Handling the coronavirus crisis

[Admin]

President Donald Trump likes to think of himself as a tough guy. He likes other tough guys. Masks, in the President's world, are not the sort of thing a tough guy wears. "But did you ever see a man that likes a mask as much as him," Trump asked a campaign rally crowd in Pennsylvania on Thursday of former Vice President Joe Biden. "And then he makes a speech, and he always has it — not always, but a lot of times, he has it hanging down. Because, you know what, it gives him a feeling of security. If I were a psychiatrist — right? I'd say, this guy's got some big issues. Hanging down." HA HA HA. Man did he zing Biden! That wimp wears a mask! What a rube!

Oh wait. Actually, wearing a mask is one of our best defenses against Covid-19, a virus that has killed more than 186,000 Americans and is projected to kill more than 400,000 by the end of this year. Don't believe me? How about Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention? "We are not defenseless against Covid-19," he wrote in July. "Cloth face coverings are one of the most powerful weapons we have to slow and stop the spread of the virus -- particularly when used universally within a community setting. All Americans have a responsibility to protect themselves, their families, and their communities.""

Donald Trump's latest attack on mask-wearing may be his worst yet - CNNPolitics

[Admin]

Top Republicans are seeking to downplay the heavy toll of the coronavirus, in part by pointing to a conspiracy theory that the number of deaths is much lower. President Trump, along with Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Rep. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), who are both in competitive Senate races, have all pointed in recent days to the widely debunked theory that COVID-19 deaths in the United States total just 10,000 instead of the more than 180,000 recorded by health officials.

The speculative remarks come at a time when about 1,000 people a day are dying from the virus, providing a grim backdrop to the final sprint to Election Day. Trump, meanwhile, has been trying to project an optimistic message, frequently pointing to rapid progress toward a vaccine and saying he thinks the virus is “going away.” The Trump administration has also increasingly emphasized protecting vulnerable populations such as the elderly rather than putting a focus on a broader strategy of trying to suppress the disease overall.

The discredited theory in question points to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) webpage stating that the coronavirus was listed as the sole cause for only 6 percent of deaths from the virus. However, that does not mean the other 94 percent of people did not die from the coronavirus.  Instead, it means that another factor directly caused by the coronavirus, such as respiratory failure, was also listed or that there was an underlying condition, such as obesity or diabetes, that is not necessarily fatal on its own but heightens the risks from the coronavirus.

The 6 percent figure has been seized on, however, to minimize the death toll. Last weekend, Trump retweeted a post from user Mel Q, who is a believer in the QAnon conspiracy theory, saying only about 9,000 people had “actually” died from the coronavirus. Twitter later removed the tweet for violating its rules. Ernst likewise said Monday that she is “so skeptical” of case and death counts from the coronavirus, later adding, according to the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, “They’re thinking there may be 10,000 or less deaths that were actually singularly COVID-19. ... I’m just really curious. It would be interesting to know that.” Marshall, who is a doctor, pointed to the theory based on the 6 percent statistic in a Facebook post Sunday.
“This week the CDC quietly updated its COVID-19 data to reflect the number of deaths from COVID-19 only,” he wrote, adding that it was “only 6%,” according to a screenshot posted by KSNT.

Facebook removed the post, with a spokesperson saying it violated “our policies against spreading harmful misinformation about COVID-19 since it misstates CDC data about the deadliness of the disease.” The prominence of the discredited theory and its embrace among high-level Republicans has dismayed experts. “It’s completely, to me, mind-boggling that people are using this as fodder for some conspiracy theory,” said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. He said experts have long said that underlying conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure are risk factors for having a more severe case of the coronavirus, so “that’s not anything surprising” that such conditions were listed as present in many coronavirus deaths. “I’m not sure why this is even a story other than people are trying to minimize what is a serious infectious disease,” Adalja added..

GOP uses debunked theory to downplay COVID-19 death toll | TheHill

[Admin]

In the past month, the number of tests conducted in the United States has actually drifted down—and that may be partly because of Trump-administration policy. The United States now reports about 100,000 fewer daily tests than it did in late July, according to the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic. Some of this decline is due to reduced demand: The surge of infections across the South and West has subsided, and when fewer people are sick, fewer people seek out tests. Yet this cannot explain all of it. In the Midwest, the number of confirmed cases is growing faster than the number of tests, which has been a sign of a growing outbreak throughout the pandemic.

The decline in reported tests has come just as other changes have hit the testing system. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has taken unprecedented steps to interfere with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As a result of White House meddling, the CDC now recommends against testing asymptomatic people, the group that may spread the virus the most. At the same time, new antigen-testing technology is rolling out nationwide. While quicker tests in greater numbers should help curb the virus, they are also decentralizing data collection.

So far, the U.S. has reported only about 200,000 antigen-test results. But some evidence suggests that these tests are being used on a much wider scale than is understood: Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of antigen tests may already be happening every day without their results appearing in any public data. Just as dark matter can’t be observed directly, even though it makes up much of the universe, this “dark testing” does not show up in the data but may already account for a substantial chunk of the coronavirus testing done in the U.S.

How Many People Is America Testing for the Coronavirus? - The Atlantic

[Admin]

A New York Times reporter claims she was removed from President Trump’s campaign rally in Freeland, Mich., on Thursday after campaign staff located her using images she posted on Twitter. As the rally was getting started, Kathy Gray noted on Twitter that out of the thousands of people who were at the rally, "maybe 10% have masks." Gray then posted a photo of Air Force One with the caption “And so it begins” shortly before the president began speaking at the rally. “I’ve just been kicked out of the trump rally,” Gray tweeted less than 15 minutes later. She later added: “First for me: Trump campaign tracked me down from pics i tweeted and escorted me out.””

NYT reporter removed from Trump rally in Michigan | TheHill

• So, from the Woodward tapes we know that the President knew early February, as in F-E-B-R-U-A-R-Y that the pandemic was airborn, easily transmissable, 5x more deadly than the flu. 
  
• Yet he kept telling us otherwise as in not to create panic (while panic is exactly the right response as it create actions when the effects of the pandemic are not yet visible, those countries who took swift early actions have fared much better than others).
  
• Instead, he kept on holding rallies, with older people screaming indoors without any protection or social distancing, exactly the recipe for getting his own supporters killed, all for the greater good of getting him reelected, supposedly. 
  
• He is still doing that, and if you report about it you get kicked out.
  

[Admin]

President Trump on Thursday scoffed at a question about why he lied to the American public about the severity of COVID-19 in the early stages of the pandemic, calling it "disgraceful" in a contentious press conference amid fallout over his comments to Bob Woodward.

Trump calls question about why he 'lied' about COVID-19 a 'disgrace' | TheHill

• But he did lie, period. 
  
• Worse, that put millions in danger and has cost tens of thousands of deaths.
  

[Admin]

Some members of Jared Kushner’s coronavirus task force believed the pandemic would affect Democratic areas worse and may have adjusted accordingly, Vanity Fair reported. In March and early April, Kushner gathered a team to devise a nationwide coronavirus testing plan. An public-health expert in regular contact with the team told the magazine that “the political folks” thought a nationwide response was a bad political move. At the time, outbreaks were worst in Democratic-voting states and cities. The source suggested that some close to Kushner thought it was best to hold back and blame governors.

Kushner's coronavirus team shied away from a national strategy, believing that the virus was hitting Democratic states hardest and that they could blame governors, report says

• And the original story:
  

This spring, a team working under the president’s son-in-law produced a plan for an aggressive, coordinated national COVID-19 response that could have brought the pandemic under control. So why did the White House spike it in favor of a shambolic 50-state response?

