People walk around an almost empty Grand Central Terminal as the coronavirus disease outbreak continues in New York, March 29, 2020. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
Euronews/AP/AFP: Coronavirus: Half of humanity now on lockdown as 90 countries call for confinement
More than 3.9 billion people, or half of the world's population, have now been asked or ordered to stay at home by their governments to prevent the spread of the deadly COVID-19 virus.
Data from an AFP database collated compulsory or recommended confinements, curfews and quarantines in more than 90 countries or territories.
Due to the introduction of a curfew in Thailand (effective from Friday), the threshold of 50% of humanity will be reached.
Meanwhile, the number of dead in Spain from coronavirus has now risen above 10,000, according to the latest health authority figures published on Thursday.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: No surprises here .... As world battles virus, governments under fire (AFP). I expect all governments in the world will be criticized for their response. That is a given. And it will be helped by some in the media who report the news with a political bias, and who are taking advantage of the current crisis to push their own agenda. But in the end I think most people understand that this is a unique global crisis impacting billions. And as a long as governments honestly report their efforts to end it while planning how (and when) to re-open their economies in the future, the majority of people now under lock-down will give them a pass.
I rather b fishing in British Columbia Canada
ReplyDeleteMy brother agrees with you G.
ReplyDeleteHe was suppose to be with his son skiing at Whistler next week. Not going to happen.
Best G comment evah!
ReplyDeletenational interest
ReplyDeleteTrump Replaced White House Pandemic-Response Team With Jared Kushner
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the national interest 2:07 P.M.
Trump Replaced White House Pandemic-Response Team With Jared Kushner
By Jonathan Chait
Jared Kushner Photo: Evan Vucci-Pool/Getty Images
At his coronavirus press briefing yesterday, Fox News correspondent John Roberts asked President Trump about his 2018 decision to eliminate the National Security Council’s pandemic-response office. Trump lashed out, “You know that’s a false story, what you just said is a false story … You shouldn’t be repeating a story you know is false,” accusing Roberts of “working for CNN.” (The charge of committing legitimate journalism is the most serious Trump could think to hurl at a Fox News employee.)
The story is not false. Trump did eliminate the job of coordinating a national pandemic response. And the strongest evidence of the damage he did is that this job is now being performed by Jared Kushner.
In May 2018, the top White House official who was focused on pandemic response departed the White House. “The top White House official responsible for leading the U.S. response in the event of a deadly pandemic has left the administration, and the global health security team he oversaw has been disbanded,” reported the Washington Post at the time. Trump and his allies — including then-NSC director John Bolton, who undertook the ill-fated move — have since tried to muddy the waters about these moves, emphasizing the fact that they merely reorganized the National Security Council rather than bluntly firing everybody involved in pandemic response.
It is true that they kept some global-health officials onboard. But one purpose of the reorganization was to deemphasize pandemic response in favor of other priorities. Nobody bothered to deny this at the time. “In a world of limited resources, you have to pick and choose,” an administration official explained to the Post in its 2018 story.
There goes a seemingly familiar bird of mimicry on another cut & paste exercise.
ReplyDeleteBird is regurgitating Jonathan Chait's line. I'd be careful little bird. Jonathan is all over the p[lace. Maybe one day he'll be a neocon or even a full blown true conservative. He describes himself as a liberal-hawk and his wife is a pro choice when it comes to education.
Jonathan has this quote.
“In a world of limited resources, you have to pick and choose,” - administration official
I do not think that Jonathan nor regurgitor understand economics. It is the science of scarcity. Resources are scarce.
(Also, I do not think Dr Facui understands economics. Fauci might be smart in one field, but he is not smart in other fields like economics. Any linear regression that you chart shows that HIV spending is out of line with the good that it does. To get that money they had to steal form other medical programs. Fauci stole. He stole big time. But it is all good. He got to feather his nest and suck up to rock stars like Bono.)
Jonathan studied some undescribed social science at UM. Social science can be worthwhile if stats are taken. If not then it is some generic sheepskin and you take a job with no standards or ethics such as journalism.
