The Commentariat -- April 22, 2020

~~~ Sigh! But see Seth Borenstein's story, linked below.

Afternoon Update:

Uh-Oh. Jessie Hellmann of the Hill: "President Trump said Wednesday that he disagrees 'strongly' with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp's (R) decision to allow bowling alleys, hair salons and other businesses to reopen on Friday. 'I want him to do what he thinks is right, but I disagree with him on what he's doing,' Trump said at a White House press briefing Wednesday. Trump said Kemp's decision violates guidelines the administration issued last week for states to follow before reopening parts of their economies." Trump said he told Kemp he disagrees with Kemp's decision.

** The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Wednesday are here. "The doctor who led the federal agency involved in developing a coronavirus vaccine said on Wednesday that he was removed from his post after he pressed for a rigorous vetting of a coronavirus treatment embraced by President Trump. The doctor said that science, not 'politics and cronyism' must lead the way. Dr. Rick Bright was abruptly dismissed this week as the director of the Department of Health and Human Services' Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, and as the deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response. Instead, he was given a narrower job at the National Institutes of Health. 'I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the Covid-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit,' he said in a statement to The Times's Maggie Haberman.... 'Specifically, and contrary to misguided directives, I limited the broad use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, promoted by the administration as a panacea, but which clearly lack scientific merit,' he said.... 'I will request that the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services investigate the manner in which this administration has politicized the work of BARDA and has pressured me and other conscientious scientists to fund companies with political connections and efforts that lack scientific merit,' he said." This is a follow-up to a STAT story linked below.

Allyson Chiu & Teo Armus of the Washington Post: "At least two people who died in early and mid-February had contracted the novel coronavirus, health officials in California said Tuesday, signaling the virus may have spread -- and been fatal — in the United States weeks earlier than previously thought. Tissue samples taken during autopsies of two people who died at home in Santa Clara County, Calif., tested positive for the virus, local health officials said in a statement. The victims died on Feb. 6 and Feb. 17, respectively. Initially, the nation's earliest coronavirus fatality was thought to have occurred on Feb. 29, in Kirkland, Wash., a suburb of Seattle that rapidly became a hot spot.... Additionally, the early deaths could mean covid-19 may have been misdiagnosed in many people early this year, Eric Topol, a geneticist and researcher who directs the Scripps Research Translational Institute, told The Post." The New York Times story is here.

Betsy DeVos Is So Sweet. From the NYT's live updates for today: "The Education Department will prohibit colleges from granting emergency assistance to undocumented students, even those currently under federal protection, according to guidance issued to colleges and universities on Tuesday. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos ordered higher education institutions to distribute more than $6 billion in emergency relief only to students who are eligible for federal financial aid, including U.S. citizens or legal residents. The directive effectively excluded the hundreds of thousands of students who attend college under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals -- or DACA -- program, an Obama-era policy that protects hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children. Mr. Trump has moved to end the program, but that effort is awaiting Supreme Court review."

Zack Beauchamp of Vox: "Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, media critics have warned that the decision from leading Fox News hosts to downplay the outbreak could cost lives. A new study provides statistical evidence that, in the case of Sean Hannity, that's exactly what happened." This is another take on a Daily Beast report linked earlier today.

Larry Elliott of the Guardian: "Donald Trump's botched handling of the Covid-19 crisis has left the US looking like a 'third world' country and on course for a second Great Depression, one of the world's leading economists has warned. In a withering attack on the president, Joseph Stiglitz said millions of people were turning to food banks, turning up for work due to a lack of sick pay and dying because of health inequalities. The Nobel prize-winning economist said: 'The numbers turning to food banks are just enormous and beyond the capacity of them to supply. It is like a third world country. The public social safety net is not working.'"

Lock Him Out! Gabby Orr of Politico: "As his own health officials continue to warn against nonessential travel, Trump has privately urged aides over the past week to start adding official events back to his schedule, including photo ops and site visits that would allow him to ditch Washington for a few hours. The day trips would be similar to those Vice President Mike Pence has made visiting businesses during the viral pandemic, according to three people familiar with the planning.... 'If there was a situation where the president was trying to violate his own guidelines, we would certainly have a conversation about that,' said an aide to Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers."

Coalition of the Witless. Matt Dixon of Politico: "Republican governors across the Southeast are teaming up to reopen the region's economy, even as they lack the testing to know how rapidly the coronavirus is spreading. One health expert called the political decision a 'perfect storm' for the virus to reassert itself. The newly formed coalition includes Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi, a part of the country that has underfunded health systems, as well as high rates of obesity, diabetes and other illnesses that amplify the deadliness of the coronavirus. And unlike their peers in New York, New Jersey and other Northeastern states that have been working cooperatively since last week to restart their economies, the six in the South have lagged on testing and social distancing measures."

Abdi Dahir of the New York Times: "The coronavirus pandemic has brought hunger to millions of people around the world. National lockdowns and social distancing measures are drying up work and incomes, and are likely to disrupt agricultural production and supply routes -- leaving millions to worry how they will get enough to eat. The coronavirus has sometimes been called an equalizer because it has sickened both rich and poor, but when it comes to food, the commonality ends. It is poor people, including large segments of poorer nations, who are now going hungry and facing the prospect of starving.... This hunger crisis, experts say, is global and caused by a multitude of factors linked to the coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing interruption of the economic order: the collapse in oil prices; widespread shortages of hard currency from tourism drying up; overseas workers not having earnings to send home; and ongoing problems like climate change, violence, population dislocations and humanitarian disasters." ~~~

~~~ On the Other Hand. Seth Borenstein of the AP: "As people across the globe stay home to stop the spread of the new coronavirus, the air has cleaned up, albeit temporarily. Smog stopped choking New Delhi, one of the most polluted cities in the world, and India's getting views of sights not visible in decades. Nitrogen dioxide pollution in the northeastern United States is down 30%. Rome air pollution levels from mid-March to mid-April were down 49% from a year ago. Stars seem more visible at night. People are also noticing animals in places and at times they don't usually. Coyotes have meandered along downtown Chicago's Michigan Avenue and near San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. A puma roamed the streets of Santiago, Chile. Goats took over a town in Wales. In India, already daring wildlife has become bolder with hungry monkeys entering homes and opening refrigerators to look for food.... Researchers are tracking dramatic drops in traditional air pollutants, such as nitrogen dioxide, smog and tiny particles. These types of pollution kill up to 7 million people a year worldwide, according to Health Effects Institute president Dan Greenbaum."

Tal Axelrod of the Hill: "Former Vice President Joe Biden said he plans to announce the members of a selection committee who will help choose his running mate by May 1 as speculation continues to mount over his vice presidential pick.... Biden added that the committee will likely take until July to narrow the hunt for a vice president down to the top three contenders."

~~~~~~~~~~

Erica Werner & Seung Min Kim of the Washington Post: "The Senate passed a $484 billion deal Tuesday to replenish a small-business loan program that's been overrun by demand and to devote more money to hospitals and coronavirus testing. President Trump said he would sign it into law. The legislation, which came together over days of intense negotiation that followed a bitter partisan standoff, would increase funding for the Paycheck Protection Program by $310 billion. It would also boost a separate small-business emergency grant and loan program by $60 billion, and direct $75 billion to hospitals and $25 billion to a new coronavirus testing program.... Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Tuesday for the first time that larger firms would now be blocked from using this program, and Trump called on some big companies that had already obtained taxpayer-backed loans to return the money.... The deal also includes another $60 billion in emergency loans and grants for a separate Small Business Administration program that is also out of money and would allow agricultural companies to qualify for these funds, as sought by some GOP senators. ~~~

~~~ Jordain Carney of the Hill: "The agreement was passed by a voice vote.... Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the only senator who has been infected with the coronavirus, said shortly before its passage that he opposed the funding, but would not block its passage and require his colleagues to come back to Washington for a formal roll call vote.... The House is expected to pass the bill on Thursday morning, with members returning to Washington for a recorded vote." ~~~

~~~ Morgan Chalfant of the Hill: "President Trump said Tuesday that he is going to ask large businesses and institutions such as Harvard University to return money that they received as part of a coronavirus relief package. 'I'm going to request it,' Trump told reporters at the White House, singling out the Ivy League school. 'Harvard is going to pay back the money. They shouldn't be taking it. I'm not going to mention any other names, but when I saw Harvard -- they have one of the largest endowments anywhere in the country, maybe in the world. They're going to pay back the money,' the president added." Mrs. McC: It's a rare day when Trump is right about something for the right reason, but this may have been that day.

Gee, Nobody Saw This Coming. Jeff Stein & Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "Senior White House and Trump administration officials are planning to launch a sweeping effort in the coming days to repeal or suspend federal regulations affecting businesses, with the expected executive action seen by advisers as a way to boost an economy facing its worst shock in generations, two people familiar with the internal planning said. The White House-driven initiative is expected to center on suspending federal regulations for small businesses and expanding an existing administration program that requires agencies to revoke two regulations for every new one they issue, the two people said. While the plan remains in flux, changes could affect environmental policy, labor policy, workplace safety and health care, among other areas." The Raw Story has a summary story here. Mrs. McC: If Trump can't kill you one way (Covid-19), he'll kill you another (fall into a vat of chocolate). (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ Update. Nick Miroff, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump said Tuesday he will halt immigration to the United States for 60 days, a freeze that will block green card recipients from moving to the country but will continue to allow temporary workers on nonimmigrant visas to enter. The president provided a rationale for the unprecedented decision that was primarily economic, arguing that he wants Americans to have access to work as millions of people have lost their jobs amid the coronavirus crisis. Senior White House officials and attorneys met Tuesday to sort out the logistics and legal implications of President Trump's late-night Twitter proclamation that he would stop immigration to the United States, a move that came with little indication of who the U.S. government would bar from entry amid the coronavirus outbreak. Trump said the executive order was still being written as of Tuesday night.... The president also said seasonal farm laborers would not be affected by the measures, and the suspension 'will help to conserve vital medical resources.'... Aides said privately that the president had once more announced a sweeping policy that was not yet ready for implementation, and his administration was trying to piece together an executive order for him to sign that would catch up to his whim." ~~~

