Just As Trump's Great Corona Cover-Up Kicks Into High Gear, It Appears To Be Backfiring On Him

On Thursday, Politico interviewed Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and she set the Trump Regime on fire for their incompetent, dysfunctional and bungled response to the pandemic. Their over-all grade wasn't an "F"-- presumably because Trump hasn't fired Fauci yet-- but a D minus. One thing she cited was "a lack of a coordinated, national response," noting that governors were stepping up with '50 different homegrown state solutions,' instead of a national response coming from the top... You know, if we were doing the things that the exemplar countries are doing, like Germany, we would be testing. We would be testing, first, health care workers and then the most vulnerable, and you’d be doing contact tracing. And we would be able to start thinking about slowly, slowly reopening places in society in safe and healthy ways, but we have a lack of a coordinated effort. That’s just the truth, across the United States.'" That means things are going to get considerably worse.

One of the states-- where the governor is an empty-headed and completely worthless Trumpist hack who has done everything to kill as many Iowans as she could, Kim Reynolds-- is experiencing a major pandemic surge. On Thursday, Iowa experienced 655 new cases and shot up to a horrifying 3,631 cases per million in its population, second only to Nebraska of any of the other states headed for the leadership roles in the state II summer catastrophe of those that have refused to take social distancing seriously. These were the newest numbers per million for the states begging coronavirus to come stay:

• Nebraska- 3,717
• Iowa- 3,631
• Indiana- 3,438
• South Dakota- 3,361
• Colorado- 3,190
• Georgia- 3,020
• Mississippi- 3,054
• Virginia- 2,618
• Tennessee- 2,064
• Nevada- 1,973
• Ohio- 1,894
• Florida- 1,825
• Utah- 1,880
• Alabama- 1,874
• North Dakota- 1,870
• Missouri- 1,558
• South Carolina- 1,441
• Arizona- 1,446
• Texas- 1,274

We had some insight into Iowa this morning from a Des Moines Register report by Donnelle Eller on a doubling of cases when a Tyson plant in Waterloo was prematurely forced to open. "More than 1,000 workers," wrote Eller, "at the Tyson Foods plant in Waterloo have tested positive for the coronavirus, a county public health leader said Thursday-- more than double the number Gov. Kim Reynolds had said were infected the day before." Reynolds reported 444 workers with COVID-19 on Wednesday and Black Hawk County officials reported 1,031 at the pg slaughtering facility with the disease on Thursday. Chris Schwartz, a Black Hawk County supervisor, said he was disappointed that Tyson officials, who were part of the briefing Thursday, didn't take responsibility for failing to act sooner to add more protections for employees. "It was incredibly shameful," he said. Black Hawk County Sheriff Tony Thompson expressed concern that some businesses and parks were reopening. "Malls are supposed to operate at 50%. How on Earth do you monitor that?... our numbers are not decreasing yet, have not yet hit a plateau," and that the number of deaths is increasing.

On a national level, you've no doubt read by now that the U.S. jobless rate hit 14.7%, the worst since the Great Depression. Heather Long earlier today: "Over 20 million people lost their jobs in April, the Labor Department said Friday, wiping out a decade of job gains in a single month. The staggering losses are roughly double what the nation experienced during the 2007-09 crisis, which used to be described as the harshest economic situation most people ever confronted. Now that has been quickly dwarfed by the fallout from the global pandemic." The stock markets-- which reflexively hate workers, or at least hate the whole idea of companies paying workers-- moved higher on the news. Analysts are warning "it could take many years to return to the 3.5 percent unemployment rate the nation experienced in February. The sudden economic contraction has forced millions of Americans to turn to food banks and seek government aid for the first time or stop paying rent and other bills. As they go without paychecks for weeks, some have also lost health insurance and even put their homes up for sale. 'This is pretty scary,' said Lindsey Piegza, chief economist at Stifel. 'I’m fearful many of these jobs are not going to come back and we are going to have an unemployment rate well into 2021 of near 10 percent.'... As horrific as the April unemployment figure, economists say the official government rate almost certainly underestimates the extent of the job losses. The Labor Department said the unemployment rate would have been about 20 percent if workers who said they were absent from work for 'other reasons' had been classified as unemployed or furloughed."

Worst hit are African-Americans, Latinos and low-wage workers in restaurants and retail. "Many of these workers," noted Long, "were already living paycheck-to-paycheck and had the least cushion before the pandemic hit... Women had a higher unemployment rate than men."

