"At least five people were killed as severe weather raged across Texas, Oklahoma and the Southeastern United States on Wednesday."
"Americans, many of whom have been stuck at home for several weeks, may dream of returning to the pre-coronavirus "normal," but only in a theoretical, aspirational sense. Polling has consistently shown that Americans do not want to become fully open right now, because they perceive a serious health risk from doing so." Funny how your perception changes when it might be your death that is needed to restart the economy.
"U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday he “totally disagrees” with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s phase 1 plans to reopen tattoo parlors, bars, hair salons and other nonessential businesses this week." Schizophrenics gonna schizo.
"In Wednesday's most stunning development, a top administration official working on a vaccine claimed he was ousted after resisting efforts to push unproven drugs promoted by President Donald Trump and his conservative media cheerleaders as "game changer" treatments… That news was followed by a bewilderingly inconsistent White House briefing. Conflicting messages on when to reboot the economy, the need for testing and the possibility of a resurgence of the virus combined with Trump's effort to suppress facts that jar with his insistence that the end of a nightmare likely to last many more months is near."
"A University of Washington model of coronavirus deaths was updated—and increased 10%— Wednesday to include a presumed increase in nursing home deaths (according to CNN), ultimately predicting the country will see 66,000 deaths from the disease by August."
"Experts say it’s possible that some of the jump in at-home death stems from people infected by the virus who either didn’t seek treatment or did but were instructed to shelter in place, and that the undercount is exacerbated by lack of comprehensive testing. It’s also possible that the increase in at-home deaths reflects people dying from other ailments like heart attacks because they couldn’t get to a hospital or refused to go, fearful they’d contract COVID-19." (Grokked from someone, sorry)
"Yet finding refrigeration units to store the remains was becoming harder, too; many companies were reluctant to rent to funeral homes in the midst of a pandemic. Funeral directors were left with little choice but to crank their air-conditioners and continue working. Like Sherman’s, one parlor in Rego Park, Queens, had converted a chapel into a 'makeshift refrigerator.'" Collecting the dead in New York. (Grokked from Laura Mixon, I think)
"New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg announced the launch of a massive contact tracing program in an effort to better contain the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). How massive? How about larger-than-any-contact-tracing-effort-that’s-been-attempted-before-in-the-U.S. massive?" Waits for the conspiracy theories to begin.
"In the past few weeks the United States has witnessed an unprecedented spike in jobless claims that has overwhelmed state agencies. Alongside a health crisis and an economic crisis, we are now entering into a devastating period of mass unemployment, one that—decades of research tell us—will leave deep financial and psychological scars for the workers and families trapped within it. Today, Americans across party lines recognize the need to act quickly to minimize this harm, but that bipartisan support will soon fade, as it has in past recessions. If Congress and state governments are going to pass forward-thinking legislation to help unemployed and precariously employed workers, now is the time."
"The number of people forced out of work during the coronavirus lockdown continues to soar to historic highs. Another 4.4 million people claimed unemployment benefits last week around the country, the Labor Department said… That brings the total of jobless claims in just five weeks to more than 26 million people. That's more than all the jobs added in the past 10 years since the Great Recession."
"A doctor who was removed as head of the federal agency that is helping develop a vaccine for the coronavirus said he was ousted after he resisted widespread adoption of a drug promoted by President Donald Trump as a treatment for Covid-19."
"US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to temporarily suspend the approval of some green cards… Critics have accused him of using the pandemic as cover to ram through long-sought hardline immigration policies in an election year." Because that's what this is.
From earlier this month, but… "On Wednesday, March 25, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that, because of the spread of the new coronavirus, the following week would be a non-working week in Moscow, and the city's residents should stay indoors… On Friday evening, about 730,000 cars, carrying perhaps 10% of Moscow's 12.7 million population, left the capital, centre of Russia's epidemic, for the countryside, according to Moscow's transport department."
"The half-loaf agreement that Democratic and Republican negotiators reached on Tuesday to replenish the the government’s emptied-out small-business rescue offered nothing on one of Democrats’ top negotiating demands… Republicans would not negotiate on the aid in this 'interim' bill to reup the Payroll Protection Program, and with restaurants and bookstores collapsing by the day, Democrats agreed to defer it to the next relief bill… Around the same time, though, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—who had just secured more money for PPP, and a month ago had secured all the money that large corporations would ever need—suggested it might be time for Congress to declare victory and call it a day."
"Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday he favors allowing states struggling with high public employee pension costs amid the burdens of the pandemic response to declare bankruptcy rather than giving them a federal bailout." Because fuck the people, that's why.
"As his own health officials continue to warn against nonessential travel, Trump has privately urged aides over the past week to start adding official events back to his schedule, including photo ops and site visits that would allow him to ditch Washington for a few hours. The day trips would be similar to those Vice President Mike Pence has made visiting businesses during the viral pandemic, according to three people familiar with the planning." He feels his control is starting to slip.
"More than a quarter of the country's 18- to 29-year-olds say that their lives are worse because of President Trump, according to a new poll, the latest to show the motivating impact the president could have on the youngest subset of voters this election year."
"Because from the early ‘90s, when bankers and lenders in New York and state regulators in New Jersey could have all but ended him, to his herky-jerky presidential campaign in 2015 and ’16, to his aberrant, hyperactive presidency, Trump has built an astonishingly consistent record of surviving crises, of dodging the comeuppance everyone assumes is coming his way, and then turning seeming calamity into his next great opportunity—and emerging not just intact but emboldened." Politico is starting to whipsaw.
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