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."

Republicans Are Giving Themselves COVID-19 In Mississippi And Tennessee

The two without masks both contracted COVID-19. One is the Mississippi House Speaker and the other is the Lt. Gov-- and, of course, they're both Trumpists

Tennessee is an overwhelmingly Republican state. All statewide elected officials are Republicans. The state Senate has 28 Republicans and 5 Democrats and the state House has 73 Republicans and 26 Democrats. Both U.S. senators are Republicans-- one a vaguely mainstream conservative and the other a full-on fascist. Only two of their nine members of Congress are Democrats, one representing Nashville and one representing Memphis. The Republicans in the state legislature have drawn up plans to split Nashville up between several red districts and eliminate a safe Democratic seat.

The governor, Bill Lee, is a far right Trumpist and he has refused-- even as Tennessee's pandemic has spiraled out of control-- to issue a statewide mask mandate. 9 of the 10 most populated counties-- Davidson (Nashville), Shelby (Memphis), Knox, Hamilton, Rutherford, Williamson, Montgomery, Sumner and Wilson have mask mandates, as do a handful of smaller counties. 7 crackpot counties where most people marry their siblings have announced there will be no mask mandates. The percentage next to the counties' names is the 2016 Trump win score:

• Cheatham- 71.4%
• Dickson- 71.0%
• Maury- 67.8%
• Putnam- 70.4%
• Hickman- 73.2%
• Marshall- 71.6%

Just sayin'.

Tennessee reported 2,553 new cases yesterday and another 2,555 today bringing the state's total to 99,004. They will likely cross the 100,000 mark tomorrow. There are 14,503 cases per million Tennesseans. The state is expected to see it's 1,000 death this weekend.

Yesterday, The Tennessean reported that in the state legislature there are now 10 members and staffers who have COVID. Kent Calfee, a Kingston Republican, was the first to contract it, about two weeks ago. His wife also has it.

Unlike the legislature, Gov. Bill Lee's administration is refusing to provide positive case totals to the public.

A spokesman for the governor declined to answer The Tennessean's questions about how many employees in the executive branch, including the governor's office, and people working at the state Capitol have tested positive for COVID-19.

...Earlier this year, a member of Lee's senior staff had to self-isolate after testing positive for COVID-19.

The administration's refusal to release such information comes months after state officials initially rejected calls to provide county-level COVID-19 fatality data, citing federal health privacy laws. The administration ultimately reversed course and began releasing the data.

Although Lee has expressed his support for open government and transparency, his administration has frequently rejected requests for public records, citing "deliberative process" and "executive privilege."

The rise in cases in the legislature comes as COVID-19 has reached record levels in Tennessee in recent weeks and as the governor and lawmakers hope to hold a special session, potentially in August, to take up coronavirus liability protections for businesses.

The Tennessean also reported (last night) that Dr. Deborah Birx went to Tennessee yesterday and personally appealed to Gov. Lee to shut the state's bars down. He refused. "It is at this very moment," she said, "where we could change the trajectory of the epidemic before it goes into full… of what we call logarithmic spread, as we’ve seen across the South."

Earlier this month, it was reported that the Mississippi legislature-- where mask-wearing is considered something only Democrats do-- 26 legislators are sick with the coronavirus. the governor, Tate Reeves (R), has warned the public to get tested for coronavirus if they have been in contact with a state lawmaker. Many politicians flouted recommendations to wear a mask inside the Capitol in recent weeks. Now, about one in six of Mississippi state lawmakers have tested positive for the coronavirus."

The leaders of both chambers-- Speaker Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann-- have tested positive for coronavirus. On Wednesday, the Enterprise Journal reported that Rep. Sam Mims, R-McComb, had tested positive for coronavirus. Mims chairs the House Public Health Committee.

...Reeves said at a press conference it would be too dangerous for lawmakers to come back to Jackson within the next two week to "that fishbowl of the Mississippi Capitol."

Opposition Research by Nancy Ohanian

Mississippi is worse off than Tennessee, running out of ICU rooms and unable to care for sick people. There are 18,245 cases per million Mississippians, 6th worst in the country. They added 1,342 new cases today bringing the small state's total to 54,299. There is no statewide mask mandate, although several counties have them because, you know, COVID-19 respects borders between counties. The far right loon of a governor says he won't issue a mask mandate statewide because that might discourage people from wearing them. No, he really said that.

