COVID19 Update - Day 25

US Tests: 1,623,807
US Cases: 305,755
US Deaths: 8,314
Worldwide Cases: 1,196,553
Worldwide Deaths: 64,549

Another day, and Trump continues to pick and choose which Americans live and die, based entirely on inscrutable reasons of his own.  Although it sure looks like the election is on his mind:

Anecdotally, there are wide differences, and they do not appear to follow discernible political or geographic lines. Democratic-leaning Massachusetts, which has had a serious outbreak in Boston, has received 17 percent of the protective gear it requested, according to state leaders. Maine requested a half-million N95 specialized protective masks and received 25,558 — about 5 percent of what it sought. The shipment delivered to Colorado — 49,000 N95 masks, 115,000 surgical masks and other supplies — would be “enough for only one full day of statewide operations,” Rep. Scott R. Tipton (R-Colo.) told the White House in a letter several days ago.

Florida has been an exception in its dealings with the stockpile: The state submitted a request on March 11 for 430,000 surgical masks, 180,000 N95 respirators, 82,000 face shields and 238,000 gloves, among other supplies — and received a shipment with everything three days later, according to figures from the state’s Division of Emergency Management. It received an identical shipment on March 23, according to the division, and is awaiting a third. 

That report came one week ago, on March 28.  In the intervening week, a third shipment has been sent to Florida:

A third shipment is on its way, which will bring the total number of N95 masks from the national stockpile to 540,000 and surgical masks to 1.2 million. In all, the state is expected to receive 201,000 gowns, 246,000 face shields and 714,354 pairs of gloves.

It's one level of malfeasance for Trump to insist that each state manage their own emergency response individually, rather than using FEMA (say) to coordinate the response nationally and make sure supplies are efficiently directed to where they are needed most.

It's another level of malfeasance entirely to pick winners and losers, and send supplies to states which are critical to one's re-election effort, or those where the governor is your pal.

And then there's a whole other level of malfeasance, which is frankly just criminal:

[W]hat I’m more interested in are reports of federal authorities confiscating physical shipments en route to states, local governments or regional hospital systems. The most publicized case of this came at some point in March when, according to Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R), a shipment of 3 million masks ordered through BJ’s Wholesale was seized by federal authorities in the Port of New York. Baker did not say which agency confiscated the goods or under what authority. That incident was what led to the widely reported and successful effort to fly goods in from China using the New England Patriots jet.

Another case happened just yesterday when the top county official in Somerset County, New Jersey, Freeholder Director Shanel Robinson, announced that a shipment of 35,000 masks had been confiscated by federal officials. According to this report in the Franklin Reporter and Advocate, “As of early in the afternoon of April 3, Robinson said that the county was told the surgical face masks would be delivered that day, but that the federal government had taken the N-95 masks.”

(As with everything at Talking Points Memo, the whole article is worth reading).

It's early days still.  But given the Trump family's history of cons and corruption, not to mention Trump's efforts to bend U.S. foreign policy to assist in his re-election campaign, it's entirely reasonable to consider the possibility that not only is Trump allowing manufacturers to profit from the pandemic, but that the Trump family is actively engaging it profiteering itself, and using state power to do it.

Stay tuned.

In personal news, I organized an online Cards Against Humanity/Zoom get-together last night with some friends, and it was pretty fun.  Not as much fun as getting together in person, mind you, but still better than sitting home alone watching reruns of The Office on Netflix.

(If you click the link, you won't find anything about Cards Against Humanity there.  That confused me, until I figured out that for copyright reasons, they needed to use the name 'Remote Insensitivity' instead).

And since I ponied up the monthly fee to get the licensed version of Zoom, I've decided to put it to good use.  I'll be hosting a get-together with a bunch of my college alumni tomorrow.

I'm also going shopping again tomorrow, for the first time in a couple of weeks.  And since I have no masks (N95 or otherwise), I'll be sporting a fashionable bandana because --- well, because that's what there is.