Banksy gave that picture to a British hospital. Very poignant. I hope people remember that in our new “war” against the virus the real warriors are the health care workers.
"what digby sez..."
Month: May 2020
Actually, he never left. He may have ended the daily rally, but he’s out there saying the same thing in different venues. And, as always, I think it’s important to document the atrocities.
Some highlights:
I sure hope there are enough of them. The rest of the country isn’t quite willing to kill themselves so Trump can be re-elected:
CNBC/Change Research Poll in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin: May 1-3, 2020
Key Takeaways
- 68% of voters in the battleground remain seriously concerned about the coronavirus and 52% disapprove of Trump’s handling of the outbreak.
- Fears about the economic impact of COVID-19 grow and 71% now say that we are in a recession.
- Majorities say it is important for small businesses (97%) and people who have lost jobs or wages (94%) to receive relief, 74% support recurring direct payments to individuals until the pandemic ends, and 66% support relief to state and local governments.
- Just 21% say that Trump’s policies in response to COVID favor the middle class and small businesses most.
Voters seriously concerned about COVID and disapprove of Trump’s handling of the crisis
Two-thirds of voters in the key battleground states remain seriously concerned about the coronavirus outbreak.
A large majority of Democrats (97%) and independents (66%) remain seriously concerned, but only 39% of Republicans are seriously concerned today (down from 55% two weeks ago).
Voters remain more concerned about the impact on their health and safety (65%) than the impact on their family’s financial situation (35%).
Over 1 million Americans had been diagnosed with COVID by the end of last week, and 47% of battleground voters reported personally knowing someone with the disease.
Voters give high marks to doctors and medical professionals (88% approve), their employers (82%), and Doctors Fauci and Birx (68% and 58%, respectively) for their handling of COVID.
A 52% majority of battleground voters disapprove of President Trump’s handling of the outbreak, and 48% strongly disapprove. According to this poll, Joe Biden would likely win the Electoral College if the election were held today.
Voters’ precautions and worries about reopening reflect partisan divide
Overwhelming majorities continue to take precautions such as handwashing (90%), social distancing (82%), avoiding crowds (78%), not going out to restaurants and bars (75%), wearing masks in public (67%), and sheltering at home (66%).
Democrats, however, are far more likely than Republicans to say they are participating in these activities:
With the exception of shopping – an activity that voters have still had to do during this crisis – and going to a public beach, fewer than half of voters in the battleground say that it is safe to engage in several activities that some states are beginning to allow. For instance, just 42% say it is safe to go to a hair or nail salon, just 38% say it is safe to dine-in at a restaurant, and only 30% say it is safe for children to return to school or daycare.
While very few Democrats say that it is safe to do any of these activities at this stage, majorities of Republicans say it is safe to engage in all of them with the exception of attending a sporting event, using public transportation, or taking a flight.
Importantly, 44% of voters have serious concerns about having to return to their place of work before they feel it is safe.
Worries of recession solidify as financial impact of COVID deepens
A 71% majority now believe that the economy is in a recession, including large majorities of Democrats (89%) and independents (73%) and half of Republicans. A 47% plurality believes that this recession will be worse than the Great Recession and 27% say it will be equally painful.
Half of battleground voters say that they or someone in their household has lost wages or a job as a result of COVID. A stunning 37% say they or someone in their household has lost a job or been furloughed as a result of COVID and just 60% of those who have lost their own job believe there is a greater than 50-50 chance that it will be there when the economy reopens.
Over three-in-ten voters, including 47% of those who make less than $50K a year, say that they have less than a month until they will be unable to afford food, housing and other essentials should they lose their source of income. One-in-four voters who expect to receive a CARES relief payment from the Treasury still have not received one (61% have received one, 11% are not eligible), and just 48% of those who have lost a job or been furloughed have been able to successfully apply for unemployment benefits.
Voters prioritize small businesses and individuals for relief and believe Trump’s policies mostly favor the wealthy and big corporations.
