Egghead Week: Power Packed Pact

Just as the West Coast and Mid-Atlantic states have done, the Midwest is forming a regional group of state governments to coordinate getting states back on track, and that includes the KY-IN-OH tri-state.

The governors of Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky announced Thursday that they will work in close coordination to reopen the Midwest regional economy in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. 

The announcement came in a news release from Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, sent on behalf of all the participating governors. 

"Our number one priority when analyzing when best to reopen our economy is the health and safety of our citizens," the governors said in a joint statement. 

"We will make decisions based on facts, science, and recommendations from experts in health care, business, labor, and education," the statement added.

The governors said they will home in on at least four factors when determining when best to reopen the economy: sustained control of the rate of new infections and hospitalizations, enhanced ability to test and trace, sufficient health care capacity to handle resurgence and best practices for social distancing in the workplace. 

Similar collaborations have been undertaken by governors in recent days on the West and East coasts. 

Two of the governors involved in the new group -- Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers -- made announcements on Thursday afternoon that suggest their states are looking toward how to reopen. 

DeWine said in a news briefing that he is developing a plan for a new phase of the state's response to coronavirus to start on May 1. Details of the new phase will come in the next few weeks, DeWine said. 

He added that talks need to continue with his group of economic advisers and speak with school district superintendents about how to reopen schools and businesses in the state, he said. The plan is to issue new guidance when they determine the best steps to move forward, DeWine said. 

Evers, meanwhile, extended his state's stay-at-home order until May 26 but loosened some restrictions on businesses, a statement from the governor's office read. 

Golf courses are now allowed to open again, and public libraries and arts and crafts stores may offer curb-side pickup, the announcement said. However, the statement also notes that public and private K-12 schools will remain closed for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year.

So hopefully that means getting testing, masks, and ventilators ready for everyone.  Accurate mass testing, tracing of outbreaks, and swift movement to limit them are the only way this works.

We'll see what happens, but this is a good sign.

Egghead Week: Maximum Override in Kentucky

Here in Kentucky, where the state legislature needs only a 50%+1 majority in both the State House and Senate to override any governor's veto, the Kentucky GOP has finally given the state one of the most ridiculous photo voter ID laws in the country, and all the DMV offices issuing acceptable IDs are closed during the pandemic.

Late last month, Gov. Beshear handed down an executive order providing that “all businesses that are not life-sustaining shall cease operations ... except as needed to conduct Minimum Basic Operations.” Among other things, the order suspends “all in-person government activities ... that are not necessary to sustain or protect life, or to supporting Life-Sustaining Businesses.”

Thus, Kentucky voters who lack an ID — perhaps because they recently moved to the state and didn’t get around to obtaining a Kentucky driver’s license before the coronavirus lockdown began — may be unable to obtain this ID in time to vote because the state offices that issue such IDs are closed. The future of life under coronavirus remains very uncertain, and it is, as yet, unclear when the country will return to anything resembling normal.

Even if Kentucky is able to relax restrictions as more testing for the virus becomes available, it may need to reimpose strict limits on businesses and government offices if an outbreak occurs. Voters may only have a limited window to acquire an ID, and that window might close just as a particular voter was preparing to obtain one.

Kentucky’s law, moreover, also resembles a similar Wisconsin law in that it requires voters to show ID in order to obtain an absentee ballot. So voters without ID cannot escape the law by voting by mail.

The new law does permit some voters to cast a ballot without showing photo ID — if they sign a sworn statement affirming that they are lawful voters and providing certain information. But this exemption from the photo ID requirement is only available to a limited group of voters, and it is far from clear that a healthy voter qualifies because they were unable to obtain an ID because government offices were shut down during a pandemic.

Although the law allows a voter to cast a ballot without showing photo ID if they were prevented from getting an ID due to “disability or illness,” the statute is not clear on whether the voter must themselves be infected by this illness in order to qualify. And voters who misuse the exemption could potentially face perjury charges.

It’s worth noting that there could potentially be a very high-profile race on Kentucky’s ballot this November. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is up for reelection, and there is some evidence that McConnell could be defeated if 2020 is a strong year for Democrats. In January, for example, one poll showed McConnell just 3 percentage points ahead of possible Democratic challenger Amy McGrath, and a second poll showed McConnell and McGrath tied.

So, while the impact of voter ID is uncertain under normal circumstances, there are good reasons to believe that such a law could have a larger effect during a pandemic. Whether that impact would be enough to skew a close election from McGrath to McConnell is also unclear. But, at the very least, many voters could struggle to cast a ballot if they are unable to obtain the IDs they need to vote.

Several other party line veto overrides were taken, including passing a measure that would stop the governor from pushing back choosing a Lieutenant Governor running mate, as well as insurance laws and redefining how the state calculates public education achievement gaps, which Beshear said would cut millions of dollars in funding from the poorest-performing schools.

And to top it all off, Kentucky Republicans are quickly crafting a measure that would give the General Assembly the power to reopen businesses across the state as long as state licensing bureaus (now controlled by Republicans in the General Assembly after the Governor's power of appointments to the licensing boards were all but written out this week) approve and can "open non-essential businesses safely" in their eyes.

