COVID19 Update - Day 51

US Tests: 6,231,182
US Cases: 1,061,101
US Deaths: 57,266
Worldwide Cases: 3,249,667
Worldwide Deaths: 232,936

It appears that while the death rate in the U.S. is no longer increasing, it's not really decreasing, either.  Today the number of deaths jumped by more than 2,000, just like it did yesterday, and the day before.  So naturally, Trump has decided to declare victory:

Trump today: "Our death totals, our numbers, per million people, are really very, very strong. We're very proud of the job we've done." Via CSPAN pic.twitter.com/gOi7DIJIQX

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) April 30, 2020

And if that's not sufficiently embarrassing/enraging, Trump has decided that he has more important things to do than worry about some silly pandemic:

President Donald Trump says he is planning to travel to Arizona next week and is looking forward to resuming campaign rallies after spending more than a month mostly cooped up at the White House because of the coronavirus.

Trump says he is looking forward to his Arizona trip next week and also hopes to visit Ohio soon despite the fact that much of the nation remains on some sort of lockdown as the virus continues to spread.

He says: “We’re going to start to move around and hopefully in the not-too-distant future, we’ll have some massive rallies and people will be sitting next to each other.”

Of course, no summary of today's events would be complete without mentioning that terrorists armed white citizens concerned about Michigan's stay-at-home order stormed occupied hung out at the state capitol:

Guns are permitted inside the Michigan capitol though, oddly, protest signs are not.

“These folks are a small minority of people who are vocally opposed the governor’s stay at home executive order,” Rosie Jones, a spokesperson for Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich (D), told TPM. “Although, their message is muddled with inflammatory language like ‘tyrants get your rope’ and images of swastikas and confederate flags.”

It seems that law enforcement removed all of the protestors from the premises.  Does anyone want to guess what would have happened to the protesters if they had all been black?

Or Muslim?

How likely do you think it is that the Cult of Trump would have supported this kind of stupidity from a group like that?

No personal news today, but I just wanted to make an observation that Trump and the Republicans seem to have pretty clearly given up at this point.  They can see that their efforts to address the pandemic are failing, and they refuse to take the hard steps necessary to actually address it (read: conduct 2 million tests per day rather than 200,000, and insist on closing down until that's a reality).  So they've decided just to claim victory and go on with business as usual, and ignore the death and damage to the economy.

I also have a prediction.  Today, according to the COVID Tracking Project, the number of coronavirus deaths stands at 57,266.

I predict that in one month, on May 31, that number has grown to more than 150,000.  I'll be delighted if I'm wrong.

Unfortunately, I doubt that I will be.

COVID19 Update - Day 50

US Tests: 6,026,170
US Cases: 1,033,157
US Deaths: 55,225
Worldwide Cases: 3,187,030
Worldwide Deaths: 227,177

In yesterday's post, I pointed out that the Republican definition of 'freedom' is being forced to work during a pandemic.  Today we learned that in Iowa at least, anyone choosing to make their own safety, their families' safety, or public safety their top priority can say goodbye to unemployment benefits:

Gov. Kim Reynolds noted the requirement for workers to return when called back by employers during a press conference last week. IWD Director Beth Townsend said the return is critical to the state's fiscal recovery.

“To get the economy going, in order for us to have a good recovery, we need employees to return to work when there’s an opportunity for them to do that," Townsend said in a Des Moines Register interview last week.

Failing to return to work out of fear of catching the virus would be considered a voluntary resignation, which disqualifies workers from receiving unemployment benefits. Workers who do not return can collect benefits only under certain circumstances, such as being sick due to the virus or living with an infected family member, IWD officials said this week.

And as if forcing lower-wage workers to work during a pandemic weren't bad enough, Trump and the GOP have so far refused to contribute a dime to help cover funeral costs for any coronavirus victims, breaking from long-standing tradition:

Often in disasters, the federal government steps in to reimburse families for funeral expenses. FEMA offered funeral assistance after Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy. The amount varies, but a September 2019 report from the Government Accountability Office found that FEMA paid about $2.6 million in response to 976 applications for funeral costs of victims of three 2017 hurricanes, or an average of about $2,700 per approved application.

But with the coronavirus, the funding stream has remained closed, despite calls from politicians including New York Democrats Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. At least 58,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the United States, and those deaths are coming as tens of millions of people deal with lost jobs.

In response to questions, FEMA stated that the decision on which programs to fund is in Trump’s hands.

And on the personal side, today I learned that my childrens' high school will be having a 'Drive Through Celebration' of teaching and learning on Friday.  There will be an emphasis on social distancing; students and their parents will drive along a prescribed route past the high school, where teachers and staff will be cheering for the students.

Under different circumstances, I would find this all rather cheesy, but given the extraordinary times we're living through, I think it's a really nice effort to bring the community together.

COVID19 Update - Day 49

US Tests: 5,795,728
US Cases: 1,005,592
US Deaths: 52,525
Worldwide Cases: 3,094,829
Worldwide Deaths: 216,160

I'm going to start with the personal side today, and just let all of my readers know (yes, both of you), that I enjoy eating meat.  As soon as I finish writing this, I'm going to start making dinner for my kids and myself, which will feature chicken.  During the summer, we often grill hamburgers, and a year ago I absolutely fell in love with a good ribeye steak.

And don't even get me started on bacon.  I once worked with a woman who flat-out didn't like bacon.  She didn't have any dietary restrictions for medical, religious or ethical reasons --- she just didn't like the way it tastes.  Which I absolutely cannot comprehend.  If you're a Jew, or a vegan, or otherwise have some reason why you CHOOSE not to eat bacon, that I can understand.

But I just cannot fathom how someone can dislike it on the merits.

The reason I'm boring you with this is to make it clear that my objections to the latest Republican idiocy is wholly on the basis of workers' rights, and not in any way based on a dislike of meat:

President Donald Trump will sign an executive order Tuesday meant to stave off a shortage of chicken, pork and other meat on American supermarket shelves because of the coronavirus.

The order will use the Defense Production Act to classify meat processing as critical infrastructure to keep production plants open.

The order comes after industry leaders warned that consumers could see meat shortages in a matter of days after workers at major facilities tested positive for the virus. A senior White House official said the administration was working to prevent a situation in which a majority of processing plants shut down for a period of time, which could lead to an 80% drop in the availability of meat in supermarkets. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the order before its release.

Sure, Trump had to be badgered into using the Defense Production Act to make sure hospitals have enough PPE, but when America's meat supply is in danger, he rushes in!

It's worth emphasizing the reason WHY meat production is threatened (from the same story):

Tyson ran a full-page advertisement in The New York Times and other newspapers Sunday outlining the difficulty of producing meat while keeping more than 100,000 workers safe and shutting some plants.

“As pork, beef and chicken plants are being forced to close, even for short periods of time, millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain,” it read.

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which represents 1.3 million food and retail workers, said Tuesday that 20 U.S. food-processing and meatpacking union workers in the U.S. have died and that an estimated 6,500 are sick or have been exposed to the virus while working near someone who tested positive.

Trump has no intention of solving the underlying problem, because (as he has spent the past 2 months amply demonstrating) he can't.  Workers will continue to get sick --- only now, even if a company like Tyson wants to do the responsible thing and keep workers safe, they won't be allowed to.

