Handling the coronavirus crisis

[Admin]

The United States passed a grim milestone this week when researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore reported that the country’s coronavirus death count had reached 100,000. But the number of COVID-19 fatalities and infections, many experts believe, is even worse than what is being reported. And journalists Darius Tahir and Adam Cancryn, in Politico, report that the number of deaths and new infections is being “deflated” at a time when President Donald Trump is pushing for states to reopen their economies sooner rather than later. “Federal and state officials across the country have altered or hidden public health data crucial to tracking the coronavirus’ spread, hindering the ability to detect a surge of infections as President Donald Trump pushes the nation to reopen rapidly,” according to Tahir and Cancryn. “In at least a dozen states, health departments have inflated testing numbers or deflated death tallies by changing criteria for who counts as a coronavirus victim and what counts as a coronavirus test.”

‘Scientifically unsound’: Disturbing evidence shows officials are hiding and deflating COVID-19 stats to build the case for ‘opening up’ – Alternet.org

[Admin]

Every advanced democracy in the world has its coronavirus epidemic largely under control except the United States. And we’re on the verge of melting down again because a substantial minority of Americans simply don’t know the basic science of how an epidemic works and why wearing masks is part of breaking the epidemic chain.

How Trump’s promotion of mask stupidity could lose him the election – Alternet.org

[Admin]

Donald Trump is demanding a packed Republican national convention with "no face coverings and no social distancing", North Carolina's governor's office has said. The US president spoke with Democratic Roy Cooper by phone, the office revealed, where they discussed the scheduled August convention in Charlotte. Mr Trump insisted on the lack of Covid-19 measures because he does not want to see signs of the pandemic in his renomination audience, a spokesperson for Mr Cooper said. The president this week threatened to move his formal renomination elsewhere if he does not get guarantees by next week of being able to hold a large-scale event.

Trump demands Republican convention 'with no masks or social distancing' despite coronavirus pandemic | The Independent

• We know that keeping people close together, indoor and letting them yell, scream and sing without masks are one of the most conducive settings for spreading the pandemic.
  
• Yet Trump wants it anyway, simply to boost his re-election bid
  
• This is absolutely scandalous, he obviously doesn't even care about the health of his own supporters..
  

[Admin]

Two governors told lawmakers on Tuesday that their states are still struggling to obtain COVID-19 supplies from the federal government, almost three months into the pandemic. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) said they’re facing challenges procuring tests and masks, adding to concerns as they prepare for a potential second wave of the pandemic in the fall. States get inaccurate answers from the federal government about when supplies will be coming, and deliveries are often late, if they come at all, the two governors told members of the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.

Governors detail frustrations with Trump over COVID-19 supplies | TheHill

• The Defense Production Act was never applied, amazing. Then there is this:
  

The White House's focus on the coronavirus has faded from public view in recent days as national unrest dominates headlines. The administration's task force has scaled back its meetings, and its top infectious diseases expert, Anthony Fauci, said he hasn't met with President Trump in weeks. The White House's designated testing czar, Brett Giroir, likewise said Monday he is set to return to his regular duties this month, and the president has shifted his focus to quashing protests nationwide in response to the death of George Floyd.

White House shifts focus from coronavirus | TheHill

• They don't seem to even care anymore..
  

[Admin]

Trump himself has a long history of defying mainstream scientific findings on the existence of climate change and the efficacy of vaccines, but his actions during the coronavirus pandemic have startled even his most vocal critics. The president falsely claimed Covid-19 would evaporate in the April sunshine, expressed bewilderment that a vaccine wasn’t imminent and pondered the merits of injecting disinfectant as a treatment. Trump has also repeatedly touted the benefits of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug he says he himself has taken as a precaution despite evidence it can cause heart problems in some patients. The World Health Organization recently halted trials to see if the drug could treat Covid-19, citing safety fears.

From its inception, the Trump administration has handed leadership of federal agencies to figures who have represented polluting industries. Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, heads the Environmental Protection Agency, while David Bernhardt, another former energy lobbyist, is in charge of America’s public lands as secretary of the interior. The deregulatory zeal of these agencies, often in the face of scientific advice, has seen droves of scientists leave the government. In a January estimate, 20% of high-level scientific positions within the government are vacant, with long-term officials complaining of being sidelined or silenced.

But the administration has also increasingly shown willingness to ally itself with groups far more fringe than the standard class of lobbyist that inhabits Washington DC. The administration defended Trump’s use of hydroxychloroquine by pointing to supportive statements from the Association of Physicians and Surgeons, an outlier group that has questioned whether HIV causes Aids (it does), argued abortion causes breast cancer (it does not) and even alleged former president Barack Obama used hypnosis techniques to trick voters, especially Jewish people, into supporting him (there is no evidence of this).

In April, Trump unveiled advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that Americans should wear face masks to curb the spread of Covid-19, but has since echoed fringe rightwing views that masks are pointless or somehow unmanly. The president said on Tuesday it was “very unusual” that Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, was seen wearing a mask, calling its use “politically correct”. “The elevation of fringe views is even more vivid with coronavirus, the impacts are more evident,” said Goldman. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has aligned itself with an anti-abortion lobbying group called the Center for Family and Human Rights, helping spread its message to the UN, while Trump’s own spiritual adviser Paula White has said she hopes abortion laws are overturned, declaring on a video that emerged in January: “We command any satanic pregnancies to miscarry right now!”

The pandemic has obscured a determined push by the Trump administration to further roll back regulations designed to prevent pollution and protect public health, with some of these efforts jarring uncomfortably with the federal government’s own analysis. For example, the administration is scaling back fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks, a process that has provoked a lawsuit from 23 aggrieved states and, according to a study of the EPA’s own figures, will cause an extra 18,500 deaths over the next three decades from air pollution, as well as $240bn more in extra fuel costs for Americans. “This administration is antithetical to science, there is an ideological mandate to roll back regulations. Facts and logic doesn’t matter, even the law doesn’t matter,” said Chris Frey, a a professor of environmental engineering at NC State University.

Scientists alarmed as Trump embraces fringe views and extreme theories amid pandemic | US news | The Guardian

[Admin]

The long-term health consequences of a significant recession, especially a prolonged one, can be serious. People who get their first jobs during a recession, for example, often suffer lifelong penalties in both income and health. As scholars who have studied “deaths of despair” in the United States, we are intimately familiar with this data. But the estimates of suicides and overdoses from Trump and some of his supporters cannot stand serious scrutiny. In general, such deaths have been rising steadily since the 1990s, through both boom and bust periods: There is no clear-cut link to unemployment levels.

More broadly, the possible connection between unemployment levels and health outcomes has been much studied by scholars; the topic remains hotly debated, and it is possible to find results coming down on both sides. Some studies have even found that overall mortality decreases during economic downturns, even in ones as severe as the Great Depression (because, for example, people drive less and therefore get in fewer accidents, or because some economic activity, like construction, is dangerous).

There's no evidence 'deaths of despair' will spike because of the shutdowns - The Washington Post

• Another Trumpian myth debunked, deaths of despair will rise dramatically as a result of the quarantaine..
  

[Admin]

Lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, closed schools, and canceled public events prevented millions of Covid-19 coronavirus cases and deaths, according to two new peer-reviewed studies in the journal Nature. One of the studies estimated the number of Covid-19 cases with and without these tough interventions. They found that in six countries, including China and the US, pandemic control policies had a huge effect. In the United States alone, the measures stopped 4.8 million more confirmed cases of Covid-19 and up to 60 million infections in total. In China, they prevented 285 million infections.

In the second study, researchers looked at the number of deaths from Covid-19 in 11 countries in Europe. They found that 3.1 million deaths in these countries were avoided with pandemic control measures. It’s good news, and yet the pandemic continues to rage. There have now been more than 7 million confirmed cases of the disease worldwide, with many more lurking undetected.