Finally, the KY GOP is doing everything it can to deem abortion clinics as "non-essential" and taking the choice away from Gov. Beshear as long as the state remains under any health-related emergency.

Because that's the important part right now.

Egghead Week: Methinks They Doth Protest Too Much

The protests are beginning in earnest now.

Oh, not of people angry at Trump's failures and that nearly 30,000 Americans have died so far.

This is America, the country that elected Trump in the first place.

No, these protests are of people angry at social distancing orders that save lives.

A crowd of protesters organized by a conservative group descended on Michigan's state Capitol on Wednesday to protest Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's (D) stay-at-home order during the coronavirus outbreak.

Supporters of the Michigan Conservative Coalition (MCC) urged Whitmer to reopen the state's nonessential businesses on May 1 while urging their own members to practice social distancing during the "Operation Gridlock" protest, local news radio station WWJ reported.

Video of the event posted on Twitter showed some demonstrators on the Capitol steps while others remained in their vehicles, honking loudly.

“When did one size solve everyone’s local issues?" one unidentified organizer asked WWJ. "Gov. Whitmer will put you out of business before allowing mere citizens to be responsible for their own behavior. That is madness.”

Whitmer has ordered Michigan residents to stay at home unless performing essential tasks until April 30, and has closed nonessential businesses in the state, though activists are complaining about which businesses have been allowed to stay open — as well as the de facto cancellation of Easter and Passover services.

And of course, this is about as grass roots as the Brooks Brothers riots back in Florida in 2000.

In a statement at a news conference earlier this week, the governor pointed out that the MCC is funded in large part by the family of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, which is very active in Michigan conservative politics.

"This group is funded in large part by the DeVos family," she said Monday, according to WWJ. "And I think it's really inappropriate for a sitting member of the United States president's Cabinet to [be] waging political attacks on any governor."

Whitmer added: "I think that they should disavow it, and I encourage people to stay home and be safe."

That's right.

Trump's Education Secretary is funding protests in her home state in support of getting stupid people back to work so that they can die from COVID-19 for billionaires like the DeVos family.

That's where we are.

Similar protests took place in North Carolina yesterday and in Ohio on Monday, Pennsylvania is their target next week.

All of these protests taking place in battleground states that Trump needs to win of course.  Most have Democratic governors. There's a method to this madness.  Expect Wisconsin to have these soon.

The protests are already here in Kentucky.

This is WILD pic.twitter.com/j1krHMOkNP

— Joe Sonka 😐 #StayHome (@joesonka) April 15, 2020

Protestors yelling outside @GovAndyBeshear’s press room. ‘Facts over fear’ they also yell pic.twitter.com/ASfyE7Kigl

— Matt Stone (@mattstonephotog) April 15, 2020

After all, it's an honor to die for you new God, Donald Trump.

Egghead Week: Check Out, The Name

To recap, Donald Trump's malignant, clinical narcissism is so completely pervasive that tens of millions of CARES Act COVID-19 relief checks will be delayed so that Treasury can print his fucking name on them.

I'm sorry.  This makes me livid.  The entire regime makes me livid, but this is just so completely idiotic, and not a Republican dares to say a word, mind you, that the whole lot of them need to be fired into the sun.

The unprecedented decision, finalized late Monday, means that when recipients open the $1,200 paper checks the IRS is scheduled to begin sending to 70 million Americans in coming days, “President Donald J. Trump” will appear on the left side of the payment.

It will be the first time a president’s name appears on an IRS disbursement, whether a routine refund or one of the handful of checks the government has issued to taxpayers in recent decades either to stimulate a down economy or share the dividends of a strong one.

Treasury officials disputed that the checks would be delayed.

While some people receiving the checks — the centerpiece of the U.S. government’s economic relief package to stave of the effects of the coronavirus pandemic — may not care, or observe, whose name appears on them, the decision is another sign of Trump’s effort to cast his response to the pandemic in political terms.

Trump had privately suggested to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who oversees the IRS, to allow the president to formally sign the checks, according to three administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

But the president is not an authorized signer for legal disbursements by the U.S. Treasury. It is standard practice for a civil servant to sign checks issued by the Treasury Department to ensure that government payments are nonpartisan.

And let's not forget, people won't be getting these checks in some cases until August or even September, because Trump is an absolute sack of garbage.  Oh, and if you owe your bank money?  They can take all of it.

Congress did not exempt CARES Act payments from private debt collection, and the Treasury Department has been reluctant to exempt them through its rulemaking authority. This means that individuals could see their payments transferred from their hands into the hands of their creditors, potentially leaving them with nothing.

Banks would be first in line to grab the payments to offset a delinquent loan or past-due fees. Even if the individual thinks their account with that bank is closed, if the payments post there, the bank could conceivably use them to cover old debts.

The Treasury Department effectively blessed this activity on a webinar with banking officials last week. In audio obtained by the Prospect, Ronda Kent, chief disbursing officer with Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service, can be heard explaining that banks had posed questions to her about “whether these payments could be subject to collection from the bank to which the money is deposited, if the payee owes an outstanding loan or other payments to the bank.” She responded—twice—that “there’s nothing in the law that precludes that action,” while counseling that the banks’ compliance officers should consult with their legal offices about what policies their banks will implement. “You will want to know for your bank what your bank has decided to do,” Kent said.

