How's The Pandemic Coming Along Where You Live?

One way to measure and compare which states have been hit worst by the pandemic is by is by looking not at the raw cases, but by looking at the cases per million residents. By that measurement, Vermont (2,470 cases per million residents), Maine (3,188 cases per million) and Hawaii (4,289 cases per million) have had the easiest time of it so far. On the other end of the spectrum, exactly a dozen states each has over 20,000 cases per million residents.

• Louisiana- 30,485 cases per million residents
• Florida- 27,623 cases per million
• Arizona- 27,051 cases per million
• Mississippi- 25,645 cases per million
• New York- 23,600 cases per million (stabilized)
• Georgia- 23,511 cases per million
• Alabama- 22,999 cases per million
• New Jersey- 21,928 cases per million (stabilized)
• South Carolina- 21,438 cases per million
• Nevada- 20,919 cases per million
• Tennessee- 20,624 cases per million
• Texas- 20,568 cases per million

By way of comparison, not one European country comes anywhere near these numbers. The worst-hit western European countries haven't been hit half as badly, not even the countries like France and Spain that have already begun Wave II:

• Spain- 8,723 cases per million residents
• Sweden- 8,515 cases per million
• Belgium- 6,976 cases per million
• Ireland- 5,643 cases per million
• Portugal- 5,441 cases per million
• U.K.- 4,778 cases per million
• Switzerland- 4,574 cases per million
• Italy- 4,270 cases per million
• Netherlands- 3,856 cases per million
• France- 3,645 cases per million
• Denmark- 2,802 cases per million
• Germany- 2,790 cases per million

In fact, France, which had 4,586 new confirmed cases reported on Friday, bringing the national total to 234,400, sits between Maine and Hawaii, two of the least impacted American states! Worst-hit European country Spain had 3,650 new cases confirmed Friday, bringing its national total to 407,879-- 8,723 per million Spaniards, somewhere between Alaska's 6,272 per million residents and Washington's 9,439 cases per million. Trump is the worst national leader America has ever had. Putin got more than he ever bargained for by investing just a few million dollars in the 2016 election.

It would be hard not to notice that most of the worst-hit American states are "red" states where Trump won in 2016 and where Republicans control state government policies and are responsible for inadequately dealing with the emergency-- a combination of just too many idiots and morons in the population and governments guided by partisan right-wing ideologues rather than by public health experts. Yesterday, CNN reported that Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation researchers are projecting that the U.S. death toll, which Friday stood at 179,200, will by over a quarter million by election day.

The Institute's director, Dr. Christopher Murray, says the acceleration of cases can be stopped and their model could be defeated: "The public's behavior had a direct correlation to the transmission of the virus and, in turn, the numbers of deaths." He told CNN that if 95% of the people in the US wear masks, the spread could be cut by 40% and more than 66,000 lives could be saved between now and the end of the year. I drove to a pharmacy yesterday to pick up some meds for my neuropathy. It's about 2 miles from my house. I saw at least 100 people on the drive and in the 3 stores I stopped in. Mask use was 100%, including homeless people who hang out in the parking lot of one of the supermarkets. 100% means that not even one person was being an idiot. I'm proud of Los Feliz!

On Thursday, Dr. Fauci told CNN that "The US has what it takes to get Covid-19 case levels down to more manageable levels by Election Day if it uses masks and other 'fundamental tenets of infection control'-- but it needs to get serious now. We can be way down in November... if we do things correctly, and if we start right now... I really do believe, based on the data we see in other countries, and in the United States, in states and cities and counties that have done it correctly, that if we pay attention to the fundamental tenets of infection control and diminution of transmission, we can be way down in November. Everybody on the team of American citizens needs to pull together... It's up to us,' he said."

It's up to us? OK, if by "us" he means the folks in Los Feliz, I feel fine. If by "us," he means the folks in the red states, I feel like we're all gonna die. Because it isn't a quarter million deaths by election day that will make these idiots take this seriously; it's a million or two million deaths-- or strictly enforced mandates, not shooting them like mad dogs, but... putting them where they can't endanger society. How about Wyoming? Build a wall around Wyoming and put all the people who refuse to wear masks there; seal it up and unseal in 2030.

Badge Of Honor by Nancy Ohanian

Most Americans blame the catastrophic U.S. response to the pandemic on Trump and his enablers, as they should. If that doesn't show up as a GOP wipeout up and down the ballots, you'll know the election was rigged and democracy has died, along with those quarter million Americans (Over 300,000 by Inauguration Day 2021, according to the model.)

Trump Has Given Up On The Pandemic-- The World Has Given Up On Trump

Opposition Research by Nancy Ohanian

Señor Trumpanzee has officially reached out to crazy right-wing governor Kristi Noem (R-SD) to find out what the process is for getting his likeness added onto Mount Rushmore. I'm not joking. I wonder how long it would take to dynamite it. Trump, apparently, doesn't understand it is supposed to represent the greatest and more admired American presidents, not the worst and most despised president.

Last week, the U.S. breezed through the 5 million confirmed cases mark. Because of Trump and his enablers another 63,246 cases were confirmed on Friday, 54,199 more cases on Saturday, and another 47,849 yesterday, bringing the total to 5,199,444-- about 2 million more than all of Europe combined (including Russia). The population of the U.S. is 331,002,651, while the population of Europe is 747,678,099. So why does Europe have 3,035,997 cases and the U.S. 5,199,444 cases? Donald J. Trumpanzee is the simple answer. A more complex answer-- though not a lot more complex-- would be that there are millions of people in the U.S. who freely voted to make Trumpanzee their leader, many of whom planning on voting for him again, despite the last 3 year of catastrophe. Toxic brew.

Over the weekend 4 Washington Post reporters, Philip Rucker, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Robert Costa, Josh Dawsey, collaborated on a piece, The Lost Days Of Summer: How Trump Fell Short In Containing The Virus, that shows how the Trumpist Regime has just given up on the pandemic. Former radical right psychopath North Carolina Congressman Mark Meadows-- current radical right psychopath Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is in charge of coordinating the executive branch, including its coronavirus response. "But," wrote The Post quarter, "in closed-door meetings, he has revealed his skepticism of the two physicians guiding the anti-pandemic effort, Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci, routinely questioning their expertise. Meadows no longer holds a daily 8 a.m. meeting that includes health professionals to discuss the raging pandemic. Instead, aides said, he huddles in the mornings with a half-dozen politically oriented aides-- and when the virus comes up, their focus is more on how to convince the public that President Trump has the crisis under control, rather than on methodically planning ways to contain it. During coronavirus meetings, Meadows has repeatedly questioned the scientific consensus that wearing masks helps contain the spread of the novel coronavirus, officials said. He has regularly raised with Fauci and others a range of issues on which he thinks Fauci has been wrong, and he personally monitors the infectious-disease expert’s media appearances. When he catches Fauci sounding out of sync with Trump, the chief of staff admonishes the doctor to 'stay on message,' officials said-- and he has impressed upon Fauci, Birx and other public health professionals that they should not opine on restrictions or make policy in the media."

If the administration’s initial response to the coronavirus was denial, its failure to control the pandemic since then was driven by dysfunction and resulted in a lost summer, according to the portrait that emerges from interviews with 41 senior administration officials and other people directly involved in or briefed on the response efforts. Many of them spoke only on the condition of anonymity to reveal confidential discussions or to offer candid assessments without retribution.

“Right now, we’re flying blind,” said Thomas Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Public health is not getting in the way of economic recovery and schools reopening. Public health is the means to economic recovery and schools reopening. You don’t have to believe me. Look all over the world. The U.S. is a laggard.”

Under mounting pressure to improve the president’s reelection chances as his poll numbers declined, the White House had what was described as a stand-down order on engaging publicly on the virus through the month of June, part of a deliberate strategy to spotlight other issues even as the contagion spread wildly across the country. A senior administration official said there was a desire to focus on the economy in June.

It was only in July, when case counts began soaring in a trio of populous, Republican-leaning states-- Arizona, Florida and Texas-- and polls showed a majority of Americans disapproving of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, that the president and his top aides renewed their public activity related to the virus.

...Trump and many of his top aides talk about the virus not as a contagion that must be controlled through social behavior but rather as a plague that eventually will dissipate on its own. Aides view the coronavirus task force-- which includes Fauci, Birx and relevant agency heads-- as a burden that has to be managed, officials said.

...[I]n recent interviews, several governors and mayors in some of the nation’s hardest-hit areas questioned the president’s credibility and the value of his presentations.

“You can be out front, but if you’re not providing accurate and truthful information, it can hurt rather than help,” said Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner (D), whose city has been a major hot spot. “Correct information is vital. People are listening, and they will respond based on what they’re hearing. And they look to their leaders at all levels of government... That trust factor is critical. If you lose that, it’s very difficult to govern.”

Jack Chow, a U.S. ambassador for global HIV/AIDS during the George W. Bush administration and a former World Health Organization assistant director general, said, “It’s extraordinary that a country that helped eradicate smallpox, promoted HIV/AIDS treatment worldwide and suppressed Ebola-- we were the world’s leader in public health and medicine, and now we can’t even protect our own people from the most devastating epidemic in decades.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Trump’s push for a speedy return to normal had deadly consequences. Asked who was to blame for the pandemic’s dark summer turn, Pelosi said, “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

“The delay, the denial... the hoax that it’s going to go away magically, a miracle is going to happen, we’ll be in church together by Easter, caused death,” Pelosi added.

...Although Fauci, Birx and other medical professionals sit on the coronavirus task force, many of the more pressing decisions lately have been made by the smaller group that huddles in the morning and mostly prioritizes politics. The cadre includes Meadows, senior adviser Jared Kushner and strategic communications director Alyssa Farah.

The policy process has fallen apart around Meadows, according to four White House officials, with the chief of staff fixated on preventing leaks and therefore unwilling to expand meetings to include experts or to share documents with senior staffers who had been excluded from discussions. This breakdown in order, for instance, has given room for trade adviser Peter Navarro to push his ideas directly with Trump and to submit an opinion piece to USA Today attacking Fauci.

...Health officials said they have been dismayed that there is no consistent message from the White House advising what people should be doing to help stem the tide of coronavirus infections, such as wearing masks and social distancing. Some internal administration models suggest that full adherence to those measures could yield the same result as the shutdown, and officials recognize that it would be better for the public health and psyche of the nation and the economy if the country could avoid another full shutdown.

Luciana Borio, a director for medical and biodefense preparedness at the National Security Council during the first two years of the Trump administration, decried “a response in disarray hampered by a lack of clear, consistent public health-oriented guidance to the public.”

“It’s very difficult to know who to trust,” Borio said. “To expect the public to sort out the facts in a time of tremendous stress leads to inconsistent and disparate actions, and that really hurts our collective effort to fight the virus.”

What also has frustrated a number of the president’s allies and former aides is that he simply seems uninterested in asserting full leadership over the crisis, instead deferring to state leaders to make the more difficult decisions while using his presidential bully pulpit to critique their performances. He deputizes Pence to handle much of the actual communication with states and other stakeholders in the fight against the virus.

Since the start of the pandemic, the U.S. response has been plagued by a chronic shortage of diagnostic tests, the supplies needed to run them and the lab capacity to process them in a reasonable time to maximize their effectiveness, according to state officials.

The Trump administration has resisted devising a national testing program and instead ceded the task to state governments, even as cases of infection average more than 60,000 a day and some people wait 10 days or longer for test results, delays that render the results essentially useless.

State officials, leaders of the American Medical Association and other medical groups as well as some officials in the administration have pushed for a stronger federal solution to the problems of testing.

