Evidence of the Trump administration’s jaw-dropping incompetence continues to grow. A report by Rep. Katie Porter shows even in February, when it was clear the pandemic was spreading in this nation, the United States was actually exporting now desperately needed ventilators and other medical equipment in large numbers, with mask exports alone increasing tenfold. It would be mid-March before the Trump administration made moves to bulk-order similar supplies for the national stockpile, and longer still until the Defense Production Act was invoked to prepare to retool factories for increased production.
We now also know that the Trump administration was warned by intelligence services last November of a new emerging disease in China—suggesting Chinese authorities took more action than has been previously known in attempting to cover up the outbreak, but also signaling that the Trump team had two more months than previously known to prepare the United States to face the same outbreak—months that were instead squandered.
In today's pandemic news:
• Amid a firestorm of controversy and allegations of insider trading based on knowledge gained in Senate briefings, wealthy Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler announced she would be liquidating her stock holdings. But, of course, will be keeping the money earned in the trades.
• After lashing out at an inspector general's report documenting severe medical shortages in the nation's hospitals, Donald Trump phoned in to the Sean Hannity show to instead insist that he "was right" that states did not need as much equipment as they claimed and that "everyone is in great shape." This is, by all evidence, false.
• After blocking a commercial Colorado order for 500 ventilators by buying the equipment out from under them, Trump tweeted that his administration would be providing the state only one-fifth of that number from the national stockpile.
• Healthcare and environmental inequality in America continue to cause disproportionate deaths in black communities, with black Americans in COVID-19 hotspots so far suffering from shockingly higher mortality rates than whites.
• Democrats are signaling they will support moves to spend an additional $250 billion for previously passed (and so far all-but-unimplemented) small business lending program during the pandemic, so long as it is coupled to other pandemic relief efforts.
• Also in dire need of quick action: Unemployment claim processing, unable to cope with now-record job losses.
• As the Trump administration continues its inability to coordinate a coherent national strategy for widespread COVID-19 testing and tracking (moves required before stay-at-home orders can be safely lifted), states are finding they "really are on their own" in building those systems.
• Conservative media, and especially Fox News, are latching on to a new Trump suggestion that the worst of the pandemic may be over, even though no U.S. state or city has yet "peaked" in cases or deaths and true peaks are, in many states, still predicted to be weeks away. This threatens (yet again) to undermine public confidence in stay-at-home orders, risking American lives for the sake of a talking point that will prove as false as each of the past claims that the virus would not spread as experts predicted.
• National polling suggests that while Republicans continue to support Trump's pandemic response—or non-response—the rest of the nation is less convinced. One reason: A CNN poll says one in five Americans now personally know someone who has been diagnosed with the virus.
• A grim result of conservative media dismissals of the virus: Nationwide, Republicans are significantly less likely than Democrats to report as sheltering in place or stocking up on food or medications.
• Over the weekend, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention modified their website to claim that a Trump-hyped drug might "anecdotally" be of use in treating COVID-19 patients, giving credence to Trump's own insistences even though the drug can be dangerous, has no non-"anecdotal" evidence of effectiveness, and is now in short supply for the lupus and rheumatoid arthritis patients who require it.
• In a similarly curious move that does not seem to mirror actual public health concerns, the CDC is reportedly also considering relaxing guidelines to more swiftly allow workers who know they have been exposed to COVID-19 to return to work. The new guidelines would encourage workers to return if they are "asymptomatic"—even after a new study suggested that 80% of all infections in China were spread by asymptomatic carriers.
• In a disturbing Fox & Friends segment, television personality Dr. Oz said he was attempting to survey people via Twitter in an attempt to find evidence that Trump's promoted drug had helped "reduce the symptoms" of COVID-19 patients.
• U.S. postal workers are risking their lives as "essential" workers during the pandemic. Congress, however, has yet to provide any United States Postal Service with relief funding. The USPS has warned that it will run out of funding by June.
• Postal banking could have helped Americans more quickly receive stimulus money urgently passed by Congress, and urgently needed by the public. If it existed.
• As hospitals contemplate how to ration care as beds fill, policies in some states explicitly give lower priority to disabled patients.
• Incarcerated Americans are being neglected during the pandemic.
• Domestic workers continue to be devastated by the pandemic's economic effects.
• Four grocery workers have died of COVID-19 in the United States, but dozens more have tested positive.
• Also at elevated risk for contracting the virus: Flight attendants.
• Federal immigration officials are "considering" releasing just 600 "vulnerable" detainees, of the 35,000 now in custody.
• California Gov. Gavin Newsom says the state is considering passing financial relief for undocumented residents who have been shut out of federal relief efforts.
• It is not like the flu: Despite comparisons by Trump and Trump-allied pundits to the H1N1 epidemic in 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken only 43 days to kill as many Americans as the H1N1 pandemic did over the course of a year. And the COVID-19 pandemic has yet to peak.
• Wisconsin's fiasco of an election yesterday, in which voters were forced to the polls despite stay-at-home orders and only a small fraction of the usual polling sites, should be a "red hot warning" of what could happen nationwide in the November elections.
Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy told Sports Illustrated that he intends to restart his campus' football program on May 1, saying his players are "healthy and they have the ability to fight this virus off."
• Massachusetts’ Hampshire College has sent students home due to the pandemic. The school is now opening up some empty dorm rooms to house members of the homeless community who have been infected with COVID-19 and require self-isolation.
• Trump's new press secretary comes into the office during a pandemic with a history of lies—including on the pandemic itself.
• Here are some doctor-recommended breathing techniques if you are struggling with COVID-19 symptoms or other respiratory infections.
from Daily Kos https://ift.tt/2JSBGgN
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