Over 7 Million Covid Cases In The U.S. And Over 200,000 Deaths-- But Trump Insists He Get An A+ For His Handling Of The Pandemic

 

Trump chit-chatted with the ass-lickers on Fox & Friends Monday morning. At the time he was on the phone 204,126 Americans had been reported dead of COVID-19. Still he rated his handling of the pandemic-- panned all over the world as the worst of any national leader (other than perhaps, Benjamin Netanyahu)-- an A+. "We’ve done a phenomenal job, not just a good job, a phenomenal job, other than public relations, but that’s because I have fake news."

Just before Trump began amusing the Fox News audience with his banalities, America slipped over the 7 million cases mark. By the time he was done speaking the U.S. national caseload was 7,005,893-- which is 21,166 cases per million Americans. Although Netanyahu's Israel has nearly as bad a record-- 21,138 cases per million Israelis-- not a single European country is in the Trump ballpark. These are the 10 worst-hit of the western European countries:

• Spain- 14,101 cases per million residents
• Belgium- 8,818 cases per million residents
• Sweden- 8,725 cases per million residents
• France- 6,933 cases per million residents
• Portugal- 6,791 cases per million residents
• Ireland- 6,653 cases per million residents
• Switzerland- 5,811 cases per million residents
• U.K.- 5,801 cases per million residents
• Netherlands- 5,600 cases per million residents
• Italy- 4,933 cases per million residents

These are all tragic numbers-- but like nothing when you compare them to what the Trumpist governor have done to their states with their partisan, ideological and anti-Science approach to the catastrophe:

• Ron DeSantis (R-FL)- 31,835 cases per million residents
• Tate Reeves (R-MS)- 31,371 cases per million residents
• Kay Ivey (R-AL)- 29,565 cases per million residents
• Doug Ducey (R-AZ)- 29,403 cases per million residents
• Brian Kemp (R-GA)- 28,835 cases per million residents
• Bill Lee (R-TN)- 26,872 cases per million residents
• Henry McMaster (R-SC)- 26,746 cases per million residents
• Kim Reynolds (R-IA)- 25,528 cases per million residents
• Asa Hutchinson (R-AR)- 25,092 cases per million residents
• Greg Abbott (R-TX)- 25,017 cases per million residents

In 2016, North Dakota was one of the most politically rancid states in America-- only West Virginia, Wyoming and Oklahoma were more welcoming to Trump's fascist and racist campaign messaging. This cycle, North Dakotans are once again ready to give Trump their overwhelming support-- if they're still alive on November 3. Yesterday, Newsweek reported that this extremely right-wing state, one of the state's with a population living in complete COVID-denialism and where there has never been any kind of mask mandate has a raging pandemic problem. "A third of North Dakota's total confirmed coronavirus cases have been recorded in the last three weeks, with almost 6,000 cases being reported since the start of September." The state has the highest rate of infection in the country. "In North Dakota, the largest proportion of new cases during the current phase of the pandemic have been people aged between 20 and 29, who have a lower mortality rate than higher-risk groups." The crackpot Trumpist governor, Doug Burgum, is still rejecting the idea of a mask mandate.

Epidemiologically, the virus knows no racial or class distinctions, but in reality, the pandemic has been much harder on poor people than on wealthy people. People of color have suffered inordinately. Yesterday, though the Wall Street Journal ran a report by AnnaMaria Andriotis, Covid Upends Middle Class Family Finances. "Millions of Americans have lost jobs during a pandemic that kept restaurants, shops and public institutions closed for months and hit the travel industry hard," wrote Andriotis. "While lower-wage workers have borne much of the brunt, the crisis is wreaking a particular kind of havoc on the debt-laden middle class. Debt didn’t present a major problem before the coronavirus. The job market was booming and median household incomes were rising, allowing families to keep up with payments."

American families with nonhousing debt making over $98,018 a year in pre-tax income owed an average of nearly $92,000 of such debt in 2016. That’s up 32% from 2004, adjusted for inflation, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit research group.

Average nonhousing debt owed by families making $52,655 to $98,018 rose about 33% over the 12 years to $33,378.

