COVID-Don and COVID-Ron, killing people in FloridaIt isn't news that the COVID infection rate is skyrocketing in America right now. While other countries are seeing a decrease, the U.S. is seeing startling increases-- from an average of around 20,000 new cases a day to an average of over 30,000 new cases a day. Today the U.S reported 36,669 new cases. The U.S. now has 7,435 cases per million, worse than all the European countries that were so badly hit early on but then took aggressive action to beat the pandemic while Trump called it a hoax and refused to back social distancing and mask suggestions from his own government and made coronavirus into a political football where to be a Trump supporter means being a courter of contagion and spreader of disease and death. Canada's rate is just 2,709 cases per million. Look at the cases per million (as of yesterday) among the U.S. and our European pre-Trump allies:
• U.S.- 7,435 cases per million• Spain- 6,292• Sweden- 6,172• Belgium- 5,255• Ireland- 5,144• U.K.- 4,521• Italy- 3,960• Portugal- 3,933• Holland- 2,907• France- 2,472• Germany- 2,306• Denmark- 2,178• Austria- 1,938• Norway- 1,621• Finland- 1,294
Daily case increases are skyrocketing in states like Florida, Arizona and Texas where people took Trump's advice instead of medical advice and in California where a weak, pusillanimous governor is laughed at and his unenforced "mandates" are ignored.Out of his mind and eager to claim victor over the surging pandemic, Psycho-President is considering ending the national emergency he was forced to declare earlier this year. The L.A. Times reported that "the prospect has stoked alarm among public health leaders, physicians, hospital officials and others who are trying to control the outbreak and fear that such a move would make it more difficult for state and local governments and health systems to keep the coronavirus in check." Meanwhile Dr Deborah Birx, the coordinator of Trump’s coronavirus task force, told the nation’s governors in a call Monday that it is absolutely vital that they ramp up testing to find asymptomatic individuals to prevent further community spread, basically the opposite of what Señor Trumpanzee has been saying.Yesterday, Corky Siemaszko of NBC News reported that "The spike in coronavirus cases in Florida, Arizona, Oregon and other Southern and Western states can be traced back to around Memorial Day, when officials began loosening their lockdowns, health experts said Monday. And in about two weeks, hospitals in those states could find themselves struggling to find enough beds for patients, one of the nation's top public health experts warned. 'In some smaller Southern towns, the per capita rates of infections could be as high as New York City was at its peak,' Dr. Erik Toner of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security said."
In the last 14 days, Oregon has reported a 234.4 percentage jump in infections, Oklahoma jumped by 202 percent, Florida's number increased by 155 percent, and Arizona's confirmed coronavirus cases climbed by 142 percent, according to an NBC News analysis of state health department figures.Texas, Utah, Arkansas, Louisiana and more than a dozen other states-- as well as Guam and the Virgin Islands-- had increases in the numbers of reported cases in the last two weeks."It's basically the same reason for all these states: It was Memorial Day," Toner said. "And in the last week of May, most states began to seriously relax community mitigation efforts."Toner said that as lockdowns are relaxed, "we will see a rise in coronavirus cases.""The question is how high will they rise," he said. "Oregon, for example, has done a good job of dealing with the pandemic, and if people adhere to wearing face masks and social distancing, it may not be bad. But some Southern and Western states have gone out of their way to not wear face masks or practice social distancing, and we expect it to be much worse."Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, delayed reopening four of the state's most populous counties this month when cases started to climb.The Republican governors of Arizona and Florida have been more aggressive with reopening, sometimes over the objections of local hospital officials.Dr. Paul Cieslak, senior health adviser to the Oregon Health Authority, said Oregon's "recent rise in cases is due to a combination of many factors.""We've had quite a few workplace outbreaks, increased contact tracing and testing, a large outbreak in Union County and finally just more community spread," Cieslak said. "But we still have a very low per capita case and death count and have the fifth-lowest cases per capita among states as measured by the CDC."
Oregon is a blue state filled with sane people, right? So how could this happen to them the way it's happening to Trump states like Texas, Florida, Arizona, Iowa, Utah, Nebraska, Georgia, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri? No state-- except Wyoming-- is all Trump or all sane; every state has Trump areas and sane areas. Union County, Oregon, which is a hellish pit of contagion is a Trumpist bastion. In 2016, Trump took 41.1% of Oregonian's votes. In Union County, it was 67.2%. And in 2018, when sane parts of the country were experiencing a big anti-red wave, Union County was in its own little red universe. Some lunatic, Knute Buehler took 68% of the county's gubernatorial vote and the county performed at an R+39 level for Republican nut Greg Walden in the OR-02 congressional race. So of course Union is a COVID-county.Meanwhile, reported that Dr, Fauci ted Congress that the nation is experiencing a "disturbing surge" of coronavirus infections "as states reopen too quickly and without adequate plans for testing and tracing the contacts of those infected with the virus."
In a break with President Trump’s upbeat assessments of the pandemic’s trajectory in the United States, Dr. Fauci told the house Energy and Commerce Committee that while some states like New York, were “doing very well” in controlling spread of the virus, the surge in other states was “very troublesome to me.”“The next couple of weeks are going to be critical in our ability to address those surges we are seeing in Florida, Texas, Arizona, and other states,” Dr. Fauci told the panel as he and other leaders of the White House coronavirus task force appeared together for the first time in more than a month to brief Congress.In their testimony, the officials said they had made progress in confronting the virus, including toward a vaccine that Dr. Fauci said he was “cautiously optimistic” would be available by early next year and expanding the availability of testing in doctor’s offices by late fall. But they also made clear they did not agree with Mr. Trump, who last week claimed in an interview with Fox News that the virus would simply “fade away.”In his opening statement, Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called the pandemic “the greatest public health crisis our nation and world have confronted in a century,” and warned that the outbreak would coincide with flu season later this year, straining hospitals and health workers. Getting a flu shot, he said, would be even more important this year.“This single act will save lives,” he said.
The Times also reported that "some state officials are slowing the return-to-work plans and in some cases, reimposing earlier restrictions." None of the moves, however, are serious. They all look to me like states handing out aspirins to cancer patients. "In Maine, indoor bars won’t be reopening as planned. In Louisiana, occupancy limits will remain in place. And in Riley County, Kansas, where case numbers grew more than 50 percent over the past week, officials said they would tighten restrictions on mass gatherings. 'I think we may have let our guard down a little bit,' said Julie Gibbs, the Riley County health officer. Several athletes at Kansas State University, which is in the county, have tested positive in recent days, and a majority of new cases have been in young adults."Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that conservative economist Kevin Hassett is leaving Team Trump (again). Another member of the economic team, Andrew Olmem, left a few days ago. Why? Trump's botched handling on the pandemic. Hassett-- who was a proponent of mask wearing and another big stimulus like the one the House passed and McConnell is blocking-- warned when addressing the economy, that "everyone should be worried about how this is going to turn out in the end, because it’s a shock unlike anything we’ve ever seen."