Coronavirus: Covid-19 lockdowns and social distancing have proven effective - Vox

[Admin]

Donald Trump is set to ignore expert warnings about the ongoing spread of the coronavirus to resume hosting arena campaign rallies next week as he seeks to take the fight to Joe Biden amid dwindling poll numbers. With the US currently on 2m cases of Covid-19 infections and 115,000 deaths but pushing ahead with gradual reopening, vice president Mike Pence has found himself forced to hurriedly delete a tweet picturing his meeting with campaign interns in northern Virginia in which the White House’s own social distancing rules are being flagrantly ignored.

Trump news live: Latest 2020 election updates as president to resume campaign rallies | The Independent

• Packing older people indoors close together, screaming on top of their longs, that's about the most risky situation one can imagine..
  

[Admin]

When the JBS beef plant in the city of Hyrum tested about 1,000 of its 1,400 workers on May 30, 287 tested positive. But instead of shutting down the plant to stop the outbreak, as some plants had done earlier in the pandemic, JBS told these employees to stay home but report back to work less than two weeks later, despite their Covid-19 diagnosis. On Tuesday, some JBS employees staged a walkout from the Hyrum plant and protested in nearby Logan. “It’s not safe to work right now,” one worker told the Salt Lake Tribune, asking to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal. Protesters said the plant should close for a few weeks and that employees who don’t go in due to safety concerns should be paid regardless of whether they are sick.
The employees, many of whom are immigrants, are not currently offered paid leave unless they’ve tested positive.

The Bear River Health Department, which oversees the area in which the plant is located, says it doesn’t have the authority to force a closure. “We do not have the ability to close them down because of that executive order,” department spokesperson Josh Greer told the Tribune. “It’s under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.” He was referring to President Donald Trump’s executive order, signed on April 28, which declared meat processing plants “critical infrastructure” that should stay open during the coronavirus crisis. Invoking the Defense Production Act, Trump said that plant closures “threaten the continued functioning of the national meat and poultry supply chain.”

At least 24,000 workers have tested positive and at least 86 have died, according to the tally of cases tied to meatpacking facilities published by USA Today and the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. That tracks with the count published by the Food and Environment Reporting Network.

A JBS meat plant in Utah is staying open despite a coronavirus outbreak - Vox

• So local authorities can't even close the plants, hotbeds of the pandemic, even if they wanted to
  
• Employees are forced to work in dangerous conditions or lose their jobs
  
• The source of this misery: Trump invoking the Defense Production Act for meat production, the same Defense Production Act he hasn't even invoked for critical supplies like PPE..
  

[Admin]

Trump risking the lives of tens if not hundreds of thousands by basically giving up the fight against the pandemic in favor of force opening the economy in order to create a temporary boom to help his reelection chances:

• Effectively disbanded the Coronavirus task force and eliminating its daily press briefings
  
• Greatly watered down the CDC guidelines for opening up the states
  
• Publishing a plan for reopening but then issuing no sanctions when states open despite not even qualifying for the first phase (14 consecutive days with falling numbers)
  
• Force states to open up, even siding with armed protesters
  
• Leaving states to fence for themselves and compete against one another for critical supplies like reagents, swabs and PPE
  
• Not invoking the Defense Production Act for any of these
  
• Ridiculing Biden for wearing a mask and not wearing a mask himself
  
• Touting potentially risky medicines
  
• Demanding churches to be reopened (stuffing old people close together indoors loudly singing is about the most risky environment one can create)
  
• Planning to hold campaign rallies (stuffing old people close together indoors loudly yelling is about the most risky environment one can create)
  
• Moving the Republican convention to Florida to avoid North Dakota's social distancing rules
  
• Vehemently arguing against mail-in voting forcing people to stand in lines for hours and risk infections.
  

How can the CDC people, the task force people, be silent in the phase of this? Fauci should resign.