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..