COVID19 Update - Day 30

US Tests: 2,360,512
US Cases: 457,963
US Deaths: 16,399
Worldwide Cases: 1,596,496
Worldwide Deaths: 95,506

Because Trump leaves a slimy trail of scandal everywhere he goes, it was just a matter of time before a scandal arose from the ashes of the coronavirus pandemic.  And although the hard facts are yet to be determined, the rough contours of it are starting to take shape.

Over the past week, there have been multiple reports of federal agencies seizing shipments of medical supplies ordered by states and municipalities.  The reasons for this remain unclear, but we're starting to get some hints about what's going on:

As we work to find out the scope and goals of the White House’s seizure of medical goods across the United States, a simpler pattern is coming into view: the White House seizes goods from public officials and hospitals across the country while doling them out as favors to political allies and favorites, often to great fanfare to boost the popularity of those allies. The Denver Post today editorialized about one of the most egregious examples. Last week, as we reported, a shipment of 500 ventilators to the state of Colorado was intercepted and rerouted by the federal government. Gov. Jared Polis (D) sent a letter pleading for the return of the equipment. Then yesterday President Trump went on Twitter to announce that he was awarding 100 ventilators to Colorado at the behest of Republican Senator Cory Gardner, one of the most endangered Republicans on the ballot this year. As the Post put it, “President Donald Trump is treating life-saving medical equipment as emoluments he can dole out as favors to loyalists. It’s the worst imaginable form of corruption — playing political games with lives.”

. . .

New examples of confiscations or rerouted orders crop up almost every day. Here’s one about a shipment of test kit materials bound for the PeaceHealth hospital system in the Pacific Northwest seized and shipped, purportedly, to the East Coast. The supplies would allow hospitals like Bellingham, Washington’s St Joseph’s Hospital to do tests on premises and more quickly ascertain who is COVID-positive and who’s not. “Our analyzers remain idle, while we continue to send specimens to outside laboratory testing sites, prioritizing labs based on the shortest turnaround times,” a spokesman for the hospital system told The Bellingham Herald.

For all the confusion, what is clear is that the federal government is demanding that states, localities and hospital systems find their own supplies while systematically interdicting those they do purchase and rerouting them in other directions while providing no explanation of what standards are being used to distribute them. At the same time, Republican officeholders keep turning up announcing windfalls of medical supplies courtesy of the President. In many cases, like Gardner, they’re Republicans within blue or purple states.

It's no exaggeration to say that Trump and Kushner are literally killing people for political gain.

And while this is just the most egregious example of Trump's misbehavior, it is sadly not the only one.  Although Trump literally can't be bothered to pay attention during his daily briefing, he's a savant when it comes to multitasking corruption.

This next story has two parts to it. First there's this:

President Trump and his Republican allies are launching an aggressive strategy to fight what many of the administration’s own health officials view as one of the most effective ways to make voting safer amid the deadly spread of Covid-19: the expanded use of mail-in ballots.

. . .

The new political effort is clearly aimed at helping the president’s re-election prospects, as well as bolstering Republicans running further down the ballot. While his advisers tend to see the issue in more nuanced terms, Mr. Trump obviously views the issue in a stark, partisan way: He has complained that under Democratic plans for national expansion of early voting and voting by mail, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

This is an old Republican tactic.  Since Republican voters tend to be wealthier and more enthusiastic than Democratic voters, depressing voter turnout gives Republicans an advantage.  This is why Republicans passionately support voter ID laws, it's why they shut down polling places, it's why the Roberts court gutted the preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act.

From a political perspective, the coronavirus is a godsend for Republicans, because it provides a perfect excuse to keep voters away from the polls.  The logical course of action is to institute universal vote by mail in time for the November election, and so Republicans are preparing to fight tooth and nail to prevent it.

And you may well be surprised by how far they'll go to shut down vote by mail:

The U.S. Postal Service’s top official pleaded with lawmakers Thursday for a $75 billion federal bailout, saying her agency is hemorrhaging cash so quickly that it could go bankrupt by the end of this fiscal year because of the coronavirus crisis.

Speaking via video conference with members of the House Oversight Committee, Postmaster General Megan Brennan said the USPS anticipates losing $13 billion in revenue this year “directly” because of the viral pandemic, which has prompted a variety of businesses to stop mailing advertisements and other letters that bring in the service’s bread and butter income.

. . .

“The Postal Service is holding on for dear life, and unless Congress and the White House provide meaningful relief in the next stimulus bill, the Postal Service could cease to exist," Maloney said in a statement.

Despite the USPS’s dire financial situation, President Trump voiced skepticism about a bailout on Wednesday, instead suggesting that the service raises levies on companies like Amazon.

This is just speculation on my part, but it seems likely that Trump is unwilling to rescue the Post Office, at least in part, because he wants to undermine the viability of vote by mail.

On the personal side, it seems likely that today I learned of the first case of someone I know personally suffering from the coronavirus.  One of my coworkers (who I haven't seen personally in 4 weeks, due to shelter-in-place) is quite sick with symptoms consistent with COVID19.

But how absurd is this: She doesn't know for certain that it's COVID19, because she's not eligible to be tested, because she's not sick enough to be admitted to ICU.  So even though all of her symptoms are consistent with COVID19, she can't get a test --- and she works for a health care provider!  It's absolutely disgraceful that there aren't sufficient tests available more than month into the crisis.