Which means, more meat-packaging workers will get infected, and those infected workers will be supplying the meat to your dining room table.  You might think the Republicans would be concerned about the possibility that someone might decide to sue over this, and you'd be right.  They've already come up with a plan to deal with potential litigation:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday the next coronavirus relief legislation must include liability protections for business owners who reopen and indicated he would be open to some aid for beleaguered states.

The House and Senate both plan to convene in Washington on May 4 and resume business with the expectation of additional action to respond to the novel coronavirus pandemic that has shut down businesses and thrown millions of people out of work.

As some states begin gradually lifting stay-at-home orders and other restrictions, McConnell said that without protection from lawsuits, business owners could end up with years of legal claims over their efforts to restart the economy.

And what if some worker decides it's not worth the risk, to him, to his family, or to the people eating the meat he packs?  Well, he could always quit his job as a matter of principle.  Although, since 26 million Americans have lost their jobs in the last 5 weeks, he'd probably have to depend on unemployment benefits in order to survive.  But --- oh, wait:

The $2 trillion coronavirus rescue package hit a minor snag on Wednesday afternoon when four Republican senators gave a press conference objecting to its unemployment insurance provisions, noting that in some cases the $600-per-week enhancement to unemployment benefits in the package would mean workers who become unemployed could collect benefits that exceed the wages they used to earn. Senators Lindsay Graham, Ben Sasse, Rick Scott, and Tim Scott are concerned that such a high level of benefits would encourage people to stay out of work and collect benefits instead.

So, in summary, the GOP wants:

• To require meat-processing businesses to remain open.
• To give the workers no alternative but to work during a pandemic, no matter the risks to them, their families or society.
• To prevent anyone from suing over subsequent sickness or death resulting from this setup.

This is exactly the kind of government tyrrany that the folks in the MAGA hats claim to oppose.  But since Trump is the one pulling the levers, they'll probably call it 'freedom'.

COVID19 Update - Day 48

US Tests: 5,593,495
US Cases: 981,134
US Deaths: 50,327
Worldwide Cases: 3,036,770
Worldwide Deaths: 210,804

I'm starting with the personal side today.  On advice of a college friend (hi Sally!), I just read Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning, which resonated for me.  But I mention it here because one particular description of Frankl's theory of logotherapy explains a lot about the miscreant currently occupying the White House.  Professor William Winslade of the Hastings Center summarizes logotherapy as follows:

To achieve personal meaning, he says, one must transcend subjective pleasures by doing something that "points, and is directed to something, or someone, other than oneself . . . by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love."

I think this is the real reason why we see a story like this one every couple of weeks --- saying that Trump is feeling 'frustrated' or 'isolated'.  The man has not once in his life cared about serving a cause, and he has never loved anyone but himself.

And his insistence on continually feeding his ego is why he constantly demands praise for the 'great job' he insists he's done in handling the pandemic, when in fact he's done almost nothing at all:

U.S. intelligence agencies issued warnings about the novel coronavirus in more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February, months during which he continued to play down the threat, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The repeated warnings were conveyed in issues of the President’s Daily Brief, a sensitive report that is produced before dawn each day and designed to call the president’s attention to the most significant global developments and security threats.

For weeks, the PDB — as the report is known — traced the virus’s spread around the globe, made clear that China was suppressing information about the contagion’s transmissibility and lethal toll, and raised the prospect of dire political and economic consequences.

But the alarms appear to have failed to register with the president, who routinely skips reading the PDB and has at times shown little patience for even the oral summary he takes two or three times per week, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified material.

And in closing, I'd just like to remind everyone that COVID19 doesn't care about your politics.

COVID19 Update - Day 47

US Tests: 5,441,079
US Cases: 959,056
US Deaths: 49,164
Worldwide Cases: 2,970,705
Worldwide Deaths: 206,495

Are you ready for the second wave?  GOP governors throughout the south are re-opening their states far too soon.  So in a week or so, we can expect the rate of cases and deaths in the U.S. to start climbing again.  Take Georgia, for example:

Of the 20 counties in the nation with the most deaths per capita from covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, five are in southwest Georgia, including Early, where Means lives. In the state’s hardest-hit places, African Americans make up most of the population, and about 30 percent of residents live in poverty. They’ve struggled for years with a severe lack of access to health care. Some counties have no doctors, no hospitals and a high percentage of uninsured residents. The facilities and physicians already were stretched thin.

Then came the coronavirus, fast-moving and super-infectious, preying on the elderly and those with underlying health problems — perfectly primed to devastate a vulnerable population.

When Gov. Brian Kemp (R) announced he was lifting restrictions on businesses, some residents in this region felt cast off, like the state was telling them to fend for themselves once again.

“To open up businesses where it’s impossible to practice social distancing — hair salons, nail salons, theaters — people are like, what? You want to put everybody in a closed room, and that’s supposed to be okay?” said Demetrius Young, a city commissioner in Albany, the center of the state’s epidemic. “For black folks, it’s like a setup: Are you trying to kill us?”

Without a widespread testing infrastructure and local health departments able to do meticulous contact tracing, Young said, his region will continue to suffer. Georgia ranks 40th in tests per resident, well behind states that have pledged to maintain their shelter-in-place orders, according to an analysis of Covid Tracking Project data. Some models say the state has not yet reached its peak number of daily deaths, suggesting the worst is still to come.

Thanks, GOP.

COVID19 Update - Day 46

US Tests: 5,184,635
US Cases: 931,698
US Deaths: 47,980
Worldwide Cases: 2,892,508
Worldwide Deaths: 202,455

Today marked a few unfortunate milestones of the pandemic.  Today we crossed the 5 million threshold for tests in the U.S.  That's a lot, but it's still less than 2% of the U.S. population --- and not even 20% of the tests Trump promised would be done by the end of March.

The worldwide death total also crossed the 200,000 mark.

That's really all I've got for today.  My kids are here this weekend, so I'm going to spend time with them and try to forget about the disaster that is reality for a while.

Okay, I lied.  I was just checking the headlines and noticed this.  FEMA is still stealing medical supplies from various hospitals, and apparently even the VA isn't immune:

Health care workers at VA hospitals have for weeks warned of severely inadequate stocks of personal protective equipment. And in an interview with The Washington Post, the VA’s Executive in Charge Richard Stone pointed the finger at FEMA.

The agency, Stone told the Post, had directed vendors with VA orders to instead send equipment to FEMA for the federal stockpile of such supplies.

“I had 5 million masks incoming that disappeared,” Stone told the Post. Some VA hospitals, Stone acknowledged, are now on “austerity levels.”

I suppose any veterans who die as a result can take solace in the knowledge that Trump used them as an excuse to criticize NFL players peacefully protesting police brutality.

COVID19 Update - Day 45

US Tests: 4,883,802
US Cases: 890,816
US Deaths: 45,786
Worldwide Cases: 2,789,315
Worldwide Deaths: 195,920

It's hard to keep an accurate tally these days.  Pretty much from the start, I've been getting my data for the United States from The COVID Tracking Project, and that's what I'll continue to use.  As of 4:54 PM CDT on Friday, April 24, it says there have been 45,786 #COVID19 deaths in the U.S.  But a lot of other media outlets are reporting the number is above 50,000.

