The first coronavirus case in the U.S. and South Korea was detected on the same day. By late January, Seoul had medical companies starting to work on a diagnostic test — one was approved a week later. Today, the U.S. isn’t even close to meeting test demand https://t.co/r49Z9SzZF5 pic.twitter.com/8FCkQkHiHQ
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 18, 2020
Republicans for the Rule of Law asks a simple question: Why Did President Trump Lie About the COVID-19 Crisis?.
The first responsibility of government is, as the Constitution says, “to provide for the common defense.” President Trump has now rightly compared the coronavirus pandemic to a war. But he was still minimizing the threat as recently as three days ago.
In a crisis, there are three rules that must be followed when communicating with the public: Be first. Be right. Be credible. President Trump has often been first but he has seldom been right and he has never been credible. In early February, 72% of Republicans agreed that coronavirus was a serious threat. Today, that number is 40%. President Trump bears responsibility misleading his supporters.
Accurate and timely information is America’s most potent defense against the pandemic we now face. The 60% of Republicans who have been misled by the president’s self-serving coronavirus lies are our families, our friends, and our neighbors. We urge them, and all Americans, to get their coronavirus information from the CDC and other reliable sources. This isn’t about politics. It’s about saving hundreds of thousands of American lives.
Good morning. 
Friday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of thirty-six. Sunrise is 6:55 AM and sunset 7:08 PM, for 12h 13m 06s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 13.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1958, an angry mob burns serial killer Ed Gein’s home in Plainfield, WI “in response to rumors that it would be purchased at an auction and reopened for tourism.”
Recommended for reading in full —
Tim Mak reports Intelligence Chairman Raised Virus Alarms Weeks Ago, Secret Recording Shows:
The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee warned a small group of well-connected constituents three weeks ago to prepare for dire economic and societal effects of the coronavirus, according to a secret recording obtained by NPR.
The remarks from U.S. Sen. Richard Burr were more stark than any he had delivered in more public forums.
On Feb. 27, when the United States had 15 confirmed cases of COVID-19, President Trump was tamping down fears and suggesting that the virus could be seasonal.
“It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle. It will disappear,” the president said then, before adding, “it could get worse before it gets better. It could maybe go away. We’ll see what happens.”
On that same day, Burr attended a luncheon held at a social club called the Capitol Hill Club. And he delivered a much more alarming message.
“There’s one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history,” he said, according to a secret recording of the remarks obtained by NPR. “It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.”
Robert Faturechi and Derek Willis report Senator Dumped Up to $1.7 Million of Stock After Reassuring Public About Coronavirus Preparedness (‘Intelligence Chair Richard Burr’s selloff came around the time he was receiving daily briefings on the health threat’):
Soon after he offered public assurances that the government was ready to battle the coronavirus, the powerful chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, sold off a significant percentage of his stocks, unloading between $628,000 and $1.72 million of his holdings on Feb. 13 in 33 separate transactions.
As the head of the intelligence committee, Burr, a North Carolina Republican, has access to the government’s most highly classified information about threats to America’s security. His committee was receiving daily coronavirus briefings around this time, according to a Reuters story.
A week after Burr’s sales, the stock market began a sharp decline and has lost about 30% since.
The luncheon had been organized by the Tar Heel Circle, a nonpartisan group whose membership consists of businesses and organizations in North Carolina, the state Burr represents. Membership to join the Tar Heel Circle costs between $500 and $10,000 and promises that members “enjoy interaction with top leaders and staff from Congress, the administration, and the private sector,” according to the group’s website.
Lachlan Markay, William Bredderman, Sam Brodey report Sen. Kelly Loeffler Dumped Millions in Stock After Coronavirus Briefing:
Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) reported the first sale of stock jointly owned by her and her husband on Jan. 24, the very day that her committee, the Senate Health Committee, hosted a private, all-senators briefing from administration officials, including the CDC director and Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on the coronavirus.
