Watch Live: White House Coronavirus Task Force Holds Early “Good Friday” Briefing
It’s Good Friday. US markets are closed, and many Americans – at least those who still have jobs – have the day off. But President Trump and the White House coronavirus task force will deliver their daily briefing slightly earlier today, in observance of the holiday.
The briefing is slated to begin at 1:30. Watch below:
Slash Oil Output Or Else! Senate Bill Would Remove US Troops From Saudi Arabia In 30 Days
A new bill has been introduced in the Senate which if passed would punish Saudi Arabia over failure to cut oil production by removing all US troops from the kingdom within 30 days.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) introduced it after Louisiana and other states have been impacted by the ongoing OPEC+ crisis and price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia. As of Friday OPEC+ appears to be closing in on a deal which would see a production cut of 10 million barrels a day, which S&P Global Platts still warned “isn’t enough to plug the 15- to 20-million b/d near-term imbalance in the marketplace and avoid tank tops in May.”
Sen. Cassidy’s bill would also impose tariffs on all Saudi oil imports within ten days of enactment, also aiming to ensure prices would not dip to below $40 a barrel.
American forces arrive at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia in June 2019, via US Air Force.
“The extra oil from Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, has made it impossible for energy companies in the United States, the world’s top oil and gas producer, to compete, Cassidy said,” as cited in Reuters.
The Republican senator noted of the long-term close US-Saudi partnership: “Withdrawing troops placed to protect others recognizes that friendship and support is a two-way street.”
“Our nation’s economy, national security and the economic welfare of families across Louisiana is threatened by oil being dumped on the world market at below-production costs. The US spends billions protecting other oil producing countries and their ability to safely transport oil around the world. Now is the time to protect ourselves. Tariffs will restore fair pricing,” said Cassidy.
The bill would also ensure defense funds cannot go to maintaining American troops on Saudi soil.
Despite that the bill would face an uphill battle, also very unlikely to be signed into law by the president, it’s being taken as an early ‘threat’ from Congress, which will not meet until at least April 20 due to coronavirus self-isolation.
President Trump himself has recently threatened tariffs on oil imports from Saudi Arabia and Russia, saying further he’s ready to ‘intervene’ if the crisis is not resolved in a way satisfactory to US producers’ interests.
Notably the Cassidy bill doesn’t take up the issue of US Patriot missiles or THAAD deployments in the region, which hawks have argued remains crucial to countering Iranian military expansion and threats to American interests and troops in the region.
I started working from home yesterday, which was nice; but I really do want to talk about COVID-19 and get to the bottom of how the issue will progress in the coming months. While each crisis is different, they are all sort-of-predictable because in the end, people don’t change all that much, even though circumstances do.
But what is this pattern I mentioned? Here are, as near as I can determine, Eight Stages of a Crisis™, a level at which each crisis can be evaluated compared to the other – this is my modification of work originally done by Zunin and Myers. This is like the Kübler-Ross five stages of grief, but with the apocalypse in mind. Why settle for one death, when you can have millions or billions on your mind? It’s so nice and cheery. The nice part of using this model is that you can gauge where we are in the current COVID-19 mess.
1.The Warning
This is the opening stage of a crisis. It may be short, as in 9/11, or it may be a slow-motion collapse like the gradually increasing troop buildups and mobilizations that led to World War I. Everyone wanted to stop it, but no one was sane enough to say “no.” The Warning before the first Civil War was literally decades in length.
In the current COVID crisis, The Warning came during and just after the December impeachment. With the focus of the country elsewhere, who cared about the flu? We don’t trust the media very much. Why? They don’t seem trustworthy. Example: when Trump shuts down air transport to China, CNN® says it’s racist. When China shuts down air transport from the United States, CNN™ says it’s a wise and prudent move by China’s benevolent leadership.
In a world where CNN™ and the Chinese government have similar levels of credibility we tend to forget the ending to the story of the boy who cried wolf: in the end, wolves really attacked.
How did they not see this coming?
2. The Event
The Event is generally not long, but it can be. It’s the Shot Heard Round the World at Lexington and Concord in the Revolutionary War. The Event is when the rules change forever, and nothing can ever make the world go back to the way it was. It’s the spark that lights the fire. When people look back, everyone can see The Event.
Nothing is ever the same afterwards – The Event changes everyone that it touches, and often ends up changing systems permanently. It is disruptive. It may not be the reason that everything fails, it might just be a small event toppling an already unstable system. In a crisis like 9/11, the event is obvious and instant. COVID-19 has led to a slow-rolling avalanche across the economy. Was it poised for a fall anyway? Possibly.
As a longer cascade, what will be The Event that history will use to remember COVID-19?
In one of my more frightening thoughts: what if we haven’t seen The Event yet?
I’m not sure he’s koalafied to make that decision.
3. Disbelief
When things have changed, and changed drastically, people refuse to believe it. When the power is out because a tree fell on the power lines, I will walk into a room an automatically flip the light switch. Why? Habit, partially. But there’s a part of my mind that is existing in Disbelief, perhaps, that doesn’t believe that the power could ever be gone.
Disbelief isn’t a coping strategy, and it’s not an attempt of the mind to protect itself, at least in a healthy person. It’s more inertia. You’re used to the world being a certain way, and when it isn’t, part of your mind isn’t quite ready to process it.
This might be an overreaction – COVID-19 might be no worse than the flu. But that isn’t explained by the reactions we’ve seen so far from places that got it earlier than the United States. Italy is locked down. In two weeks, we will know more. In a month, I think, we will have certainty.
In order to calm panicked customers, Wal-Mart opened up a second register.
4. Panic
At some point, the mind is confronted with the new reality and forced to accept it. But the rules are new, and unknown. What to do? One could take a deep breath, and review the situation and think logically or? One could Panic. Panic is easier, and doesn’t require a lot of thought.
Panic is the natural reaction when your brain realizes that it has done zero to prepare for the new reality. So, what to do? Buy staples as required to build up the stockpile you’ve accumulated over time? Or buy 550 cans of Diet Mountain Dew®? Or just buy toilet paper, because everyone else is and you don’t know what to do or have any independent thought? Toilet paper purchasing is Panic.
Not all heroes are able to walk. I mean, some gained 400 lbs on the couch.
5. Heroism
While the Panic is ongoing, the first glimmer of Heroism starts to show. Brave men and women working in the medical field are the first signs of Heroism. Donald Trump talking with Al Sharpton to address the problems he sees is Heroism – realizing that there is a greater good, and that sacrifice is required. Heroism is embodied throughout the response to the crises where a few have an opportunity to save many, and where enemies put aside squabbles for a time because it’s the right thing to do.
There was a family story – Grandma Wilder went during World War II to weld Liberty ships at the Alameda Ship Yard. She would regularly get things sent to her from her mother who lived in the country in the middle of Flyover. Needles were rationed in San Francisco, but not in Flyover. Sugar was rationed in San Francisco, but not in Flyover. Why ration needles and sugar? To build common purpose, so even people not piloting P-51s or jumping out of landing craft at Iwo Jima could feel like they were doing their part. To be fair, rationing was necessary in wide segments of the economy, it wasn’t a fake, but it did help bring everyone together.
Right now Heroism is going on, and we aren’t even asked to do anything more than to sit down and watch Netflix® unless we’re keeping vital industries going. Here’s a link to Aesop’s place that shows the quiet heroism going on out there (LINK). Read it all.
I read the other day that coyotes are about 10 miles an hour faster than road runners. My entire childhood was a lie.
6. The Cliff
Keeping order requires energy. Some part of the energy of the system is put into keeping order. In a time of significant social cohesion, like World War II, the United States didn’t face The Cliff, even though virtually every other developed nation did. Instead, the energy that the crisis took was replaced by people working together.
Most of the time in a real crisis, however, there’s The Cliff. I wrote about it here: Seneca’s Cliff and You.
We have not fallen off The Cliff. Is it certain that there is one? No. But every single leader, elected or appointed, is acting like it’s there. I believe we will see it. The new normal will be grow from events moving quickly. Already at Wilder Redoubt, we’ve had nothing but home cooked meals for the last week, with a couple of store-bought sandwiches being the exception.
