Six on Coronavirus: Inside Trump’s frantic attempts to minimize the coronavirus crisis; Is New York City prepared to deal with thousands of cases?; Last Week Tonight with John Oliver; Trump may shrug off the coronavirus. America may not; The Coronavi
panaritisp
And please don't forget to check out the pertinent images attached to every post
Thanks John and Gary
"Minutes before President Trump was preparing Wednesday to reassure a skittish nation about the coronavirus threat, he received a piece of crucial information: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had identified in California the first U.S. case of the illness not tied to foreign travel, a sign that the virus’s spread in the United States was likely to explode.
But when Trump took to the lectern for a news conference intended to bring transparency to the spiraling global crisis, he made no explicit mention of the California case and its implications — and falsely suggested the virus might soon be eradicated in the United States.
“And again, when you have 15 people — and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero — that’s a pretty good job we’ve done,” he said."
|
|
|
"But those who blithely say, “This is no worse than the flu” are missing the point.
What makes COVID-19 dangerous is not so much the threat it poses to the average person’s life, but the threat it poses to economic growth. Uncertainty surrounds it because it is so difficult it is to detect in its early stages when many carriers are both infectious and asymptomatic. We don’t for sure how many people have it, so we don’t exactly know its reproduction number and its mortality rate. There’s no vaccine and there’s no cure.
Last week, this uncertainty, crystallized by a leap in the number of Italian cases, gave the U.S. stock market its worst week since the great banking crisis of 2008-09.
I have often been asked in the past few years where the next financial crisis would come from. I have said time and again that it would come not from the United States but from China, now the second-largest economy in the world. Sure enough. A pandemic is very different from a bank run, to be sure. But in each case we witness the same phenomenon, which is characteristic of a networked world: a cascade of consequences driven by fear of the unknown.
Though old enough to be in the vulnerable part of the population, Donald Trump, 73, is well known for his high standards of personal hygiene (“Germaphobia”). It is his presidency that is in mortal danger from COVID-19 more than his life.
Although his administration did indeed take the right decision, early in the Chinese outbreak, to limit travel from China to the United States, it did little to prepare for the eventuality of a large U.S. outbreak. Worse, last week, Mr. Trump made the mistake of playing down the risk. But there will seemingly soon be an outbreak in California. No one knows for sure because, we learned last week, there are just 200 functioning diagnostic kits in the entire state.
As president, George W. Bush had at least four brushes with the horsemen of the apocalypse: the September 11 terrorist attacks, then the war he launched against Saddam Hussein, followed by Hurricane Katrina, which would have made him a one-term president if it had happened a year before. Finally, there was the financial crisis, which drove his popularity down to its nadir and doomed John McCain’s attempt to keep the White House in Republican hands.
A COVID-19 outbreak in one or more large U.S. cities would inflict a September 11-level hit on the U.S. economy and a Hurricane Katrina-level hit on Mr. Trump’s popular approval.
The fact that the principal beneficiary in that scenario would be a lifelong democratic socialist committed to universal public health care must be the kind of thing the gods find entertaining."
|
"WASHINGTON ― With the coronavirus spreading across the globe, U.S. politicians seem to be rethinking some of their most dearly held beliefs about socialized medicine.
Yoho, one of the most anti-Obamacare lawmakers in Congress, said it would be a “wise thing” for the government to pay for testing and treatment of the uninsured, while also saying he’s “not OK with socialized medicine.”
“Sometimes you have to do things that you have to do for your country, but as far as socialized medicine, no,” Yoho said. “Does this fall into that? Yeah, I guess you could throw it in there, but hopefully it’s not the long-term.”
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, said he hadn’t heard about the administration possibly covering coronavirus hospital costs, but he didn’t exactly sound opposed.
“I think a pandemic is a distinct issue from the overall health care proposals that have been on the table for a while,” Johnson said. “We have to put politics aside and address the problem.”
|
"Jewel Mullen, associate dean for health equity at the University of Texas at Austin’s Dell Medical School, said millions of Americans can’t afford to stock up on supplies, miss work or have a steady doctor to call for advice -- even on a good day.
“Resources like money and transportation and information give people head starts on protective and preventive measures, and can help create more comfortable scenarios for people to cope with disasters,” said Mullen, an internist and epidemiologist who was commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Public Health. “That’s where you really get to see disparate needs.”
JPMorgan Chase & Co., the biggest bank in the U.S., stopped employees from going on any inessential business trips. It joined a string of other corporate giants in restricting travel, splitting up teams and traders to different locations, or quarantining staff. Jamie Dimon, the bank’s chief executive officer, said not long before the announcement that he had dreamed he and other billionaires contracted the virus during January’s World Economic Forum in Switzerland."
John S. Elfrank-Dana
“If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
― Lilla Watson
--
John Elfrank-Dana
Adjunct Lecturer/Field Supervisor
Department of Curriculum & Teaching
Hunter College of the City University of New York
jelfran...@HunterSoe.org
www.Elfrank.net
--
To comment send email to Phil at Panar...@Yahoo.com
tiny URL to signup for the group: https://goo.gl/urYbRs
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Six on History" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to six-on-histor...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/six-on-history/f4422fcd-e744-414c-acfd-1ba5091cacad%40googlegroups.com.