
China, possibly as soon as tomorrow, for most cases. A second website, which updates at different times of day than Johns Hopkins,
but usually differs only slightly in the end, already has the United States at
80,071 cases. The death toll in the U.S. stands at 1,151, with another 2,112
patients in serious or critical condition.
Just like no one on Team Trump ever predicted.
___
March 27: It’s
official. Congress has passed—and the president has signed—a $2.2 trillion bailout package.
That would be $2.18 trillion more than Trump
said he thought he would need on February 22 to address this crisis.
___
March 28: As of
Saturday morning, Johns Hopkins University reports that the United States has 104,860
confirmed cases.
We’re a depressing #1.
The following states, with more than half the U.S. population, have issued
“stay-at-home” orders: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho,
Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New
Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon,
Vermont, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
Washington D.C. has issued the same.
Ten other states have issued less-stringent
orders, including Florida, which is banning tourists from farther north. In Texas,
Gov. Greg Abbott isn’t ready to make the closing call. Several cities,
including Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, step up and issue “stay-at-home”
orders on their own.
Schools in 48 states are closed completely,
while select districts in Iowa and Maine remain open.
A total of 55.1 million students have been affected, out of a school population of 56.6 million.
Since your child is probably stuck at home, and needs math work,
ask them to figure out what percentage of students in the U.S. are out of
school.
Divide 55.1 million by 56.6 million for the correct answer.
(It would be 97.3%.)
___
3/29/20:
The American economy continues to grind to a halt. As of 11:13 a.m. Sunday,
Johns Hopkins University tallied 125,313 cases of COVID-19 in
the United States. By 3:47 p.m. this afternoon, that tally was badly out of date.
The
total rose to 137,294.
The
virus is in no way contained. Kansas, Alaska and Rhode Island have
joined 24 states and Washington D.C. in putting “stay-at-home” rules in place.
In Florida, where the governor has been reluctant to shut down, the total number of cases stands at 4,246. In Washington
State, where the largest outbreak first occurred, strong measures have slowed
the spread and 4,312 cases have been confirmed. In Ohio the spread has been
slowed, and as of Sunday afternoon the state had 1,653 confirmed cases and only 29 deaths, one fatality
for every 57 patients. For the first time, an infant infected with the COVID-19
virus has died, a child in Illinois, whereas the virus had heretofore seemed
not to affect children one-year-old or younger.
Trump catches everyone by surprise,
including himself.
Adding
to the disarray, President Knucklehead continues to blunder along. Saturday
morning, he said he might issue an “enforceable quarantine order”
cutting off travel from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to and from neighboring
states. Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York pushed back, calling it “a
declaration of war on states.” All three governors told reporters that while
they had spoken to the president earlier, he had said nothing about a
quarantine. In a Saturday press conference, Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey told
reporters, “I literally saw the story as I was
walking into this room. I’ve got no more color on it.”
Apparently, someone pulled Trump aside the same day, noting
such inconsistencies as these: Massachusetts had more cases than Connecticut. Why
not include the Bay State in any ban? What about Pennsylvania? It borders New
York State—and it also had more cases than Connecticut. By Saturday afternoon, the
President of the States that Might Vote for Him in November had abandoned
another crack-brained plan.
The big news Sunday, of course, was Trump
extending social distancing guidelines until the end of April—after having said
just a few days ago that he hoped to have the country back up and running by
Easter, April 12. The president also said if he could keep the death toll
from COVID-19 down to 100,000, it would prove his administration was “doing a
very good job.”
Using that kind of math, you could argue
General Custer did “a very good job” at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
*
And remember how excited you were in June
2018, when Trump said North Korea was no longer a nuclear threat, and we could all
sleep sweet dreams again! While you were watching the chunky orange fool who
lives in the White House brag about what a great job he was doing leading America
in a time of coronavirus crisis, North Korea fired off two short-range missiles Sunday. Both landed in the sea near Japan. It
was North Korea’s fourth missile test in a month.
(We also have no deal with Iran, after Trump
tore up the imperfect deal we had and replaced it with bumblebees.)
 |
| Still a nuclear threat! |
March 30:
As it stands, Monday morning, the United States leads
the world in confirmed cases of
coronavirus. We have left China (where the virus erupted) in our rearview
mirror. We have caught up with Italy in a race we don’t want to win, a race
Trump insisted for weeks we’d never even run.
____________________
The U.S. has seen an increase of 2,979 percent
in just thirteen days.
____________________
This morning, Italy has 97,689 reported cases,
to our 143,532. Italy has 10,779 deaths, so far. And Trump will be doing a very good job, in his narcissistic view, if we keep our
death toll to nine times what Italy is suffering. You can look at this a lot of
different ways. But 100,000 dead won’t be anything close to “a very good job.”
Germany has 63,929 cases and 560 deaths. South Korea, which ramped up testing
from the start, has 9,661 cases and 158 deaths.
On March 17, South Korea had 8,320 confirmed
cases and the U.S. had 4,661. But it was only the day before that President
Trump finally admitted that the spreading virus could become a very big problem.
In thirteen days since, South Korea has seen an
increase of 16 percent in confirmed cases of COVID-19.
The U.S., caught with it’s red, white and blue
pants around the ankles, and Trump tripping over his own size-48 belt, has seen
an increase of 2,979 percent.
Then again, for Trump, there was still good
news, as he reported on Twitter yesterday. His daily news conferences were
getting boffo viewership numbers. And isn’t that exactly where a leader’s focus
should be?
TV ratings.
(Blogger’s
note: Originally, I wrote that the U.S. had seen an increase of 3,079 percent.
That was an error of fact. I forgot to subtract the original 4,661 cases from
the total before computing the percentage of increase. Not only do I
like facts, I like to get the facts right. My sincere and humble apology.)
___
March 31:
The nation is wracked with disease and death. The economy is cratering. The people
look to the president for guidance and…
…At 6:27 a.m. Trump fires up his Twitter
account and buckles down to addressing the issues at hand. That means it’s time
to praise himself. “New York Governor Cuomo says President Trump has been ‘very helpful.’
@foxandfriends Thank you,” he tweets, “everybody is working very hard!”
What else is the president fixated on as the nation awakes? The
sick and dying?
No. His feelings have been badly damaged!
Monday—on Fox & Friends, of course—he called Speaker Nancy
Pelosi a “sick puppy” because she had had the nerve to criticize his blundering
delays and denials of the COVID-19 threat. You know, like praising President Xi
Jinping on January 24, saying, the Chinese were working hard to contain the
spread of the virus. “The United States greatly appreciates their
efforts and transparency….I want to thank President Xi!” Or saying, a month
later, “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA”
Or, more recently, tagging Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan with
a juvenile nickname, after she said Trump was slow to respond to her state’s
calls for relief. “I love Michigan, one of the reasons we are doing
such a GREAT job for them during this horrible Pandemic,” Trump boasted
in a tweet. “Yet your Governor, Gretchen ‘Half’
Whitmer is way in over her head, she doesn’t have a clue. Likes blaming
everyone for her own ineptitude! #MAGA.”
