Just As The Clash Warned, The U.K. Is Headed Straight To Hell

 

Trump is still telling his simpleminded supporters that-- even as the U.S. hurtles towards a quarter million COVID-deaths-- there's really no problem at all. "It affects elderly people, elderly people with heart problems and other problems. That’s what it really affects," he said yesterday. And on Fox a day before, he said "We’ve done a phenomenal job, not just a good job, a phenomenal job" and said he deserves an A+ for his efforts. No doubt the New Axis is delighted-- plus Duterte and Bolsinaro-- but most of the world is astounded, if not horrified. Yesterday, Fiona Hill, Trump's former top Russia adviser said that the U.S. is increasingly seen as "an object of pity including by our allies, because they are so shocked by what's happening internally, how we're eating ourselves alive with our divisions." Putin sure made a wise investment when he spent a few million dollars to elect Trump in 2016.

Europe is starting the second wave now and number are spiking everywhere. None of the countries are doing badly compared to Trumpland but... no one compares themselves to the hellhole Trump has turned the U.S. into. There are now 21,446 cases per million Americans. The worst-hit European countries-- Spain (14,591 per million residents), Sweden (8,875 per million residents) and Belgium (8,912 per million residents)-- don't come anywhere close. But Europeans aren't thinking about how badly Trump is doing as a national leader; they're thinking about their own neighbors getting sick and dying. Reports from Europe so far this week have been terrible.

The U.K. has the 4th most cases after Russia, Spain and France-- 403,551, after 13,193 new cases were reported this week (Sunday, Monday and Tuesday). That's 5,937 cases per million Brits, not as bad Spain, Belgium, Sweden France, Russia or France, but worse than Holland, Italy, Denmark or Germany. The real problem for the U.K. though is that they have the most COVID deaths in Europe-- 41,825 as of yesterday. Only Belgium and Spain have more deaths per million residents.





Yesterday Jill Lawless and Danica Kirka reporting from London for the Associated Press, wrote that British prime minister Boris Johnson seems to have woken up to the catastrophic road his country has been headed down. He warned Brits that they shouldn't expect to return to a normal social or work life for at least six months and ordered new (half-asses and woefully ineffective) restrictions, likely to prove deadly in their cravenness. Example: he announced he will require pubs, restaurants and other entertainment venues in England to close down between 10 pm and 5 am and urging people to work from home where possible. Is that because you can't catch the virus before 10 pm or after 5 am? Johnson is another sickening, cowardly politician, petrified to anger voters.

Johnson had encouraged workers just weeks ago to go back into offices to keep city centers from becoming ghost towns, and he expressed hope that society could return to normal by Christmas. In a stark change of tone, he said Tuesday that “for the time being, this virus is a fact of our lives.”

“We will spare no effort in developing vaccines, treatments and new forms of mass testing, but unless we palpably make progress, we should assume that the restrictions I have announced will remain in place for perhaps six months,” Johnson told lawmakers in the House of Commons.

The announcement came a day after the government’s top scientific and medical advisers said new coronavirus infections were doubling every seven days and could rise to 49,000 a day by mid-October if nothing was done to stem the tide.

On Monday, the government reported 4,300 new confirmed cases, the highest number since May and four times the number seen a month ago. Chief medical officers have raised the U.K.’s virus alert level from three to four, the second-highest rung, saying cases of COVID-19 were rising “rapidly and probably exponentially.”

The new restrictions require face masks to be worn in taxis as well as on public transport. The size of some gatherings is being curtailed, with weddings limited to 15 people instead of 30, and a plan to bring spectators back into sports stadiums starting in October is being put on hold.

Johnson did not reduce the number of people who can gather indoors or out, which remains at six.

The British government is also increasing the penalties for breaking the rules. People who breach orders to quarantine face fines of up to 10,000 pounds ($12,800) and businesses that breach “COVID-secure” rules can be shut down.

The measures apply only to England. Other parts of the U.K. introduced similar curbs, but some went further in limiting social interactions.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who has often struck a more cautious note than Johnson during the pandemic, said that with a few exceptions, people would be barred from visiting others’ homes, and car-sharing would be discouraged.

Sturgeon said the measure would be reviewed every three weeks but “may be needed for longer than that.” She said she hoped it would be less than six months.

The new restrictions outlined by Johnson are less stringent than the nationwide lockdown imposed in March, which confined most of the population and closed most businesses. Britain eased its lockdown starting in June as cases began to fall, but that trend has now been reversed.

The prime minister said if the new curbs did not slow the outbreak, “we reserve the right to deploy greater firepower, with significantly greater restrictions.”

Still, some lawmakers from Johnson’s governing Conservative Party are uneasy about tightening restrictions on business and daily life, citing the impact on Britain’s already-reeling economy.

To persuade people to stay home if they test positive for the virus, the government announced it would pay low-income workers 500 pounds ($639) if they are told to self-isolate for 14 days.

Businesses, especially in the areas of hospitality, sports and the arts, said they urgently needed support, too.

Kate Nicholls, chief executive of trade body UKHospitality, said before the announcement that the restrictions would be “another crushing blow” for many businesses.

But most epidemiologists believe more restrictions are again necessary and even worry that the government’s plans may not go far enough.

Polls suggest a majority of people in Britain support lockdown measures to contain the virus. But they also show that trust in the Conservative government’s handling of the pandemic has declined after troubles with testing, mixed messages on reopening and the U.K.’s high death toll.

Meanwhile anti-mask right-wingers have been rioting in London this week. Like so many Trump fans, they claim COVID is a hoax and that the vaccine (which doesn't exist yet) will be more harmful than the coronavirus itself and that fighting the pandemic is tyranny and an affront to their liberty. See? And you thought people like that only lived in Wyoming, the Dakotas and on Fox News? YouTube is filled with videos being disseminated by Russian propaganda outlets seeking to cause disruption and to shatter social cohesion.

Branded by Nancy Ohanian

If You Saw A Rabid Dog You Might Shoot It, But You Can't Shoot Someone Who Refuses To Wear A Mask

I doubt Senor Trumpanzee and his Death Cult are going to be happy about this, but in a JAMA interview yesterday, CDC Director, Dr. Robert Redfield said and wrote that universal masking would stop the pandemic. "I really do believe that if the American public all embraced masking now... rigorously... over the next 4-8 weeks we could bring this epidemic under control.

Covering mouths and noses with filtering materials serves 2 purposes: personal protection against inhalation of harmful pathogens and particulates, and source control to prevent exposing others to infectious microbes that may be expelled during respiration. When asked to wear face coverings, many people think in terms of personal protection. But face coverings are also widely and routinely used as source control. For instance, if given the choice between having surgery performed by a team not wearing some covering over their mouths and noses vs a team that does, almost all patients would reject the former. This option seems absurd because it is known that use of face coverings under these circumstances reduces the risk of surgical site infection caused by microbes generated during the surgical team’s conversations or breathing. Face coverings do the same in blocking transmission of SARS-CoV-2.

Early in the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that anyone symptomatic for suspected coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) should wear a face covering during transport to medical care and prior to isolation to reduce the spread of respiratory droplets. After emerging data documented transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from persons without symptoms, the recommendation was expanded to the general community, with an emphasis on cloth face coverings that could be made more widely available in the community than surgical masks and to preserve personal protective equipment such as N95 respirators to the highest-risk exposures in health care settings. Now, there is ample evidence that persons without symptoms spread infection and may be the critical driver needed to maintain epidemic momentum.

While community use of face coverings has increased substantially, particularly in jurisdictions with mandatory orders, resistance continues. Some have raised concerns that homemade face coverings made from household fabrics may be inferior compared with commercially manufactured products. Cloth face coverings can substantially limit forward dispersion of exhaled respirations that contain potentially infectious respiratory particles in the 1- to 10-μm range that includes aerosol-sized particles, and recent research of household textiles’ performance when used as source control suggests cloth face coverings may be able to do so with acceptable efficiency and breathability. Others may think it is premature to promote community masking until research has been completed that measures the effectiveness of cloth face coverings to prevent exposure specifically to SARS-CoV-2. Laboratory studies will be difficult and costly because they require capacity to safely manage this biosafety level 3 pathogen. Any type of community-based randomized trial will be complex to deploy in the right setting (a community with active infection) at the right time (when infections are increasing) to produce actionable results quickly. In the absence of such data, it has been persuasively argued the precautionary principle be applied to promote community masking because there is little to lose and potentially much to be gained. In this regard, the report by Wang et al provides practical, timely, and compelling evidence that community-wide face covering is another means to help control the national COVID-19 crisis.

Other than to walk in the lonely Griffith Park hills in my neighborhood, I haven't been out of the house without an N-99 mask since February. [And when I walk in the hills I wear a surgical mask.] In February, when I first started going to stores to stock up, with my mask-- and other paraphernalia-- on, people looked at me strangely, some giving me aggressive looks, others just running away from me (which was even more than I could have hoped for). But I told Roland that it wouldn't be more than a month or so that everything would change and the aggressive looks would be directed at people not wearing masks. I've since seen two men beaten up for not wearing masks on lines in front of two different grocery stores. I don't like violence or vigilantism but I'd be lying if I were to tell you these two assholes didn't deserve what they got.

All the videos you can see of Trumpist imbeciles idiots-- some elected officials-- screaming about not wearing masks makes my blood boil. They're prolonging the pandemic and endangering the rest of us. I suppose that eventually they will be shot down like rabid dogs as a last ditch effort to save the country. I won't be shooting anyone; nor will I cry.

America isn't the only country with violent right-wing anti-social idiots refusing to wear masks. Last week, in Bayonne, France, near the Spanish border, two men in their 20s murdered a bus driver who asked passengers to wear masks on the bus, which is the law. Both assailants were arrested as were others on the bus who didn't help the driver. In the U.K. masks will become mandatory in all indoor businesses as of July 24, which will bring England into line with Scotland and other European nations like Spain, Italy and Germany. Those who fail to comply with the new rules will face a fine of up to £100, which is not an effective deterrent  Foolishly the new rule does not apply to retail staff. A far right-wing member of Parliament from southern England, notorious racist, Sir Desmond Angus Swayne, described the rule as a "monstrous imposition" that would make him less likely to go shopping. That probably makes retailers happy since the only thing Swayne is known for-- other than his racism-- is that he's a thief and has been caught repeatedly stealing money on his expenses.

Yesterday, L.A. Times reporters Rong-Gong Il and Maura Dolan wrote that Masks offer much more protection against coronavirus than many think. They noted that many people have been led to believe that masks don't protect the wearer; they protect other people from the wearer's germs. And many selfish people don't care about protecting others, only themselves. Well, as anyone with two brain cells to rub together figured out, by April, the government-- hoping to protect the mask supply-- was lying and that masks do protect the weare. "If you're unlucky enough to encounter an infectious person," they wrote, "wearing any kind of face covering will reduce the amount of virus that your body will take in. As it turns out, that's pretty important. Breathing in a small amount of virus may lead to no disease or far more mild infection. But inhaling a huge volume of virus particles can result in serious disease or death."

That's the argument Dr. Monica Gandhi, UC San Francisco professor of medicine and medical director of the HIV Clinic at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, is making about why-- if you do become infected with the virus-- masking can still protect you from more severe disease.

"There is this theory that facial masking reduces the [amount of virus you get exposed to] and disease severity," said Gandhi, who is also director for the Center for AIDS Research at UC San Francisco.

The idea of requiring mask-wearing in public has become an increasingly pressing and politicized issue as California and the rest of the nation see a surge in new cases as the economy reopens.

...[E]xperts say masks are essential for people to wear when they go out in public, such as to shop or go to medical appointments, and to get exercise like heading to the beach or park.

California has mandated face coverings in public settings since June 18, and a growing number of communities say they will ticket people who disobey the rules. But there remains resistance to the government mandating wearing masks in some corners of the state, including Orange County.

Some leaders in Orange County have pushed back against requiring students to wear masks should they return to classrooms in the fall.

In policy recommendations approved by the Orange County Board of Education on Monday, a document stated that "requiring children to wear masks during school is not only difficult-- if not impossible to implement-- but [is] not based on science. It may even be harmful." Individual districts will have the final say on how schools open.

Some health experts were appalled by that language.

"This anti-mask rhetoric is mind-blowing, dangerous, deadly and polarizing," said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, professor of medicine and an infectious diseases specialist at UC San Francisco. "There is no evidence that it is dangerous."

