https://jezebel.com/help-i-think-im-in-love-with-andrew-cuomo-1842396411

Rebecca Fishbein
Today 12:20PM

My roommates moved out of my Brooklyn apartment just ahead of the pandemic, and their replacements haven’t moved in yet. (At this point, they might not move in at all.) This means I haven’t had much company in the last week, and based on current covid-19 predictions, it might be like this for a long time. I am lonely and scared and anxious, but I have mitigated some of these feelings with my day’s two bright spots: 1) My afternoon run, and 2) New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s daily streamed press conference.

I worked in local New York news for years and developed an intense and reasonable dislike of Cuomo. He has repeatedly hindered attempts to reform the criminal justice system, he took advantage of a once largely conservative state Congress to keep progressive legislation on reproductive health from becoming law, he fucked around with the MTA so much he forced out the only useful subway leader the administration’s ever seen, etc., etc., etc.

And yet, in this time of crisis, with little concrete information available, I need Cuomo’s measured bullying, his love of circumventing the federal government, his sparring with increasingly incompetent city leadership. Not only that, but the less contact I have with other humans, the more I start to think of Cuomo as my only friend. I’ve started laughing at his little jokes. I catch myself touching my hair (not my face!) when he talks about an increase in testing capacity. I swooned when he told a reporter he had his own workout routine. I have watched a clip of him and brother Chris Cuomo bickering about their mother at least 20 times. I think I have a crush???

https://twitter.com/sbstryker/status/1239797745675718656

It seems I’ve fallen victim to Stockholm Syndrome, which Merriam-Webster defines as “the psychological tendency of a hostage to bond with, identify with, or sympathize with his or her captor.” Cuomo isn’t holding me hostage so much as coronavirus is, but he is the only one telling me what to do, where I can and cannot go (anywhere), who I can and cannot see (everyone), who I can and cannot listen to (President Trump, Bill de Blasio), what I can and cannot eat (anything but pasta).

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https://twitter.com/eka__d/status/1240665927764639747
Eka 🇳🇬 @eka__d

When you’re forced to give a group presentation with people you don’t like #SocialDistancing #WhiteHouseBriefing

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11:46 AM - Mar 19, 2020

https://twitter.com/BrianKarem/status/1240712096943243264
Brian J. Karem ✔@BrianKarem

The stupidity in this video is overwhelming. Supposed to practice social distancing - then pushed together by a press secretary who doesn't understand "Practice what you preach" #WhiteHouseBriefing @realDonaldTrump @VP

2:49 PM - Mar 19, 2020

https://twitter.com/RichardsonCNTR/status/1240711638757421057
Richardson Center @RichardsonCNTR

Good humanitarian gesture by Iran to furlough Michael White today. His health requires immediate treatment, especially w/the risk of COVID-19. Thank you to Iranian officials for their efforts. We look forward to continuing our dialogue and find a way to get @freeMikeWhite home

2:48 PM - Mar 19, 2020

https://twitter.com/g_e_anderson/status/1240704472713584642
G.E. Anderson ✔@g_e_anderson

Former @fema administrator Craig Fugate just mumbled something about “bullshit” to @KatyTurNBC and walked off the air. Take a chill pill, man! Not a good look for @uflorida.

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2:19 PM - Mar 19, 2020

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/19/im-an-er-doctor-coronavirus-is-already-overwhelming-us/

My colleagues and I are trained to handle crisis situations. This is a different kind of test.

By Michelle Romeo
Michelle Romeo is an emergency medicine resident physician in New York.

March 19, 2020 at 7:10 a.m. EDT

I’m on my eighth hour Saturday working in suffocating protective gear — mask, face shield, gown and gloves — when an elderly patient is wheeled into Room 23 of my hospital’s emergency department. He’s confused and gasping for air as his family tells me over the phone that he doesn’t want any “heroic measures” performed: no aggressive resuscitation, no breathing tube. Under normal circumstances, there are a few tricks I might try before I have to put a breathing tube down someone’s airway and connect them to a ventilator, which breathes for them.

But now those less-invasive breathing interventions could wind up spraying contagious viral particles into the air, putting my other patients at risk of contracting this patient’s presumed illness, covid-19. So I place a simple breathing mask over his frail face while I watch his oxygen levels fall below a viable level. At that point, I lock eyes with the supervising ER doctor standing nearby, and he dismally mutters: “This is only the beginning.”

He’s right, and that’s my worry. This patient is the first of many who are about to come to us, suffering.

My colleagues and I are used to reacting in a crisis, working long hours and making life and death decisions — that’s our job. But the coronavirus crisis is a different kind of test: Every shift is different; guidance is coming in from every direction; in some cases, we’re watching people die in front of us; we yearn to be at work, but we’re also trying to keep ourselves alive. We’re doing everything we can, but right now, it doesn’t feel like enough.

We don’t know yet if the patient in Room 23 has covid-19. We’ve seen a spike of patients arriving with similar symptoms: high fever, cough, difficulty breathing — all of the signs we’ve been reading about. We are taking precautions as if each patient is positive for this new and terrifying disease. But right now, we can’t do enough tests, and when we do test, we can’t get the results back fast enough.

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https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1240676153893040129
Asha Rangappa ✔@AshaRangappa_

I think it’s time for the media to address the elephant in the room: Trump may be incapable of understanding the problem. It involves data, graphs, projections, connecting dots, conceptual thinking. I think he fundamentally cannot mentally grasp it.


12:27 PM - Mar 19, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-outbreak.html

Government exercises, including one last year, made clear that the U.S. was not ready for a pandemic like the coronavirus. But little was done.

By David E. Sanger, Eric Lipton, Eileen Sullivan and Michael Crowley
March 19, 2020, 11:09 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON — The outbreak of the respiratory virus began in China and was quickly spread around the world by air travelers, who ran high fevers. In the United States, it was first detected in Chicago, and 47 days later the World Health Organization declared a pandemic. By then it was too late: 110 million Americans were expected to become ill, leading to 7.7 million hospitalized and 586,000 dead.

That scenario, code-named “Crimson Contagion,’’ was simulated by the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services in a series of exercises that ran from last January to August.

The simulation’s sobering results — contained in a draft report dated October 2019 that has not previously been reported — drove home just how underfunded, underprepared and uncoordinated the federal government would be for a life-or-death battle with a virus for which no treatment existed.

The draft report, marked “not to be disclosed,” laid out in stark detail repeated cases of “confusion” in the exercise. Federal agencies jockeyed over who was in charge. State officials and local hospitals struggled to figure out what kind of equipment was stockpiled or available. Cities and states went their own way on school closings.

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https://twitter.com/alexwagner/status/1240616287602118656
Alex Wagner ✔@alexwagner

This secret recording of @SenatorBurr suggests some in the GOP fully grasped how serious COVID 19 would be, but refused to say so publicly -- putting American lives at risk to maintain allegiance to the Trump WH:

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/818192535/burr-recording-sparks-questions-about-private-comments-on-covid-19 …
Burr Recording Sparks Questions About Private Comments On COVID-19
A secret recording taken of Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr shows him warning a private audience three weeks ago about how the Coronavirus would have dire effects on the U.S.

8:29 AM - Mar 19, 2020

https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1240618188993368065
Aaron Blake ✔@AaronBlake

Trump said yesterday that he was only invoking the Defense Production Act so he could use it later in a worst-case scenario.

Pelosi is urging him to use it now.



8:36 AM - Mar 19, 2020

https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1240611922984271872
Aaron Blake ✔@AaronBlake

Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska): "They call it the coronavirus. I call it the beer virus. How do you like that?“

"It attacks us senior citizens. I’m one of you. I still say we have to as a nation and state go forth with everyday activities.”

Health officials say the opposite.

8:11 AM - Mar 19, 2020