The scope of the disaster of the pandemic in the U.S. is the most blatant indictment of Trump's "leadership" so far. The kind of actions-- by government and populace-- needed to defeat the pandemic went quickly into effect in east Asian countries-- from China, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea to Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore. And it worked. The pandemic may have started in east Asia, but no one complained that wearing a mask or social distancing was an unacceptable infringement on their freedoms-- and the pandemic is pretty much under control across the region, certainly in comparison to the U.S. or Europe. Over the weekend, 697,396 new cases were reported. 99,174 of those cases were reported in the U.S. It was a very different story in mask-wearing, social distancing east Asia. These were reported new cases for Saturday and Sunday:
• Japan +1,225• South Korea +164• China +26• Hong Kong +21• Thailand +17• Vietnam +11• Singapore +10• Taiwan- 0
The combined population of these 8 countries is 1,821,626,954. The population of the U.S. is 331,584,544. The U.S. has 25,296 cases per million residents. Japan has 733 cases per million residents. South Korea has 491 cases per million residents. China has 60 cases per million residents. Thailand has 53; Taiwan 22; Vietnam 12. The data-driven Financial Times report on the pandemic crisis on Sunday noted that "by late February new cases in China were in decline, and attention had shifted to two new areas of concern, one a regional neighbour and the other further afield. Alarms were raised in South Korea in mid-February after a single super-spreader sparked more than 1,000 cases in the city of Daegu in a matter of days. Between February 17 and 25, the country’s confirmed case count rose from 31 to 1,146-- a 37-fold increase in just eight days, with cases doubling every day and a half. Meanwhile, in Europe, all eyes were on Italy as a cluster of infections began spreading through the northern region of Lombardy. Both trajectories looked bleak, but the countries’ fortunes quickly diverged. South Korea acted quickly, taking advantage of legislation passed in response to the 2012 Mers crisis that allows for extensive surveillance of its citizens during an infectious disease outbreak. A comprehensive contact-tracing operation was put in place, partnered with a rapid expansion of testing. On March 20, South Korea was carrying out 100 tests for every positive one that came back, the same day it recorded its 100th death. It took Italy three more months and 34,000 deaths to reach the same testing levels."
The US entered the crisis already particularly vulnerable among western nations due to many residents being without health insurance and a lack of paid sick leave in many areas. Moreover, in Donald Trump, it had a president who consistently downplayed the severity of the disease that he would eventually contract. In the absence of a co-ordinated federal response, state and local governments introduced their own measures to contain the virus. Loosening of restrictions has been similarly fragmented, and in some cases started before evidence suggested local outbreaks were under control. The complex patchwork of often contradictory state-level measures can be visualised using an index developed by political scientists at Oxford university’s Blavatnik School of Government to summarise the overall stringency of responses to the pandemic. When the virus claimed thousands of victims in the spring, the centre of the crisis was New York City, its suburbs and similar cities in the north-east; vast swaths of the country were largely unaffected. As the year wore on, startlingly different geographical patterns emerged. Once confined to the most densely populated cities, the virus seeped out into small-town and rural America, with places such as Hancock county, Georgia, (population: 8,457) registering among the highest death rates in the country. By early October, the overall death rate was highest in counties classified as the small towns and rural areas-- and lowest in large urban counties.
Another invaluable data provider is CovidExitStrategy.org and this map the published yesterday shows each state's progress towards a new normal. Two states are in decent shape: Maine and Vermont. California, Oregon, New York and New Hampshire don't look good but the the rest of the country looks terrible and most of it is in an "uncontrolled spread." If you want all the numbers, study the website. This map gives you can idea of the horror-show we're facing thanks to Trump's version of "leadership." Trump's version of leadership has always been highlighted by infighting and chaos. It's how lesser men control situations in business and politics. It doesn't work for anyone but the leader. It's a disaster in a national challenge-- like the pandemic. Philip Rucker took it on yesterday with a Washington Post deep dive focusing on the catastrophic response to the pandemic: Trump’s den of dissent: Inside the White House task force as coronavirus surges. "Atlas shot down attempts to expand testing," he began. "He openly feuded with other doctors on the coronavirus task force and succeeded in largely sidelining them. He advanced fringe theories, such as that social distancing and mask-wearing were meaningless and would not have changed the course of the virus in several hard-hit areas. And he advocated allowing infections to spread naturally among most of the population while protecting the most vulnerable and those in nursing homes until the United States reaches herd immunity, which experts say would cause excess deaths, according to three current and former senior administration officials. Atlas also cultivated Trump’s affection with his public assertions that the pandemic is nearly over, despite death and infection counts showing otherwise, and his willingness to tell the public that a vaccine could be developed before the Nov. 3 election, despite clear indications of a slower timetable. Atlas’s ascendancy was apparent during a recent Oval Office meeting. After Trump left the room, Atlas startled other aides by walking behind the Resolute Desk and occupying the president’s personal space to keep the meeting going, according to one senior administration official."
Discord on the coronavirus task force has worsened since the arrival in late summer of Atlas, whom colleagues said they regard as ill-informed, manipulative and at times dishonest. As the White House coronavirus response coordinator, Deborah Birx is tasked with collecting and analyzing infection data and compiling charts detailing upticks and other trends. But Atlas routinely has challenged Birx’s analysis and those of other doctors, including Anthony S. Fauci, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn, with what the other doctors considered junk science, according to three senior administration officials. Birx recently confronted Vice President Pence, who chairs the task force, about the acrimony, according to two people familiar with the meeting. Birx, whose profile and influence has eroded considerably since Atlas’s arrival, told Pence’s office that she does not trust Atlas, does not believe he is giving Trump sound advice and wants him removed from the task force, the two people said. Pence did not take sides, but rather told Atlas and Birx to bring data bolstering their perspectives to the task force and to work out their disagreements themselves, according to two senior administration officials. The result has been a U.S. response increasingly plagued by distrust, infighting and lethargy, just as experts predict coronavirus cases could surge this winter and deaths could reach 400,000 by year’s end. ...On Saturday, Atlas wrote on Twitter that masks do not work, prompting the social media site to remove the tweet for violating its safety rules for spreading misinformation. Several medical and public health experts flagged the tweet as dangerous misinformation coming from a primary adviser to the president. “Masks work? NO,” Atlas wrote in the tweet, followed by other misrepresentations about the science behind masks. He linked to an article from the American Institute for Economic Research-- a libertarian think tank behind the Barrington effort-- that argued against masks and dismissed the threat of the virus as overblown. Trump and many of his advisers have come to believe that the key to a revived economy and a return to normality is a vaccine. “They’ve given up on everything else,” said a senior administration official involved in the pandemic response. “It’s too hard of a slog.” Infectious-disease and other public health experts said the friction inside the White House has impaired the government’s response. “It seems to me this is policy-based evidence-making rather than evidence-based policymaking,” said Marc Lipsitch, director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “In other words, if your goal is to do nothing, then you create a situation in which it looks okay to do nothing [and] you find some experts to make it complicated.” These days, the task force is dormant relative to its robust activity earlier in the pandemic. Fauci, Birx, Surgeon General Jerome Adams and other members have confided in others that they are dispirited. Birx and Fauci have advocated dramatically increasing the nation’s testing capacity, especially as experts anticipate a devastating increase in cases this winter. They have urged the government to use unspent money Congress allocated for testing-- which