~~~ Michael Shear, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump said on Tuesday that he would order a temporary halt in issuing green cards to prevent people from immigrating to the United States, but he backed away from plans to suspend guest worker programs after business groups exploded in anger at the threat of losing access to foreign labor. Mr. Trump, whose administration has faced intense criticism in recent months for his handling of the coronavirus crisis, abruptly sought to change the subject Tuesday night by resuming his assault on immigration.... While numerous numerous studies have concluded that immigration has an overall positive effect on the American work force and wages for workers, Mr. Trump ignored that research on Tuesday, insisting that American citizens who had lost their jobs in recent weeks should not have to compete with foreigners when the economy reopens.... Lawyers at the Justice Department were still studying whether the president had the legal authority to unilaterally suspend the issuance of green cards, an order that caught officials at the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security off guard...." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Actually, the dynamic of Trump's turnaround on guest laborers probably is that Trump realized that Eric wouldn't be able to hire cheap foreign labor for some Trump properties. Plus, I'm not sure how "guest workers" are immune from the coronavirus, whereas your average Norwegian would-be immigrant is not. (And does Trump realize his order is barring Scandanavians and other WASPs as well as people from "shithole countries"? His tweet-order seems to present a flaw in his master-race plan.) ~~~

     ~~~ Update. Mrs. McCrabbie: Turns out Trump's big immigrant ban is a joke. According to John Harwood, who appeared on CNN this morning, the total number of would-be undeserving, job-sucking immigrants Trump has banned from entry onto our golden shores is about 75,000. With at least 22 million Americans out of work because of the pandemic, 75,000 is nothing but a rounding error to mollify Trump's base of xenophobic morons.

~~~ What Conflict of Interest? Ben Protess, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump's signature hotel in the nation's capital wants a break on the terms of its lease. The landlord determining the fate of the request is Mr. Trump's own administration.... In recent weeks, the president's family business has inquired about changing its lease payments.... The Trump Organization owns and operates the luxury hotel, but it is in a federally owned building on Pennsylvania Avenue.... If [the General Services Administration] denies the [Trump Organization's] request, the agency risks running afoul of the president, who appoints its leader; but if it accommodates the Trumps, the agency is likely to draw fire from critics.... The request to the G.S.A. is one of a number of attempts by the Trump Organization to get breathing room from its lenders and other financial partners."

Just Ignore Him. Asawin Suebsaeng, et al., of the Daily Beast: "... the White House's coronavirus response has diverged into two camps: one that defends whatever the president has chosen to care about or watch on TV, and another that actively works to ignore and paper over those excesses. The most recent, glaring example of that wild discrepancy came over the weekend, when Trump began encouraging protests against stay-at-home orders overseen by Democratic governors in several states. The president's messaging took on the language of uprising.... Rather than correct the record or even push back internally, [officials] have tried to proceed as if the president didn't just do what he had so clearly done.... [The task force] is now a team operating on a parallel but separate track: working to ameliorate a public-health crisis despite Trump pushing policies that scientists say could make that task harder." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

"I Didn't Say That": ~~~

Ed O'Keefe of CBS News: "... Democratic governors asked the White House on Monday for help encouraging Americans to adhere to these local guidelines. The request came amid mixed signals from President Trump over who is ultimately responsible for determining when Americans can resume normal activities. Over the past week, Mr. Trump has insisted that only he could order an economic restart, but later told governors 'you're gonna call your own shots' on when and how to reopen and released federal guidelines on how to do so. But over the weekend, he tweeted support for small bands of conservative protesters that rallied in the state capitals of Michigan, Minnesota, Virginia and elsewhere against restrictions put in place by Democratic governors. Vice President Mike Pence said Sunday he would be speaking to all 50 governors on Monday to discuss testing and reopening the states. On the call, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, said her state is using the White House guidelines to implement 'what we think are going to be best practices here in Michigan for the cautious, thoughtful, slow reopening of certain sectors of our economy. As we do that, any help on the national level to reiterate the importance of stay-at-home orders would be helpful,' Whitmer told Pence, according to audio of the meeting obtained by CBS News." Mrs. McC: Good luck with that. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Marissa Lang of the Washington Post: "Registered nurses gathered Tuesday in front of the White House to read the names of health-care workers who have died fighting the coronavirus pandemic. Wearing masks and standing six feet apart, the nurses held up photographs of the deceased as Melody Jones, a member of the National Nurses United union, addressed the news media in an otherwise empty Lafayette Square. The names came from all over the country.... The protest stood in stark contrast to demonstrations in recent days in some parts of the country in which protesters have demanded the reopening of nonessential businesses.... More than 9,000 health-care workers in the United States have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those numbers are believed to be an undercount of infections due to a lack of tests in many areas. The nurses said Tuesday that they wanted to bring their demands for more personal protective equipment directly to President Trump"s doorstep." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: A real president would have gone out into the square to meet these front-line American heroes and/or invited them in to discuss their needs. But Donald Trump is a gutless, careless fake president*.

Travis Gettys of the Raw Story: "Attorney General William Barr will consider legal action to force governors to ease social distancing requirements for their states.... [Barr] told talk radio host Hugh Hewitt that extraordinary measures to fight the spread of coronavirus were justified, but Barr argued that at some point they infringed on constitutional rights, reported Bloomberg. 'We have to give businesses more freedom to operate in a way that's reasonably safe,' Barr said. 'To the extent that governors don't and impinge on either civil rights or on the national commerce -- our common market that we have here -- then we'll have to address that.'... 'These are very, very burdensome impingements on liberty, and we adopted them, we have to remember, for the limited purpose of slowing down the spread, that is bending the curve,' Barr said. 'We didn't adopt them as the comprehensive way of dealing with this disease.' The attorney general agreed with Trump's call to reopen businesses in the weeks ahead, and which GOP governors have signaled they're willing to do soon." ~~~

~~~ Pete Williams of NBC News: Barr "called stay-at-home orders 'disturbingly close to house arrest.'" ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: I feel so much better knowing Bill Barr is looking out for me.

Josh Gerstein of Politico: "A coronavirus-related policy shift that could have cleared the way for thousands of federal prisoners to be sent home early was abruptly reversed this week, according to friends and family members of inmates. Prison officials indicated earlier this month that inmates who had served less than half their sentences could still be considered for early release to limit the spread of infection behind bars. However, inmates in various prisons who had been put into prerelease quarantine almost two weeks ago were advised Monda by authorities that the policy had changed.... However, shortly after this article was published Tuesday, a Justic Department spokesman suggested yet another course correction and indicated that officials at the Bureau of Prisons were confused or given inaccurate guidance about previous directives from Attorney General William Barr.... The reversal reported by inmates ... on Monday could have dashed the hopes of several well-known prisoners seeking release from federal custody, including former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen. Neither man has served half his sentence." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: The second I read the first sentence of Gerstein's report I thought, "Ah, the Michael Cohen Rule." Trump probably threw a fit when he found out Cohen would get to go home.

Common Dreams, republished in the Raw Story: "Reporting out Monday shed new light on the fact that millions of U.S. citizens are not eligible to receive coronavirus stimulus checks because of who they married. This large group, as the Los Angeles Times reported, is made of American citizens who file taxes jointly with a spouse who uses an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number &-- an identification the IRS issues to workers who don't have a Social Security Number. Those with ITINs include those who are undocumented and those who may be in the legalization process."

Huh. Nicholas Florko of STAT: "Rick Bright, one of the nation's leading vaccine development experts and the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, is no longer leading the organization, officials told STAT. The shakeup at the agency, known as BARDA, couldn't come at a more inopportune time for the office, which invests in drugs, devices, and other technologies that help address infectious disease outbreaks and which has been at the center of the government's coronavirus pandemic response. Bright, whose departure was confirmed by three industry sources and two current Trump administration sources, will instead move into a narrower role at the National Institutes of Health. Gary Disbrow, Bright's former deputy at BARDA, will serve as the acting director of the office, an HHS spokesperson confirmed to STAT.... None of the sources articulated the reason for Bright's departure, though several mentioned recent chafing between Bright and Bob Kadlec, [a] current HHS assistant secretary...."

Alex Daugherty of the Miami Herald: "Miami Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala, the lone House Democrat on the committee set up to oversee $500 billion in taxpayer money being used for coronavirus-related payouts to large businesses, violated federal law when she failed to disclose stock sales while serving in Congress.... [T]he transactions were not publicly reported as required by the STOCK Act, a 2012 law that ... requires [members of Congress] to report stock sales and purchases within 45 days.... There isn't any evidence that Shalala bought or sold stocks based on inside information." --s ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Arf. My guess is that Shalala isn't a crook; she just accidentally forgot to follow the law. But whatever the reason, it would seem she's not the best person to serve as a watchdog over financial transactions. I realize it's her staff who will do the work, but a 79-year-old probably isn't someone you want to put in charge of poring over the fine print of thousands of financial documents.

