Where Are the Tests?

It Wasn't Just Trump Incompetence-- It Was an Outright Cover-up

There has been a lot of reporting on how the Trump administration ignored its own intelligence, its own CDC, and the urgent warnings of the medical community, from as early as January and well into February of this year.

But now NYU professor Ryan Goodman and student Danielle Schulkin conclude that the Trump's administration inactions were not just negligence.   As reports of what was actually known to Trump, HHS Secretary Alex Azar, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow begin to take shape, an unmistakable picture of calculated malfeasance has emerged.

They knew it was serious, and they knew it would or could kill hundreds of thousands of Americans. But they continued to lie.   Goodman and Schulkin write, “Over the last five days of February, President Trump and senior officials did something more sinister: They engaged in a cover-up.”
As you may remember, it was the February 25 public statement of the CDC's Dr. Nancy Messonier, that first caused a shit storm at the White House/

“As we’ve seen from recent countries with community spread, when it has hit those countries, it has moved quite rapidly. We want to make sure the American public is prepared,” Nancy Messonnier told reporters.  “As more and more countries experience community spread, successful containment at our borders becomes harder and harder.  Disruption to everyday life might be severe,” Messonnier said, adding that she talked to her children about the issue Tuesday morning. “While I didn’t think they were at risk right now, we as a family ought to be preparing for significant disruption to our lives."

At the time, senior officials knew the coronavirus was an extreme threat to Americans. Thanks to information streaming in from U.S. intelligence agencies for months, officials reportedly believed that a “cataclysmic” disease could infect 100 million Americans and discussed lockdown plans. The warnings were given to Mr. Trump in his daily brief by the intelligence community; in calls from Alex Azar, the secretary of health; and in memos from his economic adviser Peter Navarro.

What did the administration do in response to Dr. Messonnier’s public warning? They lied, intentionally and knowingly. Trump claimed he didn’t want to “upset” the stock market.  In reality, Trump probably realized that a full-blown pandemic was likely to sink his re-election campaign. 

He decided to concoct a veneer of phony assurances, and his collaborators, Kudlow, Esper and Azar, were only too happy to oblige. That very Tuesday afternoon, just hours after Messonnier’s statement, Azar held a press conference, stating that “Thanks to the president and this team’s aggressive containment efforts,” the novel coronavirus “is contained.”  On that same Tuesday afternoon, Kudlow appeared on CNBC, and said the virus was “contained.”

The next day, Mark Esper told U.S. military commanders to provide him with advance notice of any measures they might be taking that might “run afoul” of the president’s messaging, indicating that he was well aware of the scope of the pandemict, and the fact that it contradicted the administration’s contrived “happy talk.”

Millions of Americans took solace in these deliberate lies that were broadcast to the country. On that same Wednesday, Trump himself came out with his infamous suggestion that only “15” Americans were likely to catch the virus.  As Goodman and Schulkin point out, Trump and Azar continued to spew these lies—Trump at his political rallies, and Azar in public appearances—over the next few days. Five days of lies, in total.

Trump’s COVID-19 failure was not simple negligence, but an intended, malicious cover-up of the actual facts, all to create a false sense of assurance in the American people while the administration grappled to find an acceptable political escape—a way to salvage the impending disaster from the electoral fallout that was sure to follow for Trump.

Trying to Stay Sane During the Insanity

Brazil's Trump Wannabe Sparking Furor Over Coronavirus Response

Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro seems to be taking a page from the Trump playbook on how to screw up his country's response to the coronavirus  Things started to go south late last month when top Brazilian politicians from across the political spectrum warned that the controversial Brazilian president was putting thousands of lives at risk with what they called his reckless, paranoid, anti-scientific and belligerent response to the coronavirus.

Bolsonaro sparked fury with an extraordinary address to the nation in which he belittled the quarantine measures and travel restrictions being implemented by many Brazilian state governors and urged Brazilians to return to work and schools – in contradiction of his own health ministry’s counsel.
The comments stunned state governors – many of whom openly revolted against the president.
“I was gobsmacked,” said Ronaldo Caiado, the rightwing governor of Goiás state and a former Bolsonaro ally.  “It’s appalling. You cannot govern a country like this,” added Caiado, who this week severed ties with Bolsonaro. “At a moment like this he should have the humility to leave things to those who understand them.”

In an open letter to Bolsonaro, the rebel governors signaled they would ignore his calls to scale back their lockdowns.  In a second letter, the governors of Brazil’s nine north-eastern states declared: “Attacks and quarrels will not save the country.”

Bolsonaro rejects such criticism as the work of political rivals jostling to succeed him in 2022. This week he claimed governors and mayors forcing businesses to close were committing “a crime” and risked mass unemployment. “They’re destroying Brazil,” Bolsonaro claimed.

A few weeks alter, Bolsonaro sparked further protests and anger by sacking his popular health minister, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, after the two clashed over Bolsonaro’s highly controversial response to the coronavirus pandemic.   Mandetta’s sacking has been anticipated for weeks, as Bolsonaro repeatedly downplayed coronavirus and urged the relaxation of social distancing measures while Mandetta defended such policies.

Speaking shortly after Mandetta’s exit was announced, Bolsonaro claimed the separation had been “a consensual divorce” – but signaled dissatisfaction with his former minister’s position on the economic impact of coronavirus.

“I know … life is priceless. But the economy and jobs must return to normal,” Bolsonaro said, as he introduced his new health minister, Nelson Teich, an oncologist who was CEO of a group of private clinics and is now a partner in a medical service consulting outfit.

When news of the sacking broke, shouts of “Bolsonaro murderer!” were heard in central Rio de Janeiro and pan-bashing protests erupted in cities across the country.  “It absurd to change the health minister in the middle of a pandemic,” said one Rio de Janeiro intensive care doctor, speaking anonymously for fear of repercussions.  Experts believe that the apex of coronavirus cases in Brazil is still weeks away and that further weakening on the country's response could result in a sharp increase in deaths.

Political commentator Leandro Colon said Mandetta’s sacking might be good news “for those rooting for Jair Bolsonaro’s quick downfall”.  Such a move would further isolate the rightwing populist and could provoke “a political reaction of major proportions”, Colon wrote in the Folha de São Paulo newspaper.

Fallout From "Bleachgate"

There was no scheduled White House briefing on the COVID-19 crisis yesterday. This followed an abbreviated Friday session in which Donald Trump made only brief remarks and left without taking any questions. And that followed "Bleachgate"- an incredible set of remarks by Trump, where he suggested drinking or injecting disinfectant as a possible treatment for coronavirus.--as well as finding a way to put a bright UV light “inside the body.”  All of  this, when taken together, seem to suggest he may finally have said something so obviously awful that even Trump may feel as sense of embarrassment.

Maybe. . . but it’s clear he's pissed.  There are now reports leaking from the White House that the hunt for someone else to blame is in full swing.

Trump’s first go-to in the search for someone to take the fall went to his standard fall guys, with the current kinda-sorta press secretary Kayleigh McEnany blaming the press for taking Trump  “out of context” while claiming that Trump never tried to give medical advice. The only problem with that is that there was no “context,” as networks were merely playing back his comments in full and unedited-- so no "context" was either added or held back.  In addition, to accept McEnany’s explanation  also requires ignoring the dozens of other times Trump tried to dispense ill-advised medical advice.

Right-wing media, both on Fox News and radio, tried to help out by coming up with the pretense that Trump was talking about some new and radical treatment—something too cool to be known by plain old medical doctors like Deborah Birx or Anthony Fauci.  It's not clear how Fox News talking heads can possibly be privy to brilliant ideas like a Clorox vape.   


Deborah Birx, a physician and the White House coronavirus response coordinator (god bless her soul), even tried to defend the president’s reckless comments, suggesting that they were part of a deliberate, if unorthodox, thought process.  “When he gets new information he likes to talk that through out loud and really have that dialogue, and so that’s what dialogue he was having,” Birx said on Fox News Channel.  Nobody's buying that, Deborah-- but keep up the good work on that scarf collection.

 The White House finally seemed to have pinned down a fresh scapegoat for bleachgate. As The Washington Post reported, the tiny Trump finger of blame has now landed on Department of Homeland Security undersecretary William Bryan. And what did Bryan do? He was the one who conducted the private briefing for Trump in which he first addressed for him how UV light and disinfectants were effective in removing coronavirus from surfaces.  Apparently, when giving this information to Trump, Bryan neglected to say that the term "surfaces" doesn’t include the interior of lungs or veins.  You can't make this stuff up.

White House staff who were present at the private briefing seemed to believe at the time that Bryan had too much information in his presentation, and that perhaps the whole thing “was not ready” to go in front of Trump.  Reportedly, even Dr. Fauci seems to have predicted where Trump would run with the information, with worries the presentation might be taken as “the cure for humans.”

William Barr Doesn't Want to be Left Out of the War on Science

Donald Trump never issued the nationwide lockdown that the United States needed to minimize the damage of the novel coronavirus.  But for Attorney General William Barr, there is no situation that can’t be made worse by misusing the powers of the DOJ. Since taking over as Trump’s go-to unraveler of law, Barr has not only managed to waste an incredible amount of time destroying U.S intelligence, eroding relationships with allies, and trying to back up Trump’s numerous conspiracy theories, he has also been eking out time to threaten Black communities, killing investigations into Trump, and destroying oversight authority. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that, in the midst of a national health crisis, Barr is determined to get out his robe and scythe to hurry the process along by threatening governors over social distancing guidelines.

Barr joined right-wing radio ding-a-ling Hugh Hewitt this week to bemoan the states' shelter-in-place orders, which are meant to slow the spread of a deadly contagion. “These are very, very burdensome impingements on liberty,” said Barr.   Barr compared the stay-at-home orders to placing everyone “under house arrest.”  Barr indicated that he will review all the state rules (by which he means all the blue state rules) and find the ones that he thinks “go too far.” When these targets are located, says Barr, he will try to “jawbone the governors into rolling them back.”

But if governors decide to listen to scientists vs. Trump and Barr, the next step for Barr is that he will "side with the plaintiffs" and take the states to court. By which he means he will take the DOJ and put it at the service of people waving Confederate flags and AR-15s in state capitals.

Drake - Toosie Slide

Reporting from the Trump Bubble

At Tuesday's press briefing, Trump interrupted Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin's discussion of the Paycheck Protection Program and made it obvious how much of a moron he is.  Let's go to the transcript:

Steve Mnuchin:   There have been some big businesses that have taken these [PPP]  loans. I was pleased to see that Shake Shack returned the money. . . I asked people just make sure the intent of this was for business that needed the money.  The intent of this money was not for big public companies that have access to capital.

Donald Trump:  Harvard, you might say.

Reporter:  Mr. Secretary, are you going to request that those other companies, because obviously Shake Shack was not alone in being a big company that got money in this. Are you going to request-

Donald Trump:  I’m going to request.

Reporter:  You’re going to ask them to return that money?

Donald Trump:  Yep. Harvard’s going to pay back the money and they shouldn’t be taking it. So Harvard’s going to. You have a number of, I’m not going to mention any other names, but when I saw Harvard, they have one of the largest endowments anywhere in the country, maybe in the world, I guess. And they’re going to pay back that money.

Trump was obviously listening to some idiot on right wing media who didn't realize that Harvard doesn't qualify for a PPP loan and had in fact received a grant under a different program.  Almost an hour later in the press conference, Bret Baier, the dimwitted political editor for Fox News, still hadn't picked up on Trump's error and stuck his foot into his own mouth, asking:

Bret Baier:  I wanted to follow up on what you said about the small business program. Harvard’s going to pay the money back. How confident are you that you can pull back money for that?

Donald Trump:  Look, I don’t like when Harvard that has I think a $40 billion endowment or some incredible amount of money that Harvard gets this money. Harvard should pay that money back. I want Harvard to pay the money back. Okay? If they won’t do that, then we will do something else. They have to pay it back. I don’t like it. I don’t like it. This is meant for workers. This isn’t meant for one of the richest institutions, not only far beyond schools in the world. They’ve got to pay it back. I want them to pay it back.

As expected, Harvard responded that it had never received or sought funds through the Paycheck Protection Program.  It did, however, say that it had  received funding under a separate program targeted at higher education institutions.  Under that program, universities are given grants, of which at least half must be sent  directly to students affected by the coronavirus.  Yale, University of Chicago, and Standard all received funding from the program.  Harvard said it would give all of the $8.6 million it received directly to students, despite being eligible to spend half that on its institutional costs related to the virus.

Undeterred by his stupidity, Trump later doubled down on his mistake, tweeting that Harvard should “give back the money now.”

There was no further comment from either the White House or the Treasury Department-- what could they possibly say without further humiliating the Orangeman?

Trump and the GOP Ensures Relief for Rich People

It's been widely reported that some very big businesses, like Ruth's Chris Steak House ($20 million) and Shake Shack ($10M) got "small business" loans from the Paycheck Protection Program.  Potbelly sandwich chain, national chain Taco Cabana, video storage company Quantum and coal company Hallador Energy, all snatched up $10 million each.

That should come as no surprise, as the emergency loan program was rigged by the GOP to favor big restaurant and hotel chains without congressional oversight.   “Big Wall Street-backed restaurant chains that pay their executives super-sized bonuses should not be the first served up SBA loans by this administration," said Derek Martin, a spokesperson for the watchdog group Accountable.US.  "What a slap in the face to the untold thousands of legitimate small businesses that will not survive this crisis, many because they couldn’t get the help they were promised from the president soon enough, if at all.”

An Associated Press investigation into the recipients of this first round of funding has revealed that a lot more very big businesses have exploited the program.  At least 75 publicly traded companies, "with thousands of employees, past penalties from government investigations and pre-virus risks of financial failure were among those receiving millions of dollars" from the loan program. Some of these companies had market values "well over $100 million." These 75 companies got a combined $300 million in the taxpayer-funded, low-interest and potentially forgivable loans.

One of the companies that got $10 million is a software company in California that had been investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for accounting errors overstating its revenue; it settled late last year with the SEC. Looking at the statistics released by the SBA last week, AP found that 4,400 of the loans exceeded $5 million. No wonder the fund, which again was supposed to rescue small businesses, was depleted so quickly.

Some of the large companies that surfaced in the AP review had foreign owners, had been de-listed from the stock exchange, or threatened with de-listing because of poor stock performance even before the coronavirus crisis.  Some have had strings of financial losses for years. One of them, Wave Life Sciences USA Inc., a Boston-area biotechnology company in pharmaceutical development, got $7.2 million.  Its parent company is based in Singapore and disclosed in its annual report that it had suffered "net losses of $102 million, $147 million and $194 million during the last three fiscal years." The company has also admitted, "We currently have no products on the market and expect that it may be many years, if ever, before we have a product candidate ready for commercialization."

The PPP fund-- meant to keep small businesses and their employees afloat during the crisis-- ended up being a bailout for a lot of companies that were failing even before the crisis.  But it gets even worse.

75% of loan requests from Nebraska (a GOP-led state) were approved; 71% of loans from North Dakota (another red state) were approved as well.  Who knew that North Dakota was a powerhouse of the nation's small business?  While California and New York saw less than 25% of their loans approved.  Washington D.C. only got 19% of their loans approved.  Sounds like the fix was in for Republican vs. Democratic states, don't you think?

On top of that, it came to light that Texas has been approved for $1 billion more in loans than California (and 30,000 more loans) despite California's economy being $1 trillion larger and being much harder hit by COVID-19 (1,200 deaths in CA vs. 500 for TX).

Democrats are trying to make sure that the next round of funding for the PPP, will have $125 billion guaranteed to go to small lenders and thus to actual small businesses.

Testing in Trumpworld

Trump Administration Continues to Interfere with States' Efforts to Procure Supplies-- Even After He said the Federal Government wasn't a "Supply Clerk" and that the States Were on their Own

Over the weekend, the New England Journal of Medicine published a letter from Dr. Andrew W. Artenstein, M.D., of Baystate Health in Springfield, Massachusetts. about acquiring N95 masks.  It read in part:

As a chief physician executive, I rarely get involved in my health system’s supply-chain activities. Yet we continue to be stymied by a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), and the cavalry does not appear to be coming.

Our supply-chain group has worked around the clock to secure gowns, gloves, face masks, goggles, face shields, and N95 respirators. These employees have adapted to a new normal, exploring every lead, no matter how unusual.  Deals, some bizarre and convoluted, and many involving large sums of money, have dissolved at the last minute when we were outbid or out-muscled, sometimes by the federal government. Then we got lucky [on one order], but getting the supplies was not easy.

We were told to expect only a quarter of our original order. We went anyway, since we desperately needed any supplies we could get. Upon arrival, we were jubilant to see pallets of KN95 respirators and face masks being unloaded. We opened several boxes, examined their contents, and hoped that this random sample would be representative of the entire shipment. Before we could send the funds by wire transfer, two FBI agents arrived, showed their badges, and started questioning me. After receiving my assurances and hearing about our health system’s urgent needs, the agents let the boxes of equipment be released and loaded into the trucks.  But I was soon shocked to learn that the Department of Homeland Security was considering redirecting our PPE.  Only intervention by our congressional representative prevented its seizure.

At the outset of the crisis, Trump (in)famously told the states that they were on their own in obtaining supplies-- but yet he continued to interfere with their ability to obtain supplies and save lives.

On March 18, a shipment of 3 million masks that Massachusetts had procured via BJ’s Wholesale Club had landed in the Port of New York and New Jersey.  At the last minute, the federal government impounded them.  The same day, the state had confirmed an order with MSC Industrial Supply for 400 masks, to be delivered on March 20-- but yet again the federal government stole the shipment out from under them.

Several days later, Massachusetts officials confirmed two additional orders: one for hundreds of N95 respirator masks and another promising shipments of 35 ventilators.  The Trump administration again swopped in and absconded with both shipments. 

On March 25, Michigan Governor (and Democrat) Gretchen Whitmer requested that the White House issue a declaration of disaster-- but she didn't realize what kind of sadistic quid pro quo Trump had in mind for her.  The declaration would release critical federal aid and allow Michigan to obtain badly needed supplies. For each hospital in Michigan, the federal allotment of personal protective equipment is 747 face masks, 204 gowns, 4, 467 gloves, and 64 face shields.

On March 26th, Trump said that he was still considering Whitmer’s request., saying  “We’ve had a big problem with the young, a woman governor...from Michigan.”  Trump has a well-known history of responding in a hostile manner to powerful women who set boundaries or criticize his actions. When women speak out against Trump’s behavior, his narcissistic rage is even more out of control than when men speak out against him.

Finally, on March 28th, it was announced that Trump finally approved Whitmer’s disaster declaration.  Except for the gloves, the amount allotted to Michigan was "barely enough to cover one shift at that hospital. It’s not even a full day’s worth of shifts,” according to Whitmer.

On April 3, Colorado closed a deal with a manufacturer for an order of 500 ventilators when the Federal Emergency Management Agency swooped in and took it themselves, Gov. Jared Polis told CNN.

Colorado's order was canceled at the direction of FEMA, and the state was told by the federal government that it it was not on the priority list and the state would have to find its own supplies.  Which was was Colorado was trying to do in the first place. 

“We can’t compete against our own federal government,” Polis said. “So either work with us, or don’t do anything at all. But this middle ground where they’re buying stuff out from under us and not telling us what we’re going to get, that’s really challenging to manage our hospital surge and our safety of our health care workers in that kind of environment.”

The state of Illinois decided it had heard enough and came up with its own strategy.  Gov. J.B. Pritzker obtained millions of masks and gloves from China and brought those supplies back to Illinois on charter jets — but he’s kept the details secret out of fear the Trump administration would seize the cargo for the federal stockpile.

When word got out, the Governor's press secretary refused to provide details on the flights, saying only: “The governor has clearly outlined the challenges this administration has faced as we’ve worked around the clock to purchase PPE [personal protective equipment] for our healthcare workers and first-responders."  A source said the governor didn’t want to release details “because we’ve heard reports of Trump trying to take PPE both in China as well as when it gets to the United States.”

GOP Governors at the Forefront of COVID-19 Outbreaks

This past week, the biggest increases in confirmed COVID-19 cases occurred in states where conservative leaders have resisted calling for stay-at-home orders.  Arkansas saw a 60% increase in cases this past week, while Nebraska saw that number go up 74%. Not to be outdone, Iowa jumped 82% in confirmed cases. But the top spot this past week goes to South Dakota, where Gov. Kristi Noem has refused calls to order stay-at-home precautions. The Mount Rushmore State saw an increase of over 1,000 cases this past week, making that a 205% spike.  

Those South Dakota statistics include the extraordinary numbers coming from Minnehaha county, and specifically the hundreds of confirmed cases at the Smithfield Pork plant. It’s the single largest cluster of cases in the country, where well over 600 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19.
This is from a Republican-governed state that still refuses to have a statewide stay-at-home order.  Governor Krisit Noem is a Sarah Palin-esque ignoramus that struggled 21 years to get her college diploma.  The under-educated former cheerleader achieved national notoriety last fall by approving the state's anti-drug slogan, "Meth. We're On It."

The Smithfield plant, which supplies 5% of the pork consumed in the U.S., employs 3,700 people, all of whom have been free to roam about the state and congregate for the last month without any restrictions, thanks to Noem’s “commonsense conservative values.” Employees there were forced to work in close proximity with no distancing measures in place, according to employees. The same employees now say that people throughout the city are becoming infected.

Elsewhere, Nebraska saw cases jump almost 30% in just a few days. Even still, Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts continues in his efforts to defend his lack of foresight and leadership by sayin  stupid things like, "This is about making that decision, not the heavy hand of government taking away your freedoms.” Nebraska still does not have a statewide stay-at-home order.

Other Republican-led states also continue to rank near the top of per-capita coronavirus cases-- Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Mississippi and Louisiana.  Florida's Ron DeSantis rashly decided to open up state beaches this weekend, risking the lives of thousands of Floridians.  It is uncertain if other GOP governors will follow the advice of scientists and extend their stay-at-home orders or cave to Trump's illogical and risky attempts to "open up" the economy prematurely.

Dispatch from the Trump Bubble

Famously wooden-eared Melania Trump tweeted a White House-themed word search she declared was “a great way to bond with your loved ones.” Presumably she thought the puzzle would help people spend more time together amid coronavirus lockdowns-- but it didn't quite work out that way.  It ended up testing peoples' patience.

Critics reminded the first lady that another kind of test was desperately needed-- one that would be able to detect the coronavirus ― a test that Trump has been stubbornly refusing to take responsibility for.

They also accused FLOTUS of insensitivity and of attempting to distract attention from her husband’s chaotic and widely criticized response to the pandemic that has now killed more than 37,000 people nationwide.  Cue the twitter-verse:

The Weeknd - In Your Eyes

Trump Continues to Deny Responsibility for Nationwide Testing

Now that Trump has been embarrassingly forced into complete capitulation over his claim to be able to force state governors into re-opening the economy, it's time to start looking at when and how we will be able to transition back to a fully functioning country. 

In the past two days, Trump has re-tweeted a call to #FireFauci for daring to tell the truth about the ineffectiveness of Trump’s actions when confronting the pandemic, and Fauci has now been forced to speak truth yet again in regards to our readiness to return to normal operations.  In an interview, Fauci has gone against everything Trump has been saying for weeks: America isn’t ready to reopen, and never will be unless there is improved testing.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Fauci explained that the United States has to have a system that identifies the real breadth of infection, allows case tracing to find those potentially exposed, and which can respond quickly to signs that the epidemic is accelerating. “We have to have something in place that is efficient and that we can rely on,” said Fauci, “and we’re not there yet.”

Trump keeps bragging about shutting down travel from China, hyping his paltry efforts in obtaining ventilators and shifting blame to China and the WHO-- but nobody cares about any of that anymore.  It's all a load of crap, meant to gloss over the fact that his administration has done NOTHING to ramp up nationwide testing.  People who think they are sick still are not able to get tested-- this week, we saw a story where a California cop died after being denied a test two times.  And we continue to be months and months away from widely-available antibody testing (which most experts believe will be necessary to get back to normal).

As experts have said from the beginning—and experience in other nations has made clear—before the general population can begin to return to anything close to normal operations, it’s necessary to identify those who may be infected and isolate them until they’ve recovered. A few days of reduced cases and deaths is far from enough to signal that everything is good to go, especially when the current testing regime is far from adequate.
 

Trump Goes Over the Deep End

Trump went really off the rails at his Monday briefing, coming very close to declaring himself a dictator.  When asked about the states not wanting to relax social distancing, he said "The president of the United States calls the shots- it's the decision for the president.  They can't do anything without the approval of the president."  He later added, "When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total.  And that's the way it's gotta be.  It's total.

Yet, he continued to shoulder none of the blame for what is universally  considered one of the worst coronavirus response efforts in the world.   When asked where such "total authority" was derived, Trump said "We are going to write up papers on this.  It's not going to be necessary because the governors need us one way or the other.  Because ultimately it comes with the federal government."  No legal or constitutional expert could figure out what the hell he was talking about.

During its live coverage of Trump's bonkers performance, CNN pulled no punches in characterizing the unfolding events:

Many heaped praise on CNN for highlighting Trump's bullshit via the use of live captions (chyrons) during the broadcast.  One Twitter user said that whoever writes the chyrons deserved a Pulitzer.  Another said the chyron writer was a "fucking hero."   Other observers said that CNN "can keep putting all the sassy chyrons on screen they want-- it doesn't matter.  What matters is when the networks stop airing the briefing and start covering it."  Another Twitter user implored CNN "don't air this shit."

We're Starting to Get a Picture of What Happened and When

Throughout January-- as Trump repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus--  an array of figures inside his government (from top White House advisers to experts in the cabinet departments and intelligence agencies)  identified the threat, sounded alarms and made clear the need for aggressive action.The president, though, was slow to absorb the scale of the risk and to act accordingly, focusing instead on controlling the message, protecting gains in the economy and batting away warnings from senior officials.

Late November, 2019:  Concerns about what is now known to be the novel coronavirus pandemic were detailed in a November intelligence report by the military's National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI),  "Analysts concluded it could be a cataclysmic event," one of the sources said of the NCMI’s report. "It was then briefed multiple times to" the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the White House. 

Early January, 2020: The National Security Council office responsible for tracking pandemics received intelligence reports in early January predicting the spread of the virus to the United States, and within weeks was raising options like keeping Americans home from work and shutting down cities the size of Chicago. Trump would avoid such steps until March.

Politico reported that in 2016, the Obama administration created a 69-page National Security Council playbook that included hundreds of tactics and policy decisions to “prevent, slow, or mitigate the spread of an emerging infectious disease threat.”  From the start, the Trump administration ignored the step-by-step tactics laid out in the playbook.   For instance, the Trump administration waited more than a month to ask for emergency funding after the timeline laid out in the playbook.

It became obvious very quickly that vacancies and inexperience at the most senior levels of the White House, DHS, VA, FDA and the CDC had left parts of the federal government unprepared and ill equipped for what would prove to be the largest public health crisis in a century.

January 6, Monday: China shares the genetic sequence of the coronavirus with the CDC.  The agency immediately begins working on its own test for the virus.

January 20, Monday:  The CDC's test is used to verify the first U.S. case.

January 21, Tuesday:  The CDC publicly announces the first coronavirus case in the United States.

January 22, Wednesday: Trump says "We totally have it under control."

January 28, Tuesday:  The VA's Senior medical adviser Dr. Carter Mecher emailed a group of public health experts which went by the name “Red Dawn.” In the email, Mecher said,“Any way you cut it, this is going to be bad.  The projected size of the outbreak already seems hard to believe.  You guys made fun of me screaming to close the schools.  Now I’m screaming, close the colleges and universities.”

Late January:  Public health concerns often had to compete with economic and political considerations in internal White House debates, slowing the path toward belated decisions to seek more money from Congress, obtain necessary supplies, address shortfalls in testing and ultimately move to keep much of the nation at home.  Trump’s response was colored by his suspicion of and disdain for what he viewed as the “Deep State” — the very people in his government whose expertise and long experience might have guided him more quickly toward steps that would slow the virus, and likely save lives.

January 29, Wednesday: Coronavirus task force is formed.  Early on, the task force is consumed day after day by crises. The group grappled with how to evacuate the United States consulate in Wuhan, China, ban Chinese travelers and extract Americans from the Diamond Princess and other cruise ships.  The task force typically devoted only five or 10 minutes (often at the end of contentious meetings) to talk about testing. The CDC assured the group that it had developed a diagnostic model that would be rolled out quickly as a first step.

January 30, Thursday: The World Health Organization declares a "public health emergency of international concern," a designation reserved for extraordinary events that threaten to spread internationally.  Trump is informed about a January 29 memo produced by his trade adviser, Peter Navarro, laying out in striking detail the potential risks of a coronavirus pandemic: as many as half a million deaths and trillions of dollars in economic losses.

HHS Secretary, Alex Azar directly warned Trump of the possibility of a pandemic during a conference call--  the second warning he delivered to the president about the virus in two weeks. The president, who was on Air Force One while traveling for appearances in the Midwest, responded that Azar was being alarmist.

January 31, Friday:  Trump took his first concrete action, limiting travel from China.  Decision-making was complicated by a long-running dispute inside the administration over how to deal with China. The virus at first took a back seat to a desire not to upset Beijing during trade talks, but later the impulse to score points against Beijing left the world’s two leading powers further divided as they confronted one of the first truly global threats of the 21st century.

February 6, Thursday: The CDC began shipping test kits to the states.

February 8, Saturday: The CDC is notified that there was a problem with the CDC's coronavirus test.  Dr. Redfield, head of the CDC, played down the problem in task force meetings and conversations with HHS Secretary Azar, assuring him it would be fixed quickly,  The FDA does not send an official to inspect the CDC labs until two weeks later.

February 13, Thursday: Azar publicly announced that the government was establishing a “surveillance” system in five American cities to measure the spread of the virus and enable experts to project the next hot spots. It was delayed for weeks. The slow start of that plan, on top of the well-documented failures to develop the nation’s testing capacity, left administration officials with almost no insight into how rapidly the virus was spreading. “We were flying the plane with no instruments,” one official said.

February 17, Monday: The administration’s top public health experts concluded they should recommend to Trump a new approach that would include warning the American people of the risks and urging steps like social distancing and staying home from work.  But the White House focused instead on messaging and crucial additional weeks went by before their views were reluctantly accepted by the president — a period of four weeks when the virus spread largely unimpeded.

February 22, Satursday: FDA officials visited the CDC labs to investigate a possible contamination which was causing the tests to malfunction.  The FDA would later issue its findings, saying that the "CDC did not manufacture its test consistent with its own protocol." 

By this time, the FDA had become a roadblock in expanding federal testing to private labs across the nation.  The FDA failed to reach out to manufacturers, instead deferring to internal scientists and using cumbersome methods for approving medical screening.  Even the nation’s public health labs were looking for the FDA’s help. “We are now many weeks into the response with still no diagnostic or surveillance test available outside of the CDC for the vast majority of our member laboratories,” Scott Becker, chief executive of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, wrote to the FDA in late February. “We believe a more expeditious route is needed at this time.”

Stanford researchers, who had a working test by February, based on protocols published by the WHO, decide not to seek FDA approval of their test, due to excessive FDA rules.  The Stanford clinical lab would not begin testing coronavirus samples until early March, when the FDA finally relaxed the rules.

February 25, Tuesday: The National Center for Medical Intelligence raised its warning from WATCHCON 2  to WATCHCON 1, meaning that a coronavirus pandemic was imminent. 

February 26, Wednesday:  Mike Pence was named to chair the Coronavirus task force.  The CDC confirmed the first case of COVID-19 in a patient in California with no travel history to an outbreak area, nor contact with anyone diagnosed with the virus. It was suspected to be the first instance of local transmission in the United States. 

February 27, Thursday: Under pressure from Congress, the CDC told state and local health department labs that they could finally begin testing for the virus.  Rather than awaiting new test kits, they should use their previous test kits and leave out the malfunctioning portion that produced errors.

February 29, Saturday: the FDA finally modified its standards to allow clinical and commercial labs to develop their own tests.  It was too little, too late-- many labs had already committed resources to  the CDC testing methodology and would lose valuable time if they were to backtrack and pursue other testing avenues.

March 3, Tuesday:  The CDC issues new guidance that allows anyone to be tested for the virus without restriction. Previously, only those who had traveled to an outbreak area or who had close contact with people diagnosed with COVID-19 could get tested.   However, due to the scarcity of tests, most hospitals required multiple symptoms (including a temperature exceeding 100) before allowing a patient to be tested.

March 6, Friday:  Trump says, “Anyone who wants a test can get a test.”  This turns out to be completely falso.

March 7, Saturday:  HHS Secretary Alex Azar clarified that only those who have gone through a doctor or medical professional can be approved for a test.  Due to shortages of test kits, physicians nationwide only prescribe tests when patients report having a fever in excess of 100 degrees.

March 13, Friday: Trump declared a U.S. national emergency,

March 16, Monday: Trump finally afinally agreed in mid-March to recommend social distancing across the country, effectively bringing much of the economy to a halt, he seemed shell-shocked and deflated to some of his closest associates.  One described him as “subdued” and “baffled” by how the crisis had played out. An economy that he had wagered his re-election on was suddenly in shambles.

A Different Easter

Happy Easter!

Ill-informed Churches Responsible for Increasing the Death Toll from the Virus

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear has been pleading for weeks with churches, synagogues, mosques and and other sites of worship to shut their doors to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.  In the face of resistance and public statements from pastors that they will not comply, Beshear has issued another executive order directing police to take down the license plates of those who attend services this weekend.  Those license plate numbers will be turned over to the local health departments who will then issue fourteen-day quarantines for those lucky recipients.  As expected, coronavirus-loving idiots Thomas Massie and Rand Paul went ballistic.

 

I should remind you that Rand Paul has been nicknamed "Typhoid Mary" after he deliberately exposed his fellow Senators in the Senate gym after he went to be tested for the coronavirus.   Massie forced a majority of Democrats to physically show up for a vote on that economic relief bill, exposing them to infection because physical distancing was impossible with that many people in the house chamber.  The ill-informed congressman felt that a voice vote was unconstitutional (even though it has been in use for most of the country's history).  After enough people showed up to make quorum, his attempt at a delay was shot down in less than a minute.

While we're on the topic of Kentucky, remember the church in western Kentucky that insisted on having a revival despite guidance from health officials about social distancing?   An infected church member carried the virus to the GE Aviation plant in Madisonville, where seven employees have tested positive. Another church member later died from the virus, and infected the first responder who assisted the resident.  Two cases in Muhlenberg County were later linked to the revival, as are an unknown number of cases in Warren and Clark counties, the latter of which is on the opposite side of the state.   By now, the death total from that Hopkins County revival meeting stands at six (and counting).  54 others have tested positive for the coronavirus.  It’s why Hopkins County has the highest infection rate in the state of Kentucky.

Assholes like Rand Paul and Thomas Massie (along with Moscow Mitch) should know better-- but are likely pandering to the fundamentalist vote in Kentucky.  Most Democrats try to avoid alienating fundamentalist churchgoers as well-- but Beshear is a Democrat who knows how to speak to religious voters, and it doesn’t hurt that Beshear has other ministers in the state who are supporting him in his efforts.  Beshear has been pleading for everyone to do the right thing, but we have some idiots who are hellbent to have their services during a pandemic that kills.

Dua Lipa - Break My Heart

Actions Speak Louder than Words

In the wake of Trump's boasting of "big, strong, powerful" companies stepping up to provide desperately needed services in a pandemic that is likely to kill at least 100,000 Americans, ProPublica went looking for instances of Donald Trump's own companies providing similar charitable support. As in, any. Even a bit.

They couldn't find any.  As high-end New York City and Chicago hotels stepped up to provide rooms for medical personnel or isolated patients, did Trump's own hotels step forward? Nope.  Did any of Trump's myriad properties offer up hand sanitizer, cleaning supplies, or anything else?  In California? In Florida? Virginia? Anywhere? Nope.

What about cash? They at least have a little cash to spare, right? Nope.

The CEO of Las Vegas' Three Square Food Bank was able to gather 180 tons of donated food from the city's now-shuttered major casinos in just two days—donations from the MGM, Wynn, Boyd Gaming, Station Casios and Ceasars, among others—plus financial donations as well.  So what about Trump, who has a tall, yellow casino tower of his own?  No, they have not been a donor.

Attention Donald Trump: If You Don't Think Protecting Americans Is Your Job, then RESIGN-- and Let Someone Else do the Job!

Trump continues to use his press briefings to spread more lies about his failed response to the coronavirus, particularly about his administration’s failure to ramp up testing early on, which allowed the virus to spread rapidly and undetected.

Trump once again shifted blame to states and hospitals for a shortage of coronavirus tests that his administration developed and distributes, saying: "Hospitals can do their own testing, also. States can do their own testing. … We’re the federal government, we’re not supposed to stand on street corners doing testing.” 

CNN’s Jake Tapper said, "One month ago today, President Trump visited CDC and said, falsely, ‘anybody who wants a test gets a test.’ Wasn’t true then and isn’t true now. Today he kicked it to states and hospitals, saying the federal government is ‘not supposed to stand on street corners doing testing.' "   According to the New York Times, “Testing availability remains a signature failure of the battle against the coronavirus in the United States, despite President Trump’s boast last week that he got a rapid test and results within minutes.”

Trump took his lies about the U.S.’s testing capabilities one step further by claiming the U.S. had done more tests “proportionally” than any other country — another claim that’s demonstrably false.

According to the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake: “Fact check: The U.S. has tested a lower proportion of its population than others.”

Trump continues in his attempts to claim that the U.S. has more confirmed cases of coronavirus because we’ve done more testing, but it was Trump’s failure to test early that allowed cases to explode in our country.  The Washington Post reported, “The most consequential failure involved a breakdown in efforts to develop a diagnostic test that could be mass produced and distributed across the United States, enabling agencies to map early outbreaks of the disease, and impose quarantine measures to contain them.”

Trump again denied the critical supplies shortage facing states and hospitals, and dismissed an inspector general report confirming he’s responsible as merely political, despite the fact the IG was elevated to her position by Trump’s own administration.  According to the Los Angeles Times, the 34-page report released Monday was based on hundreds of interviews of administrators at 323 medical centers coast to coast from March 23 to 27. It largely validated reports from news organizations, and painted a far more dire picture than the one President Trump describes at his daily news conferences.”  When Fox News reporter Kristin Fisher attempted to ask Trump specifically about the report’s finding that hospitals are working with a “severe shortage” of testing materials, Trump unloaded on her.  “You should say ‘congratulations, great job,’ instead of being so horrid in the way you ask a question,” he said.

As Trump denies and deflects, people keep dying.  And now we are finding out the African Americans are more proportionally susceptible to the virus-- something which no one at the federal level is focusing on.  In Chicago, blacks make up about 30% of population-- yet their share of coronavirus deaths is at 68%.  As of Monday, 33 of the 45 Milwaukee County residents who died of COVID-19 were black.  That's 73%, though black residents make up only 28% of the county population.  In the state of Louisiana, roughly 70% of the people who have died from the virus are black-- a striking disparity for a state where African-Americans make up only 32% of the population.  Over 40% of Michigan deaths from COVID-19 are African-American, a racial demographic that makes up only 14% of the state's pupulation.

When asked about these disparities, Trump only had this to say: "I don't like it.  We are going to have statistics over the next two to three days."