In fact, wearing masks can help prevent children from being infected and suffering serious consequences of infection, such as multisystem inflammatory syndrome, a rare condition that has been seen in children who have been infected with the coronavirus. "Kids not only transmit, but they can get sick as well," Chin-Hong said.

While children are less likely to develop severe illness from the coronavirus than adults, they can still be infected, be contagious and transmit the virus to other people, Gandhi said.

Wearing a mask at school would not only reduce their ability to transmit the virus to other classmates, teachers and administrators, but also protect the students from getting infected with a large dose of virus from infected people.

Transmission rates for coronavirus have been rising across the state. Nearly 1,000 of San Francisco's nearly 4,600 cases have been diagnosed in just the last two weeks, said Dr. Grant Colfax, the city's director of public health.

In San Francisco, nearly half of all those who have tested positive in the city are Latinos, he said, even though Latino residents make up just 15% of the city's population. Overall, the city has seen 7.8 new infections per 100,000 residents over the last seven days, far above its goal of no more than 1.8 new infections per 100,000 people.

"This, again, indicates that the virus is spreading throughout the city, particularly ... in the southeast part of the city,” Colfax said.

For every one person who contracts the virus, another 1.25 people on average are now infected, he said. “We really need to drive that down to 1 or below as quickly and as soon as possible.”

The transmission rate also rose above 1 in L.A. County in June, but has fallen back to 1. “The virus currently rages on in our community," Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said.

The reason why masks are so important in controlling the spread of the coronavirus is that it can be widely spread by people who are not visibly sick-- either because they haven't yet shown signs of illness, or they will spend the entire course of their infections with little or no symptoms at all.

...Masks don't filter out all viral particles, Gandhi said. But even cloth face masks filter out a majority of viral particles.

And even if a person wearing a mask gets infected, the mask-- by filtering out most of the viral particles exhaled by the infected person-- probably leads to less severe disease, Gandhi said.

The idea that a lower dose of virus when being infected brings less illness is a well-worn idea in medicine.

...So what happens if a city dramatically masks up while in public?

If Gandhi is right, it may mean that even if there's a rise in coronavirus infections in a city, the masks may limit the dose people are getting of the virus and result in them more likely to show less severe symptoms of illness.

That's what Gandhi said she suspects is happening in San Francisco, where mask wearing is relatively robust. Further observations are needed, Gandhi said.

There's more evidence that masks can be protective-- even when wearers do become infected. She cited an outbreak at a seafood plant in Oregon where employees were given masks, and 95% of those who were infected were asymptomatic.

...The protective effects are also seen in countries where masks are universally accepted for years, such as Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea and Singapore. "They have all seen cases as they opened ... but not deaths," Gandhi said.

The Czech Republic moved early to require masks, issuing an order in mid-March, Gandhi said; that's about three months before Gov. Gavin Newsom did so statewide in California. But in the Czech Republic, "every time their cases would go up ...their death rate was totally flat. So they didn't get the severe illness with these cases going on."

By May, the Czech Republic lifted its face mask rule. "And they're doing great," Gandhi said.

Israel is in the midst of a disastrous second wave they brought on themselves. On Sunday, Israel reported 1,206 new cases, 23rd highest in the world and Monday it was another 1,962 (17th highest in the world) bringing the national total to 40,632-- 4,418 cases per million Israelis, even worse than hard-hit European countries like the U.K. and Italy. Writing from Jerusalem yesterday, Noga Tarnopolsky noted that "Of 1,400 Israelis diagnosed with COVID-19 last month, 657 (47 percent) were infected in schools. Now 2,026 students, teachers, and staff have it, and 28,147 are quarantined.



NPR: Daniel, in Israel, it's been a little bit more of a complicated picture. School shut down because of the virus, and then it reopened. They did go back in May, and now it's out again. What happened?

Daniel Estrin: Well, what happened in Israel is quite a cautionary tale, I think. At first, the Israeli health professionals here urged the government, yes, let school resume again, but only let kids under the age of 9 go back to school, and keep it in small groups. And they said data around the world show that younger kids have a very low rate of infection and transmission.

But instead of just letting the younger kids go back to school, there were these last-minute negotiations. Ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools wanted the older kids to go back to religious studies, and so they did. And then 11th- and 12th-graders also went back to school. And so very, very quickly, everyone was back. And then very quickly after that, there was a heat wave, so the government said, well, kids don't need to wear masks anymore during this heat wave. And then we just saw big outbreaks in schools, and a lot of schools shut down for several weeks...

I think the lessons to be learned from Israel are listen to the health experts. The government here did not follow the health experts' guidelines to just open the younger grades and to have kids in small groups. They opened very fast, and there was no coherent policy. So listen to your health experts. Have a coherent policy.

This video is for Trump supporters because I have never met an intelligent Trump supporter. There may be intelligent Trump supporters-- though I doubt it-- but I never met one. So this is for you, who are, after all, Americans too:

Maybe The Whole World Feels Like It's Falling Apart Because It Is-- And Maybe We Need Better Leadership... MUCH Better Leadership

Never Waste A Serious Crisis by Nancy Ohanian

The pandemic hit South Korea early through crowded churches. The entire society mobilized and beat the crap out of the coronavirus. Korea has been a model of how to handle this-- a model followed by some countries but not others. Korea has only had 10,874 cases (same number as Minnesota-- and South Korea has 10 times more people) and 256 deaths. More importantly the country has had just 212 cases per million in their population. That's tiny. The U.S. has had over 4,100 cases per million! The American states with the fewest cases are doing worse than South Korea:

• Oregon- 765 cases per million
• West Virginia- 760 cases per million
• Alaska- 518 cases per million
• Hawaii- 446 cases per million
• Montana- 429 cases per million

And then something horrible happened. They controlled the outbreak in churches and stopped the spread-- until now. It's back. Caseloads are inching up. Bloomberg reported that on Korea's second wave tied to nightclubs in Seoul and Itaewon visited by just one patient. He exposed between 6 and 7 thousand people. Closing the barn door late, "Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon on Saturday ordered the closing of all nightclubs, discos, hostess bars and other similar nightlife establishments in the capital."