In fact, the president’s petulance is so all-consuming that he’s
willing to put lives at risk. He admitted, in typical tone-deaf fashion,
during his press conference that same day, that he told Vice President
Pence, “Don’t call the woman in
Michigan. I say, if they don’t treat you right, don’t call.”
____________________
If a few more people die in Michigan while the
president pouts, too bad for them.
____________________
So, where do we
stand—with numbers changing every hour? Johns Hopkins reports that as of 6:05
p.m. the U.S. has 184,183 confirmed cases of COVID-19, more than any country on
earth.
Some other lowlights in
the news: CNN notes that from Monday
to Tuesday, five states—New York, New Jersey, California, Louisiana, and
Michigan—report more than a thousand new cases each. That brings the total in
Michigan to
7,600. Whitmer shuts down her state. Florida, where a Trump pal is governor,
has 6,338 cases. Trump hasn’t coined an
insulting nickname for him yet.
The New York City Police
Department reports that 442 uniformed
officers and 70 civilian personnel are infected. Three officers have died.
Hundreds of New Jersey
officers are also ill and several thousand are under quarantine at home.
Unemployment
numbers skyrocket. Macy’s announces it will furlough 125,000 workers. Kohl’s says
it will lay off 85,000. One of tens of thousands of New Yorkers out of work, as of
Tuesday, is Chris Smalls. Smalls had the audacity to lead a walkout
at an Amazon shipping center, as he and co-workers clamored for safety gear and
better protection.
You can understand why
Smalls, and most Americans are worried. Freak virus hotspots have popped up all
over. A biotech conference in Boston on
February 26-27 included at least one sick participant. The virus spread from
there. Of 95 cases in Massachusetts, in early March, 77 could be traced back to
that meeting. Then the participants scattered, carrying the coronavirus back to
North Carolina, New Jersey, Tennessee, Indiana and Washington D.C.
A funeral in Albany,
Georgia two days later, led to another outbreak, what experts refer to
as a “super-spreading event.” Six siblings in one family became infected.
Dougherty County, where the funeral was held, has had 24 deaths and 600
confirmed cases since.
Fifty wealthy guests
gathered at a March 5 birthday party in Westport, Connecticut. After all the
presents were opened, and the candles blown out, and the cake and ice cream
were consumed, guests hugged and kissed and went home. At least half the people who attended would
later test positive and spread the virus everywhere they went.
Even the young are not
safe. Seventy students from the University of Texas chartered a jet on March
14, and flew to Cabo San Lucas for vacation. At least 44 ended up infected.
And the old—the old are at
grave risk. The Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, in Holyoke, Massachusetts, kept the story
quiet as long as it could. Then an anonymous tip revealed the truth. Eight patients were
dead with COVID-19, in five days. Other patients were ill. Staff were infected.
As of 7:00 p.m. on
Tuesday, it was estimated that the U.S. had tallied 3,807
deaths as
a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. Another 3,981 Americans were in serious or
critical condition.
Weep then for President
Trump.
His ego is injured.
___
COVID-19 doesn’t disappear in April!
April 1, 2020: The nearly-nationwide
lockdown continues; but problems mount. First, the purely stupid. In
Pennsylvania, two men are arrested after one chastises
the other for not covering his mouth when he coughs while both are pumping gas.
Words are passed.
Maybe germs.
The man who complained
ends up hitting the man who coughed with his car. The man who coughed opens
fire with a concealed .45 pistol. Both cougher and shooter are now under
arrest.
Otherwise, developments are
depressing. New York City, hard hit by the virus, reports that 1,400 police officers and department
personnel are infected. The death toll in the U.S. has risen to 5,110.
Governor DeSantis takes his cues from television.
Nerves are fraying, not
just at gas pumps where fools forget to cough into the crook of their elbow. In
New Jersey, ten people are charged with attending an engagement party, in
violation of a social-distancing ban. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida bows to reality
and issues a stay-at-home order for his state, as confirmed cases climb to almost
7,000. In announcing his decision DeSantis tells reporters he changed his mind
after watching the president on television. “It is a very serious situation,” he says in announcing the
change, something almost everyone else in America had long since figured out by
themselves. “When you see the President up there and his demeanor the last
couple of days, that’s not necessarily how he always is.”
That is true. The president is usually
clueless. He blew off the threat for weeks. And now, here we are as a nation.
*
Even a number of pastors
have been led away in cuffs. This past Sunday, Dr. Ronald Howard-Browne, a Florida
minister, refused to abide by social-distancing
orders and held services for hundreds of worshippers. Collection plates were
passed, and maybe a virus. Dr. Howard-Browne proves unrepentant and says he has
a constitutional right to hold services if he wants.
Undaunted by such
arrests, a Pennsylvania pastor, Jonathan Shuttlesworth, continues to plan for
what he hopes will be a “Woodstock-like” Easter service. And coronavirus,
begone! Shuttlesworth, a televangelist, has strong feelings about this threat,
as he made clear on hearing that churches in Italy and elsewhere were shutting
down in the face of COVID-19.
Shame on every European full gospel church,
bunch of sissies, they shut down during this thing. Catholic church not having
holy water in the lobby. How holy is the water, then? That should be a sign to
you that your whole religion is a fraud. Any religion that doesn’t work
in real life is a fake faith. Totally fake….If you’re putting out pamphlets and
telling everybody to use Purell before they come into the sanctuary and don’t
greet anyone, you should just turn in your ministry credentials and burn your
church down—turn it into a casino or something. You’re a loser. Bunch of
pansies. No balls. Got neutered somewhere along the line and don’t even realize
it.
Heretofore,
Shuttlesworth, has been a big fan of President
Trump, even predicting on March 2, that “America will be minimally affected” by
the coronavirus outbreak because of Trump’s support for Israel. “If it’s a plan from the deep state to practice
shutting America down [for] population control, it will fail,” Shuttlesworth
howls. “The Lord,” he promises,
“looks at the plans of the wicked and laughs, and men can’t override God’s
blessing.”
Then again, God’s protection might not extend
to the liberal parts of the nation. Pastor Shuttlesworth continues:
I exclude from my prediction the Pacific
Northwest, California, and New York, because in a God honoring nation, those
are four places that have chosen to give God the middle finger in the shape of
an Empire State Building lit up in pink to celebrate the passage of the [law]
that you can kill a baby. So if it did hit Washington state hard, with that
government there, Oregon, with that government, California. Let me tell you:
your government matters. If it hits New York, you will not see me surprised.
