At White House coronavirus briefings, rescue efforts are extensive but often aspirational

Bad news tends to build up on pandemic days right until prime time, when President Trump and the coronavirus task force gather in the White House briefing room to tamp it down.

There, from the podium, generous quantities of medical supplies are distributed. The innovative forces of American science and industry are marshaling to defeat the enemy and make testing widely available. The economy gets the intensive care it needs for America to quickly recover. The “medical war,” as Trump calls it, is being won.

These pronouncements and pledges have turned out, again and again, to be a description of the administration’s aspirational response to the pandemic, not the one doctors, nurses and stricken families are reporting from the front. Continue reading.