Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of fifty-six.  Sunrise is 6:04 AM and sunset 7:42 PM, for 13h 38m 36s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 11.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1775, the Revolutionary War begins with an American victory in Concord during the battles of Lexington and Concord.

Recommended for reading in full —

 Noah Smith writes The Lockdown Is Tough. Ending It Too Soon Would Be Worse (‘The likely result will be a resurgence in coronavirus cases, new shutdowns and even deeper economic pain’):

President Donald Trump’s approach to the issue of coronavirus lockdowns has been characterized by a series of unsettling overreaches and reversals. In late March, Trump declared that he wanted to end U.S. lockdowns by Easter. A few days later the president reversed his statement and extended federal guidelines for shutdowns through the end of April. This week, Trump briefly attempted to assert presidential authority to order states to end their lockdowns, but after it became clear that this probably was unconstitutional, he backed down and declared that he wouldn’t interfere with state and regional reopening plans. At a press briefing today [4.16] Trump gave his blessing to governors to go ahead with their own plans, issuing guidelines for recommending when each state or region should reopen. It’s a step in the right direction.

Some voices continue to call for the economy to reopen quickly in spite of the mortal danger of the pandemic. Indiana Representative Trey Hollingsworth recently asserted that the many American deaths that would result would be the “lesser of…two evils” compared with the economic cost of continued lockdowns. Investor Michael Burry, famed for shorting the housing bubble of the early 2000s, has claimed there is “no justification” for current policies. And protesters in Michigan, Ohio and elsewhere have demanded immediate reopening.

These voices are dangerously wrong. Even with most of the nation under lockdown as of the end of March, U.S. deaths have climbed to more than 34,000 and are forecast to surpass 60,000 — more Americans than died in the Vietnam War and many times the number who died in the War on Terror. Without lockdowns, epidemiologists predict that deaths could reach into the hundreds of thousands and possibly claim more lives than any war in the country’s history. And that doesn’t even include the long-term damage to the lungs and other organs of many who survive the disease.

But weighing these staggering human costs against the supposed economic benefits of a quick reopening relies on a crucial and flawed assumption — that economic conditions would rapidly go back to normal if only governments allowed people out of their houses. The truth is much grimmer.

 S.V. Date reports Trump Campaign Secretly Paying $180,000 A Year To His Sons’ Significant Others:

Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of eldest son Donald Trump Jr., and Lara Trump, wife of middle son Eric Trump, are each receiving $15,000 a month, according to two GOP sources who are informal White House advisers and who spoke on condition of anonymity.

They were unsure when the payments began but say they are being made by campaign manager Bradley Parscale through his company rather than directly by either the campaign or the party in order to avoid public reporting requirements.

The Beekeeper Making Electronic Music With Bees:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of fifty-eight.  Sunrise is 6:05 AM and sunset 7:41 PM, for 13h 35m 53s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 18.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1943, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is killed when his aircraft is shot down by U.S. fighters over Bougainville Island.

Recommended for reading in full —

Austin Carr and Chris Palmeri report Carnival Executives Knew They Had a Virus Problem, But Kept the Party Going (‘More than 1,500 people on the company’s cruise ships have been diagnosed with Covid-19, and dozens have died’):

Carnival’s ships have become a floating testament to the viciousness of the new coronavirus and raised questions about corporate negligence and fleet safety. President and Chief Executive Officer Arnold Donald says his company’s response was reasonable under the circumstances. “This is a generational global event—it’s unprecedented,” he says. “Nothing’s perfect, OK? They will say, ‘Wow, these things Carnival did great. These things, 20/20 hindsight, they could’ve done better.’?”

Donald says that if his company failed to prepare for the pandemic, it failed in the same way that many national and local governments failed, and should be judged accordingly. “Each ship is a mini-city,” he says, and Carnival’s response shouldn’t be condemned before “analyzing what New York did to deal with the crisis, what the vice president’s task force did, what the Italians, Chinese, South Koreans, and Japanese did. We’re a small part of the real story. We’re being pulled along by it.”

In the view of the CDC, however, Carnival helped fuel the crisis. “Maybe that excuse flies after the Diamond Princess, or maybe after the Grand Princess,” says Cindy Friedman, the experienced epidemiologist who leads the CDC’s cruise ship task force. “I have a hard time believing they’re just a victim of happenstance.”

While it would have been tough to get everyone aboard the ships back to their home ports without infecting more people, Friedman says several of the plagued Carnival ships didn’t even begin their voyages until well after the company knew it was risky to do so. She says its actions created a “huge strain” on the country. “Nobody should be going on cruise ships during this pandemic, full stop,” she says.

Michael Gerson writes The dangerous conservative campaign against expertise:

The main failures we have seen in the coronavirus response have not been caused by excessive confidence in experts. Our problems have been rooted in the failure of political leaders to treat the warnings of experts with sufficient seriousness, and to act on those warnings with sufficient urgency. It was the president who publicly dismissed the disease as a minor annoyance when other members of his administration knew that to be untrue. It was the president who characterized pandemic awareness as a political conspiracy during wasted weeks. It was the president who spouted misinformation about the disease and its treatment while horrified experts stood beside him.

From the beginning, flattening the curve was going to require heroic measures to achieve mixed results. That is the nature of reality, not a commentary on public health expertise. The experts have earned our trust. And continued progress depends on believing them.

Quarantine Cooking Show: Spaghetti Carbonara:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of forty-seven.  Sunrise is 6:07 AM and sunset 7:40 PM, for 13h 33m 09s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 26.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets via teleconference at 3:30 PM.

On this day in 1970, the ill-fated Apollo 13 spacecraft returns to Earth safely.

Recommended for reading in full —

 Joel Rose reports Carol D. Leonnig, Elizabeth Dwoskin, and John Hudson report As U.S. discouraged mask use for public, White House team raced to secure face coverings from Taiwan for senior staff:

The urgent appeal to Taiwan on March 14 highlights a stark conflict between the Trump administration’s stance then on the use of masks and the race behind the scenes to obtain them for key White House personnel. At the time, the U.S. government was discouraging the public from wearing masks, saying that healthy people didn’t need them and that the gear should be saved for front-line medical workers most at risk of infection.

Because of that guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the White House was not issuing masks to its staff, according to two officials. But inside the NSC, a top deputy was convinced that face coverings should be used more broadly to protect both his team and the public at large.

The resulting arrangement he struck with Taipei made thousands of masks available for White House staff use two weeks before the administration reversed policy and advised that citizens should broadly begin wearing cloth face coverings in public.

The episode reveals how some top White House officials were pushing for a wider embrace of masks early on to help slow the infection’s spread.

President Trump resisted endorsing such guidance, the subject of sharp debate between his advisers and government health experts, and even after doing so, declared that he would not wear one himself.

 David Shribman writes Once a great laboratory, Wisconsin is now a haven for the politics of resentment and revenge:

And so a state where sober and serious-minded voters once strolled to polling places in tidy towns with a sense of duty, a feeling of responsibility and an air of rural rectitude, instead this week found itself convulsed in tumult, conducting perhaps the most physically perilous election in American history, with voters practicing both social distancing and social protest in hopelessly lengthy lines.

The entire dark comedy may have been summarized by a woman in a homemade mask standing in her puffer vest in a line extended by social-distancing protocols. She held a handmade sign proclaiming the only thing Wisconsinites agreed upon this week: ”This is Ridiculous.”

The state’s 2011 redistricting gave the Republicans firm control over the state legislature in a period when Scott Walker, who served as governor from 2011 to last year, had introduced a muscular form of Republicanism into the state; the new GOP battled government-worker unions and liberal redoubts in the huge public university in Madison. Indeed, the University of Wisconsin once was so much a part of the state’s political culture that links between it and the state government were known nationally as the‘’Wisconsin Idea,’’ where knowledge stretched to the borders of the state.

Is it a dog, is it a plane? Dog soars over a farm gate with his tail spinning like a propeller:

Moment adorable dog makes incredible jump over steel gate https://t.co/wxj3IhmKlS via @MailOnline

— John Adams (@DailyAdams) April 17, 2020

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of forty-six.  Sunrise is 6:09 AM and sunset 7:39 PM, for 13h 30m 25s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 35.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1963, Dr. King writes pens his Letter from Birmingham Jail while incarcerated in Birmingham, Alabama for protesting against segregation.

Recommended for reading in full —

 Joel Rose reports A ‘War’ For Medical Supplies: States Say FEMA Wins By Poaching Orders: 

State and local officials are caught up in a fierce global competition for masks, gowns, ventilators and other medical supplies. The White House has told them not to rely on the federal government because it’s just a “backup,” and to find their own gear.

At the same time, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is keeping a tight grip on critical medical supplies leaving the country – and coming in from overseas. This new system is disrupting an emergency supply chain that’s been in place for decades.

And now governors, hospitals and local officials say the federal government is big-footing them by poaching the supplies they ordered.