Will home cooked food, family dinners, and homeschooling be the legacy of COVID-19?
I expect that we’ll see The Cliff soon enough. How deep will it go? As I’ve mentioned before, no one knows. The worst case is that the economy crashes through levels to Great Depression era lockup in two weeks or so. Only 40% of Americans are able to absorb an unexpected $1,000 expense. 80% are living paycheck to paycheck, and those paychecks just stopped.
Dead.
Going first will be car payments. The average monthly car payment is $800. Me? I’d sell you my daily driver for just two months of that, so expect car finance companies to seize up like an ungreased stripper pole. But the businesses that employ those people aren’t much better off. The best restaurant in Modern Mayberry came pretty close to closing down shop six years ago, but pulled through. The second best restaurant didn’t survive. There will be cascading failures as the debts owed from one business to the next go unpaid, and this won’t just be for small businesses. I feel confident saying that several businesses with 10,000 or more employees will go bankrupt. Overall loss to the economy? 40% of the GDP this year?
Is there a better case? Sure. We contain COVID-19 in a month or so, and then call it good. We only lose 10% to 20% of our GDP this year, and government pumps five or six trillion dollars into the economy to juice it back up. That’s the best case. And that’s just in the United States.
I’m not kidding, that’s how deep The Cliff is. If we’re lucky.
Something, something, Dark Side®.
7. Disillusionment
After the fall, things suck. We had heroes, but the time for Heroism is over. Disillusionment sets in when things don’t snap back to normal. Things will seem rosy, only for failure to crush hope. The more government “helps” during this phase, the worse recovery will be. Roosevelt “helped” so much during the Great Depression that he extended it for years.
But politicians will take drastic steps, because they can’t help themselves. The length of time Disillusionment lasts? Months to years.
Some re-assembly required.
8. Rebuilding
This is the other side of The Cliff. Whereas, as Seneca said you go down a cliff pretty quickly, you only build up slowly. Rebuilding the economy will take years. If we do it right, we’ll build a stronger economy, less dependent upon foreign supply lines, that guarantees freedom while preserving the traditional values that built the wealth in the first place.
If done poorly? The system is controlled, oppressive, and coercive. Leaders matter, but the quality of the citizenry to fight back against the system is even more important. Rebuilding takes years, and by my best case scenario, four to eight years.
New Poll: Democrats Want To Ditch Joe Biden For Andrew Cuomo
Early in America’s growing coronavirus crisis Joe Biden was more or less persona non grataas even his ardent supporters began to complain that seemingly everyone else, including his Democratic presidential rival Bernie Sanders, was giving frequent telecast addresses to the public on their proposed course of action amid the pandemic and accompanying economic crisis.
Of course, once 77-year old Biden did belatedly start giving at-home media interviews and broadcasts, it didn’t go well— and the now Democratic primary confirmed winner has continued to be dogged by questions of his mental acumen, given his sometimes “confused” statements during interviews.
AP photo
At the same time New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has emerged as a Democratic ‘hero’ amid the pandemic, which has hit his state hardest, giving daily dramatic press briefings, often articulating a decisive plan of action under stressful conditions.
So it makes sense that the majority of Dems now appear to have buyer’s remorse. A new national poll published Friday by NY Post finds“56 percent of Democrats prefer Cuomo”.
And just44 percent want the presumptive nominee Joe Biden.As the Post writes this is a “12-point margin well outside the 4.8 percent margin of error for the Democratic sample.”
The poll was commissioned by the conservative Club for Growth. The highlights are as follows:
57% of those from any party who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 favor Cuomo.
53% of those who voted for Trump in 2016 want Democrats to keep Biden.
55% of black voters favor Cuomo and 45% want Biden.
67% of voters from any party between 25-34 prefer Cuomo.
The poll was conducted April 3rd through 6th, and surveyed nearly one thousand people.
A statement by the Club for Growth was just devastating.
“With every major news event Democrats realize more and more how bad of a candidate Joe Biden is, and Democrats now preferring Cuomo is just another example,” Joe Kildea, vice president of communications for the American economic organization was quoted as saying.
Amid his rising popularity and increased national visibility, Cuomo denied last month that he wanted to run for president.
But we’ll see if at this point his answers to this question suddenly get more vague, especially given the remote but not unthinkable possibility that Biden’s mental faculties decline to an extent that drastic last-minute DNC intervention is required.
One of the most striking developments over the past two weeks is how quickly the estimates of death and hospitalizations from COVID-19 are being reduced.
The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is the most influential modeler of the novel coronavirus in the United States, with White House officials and other public health professionals using the group’s numbers to plan strategy and policy. On March 26, IHME predicted that if current social-distancing policies stayed in place, there would likely be 81,000 COVID-19 deaths in the United States by June 1. In its most recent projection, from April 8, it concluded that there would 60,145 deaths, a figure, as Fareed Zakaria writes in The Washington Post, “on par with the number of people estimated to have died of the flu in the 2019-2020 season.”
National Review‘s Andrew McCarthy notes that IHME has been revising its estimates for hospital beds (including ones in intensive care units [ICU]) and ventilators as well:
On April 8, IHME reduced the total number of hospital beds it had predicted would be needed nationally by a remarkable 166,890—down to 95,202 from the 262,092 it had predicted less than a week earlier (i.e., it was nearly two-thirds off). The ICU projection over that same week was cut in half: to 19,816 on April 8, down from 39,727 on April 2. The projected need for ventilators also fell by nearly half, to 16,845 from 31,782.
McCarthy persuasively argues that “the model on which the government is relying is simply unreliable.” The IHME is not simply changing its predictions about the future (which one would assume it would do as people’s behavior changes and as new data become available). It’s failing to describe present reality. From Zakaria:
On March 30, University of Washington researchers projected that California would need 4,800 beds on April 3. In fact, the state needed 2,200. The same model projected that Louisiana would need 6,400; in fact, it used only 1,700. Even New York, the most stressed system in the country, used only 15,000 beds against a projection of 58,000.
Governments at all levels have pointed to dire forecasts (remember the CDC’s worst-case scenario of 1.7 million deaths?) to lock down the economy, which has shrunk by 30 percent over the past month, and to help pass historically high spending bills. Residents in Kentucky and other states who are diagnosed with or suspected of having COVID-19 are being tracked using ankle bracelets and other invasive technologies. Faulty projections of the need for hospital resources “has meant that patients with other pressing illnesses might have been denied care—or not sought care—for no good reason,” writes Zakaria.
In short, we have completely upended American society on the basis on projections and descriptions that are unstable and inaccurate. There’s no question that the estimated fatality rate and need for hospital beds are coming down partly because of social distancing and other changes in behavior. But some portion of the slippage in the IHME numbers is surely because the models, which presume social-distancing rules stay in place, are flawed. It’s understandable why federal, state, and local governments have acted in such extreme fashion, especially in the wake of the CDC’s disastrous early failure to implement accurate testing and the explosion of cases in New York, a state that was slow to action.
To date, public health concerns, especially the predicted number of dead people, have pushed all other considerations, including the effect on economic activity and the massive new amounts of government debt, to the side. But as the death projections come down and the actual hospitalizations come in lower than expected, we need to start factoring in other concerns that will allow us to return to something approaching normalcy.
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One of the most striking developments over the past two weeks is how quickly the estimates of death and hospitalizations from COVID-19 are being reduced.
The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is the most influential modeler of the novel coronavirus in the United States, with White House officials and other public health professionals using the group’s numbers to plan strategy and policy. On March 26, IHME predicted that if current social-distancing policies stayed in place, there would likely be 81,000 COVID-19 deaths in the United States by June 1. In its most recent projection, from April 8, it concluded that there would 60,145 deaths, a figure, as Fareed Zakaria writes in The Washington Post, “on par with the number of people estimated to have died of the flu in the 2019-2020 season.”
