Month: April 2020

I’ve said it before and this bears out my belief. It’s important to know whether your doctor is a Republican. If so, they may be subject to Fox News brainrot and Trump death cultism:

It was at a midday briefing last month that President Trump first used the White House telecast to promote two antimalarial drugs in the fight against the coronavirus.

“I think it could be something really incredible,” Mr. Trump said on March 19, noting that while more study was needed, the two drugs had shown “very, very encouraging results” in treating the virus.

By that evening, first-time prescriptions of the drugs — chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine — poured into retail pharmacies at more than 46 times the rate of the average weekday, according to an analysis of prescription data by The New York Times. And the nearly 32,000 prescriptions came from across the spectrum — rheumatologists, cardiologists, dermatologists, psychiatrists and even podiatrists, the data shows.

While medical experts have since stepped up warnings about the drugs’ possibly dangerous side effects, they were still being prescribed at more than six times the normal rate during the second week of April, the analysis shows. All the while, Mr. Trump continued to extol their use. “It’s having some very good results, I’ll tell you,” he said in a White House briefing on April 13.

The extraordinary change in prescribing patterns reflects, at least in part, the outsize reach of the Trump megaphone, even when his pronouncements distort scientific evidence or run counter to the recommendations of experts in his own administration. It also offers the clearest evidence yet of the perils of a president willing to push unproven and potentially dangerous remedies to a public desperate for relief from the pandemic.

On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration warned against using the drugs outside a hospital setting or clinical trial because they could lead to serious heart rhythm problems in some coronavirus patients. Days earlier, the federal agency led by Dr. Anthony S. Fauci — one of Mr. Trump’s top advisers on the pandemic — issued cautionary advice on the drugs, and stated that there was no proven medication to treat the virus.

As the prescriptions surged in the second half of March, the largest volumes per capita included states hit hardest by coronavirus, like New York and New Jersey. Georgia, Arkansas and Kentucky were other states with relatively high per-capita figures. In absolute numbers, California and Washington, the earliest-hit states, were among the largest. The biggest number in either category was in Florida, where nearly one prescription was written for every thousand residents.

Carmen Catizone, executive director of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, said the surge created shortages that “put patients at risk who depend on these medications” to treat other illnesses.

“The fact that people reacted to what the White House said in such a way — in the 35 years I’ve been in pharmacy and pharmacy regulation, I’ve never seen that before,” he said.

More than 40,000 health care professionals were first-time prescribers of the drugs in March, according to the data, which is anonymized and based on insurance claims filed for about 300 million patients in the United States, representing approximately 90 percent of the country’s population. The data is current through April 14.

I expect Trump to be a numbskull. And his followers who watch Ingraham and Hannity are more to be pitied than anything else. But doctors who couldn’t see through this blatant magical thinking from the dumbest man ever to sit in the oval office really cannot be trusted.

More sad news about America … and the world:

Global leaders have pledged to accelerate cooperation on a coronavirus vaccine and to share research, treatment and medicines across the globe. But the United States did not take part in the World Health Organization initiative, in a sign of Donald Trump’s increasing isolation on the global stage.

The cooperation pledge, made at a virtual meeting, was designed to show that wealthy countries will not keep the results of research from developing countries.

The meeting also represented a symbolic endorsement of the United Nations body in the face of Trump’s decision to suspend US payments and condemn its leaders as subordinates of the Chinese Communist party. China and the US have accused each other of bullying and disinformation over the coronavirus outbreak, damaging efforts to secure cooperation at the G20, the natural international institution to handle global health outside the UN.

Instead an ad hoc grouping of 20 world leaders and global health figures were on the call, including the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the American philanthropist Bill Gates. Britain will co-chair a joint coronavirus global response summit on 4 May aimed at raising funds for vaccine research, treatments and tests.

Macron told the meeting: “We will continue now to mobilise all G7 and G20 countries so they get behind this initiative. And I hope we will be able to reconcile around this joint initiative both China and the US, because this is about saying the fight against Covid-19 is a common human good and there should be no division in order to win this battle.”

This is what it’s come to. We are not only no longer leading the world (which is fine…) we aren’t even participants in efforts to save people in a global pandemic. We are now officially a pariah state.

Not that I blame other countries for moving on without us. Why would you want miscreants like Pompeo and Trump interfering in important decisions?

I knew that Trump would be destructive. But he’s done more in three short years than I ever thought possible.