According to
Shuttleworth’s brand of Christianity, God must want those brave NYPD officers
to get sick. He must have wanted to hear gunfire at the gas station. He must
have wanted both parents of Buddy Baker, an
agent for NFL players, to die within six minutes of each other. God in His
infinite wisdom wanted 3.28 million Americans to find themselves out of work
last week, no doubt including some of Shuttleworth’s very own congregants.
God smote the nurse in Miami, and the
doctor in Margate, Florida, both of whom were caring for the sick before they
died. In Shuttleworth’s view, Jesus would side with Donald J. Trump, and strike
down those of us who think the president is a liar and a fraud.
___
April 2-3: March went out, not
like a lion or lamb, but like roadkill. The coronavirus continues to sweep the
world. As of Friday morning, 6,098 Americans are
dead, 5,421 in serious or critical condition.
To compound the
suffering, a stunning 6.6 million people filed for
unemployment in the last reporting period. That would be on top of 3.3 million
who filed the week before. As many jobs have been vaporized
in fourteen days as were added to the U.S. economy in all the months since
President Trump took office (7,065,000), and all the jobs President Obama added
in 2016 (2,341,000), and all the jobs added in November and December 2015
(510,000).
Because official
statistics lag, preliminary reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show a
loss of “only” 701,000 jobs in March. Once figures are adjusted in April the
damage is likely to be ten times greater.
So ends a streak
of job growth, started in October
2010, continuing for the last 76 months Mr. Obama was in office. The streak
continued for 37 additional months under Mr. Trump—although fewer jobs were
added monthly during his portion of the streak. There’s nothing complex about
the math. If you look at the chart below, you can see which president “inherited
a mess.” The facts show it wasn’t Donald J. Trump, as he has often complained.
Now, should he be
reelected, he can truly say he inherited a mess, one he had a major
hand in creating himself.
*
To be fair, not all of
this damage is the fault of Orange Trump. As a good liberal, with his wits
about him, this blogger admits again that no president could have
avoided all this damage.
Unfortunately, the
president we have is an idiot where science is concerned. And the toadies
around him don’t dare brook him, no matter what idiocies spew from his lips.
The failure of the Trump administration to act quickly, or to take science
seriously, ensured that the country would be hit much harder than necessary. It
was going to be hit hard even if Trump did everything right. But he left it to governors
to take the lead. The State of Washington, slammed from the first, issued a
quick “stay-at-home” order and slowed the spread. The president got mad at the
governor, called him “a snake,” and kept insisting his administration had the
virus under control. On March 29, Washington had 4,312 cases—but the spread was
already slowing. As of today, Washington reports 6,585 cases.
The Republican governor
of Ohio, Mike DeWine looked at what was happening on the Pacific coast and took
quick action, placing his state under lockdown. On March 29, Ohio had 1,653
confirmed cases. As of today (with the state updating later this afternoon),
that number has grown to 2,902.
On that same day, March
29, the situation in Florida was getting out of hand. But Gov. Ron DeSantis, a
huge fan of President Trump, refused to take action, except to warn people from
New York and New Jersey to stay away from his state. Florida had 4,246 cases. Then
came the explosion. Currently, Florida has 9,585 cases—and I think you could
argue that Ohio should keep any cars with Florida plates from crossing the
Brent Spence Bridge.
The president now says he
may consider a nationwide stay-at-home order. But he’s been slow to the
party. People in thirty-eight states are already living
under stay-at-home rules. Seven more states have orders covering parts of their
populations. Only five, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and Arkansas
have avoided such edicts entirely. Nationally, Nine out of every ten Americans are
under orders to shelter at home; and somewhere close to 100% of K-12
students have been or will soon be told school has closed. If we take just those
five states open for business, all five have closed schools.
Any good news? Not
much—save for the fact that doctors, nurses and first responders are showing up
for work despite great risks. Robert Craft, owner of the New England Patriots
flew one of his jets to China and picked up more than a million critically
needed N95 protective masks. And the crew of the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt
gave Captain Brent Crozier a rousing sendoff.
The captain gets canned.
In not so good news,
Crozier was removed from command after a letter he
wrote, demanding quick action to protect his crew, leaked to the press. You
know—the free press—what our current Commander-in-Chief likes to call the
“Enemies of the People.”
At least 114 sailors on
the aircraft carrier had tested positive for COVID-19 by the time Crozier
warned that sailors would die if action was not taken to evacuate them from the
ship. Thursday, Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Moody took quick action
and canned the captain, making it clear that Crozier was removed because
the letter leaked.
Not because Crozier was
wrong.
In other developments,
President Trump has refused to reopen enrollment for the
Affordable Care Act, even as millions of Americans lose jobs, and with those
jobs, lose healthcare.
The president, of
course, still has the red ass because he failed to come up with a way to kill
the ACA, even though he said repeal and replace would be “so easy.” Rather than
have more Americans sign up for protection, he’s going to pout and
see that they do without coverage.
___
April 4-5: You can slice the
bread any way you like it, thick or thin, or punt the loaf like a football.
Trump is a terrible prognosticator. As of Saturday afternoon, the U.S. has piled
up 312,249 confirmed cases of COVID-19,
roughly 312,247 more than the president predicted on February 26.
On Friday the CDC
recommended we all wear cloth masks in public, where social distancing rules
are hard to follow. President Trump said during his daily press conference—during which he took time
to brag about how great the economy used to be—that wearing a mask
should be “voluntary.” He wasn’t ready to order a nationwide stay-at-home order,
either. “I leave it up to the governors,” he explained testily.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key
member of the Coronavirus Task Force, has said he can’t understand why
governors in some states are resisting such orders. “You know, the tension
between federally mandated versus states’ rights to do what they want is
something I don’t want to get into,” he said during a recent CNN interview. “But if you look at
what’s going on in this country, I just don’t understand why
we’re not doing that.”
____________________
“That would be national suicide, and yet, that
is what Anthony Fauci is suggesting, at least.”
Dr. Tucker Carlson
____________________
Of course, we couldn’t have
the leading infectious disease expert spouting off and making the president look
indecisive. So that other right-wing medical expert, “Doctor” Tucker Carlson,
decided it was time to offer a fresh take. On Friday, “Dr. Tuck” first threw
out a baited hook to catch unwitting viewers. He referred to Dr. Fauci as an
“impressive person.”
Then Dr. Tuck reeled in the
dupes. “That doesn’t mean he’s never wrong. On the question of the pandemic,
Fauci has been repeatedly wrong.”
Or to put it in
Foxspeak: Don’t believe Fauci. Believe that Trump knows exactly what
he’s doing.
Yeah: Believe the guy who
said the noise from windmills causes cancer—not the
expert on infectious disease.
Carlson then cited the
ten million jobs already lost—and probably sent loyal viewers off to load their
guns—when he added, “Imagine another year of this. That would be national suicide, and yet, that
is what Anthony Fauci is suggesting, at least.”
National suicide!!!
At least.
This was a stupid statement to make. And this
blogger found himself wondering, Where did Dr. Tuck get his medical
degree? Corinthian College?
No one was advocating a shutdown for a year.
Not Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer, or all three stacked atop each
other. Not Dr. Fauci, surely. Not even the Easter Bunny. What experts were
saying was that action now—for another month, maybe two—would keep us from
having to fight an even more drawn-out, difficult, and economically devastating
battle.
Tucker Carlson and the Windmill Party.
Dr. Tuck might have explained: In South Korea,
where they instituted strict quarantines of all infected individuals, and
tested robustly from the start, the virus has been nearly halted in its tracks.
He might have talked about how Washington State, California and Ohio moved to
shut down non-essential businesses and schools to stop the spread. And how it’s
working. He could have compared those states with Florida, where the governor
dallied, and where numbers of confirmed cases are still ballooning. He might
have explained that 90% of the U.S. population was already under stay-at-home
orders. Carlson might have added that almost every child, in grades K-12, has been told to stay home as
schools in all fifty states turned out the lights. He might have explained that
the only way to start getting those ten million jobs back was
to stem the inexorable spread of COVID-19, as surely as possible.
Only Tucker Carlson wasn’t there to give
patients sound medical advice. Like most of the fools on Fox News, Carlson had
joined the Windmill Party. He was there for one purpose, to land a cheap shot, to
undercut the expert—noting that Dr. Fauci had “bulletproof job security.” He wanted
viewers to think that Fauci wasn’t worried about anyone else, because he had a
job.
Dr. Tuck went for the Windmill Party Kill,
warning that if critics of President Trump have their way, we’re all
doomed. High unemployment rates, he said, are “a far
bigger disaster than the virus itself by any measure. Our response to
coronavirus could turn this into a far poorer nation. Poor countries are
unhealthy countries, always and everywhere,” Carlson continued. “In poor
countries, people die of treatable diseases. In poor countries, people are far
more vulnerable to obscure viruses, like the one we are fighting now. You want
to keep Americans from dying before their time? Then don’t impoverish them.”
But, still! We’ve got to deny the newly-unemployed any chance to sign up for healthcare under
the Affordable Healthcare Act!
 |
The Windmill Party.
|
Postscript: As of Sunday morning, the U.S.
has tested 1.7 million people for the COVID-19 virus. That’s the most
of any nation in the world—a fact our president wants us all to remember. The
real problem becomes clear only if you understand how slow we were to get
testing up and running, or take the need for testing seriously. South Korea, with
one-sixth the population of the U.S., has tested 461,000 people.
Adjusted for population, the following countries—including one
this blogger had never heard of before—have all done a better job of testing
citizens: Aruba, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Brunei, Canada, Cyprus,
Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man
(sort of a country; definitely a tax haven), Israel, Italy, Latvia,
Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal,
Qatar, San Marino (who knew!), Singapore, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain,
Switzerland and United Arab Emirates.
 |
The flag of San Marino!
|
___
April 6: At this point, it seems clear. U.S. Surgeon
General Vice Admiral Jerome Adams warned Sunday that this week would be bad. And he
said it on Fox News, where Happy Talk regarding all things President Trump is
the rule.
“Well, it’s tragically fitting that
we’re talking at the beginning of Holy Week because this is going to be the
hardest and the saddest week of most Americans’ lives,” Adams explained. “This
is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment,
only it’s not going to be localized. It’s going to be happening all over the
country. And I want America to understand that.”
*
If you couldn’t stand to watch the
president brag and attack others during his weekend press conferences, you
missed Trump at his worst. When asked about governors complaining they were running
low on supplies, the Narcissist-in-Chief insisted health experts he talked with
were “really thrilled to be where they are.” The states had everything
they could want!
The American Hospital Association,
which represents thousands of hospitals across the nation made it clear within
24 hours. Members were not thrilled. “Not a day goes
by where we don’t hear from hospitals and health systems across the country
that are concerned about shortages of PPE [personal protective equipment] for
their heroic front line caregivers,” a senior vice president said. “The AHA
continues to urge that all levers be used by both the government and
private sector to ensure those on the front lines have the resources
and support they need to care for their patients and communities.”
Trump’s Sunday press conference was
no better. Asked about complaints that states were competing against
each other and against the federal government for critical supplies
and equipment, you knew Trump couldn’t take a whiff of criticism without lashing out:
There is a governor, I hear him complaining all the time,
Pritzker. He is always complaining. I just said, “Give me a list of a couple of
the things we’ve done in Illinois.” We’re building a 2,500-bed hospital in
McCormick Place, that’s a big convention center in Chicago. We’re helping to
staff it and probably will end up staffing it because he’s not able to do what
he’s supposed to be able to do as the governor.
He has not performed well.
(You know Trump would give the governor a 0 out of 10, if
asked.)
Jeremy Diamond, a reporter from
CNN, decided to inquire about a drug cocktail Trump keeps
touting—as if this unproven treatment might be the secret to stopping the scourge
of COVID-19.
Trump says, as he has several times
recently, that he has a hunch hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, might
be the ticket to saving us all.
He spreads his hands wide and thrusts
them like pistons in Diamond’s direction, as if to say, don’t be disagreeing with
me! He says he thinks the drug might work, even though it
hasn’t been tested. “What have you got to lose,” he adds rhetorically. “I’ve
seen things that I like. What do I know? I’m not a doctor. I’m not a doctor,
but I have common sense.”
Trump then proves he doesn’t.
He suggests that doctors might
sample the drug, themselves, before treating infected persons.
In case you’re interested, some
side effects of this drug include increased chance of cardiac arrest and
possibly fatal toxicities if mixed
with common drugs used to treat diabetes. Hydroxychloroquine can cause permanent eye damage, permanent
hearing loss, unusual bleeding, blue-black skin discoloring, suicidal thoughts,
and can be fatal to children if they swallow even a few pills.
Diamond
tried to follow up by asking Dr. Fauci what he thought. “Would you also weigh
in on this issue of hydroxychloroquine? What do you think about this?”
“Didn’t you
just ask that question…Fifteen times?” Trump snapped.
“He’s a
doctor,” Diamond responded.
“You don’t
have to answer the question,” Trump, the man with the hunch, told the man with
the medical degree. “I answered that question 15 times.”
*
Monday morning, when the blogger
set to work updating his post, the bad news was piling up like bodies in a
morgue. A quick check of the Johns Hopkins University website showed: 337,971
confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in this country. By evening,
a second check of the Worldometers website indicated that the virus was increasing
quickly. That site gave the following totals: 366,906
Americans infected, 10,868 dead. The graph below, from earlier in the day, was
of particular interest:
That tiny sliver of red, to the lower left of the orange band representing Portugal, is the percentage of cases (outside China), in South Korea (0.82), where the government ramped up testing from the start.
Again, we keep pointing this out.
On March 17, South Korea had 8,320 confirmed cases, more than the
U.S.A. As of this evening, states hardest hit:
New York 131,900
New Jersey 41,100
Michigan 17,200
California 16,000
Louisiana 14,900
Massachusetts 13,800
Florida 13,600
Pennsylvania 13,100
Illinois 12,300
(South Korea: 10,331)
Washington 8,300
Texas 8,100
Georgia 7,300
Connecticut 6,900
Even rural areas may soon be
unsafe. The county with the most cases per 100,000 residents (outlined in red,
below) is Blaine, in Idaho, with 410 confirmed cases in a population of 22,000.
*
President Trump wants us all to
believe he’s doing a fantastic job. But Monday morning the Inspector General for the Department of Health and
Human Services dropped a flaming bag of dog poo on the White House porch, rang the doorbell and ran. In a
survey of 323 hospitals, carried out March 23-27, the IG found that “severe
shortages of testing supplies,” delays of up to seven days in getting test
results, and “widespread shortages of PPE put
staff and patients at risk.”
“The level of anxiety among staff is like
nothing I’ve ever seen,” a hospital administrator explained.
Even basics, the IG found, were running low:
Hospitals reported needing items that support a patient room, such
as intravenous therapy (IV) poles, medical gas, linens, toilet paper, and food.
Others reported shortages of no-touch infrared thermometers, disinfectants, and
cleaning supplies. Isolated and smaller hospitals faced special challenges
maintaining the supplies they needed and restocking quickly when they ran out
of supplies.
Asked about the IG’s report during his Monday afternoon press conference,
Trump blasted reporters for bringing it up.
Then he insinuated that the IG was a holdover from the Obama
administration and couldn’t be trusted any farther than Trump could throw a
box of N95 masks, assuming he could find a box.
Who did Trump blame for the delay in ordering critical supplies?
THIS GUY.
___
April 7: Healthcare
experts have known for weeks that the COVID-19 virus can rage almost
unchecked in clusters. The first cluster in
the U.S. was a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington, where 129 residents and
staff contracted the virus. Cook County Jail, in Chicago, has at least 300
cases. Now we know at least 155 members sailors on the
aircraft carrier U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt have fallen ill,
including the former captain, Brent Crozier.
Crozier was removed from command last week,
in large part because the fat shadow of Donald J. Trump looms over the U.S.
Navy. After Crozier wrote a letter, demanding that his crew be allowed to leave
the ship and go into quarantine, Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly (who
replaced Richard V. Spencer, who described working for Trump as “chaos”) made
it clear. He knew Captain Crozier’s letter would anger the president. He knew
there would be pressure from the White House if he failed to act.
The Secretary of the Navy spoke
with the Washington Post about the matter and the
“Fake News” folks had the nerve to quote him. Modly explained that his predecessor “lost his job because the
Navy Department got crossways with the president” in the Gallagher case. “I
put myself in the president’s shoes,” he continued. “I considered how the
president felt like he needed to get involved in Navy decisions [in the
Gallagher case and the Spencer firing]. I didn’t want that to happen again.”
In case you don’t remember, the Navy
had recommended stiff punishment for Edward Gallagher, a member of
the elite Navy Seals. Gallagher had been accused by his own men of having
committed war crimes, including murder. After Gallagher was found guilty of
lesser charges by a military court, Trump intervened. Spencer balked. Trump fired him. Modly
didn’t want to be fired next.
Later, Spencer laid out his
response in an op-ed in the Washington Post, one of Trump’s least
favorite newspapers in all the wide world. “This was a shocking and
unprecedented intervention in a low-level review,” Spencer wrote. “It was also
a reminder that the president has very little understanding of what it means to
be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform
set of rules and practices.”
*
Yesterday, we learned that during a
special visit to Guam, Modly made an announcement to the crew of the Theodore
Roosevelt.
Someone recorded it and leaked it
to the press—and the “Enemies of the People” picked up the story again.
The letter caused alarm—and not the virus?
In his speech, Modly called the
captain “stupid” and “naïve” for sending a letter. He claimed he removed the captain because he
had “created a panic on the ship.” The letter “unnecessarily raised alarms with
the families of our sailors and Marines with no plan to address those
concerns.”
Yes! The letter caused unnecessary
alarm! Not the fact that dozens of sailors were coming down sick.
A storm of criticism—of Modly—began
brewing up Monday. At first, he insisted he stood by “every word” of his
speech.
Then he, and we assume President
Trump, realized he looked like an ass, and Trump realized he himself looked
like an ass, because he backed Modly up.
On Saturday, the president said he fully supported Modly’s
decision, although he hedged, as he does, to avoid getting pinned down as the
man who bears final responsibility. “I
didn’t make the decision,”
Trump said. But the “letter was a five-page letter from a captain, and the
letter was all over the place. That’s not appropriate. I thought it was
terrible, what he did, to write a letter,” the president added. “I mean, this
isn’t a class on literature. This is a captain of a massive ship that’s nuclear
powered. And he shouldn’t be talking that way in a letter.”
Now, it was a new day. Modly had to
tack hard as winds from the White House blew him off course. He apologized in a
statement:
I want to apologize to the Navy
for my recent comments to the crew of the TR. Let me be clear, I do not think
Captain Brett Crozier is naïve nor stupid. I think, and always believed him to
be the opposite.
I believe, precisely because he
is not naive and stupid, that he sent his alarming email with the intention of
getting it into the public domain in an effort to draw public attention to the
situation on his ship. I apologize for any confusion this choice of words may
have caused. I also want to apologize directly to Captain Crozier, his family,
and the entire crew of the Theodore Roosevelt for any pain my
remarks may have caused.
It now dawned on Trump that it
wasn’t a good look to fire a captain who was trying to keep a crew of 5,000,
crammed aboard a warship at sea, safe from an easily transmissible virus. “I’m going to get involved and
see exactly what’s going on there,” Trump assured reporters at his Monday press
conference. “Because I don’t want to destroy somebody for having a bad day.”
As if he
couldn’t have figured this out before.
*
It turns out
Trump might also have to quit making excuses for his administration’s failure,
in late January, through February, and into March, to take the threat of the
COVID-19 virus seriously.
Trump has
insisted repeatedly that no one could see this pandemic coming. But the free
press, this time in the form of The New York Times, another
newspaper the president hates, has acquired an email from
a top White House economic adviser, Peter Navarro.
Dated
January 29, it reads in part:
The lack of immune protection or an existing cure or vaccine
would leave Americans defenseless in the case of a full-blown coronavirus
outbreak on U.S. soil. This lack of protection elevates the risk of the
coronavirus evolving into a full-blown pandemic, imperiling the lives of
millions of Americans.
Navarro was
hopeful that the virus would be no worse than flu and economic damage would be minimal.
But one worst-case scenario warned that as many as half-a-million Americans
could die.
*
Local and
state officials in Georgia are fighting, after Gov. Brian Kemp said he was
going to reopen the state’s beaches. Kemp, of course, became “famous” recently after admitting that he
didn’t realize COVID-19 could be spread
by individuals who were asymptomatic.
I mean: Who
knew!
Besides
every nurse and doctor and health department official, and even every fan of
medical dramas on television.
Mayors in
several beach towns are unhappy, with one labeling Kemp’s new order “crazy.”
The mayor of Tybee Island, for example, warned, “The health of our residents, staff and visitors are being put at
risk and we will pursue legal avenues to overturn his reckless mandate.”
“We are in the middle of a
worldwide pandemic, and while we are closing schools we are reopening beaches,”
Savannah Mayor Van Johnson told NBC on Sunday. “In my mind, that does not
compute.”
___
April 8-10: I try to stick as close as
possible to the facts on this blog (albeit wrapping them in a cloak of liberal
logic).
So, the fact is, President Trump’s chances of winning a second
term appear to be rising. As of Thursday,
April 10, if we take a poll average, his disapproval rate is actually
dropping.
As a liberal, I might argue
that this proves many Americans fail to follow the news closely enough. Unlike
the president, I don’t deny the unpleasant facts.
In an update this evening,
Johns Hopkins University reports that the U.S. has 496,535 confirmed cases of COVID-19. That’s more than three times as many as Spain,
the next most suffering country. I know. Facts. Our population is seven times
greater. Adjusting for that, Spain has been hit harder, as have several other
countries, including France, Germany and Switzerland.
*
The existence of that email is what this blogger calls a fact.
Facts. I do like facts. Recently,
our evidence-averse president insisted that no one could have predicted this pandemic.
Then The New York Times revealed an email, sent on January 29,
from a top White House official—warning that the coronavirus could “evolve into a full-blown
pandemic, imperiling the lives of millions of Americans.” The existence of that
email is what this blogger calls a fact.
Even Trump didn’t dare deny
the email existed. He simply claimed he never saw it. No
one ever told him about it, even though it circulated widely in the West Wing. If
he had read it or been told about it, it wouldn’t have made any difference.
Because every decision he made was exactly right.
Still, it’s a hard fact:
On January 29, he was too busy tweeting to focus on the
growing crisis. He was excited about a big rally already planned. Ticket
requests were through the roof. What could go wrong? You know. Big crowd in one
place: “175,000 ticket
requests. Keep America Great!”
A little coughing couldn’t hurt.
So, it was—29 tweets that day—and too busy to
read that email. It was 46 tweets January 30. No time to read. January 31 was a
“slow” Twitter day. But on February 1 he was still talking rallies: “Trump poll numbers are the highest since election, despite
constant phony Witch Hunts! Tens of thousands of people attending
rallies (which the Fake News never mentions) to see ‘The Greatest Show
On Earth’. Fun because USA is WINNING AGAIN!”
Trump wasn’t worried about a coronavirus. We now know that on February 1 the
U.S. had eight confirmed cases.
A Disastrous Press Conference.
By February 26, the country had 60 cases—although that figure would
not be confirmed till later that day. Trump remained blissfully, cluelessly
unaware. He wasn’t worried in the least, telling reporters that the U.S. had only
15 cases (correct based on what was known when he spoke). And we’re not talking
“Fake News” here. We’re talking White House transcripts.
On that particular day, Trump told reporters, and a national
television audience, all of the following:
“Because of all we’ve
done, the risk to the American people remains very low.”
“As most of you know, the—the
level that we’ve had in our country is very low, and those people are getting
better, or we think that in almost all cases they’re better, or getting.”
Congress had just voted
to give the Trump administration $8.5 billion to handle the growing threat.
Trump had requested $2.5 billion and he was pretty sure he wouldn’t need the
extra dough.
Hopefully, we’re not going to have to spend so much because we
really think we’ve done a great job in keeping it down to a
minimum. And again, we’ve had tremendous success—tremendous
success—beyond what people would have thought.
That day, the president made
one of many comparisons of the coronavirus to regular flu. Even rudimentary
science seemed to baffle the poor man:
The flu, in our country, kills from 25,000 people to 69,000
people a year. That was shocking to me.
And, so far, if you look at what we have with the 15 people and
their recovery, one is—one is pretty sick but hopefully will recover, but the
others are in great shape. But think of that: 25,000 to 69,000.
A reporter asked if he
might limit travel from other countries besides China? Perhaps Italy or South
Korea?
Trump was confident. Many
countries “have no problem whatsoever,” said. “But we’re very, very
ready for this, for anything—whether it’s going to be a breakout of larger
proportions or whether or not we’re—you know, we’re at that very low level, and
we want to keep it that way.” The U.S., he reiterated, had only fifteen cases.
So we’re at the low level. As they get better, we take them
off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people.
And we could be at just one or two people over the next short
period of time.
The Johns Hopkins, I guess—is a highly respected, great
place—they did a study, comprehensive: “The Countries Best and Worst Prepared
for an Epidemic.” And the United States is now—we’re rated number
one. We’re rated number one for being prepared. This is a list of
different countries.
(Trump waved around a
list. Later, when the virus had spread unchecked, he blamed the Obama
administration for leaving the country unprepared. But he was bragging about
how the U.S. was the best prepared of any country. And since credit was due,
Trump wanted us all to know the credit was due to Donald J. Trump.)
“Whatever happens, we’re
totally prepared,” he said again.
(We weren’t totally
prepared. In failing to realize that the president ensured that we would fail
to be prepared. There was no urgency on his part.)
He adds:
When you look at a
country this size, with so many people pouring in—we’re the number one in the
world for people coming into a country, by far. And we have a total of 15
cases, many of which, or most—within a day, I will tell you most of whom are
fully recovered. I think that’s, really, a pretty impressive mark.
A reporter asks, “Mr.
President, should Americans be going out getting protective equipment such as
masks and so forth? And if so, what is the U.S. doing to boost
production of masks?”
Well, we can get a lot of it. In fact, we’ve ordered a lot
of it just in case we need it. We may not need it; you understand
that. But in case—we’re looking at worst-case scenario. We’re
going to be set very quickly.
But we—I don’t think we’re going to ever be anywhere
near that. I really don’t believe that we’re going to be anywhere near
that. Our borders are very controlled. Our flights in from certain
areas that we’re talking about are very controlled. I don’t think we’ll
ever be anywhere near that.
Trump still has no idea
how this virus might spread—from American tourists returning home from Italy,
for example.
