Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Bark louder, little dog.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

When we show up, we win.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / COVID-19 Coronavirus Update (Domestic) – Monday/Tuesday, March 9/10

COVID-19 Coronavirus Update (Domestic) – Monday/Tuesday, March 9/10

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And here we thought alcohol killed viruses…


(So has Ireland, but TBH Paddy’s Day parades are a recent, mostly tourism-based event in the Auld Sod. They’ve been a massive fixture here in Boston, and later NYC, since the 1700s. They started as a form of political protest — like a precursor of the Black Lives Matter marches.)

Speaking of public clownshows…


Since I’ve been doing this seven days a week, and update right around close-of-business hours for Asia, arguably Balloon Juice is doing a better coverage job than the Trump admin allows the CDC. Blessed!


… The problem is that the crisis fits into his preexisting and deeply held worldview—that the media is always searching for a story to bring him down. Covid-19 is merely the latest instance, and he’s reacting in familiar ways. “So much FAKE NEWS!” Trump tweeted this morning. “He wants Justice to open investigations of the media for market manipulation,” a source close to the White House told me. Trump is also frustrated with his West Wing for not getting a handle on the news cycle. “He’s very frustrated he doesn’t have a good team around him,” a former White House official said. On Friday he forced out acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and replaced him with former House Freedom Caucus chair Mark Meadows. Trump thought the virus was “getting beyond Mick,” a person briefed on the internal discussions said. Trump has also complained that economic adviser Larry Kudlow is not doing enough to calm jittery markets. Last week Kudlow refused Trump’s request that Kudlow hold an on-camera press briefing, sources said. “Larry didn’t want to have to take questions about coronavirus,” a person close to Kudlow told me. “Larry’s not a doctor. How can he answer questions about something he doesn’t know?”

Trump found a willing surrogate in Kellyanne Conway, but Conway’s dubious claim on Friday that the virus “is being contained” only made the P.R. situation worse.

Trump’s efforts to take control of the story himself have so far failed. A source said Trump was pleased with ratings for the Fox News town hall last Thursday, but he was furious with how he looked on television. “Trump said afterwards that the lighting was bad,” a source briefed on the conversation said. “He said, ‘We need Bill Shine back in here. Bill would never allow this.’”…

But thus far Trump’s private concerns haven’t affected his public response. Pressure from the public health community is mounting on Trump to cancel his mass rallies, but Trump is pushing back. “He is going to resist until the very last minute,” a former West Wing official said. “He may take suggestions to stop shaking hands, but in terms of shutting stuff down, his position is: ‘No, I’m not going to do it.’”…

I don’t think any of the Extremely Public SCOTUS Catholics — Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Roberts, Alito & Thomas — actually live in Georgetown, but IIRC they’re weekday attendees as well, so…


In fairness, the current decimation among Iran’s leadership is being blamed on the practice of jointly kissing religious shrines, and then each other, as a form of public political dominance. And South Korea’s worst outbreak seems to have taken off due to the members of a ‘secretive religious cult’ that covered up early infections rather than reporting them. So — and I say this as a person of faith — maybe a little less public piety and a little more private observance, just for the duration?

Hey, Repubs, remember the mysterious ‘carrier’ at CPAC / AIPAC?


(Can’t have been Sheldon Adelson, but am I allowed to fantasize it was someone who works for Adelson?)

The GOP is a death cult, but thank Murphy the Trickster God they’re not very good at it…

Our Glorious Economic System, asking the Important Questions: Do we need to update the HR handbook again?

Reader Interactions

35Comments

  1. 1.

    prufrock

    Out of morbid curiosity, I did some simple math to see what would happen if COVID-19 struck a vulnerable population; in this case, The Villages.

    As of 2018, The Villages had a population of 128,000 people. Let’s round that up to 130,000 for today. The average age of a Village resident is 72. The infection rate of COVID-19 is 40-70 percent. Let’s call it 50 percent for this exercise. The mortality rate for the 70-79 age range is 8 percent. Multiply the numbers together and you get 5200 dead Villagers (my new band name) as a result of COVID-19.

    Now one could argue that a seventy-five year old has had a long life. However, a seventy-five year old has a life expectancy of nearly nine years by national average, and given that The Villages is full of retired white people (98.4 percent!), the average dead Villager is giving up at least a decade  of living.

    I’m sure the survivors will still find a way to blame Obama.