Before the pandemic, Americans had amassed $4.2 trillion in consumer debt, excluding mortgages, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a record even when adjusting for inflation. Housing debt added an additional $10 trillion to the tally.

The coronavirus has spared few industries and expanded unemployment benefits designed to replace the average American income didn’t cover all the lost pay of higher-earning workers, especially in or near expensive cities. The extra $600 weekly payments expired in July, putting them even further behind.

“What I see happening here is a core assault on successful college-educated families, which are the new breed of middle-class American families,” said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. “There’s a professional workforce that’s getting slammed.”

Roughly six months into the pandemic, many lenders that let borrowers skip monthly payments now expect to get paid again. They have set aside billions of dollars to cover potential losses on soured consumer loans-- an acknowledgment that America’s decadelong debt binge has come to an end.

Credit-card debt has fallen in recent months. But with a big chunk of government assistance gone, Congress is still haggling over a second round of coronavirus relief. President Trump signed an executive order in August to provide an extra $300 a week in federal unemployment benefits. The payments haven’t been distributed by every state yet, and Democrats say the president’s order violated congressional-spending authority.

White-collar pain

Unemployment has fallen from its pandemic peak of near 15%, but the rate stood at 8.4% in August, up from 3.5% in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unemployment for the arts, design, media, sports and entertainment was 12.7% in August, more than triple its year-earlier level. In education, it more than doubled to 10.2%. Sales and office unemployment was 7.8% in August, up from 3.8% in August 2019.

Architects and engineers, who earn $1,826 in average weekly pretax income, well above the $1,389 average among full-time wage and salaried workers, have seen unemployment rise to 3.7% from 0.8% a year earlier. Unemployment for computer and math occupations, which earn $1,919 a week on average, more than tripled to 4.6%.

It could get worse. “The pain so far in the economy has largely been at the lower end of the pay scale,” said Discover Financial Services Chief Executive Roger Hochschild, adding that many of “the white-collar layoffs are still to come.”

...By some measures, the outlook for higher-earning workers appears worse than during the 2008 financial crisis. In August, about 3.3 million people age 25 and over with bachelor’s degrees or higher were unemployed, up from 1.2 million in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. During the last downturn, that number peaked at about 2.2 million.

Postings for jobs with salaries over $100,000 were down 19% in August from April, while postings for all other salary categories increased, according to job-search site ZipRecruiter Inc.

American Airlines Group Inc. and United Airlines Holdings Inc. have outlined plans to furlough or lay off thousands of employees on Oct. 1, when federal aid expires, unless they receive more government assistance. Business-software company Salesforce.com Inc. is eliminating 1,000 jobs; a spokeswoman said the company is also adding 4,000 jobs over the next six months.

MGM Resorts International and Stanley Black & Decker Inc. notified some furloughed employees they would be laid off. The companies said they have brought back, or expect to bring back, many of these employees.

America’s biggest banks have indicated they are preparing for a protracted downturn to hurt businesses in industries that weren’t immediately affected by shutdowns.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. says it expects the U.S. to add roughly 5.4 million jobs in the third and fourth quarters. That would leave the U.S. economy with about 9.2 million fewer jobs since February.

“The pandemic has a grip on the economy,” Citigroup Inc. CEO Michael Corbat said when the bank reported second-quarter earnings in July, “and it doesn’t seem likely to loosen until vaccines are widely available.” This month, the bank said many customers that previously enrolled in deferment programs are making payments.

...Many people who have jobs are struggling with pay cuts. As of August, 17 million workers were getting paid less due to the pandemic, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. Some 9.5 million took pay cuts; the remaining 7.5 million are working fewer hours, he said.

BONUS: How we survive the winter

Over the weekend, James Hamblin wrote that "It is now widely accepted among experts that the United States is primed for a surge in cases at a uniquely perilous moment in our national history." Fauci is warning Americans we must proactively cut the rate of infection by 75%. Trump is campaigning on "just the opposite message. He has promised that normalcy and American greatness are just around the corner. He has touted dubious treatments and said at least 34 times that the virus will disappear. This disinformation is nearing a crescendo now that the election looms: Trump has been teasing a vaccine that could be available within weeks. The cold reality is that we should plan for a winter in which vaccination is not part of our lives. Three vaccine candidates are currently in Phase 3 clinical trials in the U.S., and the trials’ results may arrive as early as November. But even if they do-- and even if they look perfect-- it would not mean that a vaccine would be widely available. On Wednesday, Redfield said in a congressional hearing that a vaccine was unlikely to be widely available until summer of next year, if not later. Fauci may be even less optimistic. He told my colleague Peter Nicholas that if the clinical trials go well, it could mean a few million doses could be available by early 2021. By the time we got to 50 million to 100 million doses, he estimated, 'you’re going to be well into 2021.' If each person needs two doses, as many experts expect, that would be enough to vaccinate roughly 11 percent of the population. The virus is here to stay. At best, it would fade away gradually, but that would happen after, not before, the winter. The sooner we can accept this, the more we can focus on minimizing the losses of the bleak and grisly coming months. Some of our fate is now inevitable, but much is not. There are still basic things we can do to survive." Hamblin suggests 5:

Accept Reality

Do not waste your time and emotional energy planning around an imminent game-changing injection or pill in the coming months. A pandemic is not a problem that will be fixed in one move, by any single medication or a sudden vaccine. Instead, the way forward involves small, imperfect preventive measures that can accumulate into very effective interventions. Groups of practices that minimize the spread of disease are sometimes known as prevention bundles. Our COVID-19 bundle includes important drugs, such as dexamethasone and remdesivir, which seem to help certain patients in specific situations. It also involves behaviors, too, such as distancing and masking. “Any action you take has the potential for numerous secondary and tangential benefits,” [chief of the infectious-disease division at the State University of New York Upstate Stephen] Thomas said.

A vaccine will be part of our bundles, hopefully before too long. But it will not instantly eliminate the need for everything else. If we can accept that masks will be a part of our lives indefinitely, we can focus on improving their effectiveness and making them less annoying to wear, Yale’s Ko said. “And it’s not just the design of masks themselves; we can come up with more innovative ways to promote face-mask use.” For one thing, they could be made more ubiquitous by employers and state agencies. Governments could even, as Luxembourg’s did, send masks to everyone by mail.

Plan for More Shutdowns

America’s “reopening” process is going to be less an upward line toward normalcy and more a jagged roller coaster toward some new way of life. In July, California ordered businesses and churches in some counties to again halt indoor activities after the state saw a rise in positive tests and admissions to intensive-care units. In August, the University of North Carolina sent students home barely a week after they had arrived. These sorts of moves shock the system if it relies on uninterrupted forward progress. Everyone will be better prepared if we plan for schools to close and for cities and businesses to shut back down, even while we hope they won’t have to.

“Many workplaces that have reopened don’t have clear guidelines as to when they will consider shutting back down or reducing capacity in buildings,” Kissler told me. Every place that’s reopening should assume that it might have to navigate further closures. “Having clear triggers for when and how to pull back would help us avoid what happened this spring, where everything shut down in a week,” Kissler said. “It was utter chaos. I’m afraid that scenario will play out again. We have the opportunity to avoid that.”

Live Like You’re Contagious

Even if you’ve had the virus, plan to spend the winter living as though you are constantly contagious. This primarily means paying attention to where you are and what’s coming out of your mouth. The liquid particles we spew can be generated simply by breathing, but far more by speaking, shouting, singing, coughing, and sneezing. While we cannot stop doing all of these things, every effort at minimizing unnecessary contributions of virus to the air around others helps.

Along with masking and distancing, time itself can effectively be another tool in our bundles. It’s not just the distance from another person that determines transmission; it’s also the duration. A shorter interaction is safer than a longer one because the window for the virus to enter your airways is narrower. Any respiratory virus is more likely to cause disease if you inhale higher doses of it. If you do find yourself in high-risk scenarios, at least don’t linger. Fredrick Sherman, a professor at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, recommends that if someone near you coughs or sneezes, “immediately exhale to avoid inhaling droplets or aerosols. Purse your lips to make the exhaling last longer. Turn your head fully away from the person and begin walking.”

