Handling the coronavirus crisis

[Admin]

Arizona ended the work of a team of scientists who predicted that the peak of its outbreak had not yet arrived. The experts, from Arizona universities, were making models for the state, and had predicted that the peak could come on May 22 or later. But the state’s health department stopped their work hours after Republican Gov. Doug Ducey announced some businesses can reopen this week, ABC 15 Arizona and the Arizona Republic reported. The state now says it will rely on other sources of information and on federal modelling.

Arizona, which is about to reopen, told its virus experts to stop making projections after they suggested the outbreak there has not yet peaked

The White House buried a comprehensive report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which would’ve provided state and local officials guidelines on the safe reopening of public spaces while the United States remains in the clutches of the coronavirus pandemic. The Associated Press reported on Thursday that the 17-page document contained advice from the nation’s leading disease experts on when and how to resume business at schools and day camps, workplaces, restaurants and bars, mass transit systems, religious facilities, and childcare centers. Titled “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework,” the report, which includes suggestions for religious leaders, business owners, and academic professionals, was due to be published on May 1. The AP published that report and another CDC document with flowcharts for each sector to follow. But an unnamed CDC official said scientists were told it “would never see the light of day,” according to AP reporters Jason Dearen and Mike Stobbe..

Here are the CDC guidelines the White House doesn't want you to see

[Admin]

President Trump is running against the polls with his calls for state and local governments to reopen their economies in an effort to stem the damage from what is likely to be the worst economic contraction in 90 years. Despite the protests that have garnered attention in Michigan and other states, voters in a series of polls have said they are not yet ready to resume anything approaching daily life as the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage. This raises some political risk for Trump, who fears a bad economy could swamp him in November, but who could face blame if states reopen too quickly and a new wave of COVID-19 infections hits the country.

Trump hits serious headwinds in polls on COVID-19 reopening | TheHill

• Good to see not everybody is fooled..
  

[Admin]

Nine prominent senators — all in the Democratic caucus — have penned a letter to President Donald Trump urging him to use wartime authorities to increase the amount of protective personal equipment (PPE) and testing supplies needed to confront the coronavirus. Led by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and joined by Sens. Angus King (I-ME), Gary Peters (D-MI), Kamala Harris (D-CA), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Mark Warner (D-VA), and Jack Reed (D-RI), the letter details how states have struggled to get what they need for their outbreak response.

Medical professionals lack the masks, gowns, and other items necessary to stay safe as they treat patients. And labs don’t have the requisite materials like swabs or complete kits to test people for the virus. The lawmakers’ solution? Have Trump invoke Title III of the Defense Production Act (DPA), a Korean War-era law that gives the president greater powers over industry, to have the federal government provide loans and other financial incentives to firms so they can make what’s needed.

Senators to Trump: Boost Covid-19 tests with the Defense Production Act - Vox

• It is simply stunning this hasn't been done months ago.
  
• Even more stunning because they are so eager to open up the economy, having enough testing capacity and supplies (as well as contact tracing capacity) is essential for that.
  
• Trump didn't hesitate to invoke the Defense Production Act for the meatpacking industry, as if meat is essential.
  
• The Trump government simply leaves states to their own devices, bidding against eachother for test and PPE supplies, so the blame can be laid on the states. 
  
• It might even be a ploy to get the numbers down, today Trump again said that high numbers "make us look bad" (see below), something which he previously said as he once famously didn't want stranded cruise ship passengers to board the US because that would increase the numbers.
  

President Donald Trump thinks that too much coronavirus testing makes the US “look bad.” “The media likes to say we have the most cases, but we do, by far, the most testing. If we did very little testing, we wouldn’t have the most cases. So, in a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad,” Trump said on Wednesday. The US still lags behind other countries in terms of the share of the population tested for coronavirus.

