Handling the coronavirus crisis

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Contrary to Santorum's claims, a study by Stanford researchers estimated that Trump's rallies over the summer led to “30,000 incremental confirmed cases of COVID-19” and “likely led to more than 700 deaths.” This follows recent reporting suggesting that Trump’s campaign rallies may have contributed to multiple community outbreaks across the country. In one instance following a June rally in Tulsa, an outbreak even occurred among Secret Service agents, and coronavirus cases climbed in the city in the subsequent days.

Notably, CNN's Jake Tapper did correctly refute Santorum's misreading of a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about COVID-19 spread. As Media Matters' Matt Gertz recently noted: Based on a survey of 314 people from 11 health care facilities, it focused on the impact of going to public places where masks cannot easily be worn, such as restaurants with on-site eating and bars. The study concluded that “adults with positive SARS-CoV-2 test results were approximately twice as likely to have reported dining at a restaurant than were those with negative SARS-CoV-2 test results.” It also found that close contact with someone who also tested positive was a major risk factor. “It’s misleading to leap to conclusions about the effectiveness of masks from the CDC report, since most participants reported wearing them and the study was not controlling for mask use,” PolitiFact pointed out after reviewing it and speaking to experts.

CNN's Rick Santorum claims that Trump rallies are "not highly spreadable events." Studies and reports have found otherwise. | Media Matters for America

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President Donald Trump has repeatedly lied about the coronavirus pandemic and the country’s preparation for this once-in-a-generation crisis. Here, a collection of the biggest lies he’s told as the nation endures a public-health and economic calamity. This post will be updated as needed.

All of Trump’s Lies About the Coronavirus - The Atlantic

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America had no trouble hitting the appalling milestone of 20 million coronavirus cases, but reaching the federal government’s own target of vaccinating 20 million people by the end of 2020 proved a huge problem. Just under three million Americans were vaccinated by the time the crystal-encrusted ball dropped in New York’s almost-deserted Times Square at midnight on New Year’s Eve to mark the end of a hellish year. Now US distribution of the vaccine is being routinely described as “chaos”, with criticism that inept officials are “botching” efforts.

More than 10,000 people died in the US in the last three days of 2020 alone, to bring the national death toll close to 350,000 so far, including the worst 24-hour toll of the whole pandemic when more than 3,700 people died last Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins University data. So vaccines are the big hope for fighting the outbreak. But experts are warning that hundreds of thousands more deaths are possible if the inoculation process doesn’t get quickly and solidly on track.

Public health in the US is chronically under-funded. Local and state officials had long warned federal authorities that they required more than $8bn in additional money to build an infrastructure to get shots into arms. Instead, the White House gave states just $340m for vaccination preparations. For months, some Congressional legislators chafed at providing more money for vaccine distribution. It wasn’t until last Sunday, when the delayed new coronavirus aid bill was signed by Trump, that an additional $8bn in funding came through, STAT News explained.

More money to states won’t fully solve the problem, however. Experts said that a unified, national plan is necessary to address logistical snags. “Not enough doses have been produced and distributed,” said Lee, who is also executive director of public health informatics, computational and operations research at CUNY. “Of the doses that have been distributed, the majority have not been administered. They’re either getting [caught] up in the supply chain ... or not getting administered, which is not too surprising, because there hasn’t been a clear, coordinated national plan.”

Hundreds of thousands more US Covid deaths possible amid vaccine chaos | Coronavirus | The Guardian

• The usual suspects, they simply are not up to the task (or basically any task, for that matter)..
  
• See here for a look behind the curtains at how political Trump appointee's kneecap professional services like the Dept. of HHS.
  

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The pedestrian pace of Covid-19 vaccinations in the US came under new scrutiny on Sunday, as the pandemic death toll passed 350,000 and experts warned of another surge in infections and deaths arising from gatherings at Christmas and New Year. Leading public health expert Dr Anthony Fauci issued an implicit rebuke to Donald Trump, who claimed in tweets on Sunday morning that case numbers were being exaggerated and deaths wrongly attributed. “Go into the trenches,” Fauci told NBC’s Meet the Press. “Go into the hospitals, go into the intensive care units and see what is happening. Those are real numbers, real people and real deaths.” Dr Jerome Adams, the surgeon general, also contradicted Trump’s false claim that the Covid-19 death toll was “far exaggerated”.

Fauci rebukes Trump Covid claims but offers 'no excuses' for vaccine delays | World news | The Guardian

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Tom Mountain, the mask-denying vice chairman of the Massachusetts GOP's governing body who attended a largely maskless Hanukkah party at the White House on December 9, has since infected four of his family members with COVID-19. Mountain's wife pleaded with him not to attend the party over fears that he'd get infected with the virus. He has since given her the virus as well as his son, his daughter-in-law, and his mother-in-law. Regarding wearing face masks, Mountain said, "I was one of the naysayers," adding, "I am no longer a naysayer," and "My family tried to dissuade me. I didn't listen." Mountain said he was "politically and morally obligated to go" to the party, but apparently didn't think he was morally obligated to wear a facemask to avoid infecting his wife and elderly mother-in law.

COVID-denying GOP head infects 4 family members after attending maskless White House party - Alternet.org

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Vietnam reported 349 coronavirus cases so far in 2020. Timing was nearly as important as substance. The U.S. and Vietnam both reported their first cases in the same week in January. The U.S. could have avoided 36,000 COVID-19-related deaths if it had begun a lockdown March 8 instead of March 15, according to Columbia University. By contrast, Vietnam saw the disease as a threat early on, treating its first patient in January and proceeding to contact trace and restrict movement. Timing was critical because of the virus’ ability to spread exponentially. The Ho Chi Minh City government said, for instance, that for every 300 people infected, 84,000 people had to quarantine. It is likely that Vietnam did not have to cover up mass infections and deaths because it acted before the virus could reach that point.

How Did Vietnam Become Biggest Nation Without Coronavirus Deaths? | Voice of America - English

• It can be done, even by poor countries with borders with China..
  

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Employees at a private Wisconsin company owned by two top Republican donors in the US have faced significantly higher rates of Covid-19 infection and have filed numerous complaints about workplace safety to federal authorities, according to a Guardian investigation into Uline. Billionaires backed Republicans who sought to reverse US election results Read more Dick and Liz Uihlein, the billionaire founders of the Uline packaging and office supply company who were once dubbed the “most powerful conservatives you never heard of”, have been critics of Wisconsin stay-at-home orders and, some employees fear, used their considerable political clout to try to challenge safety rules in the state. An internal document seen by the Guardian shows that at least 14% of Uline’s corporate workforce has tested positive for Covid-19 since last April, compared to 8.7% of the population in Kenosha county, where the company’s corporate office is located. Nearly 19% of the company’s Illinois workplace has tested positive, 23% of its California-based workforce, and nearly 27% of its workforce in Texas.

Workers at firm owned by top Trump donors exposed to higher Covid rates | Coronavirus | The Guardian

• The disdain for science and their own workers is typical
  

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Speaking with CNN's Sanjay Gupta in an interview airing Sunday evening, Birx explained that an August CNN interview during which she warned of the dangers of COVID-19 even to rural and isolated communities drew ire from "everybody in the White House." "The CNN report in August, that got horrible pushback. That was a very difficult time because everybody in the White House was upset with that interview and the clarity I brought about the epidemic," Birx said. Asked by Gupta what the response was from the Trump administration, Birx responded, "Well, I got called by the president." "I think you've heard other conversations other people have posted with the president. I would say it was even more direct than what people have heard," Birx said, describing the conversation. "It was very uncomfortable, very direct, very difficult to hear," Birx added. "Were you threatened?" Gupta asked. "I would say it was a very uncomfortable conversation," she answered after a long pause.

Birx describes 'uncomfortable' conversation with Trump after CNN interview | TheHill

• And who turned out to be right...
  

The United States squandered both money and lives in its response to the coronavirus pandemic, and it could have avoided nearly 400,000 deaths with a more effective health strategy and trimmed federal spending by hundreds of billions of dollars while still supporting those who needed it.

U.S. COVID response could have avoided hundreds of thousands of deaths: research | Reuters

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"First, I wanted to make sure that we stopped saying that the risk to Americans was low," Birx told CNN in a special report, "COVID WAR: The Pandemic Doctors Speak Out." "I could see the avalanche coming, and I could see that we were not prepared, and I thought I could do something."  She got immediate pushback -- and a call from the president that she said “was very uncomfortable, very direct and very difficult to hear." After that, she was kept from speaking nationally, she told CNN. "Clearly someone was blocking me from doing it. My understanding is I could not be national because the President might see it," Birx told CNN. "He felt very strongly that I misrepresented the pandemic in the United States, that I made it out to be much worse than it is. I feel like I didn't even make it out as bad as it was."

Trump White House censored head of its own coronavirus task force, new report says | TheHill

• And who turned out to be right?
  

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Last year, as then-President Donald Trump railed against Covid-19 lockdowns and called on states to reopen their economies, he claimed the shutdowns would lead to a spike in suicides: “You’re going to lose more people by putting a country into a massive recession or depression. You’re going to lose people. You’re going to have suicides by the thousands.”

But new data suggests that the number of suicides actually decreased in the US last year. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, suicides totaled fewer than 45,000 in 2020, down from about 47,500 in 2019 and more than 48,000 in 2018. So far, this seems to be true globally. England saw no increase in suicides in the aftermath of lockdowns, Louis Appleby, a researcher on suicide and self-harm at the University of Manchester, wrote for the medical journal BMJ. The same seems to be true in other nations, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, and Sweden, based on data for the first few months of lockdowns around the globe..

Covid-19 lockdowns didn’t cause an increase in suicides after all - Vox