National Review‘s Andrew McCarthy notes that IHME has been revising its estimates for hospital beds (including ones in intensive care units [ICU]) and ventilators as well:
On April 8, IHME reduced the total number of hospital beds it had predicted would be needed nationally by a remarkable 166,890—down to 95,202 from the 262,092 it had predicted less than a week earlier (i.e., it was nearly two-thirds off). The ICU projection over that same week was cut in half: to 19,816 on April 8, down from 39,727 on April 2. The projected need for ventilators also fell by nearly half, to 16,845 from 31,782.
McCarthy persuasively argues that “the model on which the government is relying is simply unreliable.” The IHME is not simply changing its predictions about the future (which one would assume it would do as people’s behavior changes and as new data become available). It’s failing to describe present reality. From Zakaria:
On March 30, University of Washington researchers projected that California would need 4,800 beds on April 3. In fact, the state needed 2,200. The same model projected that Louisiana would need 6,400; in fact, it used only 1,700. Even New York, the most stressed system in the country, used only 15,000 beds against a projection of 58,000.
Governments at all levels have pointed to dire forecasts (remember the CDC’s worst-case scenario of 1.7 million deaths?) to lock down the economy, which has shrunk by 30 percent over the past month, and to help pass historically high spending bills. Residents in Kentucky and other states who are diagnosed with or suspected of having COVID-19 are being tracked using ankle bracelets and other invasive technologies. Faulty projections of the need for hospital resources “has meant that patients with other pressing illnesses might have been denied care—or not sought care—for no good reason,” writes Zakaria.
In short, we have completely upended American society on the basis on projections and descriptions that are unstable and inaccurate. There’s no question that the estimated fatality rate and need for hospital beds are coming down partly because of social distancing and other changes in behavior. But some portion of the slippage in the IHME numbers is surely because the models, which presume social-distancing rules stay in place, are flawed. It’s understandable why federal, state, and local governments have acted in such extreme fashion, especially in the wake of the CDC’s disastrous early failure to implement accurate testing and the explosion of cases in New York, a state that was slow to action.
To date, public health concerns, especially the predicted number of dead people, have pushed all other considerations, including the effect on economic activity and the massive new amounts of government debt, to the side. But as the death projections come down and the actual hospitalizations come in lower than expected, we need to start factoring in other concerns that will allow us to return to something approaching normalcy.
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via IFTTT
In the corkscrewing anguish of the social sequester, with careers, savings, futures, and dreams whirling down the drain, voices rise above the din of conflicting statistics to ask: what is going on here? To some, it looks like a deliberate attempt to demolish what’s left of the economy for political advantage. Clouds of suspicion gather over the two medical superstars of the Daily Briefing show, Doctors Fauci and Birx, as they somewhat sheepishly revise their numbers for contagion and death downward and attempt to “balance” the formula of modeled projections versus mitigation efforts. Was the stay-at-home panic necessary, after all? Will it save the day or kill off modern life as we knew it?
Well, everyplace else in the world was shutting down, weren’t they? Did they all go off their rockers, too? At least a hundred doctors died in Italy heroically tending the stricken, so they say. South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore opted for flat-out medical Gestapo action. Britain, Spain, France, and Germany about the same, but minus testing at the grand scale and tracing of contacts. Honestly, how is it possible the whole planet punked itself?
I certainly don’t know the answer to all this, though readers are twanging on me to declare the whole Covid-19 story “a hoax,” which I’m not ready to do. I do know this: America has become utterly intolerant of uncertainty. And in the absence of certainty, that age-old human cognitive skill called pattern recognition, which has made us such a successful species, kicks into high gear scanning the field-of-view for answers. Any string-of-dots that affords even the slimmest plausibility goes on the table for review, including a lot of stories tagged as “conspiracy theories.”
I know this, too: the financial side of the gasping global economy was running off the rails well before Covid-19 flew out of its bat-cave into somebody’s soup bowl… or out of China’s Wuhan virus lab, if that’s how you like it… or before it seeped out of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s ark of world-saving secrets.
In the USA and Europe, finance had come to mostly eclipse every other human endeavor of wealth production – with the catch that finance actually didn’t produce any real wealth, it only winkled and swindled wealth (or the mere ghosts of wealth) with its asset-stripping magic, from the places where wealth once did truly dwell. Or else it ginned up abstruse rackets that attempted to replace the utility of money with sheer math. Or, when all else failed, it just resorted to plain old accounting fraud… until, finally, there was so much there not actually there, that the whole holographic fantasy flickered out.