Zandardad taught me that everyone is capable of good, because we're all human and all given free will.  But man, Donald Trump tests that theory daily. And you know what?  Trump isn't the only monster in the GOP.  Far from it.

Egghead Week: Should Have Checked First

The headline:

 "Prominent Virginia pastor who said ‘God is larger than this dreaded virus’ dies of covid-19"

My response:

God is in fact larger than this dreaded virus, but God also says "Don't be an idiot."

Egghead Week: Trump Goes Viral, Con't

Enraged by Monday's announcement of several state governors banding together on both coasts, to form regional compacts to pool resources to fight COVID-19, Donald Trump basically declared himself dictator.

President Donald Trump, hours after governors on both coasts announced regional plans for reopening their states, asserted "total authority" over decisions about when and how to emerge after coronavirus shutdowns. 

“When somebody’s president of the United States, the authority is total," Trump said at a press briefing Monday when asked about the governors' plans. "And that’s the way it’s got to to be. It's total. It’s total. And the governors know that."

"You have a couple bands of Democratic governors, but they will agree to it," Trump continued about the governors, who also include Republican Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker. "They will agree to it. But the authority of the president of the United States, having to do with the subject we’re talking about, is total.”

It's not, of course.  We specifically have a Constitution that ensures the opposite.

Our media is beginning to remember that.

I hope that every reporter continues asking him questions like this. @PaulaReidCBS is right—no one who actually cares about the lives he is costing with his willful incompetence wants to hear about his petty rivalries right now.

(And he lied about Biden.) pic.twitter.com/fbjDzsnlRd

— Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) April 13, 2020

What Trump says isn't true, and some things he can't make true.

Not without a fight, at least.

But a fight is exactly what the ghouls on the right been hoping for, and as the country continues to spiral into chaos, they see the opportunity to light the fuse on the biggest fight of them all.

There are now numerous groups weighing in with different views about what Trump should do. For example, Mnuchin said the 100 business groups would be separated into different groups based on their industry. The conservative groups, meanwhile, are pushing for the White House and GOP lawmakers to push back against health professionals who have urged more caution.

The outside effort from conservative groups is expected to be led by Stephen Moore, a conservative at the Heritage Foundation who is close with White House economic officials; Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots; Adam Brandon, president of FreedomWorks, a conservative advocacy organization; and Lisa Nelson, chief executive of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative organization with ties to the Koch brothers, according to the three people, who were granted anonymity to reveal details of an effort that had not been publicly revealed.

“There’s economic risks in both directions,” Mnuchin said, based on what Trump ultimately decides to do. A reporter asked Trump if he would order the economy to reopen by May 1, and Trump said he would give an answer to that question soon.

Mnuchin said his advice to the president was that the economy should reopen “as soon as it’s ready to open and based upon the medical professionals.”

Part of the impetus for the conservative group effort is political. Many conservatives, who had long counted on a roaring economy to lift the GOP in November, are increasingly uneasy about the party’s chances if businesses remain shuttered.

“Obviously, the sooner we get the economy going and back up, the better it’s going to be for conservatives and Republicans in this election year,” veteran tea-party organizer Richard Viguerie said in an interview. “A lot of Republicans and conservatives feel there might be an overreaction to all of this. We’re all anxious to get back. Conservatives feel the government has overreacted, and it’s got to end.”

Multiple other leading conservative groups are expected to join the effort. The coalition started lobbying Republican lawmakers last week and also is working to influence the White House’s thinking.

The conservative mobilization to reopen the economy comes at a pivotal moment in the nation’s fight against the pandemic, as the president and senior administration officials publicly suggest economic life could be largely returned to normal next month. Their push has faced resistance from public health experts, who warn of potentially disastrous consequences should Americans resume daily routines without a clear national plan for doing so safely, creating an enormous power struggle within the Trump administration.

These conservatives warn the sustained economic downturn could do more damage to Americans by destroying their livelihoods, and that the economy can be reopened safely. Numerous other economists and public health experts have pushed back against that assumption.

“There’s a massive movement on the right now, growing exponentially. In the next two weeks, you’ll see protests in the streets of conservatives; you’ll see a big pushback against the lockdown in some states. People are at the boiling point,” said Moore, who declined to comment on the group. “If this were Hillary Clinton doing these things, you already would have riots in the streets.” 

Other conservatives have proposed sidelining the two leading public health experts in the administration, Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Deborah Birx, coronavirus response director. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), a conservative lawmaker, tweeted Monday that Fauci and Birx “should no longer be the primary voices at the table."

Things are going to come to a head very soon.  What I fear most is a scenario where protests turn violent, even though the thought of armed protests during a pandemic seems too bizarre to even consider, and Trump decides he's going to restore order using force.

I know that seems greatly far-fetched but at this point we have an unstable sociopathic narcissist seeing his power slip away from him during a medical disaster that he no longer has control over.

Who the hell knows what he's going to do at this point?

Egghead Week: Pact Men Versus The Ghost Mobsters

It's okay guys, the experts are here!

Sorry about that, wrong slide.  The actual experts are ignoring the Council to Re-open America Panel (CRAP) and taking it upon themselves to fix the problem.

Today, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Oregon Governor Kate Brown and Washington Governor Jay Inslee announced an agreement on a shared vision for reopening their economies and controlling COVID-19 into the future. 

Joint statement from the Governors: 

COVID-19 has preyed upon our interconnectedness. In the coming weeks, the West Coast will flip the script on COVID-19 – with our states acting in close coordination and collaboration to ensure the virus can never spread wildly in our communities.
We are announcing that California, Oregon and Washington have agreed to work together on a shared approach for reopening our economies – one that identifies clear indicators for communities to restart public life and business. 

While each state is building a state-specific plan, our states have agreed to the following principles as we build out a West Coast framework: 

–Our residents’ health comes first. As home to one in six Americans and gateway to the rest of the world, the West Coast has an outsized stake in controlling and ultimately defeating COVID-19. 

–Health outcomes and science – not politics – will guide these decisions. Modifications to our states’ stay at home orders must be made based off our understanding of the total health impacts of COVID-19, including: the direct impact of the disease on our communities; the health impact of measures introduced to control the spread in communities —particularly felt by those already experiencing social disadvantage prior to COVID-19; and our health care systems’ ability to ensure care for those who may become sick with COVID-19 and other conditions. This effort will be guided by data. We need to see a decline in the rate of spread of the virus before large-scale reopening, and we will be working in coordination to identify the best metrics to guide this. 

–Our states will only be effective by working together. Each state will work with its local leaders and communities within its borders to understand what’s happening on the ground and adhere to our agreed upon approach. 

Through quick and decisive action, each of our states has made significant progress in flattening the curve and slowing the spread of COVID-19 among the broader public. Now, our public health leaders will focus on four goals that will be critical for controlling the virus in the future. 

• Protecting vulnerable populations at risk for severe disease if infected. This includes a concerted effort to prevent and fight outbreaks in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.
• Ensuring an ability to care for those who may become sick with COVID-19 and other conditions. This will require adequate hospital surge capacity and supplies of personal protective equipment.
• Mitigating the non-direct COVID-19 health impacts, particularly on disadvantaged communities.
• Protecting the general public by ensuring any successful lifting of interventions includes the development of a system for testing, tracking and isolating. The states will work together to share best practices.

COVID-19 doesn’t follow state or national boundaries. It will take every level of government, working together, and a full picture of what’s happening on the ground. 

On the East Coast, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is forming a similar pact with New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Maryland are forming a similar pact, and I'd expect Maryland and Massachusetts to join as well [UPDATE: GOP Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts joined today as well.]

That's a good third of the US economy in those nine states, and they're ignoring Trump completely.

Egghead Week: Taking A Break

Going to be on a lighter holiday schedule this week to recharge the batteries a bit and try to get my head around some things.  I should still be posting daily at least, as I'm sure we'll have news to cover.

Take care of yourselves and stay home.

Last Call For The China Syndrome

If Donald Trump is able to convince voters that China is somehow responsible for Trump's dismal performance directing the "federal response" to COVID-19 and connect Joe Biden to it, he wins reelection running away.

President Donald Trump and his allies are leaning heavily into a new 2020 strategy tying Democrats and their presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden not just to China but to its role in spreading the coronavirus.

Democrats are increasingly worried that the strategy will work.

The Trump re-election campaign released a new ad this week going after Biden over his opposition to restrictions on travel from China designed to control the spread of the coronavirus outbreak. That was followed with a fundraising solicitation on Saturday that hammered home the point: “I am TOUGH ON CHINA and Sleepy Joe Biden is WEAK ON CHINA,” it declared.

Inside the campaign, the strategy is simple: make China the villain of a global pandemic that has complicated well-laid electoral plans and sparked growing criticism of the president.

“[China’s] among many weaknesses, but when people learn about Biden’s attack on the president’s China travel ban, his other weak positions on China, and his conflict with Hunter Biden’s business deal with China, voters are horrified,” John McLaughlin, a Trump pollster, told The Daily Beast on Friday. Other Trump 2020 officials said that the campaign had always intended to hammer Biden on China until the election in November, and the coronavirus “angle” was merely another way to go after the Bidens and China simultaneously.

In one sense it’s simply an extension of Team Trump’s months-long strategy to tie Biden to a country increasingly viewed with suspicion by American voters. The campaign and the Republican National Committee have been hammering Biden for months over his youngest son Hunter’s past business dealings in China.

But the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, has made the country a far more potent political villain. And the massive disruptions in daily life caused by the virus virtually guarantee that China will remain in the headlines—and on the minds of American voters—for months as election day approaches. Polls already indicate that Americans of both parties overwhelmingly blame China for the virus’ initial spread.

For a Trump campaign that’s a potential political goldmine. “China was an effective wedge issue for Trump in 2016,” said one Republican strategist close to the campaign. “Now that it’s at the top of everyone’s mind, and Biden has a long record of being weak on China, just imagine how much more effective it will be in 2020.”

It definitely worked in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Democrats need to be smashing this noise and quickly.   The problem is I'd normally say Joe Biden's Rust Belt retail politics would go a long way, but that's impossible now.  Trump gets 6-12 hours of primetime coverage every week with his "task force briefings" and there no oxygen in the room for Biden or Democratic surrogates.

The question becomes how Biden can compete, and unless Dems come up with an answer soon, Trump is going to get away with this, blame China, and win by 200 electoral votes.

The key here may very well be Biden's old boss.

Red Dawn, Orange Idiot

E-mail exchanges obtained by the NY Times of some of the nation's top infection disease experts show that the experts absolutely knew COVID-19 was going to be a disaster in the hands of Donald Trump, and he proved them right at every turn.

As the coronavirus emerged and headed toward the United States, an extraordinary conversation was hatched among an elite group of infectious disease doctors and medical experts in the federal government and academic institutions around the nation.

Red Dawn — a nod to the 1984 film with Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen — was the nickname for the email chain they built. Different threads in the chain were named Red Dawn Breaking, Red Dawn Rising, Red Dawn Breaking Bad and, as the situation grew more dire, Red Dawn Raging. It was hosted by the chief medical officer at the Department of Homeland Security, Dr. Duane C. Caneva, starting in January with a small core of medical experts and friends that gradually grew to dozens.

The “Red Dawn String,” Dr. Caneva said, was intended “to provide thoughts, concerns, raise issues, share information across various colleagues responding to Covid-19,” including medical experts and doctors from the Health and Human Services Department, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Homeland Security Department, the Veterans Affairs Department, the Pentagon and other federal agencies tracking the historic health emergency.

Here are key exchanges from the emails, with context and analysis, that show the experts’ rising sense of frustration and then anger as their advice seemingly failed to break through to the administration, raising the odds that more people would likely die.

As the US now tops half million COVID-19 cases and 20,000 deaths, the toll is only growing.

One of the most active participants in the group was Dr. Carter E. Mecher, a senior medical adviser at the Veterans Affairs Department who helped write a key Bush-era pandemic plan. That document focused in particular on what to do if the government was unable to contain a contagious disease and there was no available vaccine, like with the coronavirus.
The next step is called mitigation, and it relies on unsophisticated steps such as closing schools, businesses, shutting down sporting events or large public gatherings, to try to slow the spread by keeping people away from one another. As of late January, Dr. Mecher was already discussing the likelihood that the United States would soon need to turn to mitigation efforts, including perhaps to “close the colleges and universities.”

Dr. James Lawler, an infectious disease doctor at the University of Nebraska who served in the White House under President George W. Bush and as an adviser to President Barack Obama, was also a regular participant in the email chain. He stayed in regular communication with federal officials as the United States attempted to figure out how to respond to the virus. From the beginning he predicted this would be a major public health event.

Convincing governors and mayors to intentionally cause economic harm by ordering or promoting mitigation efforts — such as closing businesses — is always a difficult task. That is why it is so important, these medical experts said, for the federal government to take the lead, providing cover for the local officials to kick off the so-called Nonpharmaceutical Interventions, such as school and business closures. Again, this group of doctors and medical experts recognized from early on that this step was all but inevitable, even if the administration was slow to recognize the need.
Strong evidence was emerging as of mid-February — with the first cases of Covid-19 already in the United States — that the nation was about to be hit hard. These doctors and medical experts researched how quickly the virus spread on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which was quarantined in the port of Yokohama, Japan, on Feb. 3 before hundreds of United States citizens on the ship returned home.

Dr. Eva Lee, a researcher at Georgia Institute of Technology who has frequently worked with the federal government to create infectious disease projections, helped the Red Dawn group do modeling, based on the virus spread on the cruise ship. (Dr. Lee is facing sentencing on federal charges that she improperly applied for a federal grant for unrelated research.)

The concern these medical experts had been raising in late January and early February turned to alarm by the third week in February. That was when they effectively concluded that the United States had already lost the fight to contain the virus, and that it needed to switch to mitigation. One critical element in that shift was the realization that many people in the country were likely already infected and capable of spreading the virus, but not showing any symptoms. Here Dr. Lee discusses this conclusion with Dr. Robert Kadlec, the head of the virus response effort at the Department of Health and Human Services and a key White House adviser.

Dr. Kadlec and other administration officials decided the next day to recommend to Mr. Trump that he publicly support the start of these mitigation efforts, such as school closings. But before they could discuss it with the president, who was returning from India, another official went public with a warning, sending the stock market down sharply and angering Mr. Trump. The meeting to brief him on the recommendation was canceled and it was three weeks before Mr. Trump would reluctantly come around to the need for mitigation.

This slow pace of action was confusing to the medical experts on the Red Dawn email chain, who were increasingly alarmed that cities and states that were getting hit hard by the virus needed to move faster to take aggressive steps.

Report after report, story after story, they all say the same thing: the largest impediment to dealing with COVID-19 in America is Donald Trump.

Sunday Long Read: On A Mission From God

This week's Sunday Long Read is Ariel Levy's spectacular read in the New Yorker about Renee Bach, the woman accused of mass murder in Uganda with her church-funded medical clinic. Hundreds of sick children died in her care, because she had no medical training whatsoever and instead felt she was chosen by God to "help".

In the summer of 2013, Ziria Namutamba heard that there was a missionary health facility a few hours from her village, in southeastern Uganda, where a white doctor was treating children. She decided to go there with her grandson Twalali Kifabi, who was unwell. At three, he weighed as much as an average four-month-old. His head looked massive above his emaciated limbs; his abdomen and feet were swollen like water balloons. All over his tiny body, patches of darkened skin were peeling off. At a rural clinic six months earlier, he had been diagnosed as having malnutrition, but the family couldn’t afford the foods that were recommended. Twalali was his mother’s sixth child, and she was pregnant again—too far along to accompany him to the missionary facility, which was called Serving His Children.

“We were received by a white woman, later known to me as ‘aunt Renee,’ ” Namutamba attested in an affidavit, which she signed with her thumbprint, in 2019. At Serving His Children, Namutamba “saw the same woman inject something on the late Twalali’s head, she connected tubes and wires from baby Twalali to a machine.” Days later, while Namutamba was doing laundry in the clinic’s courtyard, she overheard another woman saying, “What a pity her child has died.” Soon, the person called Aunt Renée “came downstairs holding Twalali’s lifeless body, wrapped in white clothes.”

Twalali was one of more than a hundred babies who died at Serving His Children between 2010 and 2015. The facility began not as a registered health clinic but as the home of Renée Bach—who was not a doctor but a homeschooled missionary, and who had arrived in Uganda at the age of nineteen and started an N.G.O. with money raised through her church in Bedford, Virginia. She’d felt called to Africa to help the needy, and she believed that it was Jesus’ will for her to treat malnourished children. Bach told their stories on a blog that she started. “I hooked the baby up to oxygen and got to work,” she wrote in 2011. “I took her temperature, started an IV, checked her blood sugar, tested for malaria, and looked at her HB count.”

In January, 2019, that blog post was submitted as evidence in a lawsuit filed against Bach and Serving His Children in Ugandan civil court. The suit, led by a newly founded legal nonprofit called the Women’s Probono Initiative, lists the mothers of Twalali and another baby as plaintiffs, and includes affidavits from former employees of S.H.C. A gardener who worked there for three years asserts that Bach posed as a doctor: “She dressed in a clinical coat, often had a stethoscope around her neck, and on a daily basis I would see her medicating children.” An American nurse who volunteered at S.H.C. states that Bach “felt God would tell her what to do for a child.” A Ugandan driver says that, for eight years, “on average I would drive at least seven to ten dead bodies of children back to their villages each week.”

The story became an international sensation. “How could a young American with no medical training even contemplate caring for critically ill children in a foreign country?” NPR asked last August. The Guardian pointed to a “growing unease about the behavior of so-called ‘white saviors’ in Africa.” A headline in the Atlanta Black Star charged Bach with “ ‘Playing Doctor’ for Years in Uganda.” The local news in Virginia reported that Bach was accused of actions “leading to the deaths of hundreds of children.”

Bach made only one televised appearance in response, on Fox News. Wearing a puffy cream-colored blouse, with her blond hair half up, she was pictured on a split screen with her attorney David Gibbs, who previously led the effort to keep Terri Schiavo on life support, and now runs the National Center for Life and Liberty, a “legal ministry” that advocates for Christian causes. Over the years, Bach said, she had assisted Ugandan doctors and nurses employed by her organization in “emergency settings and in crisis situations,” but had never practiced medicine or “represented myself as a medical professional.” Bach sounded nervous, but she firmly denied the “tough allegation” against her. She had used the first person on her blog as an act of creative license, because a simple narrative appealed to donors; in fact, she’d had a Ugandan medical team by her side at all times. “I was a young American woman boarding a plane to Africa,” she said—inexperienced and idealistic, working on an intractable problem. “My desire to go to Uganda was to help people and to serve.” 

Bach blames the Ugandan medical team for the deaths.  They blame her.  And the story behind it all is both heartbreaking and informative.  I'm fond of saying "There's a lesson here for those who choose to learn it" but that's never been more applicable to our current situation in this era of global pandemic: the people who think they know better than the medical experts kill when they are wrong.

Separation Of Church And Virus, Con't

Kansas's Democratic governor, Laura Kelly, is one of several governors to ban gatherings of people, including church services, in the era of COVID-19.  Republicans in the state sued to overrule the order and they found a state judge willing to go along.  Gov. Kelly appealed to the state Supreme Court, and yesterday -- in a bizarre tableau of a social distance internet meeting -- the court sided unanimously with Gov. Kelly, but the fight is far from over.

The unanimous decision means Kelly’s order limiting religious gatherings to no more than 10 individuals will be in effect for Easter Sunday services. The court didn’t consider whether Kelly’s order infringes on religious freedom. 

Instead, justices focused on the language of a hastily drafted resolution passed by the Legislature shortly before adjourning in March. 

The resolution granted the governor emergency powers for responding to COVID-19 through May 1 and allows the State Finance Council to extend the emergency by 30 days. If extended, the resolution gives the Legislative Coordinating Council authority to reverse any executive order issued by the governor. 

Justices determined the LCC doesn’t currently have that authority, based on the timetable outlined in the resolution. They declined to consider, as the governor argued, whether the Legislature can delegate such authority to the LCC in the first place. 

Their decision, announced late Saturday, followed arguments held hours earlier, entirely by video conference for the first time in the court’s history, and capped four days of high-stakes political posturing. 

The governor moved to limit church crowds in response to outbreaks of the coronavirus that were connected to church events in Kansas. Across the state, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused 55 deaths and 1,268 infections. 

State Republicans vow to fight the ruling somehow, but Gov. Kelly is correct here.

Kelly said her top priority is the safety and well-being of Kansans. 

“Today’s ruling does not change my commitment to maintaining open lines of communication and collaboration with the Legislature,” Kelly said. “The only way to get through this is by working with, not against, each other in a bipartisan fashion.” 

But as I said, as with churches today all over the country, many people will still attend Easter Sunday services anyway.  And some will get sick.  A few will be hospitalized, and die.

Pastor Aaron Harris, of Calvary Baptist Church in Junction City, said the high court’s decision doesn’t “validate the governor’s order,” which carries the full force of law. 

“The legislative council may not have had legal authority to revoke it, but it is still unconstitutional,” Harris said. “We’ll be having services tomorrow. I hope and pray that our local LE will respect the constitution.”

Again, we remain firmly in uncharted territory here.  Social distancing is only going to be feasible as long as people can meet basic needs like food, shelter, and water.  If that starts breaking down, then civil disobedience will turn uncivil, very very quickly.

History says this all ends extremely badly.

Last Call For The Worst-Case Scenario, Con't

The first step in realizing just how screwed we are is to realize there is no actual coordinated federal response to COVID-19.

In theory, the small flock of task forces are all working toward the same goal: defeating the novel coronavirus and getting the nation back to work — and life — as quickly as possible. But the reality is far more complicated: a bureaucratic nesting doll of groups with frequently competing aims and agendas.

As a result, an administration that has lagged behind at nearly every step of the pandemic still has no consensus plan for when or how to reopen parts of the economy, even as the president and many advisers push to do so as soon as May 1. There is still no concerted plan for getting vital medical supplies to states, which are left to fight among themselves or seek favors from Trump. There is also no developed plan for what happens if cases or deaths spike as people begin to return to work, or how to respond if the coronavirus surges again in the fall, as many public health experts and administration officials fear.
Public health experts say that among the keys to returning to normalcy are nationwide virus testing (to determine who has the virus); serological testing (to allow those who have been exposed to the virus and developed immunity to return to work); and contact tracing (quickly tracking all the contacts of an infected individual, to halt further spread). Two task force officials said that more important even than nationwide testing is surveillance — using data to make informed decisions about public health.

But the administration has not fully grappled with the sheer manpower and resources required for an effort like contact tracing — and right now, there are not even enough coronavirus tests for those who need them, let alone the entire country.

Jack Chow, a former U.S. ambassador for global HIV/AIDS during the George W. Bush administration and former World Health Organization assistant director-general, said the problem is that the administration has yet to decide what the national recovery should look like.

“The whole response has been lagging the curve of the epidemic, and what ought to be happening is the designation of key strategic goals, key accomplishments that can happen within a specified timeline,” Chow said. “It sounds like they’re groping for that. There isn’t any clear direction as to what the strategic goals are in each different line of effort, and what the prospective timeline could be given the assets they have to deploy.”

The second step is realizing there never will be a coordinated federal response, and that is on purpose.  The reason is Donald Trump will kill as many millions of Americans as it takes to secure his reelection.

During one task force meeting in the Situation Room last month, Trump turned to Fauci and challenged him.

It was the day the administration was adding Ireland and the United Kingdom to its travel restrictions, and Trump wanted to understand why talk of “herd immunity” — allowing the coronavirus to sweep a nation largely unchecked, with the belief that those who survived would then be immune — was such a bad idea.

“Why don’t we let this wash over the country?” Trump asked, according to two people familiar with his comments, a question other administration officials say he has raised repeatedly in the Oval Office.

Fauci initially seemed confused by the term “wash over” but became alarmed once he understood what Trump was asking.

“Mr. President, many people would die,” Fauci said.

Trump's complete lack of empathy is so all-consuming, his narcissism so malignant, that the sociopathy is the standard default.

He knows if he loses in November, he will spend the rest of his life in prison.

Nothing else matters to him.  Therefore, nothing else matters to the federal government that his is in charge of.  Not even keeping basic Constitutionally-required functions running, like a postal service.

Through rain, sleet, hail, and even a pandemic, mail carriers serve every address in the United States, but the coronavirus crisis is shaking the foundation of the U.S. Postal Service in new and dire ways.

The Postal Service’s decades-long financial troubles have worsened dramatically, as the volume of the kind of mail that pays the agency’s bills — first-class and marketing mail — has withered during the pandemic. The USPS needs an infusion of money, and President Trump has blocked potential emergency funding for the agency that employs around 600,000 workers, repeating instead the false claim that higher rates for Internet shipping companies Amazon, FedEx and UPS would right the service’s budget.

Trump threatened to veto the $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or Cares Act, if the legislation contained any money directed to bail out the postal agency, according to a senior Trump administration official and a congressional official who, like others in this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“We told them very clearly that the president was not going to sign the bill if [money for the Postal Service] was in it,” the Trump administration official said. “I don’t know if we used the v-bomb, but the president was not going to sign it, and we told them that.”