Trump regime dysfunction and gross incompetence have resulted on millions of workers "still battling outdated websites and jammed phone lines to try to get unemployment aid and a relief check. Economists are urging Congress to act now to ensure aid does not end this summer when the unemployment rate is still likely to be at historic levels."

There’s a growing consensus that the economy is not going to bounce back quickly like Trump wants, even as more businesses re-open this month. Many restaurants, gyms, and other firms are only able to operate at limited capacities, and customers are proving to be slow to return as they are fearful of venturing out. Many businesses also won’t survive. All of this means the economy is going to need far fewer workers for months-- or possibly years-- to come.

“We’re not going to go sharply down and sharply up. We went sharply down and we’ll go gradually up,” Thomas Barkin, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, said Thursday.

A new Ipsos poll for ABC News found that the vast majority of Americans think-- regardless of what politicians say-- it's too soon to reopen. Imagine that: ordinary citizens are smarter than the leaders who have wormed their way into top positions!

64% of Americans say it's too soon to reopen. They includes 92% of Democrats. Only 35% of Republicans agree but what it says is that most of us believe the risk to human life of opening the country outweighs the economic toll of remaining under restrictive lockdowns. 65% of self-identified Republicans say that salvaging the economy is more important than the lives of the people who will die from a premature reopening.

Sill, when asked about the likelihood of agreeing to get a safe and effective vaccine, the new survey shows some skepticism about being inoculated. One-quarter of Americans said they were not likely to get vaccinated, even if a safe and effective vaccine was developed. About three-quarters said they would likely get the immunization.

Those Americans who are opposed to getting a vaccine, experts say, often fall into one of two categories. But, unlike most things in American politics and concerning the coronavirus outbreak, those groups are not partisan in nature, with about equal proportions of Democrats and Republicans saying they were likely to get the vaccine.

"There's always been an anti-vaccine group of individuals that are going to refuse vaccines no matter what," said Dr. Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease expert, and a professor of medicine, epidemiology and global health at Emory University. "The question is, how do they impact other people."

...More states, too, began easing restrictions this week, despite the number of confirmed cases continuing to climb. As more governors began lifting orders this week that were put in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Trump acknowledged in an exclusive interview with ABC News World News Tonight anchor David Muir that there might be more deaths from COVID-19 during the reopening process. "It's possible there will be some because you won't be locked into an apartment or a house or whatever it is," Trump said. "But at the same time, we're going to practice social distancing, we're going to be washing hands, we're going to be doing a lot of the things that we've learned to do over the last period of time."

Trump's approval for the handling of the coronavirus pandemic continues to be underwater among Americans and sharply polarizing among political tribes.

Too long for so early on a Friday morning? Tell me about it! But this post wouldn't be complete without a quick look at how Trump is trying to tightens grip on pandemic information. The Washington Post's Tolouse Olorunnipa reported Señor Trumpanzee "has sought to block or downplay information about the severity of the coronavirus pandemic as he urges a return to normalcy and the rekindling of an economy that has been devastated by public health restrictions aimed at mitigating the outbreak." The criminal regime "has sidelined or replaced officials not seen as loyal, rebuffed congressional requests for testimony, dismissed jarring statistics and models, praised states for reopening without meeting White House guidelines and, briefly, pushed to disband a task force created to combat the virus and communicate about the public health crisis. Several Republican governors are following Trump’s lead as an effort takes shape to control the narrative about a pandemic that has continued to rage throughout a quickly reopening country. With polls showing most consumers still afraid to venture out of their homes, the Trump administration has intensified its efforts to soothe some of those fears through a messaging campaign that relies on tightly controlling information about a virus that has proven stubbornly difficult to contain."

So far, the Trumpist attempts to rewrite reality are failing. "If the message were to go out with complete objectivity, it would be disastrous for Trump," said Max Skidmore, a political science professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City and the author of a book on presidential responses to pandemics. 'So he is doing his best to prevent experts from speaking out or using their expertise, and he’s simply trying to divert attention."

Trump’s information-control tactics are being replicated in states across the country, where governors are lifting stay-at-home orders against the advice of public health officials.

In Arizona, where Gov. Doug Ducey (R) is pushing businesses to reopen, the state health department abruptly halted the work of a team of experts who predicted the outbreak’s peak was still about two weeks away. The department reversed the decision amid an outcry after it became public.

Governors in Georgia, Texas, Iowa and elsewhere have been praised by Trump as they ignored recommendations from doctors and health officials in their states to begin phased reopenings. States such as Florida have limited or redacted public information about their coronavirus deaths.

