Tag: Trump botched COVID-19 response

Coronavirus is spreading in fraternity houses, raising concerns for campuses opening this fall

Washington Post logoLeaders agonizing about whether, and how, to safely reopen colleges and universities this fall now have another worry: the frat house.

In recent weeks, as students have trickled back onto campus, public health officials have been warning about an alarming rise in coronavirus cases that appears related to fraternity housing and parties that had been a staple of the college experience.

With students often crammed into houses that were hard to police and regulate before the pandemic, public health officials say they think major changes are needed to better protect the health of students and the broader community in college towns from coast to coast. Continue reading.

After months of decline, America’s coronavirus death rate begins to rise

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Washington Post logoThe daily death toll from America’s coronavirus crisis rose sharply this week amid a dramatic surge in confirmed infections across the South and West that has inundated hospitals with ill patients and forced several states to pause or reverse plans to reopen businesses.

Texas, Arizona and South Carolina have all seen their death tolls rise by more than 100 percent in the past four weeks, according to an analysis of state and county health data by The Washington Post. Four more states — Mississippi, Tennessee, California and Louisiana — have seen at least a 10 percent jump in that time span.

“They’re starting to tick up,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “Deaths are a lagging indicator, so we always expected that if they were going to go up, it would take some time.” Continue reading.

Conservative flounders when a Fox News guest details Trump’s spectacular coronavirus failure

AlterNet logoWith the presidential election less than four months away, pundits are hotly debating President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus crisis. One such debate came on Friday, when Chris Hahn (a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer) appeared in a Fox News segment with far-right talk radio host Tony Katz. Hahn slammed Trump’s coronavirus response, while Katz tried to defend it — and wasn’t the least bit convincing.

“Look, America would be open had Donald Trump done what Europe did and really clamped down and encouraged people to social distance and wear a mask,” Hahn asserted. “Instead, he wanted to open in April. We weren’t ready, and now, we’re seeing the effects of that.”

Hahn noted how much COVID-19 infection rates have been surging in Sun Belt states like Texas and Florida, lamenting that those states reopened non-essential businesses prematurely and are now suffering because of it. Continue reading.

Coronavirus deaths rise again amid mounting outbreaks

The Hill logoCoronavirus deaths are rising in hard-hit states and starting to tick back up nationally, a sign that mounting outbreaks are taking a serious toll.

Arizona, California, Texas and Florida all set record numbers of daily deaths in recent days. According to an analysis from the Harvard Global Health Institute, daily deaths over the past two weeks from the coronavirus are up 79 percent in Arizona, 37 percent in Florida and 52 percent in Texas.

The mounting deaths undercut President Trump’s effort to downplay the explosion of new cases by pointing to the death rate. Earlier this week, Trump had pointed to falling death counts to push back at criticism over his response to the crisis, given the rising case numbers. Continue reading.

Trump tells Treasury to review universities’ tax exempt status

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Friday threatened the tax-exempt status of and funding for universities and colleges, claiming that “too many” schools are driven by “radical left indoctrination.”

“Therefore, I am telling the Treasury Department to re-examine their Tax-Exempt Status and/or Funding, which will be taken away if this Propaganda or Act Against Public Policy continues,” Trump tweeted. “Our children must be Educated, not Indoctrinated!”

Trump did not name specific institutions whose tax-exempt status he wants the Treasury Department to review. Most private and public colleges and universities are exempt from taxes because they qualify as 501(c)(3) organizations. Continue reading.

Deaths Starting to Increase in States With Coronavirus Resurgences

The seven-day death averages in Arizona, Texas and Florida are trending upward, according to data from The COVID Tracking Project.

Seven-day averages of virus-related deaths in Arizona, Texas and Florida are trending upward, according to data from The COVID Tracking Project laid out in graphs from Axios. All three states saw their highest single-day death tolls this week.

The rising numbers are significant because they come after some observers, like President Donald Trump, downplayed record numbers of new daily coronavirus infections while the national mortality rate remained low in recent weeks. But health experts warned that the surge in cases would likely be followed by a significant increase in deaths.

The heightening death toll in some states could be bearing out their projections. Continue reading.

Trump the victim: President complains in private about the pandemic hurting him

Washington Post logoCallers on President Trump in recent weeks have come to expect what several allies and advisers describe as a “woe-is-me” preamble.

The president rants about the deadly coronavirus destroying “the greatest economy,” one he claims to have personally built. He laments the unfair “fake news” media, which he vents never gives him any credit. And he bemoans the “sick, twisted” police officers in Minneapolis, whose killing of an unarmed black man in their custody provoked the nationwide racial justice protests that have confounded the president.

Gone, say these advisers and confidants, many speaking on the condition of anonymity to detail private conversations, are the usual pleasantries and greetings. Continue reading.

Trump administration’s approach to testing is chaotic and unhelpful, states say

Washington Post logoThe Trump administration’s erratic approach to testing for the novel coronavirus has left state leaders and commercial laboratories confused, frustrated and unprepared for the fall, Democrats on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions found in a report released Thursday.

Labs and state officials said they were unsure who in the federal government to contact about supply issues, including whether the Federal Emergency Management Agency or Department of Health and Human Services was in charge.

“It is increasingly unlikely the nation will be prepared with sufficient testing capacity to meet the health and economic needs of the country by late summer or even into the fall,” write the authors, led by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). “Disturbingly, several interviewees, including large clinical labs, reported that despite the Administration’s assurances, they did not see how the United States would reach even a million tests per day by the fall.” Continue reading.

CDC feels pressure from Trump as rift grows over coronavirus response

Washington Post logoThe June 28 email to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was ominous: A senior adviser to a top Health and Human Services Department official accused the CDC of “undermining the President” by putting out a report about the potential risks of the coronavirusto pregnant women.

The adviser, Paul Alexander, criticized the agency’s methods and said its warning to pregnant women “reads in a way to frighten women . . . as if the President and his administration can’t fix this and it is getting worse.”

As the country enters a frightening phase of the pandemic with new daily cases surpassing 57,000 on Thursday, the CDC, the nation’s top public health agency, is coming under intense pressure from President Trump and his allies, who are downplaying the dangers in a bid to revive the economy ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election. In a White House guided by the president’s instincts, rather than by evidence-based policy, the CDC finds itself forced constantly to backtrack or sidelined from pivotal decisions. Continue reading.

Fauci says hard-hit states should be ‘pausing’ the reopening process

The Hill logoAnthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said Thursday that hard-hit states should not be moving forward with reopening, but stopped short of calling for full shutdowns.

“I would think we need to get the states pausing in their opening process, looking at what did not work well and try to mitigate that,” Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, told The Hill’s Steve Clemons. “I don’t think we need to go back to an extreme of shutting down.”

Fauci struck a different note than he did a day earlier in an interview with The Wall Street Journal when he said states should consider shutdowns. Continue reading.