Lena Sun of the Washington Post: "Even as states move ahead with plans to reopen their economies, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Tuesday that a second wave of the novel coronavirus will be far more dire because it is likely to coincide with the start of flu season. 'There's a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through,' CDC Director Robert Redfield said in an interview with The Washington Post.... 'We're going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time,' he said. Having two simultaneous respiratory outbreaks would put unimaginable strain on the health-care system, he said.... In a wide-ranging interview, Redfield said federal and state officials need to use the coming months to prepare for what lies ahead. As stay-at-home orders are lifted, officials need to stress the continued importance of social distancing, he said. They also need to massively scale up their ability to identify the infected through testing and find everyone they interact with through contact tracing." A Raw Story summary report is here.

Marilynn Marchione of the AP: "A malaria drug widely touted by ... Donald Trump for treating the new coronavirus showed no benefit in a large analysis of its use in U.S. veterans hospitals. There were more deaths among those given hydroxychloroquine versus standard care, researchers reported.... Hydroxychloroquine made no difference in the need for a breathing machine, either.... The nationwide study was not a rigorous experiment. But with 368 patients, it's the largest look so far of hydroxychloroquine with or without the antibiotic azithromycin for COVID-19, which has killed more than 171,000 people as of Tuesday. The study was posted on an online site for researchers and has not been reviewed by other scientists.... The NIH and others have more rigorous tests underway." ~~~

     ~~~ An "MD at a major academic medical center wrote to Josh Marshall of TPM: "It's a retrospective study. That means medication choice was up to the docs.... The patients who got HC or HC + azithro were more likely to have poor oxygenation, have high blood pressure, have anemia, have high levels of inflammation at baseline! Usually, the sicker you start, the worse you do. I'm just saying that this should allow the real clinical trials the space to get done." ~~~

~~~ Tracy Connor & Adam Rawnsley of the Daily Beast: "President Trump was grilled Tuesday about his flogging of an anti-malaria drug as a coronavirus treatment after a government-funded study showed it didn't help veterans and was associated with more deaths. He dodged. 'I don't know of the report,' he said at the daily briefing.... The team [of researchers] acknowledged that patients who got hydroxychlroquine were likely to be among the most critically ill, but even accounting for that, the death rate [of the patients who got hydroxychloroquine] was outsize." ~~~

~~~ It's Over When the Hannity Aria Ends. Justin Baragona of the Daily Beast: "After weeks of incessantly hyping an unproven anti-malarial drug as a potential miracle cure for the coronavirus, Fox News has seemingly ditched its nearly round-the-clock promotion of hydroxychloroquine. Unsurprisingly, the change in tone coincided with President Donald Trump's own retreat from touting the drug, and comes as multiple studies have shown no benefit to COVID-19 patients." ~~~

~~~ MEANWHILE. Joe Palca of NPR: "A panel of experts convened by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases recommends against doctors using a combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for the treatment of COVID-19 patients because of potential toxicities. 'The combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin was associated with QTc prolongation in patients with COVID-19,' the panel said. QTc prolongation increases the risk of sudden cardiac death. The recommendation against their combined use would seem to fly in the face of comments made by President Trump suggesting the combination might be helpful. On March 21, for example, the president described them in a tweet as having a 'real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.'... He has repeatedly touted the use of the drugs during televised coronavirus task force briefings.... The expert panel, convened by the NIH Institute that Dr. Anthony Fauci directs, produced a set of guidelines for doctors to use in treating COVID-19 patiens.... For the most part, the guidelines are agnostic about the use of experimental medications.... But occasionally, there are recommendations explicitly against certain therapies."

Jin Wu & Allison McCann of the New York Times: "At least 28,000 more people have died during the coronavirus pandemic over the last month than the official Covid-19 death counts report, a review of mortality data in 11 countries shows -- providing a clearer, if still incomplete, picture of the toll of the crisis. In the last month, far more people died in these countries than in previous years, The New York Times found. The totals include deaths from Covid-19 a well as those from other causes, likely including people who could not be treated as hospitals became overwhelmed.... In Paris, more than twice the usual number of people have died each day, far more than the peak of a bad flu season. In New York City, the number is now four times the normal amount.... The differences are particularly stark in countries that have been slow to acknowledge the scope of the problem." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Annals of "Journalism", Ctd. Watching Hannity Is Dangerous to Your Health. Bob Brigham of RawStory: "Anew [sic] study from the University of Chicago's Becker Friedman Institute for Economics found that 'greater viewership of "Hannity" relative to "Tucker Carlson Tonight" was strongly associated with a greater number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the early stages of the pandemic.'... The researchers commissioned a poll of more than 1,000 Fox News viewers, which found that Carlson's viewers were more likely to change their behavior earlier than Hannity's viewers.... The researchers then compared the death rate in counties that favored either host, finding 'approximately 30% more COVID-19 cases' in areas that preferred Hannity than those that watched Carlson." --s

Delaware. Karl Baker of the Delaware News Journal: "George Gianforcaro, owner of the small, Newark, Delaware-based Indutex USA, said the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not pay him when it took possession of two imported shipments of masks bound for customers across the United States.... He said he does not know where the seized N95 masks are today, or whether they have been distributed to medical facilities or others.... In an emailed statement, FEMA appeared to deny Gianforcaro's charge without addressing the specific claims.... Gianforcaro canceled the remainder of the order.... 'Let's not forget I paid $4 million for this product on March 18,' Gianforcaro said, referring to the million-mask order. 'This is getting very, very expensive. I don't have any money and I don't have any product and there's people that are asking for it.'" --s

Georgia. Dana Milbank of the Washington Post: "Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp ... has a bold plan to turn his state into the place to die. Kemp, a Republican and an ally of President Trump, just called for the reopening within days of his state's gyms, fitness centers, bowling alleys, body-art studios, barbers, nail salons, cosmetologists, aestheticians, beauty schools, massage therapists, theaters, private social clubs and dine-in restaurants. He's doing this even though the state ranks near last in testing, even though it's not clear that covid-19 cases are declining there, and even knowing 'we're probably going to have to see our cases continue to go up,' as Kemp himself said.... It has been 88 years since Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis developed the idea of states serving as 'laboratories of democracy.' But even that great thinker probably couldn't have imagined states serving as actual laboratories, experimenting with the spread of infectious diseases in their populations. Now several Republican governors, with Trump's encouragement, are racing to reopen during the pandemic, using their constituents as lab rats to see what happens when you relax virus containment." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Obviously Milbank doesn't care about people like me, who are so bored sitting home that it seems like a great time to fly down to Georgia & get a tattoo.

Michigan. Matt Viser & Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's [D] administration on Tuesday abruptly canceled a no-bid contract to help track the spread of the coronavirus in Michigan, a day after announcing the hiring of a state Democratic consultant and a national firm that has worked for prominent Democratic causes. The reversal comes amid complaints that the governor tapped politically connected firms to collect health data on state residents and monitor sensitive medical information.... The Michigan contract, worth nearly $200,000 over the next eight weeks, was signed Monday and allowed the hiring of a subcontractor to help with 'contact tracing,' a process to track residents with the coronavirus and those with whom they have interacted.... The episode illustrates the political and ethical pitfalls involved in the large amounts of money suddenly being spent across the country to curb the coronavirus outbreak and boost the economy."

Texas. Brendan Cole of Newsweek: Texas Lt. Gov. "Dan Patrick [R], who turned 70 this month, faced a social media backlash in March for telling Fox News that many of his generation were willing to 'take a chance' and return to work because an economy that was shut down by the coronavirus would harm future generations. As parts of Texas started to reopen this week following weeks of restrictions, Patrick defended his comments on Monday, telling anchor Tucker Carlson again that the recent economic hardship had left him 'vindicated.'... Comparing the death toll in Texas with its population, he went on to say, 'every life is valuable but 500 people out of 29 million and we're locked down and we're crushing the average worker, we're crushing small business, we're crushing the markets, we're crushing this country.... There are more important things than living, and that's saving this country for my children and my grandchildren and ... for all of us....'" (Also linked yesterday.)

Wisconsin. Republicans Are Dangerous to Your Health. Alison Dirr of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Officials have identified seven people who appear to have contracted COVID-19 through activities related to the April 7 election, Milwaukee Health Commissioner Jeanette Kowalik said Monday. Six of the cases are in voters and one is a poll worker, Kowalik said.... Tuesday will mark the 14th day since the election -- a time frame during which epidemiologists agree symptoms typically appear." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Sapna Maheshwari & Vanessa Friedman of the New York Times: "American department stores, once all-powerful shopping meccas that anchored malls and Main Streets across the country, have been dealt blow after blow in the past decade. J.C. Penney and Sears were upended by hedge funds. Macy's has been closing stores and cutting corporate staff. Barneys New York filed for bankruptcy last year. But nothing compares to the shock the weakened industry has taken from the coronavirus pandemic.... Even as they have worked to transform themselves for e-commerce with apps, websites and in-store exchanges, the outbreak has laid bare how dependent the department stores have remained on their physical outposts.... None of them were in as immediate dire straits as Neiman Marcus, which has both an enormous debt burden ... and a raft of expensive rents in the most high-profile shopping destinations, signed during boom times."

Anna Nicolaou & Alex Barker of the Financial Times: "Walt Disney will stop paying more than 100,000 employees this week, nearly half of its workforce, as the world's biggest entertainment company tries to weather the coronavirus lockdown.... The decision leaves Disney staff reliant on state benefits ... even as the company protects executive bonus schemes ... typically worth $1.5bn. By contrast some big multinationals, including L'Oréal and Total in France, have vowed to forgo state aid in a show of solidarity with taxpayers.... In Orlando, home to more than 70,000 Disney cast members, Florida offers unemployment payments of up to $275 a week for 12 weeks -- among the lowest rates in the US." [Firewalled]--s

** Fiona Harvey of the Guardian: "The world is facing widespread famine 'of biblical proportions' because of the coronavirus pandemic, the chief of the UN's food relief agency has warned, with a short time to act before hundreds of millions starve. More than 30 countries in the developing world could experience widespread famine, and in 10 of those countries there are already more than 1 million people on the brink of starvation, said David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Programme." --s

Martin Matishak & Andrew Desiderio of Politico: "The Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday reaffirmed its support for the U.S. intelligence community's conclusion that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election with the goal of putting Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Tuesday's bipartisan report, from a panel chaired by North Carolina Republican Richard Burr, undercuts Trump's years of efforts to portray allegations of Kremlin assistance to his campaign as a 'hoax,' driven by Democrats and a 'deep state' embedded within the government bureaucracy.... Senators and committee aides examined everything from the sources and methods used for the intelligence-gathering, to the Kremlin's actions itself. The 158-page report is heavily redacted, with dozens of pages blacked out entirely. But its final conclusions were unambiguous." A New York Times report is here.

Presidential Race. Steve M.: Whatever the arc of the coronavirus pandemic, "Trump's numbers won't change much. They never do. A slight majority of the country doesn't trust his leadership, but the minority that thinks he's an amazingly good president still might be enough to win the Electoral College, even if we have a six-figure death toll and an unemployment rate well into the double digits on Election Day. Trump will just keep arguing with reporters, identifying scapegoats (today it's immigrants, tomorrow it will be blue-state governors with ongoing lockdowns), and promising miracles (though he appears to have already moved on from hydroxychloroquine, which was found to be a bust in another study). The base won't abandon him, even though we'll probably never have all the tests we need -- tests for the sick, tests to trace infection patterns, tests for antibodies -- as long as he's president."

Tim Mak of NPR: "The National Rifle Association's legal troubles have cost the powerful gun rights group $100 million, according to a recording of the group's board meeting obtained by NPR. In the January 2020 recording, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre criticizes ongoing investigations by the New York and Washington, D.C., attorneys general, bemoaning 'th power of weaponized government.' And he told the NRA's board of directors, assembled for the group's winter meeting in January, that the organization has had to make $80 million in cuts to stay afloat.... The NRA announced layoffs and pay cuts in late March, blaming the coronavirus crisis for these measures." Mrs. McC: The head of the shoot-'em-up society has a lot of nerve complaining about "weaponized government." ~~~