Administration officials say the moves reflect a shift, driven by Trump, away from focusing on the health challenges caused by the pandemic and toward restarting economic activity and pulling the country out of recession. The evolution is being driven in part by the political calendar, with just six months before voters decide the president’s fate.

...One senior administration official said the public-health experts are scaring people, and their dire warnings have often been at odds with the president’s call to “open up our country.”

...The administration also has not released guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that have been in the works for weeks and offered advice on how to reopen certain businesses and facilities.

In a sharply worded statement Thursday, the White House blasted the guidelines.

“Issuing overly specific instructions-- that CDC leadership never cleared-- for how various types of businesses open up would be overly prescriptive and broad for the various circumstances States are experiencing throughout the country,” the unnamed task force official said in a statement released by the White House press office following an Associated Press report that the guidelines had been shelved. “Guidance in rural Tennessee shouldn’t be the same guidance for urban New York City.”

The CDC, which has seen its public role significantly downsized since the early days of the crisis, continues to play a more limited part in the coronavirus response than it has in previous viral outbreaks, according to experts and administration officials. That has unnerved some lawmakers and public health experts.

“Irony around CDC not issuing it’s reopen guidance, whatever the reason, is a lot of business literally can’t reopen without it because CDC is a de facto regulator in a public health crisis,” Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, wrote Thursday on Twitter. “CDC must publish its umbrella document to publish more detailed industry specific guidance.”

The limits of Trump’s ability to shape the public’s understanding of his coronavirus response could be tested next week, as major congressional hearings featuring career government health officials are set to take place. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert and a member of Trump’s task force, is one of several officials scheduled to testify before a Senate committee on May 12.

Fauci has regularly contradicted Trump’s sunny descriptions of the crisis and described the administration’s early testing efforts as “a failing.”

While the White House blocked Fauci from testifying before the Democratic-controlled House, its blanket policy of limiting congressional testimony has not stopped the oversight process. A senior government scientist who filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that the Department of Health and Human Services made critical mistakes in the weeks before the outbreaks ramped up into a pandemic is expected to testify before a House committee next week.

Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, said in his complaint that his early efforts to take proactive measures against the virus “encountered resistance from HHS leadership, including Secretary [Alex] Azar, who appeared intent on downplaying this catastrophic event.”

Trump has tried to dismiss Bright-- who was demoted from his position after his warnings-- as a “disgruntled” employee.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany attacked House Democrats for trying to stage a “publicity stunt” with their requests for hearings, including with Fauci. Trump called the House “a bunch of Trump haters” as he defended his decision to block testimony before the congressional body.

But the White House’s effort to tightly control which officials are allowed to testify before Congress has been criticized by Democrats and some Republicans.

Rep. Tom Cole (OK), the top Republican on a House panel that requested Fauci’s appearance, said Wednesday that it would have been “useful to this country” to hear from the high-profile member of the president’s coronavirus task force.

Democrats have been more forceful in their criticism.

“President Trump should learn that by muzzling science and the truth, it will only prolong this health and economic crisis,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) said in a statement Monday. “The president’s failure to accept the truth, and then his desire to hide it, is one of the chief reasons we are lagging behind so many other countries in beating this scourge.”

Trump’s shift toward message-control comes as he has been frustrated with scientific experts, data and models that have failed to support his desire for a quick solution to the crisis.

“These models have been so wrong from day one, both on the low side and the upside,” Trump said Tuesday in an interview with ABC News. “They’ve been so wrong, they’ve been so out of whack. And they keep making new models, new models and they’re wrong.”

The administration released multiple statements this week disavowing a draft report that projected as many as 3,000 daily coronavirus deaths beginning on June 1. The report, which carried a CDC logo and was featured in a Federal Emergency Management Agency briefing, had not been vetted by the White House, McEnany said.

On Tuesday, a day after the White House attacked the report, the United States recorded more than 2,400 coronavirus deaths.

...The steadily high number of coronavirus cases and the growing death count have stood in sharp contrast to Trump’s cheerful language about reopening the economy. The president has encouraged several states to begin relaxing stay-at-home orders even though they have failed to meet benchmarks from the White House’s own guidelines. Those guidelines encourage states to wait to see a decline in cases over a two-week period before relaxing social distancing measures.

Skidmore, whose 2016 book Presidents, Pandemics and Politics describes presidential leadership during health crises as critical, said Trump’s push to turn the battle against the coronavirus into a form of information warfare will ultimately fail.

“It will work for some people, but he can’t get over the fact that many, many people are dying-- and they’re dying on his watch,” Skidmore said. “Too many people are dying, and that’s the fact that he can’t cover up however much he tries.”