The pre-Easter bear market rally on Wall Street has been a wonder, don’t you think? As the numbers of able-bodied people out-of-work rocketed up past ten million during the same period, the stock indexes shot up three, five, six percent a day? Say, what? You’re telling me that’s based on the prospect of magnificent earnings in the third quarter? With every business on God’s green earth writhing in the dust like squashed bugs? And every supply line for basic goods and the gazillion spare parts for everything… all choked off?
And meanwhile, the American public sequesters and festers, waiting for those $1,200 checks that will fix… everything! Let’s face it: this is a twilight zone between stupor and fury.
Nobody is paying anything to anyone.
All obligations are suspended: rents, mortgages, bills, loans, bets, and vigs, all up in the air somewhere, but definitely not moving to their assigned destinations. The velocity of money is zero and all the various new term facilities and structured vehicles conjured by the Federal Reserve and Congress amount to a mere shadow of money moving – even though they are represented by trillions of brand-new alleged dollars. For every ten points that the Standard & Poor’s rose this week, somewhere down the line as many hedge funders will be dribbled like so many basketballs to the hoop of judgment.
The nation now has the long Easter weekend to stew and ruminate over its fate with spring achingly vivid and beckoning beyond the grim, streaked windows of sequestering. Those little cans of Easter Spam with pineapple rings won’t offer much consolation, combined with the abject discovery that even Netflix only has so many sequels to Frozen for children going catatonic with ennui. Kids are generally not so excited by stock and bond markets, but that’s probably where the genuine melodrama picks up on Monday. The weeks ahead there will give the phrase down-to-earth a whole new meaning.
In the words of Rahm Emanuel, former Chief of Staff to Barack Obama, “never let a good crisis go to waste.”
Emanuel first said this during the 2008/2009 financial crisis… meaning that politicians can use a crisis as an opportunity to push through radical ideas that would otherwise never be accepted.
Late last month, Emanuel uttered the same words on ABC News This Week, admonishing politicians to not let this crisis go to waste either… and use it as a springboard to pass sweeping policy changes while people are too terrified to care.
And at this point in the pandemic it’s pretty clear that plenty of governments are absolutely not letting this crisis go to waste. Here’s a roundup of what’s happening around the world:
Philippines: “Shoot them dead”
In 2016 the President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, was elected on a “tough on crime” platform.
He wanted to bring back hangings for criminals convicted of murder and rape.
After being elected, Duterte said that drug traffickers, drug dealers, and even drug users should be shot dead in the street.
Other government officials insisted Duterte was exaggerating, just using theatrics to get his point across.
But sure enough, thousands of alleged drug dealers and users have been killed since 2016. Some were killed by police, and others by vigilantes.
Now the Philippines, like most of the world, is on lockdown to try to prevent the spread of CoronaVirus.
And in Duterte’s own words, “if there is any trouble” enforcing the lockdown, or people who ignore the rules, police should “shoot them dead.”
This is happening at a time when Hong Kong is experiencing its second wave of Covid outbreaks. So the government started requiring new arrivals to strap on a wristband in order to ‘geofence’ people into their quarantine areas.
Once you arrive to your destination (your hotel, apartment, etc.) you have one minute to walk around so that the GPS tracker can map out the perimeter. And if you leave the area, the authorities are immediately alerted.
Violators face up to six months in prison and fines up to USD $3,200.
This is probably going to become the standard in the West, and I’ve been told by a source in Hong Kong that the World Health Organization is trialing these bracelets for release in western countries.
Poland: Mandatory selfie photos
Poland’s government developed a special app where users are forced to upload selfie photos to prove that they are inside and not violating the lockdown.
It’s called the “Home Quarantine” app, and it’s required for people returning to Poland from abroad who must self-quarantine for 14 days.
When the app requests a photo, users have twenty minutes to upload a selfie from inside their home, or the police come knocking.
Russia: 100,000 cameras with facial recognition across Moscow
After Russia’s Duma (parliament) voted in early March to allow Vladimir Putin to defy constitutional term limits and continue to seek re-election as President, the government has now deployed a network of 100,000 cameras with facial recognition in the streets of Moscow to track individuals who are supposed to be in quarantine.
Violations in Russia can carry severe penalties, up to seven years in prison.
Furthermore, even spreading what the government deems as ‘fake news’ about Covid-19 could result in up to five years in prison.
India: Flights and trains suspended, supply chain breaks down
India’s government ordered its population to quarantine last month… and then shut down the country’s primary transportation systems.
The government suspended both domestic flights and train travel, apparently not realizing that millions of people would be stranded and unable to return home to self-quarantine.
Unsurprisingly, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that supply chains in India have also started to break down, causing shortages of certain foods.
Singapore: tracking everyone else you meet
Singapore’s government is using bluetooth and GPS data from its citizens mobile phones to map who everyone comes into contact with. They at least have announced that they will publish the source code of the tracking app.
Land of the Free: Ankle bracelets on, medical privacy off
Massachusetts, Alabama, and Florida have abandoned medical privacy laws, and officials are now informing the police and paramedics which homes have a resident who tested positive for Coronavirus.
South Africa: Bride and Groom arrested at their own wedding
A wedding that took place despite a nationwide ban on public gatherings in the South African state of KwaZulu Natal was broken up by police last weekend.
All 50 guests, plus the minister performing the service, and the bride and groom, were arrested and hauled off to jail.
Understandably, I imagine many readers might think, “Well that was stupid and a little bit selfish to hold a public gathering at a time like this.”
I agree. But it’s hard to ignore the fact that basic freedoms: freedom of assembly, freedom of worship, freedom of speech, privacy, etc. have gone out the window, all over the world.
Laws and constitutions everywhere are being violated. And while most of the discussion about this pandemic is ‘when will the public health emergency subside,’ and ‘when will the economy go back to normal,’ there’s hardly any discussion about “When will our freedoms be restored?”
It’s hard to imagine they’re going to stop the GPS tracking, the facial recognition, the criminal ‘fake news’ penalties, and the countless other ‘emergency measures’ anytime soon.
Think about it– 9/11 was nearly two decades ago and we’re still dealing with the freedom-eroding consequences of that event.
So we have to be honest with ourselves about this pandemic– the longer these freedoms are restricted, the more unlikely they’ll ever be restored.
Shocking Simulation Shows Single-Cough Spreading Cloud Of COVID-19 Across Supermarket
Researchers from Aalto University, Finnish Meteorological Institute, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, and the University of Helsinki have published a terrifying simulation of how coronavirus particles spread from a single cough in the air and disperse across several aisles at a supermarket.
“Someone infected by the coronavirus, can cough and walk away, but then leave behind extremely small aerosol particles carrying the coronavirus. These particles could then end up in the respiratory tract of others in the vicinity”, Aalto University Assistant Professor Ville Vuorinen said.
Jussi Sane, the Chief Specialist at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, said the model exemplifies why people who are sick must abide by the public health orders to stay at home.
“Based on the modeling of the consortium, it is not yet possible to directly issue new recommendations. However, these results are an important part of the whole, and they should be compared with the data from real-life epidemic studies,” Sane adds.
The model could suggest that supermarkets are breeding grounds for the virus as people rush to these indoor facilities to panic hoard food. It also makes sense why outbreaks on cruise ships are rapid.
Last month, a new report outlined how the virus could stay in the air for at least 30 minutes and travel up to 14 feet.
There’s growing evidence that people need to start wearing face masks. The only problem: 3M N95s are sold out across the world.
Last week, the US government reversed its previous position on masks, issuing new guidance that people in public places need to wear them. President Trump has yet to require masks, but some local governments have issued stricter rules.
Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser said all shoppers entering grocery stores in the Washington Metropolitan Area must wear masks, indicating that stores will enforce the new measure.
The shocking simulation of how a COVID-19 carrier’s cough creates an aerosol cloud of the virus would suggest that mask-wearing will be the new normal for people across the world until a vaccine is seen.