  2. 2.

    lexilis

    Thank you Anne Laurie. Your daily posts here on BJ are about the most concise and informative source that I have found for crucial information about Virus and its cascading effects in the US. There must be mountains of work involved in accessing, filtering, and integrating the info for these posts. I am sure I am not the only one who really appreciates what you are doing. I am a longtime reader of BJ (seldom posting), retired, living in Chiang Mai, Thailand. This country has its own problems attempting to deal with COVID-19. The tourist industry (already in bad condition before the virus) has completely collapsed. Visitors from China (Thailand’s largest, by far, source of incoming tourists) is down over 85% in Feb. The Thai government (a bunch of inept clowns that rivals even the republican shitshow in the US) claims there are only about 50 cases of COVID-19 in the country, but this claim is viewed with skepticism. The next few months here, as most everywhere, are going to be desperate.

  4. 4.

    Rusty

    Anne, another grateful reader wants to thank you for these posts each day. I see a bump in the market based on a payroll tax cut. I guess that’s better than more money being only thrown at the rich, but it fails to address that for a lot of folks, they won’t be getting any pay at all. A payroll tax cut is useless to them. It also drives the social security and Medicare deficits. Hopefully when Nancy and Chuck get involved we get something better.

  5. 5.

    WereBear

    @prufrock: Last night I advised a Jackal to not visit Florida. I got a flash yesterday morning that it’s brewing a perfect storm:

    • all those cruise ships
    • Disney World
    • high incidence of corrupt/incompetent local governments
    • all those seniors
    • high incidence of service jobs
    • no labor protections
    • high rates of poverty; people will work to eat
    • high rate of uninsured; people can’t afford testing or care
    • home of government like Matt Gaetz

     

    And I could go on; I lived there for ten years. Florida has this bizarre attitude towards its own citizens; they rely on them to keep the visitor dollars flowing, but hate them for not being rich visitors.

    My mother lived in New York when she broke her leg; and even though she didn’t have much of a job, NY took care of her. She agreed when I pointed out, “In Florida, they would have shot you like a horse.”

  10. 10.

    La Nonna

    Things are moving fast here in Puglia, we have been self isolating for about 10 days, had one member of the household do enough shopping for 2-3 weeks, all public functions closed, no leaving our home for now, full tank of gas, plenty of food, water, dogfood, etc.

    As oldsters, 70, with some underlying health conditions, we fully understand that aggressive treatments will be rationed if necessary, and tilted towards younger people.  We are fine with this, Italy’s healthcare system has  given us 10 years of wonderful care we could never have received in NYC…one of the reasons we came here to live.  The lockdown is a community effort now, tough in a country where hello is a hug and a kiss on both cheeks.

  11. 11.

    Betty Cracker

    @prufrock: Same. Just read in The Tampa Bay Times that Publix is now limiting the purchase of the following items to two per customer:

    • Hand soaps and sanitizers
    • Rubbing alcohol
    • Facial masks and gloves
    • Disinfectant wipes and sprays
    • Aerosol disinfectant sprays
    • Facial tissues
    • Cups, plates and utensils
    • Bleach

    People were panic buying. Good for Publix. My hubby stopped by Publix on the way home yesterday and reported that it was way emptier than usual. I guess everyone already did their panic buying, or else they’re decimating supplies at Winn Dixie.

    Here’s what I wish our shitty governor and useless legislature would at least consider: limiting entry and exit from the vast retirement communities. People would squawk, and it would be a logistical nightmare. But once the virus starts circulating in those places, it’s going to kill a lot of people.

    I mentioned yesterday in another thread that my husband’s mother and an auntie live in a 55+ community near The Villages. I’m so afraid for them. They’re concerned but not panicky. We’re on standby to bring them stuff if they decide to isolate themselves.

    My side of the family’s elders have mostly chosen to live in sparsely populated swamps like we do (we should change our last name to Shrek). Don’t know how much that will help. They’re Fox News addled people who aren’t taking this seriously so far.

  12. 12.

    Mary G

    Republicans want to cut the payroll tax because they love corporations who will benefit, plus it gives them cover to cut Social Security benefits if, Dog forbid, Twitler is reelected

    ETA: I second everyone complimenting Anne Laurie on these updates. I am in awe of the amount of reading involved in finding all this information and learn something every day.

