Trump Continues Making The Impact Of The Pandemic Worse

The COVID-King

Remember when the White House was telling everyone masks don't work and not to get them. At the time, we warned DWT readers they were lying and that it was only a matter of time before masks became compulsory. They became compulsory in L.A. last Friday. The country is still a long way off for that to become national policy-- but the Trumpist regime has never been serious about flattening the curve anyway. But what the Washington Post did expose yesterday is that they were lying their asses off about the effectiveness of masks, just as we warned you in February. Carol Leonnig wrote that "In mid-March, a National Security Council team rushed to fix what they saw as a threat to the U.S. government’s ability to function amid the advancing pandemic: a lack of masks to protect enough staff on the White House complex. Alarmed by the small cache and the growing signs of an acute shortage of protective gear in the United States, a senior NSC official turned to a foreign government for help."

Trump has made every wrong decision at every interval since the first days of the pandemic. It's who he is and who he has always been and who he will always be. Bill Gates warned us about the latest misstep: defunding the WHO. (Note the brainless Trumpists with their foolish comments protecting their would-be führer.)

At The Guardian, Helen Davidson reported that many public health experts see Trump's move to defund the WHO a crime against humanity. Hoping to deflect from his own criminal mismanagement of the crisis, Trump is trying to blame the WHO.

The move also drew a rebuke from the head of the United Nations, who said the WHO was “absolutely critical to the world’s efforts to win the war against Covid-19.”

Late on Tuesday Trump declared US funding would be put on hold for 60-90 days pending a review “to assess the World Health Organization’s role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus.” The US is the single largest contributor to the WHO.

Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of the Lancet medical journal, wrote that Trump’s decision was “a crime against humanity … Every scientist, every health worker, every citizen must resist and rebel against this appalling betrayal of global solidarity.”

Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary general, said it was “not the time” to cut funding or to question errors. “Once we have finally turned the page on this epidemic, there must be a time to look back fully to understand how such a disease emerged and spread its devastation so quickly across the globe, and how all those involved reacted to the crisis,” said Guterres.

“The lessons learned will be essential to effectively address similar challenges, as they may arise in the future. But now is not that time … It is also not the time to reduce the resources for the operations of the World Health Organization or any other humanitarian organization in the fight against the virus.”

...Trump’s pronouncement came amid sustained criticism of his failure to prepare for the epidemic, which has infected more than 600,000 people and killed more than 24,000 inside his country. The US is the worst affected country in the world in terms of infection numbers. On Wednesday it was reported that $1,200 relief cheques for as many as 70 million people could be delayed for several days because Trump wanted his name printed on them.

Of course, there are always worse things that Trump can come up with. In fact, Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker, Robert Costa, Ashley Parker wrote that he's made up his mind to try to force the country open on the arbitrary May Day. They wrote that "Impatient with the economic devastation wrought by social distancing and other mitigation measures-- and fearful of the potential damage to his reelection chances-- Trump has been adamant in private discussions with advisers about reopening the country next month. Yet within Trump’s circle, officials say, there is acknowledgment that it will not be possible for the president to simply flip a switch...Trump said Tuesday night that he plans to ask the governors of all 50 states later this week to implement “a very powerful reopening plan” in their states at whatever time they deem appropriate. He said more than 20 states are in “extremely good shape” and are poised to reopen their economies very soon, “maybe even before the date of May 1... A return to normal likely would take many months, administration officials said, and should be orchestrated methodically and guided by medical data. For instance, officials are considering beginning with areas deemed to have the lowest risk of a major outbreak." Like Minnehaha County, South Dakota?

These are the numbers of confirmed cases in each state as of this morning:

• New York- 214,648
• New Jersey- 71,030
• Massachusetts- 29,918
• Michigan- 28,059
• Pennsylvania- 26,753
• California- 27,097
• Illinois- 24,593
• Louisiana- 21,951
• Florida- 22,519
• Texas- 16,009
• Georgia- 15,260
• Connecticut- 14,755
• Washington- 10,910
• Maryland- 10,032
• Indiana- 8,995
• Colorado- 8,280
• Ohio- 7,791
• Virginia- 6,889
• Tennessee- 6,079
• North Carolina- 5,381
• Missouri- 4,895
• Alabama- 4,241
• Arizona- 3,962
• Wisconsin- 3,721
• South Carolina- 3,656
• Rhode Island- 3,529
• Mississippi- 3,360
• Nevada- 3,211
• Utah- 2,542
• Kentucky- 2,291
• Oklahoma- 2,263
• DC- 2,197
• Delaware- 2,014
• Iowa- 1,995
• Minnesota- 1,809
• Oregon- 1,663
• Arkansas- 1,599
• Idaho- 1,587
• Kansas- 1,494
• New Mexico- 1,484
• New Hampshire- 1,139
• South Dakota- 988
• Nebraska- 952
• Vermont- 759
• Maine- 770
• West Virginia- 718
• Hawaii- 530
• Montana- 404
• North Dakota- 365
• Wyoming- 288
• Alaska- 293

Where does Trump plan to open up business? In Alaska and Wyoming, where virtually there are no closed down businesses on a significant national scale? Although I hear the Alaska cruising industry is huge. And by the way, I imagine this guy is going to get fired soon:

[A] team of government officials led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has created a public health strategy to combat the coronavirus and reopen parts of the country, according to a draft memo obtained by the Washington Post. The strategy contains detailed instructions for a phased reopening of institutions such as schools, child-care facilities, summer camps, parks, faith-based organizations and restaurants.

...In late March, Trump was persuaded by the two physicians on his coronavirus task force, Anthony S. Fauci and Deborah Birx, as well as other advisers to extend the federal social distancing guidelines for an additional 30 days, through the end of April.

Since making that decision, however, Trump has been agitating to find ways for businesses to reopen, mindful that he could end up paying a political price for the staggering number of unemployed Americans.

Inside the White House, it has been clear to officials since last week that there is no longer much of a debate-- at least with the president-- about starting the reopening process May 1, said numerous current and former senior administration officials, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss the state of play.

“He desperately wants to reopen as much as possible on May 1,” said one former official briefed on internal discussions. “He’s been that way from the beginning, and he has not wavered. He seems determined to do it. But there’s a growing realization that you won’t be able to open everything up by May 1. Even he realizes that’s a bad idea.”

Rather, the debate this week has been over how to implement the return, what data could be used to justify the decision, and how to build public support for it to provide the president maximum political cover, according to one senior administration official involved in the discussions and a second person who has been briefed on them.

Trump’s advisers are trying to shield the president from political accountability should his move to reopen the economy prove premature and result in lost lives, and so they are trying to mobilize business executives, economists and other prominent figures to buy into the eventual White House plan, so that if it does not work, the blame can be shared broadly, according to two former administration officials familiar with the efforts.

...Some executives are wary the White House plan could backfire if it proves premature and leads to a public health catastrophe, according to three people familiar with the effort. Some also are concerned that under federal law, the contents of the meetings would have to become public, should the body meet a certain number of times.

Conservative advocacy groups such as FreedomWorks and the American Legislative Exchange Council are also mobilizing to help push the White House and Republican lawmakers to relax public health restrictions. Informally, they have started calling their group “Save Our Country,” although the project has no official name. The Heritage Foundation is launching a parallel set of working groups that is expected to deliver its recommendations on reopening the economy to Vice President Pence.

One idea that has emerged among these conservative groups is to push a liability shield for businesses that would insulate them from lawsuits if their employees get the coronavirus while at work, according to two people familiar with internal discussions.