James.galbraith

The chart above isn’t accurate. It’s not accurate in the sense that by the time it was made on Tuesday evening, the number of cases had already climbed to 994. On Wednesday morning, it’s already at 1,015 … and that will only stand up for a matter of minutes. It’s not possible to make an accurate chart of something that’s moving as fast as the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 within the United States.

Meanwhile, the quotes on the chart don’t begin to cover the reality of the messaging coming out of the White House. There wasn’t room at the top of the chart for the latest message from Donald Trump. As CBS reports, Trump saved his most incongruous, most disconnected-from-reality message for a coronavirus press appearance on Tuesday afternoon.

"It will go away, just stay calm," said Trump. "Be calm. It's really working out. And a lot of good things are going to happen."

No. Good things are not going to happen. The coronavirus isn’t just spreading rapidly; it has already spread widely. A massively undersupported testing program hasn’t even begun to probe the extent to which, in both area and numbers, the United States has been overrun by the 2019 novel coronavirus. That state officials have logged so many cases in 38 states at a point when testing has barely begun shows that the nation is farther up the curve toward a full-bore epidemic than anyone wanted to accept—and  that is information the White House refuses to acknowledge.

Trump’s entire view of the outbreak is focused on how it is affecting the stock markets. The Tuesday press event included both Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and economic adviser Larry Kudlow talking about all the “fantastic” economic actions that would be taken—such as a payroll tax cut that will do absolutely nothing for workers in an economy increasingly dominated by jobs that treat them as independent contractors, and government funds directed to industries like oil shale that were failing long before the virus first appeared. 

Meanwhile, state officials are reporting that they still lack adequate test kits, people are getting nothing like adequate preparation for what’s ahead, and the White House appears to be doing nothing to arrange for the hundreds of thousands of additional hospital beds that are going to be an absolute necessity to avoid the disaster that is costing lives in northern Italy.

Sen. Bernie Sanders addresses supporters during a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, on March 5, 2020. | Laura Segall/AFP via Getty Images

Sanders also won the state in 2016.

Sen. Bernie Sanders has defeated national frontrunner former Vice President Joe Biden to win the 2020 North Dakota caucuses.

The win is somewhat of a surprise. While Sanders has done well in caucuses, and won the 2016 North Dakota contest in a landslide over Hillary Clinton, he was not expected to win. The state had only one poll taken ahead of Tuesday’s caucuses, an unsurprising fact given its small 14 delegate total. But that poll, from Swayable, gave Biden a 35-percentage-point advantage in the state, and FiveThirtyEight’s forecast model estimated a 93 percent chance that Biden would win.

The results were difficult to predict, however, because much changed about the caucuses compared to 2016. For one thing, there was substantial early voting this year, and it was unclear what its effect would be. A week before the caucuses, the party reported that over 3,100 people had requested mail-in ballots, which is only a few hundred votes short of the entire turnout for the 2016 caucus (3,350). The early votes had to be postmarked by Thursday to ensure an accurate and prompt count on the night of the caucus.

Sanders weathered an institutional change that could have harmed his chances in North Dakota. Again, he tends to perform better in traditional caucuses like those held in Nevada and Iowa. But the 2020 North Dakota contest operated more like a conventional primary — just one run by the state party, rather than the government. Balloting was open from 11 am to 7 pm (though only in 14 different locations).

A spokesperson for the state party (technically called the Democratic-NPL Party after a 1956 merger with the Nonpartisan League) told the Williston Herald the process was to work like this: “People can come in, sign in, vote, and be on their way. They don’t have to stay for multiple rounds of voting. They won’t have to debate their neighbors. The process will be more similar to a general election day.”

By contrast, the 2016 caucuses were rowdy in-person affairs with the Clinton and Sanders camps actively jockeying for support, closer to how the Iowa caucuses work.

The delegate split in North Dakota is unlikely to be of great national consequence, given how few delegates were actually at stake in the caucus. But being able to claim another state is symbolically important for the Sanders campaign as it struggles to stay afloat after a disappointing Super Tuesday performance.

Neomi Rao, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be US circuit judge for the District of Columbia Circuit, testifies during a Senate Judiciary confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on February 5, 2019, in Washington, DC. | Zach Gibson/Getty Images

Judge Neomi Rao’s opinions read like she’s acting as Trump’s personal protector.

A federal appeals court ruled that the House Judiciary Committee must be allowed to see certain confidential documents relating to former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential Russian interference in the 2016 election — despite the Trump administration’s efforts to keep these documents secret.

That decision isn’t particularly surprising; indeed, it’s a pretty straightforward application of a federal procedural rule governing grand jury secrecy. The one thing that stands out about this decision is Judge Neomi Rao’s dissent.

Rao is both a former Trump White House official and a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. And her name is well-known to anyone who has followed President Trump’s efforts to avoid congressional oversight. Last fall, she wrote a widely mocked dissenting opinion that could have shut down much of Congress’s power to investigate the president altogether.

The case, which has the obnoxiously long title In re: Application of the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives, for an Order Authorizing the Release of Certain Grand Jury Materials, involves a fairly minor legal dispute about when grand jury materials can be shared with outside investigators. After Mueller filed his report, the Judiciary Committee sought various documents, including some redacted portions of the report, and “any underlying grand jury testimony and exhibits that relate directly to certain individuals and events described in the Mueller Report.”

As a general rule, grand jury materials are kept confidential. But the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure sometimes allow such materials to be disclosed “preliminary to or in connection with a judicial proceeding.” Judge Judith Rogers, a Clinton appointee, wrote in a majority opinion that an impeachment trial counts as a judicial proceeding. And, thus, a House committee may potentially obtain grand jury materials if it seeks them as part of an impeachment inquiry. Her opinion was joined by Judge Thomas Griffith, a George W. Bush appointee.

It is likely that the Trump administration will seek Supreme Court review of Tuesday’s decision, and that it will also seek a stay of the decision while the justices are considering what to do with the case.

Rao’s argument basically allows the Trump administration to run out the clock

Rao does not contest the majority’s broad claim that an impeachment trial is judicial in nature, or that a House committee conducting an impeachment inquiry may be allowed to see grand jury materials. But she argues that the House should be required to go back to the trial court and prove, once again, that it is actually seeking these particular materials as part of an impeachment inquiry. After all, she claims, impeachment is over.

“Much has happened since the district court authorized disclosure in October,” Rao writes, before briefly recounting the past impeachment proceedings against Trump. “If impeachment is no longer the primary purpose of the Committee’s application, the court could not authorize disclosure because the grand jury records would not be sought ‘preliminarily to or in connection with’ an impeachment trial or inquiry.”

The practical impact of Rao’s opinion would be that the House would have to go back to the trial court, most likely spend months convincing that court to issue a new order seeking the grand jury documents, and then wait even longer while this case proceeds on appeal. By the time the House is done litigating this case, Trump could very well be out of office and the case would be moot. So, while Rao’s dissent would not shut down this case entirely, it would delay it for so long that the case would likely become meaningless.

There are a few legal problems with Rao’s argument. One is that, as Rogers points out in the majority opinion, the House Judiciary Committee “has repeatedly stated that if the grand jury materials reveal new evidence of impeachable offenses, the Committee may recommend new articles of impeachment.” Nothing in the Constitution immunizes the president from a second impeachment proceeding if a first one ends in acquittal — at least if new evidence emerges suggesting that the president committed a different crime that was not the subject of the first impeachment trial.

Rao’s opinions place Congress in a trap

Additionally, Rao’s Grand Jury dissent appears to fit a pattern. Last October, her court handed down Trump v. Mazars USA, a case asking whether Trump can shield many of his financial records from congressional oversight (this case will be heard by the Supreme Court later this month).

As the majority opinion explained in Mazars, Congress has broad authority to conduct investigations so long as those investigations have a “valid legislative purpose,” which includes any investigation that touches on a matter “on which legislation could be had.” Judge David Tatel’s majority opinion held that the House may investigate Trump’s financial records because those records could reveal whether stricter presidential ethics laws are needed.

Rao, meanwhile, wrote a dissent arguing that the Constitution forbids Congress from investigating “illegal conduct by the President” unless that investigation takes place during an impeachment investigation.

As Tatel noted in the court’s majority opinion, “no case law supports the dissent.” Rather, the Supreme Court’s decisions establish that “Congress’s ‘authority ... to require pertinent disclosures in aid of its own constitutional power is not abridged’ merely ‘because the information sought to be elicited may also be of use’ in criminal prosecutions.”

Admittedly, the legal issues in Mazars and Grand Jury are rather distinct. Rao’s Mazar’s dissent argued that it is unconstitutional for Congress to investigate the president outside of an impeachment inquiry. Grand Jury, by contrast, deals with a much narrower question of who is allowed to see grand jury materials under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

But it’s hard not to see the trap Rao has build around Congress. Her Mazars opinion claims that Congress has only one path it can use to investigate President Trump. Then, when Trump traveled down the very same path that Rao identified in Mazars, Judge Rao invents a new limit — suggesting that Congress may only get one shot at an impeachment inquiry.

Moreover, as Tatel suggests in the Mazars majority opinion, Rao appears to have invented the constitutional limit she placed on congressional investigations out of thin air.

The Atlantic’s David Frum wrote that Rao’s Mazars dissent was “wild talk that would shut down almost all congressional investigations.” Maybe that’s the point — at least as long as Trump is in the White House.

Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments

FOX News host Sean Hannity has been pushing propaganda for days in praise of Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus and perhaps expected White House coronavirus task force leader and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases chief Dr. Anthony Fauci to do the same, but Fauci was able to get a few facts out to the faux news followers.

Said Hannity: “So the average age mortality for corona is 80. So this virus is impacting people with compromised immune systems, underlying other medical conditions are the most vulnerable. What about the other 99 percent? If people got the virus, worst-case scenario, how dangerous is it to them, compared maybe to the regular flu?”

READ THIS NEXT: Coronavirus Update: 1,000 Cases, Tax Filing Extension, Email Crash, TSA Agents, Jim Bakker

Said Fauci: “About 80 percent of the people who get infected will do well, they’ll get sick. They’ll be uncomfortable, they’r not gonna feel well, but they’re going to spontaneously recover. About 15 percent of them, according to the data from China, Korea, etc, those are individuals that are going to get into trouble, and the mortality in that group is very high.”

“But Sean, to make sure your viewers get an accurate idea about what goes on, you mentioned seasonal flu,” Fauci added. “The mortality for seasonal flu is 0.1 [percent]. The mortality for this is about two, two-and-a-half percent. It’s probably lower than that, it’s probably closer to one. But even if it’s one, it’s 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu. You gotta make sure that people understand that!”

Hannity, who has been downplaying how dangerous coronavirus for weeks now, is reminded by Dr. Anthony Fauci that the mortality rate of COVID-19 is at least 10 times higher than the seasonal flu.

"You gotta make sure that people understand that," he says. pic.twitter.com/6ALFCddC2O

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) March 11, 2020

The post Dr. Anthony Fauci Gives No Fs About Hannity’s Coronavirus Propaganda, Gives His Viewers ‘An Accurate Idea About What Goes On’ — WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

From the MBA: Mortgage Applications Increase in Latest MBA Weekly Survey

Mortgage applications increased 55.4 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending March 6, 2020.

In response to the current interest rate environment, MBA now forecasts total mortgage originations to come in around $2.61 trillion this year – a 20.3 percent gain from 2019’s volume ($2.17 trillion). Refinance originations are expected to double earlier MBA projections, jumping 36.7 percent to around $1.23 trillion. Purchase originations are now forecasted to rise 8.3 percent to $1.38 trillion.

... The Refinance Index increased 79 percent from the previous week to the highest level since April 2009, and was 479 percent higher than the same week one year ago. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 6 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index increased 7 percent compared with the previous week and was 12 percent higher than the same week one year ago.
...
“Market uncertainty around the coronavirus led to a considerable drop in U.S. Treasury rates last week, causing the 30-year fixed rate to fall and match its December 2012 survey low of 3.47 percent. Homeowners rushed in, with refinance applications jumping 79 percent – the largest weekly increase since November 2008,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s Associate Vice President of Economic and Industry Forecasting. “With last week’s increase, the refinance index hit its highest level since April 2009. The purchase market also had a solid week, with activity nearly 12 percent higher than a year ago. Prospective buyers continue to be encouraged by improving housing inventory levels in some markets and very low rates.”

Added Kan, “Taking into the account the current economic situation and how much rates have fallen, MBA is nearly doubling its 2020 refinance originations forecast to $1.2 trillion, a 37 percent increase from 2019 and the strongest refinance volume since 2012. As lenders handle the wave in applications and manage capacity, mortgage rates will likely stabilize but remain low for now. This in turn will support borrowers looking to refinance or purchase a home this spring.”
...
The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($510,400 or less) decreased to the lowest level since December 2012, equaling the lowest level in survey history at 3.47 percent, from 3.57 percent with points increasing to 0.27 from 0.26 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value ratio (LTV) loans.
emphasis added

Click on graph for larger image.


The first graph shows the refinance index since 1990.

With record lower rates, we saw a huge increase in refinance activity in the survey this week.

The second graph shows the MBA mortgage purchase index

According to the MBA, purchase activity is up 12% year-over-year.

A key question is will low mortgage rates bring in more buyers, or will people hold off buying a home during the health crisis (as happened in China).  So far people are still buying according to this survey.

NEW YORK — Bill de Blasio is morphing into a Bernie Bro.

Not content with solely defending Bernie Sanders on cable TV, the New York City mayor has embraced a pitbull-like aggression toward other candidates in the winnowing Democratic field. In that vein, on Tuesday he called on Elizabeth Warren to endorse Sanders — something de Blasio himself waited five months to do after he ended his own long-shot bid for the White House.

“I deeply respect @ewarren. Our nation + our party are better + more progressive because of her leadership. Now our progressive movement needs her more than ever. Senator, if the shoe was on the other foot @BernieSanders would have endorsed you already. Please join us!” de Blasio tweeted from his political handle Tuesday morning — a message aides confirmed he wrote himself.

In an MSNBC interview earlier in the day, de Blasio said former U.S. senator, vice president and three-time presidential candidate Joe Biden has yet to be “vetted” in this race. And last month he scolded former candidate Pete Buttigieg, telling him to “try not to be so smug when you just got your ass kicked” after the Nevada caucuses and signing off with, “Dude, show some humility.”

And earlier this week, he referenced socialist terminology employed by Joseph Stalin when he called reporters who write about Sanders’ strengths in the 2020 campaign cycle “class traitors.”

The idea that the mayor of the country’s largest city would make the time during an outbreak of the coronavirus to advise a once-leading presidential candidate on how to handle her political affairs rankled Democrats from Washington, D.C., to New York’s City Hall.

“Respectfully, I think a lot of people would think dealing with the coronavirus is a full time job for the Mayor of New York. Maybe stop telling a woman what to do and focus on that,” tweeted former Hillary Clinton aide Neera Tanden, who is president of the Center for American Progress think tank.

The two have some history: A Wikileaks dump revealed Tanden called de Blasio “a bit insufferable” after he publicly waffled for four months in 2015 between backing his former boss, Hillary Clinton, and Sanders. Despite his pronouncements that solutions espoused by Sanders are the cure for the Democratic Party’s ailments, pragmatism won out and de Blasio endorsed Clinton. He has since said Sanders would have beaten Donald Trump that year.

"Sir, we’re gonna need you to stop tweeting about your crush on Bernie and start addressing COVID-19 in the city for which you are *mayor,*" tweeted Eleanor's Legacy, an organization that recruits female Democratic candidates in New York.

Several of his staffers admonished his tweet to Warren.

“It’s disheartening to see this as a young female in politics, but especially during a health crisis,” one City Hall employee who would only speak on background said in response to his tweet. “Just leave Elizabeth Warren alone.”

“How long did it take Bernie Sanders to endorse Hillary Clinton?” she asked, referring to the protracted 2016 primary.

Warren dropped out of the race five days ago after a disappointing finish on Super Tuesday. She did not win any state, including her home state of Massachusetts. She has said she is undecided about who to support, and Sanders’ initial commanding lead over the field began to dwindle after Biden’s strong finish on Super Tuesday.

Alexis Grenell, a New York-based Democratic consultant and writer, said de Blasio’s tweet smacked of sexism.

“It assumes that she somehow owes him something here, and that Bernie doesn't also owe her something, that Bernie doesn't have responsibility in this equation — responsibility for his win or loss,” Grenell said. “That to me is what’s sexist — Elizabeth Warren is somehow responsible, by failing to provide an endorsement, for how Bernie performs as opposed to Bernie himself.”

“It is a real failure of feminist leadership among progressive men when they play into sexist narratives either unselfconsciously or consciously," added Grenell, who voted for Sanders in the 2016 primary.

A Sanders official did not respond to requests for comment on de Blasio’s tweets, and de Blasio’s aides would not say whether the tweet was cleared with the Sanders campaign first.

“The mayor deeply respects Senator Warren’s record and understands that endorsements are personal decisions,” a spokesperson said in response to questions about the tweet. “He fundamentally believes that we are in a fight for the heart and soul of the country, and the progressive movement must unite to challenge the status quo.”

After accusing Democrats of falsely hyping the coronavirus to hurt him, Donald Trump is now in need of Democratic votes for an economic stimulus package for the country. Indeed, GOP Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday the Senate would simply step aside and let House Speaker Nancy Pelosi negotiate a deal directly with the White House.

Unfortunately, Trump, master deal maker and negotiator savant, won't be involved in those talks, instead Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin will take the lead. According to NBC reporter Eamon Javers, Trump feels too personally wounded by impeachment and other interactions with Pelosi to get in a room with her and pound out a plan to help the country weather the coronavirus. "It doesn't seem like that would end well," Javers said of the thinking of White House aides about trying to get Trump and Pelosi together.

"What the White House would say is, that's Pelosi's fault," Javers explained, "because she ripped up his speech, she's been tough on him, she impeached him and therefore the president has every right to not want to be in a room with her."

So to review: Trump blamed Democrats for stoking concerns over the coronavirus; the stock market crashed because the coronavirus is a real thing; now Trump needs Democrats to dig himself out of a hole after he promised the virus was a nothingburger; but Trump's a little too fragile and spiteful to sit across the table from Pelosi in order to make a deal to help steer the nation through this global public health crisis.

That doesn't sound like someone who should be running the country, that sounds like someone who should be having a pretty epic time out until such time as he can play nice again with the other children.

Here’s the clip

YouTube Video

 

In lieu of doing their jobs to protect the American public, Republican Party officials are working very intensely to misinform the public, while also blaming China for COVID-19. One of the top GOP officials today is Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California. You might remember his grotesque displays of fealty during the impeachment inquiry and trial of Donald Trump. If you know anything about Rep. McCarthy, you know that he will tow whatever party line Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump think up for him. And since the GOP’s brand these days is “Being racist assholes,” McCarthy decided on Monday to help out with the public health effort by tweeting out the government’s CDC.gov url along with this thinly veiled racist statement: “Everything you need to know about the Chinese coronavirus can be found on one, regularly-updated website:”

Fellow Californian and Democratic Rep. Katie Porter was justifiably pissed off at the leading GOP stooge.

Will stop spread of coronavirus: � washing your hands � staying home if you�re sick Won�t stop spread of coronavirus: � racism � xenophobia Delete this tweet, @GOPLeader. https://t.co/hd6VX3RuHo

— Rep. Katie Porter (@RepKatiePorter) March 10, 2020

The Trump administration and the Republican Party, having stripped down and rolled back Obama-era development of our CDC, and specifically our infectious disease research and response, is now trying to use the age-old defense that they shouldn’t be in trouble because it’s someone else who “started it.” Unfortunately, they have a racist base who will likely eat up this xenophobic handling of a public health crisis. But the Republican base is a minority in our country, and the majority of people know Rep. McCarthy is a craven prick. And the responses to his lack of leadership were fast and furious.

As one responder to McCarthy’s racism explains: this is just the same playbook we’ve seen out of these incompetent grifters for years now.

Racism is the GOP Trump card. Calling it a hoax didn�t work because people keep dying. Blaming it on Obama never got off the ground. We�re now at stage three: xenophobia.#CPACcoronavirus

— Chris Alexander (@hoos30) March 10, 2020

And here are some simple facts: 

w00f

— Liz Garbus (@lizgarbus) March 10, 2020

Our government is super racist: also they really suck at keeping US safe and prosperous.

— David Rothschild (@DavMicRot) March 10, 2020

Your swastika is showing � �

— ImpeachmentForDummies (@Canadiancentri2) March 10, 2020

Of course, maybe Kevin misspoke?

Kevin, you misspelled #CPACVirus also known as #TrumpVirus. Get your facts straight you racist asshole.

— Comfortably Numb (@YGalanter) March 10, 2020

Of course, here’s a side note reminder:

Vote for @KimMangone and dump treasonous �Steve� McCarthy! pic.twitter.com/RmSoPXT7kR

— Medusa (@MedusaSeesYou) March 10, 2020

And finally, the tragically comic reality of it all.

I live in the US. Is there a website for the American coronavirus? In particular is there info on the Republicans quarantined and potentially spreading it? pic.twitter.com/JSjWXiaVvU

— Rob Jackson (@muh_thoughts) March 10, 2020

And an honest piece of advice for the GOP Leader.

You're a racist, a coward, and a sycophant. Resign.

— Dr. Jack Brown (@DrGJackBrown) March 10, 2020

If he had the guts, he could work with them on a real stimulus.

After voting last month to ensure that  Donald Trump would stay in office, Senate Republicans are now stepping up once again to the address the nation's needs amid the coronavirus public health crisis. GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters Tuesday that they would do exactly nothing, instead clearing the way for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to negotiate directly with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on a response to help Americans weather the coronavirus.

Mnuchin, McConnell said, would have "ball control," and Senate Republicans would simply defer to the deal cut by Pelosi and the White House. He added that he was certain they could work something out. Wow—almost like a total abdication of responsibility. Or, in fact, an actual total abdication of responsibility. It's basically the exact same play Senate Republicans ran during the Donald Trump-created government shutdown—let Pelosi fix it, which in that case she did.

Trump is clearly growing more desperate by the hour. At lunch on Tuesday, he told congressional Republicans he wanted to waive payroll taxes through the November elections, according to Bloomberg News.

Democrats are skeptical such a tax waiver will really help to address the needs of most Americans during the outbreak. Instead, they are focused on fixes such as enhancing paid sick leave and unemployment insurance, offering free coronavirus testing and affordable treatment, protecting frontline workers, and enacting anti-price-gouging protections. Ya know, measures that will actually help Americans get through the coronavirus.

It has become very clear to most people that the Trump administration’s slow response to the growing coronavirus pandemic is not only alarming, but also potentially deadly. The Washington Post is reporting that instead of behind-the-scenes scrambling to speed up testing and containment of the COVID-19 virus, the Trump administration is taking lots of calls from the oil and natural gas industry—specifically from shale industry billionaires who have been running deeply in-debt dying business models. 

According to the Post, as fears of the coronavirus consume the global economy, the largest one-day drop in almost 30 years in oil prices has led to a real panic. They fear that the corporate welfare already buoying many of the Republican Party’s shale company buddies will not be enough to keep them from bankruptcy. To this end, the administration is trying to figure out ways to prop up those companies. Sources in the White House tell the Post that the plan is “likely to take the form of low-interest government loans.”

Why can’t these companies get low-interest loans from big financial institutions? They are run by the brilliant billionaire buddies of guys like Trump. It turns out that their businesses are considered far too terrible to invest any good money in. Of course, taking American taxpayer money to provide welfare for corporations is just one side of the equation. The Post reports that a “major GOP donor” has said that these same oil company barons are warning the Trump administration away from providing paid sick leave policies to workers facing the pandemic.

People such as Trump-supporting fracking billionaire Harold Hamm say that they have tried to contact the White House but have not spoken “directly” to the president. Maybe that last part is true, or maybe it’s like most things billionaires tell news outlets: half-true. Hamm lost $2 billion after his energy company stakes plummeted with Monday’s oil price news. Hamm’s defense of corporate welfare is that Trump’s White House should be protecting “American interests at this time from being unfairly disadvantaged by whatever government — and we’re talking governments here, whether it be Russia or Saudi Arabia.” Hamm is probably best-known for being a climate denier, making a ton of money drilling up Oklahoma for natural gas—and creating literal earthquakes in the process.

This news comes a day after Mike Sommers, the CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, told the Washington Examiner, “We are not in discussions with anyone in the administration at this time on any type of program for the industry.” Who to believe? The Post explains that the oil and gas industry has $40 billion in debt coming due in 2020, and investors don’t like any of that. At all. So where is this dying industry looking for money if not from banks and not from investors? The math doesn’t add up in Sommers’ statement.

Say what you will about the Democratic Party, its offerings so far during this public health crisis have been attempts to make sure American citizens are protected, especially the healthcare workers charged to take care of us all. Its plans would use our collective money to help all of our country’s communities, Republicans and Democrats and independents alike.

Trump and the Republican Party came into the White House selling pipe dreams to their base, while producing nothing in the way of real jobs. Instead, they expanded fossil fuel production while ignoring the threats to our planet’s health and made rich dinosaurs of business richer. Those wealthy men want Trump’s team to keep them in the corporate welfare racket.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar added to the long list of worrying or downright scary coronavirus comments from Trump administration officials in a CNN appearance Tuesday morning. Azar admitted to having absolutely no idea how many people have been tested for COVID-19 in the U.S., even as the number confirmed to have the disease keeps growing. 

Asked by CNN’s John Berman how many Americans have been tested, Azar responded, “We don't know exactly how many because hundreds of thousands of our tests have gone out to private labs and hospitals that currently do not report in to CDC.” Doesn’t that seem like something public health officials should have some idea about?

“We’re working with the CDC and those partners to get an IT reporting system up and running, hopefully this week, where we would be able to get that data, to keep track of how many we’re testing,” Azar continued. He suggested that up to 10,000 people a day could be tested now, with the number potentially rising to 20,000 by the end of the week—but that sounded extremely hypothetical and is based on a study by the American Enterprise Institute, not on, say, CDC predictions.

”After surveying local data from across the country, we can only verify that 4,384 people have been tested for the coronavirus nationwide, as of today at 4 p.m. eastern time,” The Atlantic reported on Monday. “I just wouldn’t want to speculate,” Azar said when Berman asked him if that number was accurate.

Azar tried to present that absolute lack of information as a sign of his honesty. “Listen, my hallmark here is that I’m going to tell you what I know, and I’m going to tell you what we do not know,” he said. “We’re about leveling with the American people and being transparent, and right now I’m just telling you, when somebody sells a test kit to a private entity, right now, we don’t know when or if that’s been used, but we are working with them to get that system set up.”

Okay, so you’re leveling with us … that you don’t know anything about how the Trump administration is coping with the major disease outbreak you are supposed to be taking a lead role in responding to. That is not confidence-inspiring.

South Korea was testing more than 10,000 people a day within a week of its first coronavirus infection, Berman said, while it’s been more than two weeks since the first case of community transmission in the U.S., but “we may not have tested 10,000 people total.” Azar’s response? “We don’t know that.” Not a good defense, dude! That is exactly the kind of information you are supposed to know!

Azar went on to insist that the U.S. was testing in similar ways to countries that have similar levels of COVID-19. “We now have a surplus of tests out there available, John, so they’re out in the community, they’re available, doctors and public health officials—at no time, at no time, has a public health official who wanted to get an individual tested for novel coronavirus been unable to get them tested through the CDC’s labs or other labs authorized by CDC early on.”

Based on what doctors and sick people are saying, that is either a lie or a masterpiece of weasel-wording. For instance: “The Georgia Department of Public Health has basically thrown up their hands when it comes to testing patients who do not require hospitalization,” an emergency room doctor in Georgia told The Atlantic. “On Friday we were told, ‘If the patient doesn’t have a travel history and doesn’t need to be admitted to the hospital, don’t bother calling; we’re not going to test.’” 

The lack of testing means that we do not know how many cases of coronavirus are really in the United States right now. We have not a flipping clue. And the government apparently doesn’t even know how many people have been tested—kind of important information if you’re wondering how many more people might have the disease. 

The Trump administration doesn’t want to know.

YouTube Video

Donald Trump promised on Monday that on Tuesday his administration would roll out a plan to combat the economic effects of the coronavirus outbreak. That came as a surprise to the people who would have to come up with such a plan, CNBC reports.

Trump suggested in his Monday press conference that economic measures might include payroll tax cuts, support for hourly workers who are losing income, and help to industries affected by the outbreak, like cruise lines and airlines. He said more details would be coming in a Tuesday press conference. But “That was news to everyone on the inside,” an administration official told CNBC, and the details of a plan are “not there right now.”

Economic adviser Larry Kudlow and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will discuss options with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans on Tuesday prior to the press conference, and the White House is reaching out to Wall Street executives for their thoughts. Because why would you include Democrats in the discussion, with their silly little ideas like paid sick leave?

Effectively fighting COVID-19 could be its own form of stimulus, The New York Times editorial board suggested, calling for “Huge spending on public health,” including “staffing health facilities, testing for the coronavirus and equipment to keep workers safe.” That wouldn’t just protect people from getting sick (thereby keeping the economy running more smoothly) or help treat those who are sick, the editorial board pointed out: “every dollar spent on public health provides just as much of an economic boost as would spending on anything else.”

There are so many things to do that make sense for public health, but instead Trump is out there dropping bombshells on his own staff and turning to the all-purpose Republican economic plan of more tax cuts.

Michael Wang, 49, works from his home in Beijing, China, on March 4, 2020. | Andrea Verdelli/Getty Images

This is how we all help slow the spread of coronavirus.

The main uncertainty in the coronavirus outbreak in the United States now is how big it will get, and how fast. In the last few days, we’ve seen cases jump dramatically; as of Tuesday, there were 729 confirmed cases and at least 26 deaths. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Nancy Messonnier told reporters Monday, “many people in the US will at some point, either this year or next, get exposed to this virus.”

According to infectious disease epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch at Harvard, it’s “plausible” that 20 to 60 percent of adults will be infected with Covid-19 disease. So far, 80 percent of cases globally have been mild but if the case fatality rate is around 1 percent (which several experts say it may be), we could be looking at a horrific scenario of tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths in the US alone.

Yet the speed at which the outbreak plays out matters hugely for its consequences. What epidemiologists fear most is the health care system becoming overwhelmed by a sudden explosion of illness that requires more people to be hospitalized than it can handle. In that scenario, more people will die because there won’t be enough hospital beds or ventilators to keep them alive.

A disastrous inundation of hospitals can likely be averted with protective measures we’re now seeing more of — school closures, canceling mass gatherings, working from home, self-quarantine, avoiding crowds — to keep the virus from spreading fast.

Epidemiologists call this strategy of preventing a huge spike in cases “flattening the curve” and it looks like this:

Christina Animashaun/Vox

“Even if you don’t reduce total cases, slowing down the rate of an epidemic can be critical,” wrote Carl Bergstrom, a biologist at the University of Washington in a Twitter thread praising the graphic, which was first created by the CDC, adapted by consultant Drew Harris, and popularized by The Economist. The chart has since gone viral with the help of the hashtag #flattenthecurve.

Flattening the curve means that all of the social distancing measures now being deployed in places like Italy and South Korea, and on a smaller scale in places like Seattle, Washington, and Santa Clara County, aren’t so much about preventing illness but rather slowing down the rate at which people get sick.

On Thursday, the CDC posted new guidance for people over age 60 and people with chronic medical conditions — the two groups considered most vulnerable to severe pneumonia from Covid-19 — to “avoid crowds as much as possible.”

“If more of us do that, we will slow the spread of the disease,” Emily Landon, an infectious disease specialist and hospital epidemiologist at the University of Chicago Medicine, told Vox. “That means my mom and your mom will have a hospital bed if they need it.”

So even if you’re young and healthy, it’s your job to follow social distancing measures to avoid spreading it to others, and keep the epidemic in slow motion. “The more young and healthy people are sick at the same time, the more old people will be sick, and the more pressure there will be on the health care system,” said Landon.

Hospitals filled with Covid-19 patients won’t just strain to care for those patients — doctors may also have to prioritize them over others. “Right now there’s always a doctor available when you need one, but that may not be the case if we’re not careful,” says Landon.

Staying home helps prevent the US health system from being overloaded

At this point, with the virus spreading in America, the top priority is making sure the health care system avoids being flooded with very sick patients who need ventilators and intensive care.

“From a US standpoint, you want to prevent any place from becoming the next Wuhan,” says Tom Friedan, who led the CDC under President Barack Obama. “What that means is even if we’re not able to prevent widespread transmission, we want to prevent explosive transmission and anything that overwhelms the health care system.”

Remember, America’s hospitals and doctors are already dealing with their usual caseloads during a pretty bad flu season. Now they have to be ready to handle any Covid-19 patients who come their way.

There are serious concerns about the US system’s capacity to handle a severe outbreak. Covid-19 is a respiratory illness and in its most serious stages can require patients with pneumonia to be put on a ventilator. But there might not be enough ventilators to meet that need if the outbreak becomes too widespread.

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security reported in 2018 that, according to US government estimates, about 65,000 people in the United States would require ventilation in an outbreak similar to the flu pandemics of 1957-1958 (which killed 116,000 people in the US) and 1968 (which killed 100,000 Americans).

The maximum number of ventilators that could be put in the field in the United States is about 160,000. So under those scenarios, there would theoretically be enough capacity to meet the need.

But if the coronavirus outbreak gets worse, we could quickly run out. In a situation more similar to the Spanish flu pandemic (675,000 dead in the US), about 742,500 people in the United States would require ventilation, according to government estimates. We don’t have that many.

The health system is much more than ventilators, of course, and the concerns about capacity apply to the rest of it, too. As HuffPost’s Jonathan Cohn reported, US hospitals have about 45,000 beds in their intensive care units. In a moderate outbreak, about 200,000 patients may need to be put in the ICU, but under a more severe outbreak, it could be nearly 3 million.

And while all 3 million of them would likely not need treatment at the same time, we again need to account for the ICU patients hospitals already had before coronavirus arrived, as Cohn noted:

On the one hand, those are total numbers, for the duration of the epidemic. Even under the most dire scenario, it’s unlikely that 2.9 million people would need ICU beds all at once. On the other hand, ICU beds in the U.S. are already pretty full, thanks to the normal crush of patients with influenza and other major medical problems.

As a result, hospitals are routinely at capacity, forcing backups of patients “boarding” in emergency departments for hours or even days, waiting on the beds there until inpatient slots become available. And that’s before any influx from COVID-19.

Hospitals are already doing what they can — rationing surgical masks, preparing to stand up temporary facilities, etc — and they will take more extreme measures if they can’t handle all of the people with Covid-19 plus their more routine patients.

But the one thing everybody can do to help is stay home if they are feeling unwell and especially if they received a formal Covid-19 diagnosis. That way, the US health care system can focus on the patients who really need it during this outbreak.

“America vs. Socialism” was the theme of the Conservative Political Action Conference last month, though as fights go this one was pretty one-sided. An anti-socialist message thrummed through the halls while the crowds celebrated free-market capitalism over $4 cups of coffee and $20 chicken-salad sandwiches wrapped in cellophane.

As the panelists likened socialism to a disease, an actual disease, the coronavirus, shadowed the gathering. One participant would later test positive for the pathogen, touching off a scramble that sent four lawmakers (and counting) who attended into precautionary self-quarantine.

[Read: The coronavirus outbreak could bring out the worst in Trump]

But the White House officials and Trump allies who spoke from the main ballroom urged calm. The real threat, they said, was socialism. “The virus is not going to sink the American economy,” Larry Kudlow, the president’s top economic adviser and part of the White House’s coronavirus task force, told the audience, in comments that were premature given the market tailspin that would come soon enough. “What is or could sink the American economy is the socialism coming from our friends on the other side of the aisle.”

Even as Kudlow spoke, the Trump administration was taking aggressive measures to halt the epidemic’s spread—measures that rely on the sort of big-government intervention that was a CPAC bogeyman. In the 2020 election, Donald Trump’s aim is to brand his opponent an avatar of socialism, whether it’s Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders. But the COVID-19 outbreak demonstrates the emptiness of these sorts of ideological labels. Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, in a national emergency, there’s no truly laissez-faire government.

Speaking to reporters at the White House yesterday, Trump said he wants to shore up businesses and aid people whose finances have been hit. “We’re going to be working with … a lot of companies so they don’t get penalized for something that’s not their fault,” he said. Worried about the slumping travel industry, the White House is now considering tax deferrals for airlines and cruise lines. The administration has been weighing whether to use funds from a disaster program to pay for treatment of uninsured people who have become infected, The Wall Street Journal reported. And Alex Azar, the secretary of health and human services, said the administration might dust off a Korean War–era law called the Defense Production Act to ensure rapid manufacturing of medical supplies in the private sector.

“That’s not free-market capitalism,” says Jean Cohen, a political-theory professor at Columbia University, referring to the measures the White House has contemplated as the virus spreads. “You can choose the term: It’s regulated capitalism, or it’s the interventionist state, or it’s democratic socialism. If you want to serve the public good instead of private profit making, you need government to come in and make sure that’s done.”

Whatever the term, the Trump administration’s handling of the outbreak amounts to government activism in the face of a national crisis. It’s nothing new and, as may well prove the case this time around, it’s often necessary. Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously called on American industry to outproduce the Axis powers during World War II, retooling whole sectors to meet ambitious manufacturing goals for tanks and planes. George W. Bush, a Republican, sunk hundreds of billions of dollars into a bailout program meant to keep the banking industry afloat after the 2008 financial crisis. “I decided that the only way to preserve the free market in the long run was to intervene in the short run,” Bush wrote in his 2010 book, Decision Points.

[Read: The strongest evidence yet that America is botching coronavirus testing]

In Trump’s case, he may try to have it both ways: using socialism as a convenient campaign slogan, while battling the coronavirus with extraordinary measures comparable to what other modern presidents have done to beat back a crisis. Critics have panned his methods so far. As infections spread, he’s kept up his golf outings and fundraising schedule, while downplaying a virus that could have reached his outstretched hand: At CPAC, he greeted Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, who was in contact with the infected participant.

Trumpworld would like the 2020 general election to be a referendum on socialism; the Democrats want it to be a referendum on Trump. “We will have it out,” Kudlow said at CPAC. “President Trump is more than prepared to show the world why what he called … ‘the American model of free enterprise’ will whip socialism every time.”

Trump, though, is no doctrinaire economic conservative. His political brand is rooted in personality and celebrity, and he’s bent on capturing a second term. If he decides that the quickest path to quashing the coronavirus is activist, interventionist government, free-market doctrine is unlikely to get in his way. If there’s some dissonance in his reelection message and his practices, he’ll live with it.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: AMD processors manufactured between 2011 and 2019 (the time of testing) are vulnerable to two new attacks, research published this week has revealed (PDF). The two new attacks impact the security of the data processed inside the CPU and allow the theft of sensitive information or the downgrade of security features. The research team said it notified AMD of the two issues in August 2019, however, the company has not released microcode (CPU firmware) updates, claiming these "are not new speculation-based attacks," a statement that the research team disagrees with. The two new attacks target a feature of AMD CPUs known as the L1D cache way predictor. Introduced in AMD processors in 2011 with the Bulldozer microarchitecture, the L1D cache way predictor is a performance-centric feature that reduces power consumption by improving the way the CPU handles cached data inside its memory. A high-level explanation is available below: "The predictor computes a uTag using an undocumented hash function on the virtual address. This uTag is used to look up the L1D cache way in a prediction table. Hence, the CPU has to compare the cache tag in only oneway instead of all possible ways, reducing the power consumption." The two new attacks were discovered after a team of six academics [...] reverse-engineered this "undocumented hashing function" that AMD processors were using to handle uTag entries inside the L1D cache way predictor mechanism. Knowing these functions, allowed the researchers to recreate a map of what was going on inside the L1D cache way predictor and probe if the mechanism was leaking data or clues about what that data may be. While the attacks can be patched, AMD denies that these two new attacks are a concern, claiming they "are not new speculation-based attacks" and that they should be mitigated through previous patches for speculative execution side channel vulnerabilities. The research team says AMD's response is "rather misleading," and that the attacks still work on fully-updated operating systems, firmware, and software even today.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on Tuesday warned “medically fragile” Americans to avoid flights, cruises and large gatherings — but stopped short of telling them to skip a rally with President Donald Trump.

Ahead of an expected announcement later in the day of an upcoming Trump campaign event, Azar was asked whether it was wise for the president’s reelection effort to proceed with its plans given the administration’s guidance to “consider adjusting or postponing large meetings or gatherings” in the wake of the coronavirus crisis.

“In terms of large gatherings, and I don't want to comment on a campaign, I'll defer to what [Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases] said at last night's press conference, which is: It all depends on the community where you're doing it and what the circumstances would look like for gatherings,” Azar told CNN in an interview.

Pressed further on why the Trump campaign would hold a rally given the grave nature of the public health risks posed by the coronavirus, Azar sought to elaborate further upon the government’s recommendations.

“It's consider adjusting or postponing large gatherings if you're at risk, if you're in communities where they're spreading, if there's a science and evidence-based reason for doing that, or if you're a particularly vulnerable person,” Azar said.

“So the elderly and those who are medically fragile, we have said you really should think twice before going to a large gathering, taking a long flight, or in particular getting on a cruise ship. Please don't do that,” he continued.

Although the president on Monday evening told reporters during a White House news conference that he would propose a payroll tax cut and paid leave for hourly employees unable to work due to the coronavirus, Trump has seemingly disregarded some personal preventative measures meant to counter the outbreak.

He was seen shaking hands with supporters along a rope line on Monday after deplaning Air Force One near Orlando, and the White House later confirmed that the president has not been tested for COVID-19 despite contact with multiple GOP lawmakers who have self-quarantined over coronavirus concerns.

Trump has also insisted that he will not alter his campaign schedule and said he will continue to hold rallies as he gears up for the general election in November, remarking that “it's very safe” to keep conducting the events.

Asked on Tuesday whether he would advise his parents to attend a political rally amid the coronavirus outbreak, Azar said that he did not want “to get into making this a political issue,” but added that he “would encourage any individual who is elderly or is medically fragile to think long and hard about going into any large gathering that would involve close quarters and potential spread.”

If those Americans do put themselves in such situations, however, Azar urged them “to take appropriate personal hygiene protections” including avoiding shaking hands and keeping “as much distance as you can from others.”

Azar also struggled to answer questions on Monday regarding the number of people in the U.S. who have been tested for the coronavirus, acknowledging that the administration did not yet know the total amount since "hundreds of thousands of our tests have gone out to private labs and hospitals that currently do not report in" to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The secretary said the administration was working with the CDC and the private partners to get a reporting system "up and running hopefully this week" to track that data. He speculated that roughly 10,000 Americans per day were being tested, with the possibility of 20,000 tests per day by the end of the week, according to a study he said he had heard about.

Azar claimed that 2.1 million tests were now available and that 1.1 million had been sent out, but noted that "most of those 1.1 million that shipped were from a private vendor selling to their customers, and those entities that used their tests do not have to report back to CDC."

According to a report Green Car Reports, Honda said it discontinued the company's Clarity Electric and has no plans for the model to return. CNET reports: The battery-electric version of the Clarity rounded out a diverse lineup of alternative-fuel options housed in the nameplate. Honda still sells a plug-in hybrid version of the Clarity and introduced modest updates to the Clarity Fuel Cell for 2020. Honda only offered the EV version in Oregon and California, however. Ditto for the fuel cell version as well. The Clarity Plug-In Hybrid was originally offered in numerous states, though low demand drove the car out of the Northeast last summer. At the time, Honda told Roadshow California will be the PHEV's main focus, though the car remains available to order at any Honda dealer nationwide.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A year ago, things were looking pretty rosy for GOP Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, with her approval rating hitting a high point of 57% in February 2019. A year later, following Senate Republicans' sham zero-witness impeachment trial and their subsequent acquittal of Donald Trump, Ernst's approval ratings have taken a hit, slipping fully 10 points to 46%.

A plurality of Iowa voters, 41%, still say they will definitely vote for Ernst this fall, but 31% also vowed to vote against her, and another 20% were open to considering someone else. Democrats are currently fielding candidates in a five-way primary, so Ernst's challenger isn't clear yet. But starting the race with 51% of your constituents either vowing to vote against you or open to an alternative is not a strong start for an incumbent senator. 

Wanna take back the Senate? Give $3 right now to the effort to flip the chamber and kick Mitch McConnell to the curb.

Hawkeye State independents reflect the wariness of the larger electorate, with 32% pledging to back Ernst and 25% promising to vote against her, while 31% consider voting for someone else.

Trump's stumbles on trade and Ernst's unwillingness to challenge him on anything are also part of the equation. One undecided voter said she would support whoever was willing to take on Trump. "You have to get people in there who are willing to take him on,” said 62-year-old Kerri Christian. 

Ernst joins a quartet of GOP senators who are facing an uphill climb to reelection: Susan Collins of Maine, Cory Gardner of Colorado, Martha McSally of Arizona, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina. In addition, Democrats just put another GOP seat in play with the announcement that Montana Gov. Steve Bullock would take on GOP Sen. Steve Daines for his seat in November. 

