Won’t someone please think of the people who need to go to Whole Foods EVERY DAY??

WOW. Just had a police officer called over to me and my husband at Whole Foods bc we were not wearing masks. We come to this @WholeFoods EVERY DAY. Apparently beginning yesterday, it is now illegal to come in without a mask.
Total deaths in D.C from Covid? 69.

WTF if going on?

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) April 14, 2020

WOW, just imagine, she and her husband are not free to ignore the rules during a pandemic, WHERE IS OUR PRECIOUS LIBERTY?

Especially when the total deaths are 69 and will never go any higher because that’s how this works.

Of course she … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on This racially disproportionate rate of death.

One of the most disgusting responses to the virus I saw was – The View accusing Bernie Sanders of politicizing the crisis by pushing medicare for all.

Joe Biden sounding very much like he’d veto medicare for all if it ever actually passed the lower houses.

Biden had previously said medicare for all wouldn’t help – just look at how Italy’s healthcare service was over-run.

Well, if you go to Vox and look at their story from two days ago that included charts of infection rates, what you can see from their linear graph is that Italy has handled the virus significantly better than the US, … Read the rest

God’s eye is not on the sparrow.

Pastor Gerald O. Glenn, founder and bishop of the New Deliverance Evangelistic Church in Chesterfield, Virginia, died on Saturday evening after contracting the novel coronavirus, his church announced on Facebook.

Why it matters: Glenn snubbed social distancing guidelines and warnings about the danger of religious gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic, even after Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam issued a stay-at-home order on March 30.

Glenn’s wife has tested positive for the virus.… Read the rest

Ashley Parker has a useful summary of that nightmare press briefing yesterday.

President Trump stepped to the lectern Monday on a day when the coronavirus death toll in the United States ticked up past 23,000. He addressed the nation at a time when unemployment claims have shot past 15 million and lines at food banks stretch toward the horizon.

In other words several weeks into the worst catastrophe most of us have ever experienced. Even the war wasn’t a catastrophe for us on this side of the Atlantic the way this one is – in fact for a lot of people it brought jobs that paid a decent wage after more than a decade of high unemployment and basement-level wages. … Read the rest

OMG Trump is trending.

Unbelievable.

Trump is now playing back clips of various governors praising him pic.twitter.com/LiwAM8OgyB

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 13, 2020

That is terrifying on so many levels.… Read the rest

Oh, is that a fact. States can’t do anything without the approval of the president of the United States – according to Donald Dimwit.

TRUMP on possibility states won't want to relax social distancing as quick he would like: "The president of the United States calls the shots … it's a decision for the president … they can't do anything without the approval of the president." pic.twitter.com/a9f73Z8G3N

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 13, 2020

He’s apparently doing the craziest press briefing rally yet, including playing a campaign video.… Read the rest

It’s fine. It’s fine. I’m sure it will be fine.

Fox News White House correspondent John Roberts reported on Monday that President Donald Trump will soon announce a council to re-open the U.S. economy amid the coronavirus pandemic, a plan that was quickly ripped apart on Twitter.

Is Fox News Trump’s press secretary now? Because if not why is Fox News announcing such things instead of a press secretary or other member of Trump’s administration?

The current members of the council to “re-open America” include Mark Meadows, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Steven Mnuchin, Larry Kudlow, Robert Lighthizer, and Wilbur Ross, none of whom are experts in medicine, science, or public health.

Also, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner aren’t … Read the rest

They’re doing what now?

Relax guys. We’re in good hands. This will be handled smoothly and wisely. pic.twitter.com/NlL3JMedlw

— Helen Kennedy (@HelenKennedy) April 13, 2020

What do they need a “council” for? Trump just said it’s his to decide, all by himself, with his magic absolute powers.

But if they do need a council…oh never mind, it’s too obvious to bother saying.

Ivanka and Jared, because when I need advice on the economy, I turn to the failed handbag-plagiarizing daughter who the president wants to quote-unquote "date," if that's what we're charitably calling it, and her overleveraged and underqualified idiot slumlord husband

— Jeff Tiedrich (@itsJeffTiedrich) April 13, 2020

Ivanka and Jared – couldn't get security clearance

Steve Mnuchin –

NPR reminds us that Trump declared a national emergency a month ago on March 13.

In a Rose Garden address, flanked by leaders from giant retailers and medical testing companies, he promised a mobilization of public and private resources to attack the coronavirus.

“We’ve been working very hard on this. We’ve made tremendous progress,” Trump said. “When you compare what we’ve done to other areas of the world, it’s pretty incredible.”

But very little of what he promised actually happened.

NPR’s Investigations Team dug into each of the claims made from the podium that day. And rather than a sweeping national campaign of screening, drive-through sample collection and lab testing, it found a smattering of small pilot projects and aborted

Trump is bullshitting about his Absolute Power to do whatever he feels like doing, again.

For the purpose of creating conflict and confusion, some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President of the United States & the Federal Government. Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 13, 2020

It’s not the news media, it’s just reality. He can say “Let it be understood…” all he wants, but that doesn’t make the thing he wants us to understand true. Let it be understood that Donald Trump of Queens is a bumbling blowhard.

….It is the decision of

Now there’s an argument for you. Trans woman Gemma Stone has always leaned Labour but there’s just one problem: all this here transphobia.

A number of transphobes retain their membership despite using the hashtag #ExpelMe to ask to be expelled for transphobia. Many of them support hate groups which almost exclusively push for trans exclusionary policies. While Keir Starmer himself refused to sign a pledge condemning these groups stating he doesn’t want the issue to become a “political football”, two of his fellow contenders in the Labour leadership race did.

The fourth contender who didn’t sign, Emily Thornberry, spoke out in support of trans rights after the event, but said we should be careful about calling things

Media Matters reported recently:

Fox News host Sean Hannity has stood out among the network’s many misinformers about the coronavirus pandemic. From encouraging viewers to try unproven treatments to downplaying the lethality of coronavirus compared to other diseases to defending President Donald Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic, Hannity has downplayed coronavirus dozens of times on his Fox and radio programs over the past month.

Why? The virus doesn’t distinguish between left and right, so what’s the motivation for a Fox News hack to tell lies about it? I suppose it must be the fact that Trump has made such a dog’s breakfast of dealing with it. Great: so to defend a lying murderous hack, another hack with a huge audience … Read the rest

Another way the US is not a developed country:

Across the city of New Orleans and throughout the state of Louisiana, in America’s deep south, similar scenes of mourning have played out among hundreds of African American families. Louisiana is among the states hardest-hit by Covid-19, with 755 deaths marking one of the highest per-capita death rates in the country. Seventy per cent of those who have died here are black, despite African Americans making up only 32% of the state population.

This racially disproportionate rate of death has begun to emerge among other states in the deep south, America’s poorest region, where a nexus of intergenerational poverty, a greater prevalence of underlying health conditions, and less access

The drunk child in a bear suit thinks he, and he alone, gets to shout “OPEN IT UP!!” and we all have to obey.

On Saturday night, Trump said a decision to open up the economy was one he alone would make, and would be “the biggest” of his presidency. He has targeted 1 May as the date when the country may begin a return to normalcy, and in a tweet on Sunday morning cited a drop in hospitalisations as “a very good sign”.

He’s wrong on his facts though. The decision is not his alone to make, and in fact it’s not his to make at all. He’s permanently confused about this, with his talk of having “the absolute … Read the rest

Least surprising news ever:

Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, which he once dismissed as a hoax, has been fiercely criticised at home as woefully inadequate to the point of irresponsibility.

Yet also thanks largely to Trump, a parallel disaster is unfolding across the world: the ruination of America’s reputation as a safe, trustworthy, competent international leader and partner.

Of course, but that long predates the pandemic. It dates from his candidacy. The fact that an ignorant malevolent clown like him could get one of the major party nominations spelled doom for America’s reputation as a safe, trustworthy, competent international leader and partner. (Mind you, decades of warmongering and bullying and human rights abuses didn’t help either.)

Since

The Times has a big piece on Trump’s failure to act on the virus promptly.

“Any way you cut it, this is going to be bad,” a senior medical adviser at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Dr. Carter Mecher, wrote on the night of Jan. 28, in an email to a group of public health experts scattered around the government and universities. “The projected size of the outbreak already seems hard to believe.”

A week after the first coronavirus case had been identified in the United States, and six long weeks before President Trump finally took aggressive action to confront the danger the nation was facing — a pandemic that is now forecast to take tens of thousands of American

Originally a comment by Claire on For observation.

This is horrifying. Ethically, morally and legally monstrous.

Concern is mounting after a doctor at a Texas nursing home started giving the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine to dozens of elderly patients diagnosed with COVID-19 and tracking the outcomes in what he’s calling an “observational study.”

This is not how observational studies work. Any clinical trial, including observational studies, must have a clearly written protocol approved by the relevant IRB. Patient recruitment is done using an IRB-approved consent form. Fully informed consent is legally required. If a patient is unable to consent, they must have a legal proxy to consent for them. Patients or their proxies must be assured that they do … Read the rest