Even as it gets colder, continue to socialize and exercise outdoors when possible-- even if it’s initially less pleasant than being inside. It’s worth thinking about sweaters, hats, and coats as protective measures akin to masks. During the holidays, don’t plan gatherings in places where you can’t be outdoors and widely spaced. This may mean postponing or canceling long-standing traditions. For a lot of people, that will be difficult and sad. For some, it will be a welcome relief. In either case, it’s better than sending a family member to the ICU.

Build for the Pandemic

This is an overdue opportunity to create and upgrade to permanently pandemic-resistant cities, businesses, schools, and homes. Now is the moment to build the infrastructure to keep workers safe, especially those deemed essential. Poor indoor air quality, for example, has long been a source of disease. Businesses can minimize spread by making ventilation upgrades permanent, as well as enshrining systems that let people work from home whenever possible. “We should be decreasing the density of indoor spaces as much as possible through telecommuting, shifting work schedules, changing work or school flows to spread people out,” the Center for Health Security’s Inglesby said. Instead of being ordered to take down temporary street dining areas, restaurants might build roofs over them to bear ice and snow, and accommodate space heaters.

Keeping people safe will save us economically: If restaurants, shops, offices, schools, and churches offer only indoor options, then they can expect attendance and business to suffer even further-- either because of legally imposed limits to capacity or because people don’t feel safe going out. Building for pandemics also extends beyond physical infrastructure, to child care for workers, public transit, safe housing and quarantine spaces, and supply chains for everything from masks to air filters to pipette tips. We could make sure that sick people have places to go to seek care, and that they aren’t compelled to spread the virus by basic financial imperatives.

Hunt the Virus

Developing fast and reliable ways to detect the coronavirus will become only more crucial during the winter cold-and-flu season. Symptoms of the flu and other respiratory diseases can be effectively indistinguishable from early and mild symptoms of COVID-19. Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida, told me that testing will be needed to identify real cases and assure others in schools and workplaces that their coughs are not due to COVID-19. Being able to distinguish who among the sniffling masses truly needs to quarantine for two weeks will be vital to keeping essential workers safe and present.

The flu vaccine will be useful in helping to prevent a disease that can look very similar to COVID-19. But returns to normalcy in the coming year will depend on advancements in testing for the coronavirus itself. As of now, PCR tests, the most widely used forms of diagnostic testing, are not suited for efficient, massive-scale screening. They cannot identify every infection reliably enough, and are too resource-intensive to use as a comprehensive surveillance system. Some experts hope that November will be a watershed month for new ways of testing, as numerous novel point-of-care tests should have come to market by then. These will theoretically allow for on-premises testing at schools, offices, and polling stations-- with results obtained in minutes. There are already concerns about the accuracy of such tests, but if they work well, they would be the most effective tool in our bundle. Results would ideally be coordinated nationally, with real-time tracking, to inform precise and minimal shutdowns.

...Throughout the pandemic, America’s most significant barrier to this progress has been Donald Trump. Since February, he has depicted his response to the virus as a success by minimizing the threat. He has exaggerated and lied about treatment options, about the availability of tests, and about the importance of preventive measures such as masks. This week, after Redfield testified that a vaccine would not be widely available until mid-to-late 2021, Trump contradicted him and said Redfield was “confused.”

Trump’s insistence that normalcy is on the horizon trades long-term safety for short-term solace. Under his administration, the agencies that typically ensure the accuracy and proper usage of medical products like tests and vaccines-- the FDA and the CDC-- have been weakened and politicized. In August, the White House urged a rewrite of CDC guidelines to discourage testing asymptomatic people who have had high-risk exposures to people with COVID-19. This week, the New York Times reported that this happened over the objections of CDC scientists. In the coming months, “direct to consumer” sales of COVID-19 tests are expected to further clutter the information landscape. It will be up to the FDA to ensure that they work. Tests and vaccines will be worthless if the public can’t or simply doesn’t trust them.