The pandemic didn't hit Britain as quickly or with as much force as it did other European countries. Britain got off easy-- at first. Same with Russia. Phase One passed them both by. Now both countries (plus Brazil) are paying. The countries reporting the largest number of new cases over the weekend other than the U.S. were Russia, Brazil and the U.K. Let's leave Brazil and Russia out of this for the moment and look at the cases per million in the western European countries:

• Spain- 5,661 cases per million
• Ireland- 4,657 cases per million
• Belgium- 4,580 cases per million
• Italy- 3,623 cases per million
• Switzerland- 3,502 cases per million
• U.K.- 3,229 cases per million
• France- 2,710 cases per million
• Portugal- 2,705 cases per million
• Sweden- 2,606 cases per million
• Netherlands- 2,488 cases per million
• Germany- 2,050  cases per million

Other than Britain, most of those countries are seeing the curve flatten. Britain-- which has had the same individualistic, selfish outlook as the U.S.-- is watching the curve steepen. Yesterday, the Associated Press reported that "After a week of mixed messages that started with Johnson indicating there will be changes to the lockdown beginning Monday, the government has sought to douse speculation that they will amount to much. That’s because the U.K., which has recorded the most coronavirus-related deaths in Europe at 31,662, is still seeing a relatively high number of infections. Johnson is expected to announce modest changes in his pre-recorded televised address, including quarantining anyone flying into the country for 14 days except those from Ireland, amid rising evidence that Britons are increasingly flouting the 'stay at home' message. British police warned Saturday that they are 'fighting a losing battle' on this front... Professor Til Wykes of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London said people need 'clear, concise and accurate' messages on what to do during the pandemic. 'This one is concise only,' she said. 'It will just be confusing, be open to misinterpretation and likely to increase risky behaviour.'"

Speaking of which... on a conference call with former members of his administration, Obama tore into Trump's catastrophic response to the pandemic. "This election that’s coming up on every level is so important because what we’re going to be battling is not just a particular individual or a political party. What we’re fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided, and seeing others as an enemy-- that has become a stronger impulse in American life. And by the way, we’re seeing that internationally as well. It’s part of the reason why the response to this global crisis has been so anemic and spotty. It would have been bad even with the best of governments. It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset-- of 'what’s in it for me' and 'to heck with everybody else'-- when that mindset is operationalized in our government."

And who can't see that every damn day? Yesterday a top Washington Post team of reporters-- Josh Dawsey, Ashley Parker, Phil Rucker and Yaseen Abutaleb-- wrote about Trump's obsession for reopening the economy while it still is far from safe and how he just does not give a damn about the workers. "In a week when the novel coronavirus ravaged new communities across the country," they wrote, "and the number of dead soared past 78,000 80,000, President Trump and his advisers shifted from hour-by-hour crisis management to what they characterize as a long-term strategy aimed at reviving the decimated economy and preparing for additional outbreaks this fall. But in doing so, the administration is effectively bowing to-- and asking Americans to accept-- a devastating proposition: that a steady, daily accumulation of lonely deaths is the grim cost of reopening the nation."

[H]ealth officials warn the number of coronavirus cases could increase considerably in May and June as more states and localities loosen restrictions, and some mitigation efforts are still recommended as states begin to reopen.

The administration is struggling to expand the scale of testing to what experts say is necessary to reopen businesses safely, and officials have not announced any national plan for contact tracing. Trump and some of his advisers are prioritizing the psychology of the pandemic as much as, if not more than, plans to combat the virus, some aides and outside advisers said-- striving to instill confidence that people can comfortably return to daily life despite the rising death toll.

On Friday, as the unemployment rate reached a historically high 14.7 percent, Trump urged Americans to think of this period as a “transition to greatness,” adding during a meeting with Republican members of Congress: “We’re going to do something very fast, and we’re going to have a phenomenal year next year.” The president predicted the virus eventually would disappear even without a vaccine-- a prediction at odds with his own science officials.

...Some of Trump’s advisers described the president as glum and shell-shocked by his declining popularity. In private conversations, he has struggled to process how his fortunes suddenly changed from believing he was on a glide path to reelection to realizing that he is losing to the likely Democratic nominee, former vice president Joe Biden, in virtually every poll, including his own campaign’s internal surveys, advisers said. He also has been fretting about the possibility that a bad outbreak of the virus this fall could damage his standing in the November election, said the advisers, who along with other aides and allies requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The president is also eager to resume political travel in June, including holding his signature rallies by the end of the summer in areas where there are few cases, advisers said. Trump’s political team has begun discussions about organizing a high-dollar, in-person fundraiser next month, as well as preliminary planning about staging rallies and what sort of screenings might be necessary, according to Republican National Committee officials and outsider advisers. One option being considered is holding rallies outdoors, rather than in enclosed arenas, a senior administration official said.

Officials also are forging ahead with the Republican National Convention planned for late August in Charlotte, albeit a potentially scaled-back version.

But Trump’s outward projections of assurance and hope masked the more sober acknowledgments of some outside advisers and experts who worry the number of deaths will either stabilize around 2,000 per day or continue to climb over the next month.

“The question is, will people become anesthetized to it? Are they willing to accept that?” said one adviser to the White House coronavirus task force who, like many others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters or offer candid assessments.

Stephen Moore, a conservative economist who has been informally advising Trump and his team, said making people comfortable returning to work and resuming normal activities will take a long time.

“I’m the biggest advocate for getting the economy up and running there is, but I have two relatives who think I’m crazy, and they’re not going out of their house no matter what,” Moore said. “Just because the president and governors open up a state doesn’t mean that commerce is going to instantly resume. It’s not.”

...The task force’s new strategy came amid broader internal debate about the future of the Pence-led group. On Tuesday, the New York Times first reported that the administration was talking about dismantling the task force, which Pence confirmed to reporters shortly thereafter. The next morning, however, Trump announced on Twitter that the group would “continue on indefinitely with its focus on SAFETY & OPENING UP OUR COUNTRY AGAIN.”

Administration officials stressed that the public may have an outsized impression of the task force. Its purpose was largely to provide a centralized forum for analyzing virus data and crafting response plans, through daily Situation Room meetings, as well as to share information with the public through daily White House press briefings, while much of the government’s substantive work took place at various agencies. The goal behind disbanding the task force, officials argued, was simply to center all coronavirus efforts in the agencies where they could be handled more efficiently.

