Our coronavirus denier president said last week that the virus is “getting under control.” “Some (places) were doing very well, and we thought they (the virus) may be gone and they flare up, and we’re putting out the fires.” “I think we are going to be very good with the coronavirus. I think that, at some point, that’s going to sort of just disappear, I hope.” AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s empty assurance on controlling virus.
Today’s headline at the Washington Post: U.S. logs 26th straight day of record average case totals:
As Americans participated in scaled-back Fourth of July celebrations, the country tallied a record seven-day average of new coronavirus cases for the 26th day in a row. Florida and Texas reported new single-day records for new infections, and health officials in hard-hit Arizona said covid-19 patients were pushing the state’s intensive care units toward full capacity.
Tampa Bay Times: Florida hits another record for COVID-19 cases to start the July 4th weekend: Florida hit another single-day record for positive coronavirus tests Saturday, reporting 11,458 new cases.
The Texas Statesman: Texas sets coronavirus records: 8,258 new cases, numbers in hospital reach all-time highs: The state has a total of 191,790 cases after Texas added 8,258 new cases on Saturday, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. The number of statewide hospitalizations also hit a record high for the sixth day in a row with 7,890 Texans in hospitals for the COVID-19.
The Arizona Republic: New records for hospitalizations, ICU bed use as deaths surpass 1,800: Arizona reported 2,695 new COVID-19 cases and 17 additional deaths on Saturday, according to data from the Arizona Department of Health Services. The number of people in the hospitals and using ICU beds again broke records Friday.
Axios: 15 states broke single-day coronavirus records this week: At least 15 states broke their single-day novel coronavirus infection records this week, according to state health department data reviewed by Axios.
After prematurely declaring victory and simply wishing away this pandemic, the Trump administration has now settled on a new message: “Learn to live with it.” The self-proclaimed “wartime president” is waiving the white flag of surrender to the pandemic. America, you are on your own. ‘We need to live with it’: White House readies new message for the nation on coronavirus:
After several months of mixed messages on the coronavirus pandemic, the White House is settling on a new one: Learn to live with it.
Administration officials are planning to intensify what they hope is a sharper, and less conflicting, message of the pandemic next week, according to senior administration officials, after struggling to offer clear directives amid a crippling surge in cases across the country. On Thursday, the United States reported more than 55,000 new cases of coronavirus and infection rates were hitting new records in multiple states.
At the crux of the message, officials said, is a recognition by the White House that the virus is not going away any time soon — and will be around through the November election.
As a result, President Donald Trump’s top advisers plan to argue, the country must figure out how to press forward despite it. Therapeutic drugs will be showcased as a key component for doing that and the White House will increasingly emphasize the relatively low risk most Americans have of dying from the virus, officials said.
For nearly six months the administration offered a series of predictions and pronouncements that never came to fruition. From Trump promising that “the problem goes away in April” and predicting “packed churches all over our country” on Easter Sunday to Vice President Mike Pence’s claim that “by Memorial Day weekend we will have this coronavirus epidemic behind us” to Jared Kushner’s pronouncement the country would be “really rocking again” by July because Americans were “on the other side of the medical aspect of this.”
This all followed the White House’s initial message in January that the virus wasn’t a threat at all. Asked if he was worried about a pandemic, Trump said at the time, “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
The message then morphed to the idea that the virus would be swiftly crushed by a robust federal response. “WE WILL WIN THIS WAR,” Trump tweeted in March.
Referring to the virus as the “invisible enemy” and the fight as a “war,” Trump said, “One day we’ll be standing up here and say, ‘Well, we won.’ And we’re going to say that, as sure as you’re sitting there, we’re going to win. And I think we’re going to win faster than people think, I hope.” Trump now calling coronavirus fight a ‘war’ with an ‘invisible enemy’.
But then the Trump administration did everything in its power to aid and abet this “invisible enemy,” working at cross-purposes with the recommendations of its own Coronavirus Task Force, the CDC and the NIH.
Soon after declaring war, the president demanded governors open up their states and said he had the authority to force them to do so. “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA,” he wrote on Twitter in April. Within days he decided to shift responsibility for the pandemic to the governors, saying, “The federal government will be watching them very closely and will be there to help in many different ways.”
In recent weeks, the message has been that the country is back, face coverings and social distancing are optional, even as the number of coronavirus cases across the country surged.
“We have to get back to business. We have to get back to living our lives. Can’t do this any longer,” Trump said in an interview with Axios last month before his campaign rally in Tulsa, where almost no one socially distanced and few wore masks. “And I do believe it’s safe. I do believe it’s very safe.” A number of Trump’s own campaign staffers and Secret Service agents contracted COVID-19 in Tulsa.
Eager to move forward and reopen the economy amid a recession and a looming presidential election, the White House is now pushing acceptance.
“The virus is with us, but we need to live with it,” is how one official said the administration plans to message on the pandemic.
Accept defeat, the virus has won. Trump often says he “doesn’t like losers.” Well, he is the biggest loser of all time. This coronavirus denier gave up without a fight, and left Americans to die at the hands of an “invisible enemy.” This is criminal negligence.
It is an abject failure of leadership which has already resulted in the deaths 0f 130,000 Americans, and many more left permanently scarred by their fight to survive the coronavirus. And there is no end in sight as the pandemic is exponentially accelerating into an apocalyptic humanitarian disaster. How many more Americans will die due to Trump’s ignorance, incompetence and indifference to their lives?
