Showing posts with label Trumpsters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trumpsters. Show all posts
Saturday, March 7, 2020
Friday, March 6, 2020
Downplaying virus could lose Trump the election
The US president is fumbling in the face of a health crisis of unknown proportions
MARCH 6, 2020
https://asiatimes.com/2020/03/downplaying-virus-could-lose-trump-the-election/
Panic returned to the US stock market on Thursday as the federal government fumbled in the face of a health crisis of unknown proportions, and President Donald Trump appeared to downplay the scale of the problem in a Fox News interview. Someone should tell the president that reality shows don’t go as scripted when the studio is on fire.
Meanwhile, no one in the United States knows how fast Covid-19 has spread, where it is spread, or how it is spreading. The nationwide shortage of test kits has become an election-year issue, with Democratic officials denouncing the Trump Administration, and President Trump blaming regulatory decisions by the Obama Administration. That is a fight that the incumbent president only can lose: the incumbent president always will take the fall for a perceived fumble in a national emergency. The Obama-era policy, which required hospitals and private laboratories to submit test procedures to lengthy Food and Drug Administration (FDA) review, was an obstacle to rapid testing. But it wasn’t rescinded until February 29, six weeks after Washington State authorities believe that the first case appeared in that state.
Federal officials, meanwhile, are backtracking on promises of a rapid response.
Earlier this week FDA chief Stephen Hahn told Congress that a million test kits would be in use by Friday, but Republican senators warned Thursday that it would take much longer for testing to get underway. “There won’t be a million people to get a test by the end of the week,” Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida told Bloomberg News. “It’s way smaller than that. And still, at this point, it’s still through public health departments.”
Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma told Bloomberg, “By the end of the week they’re getting them out to the mail. It’s going to take time to be able to get them, receive them, re-verify them and then be able to put them into use.”
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today announced that it is no longer reporting the number of individuals tested for Covid-19 infection, because state and local governments have taken over most of the testing. As of March 5 the CDC reported just 49 cases under investigation, explaining on its website, “CDC is no longer reporting the number of persons under investigation (PUIs) that have been tested, as well as PUIs that have tested negative. Now that states are testing and reporting their own results, CDC’s numbers are not representative of all testing being done nationwide.”
The US agency added, “In the event of a discrepancy between CDC cases and cases reported by state and local public health officials, data reported by states should be considered the most up to date.”
The CDC added that it has no up-to-date national statistics on coronavirus infections. “State and local public health departments are now testing and publicly reporting their cases. In the event of a discrepancy between CDC cases and cases reported by state and local public health officials, data reported by states should be considered the most up to date,” the agency said.
According to the website ProPublica, the CDC made matters worse by insisting on developing its own test kit, rather than use kits from Europe – and then producing a test kit that didn’t work. “As the highly infectious coronavirus jumped from China to country after country in January and February, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lost valuable weeks that could have been used to track its possible spread in the United States because it insisted upon devising its own test,” the website reported February 28.
WHO guidelines
Even worse, “The federal agency shunned the World Health Organization test guidelines used by other countries and set out to create a more complicated test of its own that could identify a range of similar viruses. But when it was sent to labs across the country in the first week of February, it didn’t work as expected. The CDC test correctly identified Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. But in all but a handful of state labs, it falsely flagged the presence of the other viruses in harmless samples.”
Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, told ProPublica, “The basic tenet of public health is to know the situation so you can deal with it appropriately. If you don’t look, you won’t find cases.” Lipsitch noted that in China’s Guangdong Province, health authorities tested 300,000 people in fever clinics in order to identify only 420 positive cases.
President Trump meanwhile appeared to dismiss public concerns about the epidemic in a March 4 interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
“Well, I think the 3.4% [mortality rate is really a false number,” the president said. “Now, and this is just my hunch, and – but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this. Because a lot people will have this and it’s very mild. They’ll get better very rapidly. They don’t even see a doctor. They don’t even call a doctor. You never hear about those people. So you can’t put them down in the category of the overall population in terms of this corona flu and – or virus. So you just can’t do that. So if, you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work – some of them go to work but they get better.”
He continued, “When you do have a death – like you had in the state of Washington, like you had one in California, believe you had one in New York – you know, all of a sudden, it seems like 3 or 4%, which is a very high number, as opposed to a fraction of 1%,” Trump added. “But again, they don’t know about the easy cases because the easy cases don’t go to the hospital. They don’t report to doctors or the hospital, in many cases. So I think that that [death rate] number is very high. I think the number, personally, I would say the number is way under 1%.”
President attacked
News commentators attacked the president for appearing to encourage people with mild symptoms to go to work. Trump retorted in a March 5 tweet, “I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work. This is just more Fake News and disinformation put out by the Democrats, in particular MSDNC. Comcast covers the CoronaVirus situation horribly, only looking to do harm to the incredible & successful effort being made!”
Short of test kits, Washington State health authorities have asked people with mild symptoms not to come to public clinics, because there is nothing that the clinics can do for them immediately. Microsoft, Google and Amazon have told their Seattle-area employees to work from home.
Lack of basic information, hesitant action, conflicting statements and the failure to acknowledge previous blunders contribute to the panic registered on the US equity market. In an election year, it really doesn’t matter whose fault it was. The buck stops at the president’s desk, in Harry Truman’s celebrated saying – but never more so than during a public health crisis.
https://asiatimes.com/2020/03/downplaying-virus-could-lose-trump-the-election/
Panic returned to the US stock market on Thursday as the federal government fumbled in the face of a health crisis of unknown proportions, and President Donald Trump appeared to downplay the scale of the problem in a Fox News interview. Someone should tell the president that reality shows don’t go as scripted when the studio is on fire.
Meanwhile, no one in the United States knows how fast Covid-19 has spread, where it is spread, or how it is spreading. The nationwide shortage of test kits has become an election-year issue, with Democratic officials denouncing the Trump Administration, and President Trump blaming regulatory decisions by the Obama Administration. That is a fight that the incumbent president only can lose: the incumbent president always will take the fall for a perceived fumble in a national emergency. The Obama-era policy, which required hospitals and private laboratories to submit test procedures to lengthy Food and Drug Administration (FDA) review, was an obstacle to rapid testing. But it wasn’t rescinded until February 29, six weeks after Washington State authorities believe that the first case appeared in that state.
Federal officials, meanwhile, are backtracking on promises of a rapid response.
Earlier this week FDA chief Stephen Hahn told Congress that a million test kits would be in use by Friday, but Republican senators warned Thursday that it would take much longer for testing to get underway. “There won’t be a million people to get a test by the end of the week,” Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida told Bloomberg News. “It’s way smaller than that. And still, at this point, it’s still through public health departments.”
Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma told Bloomberg, “By the end of the week they’re getting them out to the mail. It’s going to take time to be able to get them, receive them, re-verify them and then be able to put them into use.”
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today announced that it is no longer reporting the number of individuals tested for Covid-19 infection, because state and local governments have taken over most of the testing. As of March 5 the CDC reported just 49 cases under investigation, explaining on its website, “CDC is no longer reporting the number of persons under investigation (PUIs) that have been tested, as well as PUIs that have tested negative. Now that states are testing and reporting their own results, CDC’s numbers are not representative of all testing being done nationwide.”
The US agency added, “In the event of a discrepancy between CDC cases and cases reported by state and local public health officials, data reported by states should be considered the most up to date.”
The CDC added that it has no up-to-date national statistics on coronavirus infections. “State and local public health departments are now testing and publicly reporting their cases. In the event of a discrepancy between CDC cases and cases reported by state and local public health officials, data reported by states should be considered the most up to date,” the agency said.
According to the website ProPublica, the CDC made matters worse by insisting on developing its own test kit, rather than use kits from Europe – and then producing a test kit that didn’t work. “As the highly infectious coronavirus jumped from China to country after country in January and February, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lost valuable weeks that could have been used to track its possible spread in the United States because it insisted upon devising its own test,” the website reported February 28.
WHO guidelines
Even worse, “The federal agency shunned the World Health Organization test guidelines used by other countries and set out to create a more complicated test of its own that could identify a range of similar viruses. But when it was sent to labs across the country in the first week of February, it didn’t work as expected. The CDC test correctly identified Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. But in all but a handful of state labs, it falsely flagged the presence of the other viruses in harmless samples.”
Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, told ProPublica, “The basic tenet of public health is to know the situation so you can deal with it appropriately. If you don’t look, you won’t find cases.” Lipsitch noted that in China’s Guangdong Province, health authorities tested 300,000 people in fever clinics in order to identify only 420 positive cases.
President Trump meanwhile appeared to dismiss public concerns about the epidemic in a March 4 interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
“Well, I think the 3.4% [mortality rate is really a false number,” the president said. “Now, and this is just my hunch, and – but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this. Because a lot people will have this and it’s very mild. They’ll get better very rapidly. They don’t even see a doctor. They don’t even call a doctor. You never hear about those people. So you can’t put them down in the category of the overall population in terms of this corona flu and – or virus. So you just can’t do that. So if, you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work – some of them go to work but they get better.”
