Dangerous Thinking

The End is Near?  Good news, Jared Kushner says the end of our coronavirus nightmare is near.  Appearing on Fox and Friends, the son in law said that "the federal government rose to the challenge and this is a great success story” and that he thinks “that's really what needs to be told." When he was pressed on coronavirus testing levels in the US, he said the question shouldn't be why did it take so long, but "How did we do this so quickly?" And then he predicted that things will be “rocking” by July.  Apparently Jared missed that more than 60,000 Americans are already gone and doesn’t get that prematurely loosening stay in place restrictions already has  modelers revising their mortality predictions upward.  It’s unclear what exactly motivated the usually publicity shy Jared to show up on Fox, maybe it was the recent Vanity Fair article that hammered his ineptitude and moral failings while pointing out that he pushed Trump to discount all those virus warnings he got from his health and intelligence experts as just another one of those deep state hoaxes intended to damage the “Trump” economy. Though Jared lays claim to lots of responsibility, he gets little done but still retains the confidence of Trump so during a midday press conference that most of the media outlets, even Fox, opted not to air live, Trump reminded us that Jared is a genius  and then went on to say that he plans to start traveling again and not too coincidentally his first trips will be to manufacturing plants in swing state Arizona and Ohio, the state that the Democrats hope to swing blue. He’s also ready to plan some of those really big rallies.  Apparently the Ventilator King is beyond bored and panicked about recent polling that shows him behind Joe Biden in a number of the  keys states that he needs to win to stay in office.  He’s so mad about that polling that he screamed at and threatened to sue his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, the lawsuit part being for no discernable reason other than that Trump likes to sue people, particularly those he owes money to.  Parscale, who makes bigly bucks off of the Trump machine while funneling “pay” checks to folks like Lara Trump and Don Jr girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle, California Governor Newsom’s one time wife (!), hopped a plane to Washington DC to provide Trump with “new” more favorable polls and has, at least for now, returned to Trump’s good graces.  As to Trump’s travel plans and Jared’s “everything thing is great” statement, the consequences of both are likely to lengthen rather than shorten the virus crisis as respected medical experts, as opposed to the faux ones who appear regularly on Fox filling the space previously occupied by Diamond and Silk, largely agree that ending stay in place orders too soon will have dire consequences.  Nevertheless, the Trump/Kushner message is appealing especially to his base and Fox diehards.  Sadly, we’ll know more about those consequences in a few weeks. Ask those residents of towns with meat packing plants, they are experiencing the impact of wishful thinking in real time.

Some Real News:  The news isn’t all bad.  New York statistics are improving, some Governors are being prudent about the way that they are loosening restrictions and Dr Fauci, the credible virus guru believes that Gilead’s anti-viral drug Remdesivir is showing lots of promise.  To be clear, the drug which is administered by IV isn’t a cure all, but it appears to shorten the duration of severe illness in a statistically significant number of hospitalized patients.  Part of the optimism is that if one drug can inhibit virus replication others in the pipeline might be able to do so as well.  As to that pipeline, a number of manufacturers appear to be a little ahead of schedule on developing a vaccination and while it still remains unlikely that one will be ready any time soon, the hope is that one or more of them will get to market sooner rather than later.  To that end, yesterday it was reported that the Trump administration is gearing up for a mass vaccination program.  Let’s hope that someone not name Jared Kushner is in charge of that.  News on the testing front remains all over the place.  Trump insists that he never said that the country would soon be able to do 5 million tests daily although he did actually say that on camera.  Testing levels remain and are likely to remain inadequate but more tests are available now, some for the virus and others for antibodies.  Unfortunately, especially with regard to antibodies, a number of those tests remain unacceptably inaccurate in part because, facing criticism for being so far behind the curve, the FDA let many manufacturers race questionable tests to market. What a mess.      

Election Update:  Representative Justin Amash appeared everywhere yesterday talking about his presidential exploratory committee.  He claims he’ll only run if he thinks he can win, but since we know he can’t win that’s hogwash.  He also says that its wrong to assume that he’ll mostly take votes away from Joe Biden, but former Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill doesn’t buy that.  She believes that the White House is tickled pink by Amash’s plans.  Amash may soon be joined by former pro wrestler/Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura who now says that he’s thinking of running on the Green Party ticket.  As to Joe Biden, he remains hidden away in his hermetically sealed basement on the receiving end for not denying more forcefully early 1990’s staff aide Tara Reade’s claims that he molested her.  Her assertions, which he has denied, have been getting lots of press attention of late, even though her story is inconsistent, records she asserts exist appear not to be real, and the timing of her complaints are questionable.  Having spent the better part of the Trump years saying women must be heard, some Democrats are having a hard time dealing with the fact that a woman who’s been known for expressing her undying love for Vladimir Putin and Russia might be “embellishing” her story.  Interestingly enough, Senator Gillibrand, known mostly for having upended Al Franken’s political career remains on Team Biden on this one as do most of the Democratic mainstream. For fairly obvious reasons Trump has, at least for now, had little to say about Biden’s accuser but its fair to assume that some of his supporters, as well as a few Berniacs, are helping Reade along.  Biden has been busy, this morning he announced the members of his VP selection committee.  They include Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, Delaware Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester, Los Angeles Mayor and campaign co-chair Eric Garcetti and former White House and Senate counsel Cynthia Hogan. For his part Trump is now accusing China, his scapegoat for this election cycle, of spreading COVID 19 to help Biden win and has asked the various US intelligence agencies to investigate all the ways that China and the WHO obfuscated the coronavirus problem, those are the same intelligence agencies who warned Trump about the virus as far back as January, around the time that Joe Biden penned an op ed in USA Today about his concerns that we were vulnerable to a pandemic because Trump had disassembled all of the things that the Obama and Bush administrations had put in place to prepare for one.