amounts to $9 billion, according to a Democratic Senate appropriations aide-- so that anyone who needs to can get a test with results returned quickly. Opposition Research by Nancy Ohanian But Atlas, who is opposed to surveillance testing, has repeatedly quashed these proposals. He has argued that young and healthy people do not need to get tested and that testing resources should be allocated to nursing homes and other vulnerable places, such as prisons and meatpacking plants. ...The president gave voice to this mind-set during an NBC News town hall Thursday night, when he declined to answer whether he supported herd immunity. “The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself,” Trump told host Savannah Guthrie. But medical experts disagreed, saying it is dangerous for government leaders to advocate herd immunity or oppose interventions. “We’d be foolish to reenter a situation where we know what to do and we’re not doing it,” said Rochelle Walensky, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “This thing can take off. All you need to do is look at what’s happened at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue over the last two weeks to see that this thing is way faster than we’re giving it credit for.” ...Trump’s notion of a vaccine as a cure-all for the pandemic is similarly miraculous, according to medical experts. “The vaccines, although they’re wonderful, are not going to make the virus magically disappear,” said Tom Frieden, a former CDC director who is president of Resolve to Save Lives. “There’s no fairy-tale ending to this pandemic. We’re going to be dealing with it at least through 2021, and it’s likely to have implications for how we do everything from work to school, even with vaccines.” Frieden added: “Remember, we have vaccines against the flu, and we still have flu.” Still, Trump has ratcheted up his push for vaccines over the past several months, intensifying the pressure on government scientists, federal regulators and pharmaceutical executives. He has had one end date in mind: Nov. 3, which is Election Day. Trump has envisioned a greenlit vaccine as the kind of breakthrough that could persuade voters to see his management of the pandemic as successful and thus upend a race in which virtually all public polls show him trailing Democratic nominee Joe Biden. ...The relationships between FDA officials and White House staffers have grown more acrimonious since September, when details of stricter FDA vaccine guidance were reported by The Post. Trump and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows-- who has involved himself in the work of health agencies to a degree other officials consider inappropriate-- have repeatedly challenged Hahn over his agency’s proposals and rules, much to the FDA commissioner’s frustration. Trump is asserting control over the messaging campaign around a vaccine. His politically minded aides in the White House have taken over the government’s communications effort, as opposed to health or scientific communicators at the relevant agencies. For example, White House aides have sought to persuade Moncef Slaoui, head of “Operation Warp Speed,” the government’s initiative to mass-distribute an eventual vaccine, to speak more positively about the vaccine, and sometimes he has pushed back on their talking points, two officials said. Trump routinely has told his political advisers that a vaccine would be ready by the time he stands for reelection. And he has plotted with his team on a pre-election promotional campaign to try to convince voters a vaccine is safe, approved and ready for mass distribution-- even if none of that is true yet. These are some of the ingredients of a public health disaster, experts say. “The one thing you can’t do-- and it’s what everybody fears, it’s what the pharmaceutical companies fear, it’s what everybody on the inside fears-- is that the government would, because of political purposes or because other countries put a vaccine out before us, truncate the normal process you’d accept for a safe and effective vaccine,” said Paul A. Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, a professor of vaccinology at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory council. Trump’s view of the FDA has darkened considerably in recent weeks. The president now believes-- despite the absence of any such evidence-- that officials there are working against him to slow-walk vaccine approval as “some sort of ‘deep state’ push to keep him from winning reelection,” according to an administration official. Trump has said as much himself. “New FDA Rules make it more difficult for them to speed up vaccines for approval before Election Day. Just another political hit job! @SteveFDA,” the president wrote in an Oct. 6 tweet, tagging Hahn’s Twitter handle. Trump’s conspiratorial view of the FDA is shaped in part by White House trade adviser Peter Navarro and others in the president’s orbit, both inside and outside the government. Saad B. Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, said the atmosphere of pressure and recrimination, nurtured by the president, is “very concerning.” “These are people who have dedicated their lives to working in public health and medicine and research,” he said. “To think that in the biggest public health event of their lives they would sleep an extra hour or slow-walk this for any reason is absurd.” He added, “It’s like how an ambulance drives faster than a regular car because it’s an emergency, but even an ambulance driver is not foolhardy. They don’t want to drive over the bridge.” 