Crimson Contagion

Disinformation:  Well, according to the statistics we are on pace to match Italy, normally being like the country of Da Vinci, Prada and Gucci would be a good thing, now not so much.  But then again if you’d listened to Trump speaking at his virus news conference yesterday you’d believe that things were much better, that key supplies were on their way to hospitals and health care workers everywhere and that both old and new drugs were set to be our salvation.  Sadly, little of that is true. On the supply front, both Trump and Pence asserted that hundreds of thousands of items like hospital quality facemasks, respirators and ventilators were in the mail.  That sounded great, but then Trump said something along the lines of it wasn’t his job to make sure that any of that stuff got to the right destinations and immediately after the conference hospitals everywhere reported that they still are critically short of supplies, Macgyver-ing equipment, and the manufacturers said that they’re mostly still in production mode.  On the drug front, Trump talked a lot about an old anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, making it sound like it was the cure-all for COVID 19.  While the drug is an approved drug it has not been approved for use in the treatment of the Coronavirus so almost immediately the FDA walked back much of what Trump said.  To be clear, the drug might help, but then again it might not.  Studies are necessary because misuse could also make things worse rather than better though on a positive front a French report indicates that the combination of hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic Zithromax did shorten the duration of the virus in a small group of patients, results that warrant further testing and no doubt that testing is taking place right now, or at least I hope it is.  

To cap off the conference, Trump then went into full conspiracy mode, proving that his few days of sober Trump were an aberration.  He did that by selecting Chanel Rion to ask a question.  Rion, is a reporter/plant from One America News (OAN), the same fringe right wing outlet that’s been working with Rudy Giuliani, remember him, on his Biden/Burisma stuff.  She began by asking if Trump considered using the term “Chines food” inappropriate and then after Trump agreed that it wasn’t racist at all, she went totally bonkers asking  “On that note, major left-wing media, even in this room, have teamed up with Chinese communist party narratives, and they are claiming you are racist for making these claims about ‘Chinese virus,’” She then continued “Is it alarming that major media players, just to oppose you, are siding with foreign state propaganda, Islamic radicals, and Latin gangs and cartels and they work right here out of the White House with direct access to you and your team?” Shortly before picking on her Trump had joked that it might be time to further reduce the number of reporters allowed into the briefing room, to make for better “social distancing.” Looks like wacky Chanel has a permanent ticket, those left wing media outlets she cited such as the WSJ(!) and the Washington Post not so much.  Later Trump moved on to a meeting with some FEMA folks, I didn’t tune in because how much Trump can anyone take in a day, but pictures from the meeting show him disengaged and bored.  And that’s probably also how he felt after he received word of the Health and Human Services Crimson Contagion simulation, an exercise that the NY Times reports was done last year to anticipate and prepare for situations like the one that we are currently facing.  At least it’s fair to assume he reacted that way, we may never know, all we know is that HHS concluded, accurately, that the US wouldn’t be ready for a similar crisis, that supply chains were a mess and hospital capability was inadequate.  Somewhere, someone yawned and filed that analysis under whatever.

The WTF File:  Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, the Republican Senator who at various times has been lauded for working cooperatively with his Democratic counterpart chaired several meetings where his committee was told that the Coronavirus was closing in on us and that things were way worse than anyone had imagined, or at least worse than we were being told. NPR reports that instead of sharing that information with the public, he “warned a small group of well-connected constituents to prepare for dire economic and societal effects” and they’ve got him on tape doing so.  And of course, because what’s the value of inside information if you can’t act on it, he then went on to sell about $1.7 million of stock in the industries that have been hardest hit by the pandemic after reassuring the public about the adequacy of virus preparedness.  He’s not the only one, apparently newbie very rich Senator Kelly Loeffler, the seat filler who was appointed to the vacated Georgia Senator seat largely because she committed to spending a huge amount of her substantial fortune on her campaign also sold $1 to possibly $3 million dollars of stock after sitting in on the Senate Intel committee meeting but bought some “work from home” related stock during the same time period.  They’re not alone, it appears that Senators Inhofe and Democrat Feinstein did some stock selling too.  Excuses run from the “I had nothing to do with my decisions, a possibility because at least with regard to Feinstein, her portfolio is in a blind trust, to that NPR is just engaging in fake news excuse.  In case you’re wondering its illegal for members of Congress to trade on inside information, but my guess is that most of these Senators will get away with it.

Et Cetera:  The Senate trillion dollar relief plan is still a moving target although Senate Leader McConnell says that no one’s going home until it is done.  As of now it appears that the Republican plan would delay the tax-filing deadline from April 15 to July 15, would include a one-time payment of up to $1,200 to US taxpayers with payments phased out for individuals making more than $75,000, reduced to zero for those making more than $99,000.  The package also includes up to $50 billion in help for the air carriers, $8 billion for cargo companies and $150 billion for other businesses impacted by the virus.  The Democrats also want funds to help hospitals, federal funding for childcare help and low interest loans to businesses as well as funding for seniors and the impoverished and subsidies for public transportation.  Again this isn’t done yet.  In other news, former UN Ambassador/South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who always thinks ahead, resigned from the Boeing board yesterday saying that she opposed the company getting any federal funding.  She figures that position will fly better when she runs for president in 2024.  And because few were paying attention, acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell fired Russel Travers, the acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center but claimed that he wasn’t fired, he just decided now was a good time for a long term, dedicated professional to retire, especially one not on the Trump train. Did I mention that Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is no longer running for president, she announced that while endorsing Joe Biden, and California is now closed?