~~~ Scott Lemieux in LG&$: "There is no violin small enough.... Normally, I'd support intervention to support the laid off workers, but in this case I'd say thoughts and prayers should be more than sufficient."

Beyond the Beltway

Arizona. Laurie Roberts of the Arizona Republic: "Unless Rep. Shawnna Bolick really is living in a tiny box on Bell Road [in a UPS store], she may be in a heap of trouble. In fact, the first-term legislator could be disqualified for running for reelection this year. If that happens, look for Republicans to break out in a wholesale sweat.... Bolick will have a chance to explain at a hearing before Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott McCoy on April 29.... The loss of one seat would give the parties a 30-30 split in the House, essentially clearing a spot at the table for Democrats when laws are made.... If they take two seats, Democrats would seize control of the House for the first time since 1966." --s

The Commentariat -- April 21, 2020

Afternoon Update:

Manu Raju & Clare Foran of CNN: "Congressional negotiations have reached a deal on a bill that includes hundreds of billions of dollars in new funding for small businesses hurt by the coronavirus outbreak, three sources familiar tell CNN. The text of the bill should be unveiled as soon as Tuesday afternoon as the two sides give the deal a final read. Lawmakers will try to pass it in the Senate at 4 p.m. ET when the chamber convenes for a pro forma session."

Jin Wu & Allison McCann of the New York Times: "At least 28,000 more people have died during the coronavirus pandemic over the last month than the official Covid-19 death counts report, a review of mortality data in 11 countries shows -- providing a clearer, if still incomplete, picture of the toll of the crisis. In the last month, far more people died in these countries than in previous years, The New York Times found. The totals include deaths from Covid-19 as well as those from other causes, likely including people who could not be treated as hospitals became overwhelmed.... In Paris, more than twice the usual number of people have died each day, far more than the peak of a bad flu season. In New York City, the number is now four times the normal amount.... The differences are particularly stark in countries that have been slow to acknowledge the scope of the problem."

Gee, Nobody Saw This Coming. Jeff Stein & Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "Senior White House and Trump administration officials are planning to launch a sweeping effort in the coming days to repeal or suspend federal regulations affecting businesses, with the expected executive action seen by advisers as a way to boost an economy facing its worst shock in generations, two people familiar with the internal planning said. The White House-driven initiative is expected to center on suspending federal regulations for small businesses and expanding an existing administration program that requires agencies to revoke two regulations for every new one they issue, the two people said. While the plan remains in flux, changes could affect environmental policy, labor policy, workplace safety and health care, among other areas." The Raw Story has a summary story here. Mrs. McC: If Trump can't kill you one way (Covid-19), he'll kill you another (fall into a vat of chocolate).

Just Ignore Him. Asawin Suebsaeng, et al., of the Daily Beast: "... the White House's coronavirus response has diverged into two camps: one that defends whatever the president has chosen to care about or watch on TV, and another that actively works to ignore and paper over those excesses. The most recent, glaring example of that wild discrepancy came over the weekend, when Trump began encouraging protests against stay-at-home orders overseen by Democratic governors in several states. The president's messaging took on the language of uprising.... Rather than correct the record or even push back internally, [officials] have tried to proceed as if the president didn't just do what he had so clearly done.... [The task force] is now a team operating on a parallel but separate track: working to ameliorate a public-health crisis despite Trump pushing policies that scientists say could make that task harder."

"I Didn't Say That": ~~~

Ed O'Keefe of CBS News: "... Democratic governors asked the White House on Monday for help encouraging Americans to adhere to these local guidelines. The request came amid mixed signals from President Trump over who is ultimately responsible for determining when Americans can resume normal activities. Over the past week, Mr. Trump has insisted that only he could order an economic restart, but later told governors 'you're gonna call your own shots' on when and how to reopen and released federal guidelines on how to do so. But over the weekend, he tweeted support for small bands of conservative protesters that rallied in the state capitals of Michigan, Minnesota, Virginia and elsewhere against restrictions put in place by Democratic governors. Vice President Mike Pence said Sunday he would be speaking to all 50 governors on Monday to discuss testing and reopening the states. On the call, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, said her state is using the White House guidelines to implement 'what we think are going to be best practices here in Michigan for the cautious, thoughtful, slow reopening of certain sectors of our economy. As we do that, any help on the national level to reiterate the importance of stay-at-home orders would be helpful,' Whitmer told Pence, according to audio of the meeting obtained by CBS News." Mrs. McC: Good luck with that.

Brendan Cole of Newsweek: Texas Lt. Gov. "Dan Patrick [R], who turned 70 this month, faced a social media backlash in March for telling Fox News that many of his generation were willing to 'take a chance' and return to work because an economy that was shut down by the coronavirus would harm future generations. As parts of Texas started to reopen this week following weeks of restrictions, Patrick defended his comments on Monday, telling anchor Tucker Carlson again that the recent economic hardship had left him 'vindicated.'... Comparing the death toll in Texas with its population, he went on to say, 'every life is valuable but 500 people out of 29 million and we're locked down and we're crushing the average worker, we're crushing small business, we're crushing the markets, we're crushing this country.... There are more important things than living, and that's saving this country for my children and my grandchildren and saving this country for all of us....'"

Republicans Are Dangerous to Your Health. Alison Dirr of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Officials have identified seven people who appear to have contracted COVID-19 through activities related to the April 7 election, Milwaukee Health Commissioner Jeanette Kowalik said Monday. Six of the cases are in voters and one is a poll worker, Kowalik said.... Tuesday will mark the 14th day since the election -- a time frame during which epidemiologists agree symptoms typically appear."

~~~~~~~~~~

Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Here's the most discouraging story I've read about Covid-19: ~~~

~~~ Jeff Wise of New York: "Hopes for a return to normal life after the coronavirus hinge on the development of a vaccine. But there's no guarantee, experts say, that a fully effective COVID-19 vaccine is possible.... Not all viral diseases are equally amenable to vaccination. 'Some viruses are very easy to make a vaccine for, and some are very complicated,' says Adolfo García-Sastre, director of the Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.... Unfortunately, it seems that COVID-19 is on the difficult end of the scale.... At this point, it's not a given that even an imperfect vaccine is a slam dunk. The way that the COVID-19 virus behaves out in the wild makes it hard to predict how it will respond to vaccination.... A recent study in China ... found that many patients who actually had the disease showed very low levels of antibodies in their blood after they recovered -- and in some cases had none at all. This might indicate that people who recover from the disease or get vaccinated against it might be able to catch it nonetheless."

Trump's Latest Threat to the Essence of the Nation: It's the "Foreigners"' Fault. Katie Rogers, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump said on Monday evening that he intended to close the United States to people trying to immigrate into the country to live and work, a drastic move that he said would protect American workers from foreign competition once the nation's economy began to recover from the shutdown caused by the coronavirus outbreak. 'In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens,' Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter, 'I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!' In recent weeks, the Trump administration has used health concerns to justify aggressively restricting immigration.... But the president's late-night announcement on Monday signals his most wide-ranging attempt yet to seal off the country from the rest of the world.... It was not immediately clear what legal basis Mr. Trump would claim to justify shutting down most immigration."