Trump says doing too much coronavirus testing makes the US 'look bad' as he pushes for the country to reopen

[Admin]

Basically, in a re-election gamble which assumes the economy must be seen to be on the mend, the Trump government has simply given up its fight against Covid-19:

• Trump was planning to disband the virus task force
  
• Trump argues that the virus will just go away, even without a vaccine
  
• Trump argues that all that testing isn't really necessary and blocks a national testing program
  
• But he and his entourage are tested every day
  
• Trump leaving testing and contact tracing all to the states
  
• But these do not have the finances and the Trump government isn't willing to provide these
  
• Trump never invoking the Defense Production Act for PPE and testing supplies
  
• Trump forcing people back to work by not extending unemployment benefits
  
• Trump invoking the Defense Production Act for the meatpacking industry, forcing workers back to work and absolving companies from liabilities so having little incentive to increase the safety conditions for workers
  
• Some states don't even publish the cases in their meatpacking plants anymore
  
• Grover Nordquist wants to absolve all business of liability
  
• The pandemic became much less of a problem when it became clear who are dying
  
• A timeline of how Trump failed to respond to the coronavirus - Vox
  

[Admin]

The single most disastrous element of the failed federal response to the Covid-19 pandemic is Donald Trump’s continued refusal to launch a massive federal effort to develop the capacity to test more Americans for the virus. Without magnitudes more testing, public health experts agree, reopening the country is a death sentence for countless Americans, particularly the less affluent. And only the federal government is capable of what’s required. On Wednesday, Trump explained himself with an extraordinarily revealing quote – one that included both a lie and a confession..“In a way, by doing all this testing we make ourselves look bad,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday, It was a lie because the number of tests administered in the U.S. – currently about 7 million – is tiny compared to the actual need.

And it was a confession because Trump was acknowledging that he sees testing as a matter of his own political health rather than the public’s. The context of his comment was also revealing, because he was speaking entirely about the public perception of the problem rather than the problem itself — and started off by ascribing ill intent to the media for accurately reporting its extent. “So the media likes to say we have the most cases, but we do, by far, the most testing,” he said. “If we did very little testing, we wouldn’t have the most cases.  So, in a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad….  Otherwise, you don’t know if you have a case.  I think that’s a correct statement.” To Trump, knowing you have a case – which, of course, allows people to get proper treatment, and to isolate themselves so they don’t infect others – has no positive value. It’s just bad optics

Trump blocks desperately needed national testing program, says tests make things “look bad” | Press Watch

[Admin]

To fix the economy, the country must solve the public-health crisis. Survey data show that the economic turmoil is driven not primarily by government shelter-in-place policies but by Americans’ fear that going outside will result in illness. To allow the recovery to begin, the United States must implement the kind of strategy that other countries have used to defeat the coronavirus. It must test widely to find infected people, trace their contacts who might themselves have been infected, and isolate that potentially infectious group from the rest of the susceptible population. Setting up this kind of infrastructure was one of the initial goals of the social-distancing measures that states and cities started in March.



Yet so far the country has failed to do so. More than 10 weeks into the coronavirus crisis, still too few Americans are being tested for the coronavirus, and the country’s testing capacity is not growing fast enough, according to data collected by the COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer initiative housed within The Atlantic. This week, the U.S. tested about 264,000 people a day, the highest level in the pandemic so far. But experts say that if the country hopes to get its outbreak under control, it must double or triple the number of daily tests. Some propose expanding testing more than 75-fold. But to an almost astonishing degree, the U.S. has no national plan for achieving this goal. There is no effort at the federal level that has mustered anything like the funding, coordination, or real resources that experts across the political spectrum say is needed to safely reopen the country.

The U.S. Still Has No Plan to Ramp Up COVID-19 Testing - The Atlantic

• And the previous entry in this thread showed you why, more testing makes the US look bad, according to Trump.
  

[Admin]

The coronavirus epidemic has rendered the racial contract visible in multiple ways. Once the disproportionate impact of the epidemic was revealed to the American political and financial elite, many began to regard the rising death toll less as a national emergency than as an inconvenience. Temporary measures meant to prevent the spread of the disease by restricting movement, mandating the wearing of masks, or barring large social gatherings have become the foulest tyranny. The lives of workers at the front lines of the pandemic—such as meatpackers, transportation workers, and grocery clerks—have been deemed so worthless that legislators want to immunize their employers from liability even as they force them to work under unsafe conditions...

The purpose of the restrictions was to flatten the curve of infections, to keep the spread of the virus from overwhelming the nation’s medical infrastructure, and to allow the federal government time to build a system of testing and tracing that could contain the outbreak. Although testing capacity is improving, the president has very publicly resisted investing the necessary resources, because testing would reveal more infections; in his words, “by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad.” Over the weeks that followed the declaration of an emergency, the pandemic worsened and the death toll mounted.. 

The disease is now “infecting people who cannot afford to miss work or telecommute—grocery store employees, delivery drivers and construction workers,” The Washington Post reported. Air travel has largely shut down, and many of the new clusters are in nursing homes, jails and prisons, and factories tied to essential industries. Containing the outbreak was no longer a question of social responsibility, but of personal responsibility. From the White House podium, Surgeon General Jerome Adams told “communities of color” that “we need you to step up and help stop the spread.”

Public-health restrictions designed to contain the outbreak were deemed absurd. They seemed, in Carlson’s words, “mindless and authoritarian,” a “weird kind of arbitrary fascism.” To restrict the freedom of white Americans, just because nonwhite Americans are dying, is an egregious violation of the racial contract. The wealthy luminaries of conservative media have sought to couch their opposition to restrictions as advocacy on behalf of workers, but polling shows that those most vulnerable to both the disease and economic catastrophe want the outbreak contained before they return to work.  

America's Racial Contract Is Showing - The Atlantic

[Admin]

But is the public health situation really all that different than when lockdowns began in March? According to epidemiologists, no. Although the situation varies from place to place, now, in general, doesn’t appear to be the best time for Americans to return to close proximity to one another. There are three main reasons:

1. Nationally, the outbreak has either peaked or plateaued. But there is a lot of infection still out there.
   
2. While the toll of the pandemic has been immense — there have been more than 76,000 recorded deaths in the United States as of May 8 — the vast majority of the population still has not been infected, has no immunity, and is fully susceptible.
   
3. This virus is fundamentally very contagious, sneaky, and deadly. That’s as true as ever.
   
4. The US has wasted lockdown time: It needs more testing, more contact tracing, targeted isolation of the infected, and the quarantining of their contacts. It also needs more research into social distancing to know what relaxed measures are safe.
   

4 reasons coronavirus reopening plans may backfire — and soon - Vox

[Admin]

In contrast to the more than 31,000 who have now succumbed to the disease in the UK, Greece has recorded one of the continent’s lowest casualty rates, with 150 deaths and fewer than 2,700 confirmed coronavirus cases after enforcement of tough measures to contain the epidemic early on. It has been a stark change of fortune for a nation more usually associated with civil disobedience and incompetence – both products of a dysfunctional state..

Greeks marvel at Britain's Covid chaos as their lockdown lifts after 150 deaths | World news | The Guardian

• Early intervention works, even in ravaged Greece..
  

[Admin]

The US has blocked a vote on a UN security council resolution calling for a global ceasefire during the Covid-19 pandemic, because the Trump administration objected to an indirect reference to the World Health Organization. The security council has been wrangling for more than six weeks over the resolution, which was intended to demonstrate global support for the call for a ceasefire by the UN secretary general, António Guterres. The main source for the delay was the US refusal to endorse a resolution that urged support for the WHO’s operations during the coronavirus pandemic.

US blocks vote on UN's bid for global ceasefire over reference to WHO | World news | The Guardian

• In the midst of a global pandemic..