This NYT article about Trump’s “inject disinfectant” rally on Thursday has some extremely interesting details. I thought this was particularly important:

Several White House officials said they shared the view that Mr. Trump had been taken out of context, even as they acknowledged that his comments were problematic. They noted that the president had later directed the same comments to Dr. Birx, and suggested them as a course of study, as opposed to a recommendation of a course of action for the American public.

But they acknowledged that Mr. Trump’s delivery was too sloppy for a president in the middle of managing the response to a pandemic that has killed over 45,000 Americans. Some said it was one of the worst days in one of the worst weeks of his presidency.

Others inside the administration raised questions about why Mr. Bryan, whose background is not in health or science, had been invited to deliver a presentation. Mr. Bryan, whose expertise is in energy infrastructure and security, is serving in an acting capacity as the head of the department’s science and technology directorate.

Mr. Bryan served 17 years in the Army, followed by yearslong stints as a civil servant at the Defense and Energy Departments. The latter role led to a whistle-blower complaint accusing him, in part, of manipulating government policy to further his personal financial interests, and then lying to Congress about those interests.

The United States Office of Special Counsel, a federal agency that investigates whistle-blower complaints, asked the Energy Department last year to investigate the accusations against Mr. Bryan. In January, the Senate returned his nomination to the White House.

Mr. Bryan was invited by the vice president’s office to coronavirus task force meetings on Wednesday and Thursday to talk about a study that his department had done relating to heat and the conditions in which the coronavirus can thrive or be dampened. On Thursday, Mr. Bryan presented a graphic to the room, according to four people briefed on the events.

Mr. Pence’s advisers wanted Mr. Bryan to brief the news media on his findings, but several West Wing staff members objected, partly because they were concerned the information had not been verified.

Before Mr. Bryan took the lectern in the White House Briefing Room, Dr. Birx and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a member of the coronavirus task force, made a few revisions to his presentation, officials said.

As he listened to Mr. Bryan, the president became increasingly excited, and also felt the need to demonstrate his own understanding of science, according to three of the advisers. So Mr. Trump went ahead with his theories about the chemicals.

So that one’s on Pence. They thought they could give Trump some happy talk news to share by bringing this D-list political appointee up to spread this “news” we already knew. They should have realized that Trump would jump on it to demonstrate his very stable scientific genius. You can be sure he says stupid things like this all the time in meetings. Of course he would do it in public!

Andrew Cuomo shared this on twitter today:

I received this letter from a farmer in northeast Kansas. His wife is ill and he is aging.

He sent me 1 of 5 N95 masks he has from farming to pass on to a doctor or nurse in New York.

This is humanity at its best. I share his letter as inspiration.

This is why I resist the red state, blue state “maker and takers” logic, as hard as it is. There are lots of good people in red states that receive more in federal aid than they pay in. And there are plenty of assholes in out blue states which send more money to the feds than we take in.

Budget woes. First money problems came for businesses. Now they come for cities’ budgets, L.A.’s among them. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti unveiled a $10.5-billion budget with cuts across an array of agencies and nearly 16,000 workers furloughed.

Expenses rise. Amid already-tight budgets, the state is spending more to secure protective equipment like masks. A Times review found middlemen, short supplies and high demand have pushed prices to as much as $12.74 per mask, and taxpayers are on the hook.

All those furloughed workers can thank the likes of Mitch McConnell who is planning to use this crisis to punish public employees. That malevolent toad is going to hold all these people in cities like LA, New York, Seattle, Chicago etc. hostage, make the Democrats play chicken with people’s lives and generally increase suffering and pain. This will give him pleasure because he’s a soulless pile of fetid offal.

Out of his mind, is more like it …

Joy Reid featured an exchange on a right wing radio show this week:

CALLER: “Maybe they could make some sort of vape that could help people, you know, that would atomize chemicals into your lungs and you could blow it out your nose, but uh thinking outside the box is what we need to do now and no one seems to want to do it. I don’t know if I’m crazy.

HOST: No, you’re not, Zack, you’re not crazy, and bingo – you said the word, you said the phrase. Thank you for that call. Thinking outside the box. That’s literally what the president was doing yesterday That’s what a good chief executive does.

They don’t know the difference between “thinking outside the box” and thinking like a 3rd grader who was held back two grades. Most adults with a high school education, a rudimentary knowledge of science and a modicum of common sense know it was a monumentally ignorant, downright infantile “idea.” It tracks with all the reporting that has Trump saying ridiculous things in meetings such as comparing the Afghanistan problem with closing down the 21 Club for renovation and ordering the pentagon to bring the nuclear arsenal to 1960s cold-war level.

The man is a fucking moron.

The problem with this exchange, of course, is that the host probably knows better (maybe not …) but is reinforcing Trump’s puerile babble to keep the cult on board. These opportunists, accomplices and henchmen are just plain evil.

This week’s White House press room follies were only among the bizarre twists and turns in the novel coronavirus saga. Aspects of the disease keep presenting new deadly challenges for doctors and patients. It’s like living through a disaster movie without the orchestral soundtrack. And a lot less fun.

A New York Times commentary by an emergency room physician warned Sunday that “Covid pneumonia” was silently killing people, driving down their blood oxygen to life-threatening levels before they sought medical attention. Only when they began experiencing shortness of breath did they go to the hospital. By then, too late for many. This “silent hypoxia” was present among people who had no other symptoms, Dr. Richard Levitan warned.

Days later, the Washington Post reported on blood clots forming “in as many as 20, 30 or 40 percent” of COVID-19 patients:

Autopsies have shown some people’s lungs fill with hundreds of microclots. Errant blood clots of a larger size can break off and travel to the brain or heart, causing a stroke or heart attack. On Saturday, Broadway actor Nick Cordero, 41, had his right leg amputated after being infected with the novel coronavirus and suffering from clots that blocked blood from getting to his toes.

Lewis Kaplan, a University of Pennsylvania physician and head of the Society of Critical Care Medicine, said every year doctors treat people with clotting complications, from those with cancer to victims of severe trauma, “and they don’t clot like this.”

“The problem we are having is that while we understand that there is a clot, we don’t yet understand why there is a clot,” Kaplan said. “We don’t know. And therefore, we are scared.”

Last night, the Post reported doctors are seeing COVID-19 patients in their 30s and 40s suffering severe strokes from the clotting. The median age for these types of strokes is 74:

Reports of strokes in the young and middle-aged — not just at Mount Sinai, but also in many other hospitals in communities hit hard by the novel coronavirus — are the latest twist in our evolving understanding of its connected disease, covid-19. Even as the virus has infected nearly 2.8 million people worldwide and killed about 195,000 as of Friday, its biological mechanisms continue to elude top scientific minds. Once thought to be a pathogen that primarily attacks the lungs, it has turned out to be a much more formidable foe — impacting nearly every major organ system in the body.

Living through this global pandemic is like being extras in a disaster movie even as our incompetent president’s responses have come to resemble old Hollywood plots.

Hearing that UV light kills the virus, Donald Trump on Thursday wondered aloud whether doctors might find a way to “hit the body” with UV or a powerful light to kill it, perhaps even from the inside.

In “Operation — Annihilate!” (1967), an alien parasite had driven inhabitants of the planet Deneva mad. The crew of the starship Enterprise investigates. Spock gets infected, but his Vulcan discipline helps control the creature inside him. Dr. McCoy uses high-intensity light to kill the parasite just like the acting president suggested on Thursday.

Perhaps, we could introduce the light from inside the body? Trump mused aloud to stunned medical experts and reporters.

Trump says he asked DHS science officials, upon hearing light can kill the virus, if the light can be used to "hit the body" or even used "inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way." He says they'll test it. pic.twitter.com/UUmYNrEeIP

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) April 23, 2020

That was the plot of the 1966 film, Fantastic Voyage. A vital Cold War scientist is comatose with an inoperable blood clot in his brain. Scientists shrink a research submarine to microscopic size and inject it into the man’s blood stream. There the crew must race against time to navigate to the clot and use a laser rifle to clear it.

“Maybe you can, maybe you can’t,” the acting president said. “I’m not a doctor. But I’m, like, a person that has a good you-know-what,” Trump said, pointing to his head. Upon hearing that household disinfectants can kill COVID-19, he suggested maybe you could inject a disinfectant into the body to kill the virus.

Here is Dr. Birx's reaction when President Trump asks his science advisor to study using UV light on the human body and injecting disinfectant to fight the coronavirus. pic.twitter.com/MVno5X7JMA

— Daniel Lewis (@Daniel_Lewis3) April 24, 2020

Manufacturers of Lysol and Clorox rushed out warnings for people not to inject themselves with nor to ingest their cleaning products.

That was no crazed Sterno-bum recommending using UV light and cleaning products internally, but the incompetent President of the United States. Then again, an aging Sterno bum and an infant were the only survivors when an alien pathogen kills off everyone in a small desert town in The Andromeda Strain (1971). Donald Trump simply combines them into one character in the remake.

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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV 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.

Takin’ it easy:

CNN:

Whether it’s goats in Wales or wild boar in Italy, animals around the world appear to be adjusting well to life without humans during the coronavirus outbreak.Even lions are enjoying the peace and quiet, a set of new photos from South Africa‘s Kruger National Park shows.The images show a pride of lions lounging on a road, seemingly unperturbed by the presence of the photographer, park ranger Richard Sowry.

Kruger visitors that tourists do not normally see. #SALockdown This lion pride are usually resident on Kempiana Contractual Park, an area Kruger tourists do not see. This afternoon they were lying on the tar road just outside of Orpen Rest Camp.
📸Section Ranger Richard Sowry pic.twitter.com/jFUBAWvmsA

— Kruger National Park (@SANParksKNP) April 15, 2020

Boars and goats and horses, oh my! Animals are taking over towns and cities around the world as more people stay home 🐐🐗🐄🐴 pic.twitter.com/URELyhkV4e

— NowThis Impact (@nowthisimpact) April 19, 2020

I love this one:

In more news of animals taking back the streets: Family of wild boars 🐗 goes on a tour of Marmaris #Turkey.

Country imposed 4-day lockdown in 30 provinces yesterday: https://t.co/RmPJ27l6pI

— Joyce Karam (@Joyce_Karam) April 24, 2020

… it does.

Apparently, they want to pass a law to give employers immunity from liability if customers sue them if they contract coronavirus in their establishments. Presumably, employees would be similarly left unprotected.

If you think about this at all, you’d know that employers would be highly unlikely to be held liable for any deaths if they followed public health guidelines. It’s only if they re-open prematurely and fail to do what they were instructed to do to protect their customers and employees that this would be a problem.

But Trump and his rich cronies see an opportunity to shield themselves from any responsibility if they show reckless disregard for the lives of their workers and customers:

White House officials are hotly debating whether and how to propose a “liability shield” that would prevent businesses from being sued by customers who contract the coronavirus, according to four people aware of the internal planning effort, as the administration seeks to encourage businesses to reopen without fear of being hit by lawsuits.

Attorneys in the White House Counsel’s Office are reviewing the matter, but some administration officials have raised objections to the idea, including whether it would expose the federal government to legal claims, according to two of the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Some White House advisers also have expressed concern that the plan might provoke a political firestorm.

“There’s political trouble here on multiple fronts,” said one person in close communication with the White House about the push. “There are a lot of questions about how to structure this.”

President Trump has pushed to “reopen” the country to reverse the economic devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic, but numerous executives have told the White House they are hesitant to reopen stores given the potential legal risk, these people said. White House officials are likely to seek the “liability shield” as part of the next stimulus package being taken up by Congress, and also are likely to enact an executive order and unilateral regulatory reform to curtail firms’ liability, a senior administration official said. The exact details of such an order have not been determined and planning remains in flux.

Trump and his chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, have publicly said the administration is working on the measure. The idea has met fierce resistance from congressional Democrats and workers’ groups, who warn it could allow employers to escape consequences for unsafe practices, complicating its likelihood of passage. Congressional Democrats are unlikely to approve the liability shield as part of the next round of negotiations.

It also has provoked internal debate among White House officials. Some small businesses have told White House advisers that the liability waiver is not a top priority for them and that they want the administration to instead focus on expanding the small-business loan program crucial to their survival.AD

At a White House news briefing earlier this month, Trump said the administration was exploring the idea of “trying to take liability away” from companies.

“We just don’t want that because we want the companies to open and to open strong,” he said.[…]

[W]orkers’ groups see the push as an attempt by business interests to shirk their responsibility to protect customers and workers, said Debbie Berkowitz, who worked at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration during the Obama administration and is now director of the worker safety and health program at the National Employment Law Project.

“It’s horrible,” Berkowitz said. “The idea companies can be held accountable is absolutely crucial to protecting workers and employers. … This is one of the most appalling things I’ve heard in the context of this crisis.”

Trump and his greedhead cronies want to force everyone to open up before it’s safe and then shield businesses if people get sick and die because of it. All it does is expose more people to the virus.

Eric Boehlert has a new piece in his excellent newsletter, PressRun (you can subscribe here.)

The staggering weight of America’s pandemic continues to come into view with each passing day, as the death toll and the number of lost jobs catapult to new heights. Politically, the carnage represents the worst possible news for the incumbent president, who now has to run for re-election against the grim backdrop of 50,000 deaths and 26 million unemployed, as consumer confidence collapses in record time.

Yet incredibly, the political press remains committed to its longtime ‘Dems In Disarray‘ narrative, deriding Democrats as being forever confused and outsmarted. (They’re not.) Specifically, the campaign coverage for November seems oddly focused on the supposed woes hounding Democratic nominee, Joe Biden.

Left out or glossed over as the ‘Dems in Disarray’ drums bang loudly? In the last 42 polls regarding the Biden vs. Trump match-up, Biden leads in 39. And two of the other three are ties. How does the press look at that data and conclude that Biden’s the one facing steep hurdles? It’s Both Sides journalism on steroids. It’s a stalwart commitment to pretend the two candidates are facing equal challenges this campaign. (Did I mention the apocalyptic job losses under Trump?)

The ‘Dems in Disarray’ coverage, particularly at the New York Times, has been a loud and steady lately: Biden doesn’t have enough money! Biden doesn’t have enough YouTube followers! Biden doesn’t have enough young voters!

Some context. Biden recently posted his largest fundraising month ever, $47 million, yet the Times immediately framed the announcement as bad news for Biden — Trump has more! In 2016, the Trump campaign was badly outspent and won the election. But in 2020, it’s fatal for Democrats if their candidate is outspent?

Yes, Biden’s trailing on the digital front and I’m sure Democrats wish that weren’t the case. But it should be pointed out that Biden trailed on the digital front during the primary season, and won that contest in a rout. The same goes for the youth vote. Biden didn’t harness it during the primary, and he won the nomination walking away. Yet the Times remains obsessed with the topic, suggesting there’s a deep rift within the party. Polling suggests otherwise.

Fact: Biden is making historic inroads among seniors, a voting block that has backed Republicans for the last three decades. But the Times even tried to hide that good news. This was the paper’s recent headline: “Is Biden Gaining Older Voters, and Losing Young Ones?” Readers would assume Biden was looking at a wash, right? He is picking up older voters, losing younger ones. In fact, there’s been a huge 15-point swing toward the Democratic nominee among older voters, as compared to the 2016 election. This, while Biden holds steady among younger voters, as compared to 2016. So why the pessimistic, Biden-struggles headline?

I admit I have no idea who’s going to win in November. So I’m not suggesting that polling in April guarantees a Biden victory. Traditionally however, polling has played a large role in campaign coverage, and the idea that the candidate who has clearly established a solid, consistent lead in dozens of polls this year is the candidate who’s struggling, really does defy journalism norms. If roles were reversed, does anyone think with Trump leading Biden in nearly 40 straight polls the Times would habitually publish stories about the campaign hurdles Trump faces?

This pattern has been weirdly consistent. Twelve months ago, the Times had no idea what the Democratic convention in 2020 would look like. But that didn’t stop the paper from warning about a chaotic, “agonizing” nominating event. Incredibly, even the Democrats’ historic midterm election wins in 2018 were presented under the ‘Dems in Disarray’ banner.

As for presidential campaigns, there simply seems to be different media standards for Democrats and Republicans up for re-election. Back in 2011, as President Barack Obama eyed his second term, the campaign press raised all kinds of alarms about his prospects when polls showed him tied with likely Republican opponents.

At the time, there was this memorable headline from a 5,000-word New York Times magazine piece that ran in November 2011, surveying his odds for re-election: “Is Obama Toast?” The Times announced that “Obama has gone from a modest favorite to win re-election to, probably, a slight underdog,” and that was treated as a very big deal. Can you image the hysterical 2012 coverage if a Republican had been polling ahead of Obama in nearly 40 straight surveys, the way Biden leads Trump today?

Beltway journalists love to portray Trump as super savvy and always two steps ahead of disarrayed Democrats. Today, that’s hard to do when he’s got 50,000 deaths and 26 million lost jobs wrapped around the neck of his campaign.

We are currently being led by a cretin so stupid he’s directing government scientists to investigate whether humans can inject disinfectant to clean the virus out of their lungs in the middle of an unprecedented pandemic. Any normal president would be in the middle of a tremendous “rally around the president” phenomenon, leading in the polls by huge margins. This one is barely hanging on to his hardcore base and even that is looking wobbly, especially among seniors who form the backbone of his voting bloc.

But sure, it’s the Democrats who are in big trouble.

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