...Despite repeated calls to invoke the Defense Production Act to help resolve testing-supply shortages, the administration has resisted doing so. Trump and several White House aides have instead continued to think that it is politically advantageous to cede the issue to the states to avoid taking ownership or blame for the issue, even though testing shortages are largely seen as a federal failure.

“The thing that disturbs me is I think the public has to know it doesn’t have to be this way,” said Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ) said. “Other countries have taken this virus seriously, trusted their public health officials and scientists, and now they’ve flattened the curve,” he said. “Meanwhile, our situation gets worse and worse every day and some Americans think, ‘Oh, that’s just the way it is.’ But that isn’t how it has to be.”

Even Trump has taken to sounding defeatist at times, as if he had given up trying to save lives. When the president claimed in a recent interview for HBO that the virus was “under control,” Axios reporter Jonathan Swan interjected.

“How?” Swan asked. “A thousand Americans are dying a day.”

“They are dying, that’s true,” Trump said. “It is what it is.”

Some people familiar with Trump’s thinking said the president is preternaturally averse to difficult challenges that don’t produce immediate results.

“He’s just not oriented towards things that even in the short term look like they’re involving something that’s hard or negative or that involves sacrifice or pain,” a former senior administration official explained. “He is always anxious to get to a place of touting achievements and being the messenger for good news.”

The Associated Press noted on Sunday that "the failure of the most powerful nation in the world to contain the scourge has been met with astonishment and alarm in Europe. Italy was hit first and hit hard, but "after a strict nationwide, 10-week lockdown, vigilant tracing of new clusters and general acceptance of mask mandates and social distancing, Italy has become a model of virus containment... Much of the incredulity in Europe stems from the fact that America had the benefit of time, European experience and medical know-how to treat the virus that the continent itself didn’t have when the first COVID-19 patients started filling intensive care units. Yet, more than four months into a sustained outbreak, the U.S. reached the 5 million mark... Health officials believe the actual number is perhaps 10 times higher, or closer to 50 million, given testing limitations and the fact that as many as 40% of all those who are infected have no symptoms.

With America’s world’s-highest death toll of more than 160,000, its politicized resistance to masks and its rising caseload, European nations have barred American tourists and visitors from other countries with growing cases from freely traveling to the bloc.

France and Germany are now imposing tests on arrival for travelers from “at risk” countries, the U.S. included.

...When the virus first appeared in the United States, Trump and his supporters quickly dismissed it as either a “hoax” or a virus that would quickly disappear once warmer weather arrived. At one point, Trump suggested that ultraviolet light or injecting disinfectants would eradicate the virus. (He later said he was being facetious).

Trump’s frequent complaints about Dr. Anthony Fauci have regularly made headlines in Europe, where the U.S. infectious-disease expert is a respected figure. Italy’s leading COVID-19 hospital offered Fauci a job if Trump fired him.

Trump has defended the U.S. response, blaming China, where the virus was first detected, for America’s problems and saying the U.S. numbers are so high because there is so much testing. Trump supporters and Americans who have refused to wear masks against all medical advice back that line.

“There’s no reason to fear any sickness that’s out there,” said Julia Ferjo, a mother of three in Alpine, Texas, who is “vehemently” against wearing a mask. Ferjo, 35, teaches fitness classes in a large gym with open doors. She doesn’t allow participants to wear masks.

“When you’re breathing that hard, I would pass out,” she said. “I do not want people just dropping like flies.”

And health officials watched with alarm as thousands of bikers gathered Friday in the small South Dakota city of Sturgis for an annual 10-day motorcycle rally. The state has no mask mandates, and many bikers expressed defiance of measures meant to prevent the virus’s spread.

Dr. David Ho, director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, who is leading a team seeking treatments for COVID-19, decried such behavior, as well as the country’s handling of the virus.

“There’s no national strategy, no national leadership, and there’s no urging for the public to act in unison and carry out the measures together,” he said. “That’s what it takes, and we have completely abandoned that as a nation.”

When he gets on Zoom calls with counterparts from around the globe, “everyone cannot believe what they’re seeing in the U.S. and they cannot believe the words coming out of the leadership,” he said.

...Many Europeans point proudly to their national health care systems that not only test but treat COVID-19 for free, unlike the American system, where the virus crisis has only exacerbated income and racial inequalities in obtaining health care.

“The coronavirus has brutally stripped bare the vulnerability of a country that has been sliding for years,” wrote Italian author Massimo Gaggi in his new book Crack America (Broken America), about U.S. problems that long predated COVID-19.

Gaggi said he started writing the book last year and thought then that the title would be taken as a provocative wake-up call. Then the virus hit.

“By March the title wasn’t a provocation any longer,” he said. “It was obvious.”

At the same time, Rebecca Falconer reported at Axios that New Zealand also has a COVID election coming up, but a very different one for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern than Trump's November reckoning. "New Zealand," wrote Falconer, "has now gone 100 days with no detected community spread of COVID-19... New Zealanders are going to the polls on Sept. 19. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been widely praised for her leadership that saw NZ lock down hard for several weeks before all domestic restrictions were lifted in June. She sees her government's response to and recovery from the coronavirus outbreak as key to her Labour Party being re-elected. Ardern announced at a briefing Saturday that Labour's re-election campaign that is heavily focused on continuing with the economic recovery, pledging NZ$311 million ($205.32m) for a 'Flexi-wage' subsidy scheme to help businesses give jobs to some 40,000 Kiwis. Labour is well ahead in the polls of its nearest rival, the National Party, led by Judith Collins. But conservative Collins told RNZ Saturday she's still confident of winning under her party's platform 'Strong team, More Jobs, Better Economy.' Collins is the third leader to be appointed by the National Party this year. New Zealand has 23 active coronavirus cases. All are NZ residents newly returned from abroad, who are staying in managed isolation facilities. The border remains closed to non-residents and all newly returned Kiwis must undergo a two-week isolation program managed by the country's defense force. All travelers tested three times before they leave. Police are stationed outside hotels where travelers are in quarantine. Officers have taken prosecutorial action against several returned travelers who've breached these rules by fleeing the facilities under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act."

Reporting solo for the Washington Post yesterday, Ashley Parker wrote that many people have just stopped caring what Trump says because everyone knows he's full of crap and nothing that comes out of his mouth is ever anything but attempted manipulation. "More than 3½ years into his presidency," wrote Parker, "Trump increasingly finds himself minimized and ignored-- as many of his more outlandish or false statements are briefly considered and then, just as quickly, dismissed. The slide into partial irrelevance could make it even more difficult for Trump as he seeks reelection as the nation’s leader amid a pandemic and economic collapse. In battling the coronavirus crisis, which has left more than 158,000 Americans dead, many of the nation’s governors have disregarded the president’s nebulous recommendations, instead opting for what they believe is best for their residents. So have the nation’s schools, with many of the country’s largest districts preparing for distance learning when they reopen this fall, despite Trump’s repeated calls for kids to return to classrooms in person. And the president’s own top public health officials are routinely contradicting him in public-- offering grim, fact-based assessments of the raging virus in contrast to his own frequently rosy proclamations."

No, It Is NOT Getting Better-- It's Getting Worse

COVID-palooza by Chip Proser

Funny; yesterday I was trying to figure out how to say that, though she isn't a villain, Deborah Birx is also not exactly a hero many of us were hoping for. And then I noticed Birx trying to defend her sullied reputation on State of the Union, telling Dana Bash that Pelosi and the NY Times are wrong about her. "I have never been called pollyannish, or nonscientific, or non-data driven. And I will stake my 40-year career on those fundamental principles of utilizing data to really implement better programs to save more lives." The Times had accused her, credibly, of feeding the Trump regime the pollyannish reports it wanted-- which helped account for the plan Kushner had come up with (which probably would have save 100,000 Americans' lives) being shit-canned.

Last Thursday, Pelosi had told Mnuchin and Meadows, with whom she was negotiating a new pandemic relief bill, that "Deborah Birx is the worst. Wow, what horrible hands you’re in," accusing her of spreading disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, while praising Fauci who "came to his senses, and is now a hero." Most Americans know who to blame, ultimately-- and that's Trump, but, like I was saying, Birx is no Fauci. Yesterday, she did admit, though, that the US is in a new phase in its fight against the pandemic and that it's more widespread than when it first took hold. "What we are seeing today is different from March and April. It is extraordinarily widespread. It’s into the rural as equal urban areas... To everybody who lives in a rural area, you are not immune or protected from this virus. If you’re in multi-generational households, and there’s an outbreak in your rural area or in your city, you need to really consider wearing a mask at home, assuming that you’re positive, if you have individuals in your households with co-morbidities."

People keep telling me-- and by people, I include "the media"-- that things are getting better, that the pandemic is receding and that we can start planning our trips to France and Bali and Italy. Not me. I'll wait 'til after a vaccine is real, safe, widely distributed, working and victorious over the virus.

On Sunday morning, we took a look at how western Europe is re-exploding with cases. It's getting so bad in Spain and France again that neither country reported how many new cases they had on Saturday or Sunday. And even without those reports, Spain is back in the top ten. The pandemic is raging out of control in the U.S., Brazil, India, South Africa, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, the Philippines, Iran, Bangladesh, Iraq, Chile and Bolivia and picking up steam again-- after having partially died out-- in western Europe, Australia and Israel.

In the U.S., small, relatively out-of-the-way states that haven't had horrific outbreaks yet, are starting to. These were numbers for Saturday to ---> Sunday with cases per million residents.

• Oklahoma +1,244 ---> +494 (9,660 cases per million Sooners)
• Idaho +393 ---> 230 (11,944 cases per million Idahoans)
• Alaska +146 ---> +144 (4,484 cases per million Alaskans) Note: Alaska shut down non-essential businesses today and starting Aug. 11th, non-residents coming to Alaska from the Lower 48 will have to have proof of a negative test within the last 3 days
• Nevada +986 ---> +1,131 (16,299 cases per million Nevadans)
• North Dakota +133 ---> +58 (8,739 cases per million North Dakotans)
• Missouri +897 ---> 32 (8,447cases per million Missourans)
• Montana +116 ---> +112 (3,923 cases per million Montanans)
• West Virginia +93 ---> +119 (3,824 cases per million West Virginians)
• Hawaii +86 ---> 45 (1,583 cases per million Hawaiians)

Writing for the Washington Post Joel Achenbach, Rachel Weiner and Chelsea Janes reported that "The coronavirus is spreading at dangerous levels across much of the United States, and public health experts are demanding a dramatic reset in the national response, one that recognizes that the crisis is intensifying and that current piecemeal strategies aren’t working. This is a new phase of the pandemic, one no longer built around local or regional clusters and hot spots. It comes at an unnerving moment in which the economy suffered its worst collapse since the Great Depression, schools are rapidly canceling plans for in-person instruction and Congress has failed to pass a new emergency relief package. President Trump continues to promote fringe science, the daily death toll keeps climbing and the human cost of the virus in America has just passed 150,000 lives. 'Unlike many countries in the world, the United States is not currently on course to get control of this epidemic. It’s time to reset,' declared a report released last week by Johns Hopkins University. Another report from the Association of American Medical Colleges offered a similarly blunt message: 'If the nation does not change its course-- and soon-- deaths in the United States could be well into the multiple hundreds of thousands.'"

Re-Opening by Nancy Ohanian

The country is exhausted, but the virus is not. It has shown a consistent pattern: It spreads opportunistically wherever people let down their guard and return to more familiar patterns of mobility and socializing. When communities tighten up, by closing bars or requiring masks in public, transmission drops.

That has happened in some Sun Belt states, including Arizona, Florida and Texas, which are still dealing with a surge of hospitalizations and deaths but are finally turning around the rate of new infections.

There are signs, however, that the virus is spreading freely in much of the country. Experts are focused on upticks in the percentage of positive coronavirus tests in the upper South and Midwest. It is a sign that the virus could soon surge anew in the heartland. Infectious-disease experts also see warning signs in East Coast cities hammered in the spring.

“There are fewer and fewer places where anybody can assume the virus is not there,” Gov. Mike DeWine (R) of Ohio said Wednesday. “It’s in our most rural counties. It’s in our smallest communities. And we just have to assume the monster is everywhere. It’s everywhere.”

A briefing document released Friday by the Federal Emergency Management Agency counted 453,659 new infections in the past week.

Alaska is in trouble. And Hawaii, Missouri, Montana and Oklahoma. Those are the five states, as of Friday, with the highest percentage increase in the seven-day average of new cases, according to a Washington Post analysis of nationwide health data.

“The dominoes are falling now,” said David Rubin, director of the PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which has produced a model showing where the virus is likely to spread over the next four weeks.

His team sees ominous trends in big cities, including Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Louisville, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Washington, with Boston and New York not far behind. And Rubin warns that the expected influx of students into college towns at the end of this month will be another epidemiological shock.

“I suspect we’re going to see big outbreaks in college towns,” he said.

Young people are less likely to have a severe outcome from the coronavirus, but they are adept at propelling the virus through the broader population, including among people at elevated risk. Daily coronavirus-related hospitalizations in the United States went from 36,158 on July 1 to 52,767 on July 31, according to The Post’s data. FEMA reports a sharp increase in the number of patients on ventilators.

The crisis has highlighted the deep disparities in health outcomes among racial and ethnic groups, and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week showed that Black, Hispanic and Native American coronavirus hospitalization rates are roughly five times that of Whites.

How Trump And The Republican Party Failed The Country... Catastrophically

...“This is not a natural disaster that happens to one or two or three communities and then you rebuild,” said Beth Cameron, vice president for global biological policy and programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative and a former White House National Security Council staffer focused on pandemics. “This is a spreading disaster that moves from one place to another, and until it’s suppressed and until we ultimately have a safe and effective and distributed vaccine, every community is at risk.”

A national strategy, whether advanced by the federal government or by the states working in tandem, will more effectively control viral spread than the current patchwork of state and local policies, according to a study from researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published Thursday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The coordination is necessary because one state’s policies affect other states. Sometimes, that influence is at a distance, because states that are geographically far apart can have cultural and social ties, as is the case with the “peer states” of New York and Florida, the report found.

“The cost of our uncoordinated national response to COVID-19, it’s dramatic,” said MIT economist Sinan Aral, lead author of the paper.

Some experts argue for a full six-to-eight-week national shutdown, something even more sweeping than what was instituted in the spring. There appears to be no political support for such a move.

True, I've said all along that for a political appetite from that, the U.S. will need to see Trump gone plus between a million and two million deaths. Right now there are "only" 158,000, which doesn't touch, let alone phase, most American idiots. Blaming national leadership only tells half the story-- well maybe more than half, but just part of the story. "With the economy in shambles, hospitals filling up and the public frustrated, anxious and angry," wrote our 3 Post reporters, "the challenge for national leadership is finding a plausible sea-to-sea strategy that can win widespread support and simultaneously limit sickness and death from the virus. Many Americans may simply feel discouraged and overtaxed, unable to maintain precautions such as social distancing and mask-wearing. Others remain resistant, for cultural or ideological reasons, to public health guidance and buy into conspiracy theories and pseudoscience."

DeWine is struggling to get Ohio citizens to take seriously the need to wear masks. A sheriff in rural western Ohio told the governor Wednesday that people didn’t think the virus was a big problem. DeWine informed the sheriff that the numbers in his county were higher per capita than in Toledo.

“The way I’ve explained to people, if we want to have Friday night football in the fall, if we want our kids back in school, what we do in the next two weeks will determine if that happens,” DeWine said.

The coronavirus has always been several steps ahead of the U.S. government, the scientific community, the news media and the general public. By the time a community notices a surge in patients to hospital emergency rooms, the virus has seeded itself widely.

The virus officially known as SARS-CoV-2 can be transmitted by people who are infectious but not symptomatic. The incubation period is typically about six days, according to the CDC. When symptoms flare, they can be ambiguous. A person may not seek a test right away. Then, the test results may not come back for days, a week, even longer.

That delay makes contact tracing nearly futile. It also means government data on virus transmission is invariably out of date to some degree-- it’s a snapshot of what was happening a week or two weeks before. And different jurisdictions use different metrics to track the virus, further fogging the picture.

The top doctors on the White House coronavirus task force, Deborah Birx and Anthony S. Fauci, are newly focused on the early warning signs of a virus outbreak. Last week, they warned that the kind of runaway outbreaks seen in the Sun Belt could potentially happen elsewhere. Among the states of greatest concern: Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee.

Fauci and Birx have pointed to a critical metric: the percentage of positive test results. When that figure starts to tick upward, it is a sign of increasing community spread of the virus.

“That is kind of the predictor that if you don’t do something-- namely, do something different-- if you’re opening up at a certain pace, slow down, maybe even backtrack a little,” Fauci said in an interview Wednesday.

Without a vaccine, the primary tools for combating the spread of the virus remain the common-sense “non-pharmaceutical interventions,” including mask-wearing, hand-washing, staying out of bars and other confined spaces, maintaining social distancing of at least six feet and avoiding crowds, Fauci said.

“Seemingly simple maneuvers have been very effective in preventing or even turning around the kind of surges we’ve seen,” he said.

