My normal volunteer time at the Ruth Ellis Center is Wednesdays. This morning I asked whether they are open for their usual evening drop-in center. They are not. Some of their services are still available and a group brought in food on Monday that is being packaged up and sent out with youth. But not many youth have come so they still had a lot of that food for tomorrow.
No bell choirs, no church, no concerts to attend, no volunteer work. My calendar is quite empty now.
Mark Sumner’s daily report on Daily Kos says the number of cases in the US went up by 1,500 today and the day isn’t over. There have also been 100 deaths. Why such a huge jump? Greater availability of testing. Which means the problem is a lot bigger than we knew. But only more rigorous testing will show the extent of the problem.
Why test? Does one really need to know what they’re sick from? Maybe not. But Financial Times reported on an experiment. A village of about 3,300 people in Italy tested everyone. Those who were positive were isolated. Result: zero new infections as the number of cases in the country around them skyrocketed.
Sumner wrote:
At the moment, the United States isn’t coming close to testing at a level sufficient to provide actionable information. So the only option is to attempt to mitigate through broad, public procedures. These procedures can work — but they do so at enormous cost to individuals and the economy. Plus, they are far less effective than the isolation of just the infected which is allowed by large scale testing.
You can use a pair of tweezers to select out those who are infected. Or you can smash your economy with a hammer, because you can’t get your act together. The United States is rolling out hammer after hammer. And the only good thing that can be said about it is that it’s better than nothing — even if it’s far, far less effective, more disruptive, and more costly in lives and dollars than simply testing the hell out of everyone.
I’ve written that many hospitals in the US know they don’t have enough ventilators to meet likely demand. Nicholas Kristof tweeted that a US company that makes ventilators says it could increase production five fold. Other countries are frantically placing orders. But not the US. Why not?
Laura Clawson of Kos says it shouldn’t be up to the hospitals who have to balance cost against revenue. Or face a deluge of cases and expenses that could push them into bankruptcy. No, it needs to be the government. And we’ve seen from the testing fiasco how likely the nasty guy and minions are going to order more ventilators.
David Clarke was the sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. He moved on to Fox News where his gig was to be an attack dog. He recently took to Twitter (where he has over 900,000 followers) saying the virus is a conspiracy and we should go into the streets, go to restaurants and bars, go to church, and demand schools and sporting events reopen. He accused the government of an orchestrated attempt to destroy capitalism. Some of his tweets were removed for violating the terms of service ban urging self-harm.
Guillermo Maldonado, pastor at King of Jesus International Ministry, a megachurch in Kendall, Fla. is urging his large congregation to show up for services, saying, “Do you believe God would bring his people to his house to be contagious with the virus? Of course not.” Yes, this is violating CDC standards for gatherings and contrary to most other churches that have closed or are moving to online services.
Characters like these two, says Marissa Higgins of Kos, are concerning. If they want to spread the virus amongst themselves that’s up to them. But they leave their big gatherings and …
go back into the world with everyone else, including the immunocompromised and the elderly. Decisions like these are dangerous for all involved and reinforce the point that amid rampant misinformation, we should be trying to educate others with patience, not mock or dismiss.
The nasty guy seems to be changing his tune. After so much dismissing of the crisis he said today:
I've always known this is real. This is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.So … why haven’t you been acting like it?
Meaning, don’t believe him this time either.
Well, this change of tune might be a help. NPR reports that the nasty guy has asked Congress for $1 trillion to counter the effects of the virus and hitting the economy with a hammer. We’ll wait (without holding our breath) to see what the GOP in the Senate thinks of that, considering they haven’t done much with the bill already passed by the House.
The nasty guy says the virus will be gone by July or August. Andy Slavitt, who was head of Medicare and Medicaid for Obama, tweeted a thread in response. The idea of social distancing and “flatten the curve” to avoid overwhelming the health system means we want to lengthen, not shorten, the time the virus is around. We don’t want it over by summer. Besides, there are other countries are battling this and could reinfect the US. It could come back in the fall. There’s a problem with that scenario – the economy can handle only 1-2 months of no action before falling into a depression.
Olga Lautman, who monitors Russia and Ukraine, tweeted that the Department of Health and Human Services and its department dealing with the virus was hit by a cyber attack. Also attacked was WorldoMeters, which accurately tracks the virus news around the world.
I poked around the WorldoMeter coronavirus site. New cases today in the US is now almost at 1800.
I also looked at the WorldoMeter main page. It shows all kinds of statistics, some actively changing, such as current world population (7.771 billion), births today, net population growth today, cars produced this year (16 million and its only March), emails sent today (227 billion), tons of CO2 emissions this year (7.6 billion, and its March), solar energy striking the earth today (2.57 trillion megawatt hours), cigarettes smoked today (13 billion), and lots more.
A reported asked if a nationwide lockdown or quarantine was being considered. The nasty guy replied, “At this point, not nationwide…But we may look at certain hot spots.”
Leah McElrath reminds us in a tweet:
Remember: “certain hotspots” doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing to Trump that it means to us. He will find ways to weaponize federal response to this crisis against those he does not perceive as “real” Americans.He’s probably not talking about virus hotspots.
And finally, news of a couple of the good guys. First, Chef José Andrés, who founded the World Central Kitchen and fed people in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, is closing his Washington, DC restaurants and turning them into community kitchens, where people in need can pick up meals to take home. He plans to open other kitchens around the country in the coming weeks.
Recently the World Central Kitchen went to Oakland, CA to feed the quarantined passengers of a cruise ship.
Second, Oswald Dillon was upset at Qasim Rashid, a Muslim candidate for Congress in Virginia. So Dillon sent an anti-Muslim tweet. In response Rashid gave a sizable donation to Dillon’s GoFundMe campaign to cover medical debt. Dillon sent an apology and they met for coffee. The two are now friends and Dillon put one of Rashid’s campaign signs in his yard – though that doesn’t mean Dillon will vote for him.
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