“We had a good lead with a manufacturer on vents, and they got swept up by FEMA, so we’re not getting them,” Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, in an interview with CNN this month.

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican, says his state placed an order for millions of N-95 respirator masks — but never got them. “We had our 3 million masks that we had ordered … confiscated in the port in New York,” Baker said at a press conference this month.

After federal officials took those masks, Baker says Massachusetts scrambled to arrange a new shipment from China. But this time, state officials used a private plane that belongs to the New England Patriots.

So where did that first order of masks end up?

“I don’t have any specific information on that,” said Captain W. Russell Webster, who is in charge of FEMA’s coronavirus response in New England, in an interview with member station WBUR.

Robert Faturechi reports Senator Richard Burr Sold D.C. Townhouse to Donor at a Rich Price:

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, has come under fire in recent weeks for unloading stock holdings right before the market crashed on fears of coronavirus and for a timely sale of shares in an obscure Dutch fertilizer company.

Now the North Carolina Republican’s 2017 sale of his Washington, D.C., home to a group led by a donor and powerful lobbyist who had business before Burr’s committee is raising additional ethical questions.

Burr sold the small townhouse, in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, for what, by some estimates, was an above market price — $900,000 — to a team led by lobbyist John Green. That is tens of thousands of dollars above some estimates of the property’s value by tax assessors, a real estate website and a local real estate agent. The sale was done off-market, without the home being listed for sale publicly.

Green is a longtime donor to Burr’s political campaigns and has co-hosted at least one fundraiser for him. In 2017, the year of the sale, Green lobbied on behalf of a stream of clients with business before Burr’s committees.

Dogs Enjoying Steak: 

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of forty-one.  Sunrise is 6:10 AM and sunset 7:38 PM, for 13h 27m 39s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 44.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Unified School District’s board meets tonight at 6:30 PM briefly in open session, then entering closed session until returning in open session at 7:00 PM. The 7:00 PM open session will be available via Zoom Online.

On this day in 1861, Wisconsin receives a call to send soldiers: “Governor Alexander W. Randall received a telegram from Washington requesting one regiment of 780 men to serve the Union for three months in the Civil War. Within a week ten companies, from Kenosha, Beloit, Horican, Fond du Lac, Madison, and Milwaukee were ready.”

Recommended for reading in full —

 Emily Badger reports Cities That Went All In on Social Distancing in 1918 Emerged Stronger for It (‘They had lower mortality rates from the influenza pandemic. But their economies also appeared to fare better’):

As the first local influenza deaths were counted in the fall of 1918, officials in Minneapolis moved quickly — more aggressively than even state health officials thought was wise — and shut down the city. They closed schools, churches, theaters and pool halls, effective midnight on Oct. 12.

Across the Mississippi River, St. Paul remained largely open into November, with its leaders confident they had the epidemic under control. Fully three weeks after Minneapolis — with The St. Paul Pioneer Press pleading “In Heaven’s Name Do Something!” — St. Paul ordered sweeping closures, too.

Both cities, relative to the worst-hit parts of the country, escaped steep death tolls. But the mortality rate in Minneapolis was considerably lower than in St. Paul. And as researchers today look back on those interventions, it appears the economy in Minneapolis emerged stronger, too.

The comparison between the Twin Cities is instructive today not just for what it tells us about the health benefits of social distancing, but also for what it says about any economic costs that come with it.

In 1918, cities that committed earlier and longer to interventions like banning public gatherings and closing schools didn’t fare worse for disrupting their economies for longer. Many of those cities actually had relatively larger gains in manufacturing employment, manufacturing output and bank assets in 1919 and into the next few years, according to a new study from researchers at the Federal Reserve and M.I.T. This is particularly clear among Western cities that had more time to prepare for a pandemic that hit the East Coast first.

Eswar Prasad and Ethan Wu write Anatomy of the coronavirus collapse:

But there is good reason to worry that the world economy is heading into a deep, protracted recession. Much will depend on the pandemic’s trajectory and whether policymakers’ responses are sufficient to contain the damage while rebuilding consumer and business confidence.

But a rapid recovery seems highly unlikely. Demand has been ravaged, there have been extensive disruptions to manufacturing supply chains, and a financial crisis is already underway. Unlike the 2008-09 crash, which was triggered by liquidity shortages in financial markets, the COVID-19 crisis involves fundamental solvency issues for firms and industries well beyond the financial sector.

Institutions Look for Creative Solutions to Ventilator Shortage: