Tag: Trump botched COVID-19 response

Long delays in getting test results hobble coronavirus response

Washington Post logoTest results for the novel coronavirus are taking so long to come back that experts say the results across the United States are often proving useless in the campaign to control the deadly disease.

Some testing sites are struggling to provide results in five to seven days. Others are taking even longer. Outbreaks across the Sun Belt have strained labs beyond capacity. That rising demand, in turn, has caused shortages of swabs, chemical reagents and equipment as far away as New York.

The long testing turnaround times are making it impossible for the United States to replicate the central strategy used by other countries to effectively contain the virus — test, trace and isolate. Like catching any killer, speed is of the essence when it comes to the coronavirus. Continue reading.

U.S. budget deficit shattered one-month record in June as spending outpaced revenue by $864 billion

Washington Post logoA huge spending increase and sharp falloff in revenue led to the large gap. The deficit in the past nine months has breached $2.7 trillion.

The U.S. budget deficit widened to a record-high $864 billion last month because of the federal government’s extraordinary response to the coronavirus pandemic, the Treasury Department said on Monday.

In June 2019, the budget deficit was just $8 billion.

Federal spending rose to more than $1.1 trillion in June, more than twice what the U.S. government spends in a typical month. The amount of tax revenue collected by the federal government remained largely flat, at about $240 billion, in part because the Treasury Department delayed the tax filing deadline until July. Continue reading.

Florida smashes single-day record for new coronavirus cases

Axios logoFlorida reported 15,299 confirmed coronavirus cases on Sunday — a new single-day record for any state, according to its health department.

The big picture: The figure shatters both Florida’s previous recordof 11,458 new cases and the single-state record of 11,694 set by California last week, according to AP. It also surpasses New York’s daily peak of 11,571 new cases in April, and comes just a day after Disney World reopened in Orlando.

Worth noting: More than a dozen states have reported new highs for daily case numbers this week.

Virus outbreak reshapes presidential race in Sun Belt — CBS News Battleground Tracker poll

The coronavirus outbreak is reshaping the presidential race in three key Sun Belt states. Joe Biden is now leading President Trump by six points in Florida, and the two are tied in Arizona and competitive in Texas, where Biden is down by just a point to Mr. Trump. Biden has made gains in part because most say their state’s efforts to contain the virus are going badly — and the more concerned voters are about risks from the outbreak, the more likely they are to support Biden.

In all three states, most voters say their state reopened too soon, and those who say this feel their state went too fast under pressure from the Trump administration. Most also say the president is doing a bad job handling the outbreak. He may be paying a price for that, at least in the short term.

This is helping Biden not only to post bigger gains with groups that already trend Democratic — like women and younger voters — but also to cut into Mr. Trump’s margins with seniors. Seniors who are very concerned about coronavirus back Biden in large numbers.

Businesses plead for states to enforce mask mandates

The Hill logoEnforcement of statewide mask mandates is increasingly falling on retail and restaurant workers as local police departments take a hands-off approach to compliance.

A growing number of states and cities have imposed mask orders to slow the spread of COVID-19 as a second surge of coronavirus cases risks another round of lockdowns. But a wave of clashes between employees and customers has left business groups pleading with state officials to step in and ease the burden on vulnerable workers.

“Public health officials and local governments are in the best position to enforce these requirements,” said Jason Straczewski, vice president for government relations and political affairs at the National Retail Federation. Continue reading.

New Poll Shows Overwhelming Disapproval For Trump’s Response To Coronavirus

Sixty-seven percent of Americans disapprove of Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new poll.

The latest ABC News/Ipsos poll found a record low 33 percent approval rating for the way Trump has handled the COVID-19 pandemic, down from 54 percent in March and 41 percent in mid-June.

Since May, Trump has focused little attention on curbing the pandemic. Continue reading.

‘I think I made a mistake’: Patient who thought pandemic was a ‘hoax’ dies after going to ‘COVID party’

AlterNet logoAccording to WOAI, a patient in San Antonio, Texas in their 30s has died after going to a “COVID party” — a gathering of people who intentionally expose themselves to coronavirus to see for themselves whether the virus is real.

Per Methodist Healthcare Chief Medical Officer Dr. Jane Appleby, the patient’s final words to the nurse were, “I think I made a mistake, I thought this was a hoax, but it’s not.”

“It doesn’t discriminate and none of us are invincible,” warned Appleby. “I don’t want to be an alarmist and we’re just trying to share some real-world examples to help our community realize that this virus is very serious and can spread easily.” Continue reading.

COVID-19 surge pushes US toward deadly cliff

The Hill logoThe coronavirus is spreading at ever-faster rates in a broad array of states, putting the U.S. on the precipice of an explosion of illness that threatens to overwhelm the nation’s health care system.

The painful economic lockdowns imposed in March gave the country time to flatten the epidemiological curve and contain the virus. But that window of opportunity, which came at great economic cost, is quickly slamming shut. Health experts say all signs point to a deadly summer and fall unless government leaders implement a much more robust national strategy.

The breadth of the spread is staggering. Forty-three states have seen the number of cases confirmed on an average day increase in the last two weeks. The number of patients in hospitals has risen over the same period in 29 states. More than 80 percent of intensive care beds are occupied in Alabama, Arizona and Georgia. Continue reading.

Fauci is sidelined by the White House as he steps up blunt talk on pandemic

Washington Post logoTrump hasn’t consulted with the scientist since early June, telling Hannity ‘he’s ‘a nice man but he’s made a lot of mistakes.’

For months, Anthony S. Fauci has played a lead role in America’s coronavirus pandemic, as a diminutive, Brooklyn-accented narrator who has assessed the risk and issued increasingly blunt warnings as the nation’s response has gone badly awry.

But as the Trump administration has strayed from the advice of many of its scientists and public health experts, the White House has moved to sideline Fauci, scuttled some of his planned TV appearances and largely kept him out of the Oval Office for more than a month even as coronavirus infections surge in large swaths of the country.

In recent days, the 79-year-old scientist and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has found himself directly in the president’s crosshairs. During a Fox News interview Thursday with Sean Hannity, Trump said Fauci “is a nice man, but he’s made a lot of mistakes.” And when Greta Van Susteren asked him last week about Fauci’s assessment that the country was not in a good place, Trump said flatly: “I disagree with him.” Continue reading.