Next week administration officials plan to promote a new study they say shows promising results on therapeutics, the officials said. They wouldn’t describe the study in any further detail because, they said, its disclosure would be “market-moving.”
Officials also plan to emphasize high survival rates, particularly for Americans who are within certain age groups and don’t have underlying conditions. The overall death rate from COVID-19 in the U.S. has been on the decline. More than 130,000 Americans have died of the virus.
Trump is expected to be briefed by Dr. Deborah Birx, one of the most visible members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, before Monday on her assessment of new hot spots that she’s visited this week, including what governors have said they need and how the new surge is affecting minority communities, officials said. Birx was in Florida, Texas and Arizona this week.
One of the officials indicated that coronavirus task force meetings and public briefings will be more frequent — a shift already underway this week. Those meetings and briefings were daily for much of March and April, but they tapered off when Trump pivoted to focusing on the need to reopen the economy. Nearly 20 million Americans are now jobless and the unemployment rate remains in the double digits, despite a record drop in the past month.
Recent public briefings from the task force, so far, have taken place outside the White House complex. Members of the coronavirus task force, led by Pence, have taken questions from reporters five times in five different places, ranging from the Department of Health and Human Services to various Sun Belt coronavirus hot spots.
One official said moving the briefing locations is an attempt to minimize questions from the White House press corps. Another said it was also designed to prevent Trump from being tempted to take over the briefings.
In recent days Trump personally asked the task force to resume briefings but decided he would not participate in them, according to three White House officials.
The change comes as multiple recent national polls show Trump trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
And the pathological liar continues to lie with reckless abandon every time he opens his big mouth.
On Thursday, the president claimed that when Pence held a recent call with governors and asked the state executives what they might need, none of them requested federal assistance.
“Not one governor needed anything. They don’t need anything. They have all the medical equipment they can have. Thank you, U.S. government,” Trump said.
Liar. Medical companies warn PPE, critical equipment situation ‘not sustainable,’ House memo says: As coronavirus infections continue to spike across the U.S, six of the nation’s largest medical equipment distribution companies are raising “troubling concerns” about the Trump administration’s coordination of critical supplies to COVID-19 hot spots. The companies told committee staff that obtaining personal protective equipment for U.S. medical personnel and patients under current conditions is “not sustainable.”
But as Pence has crisscrossed the country this week, visiting places with virus outbreaks such as Dallas, Phoenix and Tampa, he has been quick to note several requests from the governors of those states in real time. For example, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Sunday expressed a desire to continue federal funding for testing sites in his state that was set to end at the end of June.
Pence agreed and promised to extend “that every bit as long as Texas wants us to,” noting that “this is all hands on deck” during a press briefing with other members of the coronavirus task force.
In Arizona on Wednesday, Pence noted Gov. Doug Ducey requested additional medical personnel during their meeting and the vice president subsequently “instructed the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security to move out immediately on providing the additional doctors and nurses and technical personnel.”
Throughout his travels, Pence has been accompanied by Birx, a trend that is expected to continue in the coming weeks, according to a person close to the task force.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, for his part, has been issuing dire warnings on the future of the pandemic from other perches. He testified on Capitol Hill this week that if current trends continue, Americans could see as many as 100,000 new cases daily.
In an interview with BBC Radio on Thursday, Fauci said: “What we’ve seen over the last several days is a spike in cases that are well beyond the worse spikes that we’ve seen. That is not good news, we’ve got to get that under control or we risk an even greater outbreak in the United States.”
Sorry, Dr. Fauci, but Donald Trump has waived the white flag of surrender to the coronavirus, and is actively aiding and abetting this “invisible enemy” by dismissing your warnings and recommendations and setting a bad example, and is holding “spread the coronavirus” rallies around the country. The NIH should declare Donald Trump a public health threat, he is the modern-day version of Typhoid Mary. See, Trump And Pence Have Given Nearly Two Dozen Secret Service Agents Coronavirus; Eight Trump Campaign Staffers Test Positive for Coronavirus After Tulsa Rally.
Well, we do have to learn to live with COVID-19.
Because Trump and the GOP blew it and we missed the window to slow the spread.
We are going to have to live with it for years.
And COVID-19 isn’t a one and done event. We still have Ebola outbreaks, and long after COVID-19 is no longer a “novel” coronavirus, new ones will spread.
If we were a sane nation, we’d start planning on new ways of doing things.
Some investors are going to lose money, but investments come with risk, so cowboy up. If this was a hurricane or earthquake or flood you’d already be done. The slow motion aspect of a plague doesn’t make it any less life changing.
We’lll need to take care of the unemployed and real small business owners, but Wall Street should have planned for a rainy day.
Hopes of things going back to “normal” are just prolonging the pain.
And progressives who have been pushing for densely packed, energy and transportation efficient cites, are going to have to rethink their vision for the future, too.
Because it turns out, densely packed is a bad idea.
The good news, and this is only if we were a sane country, is this is an opportunity to rethink how America looks at the future, and that will create millions of jobs.
Or we can pretend there is no virus and close down over and over again, leaving millions of people without employment or any kind of job security, until the pile of Freedom Cadavers (TM) gets enough attention and the MAGA’s realize they’ve been duped.
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