Nine hospitals in the state were without any open ICU beds Monday as the coronavirus pandemic continues to batter Mississippi, and Reeves has been imploring Mississippians to wear masks while in public.

Reeves has ordered mask mandates in some-- but not all-- counties and has said his executive orders regarding social distancing are difficult to enforce. He has put the responsibility on individual Mississippians to make safe decisions.

"I know a lot of you think we can snap our finger and all of a sudden 100% of the people will comply and everything will be great," Reeves said at a Monday press conference.

But Reeves said the opposite might be true.

"If you live in Tishomingo County and there’s a statewide mask mandate you can’t help but say, 'Well, that’s probably for those folks in Hancock County,'" Reeves said. "If you put a statewide mandate, the folks in Hancock County are going to say, 'That’s for the folks up in Tishomingo County, they can’t possibly be talking about me.'"

...The Mississippi State Medical Association, an organization of nearly 5,000 doctors and medical students, called for a statewide mask mandate two weeks ago, saying early data shows face coverings significantly reduce the spread of COVID-19.

Reeves, too, wants every Mississippian to wear a mask, but said the messaging and reasoning behind his orders is more important than the order itself.

"We have to be very smart about convincing Mississippians that wearing a mask is the right thing to do. Now, keep in mind that back in March, the World Health Organization and a lot of otherwise really smart people said that wearing a mask would do you no good," Reeves said. "And so that being the case, there's a segment of our population that is naturally skeptical that this or any other measure will actually have any effect on the spread of the virus."

Maybe the governor knows his citizens better than anyone else. After all...

How Many Americans Will Needlessly Die Of COVID Because Of Trump's Incompetence And Sociopathic Nature?

Bret Stephens has a long career as a conservative opinion writer, formerly at the Wall Street Journal and Jerusalem Post (as editor-in-chief) and currently at the NY Times. He's also a crackpot Zionist, a racist, a neo-con, a Climate Change denier, a Pulitzer winner and a prominent #NeverTrump Republicano. In yesterday's column, Donald Trump Is Our National Catastrophe, Stephens wrote about a class he taught about heart of political persuasion, using as examples of practitioners Abraham Lincoln, Pericles, Martin Luther King, George Orwell, Václav Havel, Winston Churchill and Señor Trumpanzee-- or at least the Twitter account of Señor T's. "We are, he wrote, "in the midst of an unprecedented national catastrophe. The catastrophe is not the pandemic, or an economic depression, or killer cops, or looted cities, or racial inequities. These are all too precedented. What’s unprecedented is that never before have we been led by a man who so completely inverts the spirit of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. With malice toward all; with charity for none: eight words that encapsulate everything this president is, does and stands for... [G]reat political writing aims to elevate. What, by contrast, does one learn by studying Trump’s utterances?"

The purpose of Trump’s presidency is to debase, first by debasing the currency of speech. It’s why he refuses to hire reasonably competent speechwriters to craft reasonably competent speeches. It’s why his communication team has been filled by people like Dan Scavino and Stephanie Grisham and Sarah Sanders.

And it’s why Twitter is his preferred medium of communication. It is speech designed for provocations and put-downs; for making supporters feel smug; for making opponents seethe; for reducing national discourse to the level of grunts and counter-grunts.

That’s a level that suits Trump because it’s the level at which he excels. Anyone who studies Trump’s tweets carefully must come away impressed by the way he has mastered the demagogic arts. He doesn’t lead his base, as most politicians do. He personifies it. He speaks to his followers as if he were them. He cultivates their resentments, demonizes their opponents, validates their hatreds. He glorifies himself so they may bask in the reflection.

Whatever this has achieved for him, or them, it’s a calamity for us. At a moment when disease has left more than 100,000 American families bereft, we have a president incapable of expressing the nation’s heartbreak. At a moment of the most bitter racial grief since the 1960s, we have a president who has bankrupted the moral capital of the office he holds.

...Trump is responsible for the nation’s wounds. It’s that he is the reason some of those wounds have festered and why none of them can heal, at least for as long as he remains in office. Until we have a president who can say, as Lincoln did in his first inaugural, “We are not enemies, but friends”-- and be believed in the bargain-- our national agony will only grow worse.

And it isn't just Trump's words that are making literally everything worse. His dysfunctional, chaotic and incompetent, venal regime is a colossal failure. The nightmarish coronavirus pandemic is global and wasn't started by Trump. The fact that it is far worse in the U.S. than anywhere else on earth is the fault of Trump, his regime and his Republican Party lickspittles.

I Can't Breathe by Nancy Ohanian

This afternoon we crossed the two million confirmed cases mark in our country. It didn't have to be this way. Even as new case rates start to slow down in states that were hit hard early on-- New York, Washington, New Jersey, Michigan, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, other states-- particularly states with governors who emulate Trump, like Greg Abbott (Texas), Ron DeSantis (Florida), Brian Kemp (Georgia), Henry McMaster (South Carolina), Kim Reynolds (Iowa), Doug Ducey (Arizona), Pete Ricketts (Nebraska), Chris Sununu (New Hampshire), Mike Parson (Missouri)-- are watching their own cases numbers accelerate dangerously. States that we're part of the early first wave but where bad policy decisions are fueling severe outbreaks see rapidly growing cases per million today:

• Nebraska- 8,082 cases per million
• Iowa- 6,867
• South Dakota- 6,147
• Virginia- 5,938
• Mississippi- 5,803
• Colorado- 4,862
• Georgia- 4,888
• New Mexico- 4,264
• Alabama- 4,181
• Tennessee- 3,863
• New Hampshire- 3,691
• North Dakota- 3,754
• Utah- 3,764
• Arizona- 3,694
• California- 3,331
• Nevada- 3,133
• Arkansas- 3,123
• Florida- 2,977
• South Carolina- 2,775
• Texas- 2,613
• Missouri- 2,455

Friday, Guardian writer Michael Safi looked into what the contours of Wave II are likely to look like-- warning ominously that "the pandemic’s future will be decided by human action and several unanswered questions about the nature of the virus." Some countries see their curves flatten significantly-- Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Belgium, South Korea, Holland, Iceland, Switzerland, Israel, Japan, Austria, Denmark, Czechia, Australia, Finland, Cuba, New Zealand, Hong Kong-- while others, notably the U.S., India, the UK, Russia, Peru, Mexico, the Gulf states, Pakistan, south Africa and Egypt, are still going in the wrong direction. "The future shape of the pandemic," Safi wrote, will be decided both by human action, in the form of social distancing, testing and other traditional methods of disease control, but also several unanswered questions about the nature of the virus itself. Experts say there are several possibilities."

One is that the virus breaks out and is suppressed in peaks and troughs, until enough of the population is vaccinated or potentially develops immunity.

Antibody tests in most places indicate that quarantine measures were very effective in slowing down the virus. Fewer than 10% of populations in France, Spain and Sweden have developed the antibodies that would be evidence of having caught the virus and, in theory, becoming immune, for at least a short time.

But that also means the vast majority of populations remain susceptible.

If societies reopen before the virus is sufficiently eradicated, it may be that this first wave does not completely go away, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University.

“In the US, we are lifting lockdowns when there are still increasing numbers of cases in a bunch of states … We may just have peaks and valleys of transmission occurring over and over again as people’s behaviour changes,” she says.

The scale of these peaks could be reduced by making changes such as wearing masks, using public transport in a staggered way and avoiding overcrowded social events-- which are increasingly being blamed for being “super-spreaders” of the first wave of the coronavirus.

If outbreaks grow too large, some governments might choose to reimplement quarantines. “If we’re reopening and we start to see case numbers growing rapidly in a few weeks, we may see rolling lockdowns or shutdowns to try to control the virus in those areas,” Rasmussen says.

...Social distancing and robust testing-- or a lack of it-- will be critical in deciding the future of the pandemic. But its shape will also be influenced by factors outside our control.

The first is whether we can become immune to the virus, and if so, how long that protection endures for.

Sometimes immunity can last for decades. During the 2009 swine flu pandemic, public health authorities were initially confused as to why many older people seemed to be immune. Later, they discovered the virus was structurally similar to one that circulated during the 1918 pandemic. The immune systems of many older people had dealt with a similar virus 92 years ago.

Resistance to some earlier discovered coronaviruses has been thought to fade within a year. If immunity to Sars-CoV-2 is not permanent, a report from Harvard epidemiologists says it is likely to enter into regular circulation, coming in annual or biennial waves or sporadic outbursts.

The frequency of significant outbreaks may also be influenced by the weather. Most influenzas spread more easily in the winter because the virus is thought to prefer dry air over humidity, and because people in cold environments spend more time indoors and close to each other.

Existing coronaviruses also follow seasonal patterns. If this coronavirus behaves in the same way-- and there is not yet strong evidence that it does-- we could see regular wintertime surges of Covid-19.

But with so many people still apparently not immune to the virus, that summer relief may not arrive this year, says James Hay, a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health.

“The factor that most contributes towards transmission is how many people are still susceptible,” he says. “And with so many still susceptible, that’s going to swamp out any climate effect.”

Significant mutations in the virus might also lead to a wave of new infections down the track. So far, scientists say that isn’t a huge concern.

“Even though there are different genomes out there that have changes compared to each other … there’s no evidence any of those changes are in spots that are critical for the immune system to recognise,” Rasmussen says.

But that doesn’t mean we won’t see a significant mutation later. “We’ve only known about this for six months, so it’s possible different strains could emerge in the future, because it does have a higher mutation rate,” she says. “But right now there’s no evidence that that’s happening.”

For countries that are able to implement highly effective interventions such as testing and contact tracing, this first wave of coronavirus cases may be the last they experience, at least for some time.

In New Zealand, which has managed to virtually eradicate the virus and installed robust systems to monitor new outbreaks, there may be no significant new outbreaks or future waves at all, says Nick Wilson, a professor of public health at the University of Otago.

“New Zealand is about to eliminate this virus,” Wilson says. “Even if there are border control failures, I expect that the contact tracing system is now good enough to control an occasional outbreak. So this country should be able to avoid future waves until a vaccine arrives.”

Countries with small populations and isolated geography such as New Zealand and Australia may be able to pull this off. South Korea is another country whose virus detection and suppression systems may be advanced enough to smother any future outbreaks. But it will be extremely difficult for most countries, especially those with large populations and porous borders.

Conservatives Want Government To Run Like Corporations-- As The Former President Of A Big One, I Can Tell You That Would Mean A Hundred Million Americans Would Die Before The Pandemic Ends

Generally speaking, corporations run for just one reason: profit for the shareholders and-- dirty little secret-- profit for the largely unfettered management team. I wasn't really the president of a corporation-- just the president of a division of one, TimeWarner.

See these half dozen fellas? They run 6 U.S. health insurance companies. They're all grotesquely overpaid. Suppose the U.S. went back to an Eisenhower era tax structure for the super-wealthy-- with a top marginal rate of 91%. What that meant was that any individual making over $200,000 (something like $2 million in today's money) would pay 91% on the income over $200,000. Let's round it down to favor of the plutocrats to 90% on anything over $2 million. This is very roughly what these corporate CEOs would be left with after the 90% tax:

• Michael Neidorff, Centene- $3.91 million
• David Cordani, Cigna- $3.72 million
• Bruce Broussard, Humana- $4.52 million
• Barry Smith, Magellan- $2.63 million
• David Wichmann, United Health- $3.95 million
• Ken Burdick, Wellcare- $3.9 million

That would never work-- unless all corporate CEOs across all industries were subject to the same rate. Then it would make sense and it would work fine. All these fellas would still be rich and, more important, as rich as their peers.

Corporate America-- just like the conservative politicians they own and who bolster the status quo that puts them at the top of the heap (and so much richer than, say school teachers, firemen, medical care responders...)-- has failed our society again and again. The pandemic makes that crystal clear even to those with clouded vision and washed brains. On Thursday Washington Post reporters Jeanne Whalen, Rosalind Helderman and Tom Hamburger wrote about how the mask shortage shows exactly why corporate rule is bad for America. Mike Roman has been the CEO of Minnesota-based 3M for about two years. His assail compensation is $9,843,753. Trump attacked 3M on Thursday, trying to shift the blame away from his own narcissism, incompetence and dysfunctional regime. Roman replied yesterday:





Month ago, Pence visited 3M, the top manufacturer of protective masks and ventilators. The company had already doubled its mask manufacturing output in January, when Trump was still calling the pandemic a hoax and taking no serious action to prepare for it at all. Pence praised Roman at the time. The Post reported that "With its factories in South Dakota and Nebraska cranked up and running around the clock, 3M was on pace to double its global output to nearly 100 million a month, according to the company. But in a private meeting shortly before Pence spoke publicly, company leaders had warned the vice president that 3M had a problem, according to people familiar with the session, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the closed-door discussion. Chief executive Michael Roman said he was concerned that repurposing the company’s industrial masks, which made up the bulk of its production, for use by doctors and nurses could leave the company vulnerable to lawsuits. The lack of a liability waiver from Congress-- a protection the industry has sought for years-- would hinder full distribution of the gear, he said. While all N95 masks, also known as respirators, filter at least 95 percent of airborne particles, masks for construction and medical use vary in design and fit-- and are subject to different regulations. The liability issue, which set off a scramble by Pence’s aides, was one of a number of roadblocks that delayed the distribution of a basic protective item desperately needed to stem the spread of the virus."

The confluence of a slow initial response by the Trump administration, its wariness of compelling the industry to produce gear and a long-running debate about granting manufacturers legal protection in a health emergency contributed to a critical shortage of masks to front-line workers, according to an examination by the Washington Post of the early weeks of the crisis.

On Thursday evening, hours after this report published online, Trump announced he had invoked the Korean War-era Defense Production Act to compel 3M to provide more N95 masks for use by medical workers in the United States, a sharp turnabout in the administration’s posture toward the company.

Trump later tweeted: “We hit 3M hard today after seeing what they were doing with their Masks. ‘P Act’ all the way. Big surprise to many in government as to what they were doing-- will have a big price to pay!”

The dearth of masks for medical workers in the United States, despite weeks of warnings as the virus ravaged parts of China and Italy, has become symbolic of the nation’s wider failure to properly prepare for the pandemic.

The first coronavirus case in the United States was reported Jan. 21 in the state of Washington. By early February, the federal government had declared a public health emergency. But it took nearly a month, until March 2, for the Food and Drug Administration to issue an emergency order giving manufacturers formal blessing to begin repurposing industrial masks for health-care workers, a necessary step to getting construction masks into hospitals.

It was another two weeks before Congress passed and President Trump signed emergency legislation that included the protection against lawsuits that 3M sought, settling a long-running political battle over liability when industrial masks are used in health emergencies.

The liability waiver-- which was then extended to future health emergencies in the $2 trillion stimulus package-- helped open the floodgates. 3M is on track to distribute at least 31 million masks to health-care workers this month, up from 5 million a month it was providing earlier this year, according to the company and White House officials.

On March 21, the federal government awarded manufacturers contracts to produce about 600 million N95 masks over the next 18 months to supplement the private sector’s supply.

By then, the virus had been spreading in the United States for two months, and the need for masks was so dire that some doctors in Seattle and New York were reusing them or making their own from craft supplies.

“It is a basic role of government to provide defense, in this case against a public contagion. But they have not met the test,” said Rhonda Medows, a doctor in hard-hit Seattle, who serves as an executive with one of the region’s largest medical centers.

The need to dramatically ramp up U.S. production and distribution of masks should have been apparent early on in the crisis, former disaster preparedness officials said. For years, public health advocates had warned that the U.S. national stockpile of medical supplies was woefully inadequate. Domestic mask makers had repeatedly tried to sound the alarm about the country’s overreliance on foreign-made masks-- a problem that became acute when China shut down its factories as the virus swept through that country.

Katie Miller, a spokeswoman for Pence, said the vice president worked intently on procuring more masks from the moment Trump tapped him to lead the coronavirus response in late February.

“We were trying to do this in any way that we could, as fast as we could, understanding the urgency of the issue,” she said.

...Roman, the company’s CEO, said in a March 22 statement that the new law helped “ensure that all N95 disposable respirators can be used in healthcare settings, and has enabled us to increase distribution to those workers beginning this weekend.”

3 M declined to comment on Roman’s private remarks in his meeting with Pence. In a statement, the company said it did not delay shipments, adding that it shipped more than 1.35 million industrial masks to health-care customers in the two weeks before the law was signed. But the company acknowledged the volume increased after it secured liability protection.

“Don’t talk to your lawyers if you’re making masks or gowns or ventilators,” said Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at New York University School of Medicine. “See where the need is and get moving as fast as you can.”

In the past week, 3M said it delivered 10 million N95 respirators to health-care facilities across the country. The company is now manufacturing 35 million N95 masks a month in the United States, more than 90 percent of which are designated for health care-workers, it said, and expects to be up to 50 million a month in June. 3M did not respond to questions about the mix of medical versus industrial masks it is now producing.

Still, the need is outstripping supply, industry officials and health-care experts said.

Until Thursday, the Trump administration had refused to use one major tool at its disposal, the Defense Production Act, to force companies to produce and distribute masks, part of a pattern of showing deference to private industry in fighting the outbreak.

Instead, the president had praised companies that had volunteered to help produce masks. On Sunday, Trump outraged many doctors and nurses by questioning whether they need as many masks as they have requested, even suggesting without evidence that some were being squandered or “going out the back door.”

“We’re delivering millions and millions of different products and all we do is hear that, ‘Can you get some more?’ ” he told reporters on Sunday, citing the case of a New York hospital where mask usage has spiked. “I don’t think it’s hoarding; I think it’s maybe worse than hoarding.”

A global crunch

For two decades, experts on pandemics have cited the need for mass stockpiles of protective equipment and rapid production to replace quickly diminished supplies as key steps to contain outbreaks.

“What was done in the U.S. in early January-- in those precious weeks-- would have been critical,” said Christopher M. Kirchhoff, a former Pentagon and White House national security aide who worked on the Ebola mobilization and later put together a “lessons learned” report about the experience.

...In a normal year, the U.S. health-care system uses about 25 million medical N95s, according to Premier, an organization that helps hospitals purchase supplies. Many of the masks are disposable and meant to be used once.

HHS has estimated that the United States could need as many as 3.5 billion N95 masks during a pandemic.

A 2016 planning document prepared by the National Security Council called on the White House to prioritize procuring protective equipment in case of a pandemic. The planning guide, first reported by Politico, drew on the expertise of multiple agencies. It was developed by a White House medical preparedness task force established by President Barack Obama but disbanded by the Trump administration in 2018. White House officials have said the task force’s functions were folded into another office.

At the time, the issue was hypothetical. Now, nations around the world are grappling with the sheer scope of the need. Massive quantities of the filtration masks are sought now not just in the United States, but also in nearly every nation of the world.

The need has spiked just as countries have closed borders and worked to stockpile their own supplies.

“The pressure is just so intense because of the global nature of this,” said Khatereh Calleja, president of the Healthcare Supply Chain Association.

Despite known worries about possible pandemics, manufacturers said one reason for the shortage has been a decision by many hospitals to adopt just-in-time purchasing of items such as masks as a cost-saving mechanism.

“Manufacturers don’t carry inventory, and if you do, you are less competitive,” said Charles Johnson, president of the International Safety Equipment Association, a trade group that represents mask-makers. “They produce what they need to satisfy orders. That’s what has happened to global manufacturing.”

American manufacturers have also been warning for years that more and more production of medical supplies, including masks, has been relocated overseas, including to China. That has reduced costs for American health-care companies but has made the supply chain more vulnerable to global pandemics.

China, which experienced the world’s first coronavirus outbreak, was quick to stop exporting masks its own doctors and nurses needed at home, making stockpiling more difficult in recent months, U.S. health-care executives say.

An analysis by the Associated Press last month found that there had been no shipments of medical grade N95 masks from China since Feb. 19 and only 13 shipments of nonmedical N95 masks, which was about half as many that had arrived in the same period a year earlier.

To satisfy demand in the case of emergencies like the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government in 1999 established the Strategic National Stockpile, a last-resort cache of drugs and supplies intended to be tapped only in moments of crisis.

But the national stockpile was significantly depleted during the H1N1 influenza outbreak of 2009, when 85 million N95 respirators were distributed from the cache, and was never significantly replenished despite repeated warnings and requests from health-care and industry groups.

Federal officials said in March that the stockpile contained about 12 million N95 respirators and 30 million surgical masks, a tiny percentage of what is now needed by health-care workers and emergency responders.

The Trump administration has begun distributing the meager supplies, but with so much more demand than supply, many states have received only a fraction of their requests.

By this week, the stockpile was nearly exhausted, The Post reported Wednesday.

In a statement, HHS said Secretary Alex Azar pushed for more funding for the stockpile and began transferring supplies to Washington state, site of the nation’s first outbreak, on March 1.

The agency noted, however, that “health care supply chains are private sector driven.”

Some experts said mask production and distribution could have been accelerated if Trump had more quickly embraced the Defense Production Act, a 1950 law that gives the commander in chief the power to marshal resources in time of war and order industrial manufacturers to produce specific items.

“The administration has considerable power in this regard,” said Nicole Lurie, who served as a top HHS official in the Obama administration.

Trump did invoke the act last week to compel General Motors to manufacture ventilators to help handle the surge of coronavirus patients. On Thursday, he used the act to force six companies to facilitate the supply of materials for ventilators, along with ordering 3M to provide more masks.

“We are, as you know, using the act, but we use it only when necessary,” he told reporters last week. “We use it as leverage. We generally don’t have to use it to accomplish what we want to accomplish.”

...Agency officials did not say what caused the delay or respond directly to a question about whether they regretted not moving faster. In a statement, the FDA said it began creating “a more streamlined access to market” for some protective masks in 2018.

On March 10-- five days after Pence visited 3M-- Azar went further, using his authority under a law adopted during the avian flu outbreak to declare that manufacturers, distributors and other parties would be immune from federal and state lawsuits if they distributed products in accordance with the FDA emergency action. Instead, the federal government would assume the liability risk.

But manufacturers wanted the protections to be reinforced in new legislation.

“Whether or not the agency chooses to issue that order, it had to be tested in a court of law,” Johnson said. “Without clear cut legislative action that allows the government to take on that liability... our members would still face our day in court.”

Jonathan Moreno, a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said a pandemic was the wrong time for companies to dwell on their liability concerns.

The dire medical need “was very clear in early March,” he said. “You didn’t have to be a fancy epidemiologist or Dr. [Anthony S.] Fauci to know what was coming,” referring to the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The liability language that the industry was seeking was included in an early draft of the first coronavirus relief act that Trump signed into law on March 6, but House Democrats cut the language, according to people familiar with the negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ), who opposed including the provision in that bill, said what the industry wanted amounted to “an indefinite blanket liability.”

Democrats agreed to include key liability protections that the industry was seeking in the second coronavirus-related bill, passed on March 18. It explicitly covered many industrial masks used to combat coronavirus until October 2024.

Pallone said he agreed with that approach because it was a “targeted liability waiver” with an end date.

On March 19, the day after the bill was signed into law, Pence described the measure as having opened the floodgates.

“Following the signing of last night’s bill, all of those masks now have liability protection and the companies can sell industrial masks to hospitals,” he said during the White House’s daily coronavirus briefing.

Standing beside him, Trump echoed that view. “They had a big problem with liability,” he said, in an apparent reference to 3M.

Roman, the company’s CEO, also cast the law as a game-changer.

“As I write this, more than 500,000 respirators are on the way from our South Dakota plant to two of the more critically impacted areas, New York and Seattle, with arrivals expected starting tomorrow. We are also ready to expedite additional shipments across the country,” he said in a statement.

Later in the month, the industry got even more cover when Senate Republicans included liability protection as part of the $2 trillion stimulus package, over the objections of some Democrats, who had said such a move would give away too much.

“Let me be very clear that this provides immunity for respirator manufacturers from this point forward,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) during a floor debate over the measure in mid-March.

The final bill-- which waived manufacturer liability for more types of industrial masks used during the coronavirus crisis, as well as future public-health emergencies-- was signed into law by Trump on Friday.

Last night, Bill Maher asked Bernie what he would do right now if he were president. Bernie-- as you would guess-- was more than ready for that question! Watch what he told Maher and his audience-- in great detail for TV. Maher, of course, asked the standard "How are you going to pay for it?"