Easter may not bring America the victory in the war against the coronavirus pandemic that President Donald Trump anticipated. But in this Holy Week, we may be reaching our Saratoga moment, our turning point.
While New York state reported a record number of deaths from the virus on Tuesday, over 1,800, new hospitalizations were down.
Referrals of patients to ICUs were down. Intubations were down. And the discharge rate for patients from hospitals was holding steady.
The thousands of ventilators Gov. Andrew Cuomo had been crying out for are, apparently, not immediately needed. The U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort moored on the Hudson with a capacity of 1,000 beds remains largely empty. So, too, are the thousands of beds in Manhattan’s Javits Center, which has been converted into an emergency hospital.
“We are flattening the curve,” exulted Cuomo on Wednesday, “Thank God. Thank God. Thank God.”
Predictions of 1 million to 2 million U.S. deaths are no longer heard.
Last week’s projection from the White House briefing room of 100,000 to 240,000 dead has been revised, sharply downward.
Tuesday, Dr. Deborah Birx said the model she is working with projects 81,000 deaths. By Wednesday, that had dropped 25% to an estimated 60,000 U.S. deaths.
A terrible toll, still more than all the Americans who died in the Vietnam war, but compared to earlier estimates, hopeful news.
Social distancing and sheltering in place are working.
California, Oregon and Washington have begun to ship medical equipment to states where infections are still surging.
Moreover, it appears that some deaths being attributed to COVID-19 were caused by underlying conditions patients had when they came to the hospital, such as cancer, heart disease, hypertension, pneumonia, diabetes, asthma.
Yes, this could be a false dawn. We are warned of the possibility that the coronavirus, after cutting its initial murderous swath by August, could revisit us in the fall with a new season of lethal attacks.
But by then, we may have developed vaccines or drugs to prevent, mitigate or even cure the disease.
What appears conclusive now is this: The American people and nation are aware, fully engaged in the fight, and, on several fronts, gaining the whip hand over the pandemic.
Hence, understandably, consideration is being given to resuscitating the U.S. economy before this nationwide shutdown plunges America into a full-blown depression that exacts its own toll of premature deaths.
Upon this question now, the Trump presidency appears to hang:
Will Trump’s actions flatten the curve and put the pandemic on an irreversible downward course in daily cases and deaths, as he produces a U-turn, if not a V-turn, dramatically driving the economy upward from depression and toward national prosperity?
Can he revive the economy without reviving the virus?
Or will the coronavirus so severely cripple the economy that the depression it produces will kill the Trump presidency?
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie framed the issue thus: “Politically, nothing else matters. … I have never seen a time when an opponent is more irrelevant. And that’s not an insult to Vice President Biden.
“But in the end, the American people are going to decide, has the president of the United States stood up to this crisis, and done right by them and protected their lives and their property, or hasn’t he?”
Trump’s true adversary in this election is not Joe Biden, the hermit candidate sheltering in place. Biden is but a name on the November ballot you mark if you want to remove and replace Donald Trump.
Trump’s real antagonists are the media who detest him and are determined, having failed to impeach and remove him, to drive him from office by portraying him as a foolish, failed president in the worst crisis to hit the country since Pearl Harbor.
The crucial decision Trump will make is to choose the exact moment to reopen the country and the economy, without igniting a new spike in the pandemic that induces despair and causes a panic.
The president’s aides in charge of the medical crisis want the longest delay possible. His economic and political advisers, fearing Trump could be forced to run as Herbert Hoover did, at the nadir of a new depression, want an earlier decision to start opening up the country.
Action cannot long be delayed if we are to survive the medical crisis only to endure a longer and more costly economic crisis.
Thursday morning, jobless claims revealed that another 6.6 million Americans had lost their jobs, bringing to 16.7 million the number who have filed for unemployment in just three weeks.
One in 10 Americans is now out of work.
Six weeks ago, Trump was boasting, and justifiably so, of having the greatest economy of any president in recent memory. Now, the possibility exists that he could go into the fall election with the worst economy since Hoover and the Great Depression of 1932.
Trump’s decision, which will determine the fate of his presidency, is likely close at hand.