That's half a dozen solid GOP targets to work with in a year in which Democrats need a net gain of three or four pick-ups, depending on whether Trump is reelected, in order to flip the chamber.

ShannonDowney/Twitter

Coronavirus memes are reminding us to wash our hands, fighting misinformation, and keeping our spirits high.

As the novel coronavirus (a.k.a. Covid-19) spreads, plenty of exploitative scheming and misinformation has proliferated online — but the internet has also become a crucial tool for sharing important, legitimate facts about the outbreak, including scientific info, travel updates, and news on the death toll and spread.

Naturally, there have also been plenty of memes. But due to a combination of unprepared governments, delays in testing for the coronavirus, xenophobia, and general public confusion, meme-makers are treating the threat a little less flippantly than they did during other global scares of the recent past. So far, viral goofs about the coronavirus have contained strong messages on everything from racism and wearing surgical masks to the risks of touching your face and shaking people’s hands. Above all, they sound a frequent chorus about the importance of maintaining good hygiene and preventive health behaviors.

Unlike the bout of ”World War 3” memes that emerged in January amid fears about tensions between the US and Iran, coronavirus memes have largely been devoid of alarmism, ironic or otherwise. They’re often straightforwardly informational, using humor that’s positive in tone. The overarching theme of the memes is that, even amid a worldwide health crisis, it’s possible to properly prepare and take health precautions — a unique and encouraging contrast from the usual tack of the sardonic jokester internet.

Coronavirus memes are mostly promoting correct information and healthy alternative behaviors

Many coronavirus memes are doing their part to quash misinformation. Despite persistent media coverage explaining that wearing a face mask isn’t necessary if you’re not already sick or treating someone who is, many people have nonetheless purchased masks — causing shortages in places where they’re needed, like hospitals.

Consequently, several memes have emphasized that the most effective precautionary behavior is practicing good hand hygiene and staying away from other people if you’re sick.

Among some Asian cultures, masks have historical significance and are often worn as routine etiquette. Americans have frequently misunderstood the cultural purpose of such masks, and because the coronavirus originated in China, the outbreak has stoked an accompanying climate of anti-Asian hostility, with many people assuming incorrectly that people wearing masks in public must be sick. Messages downplaying these xenophobic beliefs have come in a variety of formats, from viral comics to cross-stitches; on social media, governmental organizations and public figures instructing people to wash their hands and “stop buying masks.”

The award for most creative coronavirus PSA undoubtedly goes to the Vietnamese officials who took the popular 2017 pop song “Ghen” and evolved it into a catchy informative music video, titled “Gen Cho Vy,” a pun on “coronavirus”:

“Ghen Co Vy” has become so popular, it spawned a whole TikTok dance challenge, thanks to popular Vietnamese dancer Quang Dang, who choreographed it with a few hand-washing dance moves built in:

Other memes have promoted adopting other preventive routines during the outbreak — particularly greeting alternatives to hand-shaking, for the very good reason that hand-to-hand contact is one of the most common ways viruses are transmitted. The urge to minimize shaking hands has led to lots of proposed alternatives, most notably the elbow bump, as demonstrated in this official UN TikTok video:

The concept of greeting people without touching them has since become a meme all its own.

One variant, the “Wuhan Shake,” is a viral form of ankle-bumping.

Many Star Trek fans have been ready for this moment for decades, as evidenced by the popularity of one greeting meme in particular:

And anyone who’s not with these hygiene ideas will be duly shamed. That includes you, “Sweet Caroline” fans!

What’s great about so much of this viral message-spreading is that it’s warm, upbeat, lively, and entertaining. Fun elbow-bump memes are a far cry from the global panic we’ve all been conditioned to expect from years of apocalyptic outbreak scenarios depicted in movies and on TV.

Of course, the recommended behavioral changes aren’t always easy to follow, especially when it comes to one in particular: face-touching.

No one can stop touching their face, but memes are helping us try

One of the most frequently recommended health tips to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus is to avoid touching your face. But as this widely shared clip from the 2010 outbreak movie Contagion reminds us, that’s almost impossible to do:

If you’re one of the people who struggle to reduce your face-touching, you’re not alone:

Perhaps frequent meme reminders can help keep our hands away:

But the most prominent theme yet is where coronavirus memes are doing their best work.

Hand-washing may already be the meme of the year

Could the basic act of hand-washing itself be a meme? Jokes about the importance of hand-washing to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus are already among the year’s best:

Among the more popular hand-washing meme variants are the ones that remind people how to clean up like Lady Macbeth:

Even Shakespearean acting troupes have gotten in on the Macbeth gag, while also spreading helpful hand-washing instructions:

A more recent, less bloodthirsty inspiration to head to the sink involves Eric, a popular character from Netflix’s Sex Education:

The image of the actor who plays Eric, Ncuti Gatwa, reminding people to wash their hands has even found its way into schools:

Among the most popular musical flavors of the hand-washing meme are suggestions for songs to sing to make sure wash your hands for the amount of time health experts recommend — a whole 20 seconds.

There’s even a lyrics generator for better hand-washing.

It’s perhaps a sign of the strange times we’re in that these coronavirus memes have skewed toward the positive when they could have easily gone in a more dire direction. World War 3 jokes, for example, traded in heavy irony, while memes about the 2014 Ebola outbreak were largely dominated by 4chan users sharing damaging, racist “jokes” about death and conspiracy theories. By stark contrast, coronavirus memes have generally emphasized behavioral changes and information-sharing (while also lamenting how hard it is to stop touching your face). Instead of spreading the message that we’re all going to get sick and die, coronavirus memes are downright reasonable, even borderline cheerful.

The coronavirus is a serious threat, of course. But instead of merely using humor to cope, a memetic focus on prevention methods has provided welcome bits of levity — and important information — during a growing crisis.

Measures first implemented in the north extended to the whole country.

Coronavirus is spreading across the United States, but there’s nothing united about the response. With the Trump administration seemingly most focused on downplaying the outbreak, states and cities and businesses are making their own decisions about what preventive measures to impose, rather than working in a coordinated way with uniform standards. It's a mess.

“There’s no systematic plan of when a city should close school, when they should tell businesses that they have to telework, when they should close movie theaters and cancel large gatherings,” Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said on Face the Nation Sunday. “We leave these decisions to local officials, but we really should have a comprehensive plan in terms of recommendations to cities and in some support from the federal government for cities that make that step, make that leap, if you will.”

At the same time, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is talking less about steps the government might take and more about how individuals should respond. “You don’t want to alarm people, but given the spread we see, you know, anything is possible,” he told Fox News. “And that’s the reason why we’ve got to be prepared to take whatever action is appropriate to contain and mitigate the outbreak.”

But what does Fauci want to see? “Social distancing like in Seattle is the way to go. I’m not talking about locking down anything. There’s a big difference between voluntary social distancing and locking anything down.” That right there sounds like a message coming from someone who wants to stop the spread of the disease but knows that proposing any measures more significant than “Don’t go to crowded places, think twice before a long plane trip, and for goodness’ sake don’t go on any cruises” is going to badly upset Donald Trump.

The countries that have successfully slowed the spread of COVID-19 have done so through exactly the kind of response the Trump administration is frantically rejecting. Voluntary social distancing will help in the U.S., but we need more than the good will of individual people at work here.

A new Vanity Fair write-up paints a bleak picture of Donald J. Trump's state of mind, as the coronavirus pandemic looks primed to explode in the United States despite Dear Leader's demands that his staff ignore it into submission. By "bleak picture," we mean that the malignant narcissist in chief appears headed for a total breakdown.

We are told that Trump wants his attorney general to "open investigations of the media for market manipulation" for their reports about the virus. We are told that Trump is "very frustrated he doesn't have a good team around him," despite Trump picking every last one of those incompetent suck-ups himself. We are told that Trump is pining for ex-deputy chief of staff Bill Shine because Trump is furious about how the cameras made him look during his recent Fox News town hall.

