t we should be doing right at this moment--the most urgent thing we should be doing--is testing every single pneumonia patient that is hospitalized, because if there's likely to be a sneak-through of this epidemic, it's going to come through as a pneumonia patient.

NYC Says Government-Issued Coronavirus Tests Are Faulty, Cannot Be Relied Upon'

"Holy schitt, I hope Trump is right about a miracle:"

OTOH, why would Trump be talking miracles when he claims fears about the coronavirus are the Democrats'"new hoax"?:

Aaron Rupar @atrupar

Here's Trump at his rally tonight in South Carolina dismissing worries about the coronavirus as the "new hoax"

Holy schitt, I hope Trump is right about a miracle:

AMY GOODMAN: Final comments, as we look at what's happening in the world, every continent but Antarctica? What does it mean to have a unified response?

LAURIE GARRETT: Well, we won't have a unified response. We don't. It's fragmented. It's fragmented within countries, and it's fragmented among countries. Already everybody is sealing their borders. Everybody starts saying, "No, you can't fly here. You can't." Well, we're going to see, and what's unfolding now, and the reason that the smart guys on the stock market are getting upset, is that the whole globalization system, the chain of supply and shipping, is fragmenting. And it's fragmenting amid fear and amid the false idea that in the age of air travel you could somehow stop a virus by just saying, "No, no, no, you're not allowed to land at that airport." Well, how did this fellow way up in Northern California in a rural area get infected? You know, we've been screening at the San Francisco airport since day one of this mess.

So, I think that the problem is we don't have a solidified response. And what you're going to see, and it's already playing out, is this NIMBY attitude. You know, we already have states saying, "We're not going to allow you to put quarantined people in our state. Ship them to another state," and "Oh, my state has plenty of masks on supply. We're not sharing them with the bozos next door." In every tabletop exercise I've ever been in for the last 30 years role-playing what would happen in an outbreak, the solidarity between the states of the United States completely breaks down. States put borders. They won't let you come on a highway. And they block goods from leaving the state: "No, that may be destined for Illinois, but we in Indiana want those supplies. You can't take them to Illinois."

#4 & 5 Your posts give me pause. . . .

#54 Excellent idea. I hope the hospitals in my area do that. I spent about 9 hours in a local ER last night (not for myself) and have two friends who have both been in area ERs during the past few weeks. What we all saw now, pre-pandemic, was an overflow of patients that resulted in people being treated in hallways and alcoves. Anyone coming and going has to walk right past those folks.

#2 These numbers differ a bit from yours but the conclusion is the same: this is more serious than the type of flu Americans are used to:

AMY GOODMAN: It even seems that President Trump doesn't understand the deadly nature of this. He was being questioned by Sanjay Gupta of CNN at that news conference, and he did not seem to understand that the coronavirus is, what, 20 times more deadly than the flu.

LAURIE GARRETT: No, more like 2,000 times. No, he completely got his numbers wrong, although numbers probably are not his forte to begin with. He said " well, let's say it correctly rather than misinform. The coronavirus mortality rate is running somewhere between 2 to 4%, and depending where you look and which population groups you're in. The 1918 flu, which was the most devastating influenza in the history of our species, was less than 2%. So, this is already more lethal than the pandemic of 1918. Garden-variety, everyday flu, it's about 0.1 to 0.01% fatal.

#51 LL, I found this to be one of the most compelling and worrisome observations from the Garrett interview I've been citing:

LAURIE GARRETT: Well, you know, we can't say that we don't have a lot of cases. And the last time I looked at the count, we had tested 456 people in the entire United States. To put that in comparison, in Seoul, South Korea, alone, they've tested 35,000. Now, you're not going to find cases if you're testing 456 people out of 260 million Americans. You're going to miss quite a number.

