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We Shouldn’t Forget The Pandemic

Published by digby on March 12, 2025

It was a preview of what’s to come

Five years ago yesterday, the World Health Organization announced that COVID-19 was officially a pandemic and the whole world embarked on a shared experience like nothing before in any of our lives. Although the quick roll out of vaccines and accumulated knowledge about how to treat the illness saved millions, the pandemic lasted for over two years and took 1.2 million lives in the U.S. and over 7 million worldwide. Many people were left with serious lingering effects of the virus the reasons for which are still being studied.

Hospitals and morgues were overwhelmed and the world economy was brought to an abrupt halt in March of 2020 which quickly brought mass unemployment and a shortage of goods as the global supply chain was disrupted. We learned very quickly that the federal government under Donald Trump was so lacking in logistical and crisis management ability that America had one of the worst responses of any developed country in the world. The U.S. experienced 16% of the world’s deaths with just 4% of the population.

We should have seen it coming. As Judd Legum at Public Notice presciently posted on Twitter:

Months before that a prominent Democrats had warned the country about the possibility of a pandemic and the country’s lack of preparedness:

The President of the United States downplayed the threat and insisted that he wanted to “keep his numbers down” — he was beginning to understand that this was going to interrupt his plans for a triumphant return for a second term. On March 9th, Trump made one of his most famous public appearances of the COVID era when he went to the Centers For Disease Control in Georgia and declared himself a genius:

He said:

Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for President.

Over the next few months he proved that he had definitely not missed his calling as a medical expert or a president. In fact, it became more obvious than ever that his talents, such as they are, are completely useless in a crisis.

Two days after that memorable visit, when the W.H.O made its announcement (an act which Donald Trump has never forgiven and so petulantly withdrew the U.S from the organization) the world stopped. Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson announced that they had contracted the virus and the NBA suspended its schedule. The highly respected virologist Dr. Anthony Fauci testified before Congress that the pandemic could result in “many, many millions” of deaths.

That night Trump made the only semi-dignified announcement of the crisis from the oval office shutting down travel from Europe but the order was typically poorly drafted and had to be repeatedly walked back over the following days. It was the beginning of the Trump COVID response and it was a horror show.

Those of us who were not essential workers sat cloistered in our homes watching the unfolding horror on television as the news kept a countdown clock of cases, hospitalizations and deaths that grew exponentially over the weeks that followed. And unfortunately, it became clear that we were led by a man who was completely in over his head.

Before long Trump was blaming Democrats, his go-to, for the pandemic because they suffered the greatest death toll in the big blue cities in the first wave. He demanded that they lick his boots before they could get vital medical supplies and forced them to bid against each other for them. If they failed to adequately grovel and praise him, he punished their states by delaying the needed supplies and publicly derided them as incompetent.

He denigrated the use of masks, frequently mocking those who did and ignored the social distancing measures recommended by the experts because his “business friends” told him it hurt the economy. Within just a couple of weeks he was already exhorting people to stop worrying and learn to love the virus saying that “the cure cannot be worse than the disease“, (meaning that the crisis could not be allowed to disrupt his campaign. )

His main concern at this juncture was the effect it was having on the economy which he needed to be booming before the fall campaign. Unemployment was still very high and businesses were shuttered and he wanted them open now, whether people would die or not. He had signed the first relief bill called the CARES Act but did not want to extend any more government help and basically told the country he wanted them to get back to normal now.

Unfortunately, the vaccines were still months away and new variants were springing up so he resorted to his usual tactics of pitting people against each other. He encouraged anti-mask and anti-shutdown MAGA people to rebel against all mitigation efforts. He trained his followers to distrust the science and the scientists by pushing snake oil cures on television (now linked to at least 17,000 deaths) and encouraging them to believe crackpot conspiracy theories. By the time the vaccines came online, his MAGA voters had such contempt for scientists that they rejected them, ironically denying Trump the great moment of victory he had craved.

All that and much, much more happened with a federal government that still had a working CDC, NIH, HHS and friendly, cooperative relationships with the world’s leading scientific research institutions and their countries’ leaders. Now imagine what will happen if another pandemic comes along.

Here’s a little preview of the kind of scientific expertise we’ll be relying on going forward:

Meanwhile, HHS is “reevaluating” existing contracts for MrNA vaccine development for a potential avian flu epidemic. Their plan is apparently this gobbledygook:

It has struck me as very odd these last couple of years that the pandemic has gone so far down the memory hole that it’s like it never happened. But it did, millions died and our society was scarred by the experience even if we don’t want to admit it. Our political culture was divided even worse than before largely because the man in charge at the time didn’t know how to deal with an emergency and was more concerned with his re-election than saving lives.