How bad is it? Oh, it sounds pretty bad.

Vanity Fair's Gabe Sherman reports, by way of someone "close to the administration," that the still-alleged president of the United States is tipping into new conspiracy theories now, and is "afraid journalists will try to purposefully contract coronavirus to give it to him on Air Force One."

Oh dear.

He also has instructed his Secret Service to "set up a screening program and bar anyone who has a cough from the White House grounds."

Oh dear.

As for the Air Force One theory, it does sound like a natural evolution of Donald Trump's brain ... issues. It is not just that the press is evil, bent on the destruction of his reputation. Now he worries an evil journalist working on behalf of the evil free press will infect themself with a new disease just to give it to History's Greatest Man, Donald J. Trump. (Before you say that this is completely implausible, however, note the existence of one James O'Keefe. Yeah.)

The other part is perhaps more immediately disconcerting. Trump has been known in the past to get angry at people who cough in his presence; ordering the Secret Service to detain coughers at gunpoint is not that big a stretch for an increasingly paranoid Dear Leader. That may have been what did Mick Mulvaney in; Mike Pence may himself be one small sneeze away from being banished to the shadow realm.

Well, at least he now appears to be taking the coronavirus seriously. He is taking it seriously for the only reason a malignant narcissist ever would: It dawned on him, at some recent point, that the virus might pose a personal danger to him. When it was a problem merely being faced by everyone else on the planet, it was only an irritant to the extent that it was damaging his economic numbers.

But this new news that people who are exposed to the virus might expose him, personally, to the same thing? Man the barricades!

No, literally: Secret Service, man the barricades. That's an order.

Helping affected people directly, or offering some more corporate tax cuts?

As the coronavirus outbreak increasingly becomes a pandemic, schools, public events, and public services are shutting down as government authorities such as the Centers for Disease Control urge people to distance themselves from those who could spread the disease. Thanks in part to Donald Trump lying to downplay the impending crisis for his own self-interest, the virus threatens to create major disruptions in many aspects of life and risk the lives of countless Americans. This is why it's critical that we take steps as soon as possible to ensure that November's election runs smoothly, and every state should adopt universal voting by mail.

Universal vote-by-mail works by having every registered voter mailed a ballot that they can return by mail, and, in exchange, states and localities can operate far fewer in-person voting locations and require far fewer poll workers to operate them. Ideally, the postage on ballots is prepaid, and voters have ample opportunities to cast their ballot without hassle. This includes being able to return one’s ballot by mail as late as Election Day or to return it in person at one of numerous drop box locations around their local government jurisdiction, as well being able to access a limited number of in-person voting locations for those who still want to vote that way or are physically unable to do so by mail.

As shown on the map at the top of this post (see here for a larger version), Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington have already transitioned to universal voting by mail ahead of November's elections, and states such as California and Arizona have seen a majority of voters cast their ballots by mail in recent years. Furthermore, states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Virginia have made it considerably easier to vote absentee by mail since the last election. But a large number of states still don’t even allow absentee mail voting without an excuse, let alone mail every registered voter a ballot as the default voting method.

Adopting universal voting by mail is imperative as the coronavirus threatens to become a pandemic. As governments urge citizens to avoid crowded public spaces and to vigilantly wash their hands, having millions of people stand in lines on Election Day and use the same voting machines or even the same pens to fill out paper ballots threatens public health and could dampen voter turnout. Furthermore, because poll workers are very disproportionately the same elderly Americans who are most at risk in a flu pandemic, states and localities may have trouble finding enough poll workers, and those who do show up will be at greater risk of catching or spreading the disease.

These problems should be largely avoidable with universal voting by mail, since it almost entirely eliminates in-person voting and the public gatherings that go with it. Furthermore, vote-by-mail is a cost-saving measure that frees up resources for other things because governments have to operate far fewer in-person polling places. It also has a long track record of increasing voter turnout in the states that have adopted it thanks to the ease of voting that way, especially with prepaid postage negating the need for voters to go to the post office.

Of course, voting by mail is not a silver bullet, either for increasing voting access or for mitigating viral outbreaks. Indeed, Washington’s secretary of state has urged voters not to lick their ballot return envelopes to seal them and instead use an alternative such as a sponge to moisten the envelopes to avoid having those handling the ballots come into contact with potentially infected saliva. However, by taking action as soon as possible, states could heavily expand absentee voting or fully shift to vote-by-mail to both improve how elections operate and protect voters and the integrity of the process itself from the impending pandemic.

The Trump administration wants you to know that it is taking the coronavirus threat very seriously, and that no one is trying to minimize it or its risks:

HHS Sec. Alex Azar on Fox News: "This is a very serious health problem. Nobody is trying to minimize that."

— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) March 9, 2020

Donald Trump disagrees:

So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 9, 2020

But, to be fair, as the number of coronavirus cases in the United States continues to rise, and people continue to die—with no discernible plan to deal with it from the administration—Trump did take the time to insist that the plummeting stock market is the fault of Saudi Arabia and Russia. And that Barack Obama and Joe Biden are crooks. So, carry on. Nothing to see here. Oh, and wash your hands.

President Donald Trump gives a thumbs-up to reporters as he departs the White House on March 6, 2020. | Win McNamee/Getty Images

The president tweeted misinformation about coronavirus and the stock market on Monday — showing just how in denial he is about the threat from the disease.

In two Monday morning tweets, President Trump made it painfully obvious that he is in complete and utter denial about the coronavirus threat.

Monday has seen a flood of bad news related to the coronavirus, particularly on the economic side. The stock market fell sharply amid fears that the measures necessary to combat the virus’s spread will slow economies around the world. The drop was so precipitous that trading on the New York Stock Exchange was automatically suspended for 15 minutes — a stabilizing measure designed to prevent a complete collapse.

The stock market is not a particularly good measure of economic health in general, but it’s one Trump cares for quite a bit. In response to the sell-off, he had two basic options: acknowledge the public’s legitimate fears and take steps to improve confidence in the US response, or blame the media and convince everyone that the problem isn’t real at all.

Guess which one he took?

Both of these tweets are deeply misleading.

It is true that Saudi Arabia and Russia are in the midst of a spat over oil production levels and that it’s causing a drop in the price of oil. However, you can’t separate the oil situation from the coronavirus problem. “Coronavirus is key. It is causing demand to drop dramatically — effectively shutting down the big Asian economies, cancelling flights and causing people to stay home,” writes Emma Ashford, an expert on oil politics at the libertarian Cato Institute.

But a lot of the stock sell-off is about the economic effects of the virus itself, particularly fears that the measures taken to contain it, such as canceling events and restricting travel, will grind the global economy to a halt. Trump seems to be arguing that the market reaction is paranoia stoked by a fake news media inflating the risks from the illness. Doesn’t the flu kill more people, after all?

There are many, many problems with this comparison. One big one is that the US health care system is equipped for dealing with the seasonal flu — but not the flu and another potentially deadly contagious disease at the same time, so more extreme measures may be necessary to prevent it from being overwhelmed. Another is that people have immunities to the flu but not to the coronavirus, which means that one person with Covid-19 could spread it much more easily in an office or school than a person with the flu.

Fundamentally, the issue with these tweets is bigger than Trump not telling the truth. It indicates that instead of facing the reality of a global public health and economic crisis, the president of the United States is living in denial. He is choosing to pretend this is a fake problem and, worse, seems to think he can convince the country and the world that it is, too.

For Americans counting on the Trump administration to protect them from the disease, this should be deeply disturbing.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
While I feel this observation is valid, it will not stay my hand from mocking literary theory.

Today's News: