Earlier this week Bishops the United Methodist Church requested General Conference, scheduled for Minneapolis the first half of May, be postponed. 862 delegates were coming from around the world, which would be hard with travel restrictions in place. The committee that runs GC is to meet by phone in a few days. The Minneapolis Convention Center beat them to it on orders of the Minnesota Department of Health. Since the Convention Center got there first the denomination isn’t liable for cancellation costs.
This GC has been anticipated for a year because the major topic is to be whether and how to split the denomination over how to treat LGBTQ people.
Dr. Peter Hotez at Baylor College of Medicine said on CNN …
We know the high mortality in older people, but for reasons that we don't understand, front-line health care workers are at great risk for serious illness despite their younger age.Perhaps they get larger doses of the virus? Perhaps because their Personal Protection Equipment (masks and gowns) are inadequate and understocked? Whatever the reason if healthcare workers succumb there won’t be people to replace them and that will cripple the whole system.
Kellen Squires wrote a long post for Daily Kos about being one of those front-line nurses. At the top of the post is a comparison of the biohazard suits used in China and Italy with the paper gowns available in America. There are also not enough ventilators or drugs to sedate patients while ventilators do their thing. Even though they’re unprotected these nurses will do whatever it takes to save a patient. Which likely means a viral load seven orders of magnitude higher (for those who aren’t math geeks, that’s ten million times) than the typical patient. So Squires is fatalistic about it, He’ll probably catch COVID-19 and likely die. He’s certainly not going to stop doing what he does now. He and his wife, also an ER nurse, have isolated themselves from their kids and he wishes he could give them one last hug.
If the virus kills off the medical staff? Is this state of things intentional? A phrase Sarah Kendzior has been using: They hide their malice with incompetence.
Several state governors listen to the nasty guy blather about how good things are, that test kits and medical equipment are readily available. And they say, oh really? Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker feels “a little like Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football with the federal government.”
California went into lockdown. I think Illinois did the same. Mark Sumner of Kos says that’s great, but all it does is buy us a little time for extensive testing to work. Because only lots of testing will get us through this. Even so, that extra time can allow us to do such things as begin to manufacture test kits, protective gear, and ventilators; start trials on therapeutic drugs; set up field hospitals; and work on a vaccine.
Dozens of members of Congress have signed letters to the leadership saying Congress needs to work from home. Two members have already announced they are infected. Joan McCarter of Kos agrees that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is too valuable to succumb to the virus. The good news is a few members are trying to make that happen.
Moscow Mitch has put out a first version of another round of help to lessen the impact of the virus. He’s trying to push through votes tomorrow. As we’ve learned to expect from him it puts corporations first and ignores workers. Pelosi says it’s a non-starter.
Detainees in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Newark have started a hunger strike. If the coronavirus hits the facility – two staffers at another facility have tested positive and ten detainees at a third are in quarantine – there is no way for them to avoid it. They say they are there for a civil matter and shouldn’t be locked up during a pandemic. They are not criminals. Let them out.
I mentioned that Ohio has seen a big jump in people filing for unemployment. Nationwide the jump has been 30%. Laura Clawson of Kos reports that the administrator of the Office of Employment Insurance of the Labor Department sent an email to state officials telling them to not use numbers to describe claims levels. Instead, they should use words such as “very high” or “large increase.”
Clawson suggests state officials pull out a Thesaurus, where they can find such words as enormous and hefty. Or maybe gargantuan. But Clawson asks, why demand state officials wait until federal officials give out actual numbers? Are the feds trying to downplay the problem? Are they trying to calm the markets? Well, a transparent government can do that.
John Stoehr writes a newsletter titled Editorial Board to explain politics in plain English. He noticed a phrase the nasty guy used and he explains what it means:
What does "war against the Chinese virus" mean?Below the tweet is a link to a thread with more detail.
1. Trump has found a scapegoat.
2. He wants to be a war president.
3. He can fight "foreign virus" with a border wall and an immigration crackdown.
4. His followers will cheer him on.
5. Even if it kills them.
Yep, “Chinese virus” is racist.
His desire to be a “war president” is in name only. He invoked the Defense Production Act to require increased production of critical items but didn’t actually specify what items need to be so urgently produced. So an empty declaration.
A “war president” is a strongman getting tough on foreigners, an image the nasty guy revels in. But all he does is show he suspended travel from Chine (where they’re managing things better there than he is here). And the title allows him to confuse public understanding of the outbreak. He can “fight” “foreign viruses” in ways that have nothing to do with public health.
The nasty guy has been doing all he can to lobby Congress for that $1 trillion relief bill. Since the Senate acquitted him, which says they don’t care what he does, he could shift some of the trillion to finish the border wall.
As for his followers, states such as Texas, Missouri, Idaho, and a few more who love him have taken few steps, or none at all, to slow the virus. It could kill them.
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