Sadly, our national amnesia allowed that same man to be restored to the White House where he is furiously tearing up the federal government including the world class scientific research centers and public health institutions that were all that stood between him and millions more dead the last time he was confronted with a crisis. It will be a hundred times worse if it happens again on his watch.

Salon

Fly The Unfriendly Skies

Published by Tom Sullivan on March 12, 2025

Or not

Southwest Airlines close call on Feb. 25:
Plane narrowly misses business jet at Chicago’s Midway Airport

Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their DOGE waste, fraud, and abuse cost-cutters are Making Airlines Great Again.

Reuters:

Delta Air Lines (DAL.N), opens new tab on Monday slashed its first-quarter profit estimates by half, sending its shares down 14%, and its CEO said the environment had weakened due to U.S. economic uncertainty.

The Atlanta-based airline is the first major U.S. carrier to report that mounting economic worries among consumers and businesses are hurting domestic travel.

“We saw companies start to pull back. Corporate spending started to stall,” CEO Ed Bastian told CNBC. “Consumers in a discretionary business do not like uncertainty.”

Define uncertainty.

“The National Transportation Safety Board today recommended that helicopter traffic be banned from a four-mile stretch over the Potomac River when flights are landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport,” reports CNN:

Warning signs were missed: The warning signs leading up to the disaster over the Potomac River were there, NTSB investigators said, citing data detailing thousands of near collisions at the airport over a number of years. Investigators uncovered 15,214 “near miss events” between 2021 and 2024 where aircraft were within one nautical mile of colliding, with a vertical separation of less than 400 feet. Additionally, there were also 85 cases where two aircraft were separated by less than 1,500 feet, with a vertical separation of less than 200 feet, according to the NTSB.

On the east bank of the Potomac, Elon Musk’s unofficial junior G-men are slashing the nation’s air traffic controller workforce. But that’s not all (The Atlantic):

As hundreds of career officials depart, the FAA has a fresh face in its midst: Ted Malaska, a SpaceX engineer who arrived at the agency last month with instructions from SpaceX’s owner, Elon Musk, to deploy equipment from the SpaceX subsidiary Starlink across the FAA’s communications network. The directive promises to make the nation’s air-traffic-control system dependent on the billionaire Trump ally, using equipment that experts say has not gone through strict U.S.-government security and risk-management review.

Starlink is an internet service that works by installing terminals, or dishes, that communicate with the company’s overhead satellites. Already, terminals are being tested at two sites, in Alaska and New Jersey, the FAA has confirmed. Musk, meanwhile, took to X, the social-media platform he owns, to warn last month that the FAA’s existing communications system “is breaking down very rapidly” and “putting air traveler safety at serious risk.”

Between his rapid unscheduled disassembly of government agencies, his cosmik debris endangering air traffic, and consolidation of communications infrastructure under one man who can turn it off at the flick of a switch, Musk is a Bond-villain-level threat to national and world security as well as to air traveler safety.

The Atlantic article continues, “A poll from the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released last month shows that 64 percent of American adults say air travel is ‘very safe’ or ‘somewhat safe,’ down from 71 percent last year.”

Emphasis mine:

Inside the FAA, morale is at an all-time low, two agency officials told me. A former senior executive told me that recent events—beginning with the crash and the pressure to take early retirement—have sunk the agency into “complete chaos.” The consequences, the former executive said, could be far-reaching. The FAA oversees an industry that supports $1.8 trillion in economic activity and about 4 percent of American GDP. It keeps millions of people safe.

“This isn’t Twitter, where the worst that happens is people losing access to their accounts,” the former senior executive said. “People die when FAA workers are distracted and processes are broken.”

Delta is not the only airline that will be reporting slashed profit projections this year.

Investor’s Business Daily:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 3.6% since Trump’s second inauguration, with the S&P 500 index off 6.4% and the Nasdaq composite tumbling 11%. The small-cap Russell 2000 has slumped 11.3%. 

Thank you for flying Trusk Airways. Enjoy your flight.

* * * * *

Have you fought the coup today?
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions

Killing People On Pennsylvania Ave.

Published by Tom Sullivan on March 12, 2025

Shooting someone on Fifth Avenue was small-time

Capt. Kirk negotiates a “deal” with an Iotian mob boss. “Star Trek”: Season 2, Episode 17 (“A Piece of the Action”)

As far back as he can remember, Donald Trump always wanted to be a gangster.

He fantasized about shooting people in the middle of Fifth Avenue and getting away with it. He grew up learning tax dodges from his father. He learned tough-guy bluster from mob consigliere, Roy Cohn: attack attack attack; admit nothing, deny everything; always claim victory. He bought concrete from firms run by mafiosos Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno and Paul Castellano for building Trump Plaza and Trump Tower.

City and State NY report, while “Trump’s behavior and language have also been likened to that of mobsters by several news outlets, who have noted that his speech is often peppered with terms typically used by members of the mob, like late Gambino family boss John Gotti,” the short-fingered vulgarian, like so many bullies, “has skin of gossamer” and never had the guts or the stomach to go beyond boasting.

He ran for president not to be president but to build his profile, enjoy the public attention, and enhance his family brand. Then on November 8, 2016, to his surprise, he won. His mafia stylings that worked in New York brought legal scrutiny in D.C.

Now with Elon Musk’s help he actually gets to kill people in bulk from the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue and get away with it. But the man who doesn’t use email and discourages note-taking knows how to hurt people without getting his hands dirty. He learned that in New York City. Handed a Get Out of Jail card from the Roberts court, Fifth Avenue now seems like small potatoes.

The Wall Street Journal:

The Trump administration has terminated $800 million in grants to Johns Hopkins University, spurring the nation’s top spender on research and development to plan layoffs and cancel health projects, from breast-feeding support efforts in Baltimore to mosquito-net programs in Mozambique. 

The cuts, which are in addition to threatened trims to National Institutes of Health grants, are related to the university’s work with the U.S. Agency for International Development. The school is preparing to shrink its Baltimore-based affiliated nonprofit, JHPIEGO, that since the 1970s has worked closely with the USAID and has already stopped work on a number of international health projects. 

Hundreds of thousands could die of treatable diseases worldwide

Trump has stopped weapons shipments to Ukraine and cut intelligence support. More people will die, says a Ukrainian MP (The London Times):

Ukraine’s key weapon systems were dramatically weakened on Wednesday after the US severed its intelligence sharing with Kyiv, leading to warnings that the move will result in more civilians dying.

Weapons systems stopped receiving data they rely upon to hit Russian ­targets, hampering Ukraine’s ability to effectively defend itself against ­incoming attacks. There were also fears that those personnel operating UK-supplied equipment, such as Storm Shadow cruise missiles, could struggle to identify military positions without intelligence from the US.

Kira Rudik, a Ukrainian MP, told Times Radio that the “brutal” decision to pull American intelligence sharing after ­denying the country military aid meant “so many people will be doomed”. While insisting that the move would not change Ukraine’s resolve to fight on, she said: “It is obviously brutal and I cannot imagine how many people will pay the ultimate price for the ­decision.”

Trump’s choice for Health and Human Services secretary, vaccine skeptic RFK Jr., recommends eating better and ingesting castor oil for avoiding the measles outbreak that’s spreading on his watch (ABC News):

The measles outbreak in western Texas is continuing to grow with 25 cases confirmed over the last five days, bringing the total to 223 cases, according to new data published Tuesday.

Almost all of the cases are in unvaccinated individuals or in individuals whose vaccination status is unknown, with 80 unvaccinated and 138 of unknown status, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. At least 29 people have been hospitalized so far.

Two deaths are reported so far, one child in West Texas and an adult in New Mexico. Both were unvaccinated. More are coming.

Trump’s team of DOGE assassins led by Musk is busily performing “hits” on tens of thousands of civil servants more loyal to their country and their missions than to Mafia Don. They’re losing their jobs. They may lose their homes soon enough.

Proposed cuts to Medicare could leave tens of millions of low-income Americans without health care, force rural hopitals to close, and likely cause more unnecessary deaths.

In true Mafia Don fashion, Trump hopes to bribe citizens into keeping their mouths shut about it by issuing a “DOGE Dividend” (USA Today):

The $5,000 dividend checks would come from the claimed savings that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), accrues on the path to its savings goal of $2 trillion, President Donald Trump said in February.

“We’re considering giving 20% of the DOGE savings to American citizens and 20% to paying down the debt,” Trump said in a during the Saudi-sponsored FII PRIORITY Summit in Miami Beach last month.

If it happens, people will get “a piece of the action” taken out of the hide of neighbors who’ve lost government jobs or private-sector jobs that cease to exist because Musk has cancelled contracts that paid their mortgages, fed their families, and supported local businesses.