What we should be doing right at this moment--the most urgent thing we should be doing--is testing every single pneumonia patient that is hospitalized, because if there's likely to be a sneak-through of this epidemic, it's going to come through as a pneumonia patient. It's going to be diagnosed as flu or some other cause. And it's actually going to be this coronavirus, and COVID-19 will break out in the hospital ward. This is what we've seen all over the world so far, is these outbreaks really explode when they hit one of two things: a religious site, where you have large concentrations of people coming in for a religious festival of some sort, or a hospital. And if the index of suspicion isn't very, very high among the healthcare workers "

I heard Dr. Anthony Fauci say in an interview today that the coronavirus could operate like the flu and fade away over summer and then return next fall, but we don't know yet. I point this out because people might become complacent if the virus follows that cycle only to get a nasty surprise by the time October/November rolls around.

Also because Bernie might need her delegates/voters to help him get closer to a majority of support.

Sanders/Warren 2020 because she is more detailed-oriented than Bernie and because people could see her stepping in as President if it came to that and because she is a woman and might be able to help Bernie with the suburban soccer moms he isn't impressing right now.

No wonder Trump is hoping for a miracle to save him/us.

AU, thank you for your insights. Yes, I see what is being said now:

AURIE GARRETT: Pretty abysmal situation. Where we are right now is that everybody is recognizing, oops, it was a big mistake by the Trump administration to obliterate the entire infrastructure of pandemic response that the Obama administration had created. Why did he do it? Well, it certainly wasn't about the money, because it wasn't a heavily funded program. It was certainly because it was Obama's program.

AMY GOODMAN: And explain. You're talking about the unit within the Centers for Disease Control.

LAURIE GARRETT: No, we're talking about something much vaster than that. It was a special division inside the National Security Council, a special division inside of the Department of Homeland Security--that bozo [i.e Wolf from above post] was talking from--and collaborating centers in HHS, headquarters in Washington, the Office of Global Health Affairs, and the Commerce Department, Treasury Department. But what Obama understood, dealing with Ebola in 2014, is that any American response had to be an all-of-government response, that there were so many agencies overlapping, and they all had a little piece of the puzzle in the case of a pandemic.

Just do this mental exercise with me, Amy. If we get to the situation where we're anything like what's going on in China right now, then our Department of Commerce, our Department of Transportation and our department of USDA would have to collaborate to get food deliveries all over America so that parts of America don't starve. And you could see in China convoys, hundreds of 18-wheeler vehicles completely full of food, coming into Wuhan every single day. Do we have the capacity to coordinate that?

What the Obama administration realized was that you can't corral multiple agencies and things from private sector as well as public sector to come to the aid of America, unless you have some one person in charge who's really the manager of it all. And in his case, it was Ron Klain, who had worked under Vice President Biden. And he was designated, with an office inside the White House, to give orders and coordinate all these various things.

Well, that was all eliminated. It's gone. And now they're hastily trying to recreate something. And last night there were many names tossed around about who he was going to appoint as head of the response. He had previously gone on the record, President Trump, saying, "I have great faith in Secretary Azar, and my HHS secretary will be in charge." And we're told, from multiple sources, that right up until they got on stage for that press briefing, Azar thought he was in charge. And then the president says, "And here's my good friend Mike Pence, and he's taking charge."

It isn't just Democrats who are up in arms at the Trump administrations actions. If you don't believe me, read this exchange between Kennedy and Wolf:

MY GOODMAN: On Capitol Hill, lawmakers grilled senior administration officials over their response to the crisis. This is Louisiana Republican Senator John Kennedy, who on Tuesday blasted the acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf for struggling to produce basic facts about the coronavirus outbreak.

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: You're supposed to keep us safe.
DHS SECRETARY CHAD WOLF: My budget supports the men and women of the Department of Homeland Security.
SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: You're the secretary of homeland security.
DHS SECRETARY CHAD WOLF: Yes, sir.
SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: And you can't tell me if we have enough respirators.