"A Lot of People Love Trump." -- Trump. Ted Johnson of Deadline: At Monday's 5 pm Trump Show, [PBS reporter Yamiche] "Alcindor pressed the president about someone she recently interviewed who said his family got sick and did not take precautions 'mainly because the president wasn't taking it seriously.' 'Are you concerned that downplaying the virus maybe got some people sick?' she asked. Trump replied, 'And a lot of people love Trump. A lot of people love me. You see them all the time. I guess I am here for a reason, and for the best of my knowledge I won. And I think we are going to win again. I think we are going to win in a landslide.'" ~~~

     ~~~ Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC said, "That is the answer of a sociopath." Mrs. McC: One reason Alcindor is a super-successful reporter and I'm not is that my follow-up question would have been: "That's your answer? This family got sick because they listened to you and your response is, 'I'm here for a reason.' Using the royal 'we,' you say, 'We're going to win in a landslide'?? Where's your sympathy for the family? Where's your apology? Where's your contrition? Where's one normal response to an American tragedy?" However, this was Alcindor's follow-up: ~~~

~~~ Matthew Chapman of the Raw Story: "When [Alcindor then] asked [Trump] about rallies he held in February and March, Trump lied, ' don't know anything about rallies. I haven't left the White House in months, except to give a wonderful ship, the Comfort ... Why was Nancy Pelosi holding a street fair in Chinatown?'" ~~~

(~~~ Rem Rieder of FactCheck.org: "Pelosi did visit Chinatown in late February in an effort to encourage people to go there to eat and shop. But she did not support parades or parties, try to show the coronavirus didn’t exist or delete a tweet of her visit, as Trump [has] claimed.... On the same day as Pelosi's visit, Trump tweeted, 'The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!'")

The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Monday are here. “President Trump mounted a lengthy defense of the country's coronavirus testing capacity during his daily briefing on Monday, even as governors in several states scrambled to access testing materials. Mr. Trump and members of the White House coronavirus task force said they had shared information with state officials about where to find machines to process test samples, and Vice President Mike Pence again said there was' enough testing capacity for every state in America' to make decisions about lifting restrictions.... But officials at the briefing -- including Mr. Trump, who brandished a thick binder that he said listed about 5,000 testing facilities -- emphasized lab capacity over another issue that state officials have underscored recently: an insufficient supply of materials needed to conduct the tests. Pressed about the disconnect, Mr. Trump reacted dismissively to several governors." ~~~

~~~ Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post: "President Trump said on Twitter that the demand for more tests was driven by the same 'Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats' who earlier had demanded the federal government intervene to provide more ventilators for acute-care coronavirus patients.... [At his 5 pm show Monday,] Trump directed some of his ire at Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), the head of the National Governors Association, who he said 'didn't understand much about what was going on' when he criticized the federal government's performance in addressing the testing issue."

Trump's Evil Plan. Jonathan Chait: "President Trump's current pandemic strategy -- emphasize current; like the cliché about the weather, if you don't like it, wait a few hours -- is a baffling knot of contradictions. He is hurling all responsibility to state governments, leaving it to them to devise effective tests and to decide when to relax social distancing. At the same time, he is starving them of the resources to handle the job. And even as Trump hides behind a policy of deference to governors, he is goading right-wing protesters to force their hand.... Yet there does appear to be a strategy here. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday afternoon that Trump has 'asked White House aides for economic response plans that would allow him to take credit for successes while offering enough flexibility to assign fault for any failures to others.' Trump's seemingly paradoxical stance is an attempt to hoard credit and shirk risk.... On the surface, he is deferring responsibility and blame to the governors. Just below the surface, he is coercing them to resume economic activity as fast as possible, regardless of what public-health officials say." Read on. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Hating people is a waste of energy. I'm beginning to have trouble not wasting my energy on Trump.

Delusions of Grandeur. Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: The 5 pm Trump Propaganda Show is an embarrassing extravaganza every day. David Smith of the Guardian (April 18) wrote an account of this past Saturday's installment of Trump's sideshow. The story is full of chestnuts like this one: "The president ended the briefing-cum-rally as he began, talking about anything but the coronavirus. He attacked the Democratic congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as having a 'very strong anti-Israel bent'. He said of North Korea: 'Look, if I wasn't elected, you would right now -- maybe the world -- would be over'."

Katharine Seelye, et al., of the New York Times describe some of the cloak-and-dagger lengths to which state governors & hospital administrators have gone to try to secure protective gear & other supplies for medical workers & to protect the gear frombeing seized by federal agents or otherwise disappearing. For instance, "In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat ... this month announced a nearly $1 billion deal to buy hundreds of millions of masks from China. He has refused to provide details of the contract even to state lawmakers amid reports of deals getting upended at the last minute, either from countries offering higher prices or from federal agencies stepping in and seizing goods." Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) got his wife Yumi to help get more testing kits; she speaks fluent Korean & called two Korean labs to negotiate the deal.

The Washington Post's live updates of coronavirus developments Monday are here. Fauci Puts a Damper on the Trumpendrooler Protests. "Anthony S. Fauci, the nation's top infectious-diseases expert, said Monday in response to protests of various states' stay-at-home orders that reopening the economy too early would backfire.... '... unless we get the virus under control, the real recovery economically is not going to happen.'... Fauci on Monday also cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from antibody tests, which determine whether a person was already infected with a virus. Many of the tests in circulation have not been validated or calibrated, he warned. Fauci added that although antibodies for other viruses generally confer immunity upon people who have them, experts have not proved that protection exists for the coronavirus and how long it lasts if it does exist." (Also linked yesterday.)

Erica Werner of the Washington Post: "The White House and Congress on Monday tried to design another giant bailout package aimed at combating the coronavirus pandemic's economic and health fallout, scrambling to resolve last-minute snags over loan access and testing.... House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on CNN Monday evening, '... now we're down to fine print, but I feel very optimistic and hopeful that we'll come to a conclusion tonight so that it can be taken up [Tuesday] in the Senate and Wednesday in the House or Representatives.'... The new package would amount to roughly $470 billion in new spending, with $370 billion directed to small businesses, $75 billion going to hospitals, and $25 billion set aside for testing." ~~~

~~~ Jonathan O'Connell of the Washington Post: "The federal government gave national hotel and restaurant chains millions of dollars in grants before the $349 billion program ran out of money Thursday, leading to a backlash that prompted one company to give the money back and a Republican senator to say that 'millions of dollars are being wasted.' Thousands of traditional small businesses were unable to get funding from the program before it ran dry. As Congress and the White House near a deal to add an additional $310 billion to the program, some are calling for additional oversight and rule changes to prevent bigger chains from accepting any more money.... Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) criticized the program, saying that 'companies that are not being harmed at all by the coronavirus crisis have the ability to receive taxpayer-funded loans that can be forgiven.'... Some of the companies receiving money are clients of JPMorgan Chase, adding fuel to criticism that Wall Street banks had helped their clients obtain large amounts."

Tom Boggioni of RawStory: "According to a report from the Daily Beast, Attorney General Bill Barr appears poised to take the lead and attempt to force governors to re-open their states during the coronavirus pandemic -- even at the risk of ramping up the spread of the virus when it appears to be slowing down. In the process, he could become the face of Donald Trump's failures to stem the COVID-19 health crisis." --s The Daily Beast story is firewalled. (Also linked yesterday.)

Patrick Wintour, et al. of the Guardian: "US hostility to the World Health Organization scuppered the publication of a communique by G20 health ministers on Sunday that committed to strengthening the WHO's mandate in coordinating a response to the global coronavirus pandemic. In place of a lengthy statement with paragraphs of detail, the leaders instead issued a brief statement saying that gaps existed in the way the world handled pandemics." --s (Also linked yesterday.)

Oil Prices Drop to Minus $30/Barrel. That's Right: Minus. Stanley Reed & Clifford Krauss of the New York Times: "Something bizarre happened in the oil markets on Monday: Prices fell so much that some traders paid buyers to take oil off their hands. The price of the main U.S. oil benchmark fell more than $50 a barrel to end the day about $30 below zero, the first time oil prices have ever turned negative. Such an eye-popping slide is the result of a quirk in the oil market, but it underscores the industry's disarray as the coronavirus pandemic decimates the world economy. Demand for oil is collapsing, and despite a deal by Saudi Arabia, Russia and other nations to cut production, the world is running out of places to put all the oil the industry keeps pumping out -- about 100 million barrels a day. At the start of the year, oil sold for over $60 a barrel but by Friday it hit about $20. Prices went negative -- meaning that anyone trying to sell a barrel would have to pay a buyer $30 -- in part because of the way oil is traded." ~~~

~~~ Fred Imbert of CNBC: "Stocks fell sharply Monday, retreating after back-to-back weekly gains, as a historic decline in U.S. crude prices raised concerns about the economic damage being done by coronavirus shutdowns. A delay in funding the for the depleted small business rescue loan program also weighed on sentiment. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 592.05 points lower, or 2.5%, 23,650.44. The S&P 500 slid 1.8% to 2,823.16. The Nasdaq Composite pulled back 1% to 8,560.73."

"Send in the Quacks." Paul Krugman: "... why is there such a close alliance between modern conservatism and quackery? One answer is that a political movement that demands absolute loyalty considers quacks more reliable than genuine experts.... Another answer is that the modern right is driven in large part by the grievances of white men who don't feel that they're getting the respect they believe they deserve, and Fox-fueled hostility to 'elites' who claim to know more than guys in diners -- which, on technical subjects like epidemiology, they do -- is a key part of the movement.... Finally, there has historically been a strong association between right-wing extremism and grifting.... Fake experts have reached a kind of apotheosis under Donald Trump...."

Colorado. Denver nurses stop anti-lockdown nuts: ~~~

Georgia. Paul LeBlanc of CNN: "Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp announced Monday that certain businesses can reopen this week in a move that breaks from the majority of state leaders and defies the warnings of many public health officials. Kemp said specifically that fitness centers, bowling alleys, body art studios, barbers, hair and nail salons, and massage therapy businesses can reopen as early Friday, April 24. Theaters and restaurants will be allowed to open on Monday, April 27, while bars and night clubs will remain closed for now.... According to an influential model often cited by the White House, from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Georgia hit its projected 'peak' for daily deaths 13 days ago, on April 7. But that same model predicts that dozens of people will die each day in the coming week. And to limit a resurgence of the virus, the model says that Georgia shouldn't start relaxing social distancing until after June 15 -- when the state can begin considering other measures to contain the virus, such as contact tracing and isolation." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: On the bright side, Kemp does make Florida's Ron DeSantis look a little smarter. At least DeSantis (so far) hasn't recommended physical interactions among strangers in which sweat-sharing, touching, extended touching & breaking the skin takes place.

Iowa. Stephen Joyce, et al., of Bloomberg, republished in Yahoo! Finance: "Hundreds of National Guard personnel are being activated in Iowa as coronavirus sweeps through meat-processing plants in a state that accounts for about a third of U.S. pork supply. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds (r) said 250 National Guard members have been moved to full-time federal duty status and could help with testing and contact tracing for workers at plants operated by Tyson Foods Inc. and National Beef Packing Co. Activating guard soldiers is the latest attempt to contain the disease, which has forced a growing number of slaughterhouses and meat-processing plants to slow or halt operations. The disruptions are stoking concerns for eventual fresh-meat shortages in grocery stores as well leaving some farmers without a market for their animals. That's pushing down prices for hogs and cattle, while making meat more expensive. Wholesale pork posted its biggest three-day gain in six years."

Kentucky. Christina Zhao of Newsweek: "Democratic Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear announced Sunday that the state had set a grim record with 273 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus, the highest single-day rise to date. Kentucky's increase in infected individuals comes after protesters took to the streets throughout the week to call for the state to be reopened. With the 273 additional confirmed infections, Kentucky now has 2,960 cases of the novel virus and 1,122 recoveries. Beshear also announced four new deaths on Sunday, bringing the total number of fatalities across the state to 148."

South Dakota. It's the "Foreigners"' Fault. Albert Samaha & Katie Baker of BuzzFeed News: Gov. Kristi Noem (R) & Smithfield Foods executives blame "living circumstances in certain cultures ... [unlike] your traditional American family" for the huge outbreak of coronavirus among workers in Smithfield's South Dakota pork processing plant. Noem said in a Fox "News" interview "that '99%' of the spread of infections 'wasn't happening inside the facility' but inside workers' homes, 'because a lot of these folks who work at this plant live in the same community, the same buildings, sometimes in the same apartments.' But internal company communications and interviews with nearly a dozen workers and their relatives point to a series of management missteps and half measures that contributed significantly to the spread of the virus."

Texas. Not Their Best Rodeo. Perla Trevino of the Texas Tribune & ProPublica: "The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is the city's largest annual event, attracting 2.5 million people and generating nearly $400 million in economic activity for the region.... Days before the ... rodeo kicked off, area politicians celebrated this great piece of Americana -- dubbed the world's largest livestock show -- which was going forward in the age of the coronavirus. Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, a 29-year-old rising political star..., reassured residents that 'the overall risk of COVID-19 to the general public within our counties remains low at this time.'... Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner ... posted a video of himself line dancing to the 'wobble.' But over at the Rodeo Houston headquarters, organizers worried that the 20-day event would have to be shut down early as they watched a global increase in coronavirus cases... Enough evidence existed [at the time] that 'something was probably going to develop during that time period. We just didn't know how or when, [Dr. Kelly Larkin, an ER physician and longtime rodeo board member] told ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.... Many in the community were urging organizers and city leaders to cancel the event.... Ultimately, on March 11, after eight days, the rodeo shut down. A police officer from a neighboring county who attended a pre-rodeo barbecue tested positive for the new coronavirus...."

Ishaan Tharoor of the Washington Post: "Countries such as Germany and South Korea moved to ease restrictions this week, but they have established far more efficient and widespread regimes of contact tracing and testing for the virus [than the U.S].... Even then, they remain wary about the possibility of a second wave ravaging their countries.... German Chancellor Angela Merkel..., in contrast to Trump..., urged local authorities to maintain and enforce social distancing rules to ensure that the country's slowdown in infections would continue.... And none of the indignation of Trump supporters over their apparent loss of rights during a global public health crisis can be heard in the messaging from authorities in countries that are slowly trying to restart their economies."

Brazil. Tom Phillips of the Guardian: "Former presidents, politicians and newspaper editorial boards have lined up to denounce the 'moronic' and 'anti-democratic' behaviour of Brazil's far-right leader after he hit the streets to egg on protesters demanding a return to military dictatorship. As the number of deaths caused by Covid-19 rose to nearly 2,500 on Sunday, Jair Bolsonaro left his presidential palace in Brazil's capital, Brasília, to fraternize with flag-waving radicals." --s

Singapore. Hannah Beech of the New York Times: "After recording its first coronavirus case on Jan. 23, the prosperous city-state [of Singapore] meticulously traced the close contacts of every infected patient, while keeping a sense of normalcy on its streets. Borders were shut to populations likely to carry the contagion, although businesses stayed open. Ample testing and treatment were free for residents. But over the past few days, Singapore's coronavirus caseload has more than doubled, with more than 8,000 cases confirmed as of Monday, the highest in Southeast Asia. Most of the new infections are within crowded dormitories where migrant laborers live, unnoticed by many of the country's richer residents and, it turns out, the government itself. The spread of the coronavirus in this tidy city-state suggests that it might be difficult for the United States, Europe and the rest of the world to return to the way they were anytime soon, even when viral curves appear to have flattened.... If anything, the trials of this intensely urban, hyper-international country hint at a global future in which travel is taboo, borders are shut, quarantines endure and industries like tourism and entertainment are battered."

Damian Carrington of the Guardian: "High levels of air pollution may be 'one of the most important contributors' to deaths from Covid-19, according to research. The analysis shows that of the coronavirus deaths across 66 administrative regions in Italy, Spain, France and ;Germany, 78% of them occurred in just five regions, and these were the most polluted. The research examined levels of nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant produced mostly by diesel vehicles, and weather conditions that can prevent dirty air from dispersing away from a city." --safari: Seem appropriate to remember that the EPA has stopped enforcing environmental regulations now. (Also linked yesterday.)

Jason Wilson of the Guardian: "An emerging shortage of carbon dioxide gas (CO2) caused by the coronavirus pandemic may affect food supply chains and drinking water, a Washington state emergency planning document has revealed. The document, a Covid-19 situation report produced by the State Emergency Operations Center (SEOC), contains a warning from the state's office of drinking water (ODW) about difficulties in obtaining CO2, which is essential for the process of water treatment.... Th main reason for national shortages, according to the CEO of the Compressed Gas Association (CGA), Rich Gottwald, is a ramping down of ethanol production." --s

Justin Wise of the Hill: "President Trump on Sunday lashed out at FBI leadership over the origins of the investigation into Russian election interference, calling investigators who led the probe 'human scum.' Trump made the remarks during a White House briefing after being asked about a pair of his former associates who were sentenced to prison following charges stemming from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Asked whether he'd pardon Paul Manafort and Roger Stone so they wouldn't be exposed to the coronavirus while in prison, Trump said, 'You'll find out.'" Mrs. McC: If you sometimes think maybe Trump isn't mentally disturbed, he's so often ready to disabuse you of your generous musings.

Way Beyond the Beltway

Israel. David Halbfinger & Isabel Kershner of the New York Times: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his former challenger, Benny Gantz, agreed Monday night to establish a unity government, a deal that finally breaks a yearlong political impasse and keeps Mr. Netanyahu in office as he faces trial on corruption charges. After three inconclusive elections in the past year, the creation of the new government forestalls what had appeared to be an inevitable fourth election and offers a deeply divided Israel a chance for national healing as it battles the coronavirus pandemic."

North Korea. Jim Sciutto, et al., of CNN: "The US is monitoring intelligence that suggests North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, is in grave danger after undergoing a previous surgery, according to [US officials].... A South Korean source told CNN Monday that the country's top leaders are very much aware of reports about Kim's health status but cannot independently verify details published by Daily NK.... South Korea's Unification Ministry and Defense Ministry have given a 'no comment.'"

The Commentariat -- April 20, 2020

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

Trump's Evil Plan. Jonathan Chait: "President Trump's current pandemic strategy -- emphasize current; like the cliché about the weather, if you don't like it, wait a few hours -- is a baffling knot of contradictions. He is hurling all responsibility to state governments, leaving it to them to devise effective tests and to decide when to relax social distancing. At the same time, he is starving them of the resources to handle the job. And even as Trump hides behind a policy of deference to governors, he is goading right-wing protesters to force their hand.... Yet there does appear to be a strategy here. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday afternoon that Trump has 'asked White House aides for economic response plans that would allow him to take credit for successes while offering enough flexibility to assign fault for any failures to others.' Trump's seemingly paradoxical stance is an attempt to hoard credit and shirk risk.... On the surface, he is deferring responsibility and blame to the governors. Just below the surface, he is coercing them to resume economic activity as fast as possible, regardless of what public-health officials say." Read on. ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Hating people is a waste of energy. I'm beginning to have trouble not wasting my energy on Trump.