Thirty-three U.S. states have positivity rates above 5%. The World Health Organization has cited that percentage as a crucial benchmark for governments deciding whether to reopen their economy. Above 5%, stay closed. Below, open with caution.

Of states with positivity rates below 5%, nine have seen those rates rise during the last two weeks.

“You may not fully realize that when you think things are okay, you actually are seeing a subtle, insidious increase that is usually reflected in the percent of your tests that are positive,” Fauci said.

Some governors immediately took the White House warnings to heart. On Monday, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) said at a news conference that he had met with Birx the previous day and was told he was getting the same warning Texas and Florida received “weeks before the worst of the worst happened.”

To prevent that outcome in his state, Beshear said, he was closing bars for two weeks and cutting seating in restaurants.

But as Beshear pleaded that “we all need to be singing from the same sheet of music,” discord and confusion prevailed.

COVID-Kim, bringer of death and disease

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) said Thursday she wasn’t convinced a mask mandate is effective: “No one knows particularly the best strategy.”

Earlier in the week, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) demurred on masks and bar closures even as he stood next to Birx and spoke to reporters.

“That’s not a plan for us now,” he said. He added emphatically, “We are not going to close the economy back down.”

The virus is spreading throughout his state, and not just in the big cities. Vacationers took the virus home from the honky-tonks of Nashville and blues clubs of Memphis to where they live in more rural areas, said John Graves, a professor at Vanderbilt University studying the pandemic.

“The geographical footprint of the virus has reached all corners of the state at this point,” Graves said.

In Missouri, Gov. Michael Parson (R) was dismissive of New York’s imposition of a quarantine on residents from his state as a sign of a worsening pandemic. “I’m not going to put much stock in what New York says-- they’re a disaster,” he said at a news conference Monday.

Missouri has no mask mandate, leaving it to local officials to act-- often in the face of hostility and threats. In the town of Branson, angry opponents testified Tuesday that there was no reason for a mask order when deaths in the county have been few and far between.

“It hasn’t hit us here yet, that’s what I’m scared of,” Branson Alderman Bill Skains said before voting with a majority in favor of the mandate. “It is coming, and it’s coming like a freight train.”

Democratic mayors in Missouri’s two biggest cities, Kansas City and St. Louis, said that with so many people needing jobs, they are reluctant to follow Birx’s recommendation to close bars.

“The whole-blanket approach to shut everybody down feels a little harsh for the people who are doing it right,” said Jacob Long, spokesman for St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson. “We’re trying to take care of some bad actors first.”

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey also got a warning from Birx. On Wednesday, he said all bar drinking must move outside.

“We don’t want to be heading in the direction of everybody else,” said Kristen Ehresmann, director of the infectious-disease epidemiology division at the Minnesota Department of Health. She acknowledged that some options “are really pretty draconian.”

The problem is that less-painful measures have proven insufficient.

“The disease transmission we’re seeing is more than what would have been expected if people were following the guidance as it is laid out. It’s a reflection of the fact that they’re not,” she said.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) tried to implement broad statewide measures early in the pandemic, only to have his “Safer at Home” order struck down by the state’s Supreme Court [R].

With cases in his state rising anew, he tried again Thursday, declaring a public health emergency and issuing a statewide mask mandate.

“While our local health departments have been doing a heck of a job responding to this pandemic in our communities, the fact of the matter is, this virus doesn’t care about any town, city or county boundary, and we need a statewide approach to get Wisconsin back on track,” Evers said.

Ryan Westergaard, Wisconsin’s chief medical officer, said he is dismayed by the failures of the national pandemic response.

“I really thought we had a chance to keep this suppressed,” Westergaard said. “The model is a good one: testing, tracing, isolation, supportive quarantine. Those things work. We saw this coming. We knew we had to build robust, flexible systems to do this in all of our communities. It feels like a tremendous disappointment that we weren’t able to build a system in time that could handle this.”

There is one benefit to the way the virus has spread so broadly, he noted: “We no longer have to keep track of people traveling to a hot spot if hot spots are everywhere.”

On Saturday, Wisconsin reported 1,062 new cases, on Sunday another 922 cases, and today 404 more bringing the state total to (55,328) which comes to 9,503 cases per million Cheeseheads... and that's more than any European country including the hardest hit countries, like Sweden (8,017 cases per million), Spain (7,360 cases per million), Belgium (6,024 cases per million), the U.K. (4,500 cases per million) and Italy (4,106 cases per million). Every death certificate in Wisconsin should come with a letter of apology from state Assembly Speaker Robin Vox and state Senate majority leader Scott Fitzgerald, who has the temerity to be running for Congress this year.

Caught Like A Fat Little Orange Rat, Trump Throws Extremist Advisor Peter Navarro Under The Bus

Lambchop by Nancy Ohanian

Yesterday, the Washington Post published, without comment, that "the White House moved to distance itself from an extraordinary op-ed in USA Today in which Peter Navarro, President Trump’s trade adviser, heavily criticized Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, for his handling of the pandemic." Even a toady like Moscow Mitch decided to signal Senate Republicans that it would be safe for them to break with the Trumpist Regime on this. When asked by a reporter, he said that his level faith in Dr. Fauci is "total."

Does anyone imagine that Navarro would have attacked Fauci-- and so viciously-- without an OK from Trump? In fact, L.A. Times reporters Eli Stokols and Noah Bierman wrote yesterday that the regime was forced to spend time and energy dealing with the fallout from Navarro's smear tactic and the Regime campaign against Fauci. "White House officials," they reported, "tried to distance the president from the column. Deputy press secretary Alyssa Farah tweeted that it 'didn’t go through normal White House clearance processes and is the opinion of Peter alone.' Trump, she continued, 'values the expertise of the medical professionals advising his Administration.' But there’s little doubt that Navarro’s broadside reflected-- and appealed to-- the president’s own frustration with Fauci, who has not been invited to the Oval Office to brief Trump since early June and whose proposed television appearances often have been blocked by the White House. According to one administration official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, Navarro had the president’s permission to write the column. 'Not only was he authorized by Trump, he was encouraged,' the official said."




During an interview with The Atlantic Fauci called the attack, part of a campaign by Trump's inner circle, "bizarre." ABCNews.com reported that the White House knows they're in a bad position here and are trying to distance Trump from the mess.

The latest extraordinary escalation in the attacks on Fauci began in earnest, when, in a remarkable broadside against Fauci, who polls show the American public broadly trusts for information on the novel coronavirus, Navarro wrote in the op-ed for USA Today Tuesday that "Fauci has a good bedside manner with the public, but he has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on."

Navarro, who has no known medical expertise, went on to contrast his own response to the coronavirus pandemic with misleading characterizations of Fauci's own comments on the virus. A portion of what he wrote was also included as a statement from him in a Washington Post article published Saturday.

"So when you ask me whether I listen to Dr. Fauci’s advice, my answer is: only with skepticism and caution," Navarro wrote.

Asked on Wednesday if he was OK with Navarro's op-ed, Trump did not take issue with its content.

"Well, that's Peter Navarro, but I have a very good relationship with Dr. Fauci," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Later, as he departed the White House en route to Atlanta, Trump said Navarro should not have written an opinion piece "representing himself."

"Well, he made a statement representing himself," Trump said. "He shouldn't be doing that."

Asked about Navarro's attack and the White House campaign to discredit him during a streaming question-and-answer session with The Atlantic, Fauci responded, "It is a bit bizarre. I don't really fully understand it. You know, I think that would happen with that list that came out I think if you sit down and talk to the people who are involved in that. They are really, I think taken aback by what a big mistake that was, and I think if you talk to reasonable people in the White House they realize that was a major mistake on their part because it doesn't do anything but reflect poorly on them.

"And I don't think that that was their intention. I don't know-- I cannot figure out in my wildest dreams why they would want to do that, but, I mean, I think they realize now that that was not a prudent thing to do because it's only reflecting negatively on them. I can't explain Peter Navarro-- he's in a world by himself. So, I don't even want to go there,” Fauci said.

Among Navarro's qualms with Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is over the efficacy of the antimalarial medication hydroxychloroquine. Long touted by President Donald Trump and Navarro as a promising treatment for COVID-19, Fauci for months disagreed, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration determined it was "unlikely to be effective in treating COVID-19."

The latest criticism fit a pattern of the Trump administration minimizing public health experts and prioritizing an economic recovery, which the president sees as key to his reelection chances.

Earlier Wednesday, a senior White House official, director of strategic communications Alyssa Farah, tweeted that Navarro's op-ed "didn’t go through normal White House clearance processes and is the opinion of Peter alone."

While she added that the president "values the expertise of the medical professionals advising his Administration," she did not disavow anything Navarro wrote.

Separately, a senior White House official said Navarro "went rogue, and put out his personal opinion without any approvals." The official, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity, said "the White House does not stand by these unauthorized opinions and Mr. Navarro owes Dr. Fauci an apology.”

Navarro did not respond to a request for comment on whether he got approval from the president or any other White House official before publishing the op-ed; the White House also did not respond when asked if he got permission from any official outside the communications office.

Asked if Navarro would be punished for writing the op-ed, a White House official said, “We do not comment on internal personnel matters, but [White House] Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is fully engaged.”

A second, senior White House official confirmed Meadows’ involvement but would not elaborate.

Navarro's attack came as the White House sought to discredit Fauci, who has provided a more blunt and sobering assessment of the state of the epidemic than the president and his top aides have sought to project-- one they see as politically inconvenient as Trump campaigns for re-election.

Over the weekend, the White House provided several media outlets with a misleading list of comments made by Fauci, in an effort to undercut him.

Over a week ago, I had noted that Trump was beginning the inevitable attack against Fauci, something Trump was already doing himself by July 9. On Monday the White House was pretending Trump had nothing to do with it while denying to the very people who they were leaking oppo-research on Fauci to that any oppo-research was being leaked.

It must drive Trump bonkers that every poll that has asked people who they trust more, Trump or Fauci comes up with the same answer: Fauci. ABC News continued that "despite the denial of a privately waged smear campaign, one of the president’s top aides made no effort to hide his disdain, airing criticism of Fauci in plain view on social media. The White House's deputy chief of staff for communications, Dan Scavino, who has been by the president’s side since the 2016 campaign, on Sunday posted a cartoon on Facebook depicting Fauci as a running faucet washing the U.S. economy down the drain. 'Sorry, Dr. Faucet! At least you know if I’m going to disagree with a colleague, such as yourself, it’s done publicly-- and not cowardly, behind journalists with leaks. See you tomorrow!' Scavino wrote in a caption accompanying the cartoon.

On Monday, Trump himself shared a tweet disparaging Fauci-- misconstruing a months-old comment Fauci had made-- before telling reporters later in the day that he liked Fauci "personally," had "a very good relationship" with him, and considered him "a very nice person."

But, he added, "I don't always agree with him."

While the president and White House have sought to downplay the appearance of conflict that they have directly stoked, Fauci has been increasingly sidelined within the White House's coronavirus task force.

He is no longer a regular presence at task force briefings with the media led by the vice president, he was not a participant on the vice president’s weekly call with governors on Monday, and it’s been two months since Fauci says he has personally briefed the president.

That's right... Pence prefers to consult Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma instead. Peter Nicholas noted atThe Atlantic "Targeting Fauci seems like a tragic misuse of White House time and energy if officials’ aim is to defeat the coronavirus. But Trump appears more concerned with discrediting Fauci... The attempt to discredit Fauci’s public-health expertise is a political move, and one with disastrous implications. As much as Trump wants and needs Americans to see the virus as a nuisance that’s soon to be overcome, Fauci is a recurring reminder that the crisis remains a grave and enduring threat, and that Trump has mishandled the pandemic. The Americans who believe the White House’s anti-science campaign risk cutting themselves off from potentially life-saving information."