  13. 13.

    satby

    It’s becoming very obvious that the lack of testing is a deliberate strategy, not just incompetence. They’re gambling that the virus will be mild for most citizens, and that deaths in vulnerable populations will be mostly attributed to their underlying heath problems, and without tests to confirm Covid-19 they really think no one will know for sure. What I fail to understand is why the professionals at the CDC seem to be so effectively muzzled. There should be a cascade of whistleblowers about this.

  16. 16.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Trump’s razor –  Needy Imin  is personally at risk on this one; old,  iffy health, own hotel chains, needs to get reelected to stay out of prison,  and Trump is a coward whose always been protected by expendable minions. Trump is to terrified to think rationally and all this BS is to hide it.

  17. 17.

    Anne Laurie

    @satby: What I fail to understand is why the professionals at the CDC seem to be so effectively muzzled. There should be a cascade of whistleblowers about this.

    My guess?

    • Most of the ‘disruptive’ potential whistleblowers have been purged;
    • The remaining staffers are terrified of being outed as ‘troublemakers’; and
    • Everybody’s so overwhelmed with the most basic ‘keeping the lights on’ tasks that nobody’s got the time to notice what’s not being discussed in the World Outside
  18. 18.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Mary G: Over thinking it; they love tax cuts because tax cuts are the only positive action allowed by their dogma.  In Conservative Land “Government is NEVER the solution but the problem”, except we’re in a situation were government effort is the only solution.

  19. 19.

    JPL

    Anne, thank you.  GA cases apparently jumped over night from six to seventeen presumptive.   Most of those are in counties in or near Atlanta.

  20. 20.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @satby: The highest mortality rate is among the Republican’s own voting base. It’s quite possible they will lose 2020 simply on elder voter mortality if this gets out of hand. This isn’t the Republicans doing some clever strategy, it’s their beliefs don’t let them govern.

  26. 26.

    Betty Cracker

    @debbie: Faucci is the only one I trust on that task force. He gently corrects Trump, and I suspect he hides his contempt because he wants to keep doing his job.

  27. 27.

    debbie

    @Betty Cracker:

    I rewatched the video of Tump at the CDC. The doctors behind him kept straight faces, but their eyes never stopped drilling through the back of Trump’s head. They all know he’s an idiot.

  28. 28.

    prufrock

    @Betty Cracker: In my birth town of Clearwater, there is a massive retirement community called Top of the World.  It’s been there since the 1960s.  Thousands of elderly people living in close proximity (the condos are really just apartment blocks).  Corona virus would cut through there like a scythe.

  29. 29.

    Ken

    Trump Administration Is Stalling an Intel Report That Warns the U.S. Isn’t Ready for a Global Pandemic

    IIRC it’s the same warning as last year’s report, and the year before. So hiding it is more than usually pointless, unless they’re trying to claim “you can’t see it but it says we’re fine”.

    (Which come to think of it is how they’re handling testing for the virus…)

  30. 30.

    Ken

    @prufrock: what would happen if COVID-19 struck […]The Villages

    “If”?  I would think “when”, or possibly even “now that it has”.

  31. 31.

    Ken

    From one of John’s retweets:

    Mark Meadows […] has tested negative for coronavirus but will remain isolated until Wednesday.

    So he got tested after a possible exposure?  That’s certainly nice for him, but it isn’t what most people are being told, nor apparently the current CDC guidelines.  We’ve all seen the stories of people showing most of the symptoms, but being told they can’t be tested.

  32. 32.

    arielibra

    Christ Church Georgetown is an Episcopal parish. I really don’t understand why the media has gone haring off after the Catholic element, except that the rector has been referred to (correctly) as a priest.

    LOVE these daily roundups, please keep it up!

  34. 34.

    arrieve

    Late to the thread, but I want to add my appreciation for all the work you’re doing on this, Anne Laurie. It’s one of the best sources of information I’ve found, and I’ve recommended it to many other people.

  35. 35.

    ziggy

    @prufrock: There are some factors that could help out the 55+ communities quit a lot (much of my work is in such a community).

    –they are very aware and prepared, with strong “block watch” type organization and communication setups.

    –very few of them work, and the ones that do are usually able to manage without work for at least a while (not financially strapped).

    –So if necessary, I do believe they would not hesitate to quarantine themselves in their homes with no community gatherings whatsoever.

    –lot’s of social networking, they take care of each other, social support could be critical in a prolonged quarantine.

    I think they are way better off then seniors in a nursing facility. I really don’t think they would see the “worst case” scenario.

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