The Washington Post's live updates of coronavirus developments Monday are here. Fauci Puts a Damper on the Trumpendrooler Protests. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation's top infectious-diseases expert, said Monday in response to protests of various states' stay-at-home orders that reopening the economy too early would backfire.... '... unless we get the virus under control, the real recovery economically is not going to happen.'... Fauci on Monday also cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from antibody tests, which determine whether a person was already infected with a virus. Many of the tests in circulation have not been validated or calibrated, he warned. Fauci added that although antibodies for other viruses generally confer immunity upon people who have them, experts have not proved that protection exists for the coronavirus and how long it lasts if it does exist."

Tom Boggioni of RawStory: "According to a report from the Daily Beast, Attorney General Bill Barr appears poised to take the lead and attempt to force governors to re-open their states during the coronavirus pandemic -- even at the risk of ramping up the spread of the virus when it appears to be slowing down. In the process, he could become the face of Donald Trump's failures to stem the COVID-19 health crisis." --s The Daily Beast story is firewalled.

Patrick Wintour, et al. of the Guardian: "US hostility to the World Health Organization scuppered the publication of a communique by G20 health ministers on Sunday that committed to strengthening the WHO's mandate in coordinating a response to the global coronavirus pandemic. In place of a lengthy statement with paragraphs of detail, the leaders instead issued a brief statement saying that gaps existed in the way the world handled pandemics." --s

Justin Wise of the Hill: "President Trump on Sunday lashed out at FBI leadership over the origins of the investigation into Russian election interference, calling investigators who led the probe 'human scum.' Trump made the remarks during a White House briefing after being asked about a pair of his former associates who were sentenced to prison following charges stemming from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Asked whether he'd pardon Paul Manafort and Roger Stone so they wouldn't be exposed to the coronavirus while in prison, Trump said, 'You'll find out.'" Mrs. McC: If you sometimes think maybe Trump isn't mentally disturbed, he's so often ready to disabuse you of your generous musings.

Damian Carrington of the Guardian: "High levels of air pollution may be 'one of the most important contributors' to deaths from Covid-19, according to research. The analysis shows that of the coronavirus deaths across 66 administrative regions in Italy, Spain, France and Germany, 78% of them occurred in just five regions, and these were the most polluted. The research examined levels of nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant produced mostly by diesel vehicles, and weather conditions that can prevent dirty air from dispersing away from a city." --safari: Seems appropriate to remember that the EPA has stopped enforcing environmental regulations now.

~~~~~~~~~~

The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Sunday are here. "President Trump on Sunday said the administration was preparing to use the Defense Production Act to compel an unspecified U.S. facility to increase production of test swabs by over 20 million per month. The announcement came during his Sunday evening news conference, after he defended his response to the pandemic amid criticism from governors across the country claiming that there has been an insufficient amount of testing to justify reopening the economy any time soon. 'We are calling in the Defense Production Act,' Mr. Trump said. He added, 'You'll have so many swabs you won't know what to do with them.... We already have millions coming in.... In all fairness, governors could get them themselves. But we are going to do it. We'll work with the governors and if they can't do it we'll do it.' He provided no details about what company he was referring to, or when the administration would invoke the act." Mrs. McC: IOW, the usual B.S.

** "Incredible Political Sadism." David Wallace-Wells of New York: "Whenever you start to think that the federal government under Donald Trump has hit a moral bottom, it finds a new way to shock and horrify. Over the last few weeks, it has started to appear as though, in addition to abandoning the states to their own devices in a time of national emergency, the federal government has effectively erected a blockade -- like that which the Union used to choke off the supply chains of the Confederacy during the Civil War -- to prevent delivery of critical medical equipment to states desperately in need. At the very least, federal authorities have made governors and hospital executives all around the country operate in fear that shipments of necessary supplies will be seized along the way. In a time of pandemic, having evacuated federal responsibility, the White House is functionally waging a war against state leadership and the initiative of local hospitals to secure what they need to provide sufficient treatment.... We don't know where [the supplies [the federal government seizes] are going. We don't know on what grounds they are being seized, or threatened with seizure." Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly told governors the states are on their own in securing PPE & other medical equipment.

Daddy Warlocks Hexes Pelosi, Wallace. Nervous Nancy is an inherently 'dumb' person. She wasted all of her time on the Impeachment Hoax. She will be overthrown, either by inside or out, just like her last time as 'Speaker'. Wallace & @FoxNews are on a bad path, watch! -- Donald Trump, in a tweet, reacting to Chris Wallace's interview of Nancy Pelosi ~~~

~~~ Edwin Rios of Mother Jones: "On Sunday, in her first appearance on Fox News since 2017, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicated that a new $400 billion relief bill could come 'soon but also slammed ... Donald Trump's 'weak' response to the coronavirus pandemic for failing to put forward science-based plans to address the pandemic. 'He doesn't take responsibility. He places blame -- blame on others,' Pelosi told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.... She also sharply criticized Trump's leadership when it comes to expanding testing for COVID-19, telling Wallace, 'We're way late on it, and that is a failure. The president gets an F -- a failure -- on the testing.'... Her comments came as Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin indicated on CNN that the Trump administration and congressional Democrats could reach an agreement on yet another aid package would include $300 billion to replenish funds for a federal small business loan program that ran out last week." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Hurtling from one position to another is consistent with Mr. Trump's approach to the presidency over the past three years. Even when external pressures and stresses appear to change the dynamics that the country is facing, Mr. Trump remains unbowed, altering his approach for a day or two, only to return to nursing grievances.... The president, who ran as an insurgent in 2016, is most comfortable raging against the machine of government, even when he is the one running the country. And while the coronavirus is in every state in the union, it is heavily affecting minority and low-income communities. So when Mr. Trump on Friday tweeted 'LIBERATE,' his all-capitalized exhortations against strict orders in specific states ... were in keeping with how he ran in 2016: saying things that seem contradictory, like pledging to work with governors and then urging people to 'liberate' their states, and leaving it to his audiences to hear what they want to hear in his words.... On Sunday, Mr. Trump again praised the protesters. 'I have never seen so many American flags,' he said." ~~~

~~~ Jim Fallows of the Atlantic republishes a note from Republican Mike Lofgren on what the Trump & Co. astroturf protests/street theater are really about. Here's part of Lofgren's note: "Trump's encouragement of the demonstrators is even more bizarre than commonly depicted.... This is a unique case: the head of the national government egging on residents of the states to illegally impede their state governors from carrying out their lawful, necessary, and proper functions to maintain public safety in a health emergency. So much for 'federalism' under the GOP.... Republican street theater, maybe even (or perhaps especially) when it threatens public safety or human decency, seems always to act like catnip to the mainstream media, who invariably trot out the well-worn tropes of 'economic anxiety.' The U.S. media have done an execrable job on this one." ~~~

~~~ Josh Marshall of TPM: "The protests we've seen in a handful of locations around the country have bamboozled a lot of the national press. Look closely and a lot of the turnout is heavily stocked with militia types and the kinds of groups who turned out for the Charlottesville protests a couple years ago. But the bigger thing is that for now they appear highly orchestrated.... These are basically Trump loyalists supporting Trump at his request and mobilized by key rightist groups. The key question ... is whether what starts here as orchestrated and largely inorganic takes on a life of its own and gains political traction. They now have Fox and an incumbent President cheering them on as a demonstration of political identity." --s ~~~

~~~ James Downie of the Washington Post: "Few on Team Trump are better at deploying up-is-down reasoning to spin news to Trump's benefit [than is mike pence]. But during the vice president's appearances on NBC's and Fox News's Sunday morning talk shows, it was clear that even Pence could not bootlick his way out of the lurch the president's actions leave the rest of us in.... Pence dodged [trying to explain Trump's "LIBERATE" tweets] because the president's actions were indefensible. But Pence can't say that, both because the protests are being cheered by Fox News and like-minded outlets and because Pence wants to stay in the good graces of a president who values loyalty to him above all else." ~~~

~~~ HOWEVER, Piers Morgan, the former CNN & current ITV host, who is so shallow he readily admits to being a friend of Donald Trump's, calls Trump's daily 5 pm propaganda shows "horrifying": ~~~

Hope Yen & Calvin Woodward of the AP: "... Donald Trump is falsely assigning blame to governors and the Obama administration for shortages in coronavirus testing. For much of the week, he was pretender to a throne that didn't exist as he claimed king-like powers over the pandemic response and Congress. But by the weekend, he was again saying governors called the shots and they are the ones to blame -- not the federal government, not him -- for any testing problems. He says governors aren't using all the testing capacity that the federal government has created. It's not true. Meanwhile, Trump denied praising China's openness in the pandemic, when he's on record doing so repeatedly, and declared victory over what he calls relatively low death rates in the U.S. But that's too soon to tell."

Rick Rojas of the New York Times: "Governors facing growing pressure to revive economies decimated by the coronavirus said on Sunday that a shortage of tests was among the most significant hurdles in the way of lifting restrictions in their states. 'We are fighting a biological war,' Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia said on 'State of the Union' on CNN. 'We have been asked as governors to fight that war without the supplies we need.' In interviews on Sunday morning talk shows, Mr. Northam was among the governors who said they needed the swabs and reagents required for the test, and urged federal officials to help them get those supplies. The governors bristled at claims from the Trump administration that the supply of tests was adequate. On NBC's 'Meet the Press,' Vice President Mike Pence said 'there is a sufficient capacity of testing across the country today for any state in America' to go to the first of three phases that the administration says are needed for the country to emerge from the coronavirus shutdown. Mr. Northam, a Democrat, called Mr. Pence's claim 'delusional.'... ​Gov. Larry Hogan​ of Maryland, a Republican, said that it was 'absolutely false' to claim that governors were not acting aggressively enough to pursue as much testing as possible."