Read the rest here:

Read the thread and tell me you don't think Trump should just STFU and let the experts do all the talk from here on out:

Laurie Garrett @Laurie_Garrett

A potpourri of #Trump quotes on #COVID19 for you.
THREAD
"I don't think it's inevitable. It probably will. It possibly will. It could be at a very small level or it could be at a larger level. Whatever happens, we're totally prepared. We have the best people in the world."
MORE

The complaint alleges HHS staffers were "improperly deployed" and were "not properly trained or equipped to operate in a public health emergency situation." The HHS workers were then, as the complaint says, sent home after being exposed. One of the HHS workers stayyed the night in a hotel and flew hoe the next day on via commercial airlines.

I wonder if what the complaint alleges happened is related to staffing cuts Trump made. Seems possible:(emphasis mine):

GARRETT: I mean, it took years for the Obama administration to create this super structure which has now been eliminated. Keep in mind, it`s not just that we don`t have a czar in the White House overseeing the response, but we don`t have a--that contingent inside the National Security Council. We don`t have the seasoned veteran contingent inside of Department of Homeland Security. And we don`t have this whole global health mastermind group inside of the Defense Department and HHS. These were all eliminated in 2018 by Trump.

Some are going to have to drop out, that's a given. A plurality of 30 to 35% is a weak plurality. A plurality of 40 to 45% is better, especially if it is bolstered by other candidates throwing their delegates and endorsement to you. That's why I said in another thread that Warren will be able to help Bernie.

"Trump is currently saying (and I mean now) that coronavirus will disappear "like a miracle".
Because he thinks he's in charge of miracles, I guess."

Trump does know what many of his supporters think about "the coming plagues" and the end times prophecy, doesn't he?

Mike Pence's Defining Moment As Governor? Enabling An HIV Outbreak.

Here's what to do if you want to create a public health crisis

One of Vice President Mike Pence's defining moments during his one term as Indiana governor? Lackluster public health efforts, which led to a massive HIV outbreak. The failure was spurred by public health funding cuts and Pence's moralistic stance against needle exchanges.

A timeline of the HIV outbreak, the worst in state history, reads like a roadmap of what to do if you want to create a public health crisis.

Nothing to worry about, move along:

Pence's handling of 2015 HIV outbreak gets new scrutiny

Greg Millett, director of public policy at amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, said Indiana's HIV outbreak would have been "entirely preventable" if Pence had acted earlier in response to data that was available to Indiana public health officials and clearly showed an outbreak was imminent.

WHO raises coronavirus threat assessment to highest level

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday increased its coronavirus risk assessment to "very high" and warned foreign governments not to underestimate the threat.

Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO's health emergencies program, said the rapid spread of the virus should be a wake-up call for the world.

Ryan said the WHO is not trying to alarm people but to get countries to pay attention.

"It's really not much of an excuse at this point to get caught unawares. We've been dealing with this virus for two months now," Ryan said.

"This is a reality check for every government on the planet: wake up, get ready, this virus may be on its way and you need to be ready. You have a duty to your citizens, you have a duty to the world to be ready," he said.

MFA:

Japan is reporting its first case of a person becoming reinfected with the coronavirus after showing signs they had fully recovered, according to Reuters.

Osaka's prefectural government confirmed Wednesday a woman working as a tour bus guide tested positive for coronavirus for the second time after developing a sore throat and chest pain. The woman, who is said to be in her 40s, first tested positive in late January and was discharged from the hospital on Feb. 1 after showing signs of recovery.

California patient with unknown origin of coronavirus is in serious condition, official says

"Let's hope then that the Democratic Super Delegates don't try to overturn the will of the majority of the Democrats voting in primaries."

Which, I think, is what Bernie wanted them to do last time? Let's hope that one candidate actually has a majority, not just a weak plurality.

Get ready for the double speak:

Angry Staffer @AngrierWHStaff

Mick Mulvaney at CPAC: Coronavirus is the Dem's new favorite hoax. They want to bring down the President.

- audience cheers

Also Mick Mulvaney at CPAC: you'll probably see some schools close.

- audience cheers

Not a ------- cult, though.

Only in the GOP can you both call it a hoax and acknowledge that it's likely going to cause significant disruption to daily life and that not be considered contradictory.

#6 Or voting (again) for Trump.