Trump Moves To Make The Coronavirus Vanish-- By Directly Cutting Out The CDC And Taking Control Of All Reporting Data

Good news/bad news; first the good news. Florida's gigantically accelerating new one-day cases took a rest yesterday. After a horrific couple of days ending in 12,624 new cases reported Monday, yesterday there were "only" 9,194 new cases. That brings the total to 291,629, third worst in the country after New York (which has leveled off weeks ago) and California (which, like Florida, Texas, Arizona, Georgia and several other states are accelerating dangerously). There are now 13,578 cases per million Floridians. That about the same as the two worse Western European countries, Sweden (7,524 cases per million Swedes) and Spain (cases per million Spaniards 6,495) combined. And that's the good news. Today the number of new cases edged backup again-- to 10,181, bringing the state's total to over 300,000 and the number of cases per million Floridians to 14,052.

The bad news for the DeSantis-plagued state is that yesterday was their worst single day death toll. Monday's report was 35 deaths, 4th worst in the country. Tuesday's report was 132 new deaths. (Today there were 112 new deaths reported.) Today's COVID deaths reports in other states were even more horrific: Texas (154), California (126) Arizona (+97), Alabama (+47). Both the Texas and California governors have pulled back from re-opening and put several CDC suggestions into place-- like mandatory masks. Trump puppet Ron DeSantis refuses to shut down nonessential businesses or put in place a statewide mask mandate in place.




Yesterday was the first day death rates started reflecting the new post re-opening spike. It will likely get much, much worse, as the mortality rate follows the new spiking infection rates. The states with the worst infections reported on Tuesday and ---> Wednesday:

• Texas +11,060 ---> 12, 235 (10,278 cases per million Texans)
• California +9,561 ---> 9,687 (8,992 cases per million Californians)
• Florida +9,194 ---> 10,181 (14,052 cases per million Floridians)
• Arizona +4,273 ---> 3,257 (18,046 cases per million Arizonans)
• Georgia +3,394 ---> 3,871 (12,040 cases per million Georgians)
• Louisiana +2,224 ---> 2,082 (18,098 cases per million Louisianans)
• South Carolina +2,221 ---> 1,856 (12,089 cases per million South Carolinians)
• North Carolina +1,914 ---> 1,844 (8,723 cases per million North Carolinians)
• Alabama +1,710 ---> 1,812 (12,047 cases per million Alabamans)
• Tennessee +1,514 ---> 2,273 (10,113 cases per million Tennesseans)
• Ohio +1,168 ---> 1,312 (5,935 cases per million Buckeyes)
• Nevada +1,104 ---> 849 (9,892 cases per million Nevadans)
• Oklahoma +993 ---> 1,075 (5,765 cases per million Sooners)

Fake Magic by Nancy Ohanian

Meanwhile, the NY Times reported that the cause of the entire second spike, Señor T, "has ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and, beginning on Wednesday, send all coronavirus patient information to a central database in Washington-- a move that has alarmed public health experts who fear the data will be distorted for political gain." Now why would that alarm anyone? Just because Trumpanzee is the most dishonest person to ever walk the planet?

The new instructions are contained in a little-noticed document posted this week on the Department of Health and Human Services’ website, Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports. From now on, H.H.S., and not the C.D.C., will collect daily reports about the patients that each hospital is treating, how many beds and ventilators are available, and other information vital to tracking the pandemic.

Officials said the change should help ease data gathering and assist the White House coronavirus task force in allocating scarce supplies like personal protective gear and the drug remdesivir.

Hospital officials want to streamline reporting, saying it will relieve them from responding to requests from multiple federal agencies, though some say the C.D.C.-- an agency that prizes its scientific independence-- should be in charge of gathering the information.

“The C.D.C. is the right agency to be at the forefront of collecting the data,” said Dr. Bala Hota, the chief analytics officer at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

Public health experts have long expressed concern that the administration is politicizing science and undermining the disease control centers; four former C.D.C. directors, spanning both Republican and Democratic administrations, said as much in an opinion piece published Tuesday in The Washington Post. The data collection shift reinforced those fears.

“Centralizing control of all data under the umbrella of an inherently political apparatus is dangerous and breeds distrust,” said Nicole Lurie, who served as assistant secretary for preparedness and response under former President Barack Obama. “It appears to cut off the ability of agencies like C.D.C. to do its basic job.”

The shift grew out of a tense conference call several weeks ago between hospital executives and Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator.

After Dr. Birx complained that hospitals were not adequately reporting their data, she convened a working group of government and hospital officials who devised the new plan, according to Janis Orlowski, chief health care officer of the Association of American Medical Colleges, who participated.

But news of the change came as a shock inside the C.D.C., which has long been responsible for gathering public health data, according to two officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it. A spokesman for the disease control centers referred questions to the Department of Health and Human Services, which has not responded to a request for comment.

The dispute exposes the vast gaps in the government’s ability to collect and manage health data-- an antiquated system at best, experts say.

Coincidentally, I'm sure, CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield said that without a vaccine "we're going to have to go through two or three years of wrestling with this virus... I do think the fall and the winter of 2020 and 2021 are going to be the probably one of the most difficult times that we experienced in American public health."

Fauci, participating in a Georgetown University Global Health Initiative webinar, called what we're experiencing a "pandemic of historic proportions... I think we can’t deny that fact. If you look at the magnitude of the 1918 pandemic where anywhere from 50 to 75 to 100 million people globally died, that was the mother of all pandemics and truly historic. I hope we don’t even approach that with this, but it does have the makings of, the possibility of… approaching that in seriousness." Of course with less testing and Trump making up whatever statistics he wants in order to help his reelection campaign, the pandemics as good as over... until after November 3rd.