Whatever the actual count, it's higher than it needs to be.  And Trump's daily stupidity carnival, including most recently his suggestion of using disinfectant to cure those infected with coronavirus does absolutely nothing to help.

How is Trump this actively stupid?  Today, he's claiming that he was being sarcastic when he suggested using disinfectant or 'very powerful light' to destroy coronavirus cells within an infected individual.  It's bad enough that he clearly thought this was a practical idea; what's worse is the way the idea likely entered his head:

The leader of the most prominent group in the US peddling potentially lethal industrial bleach as a “miracle cure” for coronavirus wrote to Donald Trump at the White House this week.

In his letter, Mark Grenon told Trump that chlorine dioxide – a powerful bleach used in industrial processes such as textile manufacturing that can have fatal side-effects when drunk – is “a wonderful detox that can kill 99% of the pathogens in the body”. He added that it “can rid the body of Covid-19”.

A few days after Grenon dispatched his letter, Trump went on national TV at his daily coronavirus briefing at the White House on Thursday and promoted the idea that disinfectant could be used as a treatment for the virus. To the astonishment of medical experts, the US president said that disinfectant “knocks it out in a minute. One minute!”

He went on to say: “Is there a way we can do something, by an injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that.”

For God's sake, he's the president of the United States!  There are well-trained, experienced experts whose job it is to brief him daily with good, reliable information grounded in science, so that he can be as informed as possible.  And yet he chooses to ignore them and instead pay attention to some random guy who sent him a letter.

It would be funny if it weren't dangerous.  And make no mistake --- it IS dangerous:

President Trump’s absurd suggestion that injections of disinfectants could help cure the coronavirus wasn’t, as he later suggested, a harmless stroke of sarcasm. More than 100 people in Maryland have earnestly called the state’s emergency management hotline asking about the use of household cleaners to treat COVID-19, according to Gov. Larry Hogan’s communications director.

That's 100 people who were stupid enough to think Trump might be suggesting something reasonable, but fortunately smart enough to check with an actual authority before drinking bleach.  I guarantee at least one person didn't bother to get a second opinion --- and so that death is on Trump's head, too, along with the majority of the 45,000+ in the U.S. so far.

Today is a sad day for me, because before the shutdown, it was going to be a happy day.  Today is the day I had planned to take my daughter to my alma mater (Grinnell College), for a prospective student visit and interview.  But of course, that was cancelled long ago, because the campus has shut down, because coronavirus.

On the other hand, today isn't all bad, because today the hand-sewn masks I ordered finally arrived!

COVID19 Update - Day 44

US Tests: 4,660,250
US Cases: 859,318
US Deaths: 44,014
Worldwide Cases: 2,703,615
Worldwide Deaths: 190,490

The president of the United States is a dangerous idiot:

"The disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. It gets in the lungs" -- Trump seems to suggests that injecting disinfectant inside people could be a treatment for the coronavirus pic.twitter.com/amis9Rphsm

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 23, 2020

Remember, the Democrats did everything possible, within the limits of the Constitution, to remove this corrupt ignoramous from office.   Every Republican in the House of Representatives, along with every Republican Senator (other than Mitt Romney) voted to keep him right where he is.

And I don't hear any Republican members of Congress stepping up to condemn his actions now.  Which means that every single Republican (with the possible exception of Romney) is complicit in the damage this man is doing to America.

Remember in November.

COVID19 Update - Day 43

US Tests: 4,466,559
US Cases: 826,936
US Deaths: 42,103
Worldwide Cases: 2,627,630
Worldwide Deaths: 183,336

The US continues to suffer 2,000+ deaths daily.  We're not seeing exponential growth any more (which is good), but we're not seeing the pandemic start to subside, either.  And yet, there are still politicians in the country saying stuff like this:

Las Vegas Mayor says time to reopen the city, let private businesses compete for which business can drive the least viral spread. pic.twitter.com/E00wH6Yv74

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 22, 2020

I'm dealing with survivor guilt.  Today the health provider I work for announced that it was furloughing employees, and terminating the contracts of a number of contractors.  Fortunately for me, I was not among the contractors released.  I don't know exactly how severe the cutbacks were, although anecdotally I heard that some departments lost 50% of their staff or more.

'Reopening the economy' won't change anything, because it will just lead to more infections and more death, and most people will still prefer to stay home rather than risk death.  Which means you can 'reopen' things all you want, but it still won't reverse out economic slide.

Short of a vaccine (which ain't coming any time soon), the way we truly get back to normal is by testing everyone.  Which means we need millions more tests than the relatively puny 4.5 million we've administered in the past 2 months.

Which won't happen without real leadership at the national level.

Which means it won't happen.

COVID19 Update - Day 42

US Tests: 4,155178
US Cases: 799,717
US Deaths: 39,995
Worldwide Cases: 2,561,915
Worldwide Deaths: 177,200

Trump and his friends are dying to 're-open' the economy.  Well no, that's not quite accurate.  The truth is that they're eager to have OTHER PEOPLE die so we can re-open the economy.

This is not hyperbole:

The Texas leader [Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick] then doubled down on his grim argument for allowing people to be put at risk of death from COVID-19 to help the economy recover from the damage brought on by the outbreak – a proposal that was immediately met with a flood of criticism.

“What I said when I was with you that night is there are more important things than living,” Patrick told Fox News host Tucker Carlson, referring to when he first made the suggestion last month. “And that’s saving this country for my children and my grandchildren and saving this country for all of us.”

Just to make sure we all know the stakes, I want to call attention to this report from the Department of Health and Human services, which estimates that if we went out tomorrow and returned to life as usual (which is what the Cult of Trump seems to want), there would be 300,000 total deaths, and perhaps more:

A table accompanying the older planning document shows that based on HHS experts’ “best guess” calculations in early April, roughly a third of Americans could be infected and show symptoms and more than 300,000 could die over the duration of the pandemic if social distancing and other mitigation measures were to stop immediately. That is far below earlier estimates of 2.2 million deaths predicted by the influential Imperial College model and the 1.5 million to 2.2 million predicted by the White House had the virus gone unchecked. 

Three hundred thousand deaths without social distancing “would assume a very optimistic case fatality rate,” Jha said. “That’s not where the best estimates are today.”

I think most people are on the same page --- but just in case we're not, it seems obvious that if we can prevent ~300,000 deaths by shutting down the economy for a few months, we do it --- and we deal with the fallout by handing out money.

Aside from the moral imperative not to simply toss 300,000 lives out the window, there's also the fact that allowing those deaths (and many times more infections) is ALSO going to be a drag on the economy, so it's dubious to think that accepting those deaths is preferrable from an economic point of view.

No personal news today.

An Open Letter Regarding Theft of Medical Supplies by Federal Agents

I have sent this letter to my member of Congress and Senators.  I encourage everyone reading this to do the same, and to pass it on to others.

Senator,

I am greatly disturbed by media accounts of multiple instances in which federal agents have intervened to confiscate or otherwise prevent delivery of urgently-needed medical supplies and PPE to states and hospitals.

Most recently, New York magazine described this practice thus: "The federal government is choking supply chains to states like it chokes supply chains to Iran and North Korea."  And there can be no doubt that Trump and his corrupt administration are behind it.