Only 22% of voters say we have spent too much on relief from the economic impact of COVID. Majorities say it is important for small businesses (97% very/somewhat important), people who have lost jobs or wages (94%), hospitals and health centers (86%), and state and local governments (59%) to receive federal relief.
There is strong bipartisan agreement (84%) that there ought to be regulations to ensure that the Paycheck Protection Program loans go to small businesses and not to companies like Ruth’s Chris and Shake Shack. There is also bipartisan support for continuing to make direct payments to qualifying individuals until the pandemic ends: 96% of Democrats, 74% of independents, and 53% of Republicans support such a policy. Two-thirds also support providing federal relief to state and local governments.
Over half of voters say it is not important at all for large corporations to receive relief (52%). Half of battleground voters in these states say that the policies of Trump and his administration in response to the economic fallout of COVID mostly favor the wealthy and big corporations, and just 21% say they mostly favor the middle class and small businesses.
I don’t think there’s a better word for it:
A Yale epidemiologist pulled no punches with his searing assessment of the United States’ botched handling of the coronavirus pandemic, suggesting it is now “getting awfully close to genocide by default.”
“How many people will die this summer, before Election Day?” tweeted Gregg Gonsalves, co-director of Yale’s Global Health Justice Partnership, on Wednesday morning, the day after President Donald Trump said the White House’s coronavirus task force would be wound down despite case numbers still rising. (Trump, however, tweeted later Wednesday morning that the group “will continue on indefinitely with its focus on SAFETY & OPENING UP OUR COUNTRY AGAIN.”)
“What proportion of the deaths will be among African-Americans, Latinos, other people of color?” asked Gonsalves. “This is getting awfully close to genocide by default. What else do you call mass death by public policy?”
I call it the Trump era, but that’s just me.
I’m already hearing that we will need to make a commitment to look forward, not backward, so that’s probably off the table:
That was written by Mitch Daniels, establishment Republican.
Also — No. Fucking. Way.
If you look at pictures of the anti-lockdown protests around the country you’ll often see signs that say “Fire Fauci,” of course meaning Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading scientist on the president’s coronavirus task force. Those signs will probably multiply after the MAGA crowds see Fauci’s answer when he was asked what he thinks of states reopening for business even as the virus is still spreading and the death rate is rising. He said it all depends on a crucial question: “How many deaths and how much suffering are you willing to accept to get back to what you want to be?”
The implication is clear: This means much more death and suffering.
Over the weekend the other top scientist on the task force, Dr. Deborah Birx, said it was “devastatingly worrisome” to see all these protesters in close quarters, failing to wear masks and not observing social distancing guidelines. Donald Trump’s followers weren’t too happy about her comments either.
Many of those protesters are being manipulated by political actors working on behalf of big business, super PACs and organizations affiliated with the Trump’s re-election campaign. The idea is to force governors to withdraw their stay-at-home orders and tell everyone to go back to normal. Judging from Twitter and Facebook commentary, if Trump himself weren’t pushing so hard these people wouldn’t be so receptive to that message. This is about supporting their man and nothing more. According to the new Monmouth poll, those who oppose lockdowns even believe Trump over Fox News.
Polls also show, however, that the vast majority of Americans, including Republicans, trust the scientists to tell the truth about the virus. The latest Washington Post/University of Maryland poll found that Dr. Fauci has an approval rating of 74 percent. Even two-thirds of Republicans have high regard for him. In fact, the poll found that “public health scientists in the federal government overall are rated 71 percent positive.”
Unfortunately for Trump, Fauci, Birx and virtually every other public health expert find the current insistence on opening up the economy in this haphazard, chaotic way — with no strategy and no methods to ensure the safety of businesses, workers and customers — to be, well, completely nuts.
Naturally, this means that Trump plans to keep the scientists from speaking publicly as much as possible. On Tuesday we learned that the White House plans to disband the coronavirus task force by the end of this month, which undoubtedly means the scientists will recede into obscurity as the Great Economic Traveling Revival Show takes its place. According to the New York Times, they haven’t been meeting much the last couple of weeks anyway.
Nothing ever came of the “Opening Up America Again Congressional Group,” whose only purpose seems to have been to humiliate Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the only Republican senator not invited. As for the ;”Opening Up America Council,” composed of business leaders who didn’t even know they’d been named or have any idea what they were supposed to do, that one never got off the ground at all. Indeed, the coronavirus task force itself only managed to produce some guidelines that nobody’s following while Jared Kushner sabotaged the logistical and procurement functions through massive corruption and cronyism, so maybe that’s no great loss either.
What has become clear in the last few days is that the Trump administration has made a decision.
The idea behind the stay-at-home and social distancing guidelines was always to “flatten the curve” of viral spread in order to ensure that the health care system wasn’t overwhelmed and buy time to get medical equipment, testing and tracing in place. That would keep the virus contained as much as possible and allow the economy to safely reopen. None of that happened.
Trump’s officials flailed around, unable to perform even the most basic tasks one would expect of the federal government in a disaster, while frantically running in circles trying to look as if they were doing something. Now, since they cannot do the job, they have apparently decided to let the virus “wash over the country” as Trump wanted to do from the beginning. If some governors can manage to mitigate the worst of it in their states, good for them. The president has gone back to his full-time job of running for re-election.
The person who has best articulated this pivot is former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who obviously has Trump’s ear. He explained the rationale to CNN’s Dana Bash on her podcast this week: “Of course, everybody wants to save every life they can — but the question is, towards what end, ultimately?” One would normally assume that saving lives was an end in itself, but apparently that’s no longer an obvious American value.
Bash asked for his message if he were in the White House and he said:
The message is that the American people have gone through significant death before. We sacrificed those lives. We sent our young men during World War II over to Europe, out to the Pacific, knowing, knowing that many of them would not come home alive. And we decided to make that sacrifice because what we were standing up for was the American way of life. In the very same way now we have to stand up for the American way of life.
Trump echoed these words on Tuesday:
I’m viewing our great citizens of this country to a certain extent and to a large extent as warriors. They’re warriors. … I’m not saying anything is perfect, and, yes, will some people be affected? Yes. Will some people be affected badly? Yes. But we have to get our country open and we have to get it open soon.
It’s daft enough that Trump and Christie think they can persuade the American people to see this as a “war” against a virus which they can win by exposing themselves to illness or death at workplaces, stores and restaurants. But they must also sell people on the idea that it’s heroic to contract this potentially lethal and highly contagious illness and pass it along to others.
“Kill your co-workers, friends and family to save the American way of life!” doesn’t sound like a winning campaign slogan to me. But what do I know?
As Salon’s Amanda Marcotte observed earlier this week, this rush to “open up” will end up being the worst of both worlds. The virus will continue to rage while the economy continues to sputter as many Americans get sick and everyone remains fearful, with no plan, process or safeguards to assure people they are safe outside their homes.
I’m not sure the president and his men have the slightest concern. Trump traveled to a mask factory in Arizona on Tuesday, to hold what amounted to a campaign rally. He didn’t wear a mask himself, of course. Here’s the theme music that was played:
“Live and let die” ought to be Donald Trump’s epitaph.
If you’ve ever wondered how you would fare in a disaster movie, you are in luck if you can call it that. Assuming you survive.
“For every indication of improvement in controlling the virus, new outbreaks have emerged elsewhere,” reports the New York Times (in the voice of Don Lafontaine), “leaving the nation stuck in a steady, unrelenting march of deaths and infections.”
One man won’t save the day. That one man is: Donald Trump.
An inept and corrupt president is listening to the Wormtongues of his court. He’s floundering, making all the wrong, self-interested moves. He is ignoring the people dedicated to averting disaster. One filed a whistleblower complaint Tuesday:
Dr. Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, alleges he was reassigned to a lesser role because he resisted political pressure to allow widespread use of hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug pushed by President Donald Trump. He said the Trump administration wanted to “flood” hot spots in New York and New Jersey with the drug.
“I witnessed government leadership rushing blindly into a potentially dangerous situation by bringing in a non-FDA approved chloroquine from Pakistan and India, from facilities that had never been approved by the FDA,” Bright said Tuesday on a call with reporters. “Their eagerness to push blindly forward without sufficient data to put this drug into the hands of Americans was alarming to me and my fellow scientists.”
Yes, you’ve seen this movie before. An epidemioloist at the University of Washington issued a warning Sunday:
Dr. Malmgren was responding to the acting president’s pressuring governors into lifting stay-at-home restrictions. Trump has spent four years bragging about the economy. He’s still bragging about his supposed miracle-working months after the COVID-19 pandemic put the American economy in lockdown and vaporized any gains made since January 2017. His reelection chances depend on defibrilating an economy essentially without a pulse.
Trump is desperate and doesn’t care who gets hurt. He means to survive November.
It wouldn’t be a blockbuster if things didn’t go from bad to worse.
Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have identified a more contagious mutated form of the original virus. The mutation affects the “spikes” on the exterior of the virus, reports the Los Angeles Times. It appeared in February in Europe and has become dominant across the planet since mid-March. Those who survive it may be more vulnerable to a second infection. This might be old news because the strain killing people now is likely the mutated strain.
Scientists at major organizations working on a vaccine or drugs have told The Times that they are pinning their hopes on initial evidence that the virus is stable and not likely to mutate the way influenza virus does, requiring a new vaccine every year. The Los Alamos report could upend that assumption.
If the pandemic fails to wane seasonally as the weather warms, the study warns, the virus could undergo further mutations even as research organizations prepare the first medical treatments and vaccines. Without getting on top of the risk now, the effectiveness of vaccines could be limited. Some of the compounds in development are supposed to latch onto the spike or interrupt its action. If they were designed based on the original version of the spike, they might not be effective against the new coronavirus strain, the study’s authors warned.
In New York City, for now the epicenter of the disease, children once thought to be relatively safe from COVID-19 are turning up ill:
In the past two days alone, the hospital, Cohen Children’s Medical Center, has admitted five critically ill patients — ages 4 to 12 — with an unusual sickness that appears to be somehow linked to Covid-19, the disease caused by coronavirus. In total, about 25 similarly ill children have been admitted there in recent weeks with symptoms ranging from reddened tongues to enlarged coronary arteries.
Doctors are calling the new, less lung-specific disease “pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome.” It presents as similar to “a rare childhood illness called Kawasaki disease.” That condition can cause inflammation of the blood vessels and especially the coronary arteries.
Well, it’s sort of a disaster movie:
Private Hudson : [after the drop ship crash] Well, that’s great. That’s just fuckin’ great, man! Now what the fuck are we supposed to do? We’re in some real pretty shit now, man!
And no, that’s not all. On top of a global pandemic of disaster-movie proportions and a president not just out of his depth but lacking any, the U.S. is in the grip of a mass hysteria.
From the Arizona Republic:
The Arizona Department of Health Services told a team of university experts working on COVID-19 modeling to “pause” its work, an email from a department leader shows.
The modeling team of about two dozen professors at Arizona State University and the University of Arizona was compiling the most robust public model in Arizona of COVID-19.
The email, from DHS bureau chief of public health statistics S. Robert Bailey, came on Monday evening, after Gov. Doug Ducey announced plans to begin easing social distancing in the coming days.
A rule proposed last year by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) would modify the amount of time an infection preventionist must devote to a facility from at least part-time to “sufficient time,” an undefined term that lets the facility decide how much time should be spent. The regulation has not been finalized, but CMS last week defended its proposal, saying it aims to reduce regulatory burden and strengthen infection control.
Opponents of the change said the rule could leave nursing home residents more vulnerable to infection. They expressed concern, especially given the devastation COVID-19 has caused within long-term care facilities.
“It makes no sense at all,” says Lindsay Heckler, a supervising attorney at Buffalo, New York’s Center for Elder Law & Justice. That’s Donald Trump.
Not to mention the lunatics with no masks or social distancing demanding they be eaten by the contagion because Freedom. Even Trump adviser Dr. Deborah Birx (she of many scarves) thinks they’re nuts:
“It’s devastatingly worrisome to me personally, because if they go home and infect their grandmother or their grandfather who has a comorbid condition and they have a serious or an unfortunate outcome, they will feel guilty for the rest of our lives,” Birx said. “So we need to protect each other at the same time we’re voicing our discontent.”
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to live through a mass hysteria, here is your chance. COVID-19 is a twofer.
As bad as all this sounds (and it is), just remember the one rule about surviving disaster movies: Never give up.
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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.
From the “you can’t make this stuff up” file:
The Honeywell plant makes masks.
I doubt any of my readers will be surprised by this. But it’s important to document the atrocities:
The coronavirus response being spearheaded by President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has relied in part on volunteers from consulting and private equity firms with little expertise in the tasks to which they were assigned, exacerbating chronic problems in obtaining supplies for hospitals and other needs, according to numerous government officials and a volunteer involved in the effort.
About two dozen employees from Boston Consulting Group, Insight, McKinsey and other firms have volunteered their time — some on paid vacation leave from their jobs and others without pay — to aid the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to administration officials and others familiar with the arrangement.
Although some of the volunteers have relevant backgrounds and experience, many others were poorly matched with the jobs they were assigned, including those given the task of securing personal protective equipment, or PPE, for hospitals nationwide, according to a complaint filed last month with the House Oversight Committee.
The complaint, obtained by The Washington Post, was submitted by a volunteer who has since left the group and who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the administration. Key elements of the complaint were confirmed by six administration officials and one outside adviser to the effort, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
A spokeswoman for the oversight panel declined to comment.
The document alleges that the team responsible for PPE had little success in helping the government secure such equipment, in part because none of the team’s members had significant experience in health care, procurement or supply-chain operations. In addition, none of the volunteers had existing relationships with manufacturers or a clear understanding of customs requirements or Food and Drug Administration rules, according to the complaint and two senior administration officials.
“Americans are facing a crisis of tragic proportions and there is an urgent need for an effective, efficient and bold response,” reads the complaint, which was sent to the committee on April 8. “From my few weeks as a volunteer, I believe we are falling short. I am writing to alert my representatives of these challenges and to ask that they do everything possible to help front-line health-care workers and other Americans in need.”
Of course they put people in charge who knew nothing about anything. Why do something like enlist the 26,000 member Defense Logistics Agency which exists to move massive numbers of personnel and equipment anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice? Or hire actual experts in the field who have experience dealing with medical emergencies?
But you just have to love this:
Supply-chain volunteers were instructed to fast-track protective equipment leads from “VIPs,” including conservative journalists friendly to the White House, according to the complaint and one senior administration official.
“Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade, for example, called two people he knew in the administration to pass along a lead about protective equipment in an effort to be helpful, according to two people familiar with the outreach. Fox News Channel host Jeanine Pirro also repeatedly lobbied the administration for a specific New York hospital to receive a large quantity of masks, one of the people said.
Kilmeade and Pirro said they were not aware that their tips were being prioritized, a Fox News spokeswoman said.
The volunteer group tasked with securing protective equipment is part of a broader coronavirus team set up by Kushner that spans the White House, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Much of the effort is run out of office space at FEMA headquarters.
Kushner and other key administration officials praised the volunteers’ efforts, which they said have helped the administration’s virus response.
No, they clearly hindered it because they had no clue what they were doing.
This crew makes Halberstam’s “Best and the Brightest” look like … the best and the brightest, by comparison.
That’s Trump laying out the terms of his latest “I need you to do me a favor though” extortion plot:
In a nutshell, xenophobia, destruction of the safety net and servicing rich people.
Add in some vote suppression, gun worship and anti-abortion hysteria and that’s about it. There’s really nothing else.
That was a park ranger trying to break up a drinking and smoking group and tell them to social distance.
It’s not like the armed protesters or that awful family who shot the security guard because he told a woman to wear a mask in the store. It’s just a bunch of idiots. But it’s clear that Americans are determined to spread this virus and it isn’t just a political thing. Too many of us are just incapable of understanding the threat — or, frankly, caring about it if we do.
We are a country of many shallow, selfish, barbarians …