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...

Maybe It Really Is Time For the South To Rise Again-- But Without The Built-In Racism This Time

On Friday the House voted, 232-180 to admit Washington, DC-- which has more people than Wyoming and Vermont-- as a state. Every Republican-- ironically, the party of unadulterated and unashamed racism-- voted no, as did the most Republican of the House Dems, Minnesota Blue Dog Collin Peterson. There were 8 other Democrats who wanted top vote NO-- and in fact did vote with the GOP on their motion to recommit, but who felt their best strategy was to have it both ways, voting with the GOP on the motion and with the Democrats on the bill:

• Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY)
• Angie Craig (New Dem-MN)
• Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog-SC)
• Jared Golden (careerist-ME)
• Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK)
• Conor Lamb (careerist-PA)
• Ben McAdams (Blue Dog-UT)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog-NM)

McConnell already declared it DOA as far as the Senate is concerned, somehow deciding statehood for Washington is-- wait for it-- "socialist." So his virulent and disgusting racism had nothing to do with it at all. And if McConnell were to be hit by a car tonight and whisked off to his place in Satan's bed, Trump has already said he would veto it, although didn't mention he's the most racist president to ever occupy the White House. The District, by the way, is 49% African-American so, the thinking goes among racists like McConnell and Trump and, generally all the Republicans in Congress... why give them a House seat and two Senate seats?

So I asked myself why is there still so much racism in our country. Why is it still a thing? Inequality politically and economically are bad enough but what about in our hearts? Why?

Stuart Stevens, a Mississippi Republican had something to say about that yesterday at The Bulwark-- at least for part of the problem: My Confederate Past. Before we get to Stevens' reflections, a little news (beyond Faith Hill's call for Mississippi to get a new Confederate-free state flag): there's plan to do just that and that started today, a flag that was adopted in 1894 at the height of the white backlash to Reconstruction.

As of Friday at noon, the plan-- which several sources reiterated was “extremely fluid”-- is for the House of Representatives to begin the legislative process to remove or replace the flag on Saturday morning.

A resolution will be filed that would suspend the rules so that legislators could take up a bill to address the flag. This resolution is expected to be the most difficult part of the process because it requires approval of a two-thirds majority in each chamber (82 of 122 House members, 35 of 52 Senate members). And the resolution must be passed by both chambers before either chamber could actually begin the process of debating the actual bill. [It did pass the House today-- 85 to 35-- and Gov. Reeves announced he will sign the final bill into law if it passes the state Senate too.] UPDATE: Last in the day, the Senate passed it too!

If the two-thirds threshold to suspend the rules is met, a simple majority would be required to pass the actual bill (62 of 122 House members, 27 of 52 Senate members).

Sources close to House leadership say they have-- for now-- the two-thirds majority votes to suspend rules, but they stress the margin is very thin.

On the Senate side, reports are that the leadership is “close”-- within one or two votes-- to having a two-thirds vote to suspend rules. Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said the plan is for the House to move first.

...Many Republican lawmakers have for years opposed changing the flag, particularly without a popular vote on the issue. Some who want the Legislature to change it fear a backlash from constituents.

And  Republican Gov. Tate Reeves-- the de facto head of the state GOP-- opposes the Legislature changing the flag.

But that sentiment appears to be changing among some lawmakers.

Rep. Karl Oliver, R-Winona, in a 2017 social media post said that those who support the removal of Confederate monuments should be “lynched.” In recent weeks, he declined to comment on the flag issue.

But on Thursday, Oliver issued a statement that said: “I am choosing to attempt to unite our state and ask each of you to join me in supporting a flag that creates unity-- now is the time.” Oliver’s statement said the flag issue is growing “more divisive by the day” and “History will record the position I chose.”

A growing list of businesses, cities, counties and other groups have either stopped flying the flag or asked leaders to change it. Religious leaders have spoken out, saying changing the flag is a “moral issue.”  The NCAA, SEC, and Conference USA this month took action to ban post-season play in the state until the flag is changed.

"It’s difficult to explain to a non-Southerner," wrote Stevens, "the role the Confederate flag has played in our lives. I suspect that’s more so for a Mississippian than for someone from any other state as Mississippi is the most Southern of the states. Put it this way: If you have connections to the University of Mississippi-- the most Southern school in the most Southern state-- then your connection to the Confederate flag is what the shamrock is to Notre Dame. I was born in the 1950s to parents who met at Ole Miss. The role Ole Miss football played in my life was basically what the Catholic Church is to the Jesuits. It was both a belief system and the organizing principle of life. Saturdays in the fall were the Holy Days when the Faithful would gather and reinforce our devotion through the shared communion of ritual."

These were not football games but celebrations of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. Only this time our 11 soldiers on the field of battle more often than not emerged victorious. At halftime the band marched in Confederate battle gray uniforms while Colonel Reb led the cheerleaders in unfolding what was billed as the world’s largest Confederate flag. (Even as a 10-year-old I remember wondering, “How big was the second-largest flag?”) Cheerleaders threw bundles of Confederate flags into the stands. We stood and swayed together singing Dixie, always ending in the stadium-shaking cry, “The South Shall Rise Again.”

It was at halftime in the 1962 Ole Miss-Kentucky game at Jackson’s Memorial Stadium-- walking distance from my home-- that Governor Ross Barnett gave his famous speech calling for states’ rights. We beat Kentucky that afternoon and the next day in Oxford there began the last pitched battle of the Civil War. It took 30,000 troops to force the University of Mississippi to accept a single black student.

Today you’re more likely to get a student riot if a top-ranked black athlete committed to Ole Miss and then switched at the last minute to Alabama.

...Mississippi has the highest percentage of African Americans of any state in the country. I ask myself now why did it take so long for me to realize what it might be like for nearly 40 percent of my state to go to school and work under a flag that represented a cause dedicated to the right to own their ancestors? Why is it that I had written books about traveling through China, Africa, and Europe, fascinated by every cultural quirk I came across, before I looked up at my own state flag and thought about the dehumanizing brutality it represented?

I don’t have any good answers, most likely because there are none. I was given every opportunity in this life, an open door to the world, a chance at the best education in the United States and England, a family that supported my odd passions that I was lucky enough to turn into professions. I had passport stamps from 61 countries with different flags before I began to think about my own state’s flag. It wasn’t that I was actively for the flag . . . but that indifference was just as toxic as active support.

Today many white Mississippians of my generation-- and even more of the younger generation-- are eager to change. Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” We can’t undo what we didn’t do.

But my regret is mixed with a hope. Hope that perhaps we can take steps-- small and inadequate as they might be-- to face the truth of our Confederate past. And in doing so change the future.

It will never be enough. But I hope today we can take one more step out of the shadows of a bloody past into the brighter sun of a better day.

This morning, the NY Times released a poll by Siena that showed how out of touch Trump-- who reflexively and unceasingly stokes The Lost Cause and American divisiveness over race-- is on sentiments about race seem to be heading. 59% of voters, including 52% of white voters, believe the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police in Minneapolis was "part of a broader pattern of excessive police violence toward African Americans. Black Lives Matter is seen as favorably as the police as an institution is (44% for BLM, 43% for the police). "The numbers add to the mounting evidence that recent protests have significantly shifted public opinion on race, creating potential political allies for a movement that was, within the past decade, dismissed as fringe and divisive. It also highlights how President Trump is increasingly out of touch with a country he is seeking to lead for a second term: While he has shown little sympathy for the protesters and their fight for racial justice, and has continued to use racist language that many have denounced, voters feel favorably toward the protests and their cause."

The Trump Death Cult: Mississippi, Florida and Arizona

"There Is No 2nd Wave" -Mike Pence by Nancy Ohanian

Mississippi is a hot COVID-mess. State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs told the Jackson Free Press that the state has to "prepare for an overwhelmed hospital system in which basic emergency care will be rationed." That's the entirely predictable result of idiots refusing to wear masks. Dobbs wasn't surprised and said Mississippi is "anticipating an absolute disaster coming into the fall because we're ramping up... "We have been seeing people taking on risky behaviors that we knew would lead to transmission. People are not paying attention to the guidelines we have. We feel pretty good that the social distancing guidelines that are actually in the executive orders, that are basically legally binding, are pretty strong. But we're seeing this sort of widespread abandonment of following those orders. And so it's been extremely frustrating to be quite honest. You can only do so much, but people refuse to do what can be done to prevent transmission."

Yes, there's only so much. Yesterday, a Brazilian judge ordered their Trumpist president, Jair Bolsonaro, to start wearing a mask in public like everyone else or face a $386/day fine.

On Tuesday, Mississippi reported 611 confirmed new cases (7,694 cases per million). Yesterday there another 526 new cases, bringing the cases per million to 7,871. Lucky for Mississippi, Trump isn't bringing his COVID-Death Cult Tour to Mississippi, nor saddling it with the GOP Death Cult Convention, which he forced on Jacksonville, Florida. Politico Florida reporter, Marc Caputo, looked at how Jacksonville, Florida's biggest city, is taking to the Trumpist convention. (Keep in mind, Duval County has been swingy, transitioning from red-ish to blue-ish. Trump is polling terribly... and Jacksonville voters don’t want Trump bringing his disease spreading convention to town. A new poll shows that 58% of Jacksonville voters oppose it and only 42% want it. 71% are afraid of contagion and 65% are afraid of social unrest. Predictably, most Republicans (81% favor it) and most Democrats (90%) oppose it. The bad news for the Trumpists is that 62% of independents are with the Democrats on this. And may well decide who gets Florida's 29 electoral votes.

"Jacksonville, a Republican-leaning city that essentially encompasses all of Duval County," wrote Caputo, "offered to host the event. That decision has dented the favorability of Mayor Lenny Curry, a Republican who has earned high marks for leading the Northeast Florida city in a bipartisan way as its coronavirus caseload remained relatively low compared to South Florida." The Mayor, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Señor Trumpanzee all have net negative approval ratings among Jacksonville voters now, Trump worst of all with a 61% disapprove number. Trump carried Duval by 1.4% in 2016 and now lags Biden by 7 points.

COVID-Don + COVID-Ron, coming to Jacksonville with sickness &  death

Florida is undergoing one of the worst second spikes in the country-- right up there with California, Texas and Arizona. Tuesday the state reported another 3,286 new cases and 4,819 cases per million (although Florida has been seriously challenged for providing misleading statistics to benefit DeSantis and Trump politically and their cases and deaths per million is likely much, much higher; many say Florida cheats as badly as China does). Yesterday, Florida reported another 5,511-- their worst day ever-- and their cases per million rose to 5,076.

As you probably know, Trump brought his death show to Arizona Tuesday where he spouted his fascist jargon at a Phoenix megachurch packed with young anti-mask extremists, telling them that they are guardians in a cultural war over the heritage of the country. "We’re here today to declare that we will never cave to the left wing and the left-wing intolerance."

Images from the event showed a large crowd tightly packed together, with almost no one wearing protective masks. There were no temperature checks for the estimated 3,000 cheering attendees who, like many of Trump’s staunchest fans, ignored a new local ordinance requiring them to wear a mask, despite a public-health plea from the Democratic mayor on Monday.

The coronavirus is out of control in the Grand Canyon State after its governor lifted a stay-at-home order last month, and the president is polling relatively poorly here against his presumptive Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.

Low attendance at Trump’s event in Tulsa, Okla., on Saturday (only 6,200 of the venue’s 19,000 seats were occupied) made headlines and overshadowed the president’s comeback message. But on Tuesday, he recast that rally as a roiling success, calling it the “number one show in Fox history for a Saturday night.”

Trump started 10 minutes early-- uncharacteristic for a president who routinely begins rallies as much as an hour late. His appearance came as Fox News was airing an interview with the president’s former national security adviser John Bolton, whose tell-all book of his time in the White House makes damning accusations of corruption by Trump. Trump and his administration have condemned the book and tried to block its release.

Speaking to the young audience, Trump tapped into campus culture wars on free speech to draw a divide between his supporters and protesters fighting against racism and police brutality following the death of George Floyd, an African American man, at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis.

Trump declared the students in the audience as the cultural defenders of not only his movement but also of American values as a whole, portraying Democrats as intolerant and “totalitarian.” He applauded the student activists in the crowd “who stand up for America and refuse to kneel to the radical left,” bashing the mainstream media and accusing “vicious” Democrats of stifling dissent but-- and without evidence-- accusing them of letting anyone vote, “even if they’re not citizens.”

The president condemned the removal of monuments for slave owners and Confederate leaders as a destruction of American history. He called the audience “smarter” than Democrats, who he said require “absolute conformity.”

“They hate our history, they hate our values, and they hate everything we prize as Americans,” the president said. “Our country didn’t grow great with them. It grew great with you and your thought process and your ideology. The left-wing mob is trying to demolish our heritage, so they can replace it with a new oppressive regime that they alone control."

...When he mentioned what he called “the plague,” the president dismissed it: “It’s going away,” he said.

“What a job we’re doing with testing. We did ventilators,” Trump said, attacking “the fake news people” for what he called misleading the public about how bad the situation is.

“We’re going to have a vaccine very soon,” he promised.

Later in the speech he made fun of the disease and its various names to rousing applause, including referring to it with his new xenophobic moniker, “kung flu.”

He took a jab at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who he said had danced “in the streets of Chinatown in San Francisco, long after I banned China from coming here,” in a reference to his travel ban on foreigners from mainland China at the height of the coronavirus outbreak. San Francisco’s Chinatown was founded in the 19th century, and many of its residents have families who have lived in the United States for several generations.

The November presidential election is the battleground for the future of the country, Trump said. The president charged his audience to get him reelected so they can defeat what he portrayed as the threat to America of a Democratic victory.

“This is the choice of two futures,” he said. “The left’s vision of disunity and discord, or our vision of equal opportunity and equal justice.”

The president included unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud via mail-in voting, claiming Democrats were trying to rig the election. Democrats have argued for more mail-in voting to prevent large crowds in polling places during the coronavirus pandemic.

Arizona is doing extremely poorly and experiencing one of the worst second spikes anywhere. Tuesday they reported 3,593 new cases and 7,993 cases per million. Yesterday there were another 1,795 new cases and the cases per million had gone up to 8,240, third worst of the second spike states in better shape only when compared to Nebraska and Iowa, each of which is starting to get their pandemics under control while Arizona's continues completely out of control.

What about a second wave, rather than the second spike in the first wave that we are experiencing now? The Economist explains why the next wave may be much less virulent in many countries-- though probably not in Trumpland:

Remember, There Are Innocent People In Red States Who Do NOT Deserve To Die

The extreme-right moron governors of Georgia and Florida finally-- way too late to save their citizens-- ordered statewide lockdowns Wednesday. Last time I looked there were still a dozen states where governors have refused to order lockdowns-- all red Trump states led by extremely cowardly politicians:

• Alabama-- Kay Ivey (R)
• Arkansas-- Asa Hutchinson (R)
• Iowa-- Kim Reynolds (R)
• Missouri-- Mike Parson (R)
• Nebraska-- Pete Ricketts (R)
• North Dakota-- Doug Burgum (R)
• Oklahoma-- Kevin Stitt (R)
• South Carolina-- Henry McMaster (R)
• South Dakota-- Kristi Noem (R)
• Texas-- Greg Abbott (R)
• Utah-- Gary Herbert (R)
• Wyoming-- Mark Gordon (R)

The U.S. can't start counting the 8 weeks it takes to flatten the curve until all these dozen states are also in lockdown. These right-wing baboons are threatening all of our lives. Before you start wishing that all their citizens die, please remember that though they all voted for Trump and all still support Trump, there are several million people in these dozen states who voted against Trump. They don't deserve to die. Is there enough lamb's blood to save them all when the Angel of Death comes for a visit? Hillary voters by state:

• Alabama-- 729,547 (34.36%)
• Arkansas-- 380,494 (33.65%)
• Iowa-- 653,669 (41.74%)
• Missouri-- 1,071,068 (38.14%)
• Nebraska-- 284,494 (33.70%)
• North Dakota-- 93,758 (27.23%)
• Oklahoma-- 420,375 (28.93%)
• South Carolina-- 855,373 (40.67%)
• South Dakota-- 117,458 (31.74%)
• Texas-- 3,877,868 (43.24%)
• Utah-- 310,676 (27.46%) + 243,690 (21.54%) for Evan McMullin)
• Wyoming-- 55,973 (21.63%)

The April Fool's Day issue of Politico magazine ranked the best and worst governors based on their pandemic leadership roles. I agree that both the best and worst were both Republicans--Ohio's Mike DeWine as most courageous and Trump Florida ass-licker Ron DeSantis as the one most deserving a prison sentence. Bill Scher wrote that with Señor Trumpanzee "unable or unwilling to play the part of a national unifier or to take decisive action to curb the spread of the coronavirus, the leadership we normally expect from the Oval Office has instead come from state executives throughout the nation-- or not." He framed the question he set out the answer: "Which governors have done a better job at meeting the moment, by acting decisively and boosting morale? And which have missed the moment, dragged their feet and succumbed to petty squabbling?" And, unlike any of the TV talking heads, he nailed it on TV-actor-playing-a hero Andrew Cuomo:

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has received the lion’s share of attention, as his informative and emotive press conferences have made him an overnight national political star, albeit halfway through his third term. But his record in responding to the crisis is more complicated than the sheen lets on: his coronavirus containment policies were not the most aggressive in the country, and did not prevent catastrophe. He hesitated to close all schools statewide even as other states began to do so, and resisted a statewide stay-at-home order for a few days before relenting.

Here's his list of the best. He's wrong about Newsom, who also dragged his feet except in the superficial areas Cuomo also looked good in. The 6 Bay Area counties did great while Newsom and Garcetti hid under their beds shivering that if they made the wrong move, they'd never be a presidential contenders. From most best to less best:

• Mike DeWine (R-OH)- "[N]o single governor has done more to put the nation on a war footing in the fight against coronavirus than DeWine, whose actions have contributed to Ohio’s relatively modest number of cases... On March 12, even though Ohio had yet to suffer a major outbreak of Covid-19, DeWine called for the statewide closure of public schools-- the first governor in the nation to do so, forcing most of his fellow governors to recognize they had to follow suit, and fast.
• Gavin Newsom (D-CA)
• Jay Inslee (D-WA)
• Larry Hogan (R-MD)- another mistake by Scher-- he was needlessly slow and doesn't deserve to be on this list.
• Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI)
• Wanda Vazquez (NPP-Puerto Rico)

And now the half dozen worst, although Scher left off some real doozies-- like for example, illegitimate Georgia Republican Brian Kemp who claimed stupidity for his weeks of inaction. "[H]e reversed course Wednesday as a growing number of other Republican governors, including the leaders of Florida, South Carolina and Texas, instituted broader limits on mobility and shuttered more businesses to try to counter the disease. He said his decision was triggered by "game-changing” new projections on the disease’s spread in Georgia. He also said he was informed of new data that this virus 'is now transmitting before people see signs. Those individuals could have been infecting people before they ever felt' symptoms, he said. 'We didn’t know that until the last 24 hours.'" Maybe he didn't, but everyone else on planet earth did. So here's Scher's list from worst to not as terrible:

• Ron DeSantis (R-FL)- "DeSantis is one of Trump’s favorite governors and a potential 2024 presidential prospect. But he has made a bad first impression on the rest of the country by failing to fully shut down Florida’s beaches before or after they were overrun with partiers on spring break, many of whom then traveled home to locations throughout the United States. He also resisted making a statewide stay-at-home order until finally relenting on Wednesday-- in the wake of intense pressure from Florida Democrats, and televised comments Wednesday morning by the surgeon general urging all governors to get their residents to stay at home. Before that point, his seemingly toughest measure was issuing a quarantine for travelers coming from the New York City tri-state area or Louisiana, but the focus on hot spots ignores all the community spread inside Florida and in other states. Florida already has nearly 7,000 confirmed cases, ranking it 17th among the states on a per capita basis. Earlier, DeSantis justified eschewing broader measures. 'We’re also in a situation where we have counties who have no community spread,' he said on March 19. 'We have some counties that don’t have a single positive test yet.' But everything we have experienced strongly suggests you don't want to wait until you have community spread before taking strong action. DeSantis may still be helped by Trump, who may be giving Florida preferential treatment. According to the Washington Post, other governors have had difficulty getting supplies from the Strategic National Stockpile, but not DeSantis. And Trump has been influenced by DeSantis’ argument that some social distancing measures are too harmful to the economy. The Post quoted an anonymous White House official, who explained, 'The president knows Florida is so important for his reelection, so when DeSantis says that, it means a lot. He pays close attention to what Florida wants.'" I would just like to add that DeSantis is still working actively to kill Florida seniors. He is absolutely the worst governor in America.

• Tate Reeves (R-MS)- "Aside from its next-door neighbor Louisiana, Mississippi is the Southern state with the most confirmed Covid-19 cases on a per capita basis. Yet Reeves has made a hash out of the response. As Mississippi’s localities began issuing stay-at-home edicts, Reeves issued his own order on March 24, broadly defining what business and social activity is 'essential'-- including religious services-- and declared any order from any other 'governing body' which conflicts with the state order to be 'suspended and unenforceable.'"





• Kevin Stitt (R-OK)- "On March 14, Stitt tweeted a picture of his family eating at a restaurant, as if he deserved an award for defying the coronavirus panic. 'It’s packed tonight!' he enthusiastically shared, but facing blowback, later deleted the post... Oklahoma’s rate of infection is intensifying, and testing is minimal. Stitt is not the only governor who has hesitated to implement stiff restrictions, but he may become a case study of the pitfalls of glib social media use in a time of crisis."

• David Ige (D-HI)- "Ige tapped his Lieutenant Governor Josh Green to play a key role in the state’s response to coronavirus. Green is an emergency room doctor, so his calls for strict travel restrictions and quarantines on arrivals carried great weight. But once Green publicly pushed for strong measures, Ige cut him out of the loop, instructing Cabinet officials not to consult with Green, and keeping Green out of his press conferences."

• Kay Ivey (R-AL)- "Ivey sounded a completely different note at a press conference, when she dismissed the idea of a statewide stay-at-home order. 'Y’all, we are not Louisiana, we are not New York state, we are not California,' she said. (Washington Post data journalist Philip Bump warned Ivey that Alabama’s caseload was growing faster than California’s.)"

• Jim Justice (R-WV)- "His lack of experience in crisis management has been glaringly obvious from his discordant statements and actions. On March 16, he was preaching defiance. 'For crying out loud, go to the grocery stores,' Jutice said. 'If you want to go to Bob Evans and eat, go to Bob Evans and eat.' Then, the very next day, he shut down dine-in eating at the state’s restaurants."

Yesterday a 7-person team of NY Times reporters filed a report on the geography of the pandemic response in America. The maps showing citizens ignoring social distancing look eerily-- or predictably-- like the maps of the counties where Trump won in 2016. "Stay-at-home orders," they wrote, "have nearly halted travel for most Americans, but people in Florida, the Southeast and other places that waited to enact such orders have continued to travel widely, potentially exposing more people as the coronavirus outbreak accelerates." Most Americans "in wide swaths of the West, Northeast and Midwest have complied with orders from state and local officials to stay home. Disease experts who reviewed the results say those reductions in travel-- to less than a mile a day, on average, from about five miles-- may be enough to sharply curb the spread of the coronavirus in those regions, at least for now... In areas where public officials have resisted or delayed stay-at-home orders, people changed their habits far less. Though travel distances in those places have fallen drastically, last week they were still typically more than three times those in areas that had imposed lockdown orders, the analysis shows." They offered a list of big population counties across the country where people are spreading COVID-19 willy-nilly. I added the 2016 election results. From worst to less horrible:

• Greenville County, South Carolina- Trump 59.4% to Hillary 34.7%
• Jefferson County, Alabama- Hillary 52.2% to Trump 45.0%
• Duval County, Florida- Trump 49.0% to Hillary 47.5%
• Guilford County, North Carolina- Hillary 58.7% to Trump 38.7%
• Montgomery County, Texas- Trump 74.0% to Hillary 22.5%
• Polk County, Florida- Trump 55.4% to Hillary 41.3%
• Tulsa County, Oklahoma- Trump 58.4% to Hillary 35.6%
• Volusia County, Florida- Trump 54.8% to Hillary 41.8%
• Oklahoma County, Oklahoma- Trump 51.7% to Hillary 41.2%
• Sedgwick County, Kansas- Trump 56.1% to Hillary 36.9%
• Gwinnett County, Georgia- Hillary 51.0% to Trump 45.2%
• Shelby County, Tennessee- Hillary 62.3% to Trump 34.6%
• Brevard County, Florida- Trump 57.8% to Hillary 38.0%
• Salt Lake County, Utah- Hillary 42.8% to Trump 32.6%
• Fresno County, California- Hillary 49.4% to Trump 45.5%
• Utah County, Utah- Trump 51.3% to Hillary 14.0%
• Pasco County, Florida- Trump 58.9% to Hillary 37.4%
• San Bernardino County, California- Hillary 52.2% to Trump 42.4%
• Douglas County, Nebraska- Hillary 47.9% to Trump 46.5%
• Hillsborough County, Florida- Hillary 51.5% to Trump 44.7%

Dr. Fauci has recommended that all 50 states do mandatory lockdowns-- something Trump and his goonish governors don't accept. Last night Trump lied again, this time that airplane and train passengers are being given "very strong tests" for coronavirus both before departure and after arrival. "They’re doing tests on airlines-- very strong tests-- for getting on, getting off. They’re doing tests on trains-- getting on, getting off." He's just flat-out lying-- and endangering the general public.

Light At The End Of The Tunnel? Nobel Laureate Says Yes-- But There's A Big Caveat: Social Distancing

The President Meets Wall Street by Nancy Ohanian

Michael Levitt is a Nobel laureate and Stanford biophysicist and he doesn't think the pandemic is going to be as bad as many others do. And he has reason for optimism. Levitt, reported the L.A. Times, began analyzing the number of COVID-19 cases worldwide in January and correctly calculated that China would get through the worst of its coronavirus outbreak long before many health experts had predicted. "Now he foresees a similar outcome in the United States and the rest of the world. While many epidemiologists are warning of months, or even years, of massive social disruption and millions of deaths, Levitt says the data simply don’t support such a dire scenario-- especially in areas where reasonable social distancing measures are in place."

Ah... "reasonable social distancing measures." We don't have that yet-- not even close. And it would be hard to imagine Trump has the courage or political will to mandate any such thing. Levitt almost sounds like Trump in some ways: "What we need is to control the panic... we’re going to be fine." Mozingo reports that Levitt "also blames the media for causing unnecessary panic by focusing on the relentless increase in the cumulative number of cases and spotlighting celebrities who contract the virus. By contrast, the flu has sickened 36 million Americans since September and killed an estimated 22,000, according to the CDC, but those deaths are largely unreported. He fears the public health measures that have shut down large swaths of the economy could cause their own health catastrophe, as lost jobs lead to poverty and hopelessness. Time and again, researchers have seen that suicide rates go up when the economy spirals down."

Levitt explained that he is seeing "turning points in other nations, even ones that did not instill the draconian isolation measures that China did. He analyzed 78 countries with more than 50 reported cases of COVID-19 every day and sees 'signs of recovery.' He’s not looking at cumulative cases, but the number of new cases every day-- and the percentage growth in that number from one day to the next.

In Iran, for instance, the number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases remained relatively flat last week, from 1,133 on Monday to 1,148 on Friday.

Of course, recovering from an initial outbreak doesn’t mean the virus won’t come back: China is now fighting to stop new waves of infection coming in from places where the virus is spreading out of control. Other countries are bound to face the same problem as well.

Levitt acknowledges that his figures are messy, and that the official case counts in many areas are too low because testing is spotty. But even with incomplete data, “a consistent decline means there’s some factor at work that is not just noise in the numbers,” he said.

The trajectory of deaths backs up his findings, he said. So do data from outbreaks in confined environments, such as the one on the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Out of 3,711 people on board, 712 were infected and eight died. In his view, this unintended experiment in coronavirus spread will help researchers estimate the number of fatalities that would occur in a fully infected population.

Levitt said the social-distancing mandates are critical-- particularly the ban on large gatherings-- because the virus is so new that the population has no immunity to it and a vaccine is still many months away. “This is not the time to go out drinking with your buddies.”

...The virus can grow exponentially only when it is undetected and no one is acting to control it, Levitt said. That’s what happened in South Korea, when it ripped through a closed-off cult that refused to report the illness.

“People need to be considered heroes for announcing they have this virus,” he said.

The goal needs to be better early detection-- not just through testing but perhaps with body temperature surveillance, which China is implementing-- and immediate social isolation.

While the COVID-19 fatality rate appears to be significantly higher than that of the flu, Levitt says it is quite simply put, “not the end of the world.”

Based on the experience of the Diamond Princess, he estimates that being exposed to the new coronavirus doubles a person’s risk of dying in the next two months. However, most people have an extremely low risk of death in a two-month period, and that risk remains extremely low even when doubled.

“The real situation is not as nearly as terrible as they make it out to be,” he said.

OK, now back to social distancing. In the U.S. it is neither widespread, strict nor mandatory. Here in L.A., there are more loopholes than closures. Most people in grocery stores-- let alone workers-- are wearing masks or gloves. Trump's cryptic all-caps tweet yesterday-- "WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END IF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!-- presumably referred to deciding on a national lockdown or not. Remember, even partial lockdowns are largely in blue states like New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, California, Illinois and purple states like Ohio and Florida. Deep red Trump states are still not taking the pandemic seriously for the most part and social distancing at Corona beer parties in Oklahoma, Mississippi, Alabama and Wyoming is something to laugh at.

Jonathan Swan reported that Señor Trumpanzee and his team "are losing patience with the doctors’ orders. Amid dire predictions for jobs and the economy, the White House is beginning to send signals to business that there's light at the end of the tunnel-- that the squeeze from nationwide social distancing won't be endless... [Pence] signaled the change in tone earlier when he said the CDC will issue guidance today allowing people exposed to the coronavirus to return to work sooner by wearing a mask for a certain length of time. Trump’s tweet and Pence's comment supply the strongest public signals we've seen that the administration is looking for ways to get people out in the world again to fire up the economy-- perhaps much sooner than Dr. Fauci would like... [Trumpanzee, Inc has] only limited patience for keeping the economy shut down. They are watching stocks tumble and unemployment skyrocket. At the end of the 15-day period, there will likely be a serious clash between the public health experts-- who will almost certainly favor a longer period of nationwide social distancing and quarantining-- versus the president and his economic and political aides, who are anxious to restart the economy."

Europeans have moved more rapidly than Americans to embrace social distancing and societal lockdowns-- but not as thoroughly as they have in China, Singapore and Taiwan where they have been compulsory and enforced... and successful. European countries are feeling the pushback from spoiled, self-indulgent citizens now. Some, like Spain and Italy, have sent troops to help maintain lockdowns. James McAuley reported that "In a time when Europeans and Americans have been told to practice 'social distancing' and to remain at home, people were still out and about in France and across Europe. They were shopping in proximity at bustling market stalls, running in large numbers down public promenades and, in some cases, scoffing at various government restrictions designed to keep them safe."

Over the past week, a number of European governments have urged their citizens to take coronavirus seriously by imposing strict limits on movement outside the home. The question now is how governments can actually enforce those rules, with so many people seemingly willing to break them.

Different European governments have devised different answers to that question, with no solution proved to be entirely effective.

Italy-- with more deaths caused by covid-19 than anywhere in the world, including at least 793 since Friday-- has been struggling to enforce its lockdown with police checks and has already called in military forces in two regions: Campania and Sicily. On Friday, Italy’s Interior Ministry reported that it still cited a record total of 9,600 people on Thursday for violating the terms of the lockdown.

Spanish police added extra patrols and slapped fines on people ignoring the orders to mostly stay at home. The “time has come to implement fully the state of alert,” said a statement Friday from Spain’s Interior Ministry.

Lockdown rules appeared to mean less in France, where the government relies on fines to enforce its terms. But the threat of a 135 euro ($160) fine did not prevent French police from having to stop 70,000 people and fining 4,095 in the first 24 hours of lockdown, according to a statement by France’s Interior Minister, Christophe Castaner. He called those who ignored the government’s rules “imbeciles.”

As they struggle to enforce their own rules, European governments have mostly turned to imposing stricter measures. But it remains unclear whether citizens will respond to further limitations, either.

In France, where President Emmanuel Macron announced a nationwide lockdown that started Tuesday at noon-- an extendible period of 15 days during which only essential businesses were to remain open-- local authorities have begun to take matters into their own hands.

On Friday, Christian Estrosi, the mayor of Nice on France’s Mediterranean coast, closed the city’s famous Promenade des Anglais, a scenic waterfront walkway and running path where crowds of people were gathering to do their daily exercise in groups that could still facilitate the transmission of the coronavirus. Estrosi also imposed an 8 p.m. curfew on all city residents.

“From 8 p.m., once the shops and pharmacies are closed, no one has any reason to go out,” he told France’s Journal du Dimanche newspaper. “So we don’t go out, except the staff specifically authorized by this decree-- medical staff or those who make home visits to vulnerable people.”

Similar measures were taken in Paris, where Mayor Anne Hidalgo and police chief Didier Lallement expressed their exasperation that people were simply not listening to the government’s orders. “Certain areas of the capital remain overly frequented by walkers and joggers,” they wrote in a joint statement Thursday, noting in particular the banks of the Seine River, the Champ de Mars park by the Eiffel Tower and the Invalides Esplanade.

Police essentially banned running and exercising along the banks of the Seine by Friday, and France’s Ministry of Sports also clarified that once-daily walks or runs “to stretch legs” should be brief and should happen within immediate vicinity of one’s home address. “You have to chose between going shopping and going for a run,” the ministry said.

But there are significant loopholes in enforcing that rule. France requires all those who leave their homes to carry a government-issued “attestation” form certifying the essential nature of their daily visit outside. But the forms have no time-stamp, and police officers who ask to see them have no way of knowing how many times a person has been out, or how far he or she may have wandered.

Germany, meanwhile, has threatened to impose a mandatory curfew if people do not take social distancing seriously after many crowded parks during spring sunshine last week.

Health authorities are now using anonymous cellphone data to track whether measures to stop people gathering are working and have said this weekend will be a key test. A forecast drop in temperatures may also help encourage people to stay home.

With 16 federal states, each of which have their own health authorities, distancing measures have been uneven across the country-- but all have agreed to close bars and nightclubs, nonessential shops, and restaurants are also closed in the evening.

However, some social distancing measures have been harder to enforce than others, with a ban on children’s playgrounds receiving particular pushback.

Red tape around playgrounds in Berlin was torn down last week, and some were filled with families even after the restrictions came into place. On Friday, German media reported that the local authorities in one town in North Rhine-Westphalia, the worst hit German state, had started dismantling swing sets and benches after orders to leave the playgrounds were ignored.

“The playgrounds in the city area were still full,” Dorsten’s Mayor Tobias Stockhoff was quoted as saying by Germany’s Bild newspaper. “We decided today to dismantle what can be dismantled. We are sending a clear signal.”

In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Friday the closure of all pubs, restaurants, bars, gyms and nightclubs starting Saturday. During his announcement, he also appealed to those considering going out one last time before the closure came into effect.

“Please don’t,” Johnson said. “You may think you are invincible, but there is no guarantee you will get mild symptoms, and you can still be a carrier of the disease and pass it on to others.”

Many listened to his advice, but many did not. Even after the order to close, pubs across England were filled with drinkers getting in last rounds on Friday night.

The Metropolitan Police in London and constabularies around Britain are on standby, prepared to enforce the close-down order if necessary, officials said.

Pubs in Cornwall and Devon were giving away free beer Friday night after Johnson ordered the establishments shuttered.

Mike Newton, control room supervisor for the local police, told the DevonLive news site: “Tonight was going to go one of two ways. Sadly it’s been stupidly busy.”

You think joggers at the Invalides Esplanade and folks in North Rhine-Westphalia, Cornwall and Devon are a problem? Stop for a moment. How do you think these fine folks in Mississippi are going to react when someone tries telling them about social distancing and how they have to start practicing it? And Wyoming!