*
BY THE END OF FEBRUARY, we have 70 confirmed cases. Trump still isn’t concerned.
He ends the month by
tweeting about “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Crazy Bernie Sanders” and “Mini Mike
Bloomberg.” He doesn’t have time to bone up on the coronavirus or ponder the
implications. He’s too busy
tweeting again on March 1 (29
tweets) to attend to the crisis. He did have time, however, to quote a
poll which made him sound better than President Obama.
“Don’t
listen to Stupid.”
A Poll in today’s New York Post says that 77% of “U.S.
adults have confidence in their government’s ability to handle the Coronavirus
(Number One), compared to other health threats.” 64% for Zika, 58% for Ebola.
Others way down on list. Our professionals are doing a great job.
And the president was way
too busy the following day, when he tweeted 49 times on March 2, including:
I was criticized by the Democrats when I closed the Country down to China many weeks ahead of what almost everyone recommended. Saved many lives. Dems were working the Impeachment Hoax. They didn’t have a clue! Now they are fear mongering. Be calm & vigilant!
He still wasn’t worried
enough on March 3 (37 tweets), March 4 (39) or March 5 (31) to focus on the
threat. Instead, his second tweet on March 5, was a complaint about how he was
being treated,
I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work. This is just more Fake News and disinformation put out by the Democrats, in particular MSDNC. Comcast covers the CoronaVirus situation horribly, only looking to do harm to the incredible & successful effort being made!
So, here’s what Trump did say the night before
(when the U.S. had only 161 confirmed cases). I think it’s fair to say
he made it clear he wasn’t troubled by news that the virus was spreading.
“It’s, you know, a
very, very small number in this country,” he told Sean Hannity in a
call to his show. The World Health Organization was already warning that as
many as 3.4% of those infected could die. Trump wasn’t buying that assessment.
“I think the 3.4% is really a false number. Now—this is just my hunch…because a
lot of people will have this and it’s very mild,” he told his host.
“Personally, I would say the number is way under 1 percent.”
At that point, only a dozen
Americans had succumbed. So here’s what the president said: “So if, you know,
we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by,
you know, sitting around and even going to work, some of them go to work, but
they get better.”
Did he say people should go
to work? Not precisely. Did he indicate they could, and no harm, no foul?
He did. And doctors were
appalled. Dr. Kathie Allen, a family physician from California, responded via
Twitter: “Am a doctor. Don’t go to work with Coronavirus. Don’t listen to
Stupid.” “It’s extremely irresponsible and dangerous…to
say that people with mild symptoms of the coronavirus can get better just by
going to work,” Dr. Eugene Gu tweeted. They could easily transmit the virus to
coworkers, “some of whom may have chronic medical conditions and suffer bad
complications.”
That same day, March 5, the World
Health Organization warned, “This is not a drill. This is not the time to
give up. This is not a time for excuses. This is a time for pulling out all the
stops.”
(Trump will later blame the World Health Organization for not
sounding an alarm.)
The warning signs were
multiplying. The president missed them or glossed over any that he saw. By March
5, two dozen states had declared emergencies. A cruise ship, carrying infected
passengers and crew was parked off the West Coast. Major music and sporting
venues were being canceled.
USA Today captured the president’s lack of concern:
Armed with all of that evidence, President Donald Trump spent the
next week treating COVID-19 in much the same way that he had over the previous
two months: he hosted large gatherings at Mar-a-Lago, went golfing, attended
fundraisers, dispensed misinformation about the virus and flouted social
distancing guidelines known to stem its spread.
“It
doesn’t bother them and it doesn’t bother me.”
The following week might have
been used to excellent effect, as might have been the two months already wasted.
Trump continued to act like the virus was flu with a fancy name. On March 6, he
took time during a White House meeting to call Elizabeth Warren “a very mean
person.” At a stop in Tennessee, on his way to Mar-a-Lago, he offered up support
for people who had been hard hit by a tornado. Trump shook hands all around.
A reporter asked if he
might have to end large rallies, rather than risk having supporters spread the
virus around.
Trump replied confidently,
“It doesn’t bother them and it doesn’t bother me.”
Fox News host Tucker Carlson later said that he drove to
Mar-a-Lago that Saturday night [March 7] and urged Trump to take the novel
coronavirus more seriously. But the glitzy backdrop and a ballroom of attendees
forming a conga line—or as it’s called in Mar-a-Lago, “The Trump
Train”—seemed removed from the reality that a deadly,
ultra-contagious virus was quietly seeping through the country.
On Sunday, Trump found time
for another round of golf, this time with a group of Major League baseball
players.
On Monday, March 8, the
president appeared at a fundraiser. In just the three days he was off in
Florida, the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 doubled from 262 to
583. The next day the U.S. had 959 confirmed cases.
Over the course of the next
few days, as USA Today explained, the White House consistently
violated the tenets of “social distancing.”
Finally, on March 13, Trump declared a national emergency. By
then, the U.S. had 2,179 confirmed cases, and the explosion we’ve now seen was
guaranteed. “This will pass through, and we’re going to be even stronger for
it,” Trump continued to maintain. “We’ve learned a lot. A tremendous amount has
been learned.” At a press conference that day, 18 individuals crowded the
podium. Trump shook hands with everyone who spoke, save one, who offered an
elbow bump.
Little had been learned and the opportunity to greatly curtail the
spread of COVID-19 was irretrievably lost.
___
April
11:
Thursday, we learned another 6.6 million Americans filed for unemployment. That
brought the three-week total to 16.8 million.
Still,
if you had any doubts about what kind of person the president is, you should
have learned a cold, hard truth this week. The man who previously loved to
boast about creating “jobs, jobs, jobs,” will be lucky (and we, as a nation,
will be lucky) if he doesn’t go down in history as “Depression Don.”
The
truth, then, is this. In the end the only job Donald J. Trump really
cares about is his.
That’s
why you could find him tweeting angrily Thursday, the same day the nation
learned that all those millions were out of work, about the great ratings he
was piling up with his press conferences.
After
the Wall Street Journal criticized him for appearing on TV too
often, rambling on and on, getting facts wrong, repeating himself and
contradicting health experts, the president fired off this narcissistic gem:
Only such a man as Trump could
be talking about “Monday Night Football” and “Bachelor Finale” numbers at a
time like this—when the numbers that matter are 16.8 million suddenly out of
work.
In large part due to Trump’s failure to take the threat of
a pandemic seriously, the U.S. “rates” #1 in total confirmed cases of COVID-19
(532,879), and #1 in deaths (20,577), as of today.
Nor could Trump let the Wall Street Journal criticism go. He couldn’t because he is who he is, a profoundly warped human
being.
So, he repeated his
tone-deaf boast Friday, in another disgusting tweet:
Because the T.V. Ratings for the White House News
Conference’s are the highest, the Opposition Party (Lamestream Media), the
Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats &, of course, the few remaining RINO’S,
are doing everything in their power to disparage & end them. The People’s
Voice!