Sarah Burris of the Raw Story: "... Donald Trump bragged about ... Abbott Labs for [producing] his 'Quick COVID-19 Test' as 'a whole new ballgame.'... He claimed the lab's test could deliver 'lightning-fast results in as little as five minutes.' This while many leaders are worried about a huge backlog in tests and the need for more testing to discover if social-distancing has stopped the spread or not. Trump's government bought hundreds of devices and sent them out to the states. [BUT] 'In recent days, state and hospital officials found in internal studies that the devices frequently produced inaccurate results, leading at least one hospital to return the devices, they said in interviews,' said the [Wall Street] Journal.... [In addition, according to the WSJ,] 'Most [of Abbott's tests] require a long list of components that come from different producers, including swabs, throwaway polystyrene parts, chemical reagents, glass pipettes, pipette tips and more, resulting in a complex supply chain that easily breaks down when there is a shortage of any particular element.'"

Steve Eder, et al., of the New York Times: "In recent weeks, the United States has seen the first rollout of blood tests for coronavirus antibodies, widely heralded as crucial tools to assess the reach of the pandemic in the United States.... But for all their promise, the tests -- intended to signal whether people may have built immunity to the virus -- are already raising alarms.... Criticized for a tragically slow and rigid oversight of those tests months ago, the federal government is now faulted by public health officials and scientists for greenlighting the antibody tests too quickly and without adequate scrutiny. The Food and Drug Administration has allowed about 90 companies, many based in China, to sell tests that have not gotten government vetting.... But the agency has since warned that some of those businesses are making false claims about their products; health officials, like their counterparts overseas, have found others deeply flawed.... Even as government agencies, companies and academic researchers scramble to validate existing tests and create better ones, there are doubts they can deliver as promised. Most tests now available mistakenly flag at least some people as having antibodies when they do not, which could foster a dangerously false belief that those people have immunity." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Karen DeYoung, et al., of the Washington Post: "More than a dozen U.S. researchers, physicians and public health experts, many of them from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were working full time at the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organization as the novel coronavirus emerged late last year and transmitted real-time information about its discovery and spread in China to the Trump administration, according to U.S. and international officials.... Senior Trump-appointed health officials ... consulted regularly at the highest levels with the WHO as the crisis unfolded, the officials said. The presence of so many U.S. officials undercuts President Trump's charge that the WHO's failure to communicate the extent of the threat, born of a desire to protect China, is largely responsible for the rapid spread of the virus in the United States." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Dana Milbank first revealed U.S. scientists' presence at the WHO in WashPo his column, also linked here yesterday. Putting the onus on the WHO for not informing the U.S. about what it knew about the spread of Covid-19 is another giant lie Trump has repeated multiple times. As U.S. residents began sickening & dying from Covid-19, Trump repeatedly lied about the mortal danger the virus presented to Americans. As Milbank pointed out, Trump has told 18,000 lies since becoming president*, but hiding the truth about the coronavirus is, as Milbank calls it, "a murderous lie." Impeachable? Yep.

Marilynn Marchione of the AP: "A flood of new research suggests that far more people have had the coronavirus without any symptoms, fueling hope that it will turn out to be much less lethal than originally feared. While that's clearly good news, it also means it's impossible to know who around you may be contagious. That complicates decisions about returning to work, school and normal life.... The head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 25% of infected people might not have symptoms. The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. John Hyten, thinks it may be as high as 60% to 70% among military personnel. None of these numbers can be fully trusted because they're based on flawed and inadequate testing, said Dr. Michael Mina of Harvard's School of Public Health. Collectively, though, they suggest 'we have just been off the mark by huge, huge numbers' for estimating total infections, he said."

Amy Goldstein of the Washington Post: "In a nation where most health coverage is hinged to employment, the economy's vanishing jobs are wiping out insurance in the midst of a pandemic." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Common Dreams via RawStory: "Days after the Trump administration threatened Central American countries with visa sanctions if they refuse to accept nationals who are deported from the U.S. during the coronavirus pandemic, the Guatemalan health minister said an estimated 75% of the people on one deportation flight from the U.S. later tested positive for the virus. Health Minister Hugo Monroy's claim raised fears that the U.S. is willfully sending sick people back to the countries they left, creating conditions for larger outbreaks in countries including Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras." --s

#FloridaMorons. Emily Shugerman of the Daily Beast: "The state of Florida passed two milestones in the coronavirus pandemic this week: its deadliest day yet, and the reopening of several public beaches.... Hundreds of people flocked to the beaches in Duval County Friday, some engaging group sports like volleyball or spikeball. Photos of the scene drew outcry on social media, spawning the hashtag #FloridaMorons, as well as disdain from officials elsewhere in the state.... Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who contracted coronavirus himself, called the reopening in Jacksonville 'very concerning,' adding that Florida was 'not out of the woods yet' and the consequences of reopening too soon were 'very, very scary.'... [Gov. Ron] DeSantis [R-Dimwit] said that a task force would also begin meeting daily next week to work on reopening businesses."

Ohio. Patrick Cooley & Jim Woods of the Columbus Dispatch: "Coronavirus has overtaken a vast majority of the prison population at the Marion Correctional Institution, state officials said Sunday. The Ohio Department of Health reported more than 1,000 newly confirmed cases of the coronavirus across the state Sunday, bringing the total of confirmed and probable cases to 11,602. With 20 additional deaths, there have been 471 confirmed and probable deaths from COVID-19, state officials said. The number of hospitalizations rose to 2,565.... Much of the increase in cases has come from Ohio's prison system.... Overall, the state's prison system has recorded 2,426 positive results among inmates, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said. That number is 21% of the total confirmed cases in Ohio. The majority of those cases are at the Marion Correctional Institution, where 1,828 inmates -- 73% of the total -- have tested positive for the virus, state officials say. The remaining 667 prisoners now are in quarantine."

Mike Spector & Jessica DiNapoli of Reuters: "Neiman Marcus Group is preparing to seek bankruptcy protection as soon as this week, becoming the first major U.S. department store operator to succumb to the economic fallout from the coronavirus outbreak, people familiar with the matter said. The debt-laden Dallas-based company has been left with few options after the pandemic forced it to temporarily shut all 43 of its Neiman Marcus locations, roughly two dozen Last Call stores and its two Bergdorf Goodman stores in New York. Neiman Marcus is in the final stages of negotiating a loan with its creditors totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, which would sustain some of its operations during bankruptcy proceedings, according to the sources. It has also furloughed many of its roughly 14,000 employees." Mrs. McC: I guess rich people aren't buying up enough cashmere sweatsuits online to shelter-in-comfort.

Boris & Donald, Birdbrains of a Feather. Zachary Basu of Axios: "A 5,000-word exposé by the Sunday Times of London -- '38 days when Britain sleepwalked into disaster' -- finds that Prime Minister Boris Johnson, distracted by personal turmoil and his Brexit victory lap, skipped five early crisis briefings (Cobra meetings) on the coronavirus.... Warnings issued in January and repeated in February fell on 'deaf ears,' according to the Sunday Times, with the lost time potentially costing thousands of British lives.... The U.K. government held its first Cobra meeting on Jan. 24, sensing the looming threat as the virus had spread from China to at least six known countries. Health Secretary Matt Hancock told reporters that the risk to the British public was 'low,' while a spokesperson for Johnson -- who skipped the Cobra meeting -- said the U.K. was 'well prepared for any new diseases.' Johnson went on to skip four more Cobra meetings, distracted by mass flooding, the U.K.'s withdrawal from the European Union, a Cabinet shakeup and a countryside holiday with his fiancée, before finally attending one on March 2." The Sunday Times report is here.

Hyung-Jin Kim of AP: "North Korea on Sunday dismissed as 'ungrounded 'President Donald Trump's comment that he recently received 'a nice note' from the North's leader, Kim Jong Un.... North Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that there was no letter addressed to Trump recently by 'the supreme leadership,' a reference to Kim." --s

Presidential Race

Felicia Sonmez & Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: "... Joe Biden has won the Wyoming Democratic primary, the latest nominating contest to be moved entirely to vote-by-mail amid the coronavirus pandemic. The Wyoming Democratic Party announced Sunday that Biden had won a little over 72 percent of the vote, with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) taking nearly 28 percent. This year marks the first time that Wyoming Democrats have used ranked-choice voting in their presidential nominating contest. The contest has traditionally been an in-person caucus, but because of the coronavirus, the state party switched to a vote-by-mail primary instead. The caucuses had originally been scheduled for April 4."

Washington Post: "A decade ago on April 20, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig leased by BP was working a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico when a surge in pressure and a blowout triggered a fire that killed 11 crew members and unleashed the largest oil spill in U.S. history.... Today ... attention has shifted to President Trump's efforts to undo safety steps taken by the Obama administration to prevent such a spill from happening again.... Since coming into office..., the Trump administration demonstrated it would roll back those rules by eliminating the need for independent inspectors. That followed the issuance of approximately 1,700 waivers to an industry the administration's Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE).... The United States and other countries remain heavily dependent on deepwater drilling, a daunting engineering challenge in seas so deep that even military submarines cannot venture there.... Despite the potential for another catastrophe, the public appetite for oil has encouraged the petroleum industry to treat those risks as acceptable.... There were 13,187 spills in the federal waters off the Gulf of Mexico from the time of the BP spill through March...."

News Lede

New York Times: "Peter Beard, a New York photographer, artist and naturalist to whom the word 'wild' was roundly applied, both for his death-defying photographs of African wildlife and for his own much-publicized days -- decades, really -- as an amorous, bibulous, pharmaceutically inclined man about town, was found dead in the woods on Sunday, almost three weeks after he disappeared from his home in Montauk on the East End of Long Island. He was 82."