I'm no lawyer, and perhaps this activity does not meet the dictionary definition of treason, but I believe that is a fair characterization.  This isn't simple incompetence or neglect, both of which cannot be tolerated in this time of crisis; this is outright malfeasance.  Congress has a duty to shine a light on this corrupt activity, to investigate it, and to demand that the media report it.

I urge you to do all in your power to make this happen.

COVID19 Update - Day 41

US Tests: 4,003,551
US Cases: 772,524
US Deaths: 37,321
Worldwide Cases: 2,473,209
Worldwide Deaths: 170,042

I'm only going to post one article tonight, because it's probably the most important aspect of the current disaster.  I've discussed it before, and I'm discussing it again --- because it's the story of our own government willfully blocking medical assistance to those in need (emphasis mine):

[T]he Feds are bidding against states who are trying to buy their own supplies, and refusing to interfere in those auctions between states, which have driven prices up by ten times or more. But while you might think that was as bad as federal management of this crisis could be, it is not. This new outrage is deeper: Even those states that are trying to manage their own resources, buying equipment themselves with incredibly scarce resources to aid in a time of crisis, are being stopped, and those resources seized on the way to delivery.

You could call this piracy. You could call it sanctions. The federal government is choking supply chains to states like it chokes supply chains to Iran and North Korea. These blockades aren’t as complete as those surrounding sanctioned regimes, of course, and some amount of the disruption may be honest confusion in a time of crisis. But the disruption is being brought about by federal interference, and unlike the kind of disruptions you’d want to engineer against antagonistic states, the purpose seems completely unclear — indeed the policy is inexplicable and indefensible.

That's it.  I'm not writing anything else tonight, because everyone should be focused on this.  Certainly the media, as well as Congress.

COVID19 Update - Day 40

US Tests: 3,865,864
US Cases: 749,203
US Deaths: 35,793
Worldwide Cases: 2,394,291
Worldwide Deaths: 164,938

This is not your regular flu.  People pushing a certain political agenda have attempted to downplay the seriousness of the current crisis --- partly to excuse Trump's disastrous handling of it, and partly to push for 'reopening' society.  They claim that this is just like any other flu, or that thousands of people die in car accidents every year, and we don't close down the economy for that.

Those people are wrong.  COVID19 really is an exceptional threat, requiring an exceptional response.

And since we haven't revisited it in a while, here's your periodic reminder that federal agents are regularly seizing orders of medical supplies and PPE with no explanation, leaving states and hospitals high and dry in their time of desperate need.

This most recent story, fortunately, has a happy ending.  But it's obscene that in 21st century America, a chief of medicine needs to engage in such subterfuge to obtain medical supplies:

A lead came from an acquaintance of a friend of a team member. After several hours of vetting, we grew confident of the broker’s professional pedigree and the potential to secure a large shipment of three-ply face masks and N95 respirators. The latter were KN95 respirators, N95s that were made in China. We received samples to confirm that they could be successfully fit-tested. Despite having cleared this hurdle, we remained concerned that the samples might not be representative of the bulk of the products that we would be buying. Having acquired the requisite funds — more than five times the amount we would normally pay for a similar shipment, but still less than what was being requested by other brokers — we set the plan in motion. Three members of the supply-chain team and a fit tester were flown to a small airport near an industrial warehouse in the mid-Atlantic region. I arrived by car to make the final call on whether to execute the deal. Two semi-trailer trucks, cleverly marked as food-service vehicles, met us at the warehouse. When fully loaded, the trucks would take two distinct routes back to Massachusetts to minimize the chances that their contents would be detained or redirected.

I need to emphasize that the problem here isn't merely that the federal government isn't providing these supplies in the midst of the worst pandemic this country has seen in the last 100 years.  It's that the federal government is ACTIVELY PREVENTING THE SUPPLIES FROM GETTING TO THE HOSPITALS THAT NEED THEM.

This is a huge, huge scandal with a huge human cost, and it's receiving practically no attention from the media.  In any sane world, Trump and the head of whatever agency is behind this would already be in prison.

On a personal note, I held my usual weekly Zoom conference with college alumni today.  Nothing of great note came from it, other than the fact that some people would like an option of meeting on a day other than Sunday.

I'll see what I can do.  I aim to please.

The other observation --- somewhat surprising, to me, anyway --- is that my local Costco appears to have toilet paper in plentiful supply, and there doesn't seem to be any great demand for it.  I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from this, if any. 

COVID19 Update - Day 39

US Tests: 3,690,482
US Cases: 720,747
US Deaths: 34,139
Worldwide Cases: 2,310,572
Worldwide Deaths: 159,510

Trump's disciples are following their dear leader in responding to the crisis in the stupidest manner possible.  Organized by right-wing talk radio hosts, hundreds of yahoos in red hats are ignoring social distancing and basic safety protocols (like wearing masks) to hold protests at various state capitols:

“You have to do what’s best for your business,” added Mr. Hoffman, who said a rally would take place at the State Capitol on Friday. “You have to do what’s best for your employees and your customers. You have to do what’s best for your livelihood, for your families.”

For some conservative protesters, the rallies are about more than reopening state economies. They are an outlet to express their anger, which is in some cases fueled by conspiracy theories.

Owen Shroyer, a host of a show on Infowars, the far-right website founded by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, is organizing a rally in Austin, Texas, on Saturday. He told his audience this week that he had no fears of either getting arrested or of getting infected with the coronavirus, the spread of which he claimed was a scheme by the Chinese Communist Party and the “Deep State” to destroy the economy and undermine the Trump presidency.

This is yet another manifestation of the magical thinking (if it can be called thinking) which is the hallmark of Trump and his movement.

It's understandable that people want life to return to normal, which is true no matter your politics.  But the Cult of Trump is confusing cause and effect.  We all want the crisis to end, so we can go back to work.  The trumpists seem to believe that going back to work will end the crisis, which is nonsense.

Not only will it lead to additional infections, hospitalizations, and deaths --- thus prolonging the crisis --- but even if all of these folks went 'back to work' tomorrow, it would do nothing to help them financially.  Business owners wouldn't generate enough revenue to be profitable, which means they wouldn't be able to rehire laid off employees, because almost no one would patronize those businesses, because most people aren't willing to risk their own lives or those of their families by pretending the pandemic doesn't exist.

So not only are these protests dangerous to the people participating in them, they are actually counterproductive.  Which is sort of the whole trumpist movement in a nutshell.

Back in the real world, Paul Krugman gives a brief explanation of how Republicans are about to cause far more long-term damage to the economy than is necessary, simply because of their anti-government dogma:

Everyone, and I mean everyone, knows what is really happening: McConnell is trying to get more money for businesses while continuing to shortchange state and local governments. After all, “starve the beast” — forcing governments to cut services by depriving them of resources — has been Republican strategy for decades. This is just more of the same.

This reality leaves Democrats with no choice except to stand firm while they still have leverage. Bear in mind that McConnell could have the money he wants tomorrow if he were willing to meet them halfway. So far, however, he isn’t. Oh, and Trump personally has ruled out aid for the Postal Service.

At a basic level, then, anti-government ideologues are preventing us from responding adequately to the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. Their obstructionism will cause vast suffering, as crucial public services are curtailed. It will also compound the economic damage.

This is a critical moment in our country's history, one for which Republican dogma is uniquely unsuited.

It's time for them to go away permanently.

LATE UPDATE: Too stupid to be believed.  The state of Florida, which has suffered the 9th-most deaths from the virus, has reopened its public beaches.

Let's see how long it takes them to lead the nation in deaths.

COVID19 Update - Day 38

US Tests: 3,557,493
US Cases: 694,520
US Deaths: 32,365
Worldwide Cases: 2,242,868
Worldwide Deaths: 154,209

Unfortunately, we must begin with the latest from Trumpworld, in which --- there's no other way to say it --- the president engaged in treason:

President Trump incited insurrection Friday against the duly elected governors of the states of Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia. Just a day after issuing guidance for re-opening America that clearly deferred decision-making to state officials — as it must under our Constitutional order — the president undercut his own guidance by calling for criminal acts against the governors for not opening fast enough.

. . .

“Liberate” — particularly when it’s declared by the chief executive of our republic — isn’t some sort of cheeky throwaway. Its definition is “to set at liberty,” specifically “to free (something, such as a country) from domination by a foreign power.” We historically associate it with the armed defeat of hostile forces during war, such as the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control during World War II. Just over a year ago, Trump himself announced that “the United States has liberated all ISIS-controlled territory in Syria and Iraq.”

In that context, it’s not at all unreasonable to consider Trump’s tweets about “liberation” as at least tacit encouragement to citizens to take up arms against duly elected state officials of the party opposite his own, in response to sometimes unpopular but legally issued stay-at-home orders. This is especially so given the president’s reference to the Second Amendment being “under siege” in Virginia, where Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam just signed into law a number of gun-safety bills passed during the most recent session of the state general assembly — bills that prompted protests by Second Amendment absolutists at the state capitol in January, leading Northam to declare a state of emergency and temporarily ban firearms from the capitol grounds due to the threat of violence.

This isn't some Saturday Night Live skit.  This is the duly elected (and impeached) president of the United States LITERALLY encouraging his followers to take up arms against other duly elected officials of the U.S.

I'm not a lawyer, but it's difficult for me to see the distinction between this and treason.  But just wait --- not one single elected Republican will voice even the mildest criticism of Trump's insanity.

I'm so eager to save lives, I'm willing to give Republicans electoral advice.  I know they won't take it, but for Republicans, the best political response to Trump's attack on democracy (which just happens to be the correct moral response as well, not that any Republican cares), is to demand immediate impeachment and removal of Trump from office.

Think about it.  If Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell release a joint statement tomorrow demanding Trump's impeachment, they will be seen as putting country before party, and leading the charge to rid America of a corrupt president.  Democrats will be eager to go along (not that they have any choice), and Trump will be removed by a huge --- if not unanimous --- majority.

True, the GOP will face a wicked backlash from Trump voters.  But they will receive lavish praise from a media desperate to find a reason to praise Republicans, they will still have a Republican president --- who's far more electable than Trump!  And most important of all, Pence will actually let the medical experts be in charge of leading the response to the pandemic, which means that more lives will be saved, the economy can restart sooner, and sustain less damage.  Compared to Trump, even a merely adequate performance like Pence will make him look like a genius and statesman, the reincarnation of Winston Churchill.

No one can predict the future, but it's quite likely that things will be more or less 'normal' by the end of September, allowing Pence to run a few victory laps before the election.  If you're a Republican, how can you possibly prefer the alternative, of letting treason Don continue his clown act for another 7 months while Americans are dying by the thousands every day?

Just some free advice, Republican friends.  You're welcome.

And on the personal side, I almost didn't post this update tonight, because I spent 3 hours on a Zoom call with folks.  We played a game online (getting everything to work right was a bit tricky), and then three of us stayed on for another hour or so, chatting (Hi Sheila!  Hi Karin!).  Not as fun as an old-fashioned get-together, of course, but still pretty fun.

COVID19 Update - Day 37

US Tests: 3,401,064
US Cases: 663,260
US Deaths: 30,296
Worldwide Cases: 2,152,647
Worldwide Deaths: 143,802

Rather than beating the corpse of the long-dead horse which is Trump's abysmal handling of the pandemic, tonight I want to focus on things a bit closer to home.  Specifically my home, Minnesota.

To begin with, Minnesota has formally entered into a coalition with Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky, to coordinate their response to the pandemic:

The governors said in a statement announcing the coalition: “We are doing everything we can to protect the people of our states and slow the spread of COVID-19, and we are eager to work together to mitigate the economic crisis this virus has caused in our region. Here in the Midwest, we are bound by our commitment to our people and the community. We recognize that our economies are all reliant on each other, and we must work together to safely reopen them so hardworking people can get back to work and businesses can get back on their feet.”

The statement says the states will “closely examine” at least four factors before reopening:

They include “sustained control” of the rate of new infections and hospitalizations; enhanced ability to test and trace; “sufficient health care capacity” to handle any resurgence; and “best practices” for social distancing.

Today’s announcement comes as President Donald Trump is soon to unroll his plan to reopen the national economy.

The statement seems to go out of its way to underline that state CEOs, and not someone else, will decide what’s right for their residents, and that health will be the top consideration.

The states “will work in close coordination to reopen our economies in a way that prioritizes our workers' health,” the joint statement says. “We look forward to working with experts and taking a fact-based, data-driven approach to reopening our economy in a way that protects families from the spread of COVID-19.”

This is the third such coalition, following the lead of the Northeast coalition (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Delaware) and the West Coast coalition (California, Oregon and Washington).  It goes without saying that the reason the states are doing this is because Trump has completely abdicated any kind of leadership in this time of crisis.

Okay, I guess I'll beat the horse a little bit.

And in a rare piece of good news, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN has announced that they are able to process enough coronavirus tests to reopen business in the state of Minnesota:

Mayo Clinic officials said Tuesday that the health giant has enough testing capacity to meet Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz's benchmarks to reopen businesses after a weeks-long near-shutdown over the coronavirus pandemic.

The Post Bulletin reports on the announcement by Mayo's Dr. William Morice, who chairs the clinic's Department of the Department of Laboratory Medicine. Morice said Mayo could produce 8,000 daily molecular or diagnostic tests to detect infected individuals as well as 10,000 serological tests that can screen for patients who already had the disease.

There are only two ways life gets back to normal.  Either a vaccine is developed, or sufficient testing is available so that all infected individuals can be quarantined while everyone else goes about their lives.  And since a vaccine is still 12 to 18 months away, massively increased testing is our best hope for returning to business as usual any time soon.

As a Minnesotan, obviously this news from the Mayo Clinic is very hopeful indeed.

COVID19 Update - Day 36

US Tests: 3,242,755
US Cases: 632,656
US Deaths: 28,160
Worldwide Cases: 2,062,485
Worldwide Deaths: 136,908

After some hopeful signs last week that the increase in US deaths may be starting to slow down, today is the biggest one-day increase in deaths so far, with nearly 2,500.  And now ProPublica published information finding that we probably shouldn't take the official death total too seriously anyway:

In recent weeks, residents outside Boston have died at home much more often than usual. In Detroit, authorities are responding to nearly four times the number of reports of dead bodies. And in New York, city officials are recording more than 200 home deaths per day — a nearly sixfold increase from recent years.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the United States had logged more than 592,000 cases of COVID-19 and more than 24,000 deaths, the most in the world, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. But the official COVID-19 death count may, at least for now, be missing fatalities that are occurring outside of hospitals, data and interviews show. Cities are increasingly showing signs of Americans succumbing to the coronavirus in their own beds.

Trump always finds a way to make things worse.  Sure, he's essentially delegated all responsibility for the pandemic response to the states, and sure, he's refused to leverage the Defense Production Act to step up production of PPE and ventilators.  And sure, he's played politics with the medical supply chain, seizing shipments of PPE from pretty much everywhere in the country in order to make a big show of doling them out to battleground states with vulnerable GOP politicians who kiss his ass.  And sure, he's holding up desperately-needed stimulus checks to unemployed and lower-income families so that his name can appear on them somehow.  And sure, he's mostly spent the last month staging phony press conferences where he can spread misinformation, whine about how badly he's mistreated, and bring up CEOs and sycophants to sing his praises.

But just when you think he can't get worse --- he finds a way:

President Trump’s decision to suspend funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) is meeting with furious blowback from business groups, Democrats, foreign leaders and health groups, who say he is jeopardizing the global response to the pandemic. 

While Republicans, some of who have joined Trump’s criticism of the WHO, have not slammed the decision to halt funding, the White House is coming under attack from many other directions over the issue.

Who exactly is slamming this decision, and why?  Let me count the ways:

• The U.S. Chamber of Commerce --- a notoriously Trump-friendly organization --- says "Cutting the WHO’s funding during the COVID-19 pandemic is not in U.S. interests given the organization’s critical role assisting other countries — particularly in the developing world — in their response"
• The American Medical Association: "During the worst public health crisis in a century, halting funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) is a dangerous step in the wrong direction that will not make defeating COVID-19 easier"
• The European Union: "There is no reason justifying this move at a moment when their efforts are needed more than ever to help contain & mitigate the #coronavirus pandemic."
• The United Nations: "[N]ot the time to reduce the resources for the operations of the World Health Organization or any other humanitarian organization in the fight against the virus."
• Congressional Democrats (naturally): "A weak person blames others,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement. “This decision is dangerous, illegal and will be swiftly challenged.”

Aside from this decision being self-evidently horrendous on humanitarian grounds --- developing nations will need all the assistance they can get to prevent the virus from wiping out a huge portion of their populations --- it's also self-evidently bad policy on purely selfish grounds.

The way diseases work is that they move from one person to another, infecting and occasionally killing those it infects.  It's in EVERYONE'S best interests --- including American interests --- to limit the spread of the disease as much as possible.  Even limiting the spread OUTSIDE the United States.

The man is a disgrace, an abomination, and responsible for the preventable deaths of thousands.  He belongs in The Hague, not the White House.

On a personal note: For the second time since the pandemic began, I played Cards Against Humanity (rebranded as Remote Insensitivity) with some folks online.  It was fun.  If you have an interest in playing with your friends, you can play here.  No registration or fee required, though it is fairly limited in terms of available features.  Maximum number of players is 6, and I highly recommend scheduling  Zoom meeting (or something similar) to go along with it, since the game site itself does not support any kind of chat/teleconference capability..

COVID19 Update - Day 35

US Tests: 3,081,620
US Cases: 602,473
US Deaths: 25,668
Worldwide Cases: 1,979,477
Worldwide Deaths: 126,539

I'm not sure what happened at the Johns Hopkins coronavirus resource center.  Either I screwed up the number of worldwide cases yesterday, or they made some kind of adjustment, because somehow the total went down.  Let's hope this lower number is the correct one, I guess.

I have nothing special to report about the pandemic on either a personal or national level, so instead I'll just talk about ways you can help others at this time.

Once again, I want to promote the site While at Home.  It offers state-by-state information about how you might be able to get tested for COVID19,   It provides a list of ways one can volunteer to help others at this time.  And it lists a number of well-run charitable organizations you can donate to, if you are fortunate enough to still be employed during this time.

Additionally, now would be a really good time to support the United States Postal Service.  If you haven't heard, the post office is nearing bankruptcy, and is requesting $75 billion in additional funds.  This is partly due to reduced customer demand during the pandemic, but it's mostly due to Republican efforts to cripple the post office during the Bush administration:

In 2006, Congress passed a law that imposed extraordinary costs on the U.S. Postal Service. The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) required the USPS to create a $72 billion fund to pay for the cost of its post-retirement health care costs, 75 years into the future. This burden applies to no other federal agency or private corporation.

If you want to support the post office --- and you should --- you should buy stamps or other items from them, and then call your members of Congress and demand that the USPS get the funding it needs.

If we're still sheltering in place in November, we may need to vote by mail.  And that can't happen if the post office has been shut down --- which is a big part of the reason why Trump opposes giving USPS the funding it needs.

COVID19 Update - Day 34

US Tests: 2,935,006
US Cases: 576,774
US Deaths: 23,369
Worldwide Cases: 2,019,320
Worldwide Deaths: 119,483

Maybe I've been too hard on Trump.  Maybe he is doing a very good job, as he continually insists.  Fortunately, we now have objective data for evaluating Trump's performance: The standards that he set for himself when he declared a national emergency in response to coronavirus one month ago.  Let's see how he's done, shall we?

• Drive-thru coronavirus testing available at pharmacies and retailers. Two Walmart locations, two Walgreen's locations, and four CVS locations.  So a total of 8 such sites nationally.
• In-home testing. None.
• 'Google' website to assist in finding the nearest testing location.  Google proper was never working on such a site.  Verily, a company owned by the same parent company as Google, has developed a website serving five counties in California. (I want to point out that While at Home has such information on its website, developed completely independently of Verily, Google, or the federal government).
• Waive interest on student loans. Done, as of March 20.
• Waive in-state requirements for medical professionals serving Medicate, Medicaid and CHIP patients. Done.
• Fill up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve while gas prices were at record lows.  Nope.  And it's not going to happen, either, now that Trump is bragging about how he worked with OPEC and the Russians to RAISE oil prices.
• 5 million new coronavirus tests within a month.  Yes and no.  We do have the capacity to conduct millions more tests.  What we don't have is the necessary equipment to collect samples for those tests.  And it doesn't seem that will happen any time soon.

COVID19 Update - Day 33

US Tests: 2,805,892
US Cases: 551,826
US Deaths: 21,919
Worldwide Cases: 1,848,503
Worldwide Deaths: 114,185

I'm focusing on the personal side today.  Today was Easter, so Happy Easter to those who celebrate the holiday.  I myself do not.

The day started out pretty crappy.  My kids (19 and 17) spent the night here last night, and because my son likes his room to be cold when he sleeps, he left his windows open last night.  So when I woke up to find it had snowed, I also found his bedroom windows cranked open and covered in snow.  Thank goodness the heat wasn't running to heat up the outside, but of course that meant the house was cold.

After that joy, the kids eventually went back to their mom's house, and I could focus on hosting a 3-hour Zoom meeting that I do for my college divorce and separation support group.  It appears that this will be a regular thing for the duration of the pandemic, though it remains to be seen how well attended it will be.  This is only the second week, and we had a total of 11 participants, which isn't bad, I guess.

In the meantime, my kids (especially my daughter) decided that they enjoyed playing Risk so much yesterday that they invited me to their mom's house to play again tonight, which I did after the Zoom meeting.  I lost --- barely --- and mostly because my kids decided to gang up on me.

But as was the case last two weeks ago, the last time I spent the weekend with my kids, I was able to mostly forget about the pandemic and the grim disaster that is America's response to it.

Almost.

Speaking of grim disaster, the only news I'll share from the national sphere about the pandemic is this interview with Anthony Fauci on Meet The Press, where he basically acknowledges that Trump screwed up badly, while struggling mightily not to say it:

Asked why the President didn't recommend social distancing guidelines until mid-March -- about three weeks after the nation's top health experts recommended they be put in place -- Fauci said, "You know, Jake, as I have said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint. We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes it's not. But we -- it is what it is. We are where we are right now."

COVID19 Update - Day 32

US Tests: 2,665,392
US Cases: 522,569
US Deaths: 20,339
Worldwide Cases: 1,777,517
Worldwide Deaths: 108,862

The numbers are still terrible --- we're now losing roughly 2,000 people per day in the U.S. --- but behind those numbers is actually some good news.  Specifically, the number of deaths is now rising at a linear rate of roughly 2,000 per day, versus the earlier exponential rate.

2,000 deaths per day is still unacceptable --- it's like a slightly smaller 9/11 attack happening each day --- but it's still an improvement over what we've been seeing.  Only time will tell whether the number of new deaths will actually start to drop.  Personally, I'm not optimistic, due to the idiot governors in Florida, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas who were late to shut down their states.  It's likely the worst is still to come in those states, which means another surge in the death toll.

We'll see.

In the never-ending story of how Trump's ignorance and incompetence is costing American lives, today the New York Times published a chain of emails going back and forth between medical experts and high-ranking officials from numerous federal agencies, expressing in real time their horror at Trump's ineptitude.  Here's just a sample, in response to Trump's March 11 address to the nation in which he announced a travel ban from Europe, but no other concrete steps to address the crisis (like the things we know he should have been pushing, like social distancing and shelter-in-place):

It's worth pointing out that a number of prominent Republicans are now openly expressing the dangers of a continued Trump presidency, including George W. Bush's former speechwriter and manager of his campaign war room, and tea-party former Congressman Joe Walsh.

Defending America from Trump is not political; it's necessary for the survival of the country.

And on the personal side, this weekend was once again my turn to spend the weekend with my kids.  Shelter-in-place kept us at home, of course, and I was pleasantly surprised to find they actually like playing Risk, a game I spent hours and hours (and hours and hours and hours and hours and ---) playing when I was in high school and college.  In fact, they liked it a little bit TOO much; we ended up playing THREE GAMES (two of which I won).  And even with that, we found time to watch 4 episodes of Breaking Bad, and even get outside and play some basketball.

I'm still fortunate that no one close to me is sick (fingers crossed), so I can enjoy all of this family time.

COVID19 Update - Day 31

US Tests: 2,528,725
US Cases: 492,678
US Deaths: 18,461
Worldwide Cases: 1,694,594
Worldwide Deaths: 102,669

The Cult of Trump is ready to take a victory lap.  I'm not linking to them, but they're out there, pointing to the fact that 'only' 18,000 Americans have died (as if there aren't going to be thousands more to come), and talking about how that's a lower mortality rate than the regular flu.

Their boasts conveniently ignore two facts:

1. We are still far from knowing the final death tally.  It's going to grow, and will probably grow higher than it needs to because Trump and his acolytes (Governors DeSantis, Ivey, Reeves, etc.) want to 're-open' society sooner than they should.
2. Whatever the final number is, any credit for keeping it relatively low is due mainly to the exact social distancing and shelter-in-place shutdown the Cult of Trump want so badly to be rid of.

I mean, no one should be celebrating when this is happening anywhere in the United States:

Interments are typically done by inmates from the city's Rikers Island jail complex, but during the coronavirus pandemic the job has been taken over by contractors.

City officials haven't explained whether the increase in burials is due to pressure on mortuaries to dispose of bodies more quickly. The virus has been killing hundreds of New York City residents each day this week.

Overwhelmed hospitals have been placing bodies in refrigerated trucks parked outside their doors.

In a surprising twist in the continuing saga of federal confiscation of medical supplies from states and municipalities, FEMA insists that they're not seizing anything:

FEMA and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection are working to prevent domestic brokers, distributors and others from sending critical medical resources overseas, according to the FEMA statement.

“PPE being distributed internally within the United States is not being seized or re-routed by FEMA,” the statement read.

There is no question that SOME federal agents are confiscating medical supplies all over the country.  So the only question is whether FEMA is lying, or whether some other federal agency is responsible.  Either way, it's starting to seem certain that Trump is playing games with these supplies --- and thus with peoples' lives --- in an effort to score political points.

On the personal side, my only personal update is that today is my dad's birthday.  Happy birthday dad!

COVID19 Update - This is Trump's fault

Some thoughts from David Frum.  Mr. Frum was the speechwriter for George W. Bush who coined the phrase 'Axis of Evil', so he's no socialist liberal snowflake.

That the pandemic occurred is not Trump’s fault. The utter unpreparedness of the United States for a pandemic is Trump’s fault. The loss of stockpiled respirators to breakage because the federal government let maintenance contracts lapse in 2018 is Trump’s fault. The failure to store sufficient protective medical gear in the national arsenal is Trump’s fault. That states are bidding against other states for equipment, paying many multiples of the precrisis price for ventilators, is Trump’s fault. Air travelers summoned home and forced to stand for hours in dense airport crowds alongside infected people? That was Trump’s fault too. Ten weeks of insisting that the coronavirus is a harmless flu that would miraculously go away on its own? Trump’s fault again. The refusal of red-state governors to act promptly, the failure to close Florida and Gulf Coast beaches until late March? That fault is more widely shared, but again, responsibility rests with Trump: He could have stopped it, and he did not.

The lying about the coronavirus by hosts on Fox News and conservative talk radio is Trump’s fault: They did it to protect him. The false hope of instant cures and nonexistent vaccines is Trump’s fault, because he told those lies to cover up his failure to act in time. The severity of the economic crisis is Trump’s fault; things would have been less bad if he had acted faster instead of sending out his chief economic adviser and his son Eric to assure Americans that the first stock-market dips were buying opportunities. The firing of a Navy captain for speaking truthfully about the virus’s threat to his crew? Trump’s fault. The fact that so many key government jobs were either empty or filled by mediocrities? Trump’s fault. The insertion of Trump’s arrogant and incompetent son-in-law as commander in chief of the national medical supply chain? Trump’s fault.

Read the whole thing.

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.

 

 

COVID19 Update - Day 29 - Late Update

It would be a remarkable understatement to say that Trump has handled this crisis poorly.  Yet in spite of everything he's done wrong, and everything he's failed to do right, he still demands praise.  The man is pure ego.

And yet --- he still can't even manage the simplest thing.  Essentially everyone has been screaming at the top of their lungs for WEEKS (if not months) that increased testing is the only way we will ever get a handle on this crisis.  And yet:

Some local officials are disappointed the federal government will end funding for coronavirus testing sites this Friday. In a few places those sites will close as a result. This as criticism continues that not enough testing is available.

I'm sure it would be possible for Trump to mishandle the crisis even more badly than he has so far --- although it's difficult to imagine how he would do that.

COVID19 Update - Day 29

US Tests: 2,189,766
US Cases: 423,164
US Deaths: 14,495
Worldwide Cases: 1,511,104
Worldwide Deaths: 88,338

I want to start off this update by once again referring my handful of readers to While at Home, a site set up as a clearinghouse for information about where to get tested for coronavirus, along with ways to help out in your area.

Today the L.A. Times gives more information about the federal government confiscating medical supplies:

Hospital and clinic officials in seven states described the seizures in interviews over the past week. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is not publicly reporting the acquisitions, despite the outlay of millions of dollars of taxpayer money, nor has the administration detailed how it decides which supplies to seize and where to reroute them.

Officials who’ve had materials seized also say they’ve received no guidance from the government about how or if they will get access to the supplies they ordered. That has stoked concerns about how public funds are being spent and whether the Trump administration is fairly distributing scarce medical supplies.

. . . 

Experts say judicious use of this authority could help bring order to the medical supply market by routing critical material — ventilators, masks and other protective gear — from suppliers to the federal government and then to areas of greatest need, such as New York.

Yet there is little indication that federal officials are controlling the market, as hospitals, doctors and others report paying exorbitant prices or resorting to unorthodox maneuvers to get what they need.

Hospital and health officials describe an opaque process in which federal officials sweep in without warning to expropriate supplies.

While the New York Times was inclined to chalk this up to mere incompetence, the L.A. Times draws no such conclusions.  The thing that really makes me uncomfortable are the fact that it is an "opaque process" which no one seems to understand, and which no one from the administration is willing to explain.

Whenever Trump is involved in a situation with a lack of transparency, it usually signifies corruption.

No personal updates today.

COVID19 Update - Day 28

US Tests: 2,054,462
US Cases: 392,594
US Deaths: 12,621
Worldwide Cases: 1,428,428
Worldwide Deaths: 82,020

The New York Times has done some investigation into multiple cases of federal authorities seizing/confiscating shipments of PPE and other medical supplies, and come to the conclusion that it's being done merely out of incompetence, and not something more sinister:

The intervention has confused some local officials and company executives who have watched as the administration has repeatedly called on states to find medical supples on their own without relying on the federal government. But hundreds of hospitals continue to struggle with widespread shortages of test kits, protective gear for staff members and ventilators, according to a new report by the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services.

The chaotic race to procure such supplies has also drawn fraudsters looking to hoard items and resell the equipment at a steep price. A number of F.B.I. investigations are already underway.

. . .

Adding to the disarray is the White House’s ad hoc system of disaster response in which the right call to Mr. Trump can result in one county getting priority over another. Advisers to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, have surprised FEMA officials in recent weeks to deploy supplies to communities after the area’s representatives got through to Mr. Trump, even if the state had not yet gone through the formal process to secure supplies.

Incompetence has been the hallmark of this administration.  There is a common expression for someone who is disorganized and clueless, that he can't find his ass with his hands.  Trump is so disorganized and clueless, he can't find his ass with his hands tied behind him:

The USNS Comfort hospital ship and an emergency hospital at the Javits Center are meant to be relief valves for hospitals in New York City, where more than 14,000 people have been hospitalized for COVID-19. But the facilities have been largely empty, leading officials to try to streamline their operations.

Similarly, although the military has offered its labs to assist in conducting tests for the coronavirus, as of March 25, no tests had been conducted.  The response to the pandemic has been so ad-hoc and chaotic, you wonder who's in charge.

And pretty soon, you realize that no one is.

And finally, here's a story about a potentially quite promising development in COVD-19 treatment for critically ill patients:

In the editorial, Dr. Gattinoni and his colleagues explained further that ventilator settings should be based on physiological findings — with different respiratory treatment based on disease phenotype rather than using standard protocols.

“This, of course, is a conceptual model, but based on the observations we have this far, I don’t know of any model which is better,” he said in an interview.

Anecdotal evidence is increasingly demonstrating that this proposed physiological approach is associated with much lower mortality rates among COVID-19 patients, he said.

While not willing to name the hospitals at this time, he said that one center in Europe has had a 0% mortality rate among COVID-19 patients in the intensive care unit when using this approach, compared with a 60% mortality rate at a nearby hospital using a protocol-driven approach.

No personal news of note today.

While at Home

I just stumbled on this site, which looks like it's trying to be the definitive clearinghouse for information about the pandemic, with information about how to get tested, and how to help others.

It just got up and running on March 26, so you may not have a seamless experience there, but it looks promising.

While at Home

COVID19 Update - Day 27

US Tests: 1,917,095
US Cases: 361,331
US Deaths: 10,680
Worldwide Cases: 1,341,907
Worldwide Deaths: 74,565

Things continue to worsen.  Americans are now dying at the rate of more than 1,000 per day.  And not only that, we're falling behind the rest of the world.  One week ago the U.S. accounted for just 7.8% of coronavirus deaths worldwide.  Today, 14.3% of worldwide deaths are American --- our proportion of the overall death total has nearly doubled in just one week!

This should not come as a surprise to anyone who read the Washington Post Saturday:

The administration often seemed weeks behind the curve in reacting to the viral spread, closing doors that were already contaminated. Protracted arguments between the White House and public health agencies over funding, combined with a meager existing stockpile of emergency supplies, left vast stretches of the country’s health-care system without protective gear until the outbreak had become a pandemic. Infighting, turf wars and abrupt leadership changes hobbled the work of the coronavirus task force.

It may never be known how many thousands of deaths, or millions of infections, might have been prevented with a response that was more coherent, urgent and effective. But even now, there are many indications that the administration’s handling of the crisis had potentially devastating consequences.

In other news, the federal government continues to block some states from getting the medical equipment they need --- this time in Kentucky:

State officials have also requested additional gloves, masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) from the Strategic National Stockpile, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and through private contracts.

But in most cases, [Kentucky Governor Andy] Beshear said the federal government got it first.

“Our biggest problem is that just about every single order that we have out there for PPE, we get a call right when it’s supposed to be shipped and it’s typically the federal government has bought it,” Beshear said during a Saturday press conference. “It’s very hard to buy things when the federal government is there and anytime they want to buy it, they get it first.”

This is just the latest example of the federal government basically confiscating medical supplies from states.  And although it's easy to surmise some sinister motive behind it (we're talking about Trump, after all), Josh Marshall conjectures that the real explanation is simpler and stupider: that the feds are taking supplies away from the states because the feds dropped the ball in getting ahead of the virus, and so basically stealing medical supplies is the only way for the feds to get them.

On a personal note --- not to sound like a broken record, but --- each day is pretty much like every other.  There was one noteworthy change today, though.

I'm a software developer, and I work on a contract basis.  Today I was notified that the agency which holds my contract will no longer pay its contractors as soon as they've received payment of their invoices.  Instead, effective immediately, they will move to a 'net 30' payment model, which means that contractors will be paid 30 days after the billing period in which they do their work.

This is a more industry-standard way of handling these payments, so there's nothing necessarily concerning about the change.  But it DOES mean that it will now be more than a month before any contractors receive their next payment --- which is bad timing for us contractors, given the state of the economy.  But possibly a necessary cost-savings measure for the agency.