How Jared Kushner’s Secret Testing Plan “Went Poof Into Thin Air” | Vanity Fair

• So the national strategy went out of the window because the virus hit blue states disproportionally in the beginning (as well as minorities) and some argued it would be better just to blame the governors..
  

[Admin]

As my colleague German Lopez detailed this week, if the US had the same death rate as the European Union, roughly 84,000 of the more than 190,000 Americans who have now died would likely still be alive. And if the US had the same death rate as Canada, 109,000 Americans would still be alive.

The key figure to put things in context is that the US has endured 22 percent of the world’s coronavirus deaths, despite being home to only 4 percent of the world’s population. But to the extent that Trump engages with coronavirus data, he’s in the habit of cherry-picking false and misleading numbers about excess mortality or the case fatality rate in order to portray things in the rosiest possible light..

Trump keeps lying about how US Covid situation compares to other countries - Vox

[Admin]

One opportunity for decisive action came Jan. 28, when his national security adviser, Robert C. O’Brien, told Trump that the coronavirus “will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency.” Trump absorbed the warning, telling Bob Woodward days later how deadly and contagious the virus could be, according to Woodward’s new book, “Rage.”

Yet the president then misled the public by downplaying the virus, comparing it to the flu and saying that it would “go away.” He resisted masks, sidelined experts, held large rallies, denounced lockdowns and failed to get tests and protective equipment ready — and here we are, with Americans constituting 4 percent of the world’s population and 22 percent of Covid-19 deaths. There’s plenty of blame to be directed as well at local officials, nursing home managers and ordinary citizens — but Trump set the national agenda.

Suppose Trump in January — or even in February — had warned the public of the dangers, had ensured that accurate tests were widely distributed (Sierra Leone had tests available before the United States) and had built up a robust system of contact tracing (Congo has better contact tracing than the United States). Suppose he had ramped up production of masks and empowered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to lead the pandemic response, instead of marginalizing its experts. Suppose he had tried as relentlessly to battle the virus as he has to build his wall?

It wasn’t as if the United States was unready. A 324-page study in October 2019 found that America was the best-prepared country in the world for a pandemic — but it didn’t imagine that the United States would fumble testing, data collection, contact tracing, communications and just about every other facet of managing a novel virus.

Jeffrey Shaman, a public health expert at Columbia University, calculated that if each county in the United States had acted just two weeks earlier to order lockdowns or other control measures, then more than 90 percent of Covid-19 deaths could have been avoided through early May.

Shaman told me that his team didn’t model even earlier interventions, in January or February, but that he believes it would have been plausible for the United States to enjoy the Covid-19 mortality rate of South Korea. That would mean almost a 99 percent reduction in mortality.

“There’s no Covid,” an unmasked man attending a Trump rally the other day told CNN. “It’s a fake pandemic.”

Opinion | How Did the ‘Best-Prepared Country’ Become a Horror Story? - The New York Times

[Admin]

“I’m on a stage, and it’s very far away,” Mr. Trump said of the gathering on Sunday. His own campaign aides privately called the move a game of political Russian roulette.

Trump Defends Indoor Rally Amid Covid, but Aides Express Concern - The New York Times

• Never mind he's killing his own supporters, cramming them indoors, packed together without masks, screaming and shouting, many older and unhealthy..
  
• But as long as he's safe..
  

[Admin]

On Monday night, CNN released clips of Trump’s phone conversation with Woodward regarding COVID-19 on April 13 in which the President asserted that “this thing is a killer if it gets you.” “If you’re the wrong person, you don’t have a chance,” Trump told the reporter. In another clip of the conversation, the President said COVID-19 “rips you apart” and described the virus as “the plague.” Twitter users pointed out that Trump made the comments three days after he claimed that the virus “will soon be in full retreat!” and four days before he called on the right-wingers protesting stay-at-home orders to “LIBERATE” Minnesota, Michigan, and Virginia..

Trump Told Woodward COVID Is ‘A Killer’ That ‘Rips You Apart’