He continued, “When you do have a death – like you had in the state of Washington, like you had one in California, believe you had one in New York – you know, all of a sudden, it seems like 3 or 4%, which is a very high number, as opposed to a fraction of 1%,” Trump added. “But again, they don’t know about the easy cases because the easy cases don’t go to the hospital. They don’t report to doctors or the hospital, in many cases. So I think that that [death rate] number is very high. I think the number, personally, I would say the number is way under 1%.”
President attacked
News commentators attacked the president for appearing to encourage people with mild symptoms to go to work. Trump retorted in a March 5 tweet, “I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work. This is just more Fake News and disinformation put out by the Democrats, in particular MSDNC. Comcast covers the CoronaVirus situation horribly, only looking to do harm to the incredible & successful effort being made!”
Short of test kits, Washington State health authorities have asked people with mild symptoms not to come to public clinics, because there is nothing that the clinics can do for them immediately. Microsoft, Google and Amazon have told their Seattle-area employees to work from home.
Lack of basic information, hesitant action, conflicting statements and the failure to acknowledge previous blunders contribute to the panic registered on the US equity market. In an election year, it really doesn’t matter whose fault it was. The buck stops at the president’s desk, in Harry Truman’s celebrated saying – but never more so than during a public health crisis.
The Cultural Problem of Cheating & Lying
Widespread dishonesty in the U.S. — exemplified by Trump but coming long before him and going far beyond — threatens key pillars of society, writes Lawrence Davidson.
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/03/05/the-cultural-problem-of-cheating-lying/
Cheating, and the lying that always accompanies it, is probably as old as the human species. At the same time, that is probably how long we have known that they are harmful traits. The Eighth Commandment (out of the famous 10) tells us not to bear false witness, which means, don’t lie. Most older societies had someone assigned to monitor the marketplace for reliable weights and measures — because left to themselves, most capitalists, of all times and places, cheat. This reality was and still is confirmed by the Roman warning “caveat emptor,” let the buyer beware.
This perennial problem is still with us and can only be held at bay by education, regulation and standards set by role models and other worthy authority figures. Alas, these standards are slipping in the case of the United States and thus, our tendency to cheat is witnessing a growth phase. Here are some recent examples:
(1) The Astros baseball team cheated to win the World Series in the 2017 season. Baseball is the “national sport” of the United States and as such it is supposed to hold an honorable place in our culture. But did that stop what must have been nearly the entire Astros team (every batter must have been in on the scheme) from involving themselves in the “game plan” to steal their opponents’ pitching signs? Not at all.
(2) Then we were shown how willing numerous well-to-do Americans were to suborn the college entrance process by buying their children into elite schools. The educational system in the United States is supposedly a mark of national pride, but so is the status of wealth. So why shouldn’t the latter assure entrance into the former? To make it so, all one has to do is cheat (in these cases bribery was the vehicle).
(3) And, by the way, students in colleges and universities, high-end schools or otherwise, can engage in the cheating process by plagiarizing. Term papers and other pre-prepared, and illicit, assignments are for sale online.
Here in the U.S., we are no longer sure that all of this is really so bad.
Maybe, if you can get away with it, it is just smart. That is the message the public receives from an increasing number of traditional role models — those who now stand at the very highest levels of our society and publicly flaunt corruption. I speak here of the behavior of President Donald Trump (and his entourage), who, in less than three years in office has managed to brandish his particular aptitude for mendacity (the man is a habitual liar by any standard), bribery, obstruction, incitement and just plain disdain for all manner of rules. And this behavior has given license to others to act out their own disregard for both honesty and truth.
All of this is very bad news. This cheating side of our behavior, having gained increased acceptance, has become a real threat to two basic pillars of our society: the integrity of science/technology and the practice of honest government.
Discrediting Science
Let’s begin with science/technology. Our society would be unrecognizable apart from the science and technology that underpins all material aspects of modern life. The scientific method is the surest way we know to establish the truth about aspects of the material world. Yet today, this foundation is in danger of being eroded by the lies and misrepresentations that plague our everyday lives.
How is this being done? According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Trump administration, in its rush to do away with all manner of regulations, appears to consider scientific facts as obstacles to be overcome. This is particularly the case when it comes to the “active dismantling of science-based health and safety protections, sidelining scientific evidence, and undoing recent progress” based on scientific research. Here are just a few of dozens of examples:
(1) Trump appointed administrators at the Environmental Protection Agency have “forbidden SACC [that is, its own Scientific Advisory Committee on Chemicals] from commenting” on EPA decisions concerning such things as worker safety protections, cancer risks, and the (often suspect) quality of industry data.
(2) The Department of the Interior “dismantled the role of science” when looking at protections for endangered and threatened species.
(3) The Department of Agriculture prevented the release of a plan for how the agency can effectively respond to the impacts of climate change.
(4) Trump issued an executive order to “rid federal agencies of one-third of their advisory committees,” many of which provide scientific advice to federal agencies.
(Mike Licht, Flickr)
Without proper scientific standards for review and regulation, we get what David Michaels, former assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, calls “mercenary science.” This is “science-for-hire, contracted out by chemical and pharmaceutical companies to prove that their harmful products aren’t harmful by giving them the quantitative imprimatur.” This is what happens given inadequately supervised capitalism, where science and truth are separated out for the sake of profit. Before proper regulation, this approach ended up killing and maiming a lot of consumers. It will do so again as Trump deregulates.
Dishonest Government
A popular sense that those who run the U.S. government are not trustworthy, and do not run the government in the interests of the nation as a whole, is not new. According to multiple polls taken regularly since the end of World War II, this sentiment began to become prevalent in the 1960s, and has persisted ever since.
It is also interesting that this downturn in confidence in U.S. leadership coincides with the upturn of a culture war still being waged today. In the 1960s, it was the alienating and starkly immoral nature of the Vietnam War that gave impetus to a youth counterculture movement.
It was also in the 1960s that the various aspects of an African-American power movement — ranging from the actions of Martin Luther King Jr. to those of the Black Panthers — began to promote politically effective equalitarianism. Therefore, one should not be surprised that a good part of Donald Trump’s “base” is a reactionary force in this war: white, racist and culturally traditionalist. As to the last of these positions, many of Trump’s backers are religious ideologues who wage a societal war against same-sex marriage and other LGBTQ civil rights protections. These are the same “Godly” folks who think evolution is wrong and science a suspect anti-religious enterprise. Simultaneously, they turn a blind eye to Trump’s criminal inclinations. They will support him because they think he is a tool, albeit a lying and cheating one, in some genocidal divine plan.
However, the cheating culture we are now confronting does not express itself through Trump and his supporters alone. As we have seen, it is wider ranging. So, while the actions of certain Democrats may not match Donald Trump’s venality, you can bet that these Democrats are also undermining honest, representative government.
Democratic Party cheating became notable in 2012. No doubt it goes back much further, but 2012 is when it literally showed itself on public media. Specifically, the telltale incident occurred on Wednesday, the fifth of September, 2012 — in the middle of a broadcasted session of the Democratic Party convention, no less!
Here is how it went: The Democratic platform committee had decided to keep all issues pertaining to a final treaty between Israelis and Palestinians out of the platform. After all, Israel and Palestine are foreign nations. Among these issues was the final status of the city of Jerusalem. However, the Republican platform of that year “envisioned” Israel with Jerusalem as its capital, and the Republicans were trying to make the status of Jerusalem a campaign issue.
So, President Barack Obama and his platform committee apparently decided that the politically savvy thing to do was to change the Democratic platform to match that of the Republicans.
However, to amend the platform required a two-thirds majority vote from the convention floor. So, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who was chairing the Democratic convention, confidently called for a voice vote on the issue.
Villaraigosa called for the vote three times. Each time the viewer could hear that he failed to get the desired result. Between the second and third vote a member of the platform committee went over and told Villaraigosa that he had to rule in favor of the change in wording. So, after the third vote, which again could be heard to fall short of the two-thirds required, Villaraigosa straight out lied and said the delegates had approved the change in wording, and that was that.
This brazen incident, taking place on national television, was not the last time the Democratic leadership cheated. They rigged the selection process in favor of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and may even now be rigging the selection process against Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in 2020. Also, some Democratic “progressives” are showing signs of being vicious competitors in their own right.
Cheating, along with its partner habitual lying, undermines both communities and institutions: everything from marriage to commerce, to science, to government. Nothing can stand firm before them once these vices become normative. That is what makes Trump so unacceptable—he represents a social climate wherein honesty can never be assumed.
Once again, it should be emphasized that Trump, as dangerous as he certainly is, did not cause this present problem. He is just opportunistically exploiting it. In truth, these vices are always latent within society because, for human beings, cheating rather than honesty may be a default position. Thus, we must be taught or otherwise encouraged to be honest with both each other and ourselves.
This is not just a lesson for parents, schools, the courts, and the marketplace. It is also a necessary lesson for our politics. But we have not managed to come up with a way to vet our leaders so as to assure their long-term honesty and integrity — a process we have been searching for since the time of Plato. Nonetheless, we should try harder, because both history (of which most people are woefully ignorant) and our present circumstances offer us examples of what it means to fail in this regard. Cheating and the habitual lying that comes with it are the ultimate signs of systems failure.
70+ Groups Demand Trump Prohibit Coronavirus Profiteering by Big Pharma
"We the People have driven coronavirus research and development—not pharma corporations."
Julia Conley, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/05/70-groups-demand-trump-prohibit-coronavirus-profiteering-big-pharma?
More than 70 organizations on Thursday demanded that the Trump administration forbid monopolies or price-gouging on all vaccines and coronavirus treatments and to reject any effort by private companies to profit off the public health crisis now roiling the U.S. and the world.
As the government offers subsidies to pharmaceutical companies like Sanofi and Regeneron, the open letter (pdf) from the groups, led by Public Citizen, said, the Trump administration must require all COVID-19 contracts guarantee reasonable pricing for any treatments or vaccines.
"Allowing companies to price-gouge and hold monopolies on treatment for the respiratory illness which has killed more than 3,300 people so far would have grave implications for the U.S. government's ability to stop the spread of COVID-19," the groups said.
"The imperative of requiring reasonable pricing and access is not just a matter of avoiding profiteering, it's a matter of public health urgency," they wrote. "If monopoly pricing of pharmaceutical companies inhibits access around the world, it will hinder our response to what could turn into a global pandemic."
"We need clear and firm commitments across all funding agencies, and for all types of products," the groups added. "Specifically, we call on your administration to require open, non-exclusive licenses. All manufacturers who can produce high-quality products and commit to reasonable pricing should be allowed to develop vaccines and treatments."
The letter was written days after congressional Democrats pushed their Republican colleagues to include "fair and reasonable price" standards in federal contracts for purchasing treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, failing to force Republicans to apply those standards to the commercial market.
Taxpayers, the groups said, have already spent nearly $700 million on research and development regarding coronaviruses including COVID-19, SARS, and MERS since 2002.
That taxpayer-funded research "has been instrumental in laying the groundwork for the COVID-19 response," the groups wrote. "Taxpayers should not have to pay twice."
"We the People have driven coronavirus research and development—not pharma corporations," said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. "Americans will not accept Trump giving Big Pharma corporations monopolies or letting pharma corporations profiteer off a potential pandemic that claims lives daily."
Public Citizen led the drafting of the letter a week after Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told Congress he could not guarantee that a federally-funded coronavirus vaccine or treatment would be affordable for all Americans. Azar told Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) that "we can't control that price because we need the private sector to invest."
Azar, who led drug company Eli Lilly during a period when it doubled the price of insulin, later backtracked on the statement. But as Public Citizen and other groups wrote, "Vague assurances are not enough."
"No, Secretary Azar, it would be ludicrous to leave such operations to private industry," Sachs wrote. "Mr. Secretary, we should not grant patent protection for such a new vaccine produced heavily with public money to fight a global public emergency."While not unusual in general, economist Jeffrey Sachs wrote in an op-ed on Thursday that allowing the pharmaceutical industry to set the price of life-saving treatment would "be disastrous in the context of an epidemic."
Sachs added that vaccine development should be placed in the hands of Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, with delivery and funding in the control of the federal government.
"Private industry can be a welcome partner but should operate under clear federal leadership and with no monopoly rights to the vaccine," Sachs wrote.
Markets Plunge as Critics Say Trump's "Keep the Stock Market Calm" Approach Has Backfired
"Trump staking his presidency on a good stock market was once just an annoying tic," said The Nation's Jeet Heer. "But now there's a situation that makes it actively harmful."
Eoin Higgins, staff writer
1 Comments
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/05/markets-plunge-critics-say-trumps-keep-stock-market-calm-approach-has-backfired?
The stock market plunged 970 points Thursday, or 3.58%, as fears of the economic impact of the global coronavirus outbreak—and President Donald Trump's mishnadling of the crisi—continued to roil the world's financial markets after last week's panic sent markets into freefall.
"It's kind of like an earthquake—there's the earthquake, which is last week, and then there's the aftershocks, which is this week," MUFG Union Bank chief financial economist Chris Rupkey told the New York Post.
Trump's handling of the coronavirus crisis has been blamed by some observers for market volatility. The White House response to the coronavirus outbreak has been erratic, with health officials being contradicted by the president and Trump going on cable news to downplay the level of danger posed by the disease.
On Wednesday night, as Common Dreams reported, Trump called into Fox News' "Hannity" and told the eponymous host that he had a "hunch" the reported death rate was being misreported, that people with mild symptoms of the disease should nonetheless go into work, and likened the coronavirus to the common flu.
The Nation's Jeet Heer commented on Twitter that the president's insistence on pinning his political performance on the stock market was creating a situation where active measures to stop a pandemic might be deprioritized to ensure financial markets continued to do well.
"Trump staking his presidency on a good stock market was once just an annoying tic (one he shares by many other politicians)," said Heer. "But now there's a situation that makes it actively harmful."
Airline stocks led Thursday's drop after a global slowdown in air travel due to the continuing outbreak was projected to cost billions in travel.
Thursday's losses more than erased gains from Wednesday on the back of a health insurance stock surge that some analysts suggested was because of former Vice President Joe Biden's strong showing in the Super Tuesday 2020 Democratic primary contests against fellow frontrunner Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and an interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve. But, as Rosenberg Research CEO and strategist David Rosenberg told the Washington Post, that was a boost with a one-time application.
"Yesterday's market catalysts, clearly a slate of one-offs, were Joe Biden's success on Super Tuesday and a range of spending announcements to tackle the coronavirus," said Rosenberg. "Markets typically price in an announcement once. It got it yesterday. The news today is the spread of the virus in the U.S. and Italy closing schools, universities, and museums."
As CDC Says 'Do Not Go to Work,' Trump Says Thousands With Coronavirus Could Go to Work and Get Better
"These are really dangerous lies."
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/05/cdc-says-do-not-go-work-trump-says-thousands-coronavirus-could-go-work-and-get?
Running roughshod over the advice of trained medical professionals and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, President Donald Trump Wednesday night suggested to millions of Fox News viewers that people infected with coronavirus could still go to work and recover, comments that were immediately condemned as irresponsible and dangerous.
"A lot of people will have this and it's very mild. They'll get better very rapidly," Trump told Fox's Sean Hannity. "They don't even see a doctor, they don't even call a doctor. You never hear about those people."
"Trump has had briefings from the nation's best doctors and scientists on COVID-19 and he still spouts total, dangerous bullshit."
—Peter Gleick
"So you can't put them down in the category of the overall population in terms of this corona flu and/or virus," Trump continued. "So you just can't do that. So, if, you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work. Some of them go to work, but they get better."
The CDC has advised that anyone exhibiting symptoms of coronavirus such as a fever, coughing, and/or shortness of breath stay home from work, avoid public areas as much as possible, and seek medical attention.
"You should restrict activities outside your home, except for getting medical care," the CDC's website states. "Do not go to work, school, or public areas. Avoid using public transportation, ride-sharing, or taxis."
Trump also claimed in the interview with Hannity that the World Health Organization's (WHO) estimate of a 3.4% global death rate from coronavirus is a "false number."
"This is just my hunch," the president said.
"These are really dangerous lies," tweeted The Nation's Jeet Heer.
"Trump has had briefings from the nation's best doctors and scientists on COVID-19 and he still spouts total, dangerous bullshit," added climate scientist Peter Gleick.
Trump's remarks came just hours after California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a statewide emergency following the death of a 71-year-old man, the first U.S. coronavirus fatality reported outside of Washington state.
"This is not something that I say hyperbolically," Newsom said of the emergency declaration during a press conference Wednesday. "The proclamation is to serve to help advance our resources."
As Trump and other White House officials have attempted to downplay the severity of the outbreak and hurled accusations of fearmongering—the president said at a rally last week that Democrats' criticism of his handling of the health crisis is a "new hoax"—coronavirus has spread to at least 15 states in the U.S. and killed 11 people.
"The death rate so far—which includes more than 3,000 deaths [globally]—is many times higher than the mortality rate of the seasonal flu, which is 0.1%," the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday. "WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that is at least partly because COVID-19 is a new disease, and no one has built up an immunity to it."
Researchers at MIT Affirm: No Evidence to Support OAS’s Suggestions of Fraud in Bolivian Elections
New analysis of Bolivia’s October elections, and the OAS’s publications on them, by Jack Williams and John Curiel, researchers at the MIT Election Data and Science Lab, has reopened international debate and been widely discussed in the media. The study, which CEPR commissioned and has posted in full here, determines: “it is very likely that Morales won the required 10 percentage point margin to win in the first round of the election on October 20, 2019.” Williams and Curiel replicate findings CEPR published in November.
“Argentine President Alberto Fernández said the report’s findings justified his continued support for Morales,” Reuters reported. “We demand the prompt democratization of #Bolivia, with the full participation of the Bolivian people and without prescriptions of any kind,” he Tweeted.
Mark Weisbrot said: “The OAS greatly misled the media and the public about what happened in Bolivia's elections, and helped to foster a great deal of mistrust in the electoral process and the results.”
“The OAS seems to have made statements regarding the preliminary election results without basis in fact,” Williams says. Evo Morales “appears to have been heading toward a first-round victory prior to the interruption of the preliminary count.”
“It is obvious from this report that simply tweaking the system is not enough.”
CEPR’s new report on hospital consolidation in Colorado shows the damage it causes and the cascading harm that follows – to health care insurers, patients, and communities. Colorado’s hospital systems are a microcosm of what is broken in America’s health care system.“The incentives of all the players in the system are pointed away from quality, accessible, and affordable health care for all,” said Jared Gaby-Biegel, author of the report.
The coronavirus has quickly revised the economic outlook. When stock markets plunged last week, Mark Weisbrot reminded Buzzfeed, "the stock market is not the economy, and it shouldn’t be treated so much as such." In the Washington Post, Dean Baker and Jared Bernstein penned a checklist of things the US can do to prepare the economy for a global pandemic. Vox and the New York Times have quoted CEPR research and Eileen Appelbaum on how the US is uniquely vulnerable because it is the only advanced economy with no federally mandated paid sick leave policy. The loss of a paycheck is a powerful incentive to work when urged to stay home.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) asked for ideas for a new poverty measure and Shawn Fremstad eagerly responded. A long-time critic of the outdated poverty measure, Fremstad suggests an alternative could “set the poverty threshold equal to 60 percent of median equivalized disposable income.”
CEPR’s Revolving Door Project has expanded and is pleased to announce the launch of its first-ever dedicated web home. This new website makes it easier than ever to learn about this groundbreaking project. Visit www.therevolvingdoorproject.org to see a record of much of the project’s work since its founding, including blog posts, op-eds, public comments, letters, and FOIA requests. Also, be sure to check out the Revolving Door Project and the Demand Progress Education Fund’s newly-launched Agency Spotlight, which is easily accessible from our new homepage. And, finally, don't leave without signing up for the project's regular newsletter!"
“An honest accounting of the violence in Haiti must also address the political and economic elite...”
“An honest accounting of the violence in Haiti must also address the political and economic elite who sponsor these violent outbursts with arms, money, and protection — a phenomenon that transcends political affiliation,” Kira Paulemon writes for Haiti Relief and Reconstruction Watch.
The Trump administration is requesting $200 million dollars “to address the crisis in Venezuela,” including for regime change. This represents a twenty-two-fold increase from the administration’s FY 2020 request. Read Cavan Kharrazian’s post for The Americas Blog.
“Honesty will … be a precondition for any leader serious about addressing the roots causes of migration. And it might help explain why, in Nevada at least, Sanders received more than 50 percent of the Latino vote,” Jake Johnston writes in a post examining how Democratic candidates are, or aren’t, discussing US policies that have destabilized Latin American countries.
Thursday, March 5, 2020
Joe Biden Would Be Donald Trump's Dream Opponent
Conor Lynch
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/biden-would-be-just-the-challenger-for-trump/
Donald Trump had the perfect opponent in the 2016 election. Running as a populist billionaire taking on the Washington elite, he couldn’t have asked for a better rival in Hillary Clinton, who carried heavy political baggage and who, for many, personified the so-called establishment. While Trump’s populist shtick was easy to pick apart, Clinton was the wrong person to promote the message she was trying to get across to voters.
By nominating a candidate whose place in the Democratic Party establishment was undeniable and who lacked credibility on issues like money in politics, the Democrats simply let Trump run as the anti-establishment candidate. Not only that, but the Clinton camp even tried courting establishment Republicans who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for their own party’s candidate.
Here was a man who had openly bragged about bribing politicians, yet Democrats couldn’t go after Trump on the issue because their own candidate was one of the politicians to whom he’d donated in the past. The Clinton camp raised (and spent) far more money than Trump, but whether this actually helped or hurt her is unclear, as it also gave credence to the perception that she was the candidate favored by big donors Meanwhile, Trump positioned himself as the self-financing candidate who couldn’t be bought.
As the Trump campaign’s onetime CEO, Steve Bannon, put it shortly after the election, “Hillary Clinton was the perfect foil for Trump’s message. From her email server, to her lavishly paid speeches to Wall Street bankers, to her FBI problems, she represented everything that middle-class Americans had had enough of.”
This time around, Trump should have zero credibility running as a “populist.” The president has presided over the most corrupt administration in modern history, plagued by investigations and numerous indictments that have led to convictions of some of his closest associates. Trump has nominated Supreme Court justices who defend money in politics, and his major legislative achievement has been to give billionaires and corporate elites major tax cuts.
Under Trump, corporate America has thrived while real-income growth has declined for most working- and middle-class people. Inequality has continued to reach historic levels, and billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Mike Bloomberg have seen their wealth surge. In 2020, Trump is no longer even pretending to self-finance his campaign. With his recent predatory budget proposal he has made it clear that he is getting ready to gut programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, during his second term.
It should be easy for Democrats to expose Trump as the corrupt charlatan that he is. In an age when a majority of voters rate political corruption as America’s biggest crisis and nearly 8 in 10 Americans agree that there should be “limits on the amount of money individuals and organizations” can spend on political campaigns, how hard can it be to defeat a hugely unpopular president who makes Richard Nixon look half decent? The surest way for Democrats to lose to Trump again would be to follow the same strategy as 2016 and nominate a candidate who embodies the establishment, carries a ton of political baggage and lacks credibility on issues like corruption.
By the looks of it, Democrats might just pull it off. After Super Tuesday, it appears that Trump will have another perfect foil for his message in 2020. Former Vice President Joe Biden has regained his place as the Democratic frontrunner after a successful showing on Tuesday, thanks in large part to party elites, and some of his former rivals, quickly consolidating around his campaign the day before. Though the race is far from over, Biden is now well-positioned to win the nomination. By selecting Biden, Democrats will effectively let Trump and his deeply corrupt administration off the hook yet again.
Biden is a lot like Clinton, but worse in almost every measurable way. On issue after issue, Biden has consistently been to the right of Clinton throughout his fifty-year political career. He has a record of advocating cuts to Social Security and Medicare; he helped write the 1994 Crime Bill that led to an explosion in mass incarceration; he played a critical role in passing the 2005 bankruptcy bill that stripped bankruptcy protection from some of the most vulnerable people. Biden also supported and championed the Iraq War.
This list goes on and on. Beyond his extremely problematic record, which will make it hard for Democrats to go after Trump about, say, cutting Social Security (which Biden himself supported not too long ago), Biden has his own personal scandals that will make it very difficult for him to cast Trump as corrupt.
While his son Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine may not qualify as corruption, it was doubtless unethical and sleazy for Biden’s son to take a high-paying consultant gig with a foreign firm while his father was vice president (and Biden’s refusal to acknowledge this conflict only makes it worse). The behavior of Biden’s family will haunt him in the general election. As Ryan Grim wrote in The Intercept last October, Biden’s son and brother have been “trading on their family name for decades, cashing in on the implication — and sometimes the explicit argument — that giving money to a member of Joe Biden’s family wins the favor of Joe Biden.” Predictably, a majority of voters believe it was inappropriate for Biden’s son to take a job with the Ukrainian firm, and Trump will exploit this and use it to defend his own family’s nepotism and corruption.
In the lead-up to the general election, Biden, who has recently struggled to string coherent sentences together, would provide the slick demagogue Donald Trump with all the ammunition he needs. We were given a little preview of what to expect in President Trump’s Super Tuesday commentary: “The Democrat establishment came together and crushed Bernie Sanders, AGAIN!” he gloated on Twitter, once again positioning himself as the anti-establishment populist.
On Monday, the Democratic establishment proved that it still has far more control over the party than the Republican establishment did over their own party in 2016. No one stands to benefit more from an establishment triumph than Donald Trump. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has the credibility to call out Trump on his corruption and neoliberal economic policies, is still in the race, but his chances are looking much slimmer than they were just a week ago.
Democrats have a choice: They can follow the same strategy that ended up costing them all three branches of government in recent years, or they can go another way. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
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