'A lot of political pressure' The distrust in Washington has trickled down to the states, where friction has increased between several governors and the administration over the vaccine process. Some governors and officials close to them privately have expressed alarm about Trump and his aides laying the groundwork for a rushed vaccine announcement. The president has delegated much of the state outreach to Pence, who in regular calls with governors has come across as a smooth salesman for Trump’s speedy approach. The vice president has encouraged governors to help build confidence for eventual vaccines among their constituents. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D), whose state is the site for vaccine trials, said in an interview, “I certainly fear there is a lot of political pressure being applied.” He said his state is preparing for a vaccine rollout, but would carefully evaluate the integrity of any announcement emanating from the White House. “Nobody has told me that it’ll be ready by November 2nd or anytime before the election,” Pritzker said. “But [Trump] will no doubt claim such a thing because of the cocktail of drugs that he seems to be on now. He’s liable to say anything that isn’t true.” The concerns are not limited to Democrats. One Republican state official who works with the Trump administration and spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve that relationship, said, “It’s what I would call soft power. Pence comes on these calls and sounds normal and upbeat, and basically says, ‘Stand with us.’” The official added, “We all want a vaccine, right? We obviously want it. We’ll take it. But we don’t really know if they’ll do this right.” The politicization of the process has damaged public credibility in an eventual vaccine. A Gallup poll released this month found that 50 percent of Americans said they would be willing to take a coronavirus vaccine approved by the FDA “right now at no cost.” That is a sharp decline from 61 percent in August and 66 percent in July. During a virtual task force meeting led by Pence on Sept. 21, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) said, “There is a substantial concern,” according to an audio recording of the meeting. “A significant part of that problem is the president’s continued anti-science statements that are contradictory to his medical advisers in so many different ways.” Inslee asked Pence directly, “Have you discussed with the president how he’s been eroding public confidence in our efforts, including the vaccine approval? Have you discussed that with him? Have you urged him to stop this behavior?” Pence did not directly answer the question. Rather, he replied, “We think you and all the governors on this call have a great responsibility to make sure the public knows while we’re moving rapidly and while there may be differences in opinion about various events, we just don’t want any undermining of confidence in the vaccine.” The vice president added, “I can assure you the president will continue to speak clearly about that process.” Inslee later said in an interview that Pence was anything but assuring. “There is a pressure campaign,” Inslee said. “We need to follow science and not this distortion campaign... The people are on to [Trump]. They know he is trying to turn this into an electoral issue.” ...Trump has used Atlas to back up his own rejection of medical expertise. At Thursday’s NBC News town hall, a Florida voter asked the president whether after contracting covid-19 he now believed in the importance of mask-wearing. “I’ve heard many different stories on masks,” he said. When Guthrie challenged him by noting that all of his health officials were united in advocating masks, Trump countered by invoking Atlas. “Scott Adkins,” Trump said, mispronouncing the doctor’s name. “If you look at Scott, Dr. Scott, he’s from-- great guy-- from Stanford, he will tell you.” “He’s not an infectious-disease expert,” Guthrie said. “Oh, I don’t know,” Trump replied. “Look, he’s an expert. He’s one of the experts of the world.”
Back to Gov. Pritzker for a moment. Illinois is in a catastrophic situation right now-- full-fledged pandemic crisis back after a long summer lull. Sunday, Illinois reported the most new cases of any state-- 4,245, bringing the statewide total to 347,635-- 27,434 cases per million residents. What made everything turn south again? Pritzker blames Trump and his allies. He was on CNN's State of the Union Sunday and told Jake Tapper that "People are not following the mitigations, because the modeling is so bad at the leadership level, the federal level. We are trying to get the word out and you're trying to continue to convince people to do the right thing but it is the president's allies in our state, all across the state, who are simply saying to people don't pay any attention to the mitigations, don't follow the rules." Pritzker told the viewers that Trump is "modeling bad behavior. He doesn’t wear a mask in public. He has rallies where they don’t encourage people to wear masks in public. Truly, this is now rhetoric that people understand, particularly in rural areas in my state, 'Well, the president doesn’t wear a mask; we don’t need to wear a mask. It’s not that dangerous.' The truth of the matter is that it is very dangerous."