Instead, Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) added a last-minute $10 billion Treasury Department loan to the Cares Act to keep the agency on firmer ground through the spring of 2020, according to a Democratic committee aide.

Trump is going to break everything and loot what's left, and become dictator.  That was always the plan from day one.

Mitch Goes Viral

This is one fight GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is going to lose badly.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy vowed Saturday morning to refuse Democratic demands in the GOP’s push for more aid to small businesses. 

“Republicans reject Democrats’ reckless threat to continue blocking job-saving funding unless we renegotiate unrelated programs which are not in similar peril,” McConnell (R-Ky.) and McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in a joint statement.

Their comments, coming a day after Democratic leaders said the Trump administration would begin bipartisan talks over the interim relief bill, suggest an end to the deadlock remains far off.

Senate Republicans on Thursday attempted to pass an additional $250 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program, a small-business fund established in the $2 trillion rescue package that is projected to run out of money soon. Senate Democrats blocked the effort and sought approval for an alternative plan that would provide money for the small business fund as well as additional funds for local governments and hospitals. McConnell rejected that measure on the floor as well. 

The two Republican leaders reiterated Saturday that they will only support an increase in funding for the small business program and warned it has already used up about half of its funding in its first week. They said Democrats should wait for negotiations on a broader package in the coming weeks to address other issues. 

“This will not be Congress’s last word on COVID-19, but this crucial program needs funding now,” McConnell and McCarthy said. “American workers cannot be used as political hostages.”

So, checkmate GOP, right?  Dems are going to absolutely fold on this and give McConnell and McCarthy 100% of what they want: money for industry bailouts and not a penny more.

Normally, you'd be right, and this would be the end of the story.

Not this time.

Democrats counter that the funding they’re seeking is also desperately needed and that McConnell failed to negotiate with them before moving forward on his small business push. 

In a boost for Democrats' argument, governors in both parties are calling for more federal aid to their states. In a joint statement Saturday, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, urged Congress to provide states with an additional $500 billion to address shortfalls stemming from the pandemic.

Governors like Cuomo and Hogan have approval ratings right now that are astronomical.

Mitch McConnell does...not.

The GOP is screwed on this and they know it.

Separation of Church And Virus

Here in Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear is serious about stopping church gatherings for Easter Sunday services in the era of COVID-19 and is directing local law enforcement to get license plates in order to issue quarantine orders.

Expecting that a “handful” of churches and other groups across Kentucky will defy his executive order and have in-person mass gatherings on Easter Sunday, Beshear said local officials are being directed to record license plate numbers of participants to pass to local health departments.

Those who attend these gatherings can expect public health officials to show up at their doors with mandates that they self-quarantine for 14 days, the governor said.
“If you’re going to expose yourself to this virus, it’s not fair to everybody else out there that you might spread it to,” Beshear said. “Understand, this is the only way we can ensure your decision doesn’t kill somebody else.”

This order doesn’t apply to drive-in services.

Kentucky Republicans are livid at the move.

Taking license plates at church? Quarantining someone for being Christian on Easter Sunday? Someone needs to take a step back here.

Kentucky Governor Announces Plan to Record License Plates of Easter Church Goers and Force Them to Quarantine for 14 Days https://t.co/z7U42liQRh

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) April 11, 2020

What the actual hell?

“Democrat Kentucky Governor Announces Plan to Record License Plates of Easter Church Goers and Force Them to Self-Quarantine for 14 Days”https://t.co/p6bAR8U3M2

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) April 11, 2020

Frankly, Beshear is 100% correct here and as the state's former Attorney General, he knows he has the law on his side here.  He's not using law enforcement to break these services up, but he's damn sure making it clear he has four million Kentuckians to worry about too.

Compare that to Florida's Ron DeSantis, who is scrambling to give nursing homes blanket immunity from COVID-19 lawsuits.

Just weeks after a coronavirus outbreak in a Florida assisted living facility, the state's most powerful nursing home organization sent a letter to Gov. Ron DeSantis with an urgent request: Grant the homes sweeping protections from legal claims arising from the viral scourge.

The response: DeSantis is considering it.

In one of the first such requests in the country, the governor’s office is consulting with some of the state’s top lawyers to see if such immunity can be provided to nursing homes and other healthcare providers, the chief of Florida’s top healthcare agency told members of the Florida Health Care Association on Thursday.

The letter to the governor, signed April 3 by the industry group’s executive director, Emmett Reed, prompted angry responses from one of the state's most well-known elder advocates, who has long fought to improve conditions in Florida's elder homes.

"It's jaw dropping," said Brian Lee, Florida's former chief long-term care ombudsman. “That they could, in the middle of a worldwide crisis, that they want to protect their interest, that they would make this request just floored me."

If granted, the measure could set up a battle between the governor's office and legal advocates in a state with a booming long-term care industry and the largest percentage of people older than 65 in the country. So far, the state has logged 731 virus cases among residents and staff members in the homes.

Democrats are trying to protect the people.  Republicans are trying to protect businesses who screwed up.

Stay at home, folks.