May 4, 2020

Key Scientific Group Doubles Its Projected US Death Toll from Pandemic to 135,000

Source: Mediaite

The academic group that President Donald Trump and the White House coronavirus task force has frequently cited for official estimates of coronavirus cases and fatalities radically changed its numbers on Monday, nearly doubling its projected final death toll for the first wave of the Covid-19 outbreak to 135,000.

On Monday afternoon, the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation issued a lengthy press release explaining that it was revising upward by nearly 100% its projection of roughly 74,000 from just one week earlier. The IMHE attributed the stark change to relaxed social distancing rules and increased mobility in many states where the Covid-19 spread has peaked but not declined measurably.

This news comes just hours after the New York Times reported that a private assessment inside the CDC warned that the rapid pullback of quarantine orders will boost the death toll to 3,000 a day by the beginning of June, a mark more than 50 percent higher that the current daily mortality rate. And the IMHE’s reversal arrived less than 24 hours after Trump very publicly backpedaled the virus’ impact in a Fox News town hall on Sunday night, in which he said “We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people.” For weeks, Trump touted the IMHE’s downwardly revised projection of 60,000 from 100,000 as evidence that his administration’s response was saving lives.

Read more: https://www.mediaite.com/news/key-scientific-group-doubles-its-projected-us-death-toll-from-pandemic-to-135000/

May 4, 2020

Remember the Tea Party protests during Obama's first two years in office?

Remember these guys?





Well this news just hit the wire:

Where are the protests against deficit spending now? They're nowhere to be found.

It was never about government spending and deficits.

It was always about the fact an African American was President.

May 4, 2020

Robert Reich reveals the GOP 4-step plan to reopen the economy and get more Americans killed

Step 1
Remove income support, so people have no choice but to return to work.

Trump’s labor department has decided that furloughed employees “must accept” an employer’s offer to return to work and therefore forfeit unemployment benefits, regardless of Covid-19.

<...>

Step 2
Hide the facts.

No one knows how many Americans are infected because the Trump administration continues to drag its heels on testing. To date only 6.5m tests have been completed in a population of more than 200 million adults.

Florida, one of the first states to reopen, has stopped releasing medical examiners’ statistics on the number of Covid-19 victims because the figures are higher than the state’s official count.

<...>

Step 3
Pretend it’s about “freedom”

Weeks ago, Trump called on citizens to “LIBERATE” states like Michigan, whose Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, imposed strict stay-at-home rules.

Michigan has the third-highest number of Covid-19 deaths in America, although it is 10th in population. When on Thursday Whitmer extended the rules to 28 May, gun-toting protesters rushed the state house chanting: “Lock her up!”

Step 4
Shield businesses against lawsuits for spreading the infection.

Trump is pushing to give businesses that reopen a “liability shield” against legal action by workers or customers who get infected by the virus.

<...>

The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, insists that proposed legislation giving state and local governments funding they desperately need must include legal immunity for corporations that cause workers or consumers to become infected.

Read more....

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/03/donald-trump-reopen-us-economy-lethal-robert-reich

May 3, 2020

AZ reopen rally ends with people joining hands and touching each other while singing 'Amazing Grace'

By Sarah K. Burris
May 3, 2020

At the end of the rally to reopen in Arizona Sunday, the speaker urged the audience to join hands and touch each other while they sang “Amazing Grace.”

Very few of the attendees were wearing masks and it didn’t appear anyone was wearing gloves.

Another man decided to break social distancing and provide free hugs to people. While the action may have been a popular option pre-COVID, after the virus spread, it isn’t exactly a safe option.

“The best way to fight for freedom is with love,” said Phoenix-area resident Zhani Doka. “I like hugs…I want to bring back the ability to show affection, I think that is a horrible consequence of this pandemic ’cause we can’t hug each other anymore.”



https://twitter.com/MichaelDoudna/status/1257049515946725376

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/05/arizona-reopen-rally-ends-with-people-joining-hands-and-touching-each-other-while-singing-amazing-grace/

May 3, 2020

When the entire world....

May 1, 2020

Not only is white privilege a thing, but republican privilege is also a thing

We all know what would've happened if armed African Americans stormed the Michigan capitol like those white people did today. They would've likely been gunned down.

But what if Obama had his own inept son in law like Jared Kushner and appointed him to solve Middle East peace and the coronavirus pandemic for the United States.

Just imagine the outcry.

Republican privilege is also a thing.

May 1, 2020

Everything that's wrong with our "democracy" in a nutshell:

Lawmakers Vote by Mail to Roll Back Vote by Mail

April 30, 2020 at 3:10 pm EDT
By Taegan Goddard

“An emergency plan for Louisiana’s delayed spring elections was approved by the state Legislature after Republican lawmakers rolled back an expansion of mail-in ballots for people concerned about the coronavirus,” the Baton Rouge Advocate reports.

“Lawmakers voted by mail on the emergency plan.”

https://politicalwire.com/2020/04/30/louisiana-lawmakers-vote-by-mail-to-roll-back-vote-by-mail/

April 28, 2020

Not only do blue states subsidize red states, but blue regions in red states subsidize red regions

https://twitter.com/RealJohnLaurens/status/1254785665557921798

Paul Krugman
✔
@paulkrugman
· 14h
As states exchange insults over who subsidizes who (yes, blue states subsidize red states), some people I've been talking to are suggesting that red states may face a worse fiscal crisis than blue this time around, bc of their different revenue bases 1/

——

John Laurens
@RealJohnLaurens
It is also true that the blue regions within red states subsidize the rest of the states. In Kentucky, Louisville, Lexington, and Northern Kentucky are responsible for much of the revenue from state taxes. Louisville and Lexington consistently vote Democratic.

April 27, 2020

Where Has Jared Kushner Gone in the Fight Against Coronavirus?

Erin Banco National Security Reporter
Asawin Suebsaeng White House Reporter
Updated Apr. 27, 2020 12:56PM ET / Published Apr. 27, 2020 4:41AM ET


In February, as the White House scrambled to handle the growing coronavirus epidemic, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, stepped into what officials described as a crucial role: forging a partnership between the private sector and the federal government so they could together contain the rapidly spreading virus.

<...>

Over the past two weeks, Kushner has been notably removed from coronavirus-related operations, according to four officials working in coordination with his team. One official working in the White House said it was “unclear” exactly what he and his team had actually done over the last two weeks. Another individual familiar with Kushner’s work said they hadn’t received updates from his team in “about a week.”

<...>

“He muddied up a process that was really not needing a fix,” said Juliette Kayyem, a former assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. “What that does is disempower FEMA because if at any moment Jared or one of his henchmen demand assets to be redistributed at their discretion, FEMA’s planning gets disrupted. I’ve never seen operations on something this scale being run out of the White House. Usually it’s policy and communications that they handle… but you would never run logistical operations out of the White House.”

<..>

“[Jared] could be in his office just googling ‘coronavirus,’ show the results to the president, and still get a gold sticker from his dad-in-law. He is solving the coronavirus like he’s bringing peace to the [Middle East].”

The whole article:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/where-has-jared-kushner-gone-in-the-fight-against-coronavirus?ref=home

April 24, 2020

Researchers cut chloroquine study short over safety concerns, citing a 'primary outcome' of death

Source: CNBC

Citing a “primary outcome” of death, researchers cut short a study testing anti-malaria drug chloroquine as a potential treatment for Covid-19 after some patients developed irregular heart rates and nearly two dozen of them died after taking doses of the drug daily.

Scientists say the findings, published Friday in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association, should prompt some degree of skepticism from the public toward enthusiastic claims about and perhaps “serve to curb the exuberant use” of the drug, which has been touted by President Donald Trump as a potential “game-changer” in the fight against the coronavirus.

Chloroquine gained widespread international attention following two small studies, including one with 36 Covid-19 patients published March 17 in France, found that most patients taking the drug cleared the coronavirus from their system a lot faster than the control group. The JAMA report said those trials didn’t meet the publishing society’s standards.

“These weak findings, bolstered by anecdotal reports and media attention, have fostered widespread belief in the efficacy of these agents,” according to a separate warning about prescribing the drugs issued Friday alongside the new JAMA study.

Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/24/coronavirus-citing-a-primary-outcome-of-death-researchers-cut-chloroquine-study-short-over-safety-concerns.html