4/13/20: The staggering economic damage from
the coronavirus outbreak continues to mount.
____________________
The federal deficit for Fiscal Year 2020 is expected to rise to
$3.8 trillion.
____________________
An added worry Monday: 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 exceed $2.1 trillion.
We can also expect state and local governments to be battered by
huge unemployment payouts and sagging tax receipts. Most states must, by statute, balance their budgets. So they end up cutting jobs and services, not the kind of tonic
needed when an economy is 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 dead.
President Trump continued yesterday to defend his lame ass response
to the coronavirus 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.
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. That means another
1,357 Americans died in the last twenty-four hours. In Germany, which has about
one-fourth of 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, had
Trump focused from the start. Again, we note that South Korea had more
confirmed cases on March 17 than the United States. But active testing was
already halting the spread.
At the risk of repeating ourselves (“myself,” really, since I’m
just a lonely blogger, tapping away on my keyboard for fun), South Korea now
has 10,537 cases.
That’s an increase of 26.6%.
The increase in this country, from 4,661 on March 17, would be 12,417%.
*
Trump seems to be
going for a “Grapes of Wrath” vibe.
IF YOU HAVE any doubt about what can happen when people fail to
“socially distance” themselves, or aren’t in a position where they can, look no
further than the situation involving the officers and crew of the aircraft
carrier U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt. The first infected sailor died Monday and 585 crewmen and
women have tested positive for COVID-19.
Or consider the outbreak of coronavirus 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 40% of all the cases reported in South Dakota to this point.
Perhaps even more ominously, for the country, 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 [emphasis
added] 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 can pick the
strawberries and pluck the apricots and pull up the lettuce that we like to see
in our grocery stores every week. 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
“Grapes of Wrath” vibe.
Screw the people who truly toil.
And, hey…who thinks Trump is crazy to let all those immigrants loose
in our orchards and fields with sharp cutting tools?
Didn’t he make it clear from the start of his run for office that
people who come into this country from places like Mexico just want to rape and
kill?
Well, and harvest crops for minimum wages!
And now, perhaps, for even less.
*
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 thought it would raise his approval rating a point.
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 more aggressively than the U.S. – and, if we adjust for population would have a third as many
confirmed cases as the United States.
Justin Trudeau – good job!
In South Dakota, a 2,000-patient trial of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine has begun, with the medical experts urged on
by Gov. Kristi Noem. President Trump has touted the potential of the untested drug to halt the
spread of COVID-19. Noem wants to help out.
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 or some other predecessor, Warren
G. Harding, or Calvin Coolidge, possibly.
The U.S. Supreme Court will be holding oral arguments via
teleconference in May, which is expected to slow the wheels of justice.
Finally, President Trump catches a break! At issue in one case: Can Congress
demand to see his tax returns?
And be honest – with the deficit exploding like a cigar in Bugs Bunny’s face – wouldn’t it be nice to know if the Narcissist-in-Chief was
paying his share of all the unexpected bills this great nation faces?
BLOGGER’S NOTE (7/15/21): South Dakota Gov.
Noem proves to be a giant suck-up to the president.
Alas, the test of hydroxychloroquine
fizzles by June 2020, when Sanford Health experts, who had been expected to
conduct the South Dakota trial read a newly-released study by the University of
Minnesota. That study found that there was no more health benefit from hydroxychloroquine than you would
expect from any placebo.
“After closely reviewing the new research,
our clinical trial team determined that the South Dakota study is unlikely to
see different results,” Dr. Susan Hoover, Sanford Health infectious disease
doctor and principal investigator of the study, told reporters. “We’re focused
on our goal of advancing the science around this disease and will continue to
pursue other COVID-19 research.”
In August 2020,
Admiral Brett Giroir, of the U.S. Public Health Commissioned Service is asked if he can recommend
hydroxychloroquine.
“At this point in time,” he tells NBC’s Chuck Todd, “there’s been five randomized-controlled,
placebo-controlled trials that do not show any benefit to hydroxychloroquine,
so at this point in time, we don’t recommend that as a treatment.”
He pauses a moment, and then adds, “Right now,
hydroxychloroquine, I can’t recommend that.”
People like
Gov. Noem and the president, who were pushing hydroxychloroquine were, to put
it plainly, putting people’s health at risk.
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