He has done the worst job in the world

Here’s where we’re at: America has passed 3,000 deaths from COVID-19. That includes 500 deaths on Monday. Only two months ago the nasty guy said, “We have it very well under control.”

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos started today’s coronavirus update with:

We are becoming a nation of reluctant mathematicians. Just as everyone’s tenth grade algebra teacher predicted, there really is a need to understand the basics of exponents and formulas. They just didn’t tell us that we’d be using those skills to measure out bodies.
…
All of it is meant to back up the message Trump is still sending—governors and healthcare workers are making things sound worse than they are and asking for too much, all to make Trump look bad.

Gosh, that couldn’t possibly be because he is bad, could it?

Sumner’s chart of confirmed cases since the beginning of March shows the tally in China has leveled off at about 80,000 cases. The US has now shot well above that and is now at 180,000 according to Johns Hopkins University. Italy’s case count is still rising, might be leveling off, and is above China’s but well below that of the US.

However, the rate of increase in the US has slowed, and is now below doubling every four days. Things that happened two weeks ago – shelter in place orders – are having an effect now. Less than a week ago the number of cases was doubling every three days.

In a separate post Sumner reviews how thoroughly the nasty guy was warned and didn’t act. And now the US has more considerably more cases than any other country. Which means…
A pandemic may have been inevitable, as experts were predicting—and Trump was denying—months ago. But the level of damage being done to the United States at every level, including lives, was not. Trump hasn’t done a “very good” job. He has done the worst job in the world. And he has absolutely no excuse.



Bree Newsome Bass tweeted:

So... the WH is taking every possible step to ensure a shortage of masks for healthcare workers? Am I understanding correctly?

Jennifer Cohn, who advocates for election security, tweeted a thread. First she noted that the nasty guy could easily convince 40% of the country to thank him for only 100k or more deaths and also convince them that a million deaths are “just” 100K.

The Trump regime is a suicide cult. Whether death occurs by coronavirus or climate change or lack of health care, they want to “Jim Jones” the United States. We need experts in cult psychology and psychological warfare more than ever.
...
I don’t think this aspect of Trump’s personality has been taken seriously enough. The notion that Trump is an idiot is a dangerous half truth. He’s like an idiot savant. He is a master class manipulator and con man.

Then Cohn tweeted a couple descriptions of warning signs of cults. Some of them:

* The leader is always right.

* No tolerance for critical inquiry.

* Everything the leader does can be justified no matter how harsh or harmful.

* Criticism is characterized as persecution.

Sound familiar?

Commenters offered a correction. This isn’t a suicide cult – this leader has no intention of dying. It is a genocide cult.



Joan McCarter of Kos has an example of how corporations are treating the pandemic as a money grab. This example is about ventilators. The Department of Health and Human Services helped develop a ventilator, then ordered 10,000 of them last September at $3,820 each. None are in the HHS stockpile. But Trilogy Evo isn’t selling that model. They’ve got two higher priced models, which a middleman is selling for $17K each.



Gabe Ortiz of Kos tells about several DACA recipients who are working in healthcare as a critical part of the pandemic response. Yet, their status in America is still precarious. And the nasty guy could toss them out of the country, making our medical staffing problems worse.

Which makes me wonder if the nasty guy is not supplying masks so that our medical providers also succumb to the virus, so there is less fewer people caring for the sick, increasing the death count.



In yet another post Sumner wrote:

Under the cover of the coronavirus, Donald Trump has let polluters know that all bets are off. Anything goes. And the usual suspects are welcoming the opportunity.

One example is removing limits on on emissions in vehicles. That could throw a billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Car companies don’t want the rules lessened – they would still have to deal with restrictions from elsewhere in the world and don’t want to create two versions. Consumers don’t want rules relaxed because of the threat to public health. So who does? Oil companies – under nasty guy rules instead of Obama rules they would sell 80 billion more gallons of gasoline.



The Hungarian Parliament passed a bill that give Prime Minister Orban unlimited powers, such as a state of emergency without time limit, rule by decree, suspended Parliament, no elections, spreading fake news resulting in up to 5 years in prison.

Anne Applebaum tweeted:

And there it is. The European Union's first dictatorship. None of these powers is needed to fight the virus. But they will help distract and deter opposition, especially when it becomes clear that the government has no better plan.

Yashar Ali of New York Magazine and HuffPost tweeted a long thread saying he has gotten maybe 40,000 messages from people who are suddenly in dire financial situations and need help. They thought they had done everything right – they worked and took care of themselves. Suddenly their jobs are gone and everything else snatched away along with it. Yeah, help – a little bit – is coming, but in a month or several. These suddenly poor don’t know how to file for unemployment because they never thought they would need it.

So, if you can – and not in an impoverished state yourself – please give to those who need it now.



Denise Oliver Velez of the Kos community is a medical anthropologist. She has a strong interest in epidemics and how cultures deal with them. So she shared several videos of songs about the proper way to wash hands. There are videos from Vietnam, New Zealand, Iran, India (policemen in a dance routine), South Africa’s Ndlovu Youth Choir, nurses in Mexico, and even Neil Diamond with new words to Sweet Caroline.

And Bill in Portland, Maine includes an amusing hand washing video in this post.



Tonight’s opera was The Barber of Seville by Rossini. It’s a romantic comedy, famous for the character of Figaro, the barber in the title. Of course, there are several times the singers must navigate the rapid singing that is a feature of the Rossini style. It’s also 90 minutes shorter than a couple of the Wagner operas I watched last week. But I spent so much time watching the opera and the subtitles I'm not getting to bed any earlier.