Tag: Trump botched COVID-19 response

Trump-era racist rhetoric makes Chinese students in the U.S. less supportive of democracy

Washington Post logoWhen President Trump uses the phrase “kung flu” to refer to the novel coronavirus, his campaign rally crowds roar with approval. But this xenophobic talk doesn’t just appeal to Trump’s base — it may also be a boon to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In a new paper, we show that racist, anti-Chinese taunts boost support for the Chinese regime from an unexpected group: a new generation of Chinese students in the United States, a cohort many would think likely to embrace democratic values.

Senior figures in the Trump administration like deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger have encouraged the Chinese people to bring democracy to China. But anti-Chinese rhetoric spouted by the president and repeated by his supporters makes this goal far less likely. Continue reading.

Public Outrage Forces CDC To Restore Hospital Data On Website

Hospitalizations for COVID-19 have been seen as a key metric of both the coronavirus’s toll and the health care system’s ability to deal with it. Recent federal actions may strike a blow to the public’s ability to track them.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed from its website, and then restored, data on hospital capacity across the country to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. But in a note, the agency indicated that the data may no longer be updated because of a change in federal reporting requirements to hospitals.

On Wednesday, ProPublica noticed that the CDC’s website had stopped displaying hospital capacity information, which was seen as a good barometer of whether hospitals in certain states had enough beds to deal with surges in COVID-19 cases. The data showed that more than 70 percent of intensive care unit beds in some states, including Texas and Arizona, were filled. That had been viewed by some experts as a benchmark for safely reopening businesses. Continue reading.

‘Sheer lunacy’: Robert Reich explains how Trump’s plan to deal with COVID is only making things worse

AlterNet logoDonald Trump said that June’s jobs report, which showed an uptick, proves the economy is “roaring back.”

Rubbish. The Labor Department gathered the data during the week of June 12, when America was reporting 25,000 new cases of Covid-19 per day. By the time the report was issued, that figure was 55,000.

The economy isn’t roaring back. Just over half of working-age Americans have jobs now, the lowest ratio in over 70 years. What’s roaring back is Covid-19. Continue reading.

Trump faces rising disapproval and widespread distrust on coronavirus, Post-ABC poll finds

Washington Post logoAmericans’ views of President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic have deteriorated significantly as cases rise across the country and personal fears of becoming infected persist, a Washington Post-ABC News poll finds.

The Post-ABC poll shows 38 percent of Americans approve of his handling of the outbreak, down from 46 percent in May and 51 percent in March. Sixty percent disapprove, up from 53 percent in May and 45 percent in March.

More than half of the public — 52 percent — now disapproves “strongly” of Trump’s handling of the outbreak, roughly double the percentage who say they strongly approve of his efforts and an increase from 36 percent in strong disapproval since March. Continue reading.

Who took down the CDC’s coronavirus data? The agency itself.

Alarm over the missing data, which was restored Thursday, became the latest source of tension between the CDC and administration officials.

After the Trump administration ordered hospitals to change how they report coronavirus data to the government, effectively bypassing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, officials at the CDC made a decision of their own: Take our data and go home.

The sudden disappearance of the CDC’s coronavirus dashboards on Wednesday — which drew considerable scrutiny before the agency restored them on Thursday afternoon — has become the latest flashpoint in the extraordinary breakdown between the Washington, D.C.-based federal health department and the nation’s premier public health agency, located in Atlanta.

While Democrats and health care groups spent Thursday blasting the Trump administration over the missing dashboards, which tracked critical data on coronavirus hospitalizations, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services insisted that they were just as shocked when the CDC’s data disappeared from public view. Continue reading.

Masks win political momentum despite GOP holdouts

The Hill logoThe political momentum behind mask mandates is growing quickly, with more governors issuing orders that people wear face coverings in public and major retailers uniting behind them.

Cloth masks or face coverings are now required in public in about half of the states, but some governors — mostly Republicans — are still resisting calls to issue statewide mandates, leading to a patchwork of rules across the country.

Public health experts for several weeks now have pushed for states to issue masking requirements to stop the spread of COVID-19 and help Americans to return to some semblance of normalcy as the search for a vaccine continues. Continue reading.

Kayleigh McEnany lashes out at the press for accurately quoting her saying ‘science should not stand in the way’ of school openings

AlterNet logoWhite House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany lashed out at the media on Thursday after she garnered criticism for her remarks about science and decisions on school reopenings.

Speaking during the afternoon’s press briefing, McEnany stumbled into a gaffe when she urged schools across the country reopen despite the ongoing pandemic and said: “The science should not stand in the way of this.”

This sounded as though she thought schools should reopen regardless of what the science says. The slip-up clearly played into one of the consistent criticisms of the Trump administration — and the GOP more broadly — that it refuses to accept scientific conclusions it finds ideologically inconvenient. Continue reading.

Unpublished White House report recommends stricter coronavirus measures in hard-hit states

NOTE:  This article is provided free of charge by The Washington Post.

Washington Post logoAn unpublished report by the White House Coronavirus Task Force dated Tuesday suggests that at least 18 hard-hit states — including California, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma and Texas — enact stricter measures such as mask requirements and increased testing. The report was first published by the Center for Public Integrity.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) on Thursday sued to stop Atlanta from enforcing some of its coronavirus-related rules, including its recent mandate to wear a face covering in public.

The lawsuit alleges that Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) lacked the authority to implement a mask requirement and that she must obey Kemp’s executive orders, including one signed Wednesday night that explicitly bans municipalities from enacting their own mask ordinances. Continue reading.

Public health groups denounce new Trump move sidelining CDC

The Hill logoA new Trump administration policy that bypasses the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for control of key coronavirus information is provoking outrage among public health experts.

Under the policy, quietly announced late last week, hospitals are now required to report directly to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on the number of COVID-19 patients each facility is treating, available beds and ventilators, and other data.

The CDC had been collecting that information from the start of the pandemic on its National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN), which the agency describes as the country’s most widely used health care-associated infection tracking system. Continue reading.

Trump Officials Are Attacking Anthony Fauci. Thousands Of Doctors Are Hitting Back.

“You cannot have a competent public health response without a clear communication strategy,” one top medical expert said of the White House’s moves against Fauci. “This isn’t it.”

More than 1,000 health officials came to the aid of Dr. Anthony Fauci after a White House official published an op-ed trying to discredit the nation’s top health expert who has helped steer the country through the coronavirus pandemic so far.

Peter Navarro, an assistant to the president and a director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, wrote an op-ed in USA Today criticizing Fauci. The op-ed said Fauci has “been wrong on everything” that Navarro has interacted with him on.

Thousands of doctors are now ridiculing Navarro’s claims and responding with a broad defense of Fauci, who has led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984. Continue reading.