As far back as he can remember, Donald Trump always wanted to be a gangster. But getting rich as a mobster is nowhere near as sweet as being able to destroy the lives of tens of thousands of people you’ll never know. And get away with it. That’s power. Mobsters just whack individuals. Donny and Elon have an entire republic in their sights.

Meanwhile, where I live boxes of breakfast cereal now go for $5.

* * * * *

Have you fought the coup today?
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions

This Is The Problem

Published by digby on March 11, 2025

Trump’s Grand Narrative that rationalizes all the chaos and extreme policies is that Biden left him the worst economy since the Great Depression, maybe even worse than that. They are all saying that it was in a massive crisis requiring emergency measures to keep the country from collapsing.

The media is not correcting them and people are all too eager to believe that the price of eggs is a catastrophe and that we must to anything and everything including decimating the federal government in order to bring it down. We are a very stupid country and our mainstream press is not helping.

Trump believes, and not without reason, that he can convince most Americans that up is down and black is white and he may just do it. It’s Bizarro World.

Reality just last fall:

Look what Biden inherited and what he did with it:

And yes, inflation spiked briefly in the wake of the pandemic due to the supply chain being disrupted but look where it ended up: right in the range of where it had been during the previous 10 years. By October it was down to 2.6%. (Let’s see how that holds up with Trump reckless temper tantrums.)

I don’t want to hear anyone agreeing that the economy was in crisis when Trump took over. It is now and it’s all on him, every single bit of it. If he had any faculties left he would have played it cool and had Elon do some “studies” and hold off on the tariffs and he could have ridden the Biden recovery to success the way he rode Obama’s. Instead he’s acting like the demented old man he is and here we are.

R.I.P Kevin Drum

Published by digby on March 11, 2025
Kevin and one of the internet’s first cat superstars, Inkblot

Kevin’s wife, Marian, posted this last night:

With a heavy heart, I have to tell you that after a long battle with cancer my husband Kevin Drum passed away on Friday, March 7, 2025.

No public memorial services are planned.

In lieu of flowers, please donate to the charity or political cause of your choice.

A Facebook page, ‘In Memory of Kevin Drum’, has been created as a place for friends and family to share memories of Kevin. I encourage you to post your thoughts and memories there.

Thank you to all the wonderful blog readers who supported, encouraged and challenged him through the years.

He will be greatly missed.

Kevin was one of the earliest bloggers, maybe even a bit before me, and like a vanishingly few number of us he kept to the form over these last 20+ years. First with CalPundit, then Political Animal at the Washington Monthly, his eponymous blog at Mother Jones and his last one called Jabberwocking he was a blogger to the core.

They were all great blogs, delivered with his characteristic sharp, informative style. He was one of the people who created the form way back when this whole thing was the wild west and his particular method was unique in its calm, clear, analytical style which we all linked to in order to back up our more hyperbolic analyses. We trusted him to be right and he always was.

He invented Friday Cat blogging as a way for all of us to take little breather at the end of the week and remind our readers and ourselves that we were human beings. ( My Friday Night Soother was modeled on it.) Kevin and his famous cat Inkblot were even featured in the NY Times:

“It brings people together,” said Kevin Drum, who began the cat spotlight last year on his own blog, Calpundit (www.calpundit.com). “Both Atrios and Instapundit have done Friday catblogging. It goes to show you can agree on at least a few things.”

Kevin wrote for many years at Mother Jones and did important work there. His pieces on lead poisoning were seminal and according to his friend and former publisher Paul Glastris at the Washington Monthly should have won the Pulitzer Prize and I agree. (Glastris’s tribute is well worth reading.)

He was not only a great blogger, he was a real mensch. His former Mother Jones editor Clara Jeffrey revealed on BlueSky that he had always refused raises, telling them to give the money to younger journalists. He was always kind to me as well. Although we lived not far from one another we only met in person a handful of times, once when he generously hosted a book party for Rick Perlstein’s book Nixonland. But we emailed from time to time although I did not reach out as often as I should have as his illness progressed over the past few years.

I read his blog religiously, however, and I learned so much from his writing, all the way until the end. I will miss it very much. R.I. P. Kevin. Say hi to Inkblot.

He Means It

Published by digby on March 11, 2025

Says the man who has withheld military aid and intelligence to Ukraine just in the last week, resulting in dozens of lost innocent lives. (Also, Israel has just cut off electricity to Gaza. No doubt Trump is cheering them on.)

I think this is the clearest sign of his dementia. He’s convinced himself that he can make this happen. It’s ridiculous.

Josh Marshall had some thoughts on this on BlueSky today that I thought were insightful:

The word “trade war” gets thrown around casually. They’re usually more tits for tats, escalating diplomatic eye-poking. But what Trump is doing now with Canada, just upgraded with new tariffs this morning, is more and more like waging a war against our neighbor albeit it economic means.

The tariffs now are far, far beyond anything with an economic or trade logic behind them, even in the sense of creating pressure for an agreement. These are more like trying to wreck Canada’s economy and immiserate its people. Combine that with endless demands for an anschluss and you see the true nature of what’s happening here.

Those of in the US who are ashamed of Trump’s shambling moral degeneracy and predation can’t help but see the 51st state horseshit as fundamentally stupid. But in its totality, I’m sure it seems like more than stupid to our friends and neighbors in Canada because at the end of the day the US probably could starve the Canadian economy.

And of course, we have nuclear weapons, the most powerful military in the world. Of course, that’s craziness to even talk of such things. But do you know you where Trump’s limit really is? I didn’t think so.

Seriously, you have to think about it. He’s decompensating every day and he’s getting more and more irrational and aggressive. There is nobody in his inner circle to stop him.

Yes, that’s the worst case scenario and maybe it’s hyperbolic to even bring it up. But even if he doesn’t go that far, look how far they are willing to let him go:

Here’s quote from Mike Johnson who is allegedly a smart guy. Does this make any sense at all to you?

Take Care Of The Cronies

Published by digby on March 11, 2025

Don’t cross the King — or his friends:

We knew that the U.S. pardon attorney was fired by the Trump Justice Department on Friday in a new purge of senior attorneys. Now we know why.

In a interview with the NYT, Elizabeth G. Oyer says she was terminated hours after she refused to go along with a rushed, last-minute attempt to put actor Mel Gibson on a list of people who would have their gun rights restored.

Gibson cannot legally carry a firearm after a 2011 domestic violence misdemeanor conviction.

Oyer describes a careful deliberative process to come up with a list of people whose gun rights could be safely restored then her growing dismay as that process was circumvented to try to add Gibson, who had not been vetted.

Oyer said she came under increasing pressure to sign off on Gibson, culminating in a call from a senior official in the office of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche: “He then essentially explained to me that Mel Gibson has a personal relationship with President Trump and that should be sufficient basis for me to make a recommendation and that I would be wise to make the recommendation,” she said.

They’re actually saying this stuff out loud now, not even trying to make up some kind of story to cover their corruption. Blanche, who was a US Attorney for many years and definitely knows better, just told her flat out to do it for the boss. The corruption is complete.

Can someone please tell me why that drunken lunatic Mel Gibson should be able to own a gun? He’s rich enough to hire security 24/7 and probably does. He’s nuts and he’s dangerous and can only need one to threaten or shoot someone when he’s drunk or angry.

Great Replacement Excuse To Cut Your Social Security

Published by digby on March 11, 2025

Musk: “The waste and fraud in entitlement spending — that’s the big one to eliminate. That’s the half trillion, maybe 600 or 700 billion a year. That’s also the mechanism by which Democrats attract & retain illegal immigrants by essentially paying them to come here & then turning them into voters.”

Put it in an ad and get it on the air. Play it until he’s gone or until November 2026.

Heartbreaking

Published by digby on March 11, 2025

The lying and conspiracy theories have turned tens of millions of Americans into monsters:

As Francis Collins, longtime director of the National Institutes of Health, took to the steps below the Lincoln Memorial on Friday for a sound check before speaking at the Stand Up for Science rally, he was confronted by an agitated protester who warned, “You’re going to prison.”

The incident was witnessed by a reporter from STAT, and the man afterward identified himself only as “Jeff” and said he was there to protest Collins’ oversight of NIH, and specifically the agency’s funding of gain-of-function research at a lab in Wuhan, China, where some believe the SARS-CoV-2 virus may have originated. “He’s an indicted felon, he lied before Congress,’’ Jeff, baselessly, told the reporter.

The confrontation was the latest public manifestation of the dramatically altered public image of Collins, from a near-legendary geneticist who led the Human Genome Project and was beloved by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle — and was asked to stay on by President Trump in his first term — to a target demonized by Trump’s Make America Great Again followers. 

Collins told STAT he is so concerned for his personal safety that he has hired security at his home.

“If I become more outspoken now, as I was on Friday, about the harms that are being done, it probably increases my visibility and the chances that such threats or maybe even real actions will become more likely,” he said. “I don’t know what to do about that. I can’t go hide under my desk.” 

What have we become?