Trump Goes Viral, Con't

The word is that Trump will urge states to send people back to work and reopen schools as early as next week, with Americans being advised to wear masks and proceed as normal.

On Saturday, Weill Cornell’s Dr. Matt McCarthy reported that the Centers for Disease Control will revise their recommendations on protective masks.

In the next ten days, the CDC guidelines will reportedly change to advising Americans to wear masks “in everyday life.” This contrasts with the current guidelines, which only recommend masks for high-risk groups like health care workers.

The country is currently suffering from a shortage of masks and other personal protective equipment as health care workers struggle to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. Many have been forced to reuse spent masks, or fashion their own out of materials lying around. The revised guidelines would threaten to worsen the mask shortage unless increased production begins right away.

Following the publication of this story, the CDC denied the report.

Trump is calling up retired troops and reservists back to duty to prepare for the inevitable.

President Trump issued an order Friday night that permits the Pentagon to bring back to active duty some veterans and reserve members of the military to augment forces already involved in the response to the coronavirus pandemic, senior U.S. officials said.

The president said Friday night that the decision will “allow us to mobilize medical, disaster and emergency response personnel to help wage our battle against the virus by activating thousands of experienced service members, including retirees.”

The president did not clarify whether anyone will be involuntarily recalled to duty but said some retirees have “offered to support the nation in this extraordinary time of need.”

“It’s really an incredible thing to see,” Trump said, speaking at the White House. “It’s beautiful.”

An Army spokesman, Lt. Col. Emmanuel Ortiz-Cruz, said some 15,000 veterans have expressed interest in rejoining the service to help the military’s response to the pandemic.

But a U.S. military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, would not rule out that involuntary recalls also are possible.

“That’s to be determined based on requirements,” the official said.

I guarantee you that the orders will not be voluntary in a matter of weeks.  In a matter of weeks, it will be utter and complete chaos, with thousands of Americans dying daily.

We're up to hundreds of Americans dying daily now as the total number dead are doubling every 3 days.   If there's anything good that has come from the last week, it's the fact that far fewer Americans now believe Trump this week when it comes to COVID-19.

A clear majority of the American public, including self-identified Republicans, do not believe the disinformation that President Donald Trump keeps pushing around the spread of coronavirus. And even members of the president’s own party are skeptical of his argument that getting the country back to work needs to be as prioritized as public safety measures.

A new survey conducted by Ipsos exclusively for The Daily Beast provides some of the clearest evidence to date that the president’s attempts to paint a rosy picture about the coronavirus’ spread throughout the country are not resonating beyond a small segment of the populace with a small exception for those who say they’re getting their information from Fox News. 

• A full 73 percent of respondents, including 75 percent of Republicans, said that it was not true that “anyone who wants to get tested [for the virus] can get tested.” Just 17 percent said it was true. 
• Only 20 percent of the public, and just 25 percent of Republicans, said that they believed a vaccine will be available soon. Forty-two percent said that was false and 38 percent said they did not know. 
• Fifty-one percent of respondents, including a plurality or Republicans (46 percent), said it was false that the virus would go away on its own in warm weather, while just 13 percent said that was true. 
• And 61 percent of respondents said that they believed COVID-19 was more deadly than the flu; with 22 percent saying it was about the same and 11 percent saying they believed it was less deadly. 

The question that seemed to generate the most confusion was on whether the Federal Drug Administration had “approved anti-malaria drugs to treat the virus." 

But even then, 45 percent of respondents correctly identified that statement as false, 22 percent said it was true and 33 percent said they did not know. 

Collectively, the results present a portrait of a public that is sober minded about the coronavirus and unpersuaded by talk that life could return to normalcy soon. Over the past few weeks, Trump has suggested that the spread of coronavirus would abate as the temperature warmed. He’s repeatedly insisted that those who want a test can get one, against overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He’s downplayed the lethality of it by comparing it to the flu. He’s talked about a vaccine hitting the markets in weeks, if not months, and pushed hydroxychloroquine as a therapy for coronavirus, despite his own medical experts warning that there is nothing more than anecdotal data suggesting it could work.

We're still in the first 20-30 minutes of this pandemic movie, where the national leader is telling everyone that things will be fine.

They will not be fine.  The next month will be hell.

It will be significantly worse in the days ahead.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you.