You would think regurgitator would have remembered to look at the CDC's response center and answer the question about why we need another layer of management at the NSC on top of the CDC. Regurgitator has not though about it and will not in the future. Regurgitator is a hack.
Here is the link to the CDC Emergency Operations Center (EOC) provided for the umpteenth time.
www.cdc.gov/cpr/eoc.htm
Do not expect the Regurgitator to look at it. It has no time except to look up smut and the NYT. The 2 go together.
Some GOP senators who supported lowering the unemployment benefits in the coronavirus rescue package aren’t mentioning that to their constituents.
ReplyDeleteBy Arthur Delaney and Igor Bobic
A core part of lawmakers’ job is to make sure their constituents have access to government programs that are designed to help them.
To that end, many members of Congress are pointing to expanded unemployment benefits they authorized last week as part of a massive coronavirus pandemic response bill, which will boost weekly benefits by $600.
Among the lawmakers touting the additional $600: Senate Republicans who voted against it.
“This package that we passed will provide $600 a week on top of the Montana benefit if you’re unemployed,” Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) told a local TV station the day after the bill passed. “That’s very significant. It more than doubles what the state of Montana pays. That’s taking care of those Montanans who’ve lost their jobs.”
But Daines, like most of his other GOP colleagues, supported an amendment to the bill offered by Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) that would have capped unemployment benefits and denied some people the extra $600. The Senate rejected the amendment before ultimately passing the bill last week.
A spokesperson for Daines said the senator “worked to include nearly full wage unemployment insurance in the coronavirus economic recovery bill. The senator did not think that unemployment insurance should pay more than the job a person lost.”
Sasse argued the added benefits would incentivize workers to stay unemployed.
“This bill, as currently drafted, creates a perverse incentive for men and women who are sidelined to then not leave the sidelines to come back to work,” Sasse claimed on the Senate floor.
His amendment, which all but two Senate Republicans voted for, would have directed state unemployment agencies not to give claimants the full $600 per week if it would exceed their prior wage when combined with their regular benefit allotment.
Democrats had initially wanted state agencies to precisely match wages of workers losing their jobs due to the economic downturn caused by the spread of the coronavirus. They said that Trump labor secretary Eugene Scalia argued that it would have been too much of a burden on state agencies, which have been crushed by an unprecedented surge in unemployment claims.
Negotiators ― including the Trump administration and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) ― came up with $600 because it’s roughly the difference between the average unemployment payment of about $360 and the average weekly wage of about $980. The extra cash will remain available for only four months.
Nevertheless, Sasse, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) decided to make a stink about the increased benefits on the Senate floor. Sasse’s amendment, targeting the $260 billion unemployment portion of the $2 trillion bill, was the only amendment debated on the floor. The debate was purely symbolic as the amendment stood no chance of clearing the 60 vote threshold needed for adoption.
This week, as coronavirus deaths in the U.S. spiraled up to surpass those killed on 9/11, the White House is conceding that an optimistic assessment of the coming death toll will leave between 100,000 and 240,000 Americans dead. But if the White House had heeded an Army warning nearly two months ago, it might have prompted earlier action to prevent an outbreak that threatens to kill more Americans than two to four Vietnam Wars.
ReplyDeleteAn unclassified briefing document on the novel coronavirus prepared on Feb. 3 by U.S. Army-North projected that “between 80,000 and 150,000 could die.” It framed the projection as a “Black Swan” analysis, meaning an outlier event of extreme consequence but often understood as an unlikely one.
In other words, the Army’s projections on Feb. 3 for the worst-case scenario in the coronavirus outbreak are, as of this week, the absolute best-case scenario—if not a miraculous one.
A month after the Army’s briefing, on March 4, President Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity that the World Health Organization’s coronavirus death estimate of 3.4 percent of cases was a “false number,” since it contradicted a “hunch” he had. “It’s not that severe,” the president said.
The document made it to high levels within U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), the military command responsible for operations in North America and which aided civilian agencies’ early responses to evacuating and quarantining Americans abroad.
The document came two days after Defense Secretary Mark Esper instructed NORTHCOM to begin “prudent planning” for synchronizing a military response to a domestic COVID-19 outbreak. (That planning didn’t “indicate a greater likelihood of an event developing,” a NORTHCOM spokesman assured at the time.) Feb. 3 was also four days after Trump banned non-citizens recently in China from entering the United States.
The Daily Beast can confirm the document was seen by NORTHCOM commander Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy, as well as the Army-North commander, Lt. Gen. Laura Richardson, whose forces are the main contributor to NORTHCOM. It also made its way to the Department of the Army’s Pentagon headquarters, where Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville and Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy received it.
But it’s unknown how widely distributed the Army’s death estimate was. Representatives for Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley did not respond to The Daily Beast’s questions. Neither did representatives for the National Security Council and the White House. The CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined comment.
O’Shaughnessy, during a Wednesday press briefing, would not discuss the assessment but said it reflected “worst-case” planning.
The Gubernatorial Busts
ReplyDeletePhoto treatments of governors
1. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R)
DeSantis is one of Trump’s favorite governors and a potential 2024 presidential prospect. But he has made a bad first impression on the rest of the country by failing to fully shut down Florida’s beaches before or after they were overrun with partiers on spring break, many of whom then traveled home to locations throughout the United States.
He also resisted making a statewide stay-at-home order until finally relenting on Wednesday — in the wake of intense pressure from Florida Democrats, and televised comments Wednesday morning by the surgeon general urging all governors to get their residents to stay at home. Before that point, his seemingly toughest measure was issuing a quarantine for travelers coming from the New York City tri-state area or Louisiana, but the focus on hot spots ignores all the community spread inside Florida and in other states. Florida already has nearly 7,000 confirmed cases, ranking it 17th among the states on a per capita basis.
Earlier, DeSantis justified eschewing broader measures. “We’re also in a situation where we have counties who have no community spread,” he said on March 19. “We have some counties that don’t have a single positive test yet.” But everything we have experienced strongly suggests you don't want to wait until you have community spread before taking strong action.
DeSantis may still be helped by Trump, who may be giving Florida preferential treatment. According to the Washington Post, other governors have had difficulty getting supplies from the Strategic National Stockpile, but not DeSantis. And Trump has been influenced by DeSantis’ argument that some social distancing measures are too harmful to the economy. The Post quoted an anonymous White House official, who explained, “The president knows Florida is so important for his reelection, so when DeSantis says that, it means a lot. He pays close attention to what Florida wants.”
For now, DeSantis remains on the GOP’s 2024 shortlist. But if DeSantis encourages Trump to make bad decisions, and if Florida is getting supplies while other states scrounge, the governor’s ties to the president may become a serious liability for his own future prospects.
Photo treatments of governors
2. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R)
Aside from its next-door neighbor Louisiana, Mississippi is the Southern state with the most confirmed Covid-19 cases on a per capita basis. Yet Reeves has made a hash out of the response.
As Mississippi’s localities began issuing stay-at-home edicts, Reeves issued his own order on March 24, broadly defining what business and social activity is “essential” — including religious services — and declared any order from any other “governing body” which conflicts with the state order to be “suspended and unenforceable.” Two days later, under pressure, he tried to clarify that the state order provided only a “floor,” which counties and cities could surpass, but confusingly added that “no order can keep those essential services from going on.” Mississippi mayors have been confused and have interpreted the governor differently.
Reeves had resisted a statewide stay-at-home order on ideological grounds, insisting that “Mississippi's never going to be China. Mississippi's never going to be North Korea.” Yet as the virus spreads, Reeves may find himself dragged into a more expansive response.
On Tuesday, Reeves issued his first stay-at-home order, but in just one county, Lauderdale, where a nursing home has suffered an outbreak. “The businesses in Lauderdale County are simply losing customers to surrounding counties and BTW covid doesn’t stop at the county line,” tweeted the mayor of Tupelo, which is in Lee County.
On Wednesday, Reeves issued a stay-at-home order that encompasses the whole state — but which doesn't take effect for another two days. If Mississippi’s spread becomes severe, Reeves’ haphazard response will come back to haunt him.
Photo treatments of governors
3. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R)
ReplyDeleteOn March 14, Stitt tweeted a picture of his family eating at a restaurant, as if he deserved an award for defying the coronavirus panic. “It’s packed tonight!” he enthusiastically shared, but facing blowback, later deleted the post.
The next day, Stitt declared a state of emergency. Then, the day after that, the governor’s spokesman said, “the governor will continue to take his family out to dinner and to the grocery store without living in fear, and encourages Oklahomans to do the same.” Stitt still has not issued a statewide stay-at-home order. In the absence of one, major Oklahoma cities have imposed their own over the past few days.
Two weeks later, Oklahoma’s rate of infection is intensifying, and testing is minimal. Stitt is not the only governor who has hesitated to implement stiff restrictions, but he may become a case study of the pitfalls of glib social media use in a time of crisis.
Photo treatments of governors
4. Hawaii Gov. David Ige (D)
You may remember Ige as the governor who, for 17 minutes in 2018, couldn’t correct a false warning of an incoming ballistic missile because he didn’t know his Twitter password.
Earlier this month, Ige tapped his Lieutenant Governor Josh Green to play a key role in the state’s response to coronavirus. Green is an emergency room doctor, so his calls for strict travel restrictions and quarantines on arrivals carried great weight. But once Green publicly pushed for strong measures, Ige cut him out of the loop, instructing Cabinet officials not to consult with Green, and keeping Green out of his press conferences.
Hawaii faced an influx of “crisis tourists” looking to ride out the pandemic in paradise. But as the governor of a tourism-dependent state, Ige hesitated to act. On March 19, the state House speaker, fellow Democrat Scott Saiki, upbraided Ige in a letter, describing the administration’s response as “utterly chaotic,” causing “mass confusion among the public.”
Ige has now made peace with Green, and recently ordered a 14-day quarantine for arrivals — though there was a five-day gap between the announcement and the implementation. A stay-at-home order has been issued, though with exceptions for swimming and surfing. Ige better hope those steps are enough.
Photo treatments of governors
5. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R)
Ige isn’t the only governor taking heat from his No. 2. Ivey is being shown up by her lieutenant governor, Will Ainsworth.
On March 25, Ainsworth, who serves on Ivey’s coronavirus task force, wrote a letter to the panel’s other members. After some perfunctory pleasantries, he lit into them: “A tsunami of hospital patients is likely to fall upon Alabama in the not too distant future, and it is my opinion that this task force and the state are not taking a realistic view of the numbers or adequately preparing for what awaits us.”
The day after, Ivey sounded a completely different note at a press conference, when she dismissed the idea of a statewide stay-at-home order. “Y’all, we are not Louisiana, we are not New York sate, we are not California,” she said. (Washington Post data journalist Philip Bump warned Ivey that Alabama’s caseload was growing faster than California’s.)
Then, at a press conference one day after that, Ivey dumped on Ainsworth, saying he was “not helpful” in “raising challenges and criticism and issues we are aware of, and offering no solutions and showing no willingness to work with the task force and the team willing to fix it.” (Ainsworth’s letter did, in fact, offer solutions regarding health care capacity.)
Ivey, who is not yet term-limited, would turn 78 before the 2022 election. By that time, Ainsworth, who won a separate election for lieutenant governor and did not run with Ivey on a ticket, would be 41, and well-positioned to move into the governor’s mansion. Perhaps Ivey will just want to retire by 2022. But if she does plan on seeking reelection, she now has to worry about a possible primary challenger who has successfully separated himself from her questionable pandemic response.
6. West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R)
ReplyDeleteJustice is a billionaire political neophyte who won the 2016 gubernatorial election as a Democrat, then, in 2017, switched to become a Republican and a Trump ally. His lack of experience in crisis management has been glaringly obvious from his discordant statements and actions.
On March 16, he was preaching defiance. “For crying out loud, go to the grocery stores,” Jutice said. “If you want to go to Bob Evans and eat, go to Bob Evans and eat.” Then, the very next day, he shut down dine-in eating at the state’s restaurants.
The following Saturday, Justice gave a disjointed address which, according to the Associated Press, featured “jumbled sets of numbers that puzzled viewers in their randomness.” He warned of dire consequences, but neglected to issue a stay-at-home order. “Governor Urges Action, Takes None,” read a headline in the Charleston Gazette-Mail the next day. Later that week, Justice finally announced a stay-at-home order.
This wobbly performance is coming at the worst possible time for Justice politically, because he faces a contested party primary for the gubernatorial nomination this spring. (Justice just pushed back the primary from May 12 to June 9.) Justice faces six primary opponents, with the most spirited challenge coming from Justice’s former Commerce secretary, Woody Thrasher. Justice has been a heavy favorite to date, but a mismanaged crisis can change poll numbers very fast.
CLARIFICATION: An earlier version of this article said Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves had issued a stay-at-home order only covering one county. As this piece was being edited and produced, he announced a new stay-at-home order covering the whole state. The piece has been updated accordingly.
Why would some Republican congressmen be leery of sending out checks? Because it would be covered by printing money. You can't print money ad infinitum. You end up like Zimbabwe or Wiemar Germany.
ReplyDeleteIf you think that printing money can't lead to a bad end, then think about Wiemar Germany, Hitler, and Holocaust. But a liberal Jew, who is devoutly religious to socialism, will pay no mind. Kind of a dumb fuck that way.
Of course Nancy Pelosi and the other socialist do not care if hyper inflation kills the economy, because they want the economy dead to clear the way for 'their' form of socialism. This time it will work, they think.
The problem with printing money
November 28, 2019 by Tejvan Pettinger
Readers Comment. Why doesn’t the Bank of England just print the money instead of borrowing the money?
"Printing more money doesn’t increase economic output – it only increases the amount of cash circulating in the economy. If more money is printed, consumers are able to demand more goods, but if firms have still the same amount of goods, they will respond by putting up prices. In a simplified model, printing money will just cause inflation."
BESIDES YOU DO NOT WANT THEM TO ADD ZEROES TO THE CURRENCY AS YOU CANNOT COUNT MUCH PAST TEN.
ReplyDeleteMake up Work for Airheaded Bird.
"Why can't we just print more money, since it really isn't representative of anything of value?"
https://www.econ.iastate.edu/node/673
But why wait? Let’s talk about Rush Limbaugh, because what this man has said over the last month ought to mark him for the rest of his life.
ReplyDeleteFebruary 24: “Folks, this coronavirus thing, I want to try to put this in perspective for you. It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump. Now, I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus. You think I’m wrong about this? You think I’m missing it by saying that’s — Yeah, I’m dead right on this. The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.”
February 25: “Why couldn’t the coronavirus get Donald Trump reelected? What if the United States comes up with a dramatically great policy to deal with it—and the number of cases in the United States dwindles, goes down, or does not expand like the cases around the world? Then why wouldn’t that be beneficial to Trump? Notice: Here we are in February, and they’ve already got this virus ruining the economy by November, in time to take out Trump. This is proof they’ve got nothing. They know they can’t beat the guy, folks…. Donald Trump has survived every coup attempt, every assault on him, that has been made up and now the coronavirus, they’re trying to lay it at his feet and make him responsible for it and they’re doing irresponsible news reports claiming that the coronavirus is gonna destroy the US economy by when? November! Isn’t it magical? The coronavirus is the new Russians…”
March 9: “Democrats out the wazoo are showing up at Trump rallies. This is why they want these rallies stopped. This is why — it’s not because of public safety, not because of public health.”
March 11: “This coronavirus, they’re just — all of this panic is just not warranted. This, I’m telling you, when I tell you — when I’ve told you that this virus is the common cold. When I said that, it was based on the number of cases. It’s also based on the kind of virus this is. Why do you think this is “COVID-19”? This is the 19th coronavirus. They’re not uncommon. Coronaviruses are respiratory cold and flu viruses. There is nothing about this, except where it came from, and the itinerant media panic…”
March 13: “We’re shutting down our country because of the — the cold virus, which is what coronaviruses are. This is COVID-19, the 19th version of the coronavirus. We’re shutting it — can you imagine our enemies watching this? You think the Chinese are not laughing themselves silly over how easy this has been?”
March 27: “We didn’t elect a president to defer to a bunch of health experts that we don’t know. And how do we know they’re even health experts? Well, they wear white lab coats, and they’ve been in the job for a while, and they’re at the CDC and they’re at the NIH, and they’re up, well — yeah, they’ve been there, and they are there. But has there been any job assessment for them? They’re just assumed to be the best because they’re in government. But, these are all kinds of things that I’ve been questioning.”
There was another moment on March 11 where Limbaugh claimed that “medical professionals” weren’t overly concerned and then did a little rant against the very idea of suppression and mitigation protocols:
Florida this week joined the states directing residents to stay home to help reduce spread of the coronavirus but carving out exemptions for religious services, drawing criticism as the federal government advises against gathering in groups of more than 10.
ReplyDeleteThe stay-at-home order issued by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Wednesday directs Floridians to stay home except to obtain or provide "essential" activities. Attending services conducted in houses of worship is listed under the definition of "essential activities.”
Florida is among several states issuing orders for people to avoid leaving their homes but granting certain exemptions for religious services over concerns that forcing houses of worship to close would violate the constitutional right to religious freedom.
Michigan, New Mexico, Delaware, Ohio, Texas and West Virginia have also allowed some exemption for religious services.
Other states with stay-at-home orders, such as Virginia and Maryland, are requiring places of worship to limit in-person services to 10 people to comply with bans on large gatherings while adhering to physical distancing measures. Many houses of worship across the country have voluntarily ceased holding public services.
The religious exemption granted in DeSantis's stay-at-home order comes after a Florida pastor was arrested on Monday for holding services at his Tampa megachurch in violation of a ban on large gatherings.
The Porn King
ReplyDelete- Senile Airhead?
- Devout, Religious Liberal, who prays to the fanes of the Cult of the Supreme Being or the Cult of Reason?
- an impostor, who works for a liberal group?
I understand that the Porn King is an atheist and therefore its complete and utter hostility to religion. He must have really squirmed, when it read about the church in Tampa.
ReplyDeletePrevious
Next
Donald Trump tries to shift responsibility to states to help millions of newly-unemployed get stimulus funds - as Georgia's governor says he 'didn't know' asymptomatic people could transmit coronavirus
President Trump indicated in a tweet Thursday that he wanted the states to do more in the handling of the coronavirus crisis
Trump quoted Fox News Channel's Maria Bartiromo who said the states 'have to get the money to the people who need it'
It could take months for some Americans to get their stimulus dollars as the IRS will have to mail checks to people who didn't provide direct deposit information
At the same time Thursday, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp was showing how little he knew about the spread of the virus
He said he 'didn't know' asymptomatic people could transmit the coronavirus to others
Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top medical experts have been warning of that kind of transfer for weeks
NBC News is fact-checking some of his statements, made or repeated at various points during the ongoing global crisis, and updating this article.
ReplyDeleteClaim: Trump says he inherited a "broken test" for the virus. This is false.
"We inherited a broken test," Trump said on March 30 on Fox News.
Later in the day, he complained that his administration wasn't getting enough credit for overcoming what he claimed was a "broken testing system" in order to get a coronavirus test up and running.
“You should be saying congratulations to the men and women who have done this job, who have inherited a broken testing system, and who have made it great,” he said during the March 30 Rose Garden news conference.
Trump's claims come amid broad criticism that the U.S. was slow to begin testing its residents for coronavirus, hurting early efforts to contain the outbreak. But it’s impossible for Trump to have inherited a broken testing system for COVID-19. The novel coronavirus did not exist until late last year, when researchers believe it was transmitted from an animal to a human for the first time.
And there's little evidence that the actions past administrations hamstrung the Trump administration here, particularly since no administration had faced a pandemic of this nature.
Dr. Irwin Redlener, the director of the Columbia University National Center for Disaster Preparedness and a public health analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, said the president’s claim was “nonsense.”
“There’s nothing that he inherited that could have hamstrung them,” said Redlener, adding that virus test development is pretty commonplace.
“Even if there was, the World Health Organization and Germany and other places offered us testing equipment and materials, which we decided not to take," he said.
There is, however, evidence that the Trump administration made early missteps: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention struggled to develop its own test and then, as a limited supply came online, ran the lab work through just a handful of state and federal labs.
That prolonged wait times for a diagnosis while the virus spread further, lab directors and public health experts told NBC News last month, and the federal government did not issue new rules speeding the approval process for commercial, research and academic labs until Feb. 29. Testing capacity has since expanded significantly.
Claim: The U.S. implemented a travel ban "way ahead of anybody else." This is false.
On April 1, Trump told reporters that the United States had banned "dangerous foreign travel that threatens the health of our people and we did so early, far earlier than anyone would have thought, and way ahead of anybody else."
The U.S. implemented a restriction on foreign travelers who had been in China in the past two weeks, at 5 p.m. Feb. 2. Italy had already done so by Jan. 31 and North Korea had banned all foreign tourists Jan. 22.
Claim: The U.S. is testing more than other countries. This needs context.
During a news conference March 30, Trump said, "We have done more tests, by far, than any country in the world, by far," in response to a question about the United States lagging behind in testing residents "per capita."
It is technically true that the U.S. has run more tests for the disease caused by the virus than any other country, but this claim, one the president makes frequently, requires more context. The U.S. is not testing the same share of its population as other countries, a key measure.
On March 31, the White House said there had been more than 1.1 million tests; that's 1 in 297 people who are getting tested. South Korea, for instance, has done 410,564 tests as of the same day. But South Korea has a population of 51 million people, which means they’re testing a much larger share of the population — 1 in every 124 people.
Claim: There's an "approved" treatment for COVID-19. That's not accurate.
ReplyDeleteThe president has promoted an anti-malaria drug as an “approved” treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
"The hydroxychloroquine and the Z-pack, I think, as a combination, probably, it's looking very, very good," Trump said during a news briefing March 23. He called the pair of medicines a "drug that got approved in record-setting time."
There's some early evidence that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine — decades-old drugs used to prevent malaria and treat rheumatic diseases — might help patients fight off the virus, particularly when paired with the antibiotic azithromycin, commonly known as a Z-Pack.
But it's not an "approved" treatment for the coronavirus, according to the Food and Drug Administration, or even a fully vetted option, according to one of Trump's top scientists.
"The information that you're referring to specifically is anecdotal. It was not done in a controlled clinical trial. So, you really can't make any definitive statement about it," the nation's leading infectious diseases expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said during the same news conference.
Dr. Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the FDA, also said in March that the agency wants "a large, pragmatic clinical trial" to see whether the drug "actually benefits patients."
A nationwide trial to determine whether hydroxychloroquine can prevent the disease in exposed persons is underway, NPR reported March 31.
Claim: Some hospital workers may be taking hydroxychloroquine already. True, but medical associations have urged caution.
Trump said of hydroxychloroquine on March 31: "I think some medical workers are doing that, using it maybe or getting it prescribed perhaps as — for another use."
"There is a theory going around that in our country and some other countries, people are taking that — that work in the hospitals, that work with the patients — because there is some evidence. And, again, it's going to have to be proven. It's very early," he added.
Here, Trump is continuing to promote an unapproved treatment by amplifying anecdotal reports of a practice medical authorities have acknowledged is indeed happening. But those same authorities have issued warnings against the practice, in large part because the treatment is not approved by the FDA.
The American Medical Association, the American Pharmacists Association and the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists released a joint statement acknowledging "that some physicians and others are prophylactically prescribing medications currently identified as potential treatments for COVID-19."
"We strongly oppose these actions," the statement said. "We caution hospitals, health systems, and individual practitioners that no medication has been FDA-approved for use in COVID-19 patients."
These early anecdotal success stories, and the president's public promotion of the drugs as an effective weapon against the disease, have led to hoarding and shortages of the drug, leaving people with lupus and other rheumatoid diseases wondering if they'll be able to refill their prescriptions.
Claim: New York hospital staff are stealing lots of PPE. There's no evidence of this.
During multiple news conferences, Trump has questioned the rate at which a hospital in New York is using personal protective equipment (PPE), suggesting that theft is why the unnamed facility needs 300,000 masks a week.
At one point, he claimed a distributor told him that a N
Claim: New York hospital staff are stealing lots of PPE. There's no evidence of this.
ReplyDeleteDuring multiple news conferences, Trump has questioned the rate at which a hospital in New York is using personal protective equipment (PPE), suggesting that theft is why the unnamed facility needs 300,000 masks a week.
At one point, he claimed a distributor told him that a New York hospital's mask purchases were far too high to reflect actual need.
"There's only a couple of things that could happen — is it going out the back door? And I've reported it to the city and let the city take a look at it. But when you go from 10,000 masks to 300,000 masks ... there's something going on," Trump said during a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House on March 30.
While there were anecdotal reports of mask theft, there’s no indication this has driven up supply needs dramatically — and officials from New York state and the city, as well as hospitals, strongly disputed Trump. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo skewered the suggestion of rampant theft, explaining that the state has been preparing for the apex of the pandemic that is coming soon. The state is the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S., with 83,712 confirmed cases as of April 1.
For most Florida hotel guests, it’s past checkout time. But not for DeSantis’ top donor
ReplyDeleteBy Gov. Ron DeSantis
9-12 minutes
DeSantis will limit activity in Florida to essential services only for 30 days
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said on April 1, 2020 that he would limit activity in the state to essential services only for 30 days.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said on April 1, 2020 that he would limit activity in the state to essential services only for 30 days. By Gov. Ron DeSantis
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has pointed the finger at New Yorkers for the spread of the coronavirus in the state, and required that visitors to Florida coming from New York and surrounding states be screened and self-isolate after entering Florida.
And Palm Beach County has ordered that hotels stop taking reservations.
But it’s a different world when you’re a billionaire.
Kenneth Griffin, the 38th richest American and the biggest backer of DeSantis’ 2018 gubernatorial campaign, has quietly flown in traders and staff from New York and Chicago to set up shop in the Four Seasons Resort Palm Beach, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the arrangement.
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Social media post on April 1, 2020 from the Four Seasons resort in Palm Beach where Citadel Securities has set up temporary trading operations.
Griffin’s Citadel Securities has set up a makeshift trading floor in the swank hotel, secluded behind a wall of palm trees and other dense foliage, despite orders from Palm Beach County requiring hotels to stop taking reservations this past Monday.
The cops were there this week — not to shut it down but to provide security. Two imposing blue-and-white Town of Palm Beach police cruisers were parked in front.
ReplyDeleteYet another DIM-o-crat governor reverses themselves.
Goober Whitmer reverses her Hydroxy-Choloroquine ban.
Gov. Whitmer reverses course on coronavirus drugs, is now asking feds for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine
There should be a ban on adminsitering Hydroxy-Choloroquine to liberals, who deny its efficacy.
ReplyDelete"Claim: New York hospital staff are stealing lots of PPE. There's no evidence of this."
What lousy reporting. Are we talking about N95 masks or surgical masks?