*
To focus the point,
consider a handful of jobs lost and gained this past week. One who found
himself suddenly out of work was Captain Brett Crozier, commander of the U.S.S.
Theodore Roosevelt.
Crozier made the mistake of
making Trump look bad.
With the coronavirus
spreading through his crew, he fired off a letter to top leaders of the U.S.
Navy (and by implication to the president) demanding action to protect the
5,000 men and women aboard. By the time the letter leaked to the press, dozens
had taken sick. Given the cramped accommodations on an aircraft carrier,
Crozier warned the situation could only get worse.
There were press reports immediately, that Trump wanted the
captain fired. But he let Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly do the dirty
deed. Then he said he agreed with the decision to
fire the captain, “100 percent.”
Modly told reporters he
fired Crozier because he broke chain of command. Then Modly visited Guam, where
the Roosevelt was anchored. He tried to explain his decision
in a talk over the ship intercom. All he did was anger most of the men and
women who heard him speak.
Meanwhile, Crozier’s
warning proved prophetic. He fell ill with COVID-19. The virus swept the ship.
By Thursday, there were 416 confirmed cases among officers, sailors
and Marines.
“I think his motives were pure. He was looking out for his
crew.”
By Friday, the commander of the 7th Fleet, Vice Admiral
Bill Merz, was talking to CNN and admitting the crew of the Roosevelt was in
a bad place. “There was lots of anxiety about the virus,” Merz told Barbara
Starr, a highly respected, veteran Pentagon reporter. (Trump hates CNN.) “As
you can imagine the morale covers the spectrum, considering what they have been
through.” The sailors and Marines were “struggling in
the wake of losing their CO [commanding officer] and their perception of the
lack of activity regarding fighting the virus,” Merz added.
Starr explained:
Merz suggested that the crew did not appear to have been given a
comprehensive and clear sense of the various steps the Navy was taking to help
the Roosevelt deal with the virus outbreak onboard. That lack
of information may have caused some stress, he suggested, feeding the very
visible anger many crew members displayed when [Acting Secretary of the Navy
Thomas] Modly visited the ship and addressed them about Crozier’s dismissal.
Of Captain Crozier, Merz
added, “I certainly don’t question his motives. I think his motives were pure.
He was looking out for his crew.” Starr also reported that a sailor who
had already tested positive was found unconscious by “his buddies.” He was rushed
to an intensive care unit on Guam.
Suddenly, the
Narcissist-in-Chief woke up to the threat. He wasn’t worried about Crozier. He
wasn’t worried about the sick sailor or his buddies. He was worried, first,
second, twenty-third and last, about himself. If the firing made him look
bad—if sailors died for no good reason—and that angered active duty military
and their families—he might be relieved from command himself, come November.
There was nothing to do but
send Secretary of Defense Mark Esper out to tell reporters that the president was “open” to reinstating Crozier. “We’ve taken nothing off the table,” Esper told CBS News.
So: Crozier was out because
he made Trump look bad.
Then Crozier might be in
again, because bringing him back might make Trump look good.
*
As this blogger readily
admits, he does not care for Donald J. Trump. But this blogger is an inveterate
searcher out of facts. Here are a few about one lucky individual who
landed a plum job this week. The White House now has a new press
secretary, fourth to hold the coveted post under Trump. Her name is Kayleigh
McEnaney. (Fact.) She’s blonde. (Fact.) McEnaney has a law degree from Harvard.
(Fact.) She must be smart. (Supposition, based on fact.) She has insisted that
Trump “doesn’t lie.” (Fact—that she said that. Absurd that she did.) McEnaney
said in February that the coronavirus wasn’t coming to America and said as late
as March 11, that it posed no threat. (Fact and fact—that she said that—not
that the future press secretary was correct.)
Just for fun, imagine you
had the choice of hiring anyone to fill this White House post. The job of
the Press Secretary is to stand before reporters and the American people and
tell the best version of the truth he or she can. Would you, if you were making
this hire, pluck a woman out of the entire population of this great nation, who
first made her name as a “birther?” That is, would you hire a young woman who
first made waves by denying that Barack Obama had the right to serve as our
leader at all?
You would if you were
Donald J. Trump. Because you would be suffering from Narcissistic Personality
Disorder.
Citizen Trump made the same
false claim for years, until he realized late in the 2016 campaign that his
racist-tinged lies were hurting him in the eyes of undecided, moderate
voters. Then, and only then, did he do what a narcissist does. He did what was
best for himself.
He did it in the fewest words
possible and never apologized for years of lies. He didn’t recant because he
cared about truth. He recanted in service to the only “greater good” a
narcissist ever sees.
He did it for himself.
McEnaney, then, is the
perfect person to shield the Narcissist-in-Chief from any harsh
truths.
Postscript: Just to be clear, the U.S. is not, as the president is now
insisting, leading the world in testing rates. This is one of the
main reasons the virus is spreading near and far.
We have currently tested one American
out of every 124 (8,068 per million, as of Saturday night). Italy has tested
one out of every 63 citizens, Germany one out of 64. Canada, with its system of
socialized medicine has tested one out of every 94. And only 653 Canadians have
died (their population is about one ninth of ours). Norway, another country
with a system of socialized medicine, has tested 1 in 44. South Korea began
testing early and often, as soon as the virus reached its shores.
Today, South Korea reported
30 new cases of COVID-19.
The U.S., so dilatory under Trump, to
take heed, had 30,003 new confirmed cases in one day.
___
April 12: A quiet Easter passes. Most churches are closed. The Pope
delivers a sermon to Catholics round the world on the “contagion of hope,” but
speaks from a nearly empty St. Peter’s Basilica. Like most good Christian
leaders, Pastor Greg Ball of Destiny Church in Naples, Florida holds a drive-in Easter service. “What
we’re doing is practicing social distancing,” he tells a reporter, “asking
everyone to stay in their cars and to separate with a good distance between
them.” Members of the congregation listen to his sermon on their radios. Several
offer praise while standing in open sunroofs. “My heart was filled with so much
joy,” Ball says afterwards. “Everyone waving to each other in the cars and
smiling.”
So that was all good.
____________________
Patriots gather to hug and shake hands and cough in each other’s faces.
____________________
One man who insisted on
exercising his right to gather people together in clusters and scoff at the
possibility of infection, was Ammon Bundy, in Idaho.
This is the same Bundy who led an armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in
Oregon to protest federal overreach. He had pledged to hold a nondenominational
Easter service in a venue holding up to 1,000 people.
Because, let’s face it,
nothing says “I am exercising my freedoms,” quite like gathering people
together, where they might pass the virus along, and go back out into the world
and spread it among family, friends and innocent bystanders.
___