No state delegation in America has been less receptive to a federal coronavirus relief package than the WISGOP delegation to Washington. Allison Stevens reports Congress clears 2nd major coronavirus package; 3rd in the works:
A second major coronavirus package cleared the U.S. Senate Wednesday and is now headed to President Donald Trump for his signature.
The bill passed 90-8, with overwhelming bipartisan support. The multi-billion dollar measure aims to slow the spread of a new coronavirus and stimulate the economy as a major recession looms.
The package would provide free access to tests for the virus, including for those without health insurance. It would also give workers affected by the virus temporary paid sick leave, boost unemployment benefits, strengthen government food programs for children, older people and those with low incomes and help states meet expenses for Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor.
“It is aimed at making it easier for people to socially distance themselves,” Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) said in an interview.
However, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) was one of just eight senators to vote against the bill. And all of Wisconsin’s Republican House members also voted against the bill, reportedly at Johnson’s urging.
It’s nearly impossible for a reasonable person to understand how anyone would follow Ron Johnson’s lead: he shows outward signs of either intellectual, educational, or emotional deficiencies (or perhaps all of these). See Public Policy Responses to the Coronavirus: ‘You have to address the health side.’
Johnson has become the subject of national ridicule for observing that “[r]ight now all people are hearing about are the deaths. I’m sure the deaths are horrific, but the flip side of this is the vast majority of people who get coronavirus do survive.” Johnson later doubled down, declaring that “getting coronavirus is not a death sentence except for maybe no more than 3.4 percent of our population (and) I think probably far less.”
Even an obtuse person should understand that a fatality rate applied to 3.4% of the population, or in Johnson’s uncredentialed estimation perhaps “far less” than that would represent a profound human tragedy.
(Note well: I’m not offering a fatality projection, and needless to say never will – I’m considering Johnson’s use of a figure that shows he’s both indifferent to human life and ignorant of the rippling consequences of a pandemic.)
His previous conspiratorial musings about Ukraine, etc., however objectionable, are less objectionable than his present (and repeated) expressions of indifference to life.
Johnson is unworthy of serving our beautiful state, and in a more responsible time he would be – figuratively – pulled by the collar and dragged from public office.
Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of fifty-five. Sunrise is 6:57 AM and sunset 7:07 PM, for 12h 10m 10s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 20.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1962, Bob Dylan releases his first album, the eponymously titled Bob Dylan.
Recommended for reading in full —
Raquel Rutledge and Mark Johnson report Wisconsin nurses say the shortage of masks, gowns and protective gear puts them at risk during coronavirus outbreak:
Nurses and other health care workers in Wisconsin are grappling with a shortage of masks, gowns and other gear to protect them from COVID-19 and are experiencing other breaches in safety protocol they fear put them at risk.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has heard from nearly a dozen health care workers from hospitals in Milwaukee and Madison who report they have no protective masks or that they have been required to wear a single mask all day.
“This is cause for concern,” said Gina Dennik-Champion, executive director of the Wisconsin Nursing Association, an advocacy group for the state’s roughly 90,000 nurses.
Masks degrade the longer you wear them and can become contaminated when you reuse them.
Mitchell Schmidt reports Tony Evers restricts child care center capacity as state COVID-19 cases top 100:
Adding another layer of antiviral measures — and challenges for parents — Gov. Tony Evers on Wednesday placed restrictions on child-care center capacity as part of a statewide response to the spread of COVID-19, which now tops 100 cases statewide.
Evers also officially requested federal disaster loans, underscoring the devastating impact the order to close schools, restaurants, retail establishments and other businesses is expected to have on owners and employees in an effort to slow the spread of the respiratory disease.
“Social distancing and self-isolation are critical steps in reducing and preventing the spread of this virus in our communities, but it comes at an economic cost to our local businesses,” Evers said in a statement.
Under Evers’ latest order, which takes effect at 8 a.m. Thursday, child-care centers will not be allowed to operate with more than 10 staff members or more than 50 children present at a time. The order remains in effect for the duration of the public health emergency Evers declared last week.
Christopher Weaver, Betsy McKay, and Brianna Abbott report America Needed Coronavirus Tests. The Government Failed. (‘Decisions that limited testing for the pathogen blinded the U.S. to the outbreak’s scale. Here’s how it happened’):
When cases of the new coronavirus began emerging several weeks ago in California, Washington state and other pockets of the country, U.S. public-health officials worried this might be The Big One, emails and interviews show.
The testing program they rolled out to combat it, though, was a small one.
Limited testing has blinded Americans to the scale of the outbreak so far, impeding the nation’s ability to fight the virus through isolating the sick and their contacts, public-health officials say. As of early Wednesday, about 6,500 people in the U.S. had tested positive, data compiled by Johns Hopkins University show, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had reported only about 32,000 tests conducted at its facilities and other public-health labs.
Massive Sea Lion Found Blocking the Road in Washington State:
Economist Austan Goolsbee offers three scenes, in his words, for addressing the coronavirus pandemic. All three, in the order he presents them, are sound. Most economic schools of thought – and all sound ones across the continuum – would consider something like his suggestions in response to a pandemic.
One obvious note – or at least a note that should be obvious. Republicans like Sen. Ron Johnson who think think benefits will incentivize people not to work are either profoundly ignorant or profoundly stupid. (Most people are sharp; there are very few people who are anything like stupid. Perhaps one needs to make an exception for Johnson. He may truly have a head full of mush.)
The labor force – and free markets in labor – are now being prevented or discouraged from working due to illness or concern of becoming ill. We’ve a unique public health problem, across our entire continent, and under that condition a unique labor market concern arises: laborers who are too close together only risk greater weakness to themselves and across the labor pool. We don’t have a problem incentivizing to people not to work, so to speak – we have a problem of not incentivizing people to stay home when they should be away from others.
Anyone with even an elementary grasp of free markets in labor should be able to understand this regrettable result of a pandemic.
Goolsbee’s suggestions immediately follow —
Scene 1:VIRUS ECONOMICS
Here the most important thing you can do for the economy is slow the virus or show it has a lower bound. Pay sick not to work, buy ventilators, test/isolate. Nothing works until you get a handle on this.Scene 2: PREVENT FOREVER DAMAGE FROM NOW PROBLEMS
Even if it rebounds soon, many businesses & ppl will not be able to survive the shock. Extensions on loans, food stamps, bankruptcy/foreclosure moratoria, money to stave off permanent collapse is key here.Scene 3: STIMULUS
Only AFTER 1 and 2 can you effectively get ppl spending again. Personally I favor cutting sales taxes here because it incentivizes actual spending rather than more savings if people remain fearful after virus wanes but any good bang-for-buck stuff here works.But there’s danger in trying 3 before 1 or 2: if govt spends $500b and nothing happens but rich people get another tax cut, no one will agree to any further stimulus again.
And there’s good hay to be made in using #1 as stimulus—govt program to 3x ventilators, rent out entire hotels for 6 mos for care centers, whatever. Do the WWII mobilization type stuff applied to health. It ramps down fear can help move us quicker to scenes 2 and 3.
As in financial crisis, you can do anything until you stop the bank runs. Here the runs are ordinary people withdrawing from the economy. You have to address the health side before they will come back.
So one hears that an effort toward assistance for children’s breakfast & lunch meals received a lower initial response than some expected. Perhaps, but responses take time – especially in a community where large numbers of children live in poor families that almost certainly do not have conventional broadband access.
Initial responses are not indicative of need. It will take time for families to learn by word of mouth that meals are available. There is no reason whatever to mention how few arrived on the first day; more will arrive in future days as awareness grows. Along the way, adjustments can be made (and may have to be made) to quantities and for scheduling to accommodate greater numbers.
To provide meals is the right course; providers are acting well and compassionately in defense of others. Meeting needs takes time, but one has no doubt these needs can be met.
Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will see scattered showers and a high of forty-five. Sunrise is 6:58 AM and sunset 7:06 PM, for 12h 07m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 29.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1865, the Congress of the Confederate States adjourns for the last time.
Recommended for reading in full —
Chris Giles, Brendan Greeley, and Martin Arnold report Global recession already here, say top economists:
The world economy has fallen into recession, suffering from a “wicked cocktail” of coronavirus and the dramatic action to limit its spread, according to four former IMF chief economists.
As the virus has spread from China to the rest of the world, economists no longer feel they have to wait for data to confirm the world is in recession, even though official forecasts remain more optimistic.
….
A long outbreak could also lead to a second round of consequences, where workers were let go and there was another fall in demand, eroding long-term confidence, he warned. “These kinds of effects — firms closing down — depend on how prolonged the first round is, and what steps we take to alleviate that first round. So it is up in the air,” he said.
Noah Lanard writes We Went to Chinatown in Queens Last Week and Saw the Future of Restaurants. It Was Grim:
James Chen, the founder of a delivery app called GoHive, told me last week that half the stalls at one Flushing’s main food halls had already closed. Chinese immigrants were growing fearful from what they saw happen in their homeland, as well as the sometimes misleading information spreading on the messaging platform WeChat that made the virus seem even more deadly than it already is. Another problem was that many American news outlets had used photos of Flushing to illustrate stories about the coronavirus, feeding the false impression that the neighborhood of small businesses and apartment buildings was at the heart of the pandemic. I had been one of those food tourists from Brooklyn two months ago, when I’d angled for a table in the packed New World Mall food court; now there appeared to be more staff than patrons.
Drew Jones reports These historic sites and attractions are offering virtual tours during the coronavirus pandemic:
Last year, the world’s most visited museum was the subject of lamentations over overcrowding and peculiar guest behavior. Now because of its closure, visitors to the Louvre can check out virtual tours of the Egyptian antiquities collection, remains of the Louvre’s moat and the Galerie d’Apollon without having to brush by anyone’s shoulders.
….
The national lockdown in Italy has forced the country to a near-standstill, shuttering public events, soccer stadiums and even the Vatican. Now, visitors can tour the interior artworks of the chapel, including its renowned ceiling and “The Last Judgment,” by the Renaissance-era painter Michelangelo.
….
The Guggenheim is offering VR access to its entire contemporary arts collection through a partnership with Google Arts & Culture. Using the Street View feature, visitors can tour the museum’s iconic architecture, sprawling design and any of its galleries.
Penguins toured Shedd Aquarium, now closed because of coronavirus concerns:
Linked above, an episode of The Daily, a podcast of the New York Times —
Italy has become the epicenter of the pandemic’s European migration, with nearly 30,000 infections anToday, we speak to one Italian doctor triaging patients north of Milan about the road that may lie ahead. Guest: Dr. Fabiano Di Marco, a professor at the University of Milan who is also the head of the respiratory unit of the Hospital Papa Giovanni XXIII in Bergamo, a nearby town. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.
Background reading:
- In less than three weeks, the virus has overloaded hospitals in northern Italy, leaving doctors to decide who lives and who dies. Now, with the country on lockdown, families are having to delay the burial of their loved ones.
- President Trump released suggested guidelines to control the virus, stopping short of the mandatory lockdown now in place in Italy. Here are the latest updates on the crisis.
- We hope you are well, wherever you are. Here are a few tips on staying safe and coping in this moment.
Good morning.
St. Patrick’s Day in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of forty-three. Sunrise is 7:00 AM and sunset 7:04 PM, for 12h 04m 18s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 38.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1941, Milwaukee’s airport was named to honor the city’s famous air-power pioneer, General William “Billy” Mitchell.
Recommended for reading in full —
Nahal Toosi, Daniel Lipman, and Dan Diamond report Before Trump’s inauguration, a warning: ‘The worst influenza pandemic since 1918′:
Seven days before Donald Trump took office, his aides faced a major test: the rapid, global spread of a dangerous virus in cities like London and Seoul, one serious enough that some countries were imposing travel bans.
In a sober briefing, Trump’s incoming team learned that the disease was an emerging pandemic — a strain of novel influenza known as H9N2 — and that health systems were crashing in Asia, overwhelmed by the demand.
The briefing was intended to hammer home a new, terrifying reality facing the Trump administration, and the incoming president’s responsibility to protect Americans amid a crisis. But unlike the coronavirus pandemic currently ravaging the globe, this 2017 crisis didn’t really happen — it was among a handful of scenarios presented to Trump’s top aides as part of a legally required transition exercise with members of the outgoing administration of Barack Obama.
And in the words of several attendees, the atmosphere was “weird” at best, chilly at worst.
….
Lisa Monaco, Obama’s homeland security adviser, explained the thinking behind the January 2017 session in a recent essay for Foreign Affairs. “Although the exercise was required, the specific scenarios we chose were not,” she wrote. “We included a pandemic scenario because I believed then, and I have warned since, that emerging infectious disease was likely to pose one of the gravest risks for the new administration.”
Michael Gerson writes Never have GOP votes against impeachment seemed more shortsighted:
Every time Vice President Pence appears for a coronavirus briefing, it is a reminder what the votes of just 20 Republican senators for impeachment might have accomplished for the republic.
Pence is no Franklin D. Roosevelt, but neither is he an obviously outmatched leader like his boss. The vice president is a sycophant but not an incompetent. He possesses the type of qualities one might find in an effective governor facing a hurricane. President Trump possesses the qualities one might expect in a shady businessman trying to shift responsibility for bad debt and mismanagement — which was the main leadership qualification on his pre-presidential résumé.
Paul Farhi and report On Fox News, suddenly a very different tune about the coronavirus:
For weeks, some of Fox News’s most popular hosts downplayed the threat of the coronavirus, characterizing it as a conspiracy by media organizations and Democrats to undermine President Trump.
Fox News personalities such as Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham accused the news media of whipping up “mass hysteria” and being “panic pushers.” Fox Business host Trish Regan called the alleged media-Democratic alliance “yet another attempt to impeach the president.”
With Trump’s declaration on Friday that the virus constitutes a national emergency, the tone on Fox News has quickly shifted.
On his program on Friday, Hannity — the most watched figure on cable news — lauded the president’s handling of what the host is now, belatedly, referring to as a “crisis.”
SpaceX rocket stage separation captured in amazing ground view:
There has been some uncertainty in Whitewater about how cautious one should be in response to the coronavirus pandemic. As it turns out, Whitewater’s residents have had the right view of this, recognizing as they have the need for distance between people to limit the spread of disease.
One reads, in an email from the Whitewater Unified School District dated 3.15.20, that schools will be closed beginning today (3.16.20):
Whitewater Unified School District is closing effective immediately due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Due to the increasing number of corona-virus cases in Wisconsin, the increased concerns of parents, students, and staff, and the large number of closures in surrounding communities and states, it is in the best interest of the health and safety of Whitewater students and community to close schools beginning tomorrow.
This is a sensible, rational approach, and speaks well of our community’s residents.
Sometimes it’s necessary to move in the direction of danger (to rescue a drowning person, for example), sometimes one needs to stay still (so as not to excite a wild animal, for example), and other times (as with an infectious disease) it’s a proper approach for ordinary people to move calmly to a reasonable distance from crowded areas.
An abundance of caution (through social distancing, for example) is not in opposition to good science – it is an application of good scientific principles from national experts in times of limited local testing data.
There will be, during this time, serious (and heartbreaking) concerns about children having proper nutrition during a school shutdown. Our community – and thousands of other cities & towns – will face (and should be able to meet) these needs. By lessening one concern, we will be able to turn less distractedly to another.
None of this is desirable; it is all regrettable.
We are simply asked to do the best we can, with compassionate attention to those most affected.
