Month: April 2020

It seems like only yesterday that everyone was lamenting the lack of COVID-19 tests and vital medical equipment, and now we are supposedly ready to “reopen the country.” That’s because it was only yesterday — and it will be the same tomorrow. There are still not enough tests and not enough medical equipment. But because the worst hotspots, including New York City are muddling through at or near the apex of the pandemic curve — dealing with the ravages of this virus day after day as the bodies pile up but new cases level off — President Trump is trying to change the subject away from his failures to a premature declaration of victory.

His coronavirus rallies (aka “press briefings”) this week have been hostile affairs, with the president on the defensive trying to push back against the devastating cascade of reporting that has laid bare the fiasco of his response to the pandemic. But by once again attempting to downplay the current state of the crisis, he seems intent upon making exactly the same mistakes he made before.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes astutely observed on his Tuesday night show that Trump made three essential errors at the beginning of the crisis.

1. He failed to take it seriously and appreciate the terrible danger of a pandemic.
2. The administration did not move quickly, with the lead time, it had to prepare adequate testing.
3. He focused on the problem of the economy, thinking of it as somehow more important than — and separate from — the epidemic.

Inadequate testing left public health professionals flying blind for weeks and Trump’s lack of understanding of the threat meant that officials waited far too long to issue social distancing guidelines and initiate any meaningful public health response. Trump spent most of his time making happy talk to pump up the stock market, which made it almost impossible for the government to adjust for new information or switch gears when something wasn’t working, because he was deeply invested in saying everything was going great.

As Hayes pointed out, Trump learned nothing from that experience and has remained focused on himself and his re-election prospects above everything else — so he’s doing exactly the same things all over again.

Trump still fails to appreciate the deadliness of this virus, now bragging openly that because the models no longer suggest hundreds of thousands of deaths, he has handled the crisis “perfectly.” Now that he’s concentrating on “reopening the country,” he again fails to understand that testing and contact tracing on a massive scale is absolutely necessary to avoid a terrible resurgence of the outbreak.

Indeed, he still doesn’t seem to understand that asymptomatic people can spread the virus. At last Friday’s coronavirus rally, Trump said widespread testing was not needed because “people aren’t going to go to the hospital, people aren’t going to get sick. It will be gone and it won’t be that much longer.” (The public health experts undoubtedly pounded their heads on their desks when they heard that one.)

He has totally abdicated, once again, the responsibility to make sure that testing is available:

The president, who rolled out a partnership for testing in parking lots at major retailers in mid-March, now says fed govt "can't be thinking about" testing in a Wal-Mart parking lot, but states should. The testing never lived up to the promises the president rolled out.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) April 14, 2020

And of course, Trump still sees the economy as the greater problem, without understanding that these things are all connected, and that dealing with the epidemic is necessary before the economy can recover. Simply telling people to go back to work, go back to the mall and go out to dinner doesn’t mean they are going to do it if they think it might kill them. He can’t just magically wish this all away.

So, what are we really looking at in terms of “opening up the country”? He’s been talking about it almost from the start but it’s never been clear exactly what he means. He spent a couple of months just hoping the virus would miraculously go away or suggesting that his miracle cure, hydroxychloroquine, would bring an abrupt end to the crisis and he could go back to talking about Hunter Biden every day.

That didn’t work out, so now he’s pushing the “reopening” as some kind of edict from the mountaintop. On Monday he made the startling announcement that he had the “absolute authority” to order state governors to reopen. Someone must have informed him we actually have a written constitution and he isn’t a king, so he walked that back a bit on Tuesday, saying that he would be “working with” governors and he expected they would do as he suggested.

Lurking underneath that comment was the implicit threat that if they didn’t, he might not be able to “help” them any further with federal assistance.:

We’re going to have some very strong recommendations for the governors. We’re going to work with the governors and the governors are going to do a good job.

And if they don’t do a good job we’re going to come down on them very hard, we’ll have no other choice.

That’s a dark threat. No, Trump doesn’t have “absolute authority” over the states, but he has plenty of power that he can use. We’ve already seen it in action. He has made it quite clear that if the states need something they’d better kiss the ring, famously saying of governors who were pleading for ventilators, “It’s a two-way street. They have to treat us well also. They can’t say, ‘Oh, gee, we should get this, we should get that.'”

It has been demonstrated that he’s more than willing to pass out favors to loyal political allies like Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., or Republicans in tough re-election races such as Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado and Sen. Martha McSally of Arizona. Jared Kushner floated in like an apparition at one White House rally and talked about getting a phone call from one of Trump’s New York cronies, and then rushing out some needed supplies right away.

It seems obvious that Trump and some of the people who are whispering in his ear are making the calculation that losing tens of thousands more lives than necessary is just the price that has to be paid. Rep. Trey Hollingsworth, an Indiana Republican may have articulated this idea more clearly than Trump ever has in an interview on Tuesday:

It is always the American government’s position to say, in the choice between the loss of our way of life as Americans and the loss of life, of American lives, we have to always choose the latter.

Our GDP is supposed to be down 20% alone this quarter. It is policymakers’ decision to put on our big-boy and big-girl pants and say it is the lesser of these two evils. It is not zero evil, but it is the lesser of these two evils and we intend to move forward that direction. That is our responsibility and to abdicate that is to insult the Americans that voted us into office.

The one’s who are still alive anyway.

This is the policy that Trump himself reportedly called “letting the wave just wash over the country” — to which Dr. Anthony Fauci responded, “Mr. President, many people would die.”

Trump may be deeply ignorant, but he understood that part. Like Hollingsworth, he just sees the preventable deaths of Americans as a necessary evil to get what he calls “the greatest economy in the history of the world” back on track before November.

My Salon column reprinted with permission

Voting in Wisconsin on Tuesday was down overall compared to the primary contest in 2016. But participation in statewide and local elections surged to over 1.5 million. While the COVID-19 pandemic depressed voting in person, voting by mail more than compensated (PBS):

Overall, nearly 1.1 million voters mailed in absentee ballots out of a total 1.5 million votes cast, according to state election data — a major increase from previous elections and a record for Wisconsin. The state has not yet released more detailed statistics for absentee ballots, but it was clear from the initial returns that in-person voting was down across the state.

Many voters who did not vote by mail were undeterred by the novel coronavirus pandemic. They stood in long lines at the polls for hours (many wearing masks for protection). How many were asked to remove them at check-in and expose themselves (and poll workers) to additional health risk to satisfy the state’s photo ID law is unknown.

It is clear, however, that demand for voting by mail (where permitted) will increase for this November’s election. Two Democratic lawmakers with oversight of the United States Postal Service (USPS) warn that plummeting mail volumes amid the pandemic leave the service “in need of urgent help” or USPS “could be forced to cease operations as early as June.” *

So far, the same Congress willing to bail out struggling airlines and cruise ship companies registered in other countries has yet to provide sufficient financial support to a constitutionally provided service essential to conducting, not just normal business and commerce, but a safe election during a pandemic. The Brennan Center estimates the cost to conduct a free and fair election under pandemic conditions could cost $2 billion. To date, Congress has approved only $400 million.

Eric Levitz notes USPS enjoys a 90 percent approval rating while trust in other public institutions has collapsed. He explains the acting president is a major stumblingblock:

Congressional Democrats would like to help the Postal Service through this troubled time by providing it with a federal bailout. The Trump administration would like to use the agency’s financial crisis to both force through cuts to postal workers’ compensation and (for God knows what reason) screw over its own rural base by allowing the agency to charge low-density parts of the country higher rates. The president, meanwhile, ostensibly wants the USPS to bilk Jeff Bezos until he stops funding journalism critical of Republicans (this might be sound policy for punishing Trump’s personal enemies, but it would not actually solve the Postal Service’s funding woes).

Rick Hasen adds at Slate:

But whether or not Congress acts, mail-in ballots will naturally be more in demand for the general election if the pandemic continues to affect daily life. Five states already conduct elections mostly by mail. They are among the two-thirds of states, including many of the swing states, offering any voter who wishes to vote by mail to do so. These states are going to be inundated with absentee ballots, as evidenced by the explosion in absentee ballot requests that flooded into Wisconsin during its recent primary. With 175 of 180 polling stations closed in Milwaukee last week, voters faced the choice of voting absentee, waiting in long lines and risking their health, or simply not voting. We know what these voters will do in November if they have the choice.

Hasen continues:

It is hard to imagine how we could have a successful election without a functional USPS. Even with the postal service running, a number of voters in the Wisconsin primary were disenfranchised because absentee ballots couldn’t get to voters in time and the United States Supreme Court reversed a lower court order extending the time for voters to return them. Many of us were rightly worried by the 10,000 voters disenfranchised by these deadlines in Wisconsin. Now, without a massive infusion of cash, USPS expects to be “financially liquidated” by Sept. 30—right as the election season is gearing up. While it’s unlikely that the mail would entirely stop being delivered, massive service disruptions, delays, and confusion would make the election even more chaotic.

Vote-by-mail, while proven safe and secure, is not for every voter, Hasen admits, but will see more demand this year than ever.

But it is not without USPS-related hitches. Mailed ballots go uncounted for a variety of reasons. During the March 3 primary here, dozens of absentee-by-mail ballots went uncounted. Nearly a dozen mailed in late February arrived well after the March 6 delivery deadline. (Cost-cutting closed the local postal sorting center; local mail goes to South Carolina now before coming right back here.) Nearly two dozen ballots mailed on or just before March 3 arrived too late to be counted. Nearly three dozen arrived late with no postmark indicating the date of mailing. Less than 0.1 percent of the total ballots cast is only small unless it is yours that goes uncounted.

* Before my in-box is flooded with missives on the postal service’s Congress-induced financial struggles, reference recent Forbes columns by Elizabeth Bauer. The USPS story is too complex to tell in a headline.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide election mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.

From the “you can’t make this stuff up” files:

"People have been starved for content … we're watching, like, reruns from the early 2000s," Gov. Ron DeSantis says of his bizarre decision to classify live pro wrestling shows as an "essential service" during a deadly pandemic https://t.co/rWeCOJKkh2

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 14, 2020

These people are insane.

This story in the New York Times was a nice (and unusual) recognition that the sometimes obsessive interest in east coast news by the national media can seem a little bit much to those of us who live in the rest of the country. In the case of the pandemic, it’s certainly understandable that everyone’s attention would be riveted on New York since it’s the epicenter of the outbreak and has suffered more than the rest of us combined. I have no complaints on that count.

But as we go forward there really should be some attention paid to the places that managed to smartly deal with this epidemic even taking political chances that were very, very risky at the time. The west coat looks pretty good there. It could have been much, much worse here if they hadn’t done what they did.

Anyway, here’s the NY Times story:

California, Oregon and Washington have shipped 1,000 ventilators to New York. Should Western states be getting more attention for their relative success in battling Covid-19?

California, Oregon and Washington have more ventilators than they can use. As the nation struggles to scrounge up the lifesaving machines for hospitals overrun with Covid-19 patients, these three Western states recently shipped 1,000 spares to New York and other besieged neighbors to the East.

“All NYC needs is love …. From CA,” a worker scrawled in Magic Marker on a ventilator shipping box, shown in a video posted on Twitter by the governor of California, Gavin Newsom.

The ongoing effort of three West Coast states to come to the aid of more hard-hit parts of the nation has emerged as the most powerful indication to date that the early intervention of West Coast governors and mayors might have mitigated, at least for now, the medical catastrophe that has befallen New York and parts of the Midwest and South.

Their aggressive imposition of stay-at-home orders has stood in contrast to the relatively slower actions in New York and elsewhere, and drawn widespread praise from epidemiologists. As of Saturday afternoon, there had been 8,627 Covid-19 related deaths in New York, compared with 598 in California, 483 in Washington and 48 in Oregon. New York had 44 deaths per 100,000 people. California had two.

But these accomplishments have been largely obscured by the political attention and praise directed to New York, and particularly its governor, Andrew M. Cuomo. His daily briefings — informed and reassuring — have drawn millions of viewers and mostly flattering media commentary. They have established him as a daily counterpoint to President Trump and even prompted Democratic daydreaming that he could be drafted as their presidential nominee.

“Cuomo is just extraordinary to watch: He’s so real and authentic,” said Dr. Robert M. Wachter, the chairman of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “But when this history is written, you have to look at what the mayors here did, what the public officials did, what Newsom did, and say they saved thousands of lives.”

This disparity in perception reflects a longstanding dynamic in America politics: The concentration of media and commentators in Washington and New York has often meant that what happens in the West is overlooked or minimized. It is a function of the time difference — the three Pacific states are three hours behind New York — and the sheer physical distance. Jerry Brown, the former governor of California, a Democrat, found that his own attempts to run for president were complicated by the state where he worked and lived.

“News in this country flows east to west, always has and always will, but political and cultural movements flow west to east,” said Averell Smith, a longtime Democratic strategist who worked in campaigns nationwide and grew up in San Francisco, where his father was the district attorney.

The different responses that have been on display during these difficult weeks also illustrate the cultural, political and philosophical ways in which California, Washington and Oregon are distinct from the rest of the nation, a trend that has only accelerated since President Trump was sworn in.

[…]

California and Mr. Newsom have been under fire for delays in developing tests for the virus; New York has far outpaced California in testing potential victims. But the six Bay Area counties, including San Francisco, announced shelter in place orders on March 16. Mayor Eric Garcetti issued a stay at home order for the city of Los Angeles on March 19. Later that day, Mr. Newsom issued a statewide stay-at-home order.

Mr. Cuomo, who earlier that week had resisted a call from Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York to issue a stay-at-home order, followed a day later for New York — but that not take effect until March 22. Epidemiologists said that given the speed with which the virus spread and the density of parts of New York City, that delay was troubling.

“I remember seeing Governor Cuomo on TV making comments about not wanting to take away people’s civil liberties,” said London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco. “I understand that, I totally understand that, But I don’t think that’s what we were doing. I know the information I had. It showed me the best-case and worst-case scenarios and provided the guidance to avoid the worst-case scenarios.”

“I think we’re going to look back and see that issuing this order had a tremendous impact on the number of people who have been infected, and also the number of people who died,” she said.

[…]

The West Coast is different than the East Coast in many ways.There are few cities on the Pacific with the sort of population density as skyscraper-filled New York and other metropolitan parts of the Northeast.

And the mostly liberal politics of the West Coast paved the way for the kind of early interventionist policies that were until recently resisted in much of the country.

“There’s not a general sense that government is somehow the enemy rather than an essential part of life,” said Janet Napolitano, the former governor of Arizona who is now the president of University of California.

It is a region with a heavy concentration of tech industry engineers and executives, particularly in Washington, Oregon and, of course, Silicon Valley. The tech industry, including companies like Google and Apple, took the lead in having employees work from home. “We’re adept at understanding and accepting science,” said Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington. “Looking over the horizon at threats earlier than perhaps other parts of the nation.”

In Oregon, Gov. Kate Brown said she had been “blown away by how receptive Oregonians across the political spectrum” have been to the demands of the moment and she offered a theory as to why. “We’ve been preparing and thinking through these crises, and I do think at some level it permeates the public’s consciousness,” she said, citing the frequent natural disasters that have befallen her state.

And the Pacific states are more connected to Asia, with a large population of Asian immigrants, so the threat of a medical calamity in the Far East did not seem as remote as it might in Maine and Georgia. “We saw it a little bit earlier,” said Mr. Inslee. “There’s just geography: We’re closer to China.”

In Los Angeles, Mr. Garcetti said officials saw early warnings in the low attendance at the Lunar New Year parade in early February and the small crowds on the sidewalks in Chinatown. “I think we had an earlier sense that this might actually touch us,” he said. “We have planned for a long time for a pandemic.”

Shutting down an economy — in the fact of deep concerns of workers and the business community — is one of the most difficult decisions an elected official can make, as has become clear this month.

“It’s easy now to look at Newsom and London Breed and say, ‘of course,’” Dr. Wachter said. “But there was a lot of pushback at the time. If they had made the wrong bet, it would have been politically disastrous.”

[…]

But if their prompt response has been overshadowed, Pacific Coast residents living through this crisis don’t seem to be giving that a lot of thought.

“This is a community that’s not self-obsessed and looking for recognition, adulation or credit,” said Bill Walton, the San Diego native, former UCLA basketball great and noted Pacific evangelist.

As for the attention to Mr. Cuomo, Mr. Inslee only praised his fellow governor, calling the nationally-televised briefings from Albany “really helpful to the whole country,” while expressing resignation about the disparity in coverage.

“We’re not going to change the direction the sun rises,” he said.

Trump said in his coronavirus rally today that some states are “ready to go” to re-open and I suspect he means California because Newsome put out some preliminary plans for how it will go once they believe they have everything in place to make that safe. It ain’t going to be May 1st:

While there is no timeline for modifying the stay-at-home order, Newsom’s office said California would use a “gradual, science-based and data-driven framework” to determine when it would be safe to do so. Newsom indicated efforts to flatten the curve in California “have yielded positive results.”

• California had 24,421 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of Tuesday afternoon, per the LA Times.
• On Monday, Newsom announced California would create a task force with Oregon and Washington to coordinate the reopening of the regional economy. Northeastern states have announced a similar plan.

Newsom said California would use six indicators to determine when to relax social distancing measures:

1. “The ability to monitor and protect our communities through testing, contact tracing, isolating, and supporting those who are positive or exposed.”
2. “The ability to prevent infection in people who are at risk for more severe COVID-19.”
3. “The ability of the hospital and health systems to handle surges.”
4. “The ability to develop therapeutics to meet the demand.”
5. “The ability for businesses, schools, and child care facilities to support physical distancing.”
6. “The ability to determine when to reinstitute certain measures, such as the stay-at-home orders, if necessary.”

“While Californians have stepped up in a big way to flatten the curve and buy us time to prepare to fight the virus, at some point in the future we will need to modify our stay-at-home order,” Newsom said.

• “As we contemplate reopening parts of our state, we must be guided by science and data, and we must understand that things will look different than before.”
• “There is no light switch here. Think of it as a dimmer. It will toggle between less restrictive and more restrictive.”

Trump, on the other hand, wants to “open the economy with a bang.” I hope he isn’t counting on California to provide that pop because it isn’t going to. I suspect we’ll come back in he most sane way, meaning way more testing than we’re currently doing and lots of contact tracing.

Newsom is very adroitly kissing Trump’s ass the way he likes it. But I will be very surprised if he opens the state prematurely on Trump’s orders.

Following up on the post below about Hydroxychloroquine, this fact check by the Washington Post should sober everyone up:

“But I think it could be, based on what I see, it could be a game changer.”

— President Trump, at a White House news briefing, March 19, 2020

“Hydroxychloroquine — I don’t know, it’s looking like it’s having some good results. That would be a phenomenal thing.”

— Trump, at a White House news briefing, April 3

“What do you have to lose? I’ll say it again: What do you have to lose? Take it. I really think they should take it.”

— Trump, at a White House news briefing, April 4

“It’s this powerful drug on malaria. And there are signs that it works on this. Some very strong signs.”

— Trump, at a White House news briefing, April 5

Where did this come from? The right-wing fever swamp:

The world is looking for answers in the search for a treatment for covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, which has claimed more than 100,000 lives across the globe. President Trump has repeatedly touted the anti-malarial medications hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as that much-needed solution.

Even before Trump started talking about the drugs, studies abroad sparked interest in them as a potential cure. News about the drugs spread quickly online, percolated to the media and the White House.

Scientists have since pointed to major flaws in those original studies and say there is a lack of reliable data on the drugs. Experts warn about the dangerous consequences of over-promoting a drug with unknown efficacy: Shortages of hydroxychloroquine have already occurred, depriving lupus and rheumatoid arthritis patients of access to it. Doctors say some patients could die of side effects. Other potential treatments for covid-19 could get overlooked with so much concentration on one option.

The Fact Checker video team has reconstructed how the claim spread online and illustrates the troubling consequences of such misleading hope in the drugs.

The Facts:

Conversation around hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as potential treatments for covid-19 started in China in late January. According to Kate Starbird of the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, tweets from media organizations — including Chinese state outlets — and investors highlighted past studies in which the medications were tested as cures for severe acute respiratory syndrome. (The 2005 tests never made it to human trials.) They also pointed to statements from the coronavirus research center in Wuhan, China, suggesting the drugs could be used to fight covid-19.

Renée DiResta, technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, found similar trends on Facebook and Instagram in February. The number of total posts and interactions increased, and Internet speculation spread beyond China to Nigeria, Vietnam and France.

A large portion of activity online at the end of February and early March appeared in French and centered on a study published by French researcher and doctor Didier Raoult.

The spread in the U.S.

Raoult’s findings helped bring the theory to the United States. However, scientists have since discredited the trial, pointing to major flaws in the way it was conducted. The journal that published the study announced on April 3 that it did not meet its standards.

Yet before the record could be set straight, the hypothesis spread widely on U.S. social media. The Fact Checker has refrained from linking to original posts on the drugs to avoid giving further oxygen to misleading information.

According to Starbird, the first viral tweets were posted by Paul Sperry, a staunchly conservative author, on March 9 and 11. A blockchain investor, James Todaro, then tweeted a link to a Google document he co-wrote with Gregory Rigano about the potential cure on March 13. Tesla chief executive Elon Musk retweeted that Google doc on March 16, writing, “Maybe worth considering chloroquine for C19.” The faulty research then appeared in the Gateway Pundit, Breitbart and the Blaze. It ultimately made its way to Fox News, first appearing on Laura Ingraham’s program on March 16. Fox News shows hosted by Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson went on to promote the drugs and continue to do so.

On March 19, Trump first mentioned hydroxychloroquine at a White House news briefing. DiResta’s analysis showed that the following week, the claim started to spike in the United States, with 101,844 posts on Facebook. Starbird reports Trump’s first mention set off a surge in attention, seeing tens of thousands of tweets per hour in late March.

Data from Brandwatch, a digital consumer intelligence company, as well as DiResta and Starbird, show the total number of mentions about hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine increased in late March and early April.

Trump and his allies, including his son Donald Trump Jr. and his personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, tweeted about the drugs in late March. These posts saw the highest percent of reach, according to Brandwatch data, at some of the sharpest spikes in social media mentions online.

Because they had to keep Little Lord Trumpleroyd happy, they went ahead and put together big clinical trials just to shut him up even though this is not something they necessarily would have done otherwise because the evidence was just that thin. That’s how things work in Trump’s America.

Dr. Luciana Borio, the former head of medical and biodefense preparedness at the National Security Council, criticized the FDA’s EUA announcement and has called for a randomized clinical trial of the drugs.

“I think that it was a misuse of emergency authorizations of the authority that the FDA has. Because it gives this credence that the government is actually backing, and it’s so common for people to equate that with an approval,” Borio said.

When asked whether any of the completed studies have provided substantial evidence that the benefits of the drugs outweigh the risks, Borio responded, “Not at all. No study was done in a way that would allow that conclusion.”

(The Post story offers all the latest scientific thinking and data on these drugs if you care to read them. It’s eye-opening. )

The Pinocchio Test:

Over the course of only a few weeks, posts online, the media and politicians turned chloroquine from an unknown drug to a “100% coronavirus cure,” misleading the public on its effectiveness and engendering unintended but negative consequences.

Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as treatments for covid-19 are not yet backed by reliable scientific evidence. In a pandemic, it’s important for everyone to follow the lead of scientists. Rumors on the Internet are the least reliable source of information. And politicians are not qualified to provide scientific advice, despite even the best intentions.

In particular, Trump’s incorrect comments on the drugs and his role in advocating for their use, based on minimal and flimsy evidence, sets a bad example. His advocacy for this unproven treatment provides potentially false hope and has led to shortages for people who rely on the drugs.

The president earns Four Pinocchios.

When all is said and done, whether the drug proves to have some efficacy or not, the role played here by quacks like Dr. Oz and Fox News personalities and, of course, Donald Trump will be remembered as one of the most astonishingly surreal of the crisis. These charlatans were able to convince the US scientific community (and plenty of doctors) to use this unproven treatment on patients and conduct multiple trials, probably to the exclusion of others that may have equal or better chances of being helpful. It is one of the worst things Donald Trump has done and that is saying something.

I realize this is a little bit simplistic in some ways. But since there have been so few women leaders in the past it’s hard not to notice some differences now that there are more of them:

Looking for examples of true leadership in a crisis? From Iceland to Taiwan and from Germany to New Zealand, women are stepping up to show the world how to manage a messy patch for our human family. Add in Finland, Iceland and Denmark, and this pandemic is revealing that women have what it takes when the heat rises in our Houses of State. Many will say these are small countries, or islands, or other exceptions. But Germany is large and leading, and the UK is an island with very different outcomes. These leaders are gifting us an attractive alternative way of wielding power. What are they teaching us?

Truth:

Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, stood up early and calmly told her countrymen that this was a serious bug that would infect up to 70% of the population. “It’s serious,” she said, “take it seriously.” She did, so they did too. Testing began right from the get go. Germany jumped right over the phases of denial, anger and disingenuousness we’ve seen elsewhere. The country’s numbers are far below its European neighbours, and there are signs they may be able to start loosening restrictions relatively soon.

Decisiveness

Among the first and the fastest moves was Tsai Ing-wen’s in Taiwan. Back in January, at the first sign of a new illness, she introduced 124 measures to block the spread, without having to resort to the lockdowns that have become common elsewhere. She is now sending 10 million face masks to the US and Europe. Tsai managed what CNN has called “among the world’s best” responses, keeping the epidemic under control, still reporting only six deaths.

Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand was early to lockdown and crystal clear on the maximum level of alert she was putting the country under – and why. She imposed self-isolation on people entering New Zealand astonishingly early, when there were just 6 cases in the whole country, and banned foreigners entirely from entering soon after. Clarity and decisiveness are saving New Zealand from the storm. As of mid-April they have suffered only four deaths, and where other countries talk of lifting restrictions, Ardern is adding to them, making all returning New Zealanders quarantine in designated locations for 14 days.

Tech:

Iceland, under the leadership of Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir, is offering free coronavirus testing to all its citizens, and will become a key case study in the true spread and fatality rates of Covid-19. Most countries have limited testing to people with active symptoms. Iceland is going whole hog. In proportion to its population the country has already screened five times as many people as South Korea has, and instituted a thorough tracking system that means they haven’t had to lockdown… or shut schools.

Sanna Marin became the world’s youngest head of state when she was elected last December in Finland. It took a millennial leader to spearhead using social media influencers as key agents in battling the coronavirus crisis. Recognising that not everyone reads the press, they are inviting influencers of any age to spread fact-based information on managing the pandemic.

Love:

Norway’s Prime Minister, Erna Solberg, had the innovative idea of using television to talk directly to her country’s children. She was building on the short, 3-minute press conference that Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen had held a couple of days earlier. Solberg held a dedicated press conference where no adults were allowed. She responded to kids’ questions from across the country, taking time to explain why it was OK to feel scared. The originality and obviousness of the idea takes one’s breath away. How many other simple, humane innovations would more female leadership unleash?

Generally, the empathy and care which all of these female leaders have communicated seems to come from an alternate universe than the one we have gotten used to. It’s like their arms are coming out of their videos to hold you close in a heart-felt and loving embrace. Who knew leaders could sound like this? Now we do.

Now, compare these leaders and stories with the strongmen using the crisis to accelerate a terrifying trifecta of authoritarianism: blame-“others”, capture-the-judiciary, demonize-the-journalists, and blanket their country in I-will-never-retire darkness (Trump, Bolsonaro, Obrador, Modi, Duterte, Orban, Putin, Netanyahu…).

There have been years of research timidly suggesting that women’s leadership styles might be different and beneficial. Instead, too many political organisations and companies are still working to get women to behave more like men if they want to lead or succeed. Yet these national leaders are case study sightings of the seven leadership traits men may want to learn from women.

I realize that we are America and therefore “exceptional.” And it’s clear that electing a woman to lead here is an uphill climb with a whole lot of Americans who live in places that have outsized power in our weird electoral system. Maybe that will change if the woman in question is an anti-feminist right-winger who gives lip service to traditional patriarchy instead of challenging it.

But so far they generally prefer white men we’d like to have a beer or grab pussies with. It turns out those men really aren’t all that great in an emergency. Certainly electing an ignorant, con man with no qualifications and a severe personality disorder hasn’t turned out well for us.

Tell the Democrat Governors that “Mutiny On The Bounty” was one of my all time favorite movies. A good old fashioned mutiny every now and then is an exciting and invigorating thing to watch, especially when the mutineers need so much from the Captain. Too easy!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2020

Wow. He really didn’t understand that movie — or watch all the way through to the end.

And anyway, I think “The Caine Mutiny” is more pertinent:

Captain Queeg had much more self-awareness than Trump.

This is no more conclusive than the anecdotal evidence that it helps, but these studies should at least give some people pause before they start handing this drug out like candy to anyone who tests positive for COVID-19.

Scientists around the world are continuing to study two drugs — chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine — for their potential as possible treatment approaches for illness caused by the novel coronavirus. Yet as new data emerge out of such research, so do some concerns about the efficacy and safety of the drugs when used to treat Covid-19.

There have been early indications that these drugs may be effective in treating or preventing Covid-19, but the medications haven’t endured the due diligence of extensive clinical trials and there have been growing concerns about the impact chloroquine and the closely related hydroxychloroquine can have specifically on the heart.

Now, a chloroquine trial in Brazil has been cut short, hospitals in Sweden have been cautioned against using the drugs for Covid-19 and American cardiology groups have urged doctors to be aware of “potential serious implications” when used for people with existing cardiovascular disease.

The “safety profile” for chloroquine may differ from hydroxychloroquine overall but when it comes to the heart, there is no reason why one would be safer than another, said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and an attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Currently, there is no treatment for Covid-19 approved by the US Food and Drug Administration — but the agency has issued an emergency use authorization for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to treat patients hospitalized with Covid-19.

“In a better world, if we weren’t so panicked about this virus, we would wait and see if this drug had some value other than the President declaring that it has some value,” Offit said. “If someone’s sick you can still hurt them.”

The medical and research community are really taking the potential of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine seriously,” Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Programme, said during a media briefing in Geneva on Monday.Currently, “there is no evidence from randomized control trials that it works and clinicians have also been cautioned to look out for side effects of the drug to ensure that first we do no harm,” Ryan said. “We eagerly await the outcome of the trials that are underway.”

A preliminary study out of Brazil on the use of chloroquine diphosophate to treat patients with Covid-19 symptoms ended early after several patients died and researchers found that a high dose of the drug was associated with a severe type of arrhythmia, or irregular heartbeat. […]

Hospitals in Sweden have received guidance directing clinicians not to use chloroquine to treat Covid-19 patients outside of clinical trials. Magnus Gisslén, professor and senior doctor at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden, told CNN last week that the guidance also applies to the related medication, hydroxychloroquine.

The guidance states that “considering the very low evidence of any significant effect on Covid-19 and since serious side effects can’t be ruled out, the use of chloroquine outside of clinical trials is not recommended.””We stopped using it a few weeks ago after only a very limited use,” Gisslén said. “We have recommended it to all hospitals in our region to stop using it. I think almost all hospitals in the country have now stopped using it.”This medicine has no effect that we have been able to see on the treatment of Covid-19.”

Gisslén and his colleagues have seen “a serious effect on the heart” linked to using the medication, he said. He added that patients with lower kidney function also had a difficult time taking the drug.The patients most at risk are those with pre-existing conditions in the heart, Gisslén said. “Those are often the older patients,” he said. “But if you get a too high dosage it can affect people who have no underlying conditions at all.”

There are people I see on TV who were given the drug and recovered. But, of course, they don’t really know if they would have recovered anyway. They were also given Tylenol and a bunch of other stuff that could just as easily be attributed to their recovery. That’s part of what we’re seeing as anecdotal evidence and it’s completely worthless as far as proving the drug is useful.

There are a bunch of drugs being studied but we only hear about this one because Trump has decided it’s the magic cure/vaccine that will fix everything so we can all go back to normal. (He also has stars in his eyes, seeing himself as the Jonas Salk of coronavirus — that is if he knows who Jonas Salk is in the first place — who “discovered” the cure and saved the world.) It may end up being a treatment that helps. We just don’t know. But so far, there is absolutely no proof that it is despite Dr’s Ingraham, Hannity and Trump declaring that it’s a miracle.

Take a look at the future of the red states

As governors across the country fell into line in recent weeks, South Dakota’s top elected leader stood firm: There would be no statewide order to stay home.

Such edicts to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus, Gov. Kristi L. Noem said disparagingly, reflected a “herd mentality.” It was up to individuals — not government — to decide whether “to exercise their right to work, to worship and to play. Or to even stay at home.”

And besides, the first-term Republican told reporters at a briefing this month, “South Dakota is not New York City.”

But now South Dakota is home to one of the largest single coronavirus clusters anywhere in the United States, with more than 300 workers at a giant ­pork-processing plant falling ill. With the case numbers continuing to spike, the company was forced to announce the indefinite closure of the facility Sunday, threatening the U.S. food supply.

“A shelter-in-place order is needed now. It is needed today,” said Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken, whose city is at the center of South Dakota’s outbreak and who has had to improvise with voluntary recommendations in the absence of statewide action.

But the governor continued to resist. Instead, she used a media briefing Monday to announce trials of a drug that President Trump has repeatedly touted as a potential breakthrough in the fight against the coronavirus, despite a lack of scientific evidence.

“It’s an exciting day,” she boasted, repeatedly citing her conversations with presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Can you believe it? Instead of issuing a stay at home order she touts Jared giving her an untested drug that will do absolutely nothing to stop the spread of the disease.

The “death cult” thing is not hyperbole. They are this close to Kool-Aid.

The piecemeal approach to combating the coronavirus in South Dakota offers a throwback to America’s not-so-distant past, the period around a month ago when governors were still leery of using their powers to shut down restaurants and bars or to order people, for the greater good, to stay at home.

It also may offer a glimpse of the country’s near-term future, as pressure builds — not least from the president — to reopen after a weeks-long shutdown. Trump has been eager to get the economy on its feet again by the beginning of May after record rises in unemployment claims and dramatic falls in the stock market.

Yet as South Dakota’s experience shows, no part of the country is immune to being ravaged by the virus. And rescinding orders that people stay at home — or declining to issue them, as in the case of South Dakota and four other states — offers plenty of peril.

Reopening the country by May is “not even remotely achievable,” said TenHaken, who, like Trump and Noem, is a Republican. “We’re in the early innings of this thing in Sioux Falls.”

Already, the experience has been harrowing: As of early April, the city had relatively few cases. But over the course of last week, the numbers surged as the virus ripped through the city’s Smithfield Foods production plant, a colossus that employs 3,700 people — many of them immigrants — and churns out 18 million servings of pork product per day.

On Monday alone, 57 more workers were confirmed to have positive diagnoses, bringing the total well above 300 — and making it one of the country’s largest clusters. Other major clusters include Cook County Jail in Chicago and the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier.

The Smithfield cases amount to more than a third of the state’s overall total, which stood at 868 on Monday, including six deaths, in a state of nearly 900,000 people.

Over the weekend, Smithfield bowed to growing pressure and said it would shutter the facility indefinitely in a bid to contain the spread — though Smithfield leaders cautioned that the action could severely disrupt the nation’s food supplies. The factory, like other food production facilities, had earlier been deemed essential by the federal government.

The shutdown of the Sioux Falls plant, coupled with other closures, “is pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply,” Kenneth Sullivan, Smithfield president and chief executive, said in a statement. “It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running.”

Before the closure, workers had complained that they were not given sufficient access to protective gear, such as masks. The company said Thursday that it had taken steps to reduce the spread, including “adding extra hand sanitizing stations, boosting personal protective equipment, continuing to stress the importance of personal hygiene.” But workers said they were required to work so closely together that it was impossible to stay healthy.

“There is no social distance,” said Lily, a 30-year-old Mexican immigrant who had worked at the plant for nearly 13 years but quit because she feared bringing the coronavirus home to her husband and young daughter.

Lily, who spoke on the condition that her last name not be published for fear of retribution, said it is not only at work where she feared the virus. “Many people are sick. Not only in the plant — in the whole city,” she said.

Sioux Falls, home to nearly 200,000 people, is the state’s largest city. TenHaken, the mayor, said in an interview that he has done everything within his power to enforce social distancing, including using a “no lingering” ordinance to confine restaurants to takeout and delivery service and strongly recommending that all nonessential businesses close.

He has little power of enforcement, however, and no ability to control what happens in nearby jurisdictions. Restaurants within Sioux Falls may have shut down for in-person dining, but the rules don’t apply outside city limits. Without a more assertive response from state government — including stay-at-home orders in at least the surrounding counties and a declaration of a statewide public health emergency — TenHaken said he fears the spread will continue.

I think it’s quite clear that Trump’s henchmen like Noem just don’t care. People will die. That’s just the way it has to be because the new GOP ethos is that to do what needs to be done in this crisis will hurt Trump and that is unacceptable.

They are not thinking this through. The pandemic has hurt Trump already because he’s botched the response at every turn. There is no going back. Individual political officials still have a chance to save themselves if they simply act like human beings. But I guess they have forgotten how to do that.

It seemed like nature’s gift to the enemies of democracy. If Wisconsin Republicans’ efforts to date were not enough to suppress turnout in the April 7 elections, a deadly pandemic added risking one’s life to legal voting hurdles already in place.

Last week’s hours-long lines of masked voters at too few open polling places during a statewide stay-at-home order proved Wisconsinites were undeterred. Mass cancellations by poll workers meant that in Milwaukee only five of the usual 180 polling locations opened.

Results released Monday night delivered a stunning upset to conservative candidates appointed by Republican former governor Scott Walker.

Dane County Circuit Judge Jill Karofsky won a coveted seat on the state Supreme Court. The liberal Karofsky’s win shifts the conservative court’s ideological balance from from 5-2 to 4-3. With 99 percent of the vote counted, Karofsky defeated conservative Justice Daniel Kelly by more than 10 points. Kelly was only the second incumbent State Supreme Court justice turned out at the polls since 1967:

“Tonight, not just Jill Karofsky but democracy prevailed over a politically cynical strategy to weaponize the coronavirus pandemic as a tool of voter suppression,” said Ben Wikler, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party.

Officially nonpartisan elections for judges have become “something of a joke” in a bitterly partisan environment, said Villanova University professor of political science, John Johannes.

“The fact that the liberal challenger won under these circumstances is a really big deal,” Sara Benesh, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee told the Courthouse News Service.

Two other Walker-appointed judges lost their seats by wide margins: Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judges Paul Dedinsky and Dan Gabler.

RESULTS: Both judges appointed by former Gov. Scott Walker — Judge Paul Dedinsky and Judge Dan Gabler — lose by at least 20 percentage points.

— Daniel Bice (@DanielBice) April 13, 2020

Appearing by video conference from home, Karofsky thanked supporters and condemned the decision to hold the election during the pandemic:

“Look, we shouldn’t have had the election on Tuesday,” she said. “It was an untenable decision (on whether to vote), but the people of the state of Wisconsin rose up.

“Anyone who wasn’t brought to tears when they were looking at those people in Milwaukee voting on Tuesday, and voting in Green Bay on Tuesday, just doesn’t have a heart.”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg slammed an April 6 decision by U.S. Supreme Court conservatives to disallow an extension of the absentee ballot deadline in Wisconsin:

“The question here is whether tens of thousands of Wisconsin citizens can vote safely in the midst of a pandemic. Under the District Court’s order, they would be able to do so. Even if they receive their absentee ballot in the days immediately following election day, they could return it,” RBG wrote.

“With the majority’s stay in place, that will not be possible. Either they will have to brave the polls, endangering their own and others’ safety. Or they will lose their right to vote, through no fault of their own. That is a matter of utmost importance — to the constitutional rights of Wisconsin’s citizens, the integrity of the State’s election process, and in this most extraordinary time, the health of the Nation.”

Adding potential injury to insult, the state’s photo ID law played an as-yet unknown supplemental risk to voters last week. An image from the Janesville Gazette confirms that voters standing in line and using social distancing and masks to avoid infection by COVID-19 might have to risk themselves again by removing masks at check-in. Wisconsin’s photo ID law requires it:

Voters and poll workers exposed to the virus during last week’s election may not show up in the state’s pandemic statistics until this week. The state health department hired an additional 120 workers to help inform people “who may have been exposed to COVID-19 during Tuesday’s election.“

Donald Trump carried Wisconsin by 0.7 percentage points in 2016. Republicans losing a statewide race by over 10 points in April could bode ill for his reelection chances in November.

To understand why the Trump campaign is so obsessed with voter suppression in Wisconsin specifically that it's willing to expose people to coronavirus, just look at this graph. If we beat Trump in Wisconsin, he loses the electoral college. Help us do it: https://t.co/wRSt7EtOgD pic.twitter.com/vDnJuAidZ1

— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) April 13, 2020

A friend in Milwaukee reflecting on last night’s results texted, “I’ll honestly sleep better tonight.”

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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide election mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.