I asked the pastor about the handbell choir I lead. I didn’t think rehearsals could be done by conference call. He replied rehearsals are canceled. I told the rest of the group.
At 5:08 this afternoon I got another email from the church. For the next three weeks – the rest of March – worship will not be done in person. The pastor, perhaps a pianist, and a tech person will livestream the service on Facebook.
The Detroit Symphony Orchestra has canceled all concerts through April 5. My next ticket is for – April 4.
I stopped in a pharmacy. There were boxes of paper towel and toilet paper just inside the door. Then on to a big box store that has a large grocery department. Lots of cars in the parking lot. I took the last shopping cart. The bread shelves were empty. Many other shelves were sparse or empty. I had done a lot of shopping already so bought only a few things. In the self checkout line the woman in front of me commented about the crowds. She said radio stations were urging people to stock up. On the way home the local news said that several large chains (such as the one I was at) were reporting sales were 2-3 times normal.
The NPR show Marketplace commented this evening about the probability of us all hunkering down and the entire economy grinding to a stop – not a slowdown in a recession, but a stop. Yeah, scary.
On the way home I listened to a segment on NPR’s All Things Considered about Louisiana delaying its Democratic primary election from April 4 to June 21. This is to protect election workers, most of whom are above 65 and vulnerable to the virus. But there’s something fishy here. The Secretary of State, Kyle Ardoin, is GOP. Even though the Dem governor approved the plan the Dem candidate will likely be chosen by then and the national Democratic Party says if delegates are not chosen by June 9 the Louisiana delegation will be cut in half.
That gave some insight on how the nasty guy and the GOP might cancel the November election – we have to protect the poll workers. There’s another way to do that – vote by mail. Like one county in Arizona is trying for their primary on Tuesday.
As for tomorrow … my freezer and cupboards are full. So many events are canceled there’s no place to go. So I’ll stay home. The next event on my calendar is on Tuesday. And I suspect it will be canceled.
Mark Sumner of Daily Kos has been issuing a daily report on the coronavirus. Today he didn’t use the series of charts that have been a part of his reports. Instead, he wrote about one person.
The problem is that Trump continues to demonstrate not the least bit of concern over the actual damage being done to anything but his ratings. He’s not focused on results. He’s focused on the perception of results.
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Because it’s clear at this point that Trump will continue to deal with this crisis not by dealing with it, but by claiming that it’s being dealt with.
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It’s not just that he rolled back America’s ability to deal with this situation to its pre-9/11 status; Trump also placed the focus, right from the beginning, on where he always puts it: the appearance that he knew what he was doing, or that the situation was being handled. That has involved deliberately underplaying the threat, deliberately distorting the availability of tests, deliberately underreporting the number of people infected, deliberately mischaracterizing the nature of the threat, deliberately classifying public health information to prevent Americans from hearing the truth, and deliberately reducing the number of tests conducted in order not to find more active cases.
Thanks to Donald Trump, America isn’t just going forward with a reduced ability to deal with this crisis; it’s operating in an environment where facts are being censured and distorted for the purpose of making Trump’s response look better than it is. When this was being done with regard to taxes or regulations, it was already harmful to the nation. Now that harm will be measured in numbers of bodies.
Hunter of Daily Kos wrote in a separate post about the revelation that the nasty guy avoided testing for the coronavirus because low testing would show low numbers of infections. And lower numbers were better for his reelection.
Either through neglect or—if the reports of test suppression prove accurate—with malicious intent, Trump abused his authority in a manner that hampered the early taking of preventative measures that could have stopped people from spreading the virus, which is now rampant and killing. This isn’t incompetence, or sloppiness, or too much on his plate. It’s sociopathy.
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No amount of hand sanitizer will wash the blood off his hands.
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