Whereas initially the task force found itself scrambling to deploy a whack-a-mole management effort, dealing with regular crises as they emerged — from coronavirus-infected cruise ships to the urgent need for ventilators — the administration now intends to shift its focus to what is says is more strategic longer-term planning.

“I think we’re in a really good position now to be able to look around the corner and set ourselves up for the fall,” said Katie Miller, Pence’s press secretary.

However, White House officials declined to provide any specifics as to what the long-term strategy is, what the different plans will look like, and who is leading the various efforts.

The task force had already begun to curtail briefings, following a disastrous performance last month when Trump suggested the idea of injecting disinfectants, such as bleach, to treat the virus.

Although Trump and his aides have boasted that the number of Americans tested continues to rise — the total was 8.4 million as of Saturday — allies and other public health experts bemoan the slow pace. They argue that the country could have tested far more people and initiated a contact tracing plan had the president and his team focused more strategically on that in recent weeks.

“It’s incredibly sad and it shouldn’t be the case,” a former senior administration official said. “We should have testing and contact tracing and we don’t. That’s a concern.” The official added, “You can’t have just whatever the shiny ball is today. You have to be able to do more than one thing at a time and deal with more than one crisis point at a time.”

More than anything, three advisers said, Trump is focused on how to turn the economy around and reopen the country, seeing a nascent recovery as key to getting reelected and his handling of the economy as one of his only strengths in the polls over Joe Biden.

“Given that we’re going to be at 15 or 20 percent unemployment, it is the direction of the economy, rather than the raw numbers of the economy, that I think voters will judge him on,” said Neil Newhouse, a prominent GOP pollster.

The president and senior White House advisers have begun holding meetings on a range of topics other than the coronavirus, such as a session Friday on the thrift savings plan in the Oval Office and a Monday session on health care.

Trump son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, who has been running his own coronavirus effort, has begun interviewing candidates for a new position focused on finding vaccines and therapeutics, but some administration officials say it is another instance of Kushner stepping into territory he knows little about.

On Thursday afternoon, Trump huddled in the Oval Office with a mix of campaign aides and White House officials. No one wore masks, though campaign manager Brad Parscale did tweet a photo of himself in the West Wing sporting sunglasses and a white mask with red “Trump Pence 2020” lettering. Parscale brought five prototype campaign masks to show the president and is planning to send out 50,000 to supporters across the country.

As the president was updated on the Republican convention, various lawsuits the Republican Party and Trump campaign have launched against states over voting rules, and political ads attacking Biden over China, he appeared to be in a good mood, said three people familiar with the meeting.

But reality kept intruding. The same day, news broke that one of Trump’s personal valets, a Navy chief petty officer, had tested positive for coronavirus. And on Friday, Trump himself revealed the name of another White House staffer who had just tested positive for the virus: Miller, the vice president’s press secretary.

At the same time, another Washington Post reporting team-- Karen DeYoung, Katie Mettler and Meryl Kornfield-- were noting how caseloads are increasing in the states opening up too early. They wrote that "Easing of social distancing guidelines-- whether by government edict or individual decision-- has led to new coronavirus flare-ups in the United States and abroad, even as pressure builds to loosen restrictions that have kept millions isolated and decimated economies."

Officials in Pasadena, California, warned Saturday against Mother’s Day gatherings after a cluster of new covid-19 cases was identified there among a large group of extended family and friends attending a recent birthday party, despite a stay-at-home order in effect.

Through contact tracing, investigators discovered more than five confirmed cases and “many more ill individuals” linked to the party, the local public health department said.

The controversy over when, and how much, to open up has taken on sharp political overtones, with protests and occasional violence against those trying to keep the rules in place.

Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a statement that a report by the Associated Press alleging the White House had held back restrictive recommendations from experts on how to safely reopen hinged on a premature “draft” that “had not been vetted through the interagency process.”

Trump administration officials previously said that the recommendations were overly specific and did not take into account regional differences in the threat level.

In a series of Saturday tweets, President Trump accused California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) of opening a public polling place to favor Democrats in a special congressional election to be conducted largely by mail-in ballots next week, while Newsom has refused to open “restaurants, beaches and stores.”

Voters were encouraged to vote by mail because of the novel coronavirus, with a few in-person polling places. Democrats in the district had raised concerns that a city with a large African American population didn’t have an in-person voting place, leading the new voting center to be added... Because of the coronavirus, voters were encouraged to mail-in ballots, with every voter receiving a pre-stamped ballot to fill out and return. But a limited number of in-person polling places were long planned to be open, and one was added recently in Lancaster.

Tesla on Saturday filed a lawsuit against the California county that has prohibited the electric car company from producing vehicles during the outbreak.

The company alleged in its suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, that Alameda County had violated the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment and sought an injunction that would allow the company to operate. Its Fremont manufacturing plant is located in that county.

The suit followed chief executive Elon Musk threatening in a series of tweets earlier Saturday that the company would sue and move Tesla’s headquarters and future programs to Texas and Nevada. He appeared to leave open the possibility of maintaining some operations in Fremont depending “on how Tesla is treated in the future.”

South Korean officials, who recently began to loosen social distancing requirements, ordered more than 2,100 nightclubs, discos and bars in Seoul to close Saturday after the country recorded dozens of new cases linked to partygoers in the city last weekend.

In Germany, where the government has outlined a cautious but steady opening, hundreds of workers in at least three meat-processing plants have tested positive for the coronavirus, medical and local officials said. Word of the new infections came as Chancellor Angela Merkel, speaking in her weekly video message to the nation, said that “we are excited to take the first steps towards normal, everyday life.”

As governments try to balance health and economic priorities, medical experts have said that new flare-ups are inevitable, but that widespread testing and contact tracing are key to preventing breakouts. Both South Korea and Germany have been among the countries adopting the strictest shutdown measures and providing the most testing and contact tracing.

Trump, who has pressed to reopen schools and businesses sooner rather than later, said Friday that “testing isn’t necessary.”

On Saturday, two senior members of the administration’s coronavirus task force said they would self-quarantine after being exposed at the White House.

Redfield and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn will isolate for two weeks, the CDC and FDA said, after coming into contact with White House staffers who have tested positive for the virus.

Vice President Pence’s press secretary, Katie Miller, and one of President Trump’s personal valets tested positive last week, although neither they, nor Redfield or Hahn, have been reported ill.

France and Spain, among the hardest-hit countries, but with declining death rates, have scheduled partial reopenings this week. Italy recorded a decline in new infections, but remains the country with the third-highest confirmed death toll, at more than 30,000, behind Britain, with nearly 32,000, and the United States, the highest at more than 78,000 80,697.

Maybe Elon Musk, a South African asshole, thinks he can sell his Teslas in Mississippi and West Virginia. Good luck with that, prick. If Californians stop buying his defective cars-- as they should-- he's out of business in less than a year-- and is exactly what he deserves. Let him go try to peddle his products in Texas and the Dakotas.

Sir Keir Starmer Replaces Jeremy Corbyn As Leader Of Labour

This is how Bloomberg News summed up the story for American readers:

After a decade in the political wasteland, members of Britain’s main opposition Labour Party have chosen a moderate, un-flashy lawyer as their new leader. Their hope is that turning the page on the socialist radical Jeremy Corbyn, who was resoundingly rejected by voters last year, will see them re-take power.

Keir Starmer, 57, offers dry competence and seriousness after a turbulent five years under the firebrand Corbyn. At a time when the U.K. is grappling with the global coronavirus crisis and its own exit from the European Union, a steady hand could prove popular.

“Maybe being boringly competent is a magical thing-- because we haven’t got many boringly competent politicians at the moment, particularly in government,” said Steven Fielding, a professor at Nottingham University and historian of the Labour party. “People just flock to him like a safety raft from a sinking ship.”

On Saturday he won 275,780 votes (56.2%) in a three-way race and was elected party leader (over 2 women candidates). He represents a London district (Holborn and St Pancras), served in the shadow cabinet as the Brexit spokesman and was caught on tape opposing Corbyn as party leader. He's anti-Brexit and although widely known as a moderate, claims to be a socialist. He isn't an inspiration leader.

And if Boris Johnson passes away from his COVID-19 infection, the U.K. will need an inspirational leader. Johnson, who tested positive and has been getting worse in home quarantine, was admitted to the hospital today. In a extremely rare TV address, not necessarily in regard to Johnson's condition, Queen Elizabeth urged Brits to stay strong, united and resolute: "While we have faced challenges before, this one is different. This time we join with all nations across the globe in a common endeavour, using the great advances of science and our instinctive compassion to heal."

Transpartisan Failure

Our political leadership-- and not just Trump-- has failed us... dismally so. Even blue state governors like Andrew Cuomo (New York), Phil Murphy (New Jersey) and Gavin Newsom (California) have been taking ineffective baby steps that have already been proven to only make the pandemic worse. Like Trump, they are more afraid to be blamed for an economic turn-down than to watch thousands and perhaps millions of Americans die. Despite bad examples of behavior with resultant calamity in Italy, Spain and Holland and good examples with quicker resolution in Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea, they have all been masters of "too little too late," thereby putting us all at risk-- and showing how utterly worthless they are as political "leaders." The American people are savvier about the pandemic then our political leaders are. A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll by Hart Research.

Although most Americans report that they have not changed their behavior in ways that could slow down the pandemic, most still recognize that Trump has failed in protecting the country:

47% of respondents say they have either stopping attending large public gatherings like movies, concerts or sporting events or plan to, while 49% have neither stopped nor intend to stop. It gets worse when asked about canceling travel plans and eating in restaurants. Just 36% have canceled or rescheduled travel plans-- as opposed to 58% who have not or don't plan to-- and just 26% have stopped eating in restaurants, as opposed to 69% who have not stopped eating in restaurants. Americans are worried-- but not worried enough to act on those worries. One of my sisters-- the Trumpier one-- refused to cancel plans for a cruise. The cruise company canceled it. She also planned to see a Michael Bublé concert in Atlantic City last week and much to her chagrin-- she insists this is all "media hype"-- the concert was canceled. Last week I stopped wearing my hospital masks and started wearing a heavy duty N-99 Base Camp mask with exhalation valves whenever I go out. I noticed that when I wore it to the grocery store over tiger weekend, I was the only one in the entire (huge) store with any kind of a mask and that everyone looked at me as though I had the plague and moved quickly away from my vicinity-- a bonus as far as I was concerned.

Excursion to the grocery store for more daikon root

At every step of the way, conservative politicians have prioritized the economy over health. Kara Eastman, the Omaha progressive running against one of those conservative politicians, Donald Bacon (R), told me yesterday that "Our fractured and inefficient collection of private and public health programs leaves millions of Americans out in the cold during a crisis like COVD-19. A well-designed national health program would cover every U.S. resident and would ensure timely care for those who need it most. The fact is that millions of American citizens in our growing gig-economy are at risk and single payer can greatly mitigate that risk." Jim Harper, the progressive candidate for the open blue seat in northwest Indiana. He had a similar perspective. "Every day," he told me, "I meet Hoosiers who are terrified about their ability to access healthcare during this public health crisis. They know that our healthcare system is broken and that the inability of some to access care puts everyone at risk during this public health crisis. Medicare for All would ensure universal healthcare was important before this pandemic. But the current public health crisis shows how serious the issue is and how Medicare for All would protect all Americans."

Trumpist Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was on This Week yesterday when Jonathan Karl asked him if the pandemic would cause a recession, which every credible economist is predicting. Being part of the Trump Regime requires lying... so he did. "I don't think so. The real issue is not the economic situation today… This is a unique situation. We are going to have a slowdown. Later in the year economic activity will pick up as we confront this virus." Except the U.S. isn't even close to adequately confronting the pandemic so it will only get worse and the chances of escaping a humongous recession will diminish. Larry Elliott reported for The Guardian that travel bans, prohibitions on mass gatherings like sporting events and concerts, stock markets in freefall, deserted shopping malls (and the coming closures of restaurants, bars, schools, most service jobs and pretty much anything other than grocery stores and pharmacies), we need to prepare for a global recession.

If history is any guide, the global economy will eventually recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, but the idea that this is going to be a V-shaped recession in the first half of 2020 followed by a recovery in the second half of the year looks absurd after the tumultuous events of the past week.

What’s more, policymakers know as much. The Federal Reserve-- the US central bank-- does not need to be told by Donald Trump that it needs to cut interest rates and resume large-scale asset purchases known as quantitative easing. Wall Street is looking to the Fed to pull out all the stops when it meets on Wednesday and the world’s most powerful central bank cannot afford to disappoint.

In the UK the coordinated response by the Bank of England and the Treasury last week was seen as a textbook example of how policymakers ought to respond to the crisis. It was, though, only the start. Airline companies will quickly go bust unless they receive financial assistance. The same goes for retailers, many of them hanging on by their fingertips even before Covid-19. Britain has a new chancellor of the exchequer in Rishi Sunak and, from Monday, a new governor of the Bank of England in Andrew Bailey, and they will both be aware that the risks of doing too little too late are far greater than those of doing too much too soon.

So, in the coming weeks the Bank can be expected to cut interest rates to 0.1%-- the lowest they have ever been-- and to resume its QE programme. Sunak will have to add to the £12bn he has set aside to deal with Covid-19.

As in 2008-09, the authorities in the eurozone have been slowest to act but there have been welcome signs in recent days-- from Germany, most significantly-- of the need for governments to spend, and spend big.

The perfect time to implement Medicare-for-All.

Mark Levine is a City Councilman and chair of the City Council Health Committee in hard-hit NYC. On Sunday he came clean with his constituents: "Our city is facing a mounting threat in the coronavirus epidemic. We must move aggressively-- now-- to slow the outbreak in New York City. This is going to require extreme measures to ensure that the public avoids crowded places to the maximum extent possible. That is why I support the closure of all non-essential services, including schools, bars, restaurants, gyms, movie theaters, and courthouses."

Moments later it was announced that all NYC schools would close "until April 20," a silly aspirational random date.

New Yorkers shouldn’t wait for such an order to take responsibility for their own actions. I urge everyone to avoid any and all social gatherings if at all possible. We all need to adhere to aggressive social distancing, slow the spread, of the virus to protect the vulnerable, and prevent our health system from becoming overwhelmed.

Those who can work from home should. Families who are able to keep their children home from school should. If you must travel to work and are able to walk or bike you should.

And if you are feeling ill, it is imperative that you stay home. You should not go to work, you should not be in public.

And here’s the hardest part: if you are only mildly ill with COVID-19 symptoms (fever, dry cough) and do not have other health complications, you should not go to the hospital. You should rest at home and have a phone by your side to call for a doctor if your condition worsens. These extraordinary recommendations are necessary because we must preserve every element of our healthcare system for the seriously ill, as the number of coronavirus cases continues to rise.

These coming weeks and months will be a time of unprecedented challenges for our city.

Our world; and, possibly, our species.

It has been clear from the start that Covid-19 affects both sides of the economy: supply and demand. The supply of goods and services is impaired because factories and offices are shut and output falls as a result. But demand also falls because consumers stay at home and stop spending, and businesses mothball investment.

Conventional policy measures-- such as cutting the cost of borrowing or reducing taxes-- tend to work better when there is a demand shock. There is a limit to what they can do in the event of a combined supply and demand shock.

...[T]he economic disruption caused by Covid-19 is enormous. Entire countries-- Italy and Spain-- are in lockdown. The problems facing airline companies are symptomatic of a crisis facing the global travel industry, from cruise companies to hotels that cater for tourists. Discretionary spending by consumers appears to have collapsed in recent days.

Despite globalisation, much economic activity remains local but here, too, there will be an impact as people cancel appointments at the dentist, put off having their hair cut and wait to put their house on the market.

Paul Dales, the chief UK economist at Capital Economics, has estimated that output in Britain will shrink by 2.5% in the second quarter but says a 5% fall is possible. The more pessimistic estimate looks quite plausible.

What’s more, in a service-sector dominated economy much of the lost output is never going to be recovered. If people do not go out to their weekly meal at their favourite local restaurant for the next two months they are not going to eat out four times a week when the fear of infection has been lifted.

It also seems likely that the economic pain will go on for longer than originally estimated. Having imposed bans and restrictions, governments and private-sector bodies will be cautious about removing them. Countries such as Italy will be wary of opening their borders while there is a fear of reinfection. The idea that Premier League football will be back by early April is fanciful.

There is also a question of how long it will take consumer and business confidence to recover. Policy action by central banks and finance ministries can help in this respect but only so much. The chances are that the imminent recession will be U-shaped: a steep decline followed by a period of bumping along the bottom. There will be recovery but it will take time and only after much damage has been caused.

People who tell you schools will reopen later in the month or next month or that "postponed" events will be rescheduled soon are either stupid or deceitful. Our politicians need to do two things immediately:

• remote voting for Congress and state legislatures
• removing voting for primaries and the 2020 general election

Immediately means now. Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf did the right thing by ordering a total lockdown for Bucks and Chester counties but the Speaker of the state House, Michael Turzai (R), is refusing to postpone the election, knowing it is the only chance the GOP has to hold onto the seat.

Jay Ponti wrote over the weekend that words like "reckless," "criminal," and "villainous" only begin to describe the Democratic Party’s "willingness to threaten the lives of voters by not postponing voting at the polls" due to the pandemic.

The NHL, NBA and MLS have shut down.

Italy’s government imposed the closure of restaurants, bars and almost all shops except food stores and pharmacies. Three weeks ago Italian citizens were going about their day, business as usual, and today the country is in chaos.

Given the alarming rate of contagion, our country may be on the verge of the worst health catastrophe in modern U.S. history.

World leaders. A-list Hollywood actors. Members of Congress have tested positive for Covid-19. Not even POTUS was able to avoid being exposed to the virus that is ten times deadlier than the flu.

The difference between them and millions of poor people is that they have access to the best health care and will be at low risk to die from exposure.

Major museums, schools, and Universities. All closed.

Fucking Disney World.

Why? Because lives are at stake.

AEG has canceled Coachella and all North American concerted tours, but the democratic party is determined to put thousands of lives at risk just so it can push through their establishment candidate, Joe Biden.

The extent to which the virus is contained depends entirely on how the country responds to the crisis. Singapore and Taiwan are the gold standards in Coronavirus containment.

“While other countries waffled on acknowledging the danger of the outbreak, Taiwan took action immediately under the guidance of its National Health Command Center, which the country established after the deadly SARS outbreak in 2003 that killed 73 people there.”

Anywhere there are crowds of people in public is an unacceptable risk.

It is not overstating to say that holding primaries in the middle of a global pandemic is state-sanctioned genocide. To continue down this path following the fiascos in California and Texas that witnessed voters in line for up to 2–4 hours. Who were these people who stood in line for hours, refusing to be denied their sacred franchise?

Poor and working black and Latino voters.

These will be the ones to suffer the worst impact.

The effects won’t stop there. We need to understand that it is not just those who are infected in public spaces. It will affect the loved ones at home and everyone else that each infected person comes into contact with. Elders are the highest risk. Approximately 70–80% of senior citizens in other countries contracted the virus from a family member.

The only way to “flatten the curve” of Coronavirus is through quarantine. Global supply chains have been disrupted due to Trump’s trade war. Critical supplies for citizens and health workers like n95 respirator masks are all running out. The administration has forced the CDC to cut spending.

We are at a watershed moment.

The shelves of supermarkets are already being stripped bare, but we have not begun to see the worst.

We are in the moment when the shoreline is receding before the tipping point when the tsunami hits. The administration has been aware of this virus since December and has done nothing about it. Are we to believe that no one in the democratic leadership has been aware of this or the decimation of the CDC? Did anyone raise the alarm? Where was our media?

Failed leadership. Our institutions continue to fail us.

Liam O'Mara is the progressive Democrat and history professor running for the Riverside County congressional seat held by corrupt and incompetent Trump stooge Ken Calvert. O'Mara, however, knows that the incompetence isn't partisan and that there are Democrats every bit as bad as Republicans. This morning je told me that "Recently John Delaney tweeted that during a pandemic was a bad time to be discussing Medicare for all. With all due respect, it is the best time to be discussing it, since if we had done it decades ago we would be in far better shape to face a pandemic. Better late than never, though, and we need to be looking at how to prepare America for health care emergencies. Outbreaks like this are as inevitable as the sunrise-- they have recurred throughout history, and the best we can do is to be ready for them. Medicare helps to accomplish that, so here are a few points to consider:

Recently John Delaney tweeted that during a pandemic was a bad time to be discussing Medicare for all. With all due respect, it's a great time, since if we'd done it decades ago we would be in far better shape to face a pandemic. Better late than never-- we need to prepare America for health care emergencies. Outbreaks are as inevitable as the sunrise; they've recurred throughout history, and the best we can do is to be ready. Medicare helps to accomplish that, so here are a few points to consider:

1. 28 million Americans are uninsured, and tens of millions more are under-insured, with large co-pays and deductibles. People cannot afford to seek treatment and have been conditioned by experience not to try. It doesn't matter if the gov. says, "come on and get tested, it's free"-- lots of people won't hear it and a lot more won't believe it. (In fact, they should not, since our leaders have already lied about what they are providing in the way of emergency relief. Consider the sick-pay issue and the exemptions offered to so many businesses.) People who seek treatment for COVID-19 can get stuck with huge bills they cannot afford, raising again the spectre of ruined lives. We are the only rich country in the world where people declare bankruptcy over illnesses.

2. Without actual coverage, many Americans will be forced into emergency rooms when their symptoms get too bad to ignore. This can swiftly overwhelm capacity, since the need for profit slows investment in hospital capacity. We do not have existing capacity to treat a major pandemic regardless-- look back to the Spanish Flu of 1918, and at what China did in Wuhan, for an example of what is needed to manage a large-scale outbreak. But emergency rooms are especially costly and easily overrun by high demand, and the lack of regular coverage makes them the only option for many. This is a problem unique in the rich world, and makes no logical sense.

3. Cost considerations have compromised our readiness in other ways-- health care centres nationwide are short of equipment needed to treat a pandemic, from masks and sterilizing agents on down to beds and staff. As it is, rural America is chronically short of health care providers. The need to make a profit from health care leads to very different calculations than a simple emphasis on the public good.

4. Regular check-ups and preventive care also increase the resilience of a population. We are the 35th healthiest population in the world, despite extraordinary spending on health care, so we are getting poor value for our money. With universal health care, Americans would be healthier overall, and we would not have a large pool of citizens & residents who never see a provider and may be at higher risk due to untreated chronic heart & lung illnesses.

5. And again, lack of coverage means that by the time many seek treatment, their condition will be quite bad, and they'll have exposed more people, both at the medical facility and in their daily lives and workplaces. 44% of Americans report they do not seek treatment when sick due to cost. The outrageous cost of health care in the US puts us all at far greater risk. This is inexcusable. It's time for Medicare for all.

Nabilah Islam doesn't agree with John Delaney's position any more than Liam is. She's running for an open suburban seat north of Atlanta and a few hours ago she told us that "There is nothing I have more confidence in than the American people and our ability to persevere. I know that like we have in the past so many times, we will too overcome the coronavirus. What we CANNOT do is wait for the next pandemic to fight and pass Medicare for All. While the costs of testing are being waived, what about the cost of treatment? Without a centralized system, we will have a hard time streamlining supply orders. By states and hospitals estimating bed counts by the insured instead of populations, we will not have the capacity needed. If the coronavirus has shown us anything, we need Medicare for All Now."

Montana state Rep and congressional candidate Tom Winter reminded us that "It shouldn't have taken a global pandemic for us to finally realize our government and healthcare system does not work for America's working families. I've been working as a state legislator throughout this crisis to connect public health and healthcare professionals with our state and local government to help with triage plans and general preparedness. What immediately jumped out to me was how little capacity our hospitals and healthcare providers have to deal with an influx of patients. If the other wealthy countries of the world that have single payer healthcare systems-- and much greater capacity than us-- are bending to their breaking points as this pandemic reaches new levels, then I worry our system is woefully unprepared for the approaching storm. In the meantime, our politics is finally catching up on certain baseline policies like guaranteeing paid sick leave, waiving out-of-pocket expenses for life-saving testing and care, lowering drug costs, and countless other commonsense things that already exist in single payer systems. When we get through this crisis I think Americans will have a much greater appreciation for the security a single payer healthcare system could provide for their family's health. Not to mention the blowback that will happen when we all realize the ridiculousness that all of these life-saving policies were only temporary. Healthcare is a right for all, whether we are in a pandemic or not."