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

We’re number one!

The US has suffered more confirmed coronavirus deaths than any other country and on Saturday was poised to soon reach 19,000 Covid-19 fatalities, new data indicated.

This is all the more impressive when you remember we don’t have more people that any other country – we’re far behind China and India.

By Saturday afternoon, Johns Hopkins University’s tally of US Covid-19 fatalities was at 18,860. Italy followed with 18,849. The US was also the first country to report 2,000 deaths in a single day, with 2,108 people dying in the previous 24 hours….

Also on Saturday, the New York Times published a devastating report chronicling Donald Trump’s repeated failures over several months to take the coronavirus crisis

One good thing about the virus though: it could give Trump the chance to kill the postal service and thus make voting by mail impossible, which would improve his chances of stealing another election.

Though the novel coronavirus has Americans more reliant on package delivery than ever—including for prescription medications—it has put the future of the U.S. Postal Service in danger. Not distant, far-in-the-future danger, but could-stop-operating-in-June danger. And the Trump administration, which wants to bail out foreign-flagged cruise lines, is saying the postal service is on its own.

“I spoke with the Postmaster General again today,” Rep. Gerry Connolly tweeted Thursday afternoon. “She could not have been more clear: The Postal Service will collapse without urgent intervention,

Oh good, human drug testing without consent at a nursing home, that’s not reminiscent of the Nazis at all.

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.”

Coolio, can we give untested drugs to him in an observational study?

The Food and Drug Administration has not approved the drug for the treatment of COVID-19. The U.S. National Institutes of Health is currently tracking clinical trials of the drug. Additionally, the University of Minnesota is undertaking a trial and Columbia University is as well. Results are not expected for weeks or

Via Beth Rep:

Yasssssssssss that’s definitely an excellent way to make yourself feel more feminine. So is

and

and… Read the rest

At the press briefing rally today.

Jerome Adams, U.S. Surgeon General, tells black people, Latinos and other ppl of color to avoid alcohol and drugs and adds: "Do it for your abuela, do it for your grandaddy, do it for your Big Mama, do it for your pop pop."

Context: Many found this language highly offensive.

— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) April 10, 2020

Oh, no, surely he was being friendly.… Read the rest

So…he doesn’t even remember that antibiotics can’t touch viruses? They must have told him, they must have told him a hundred times, because that’s who he is, but I guess a hundred times he didn’t listen.

Trump: "Antibiotics used to solve every problem and now one of the biggest problems the world has is the germ has gotten to brilliant that the anti-antibiotic can't keep up with it." pic.twitter.com/FqYKdUEQmZ

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 10, 2020

… Read the rest

The Guardian on Barr’s corrupt campaign to protect Trump and punish anyone who tries to hold him to account:

William Barr has said without evidence that he believes the Russia investigation that shadowed Donald Trump for the first two years of his administration was started without any basis and amounted to an effort to “sabotage the presidency”, he said in an interview with Fox News Channel that aired on Thursday.

The attorney general offered no support for his assertion that the FBI lacked a basis for opening the investigation and made no mention of the fact that the bureau began its investigation after a Trump campaign adviser purported to have early knowledge that Russia had dirt on his Democratic opponent

The House is looking into it.

Two House committees have called on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to turn over documents related to reports that the agency is seizing orders of coronavirus medical supplies from states, as well as the involvement of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in overseeing those efforts.

I wish that said “ordered” instead of “called on.” This shit should not be negotiable.

The committees also requested a response to media reports that that agency was “redirecting” medical supplies ordered by states and hospitals. Officials in at least a half-dozen states have reported that FEMA hijacked supplies sent to states without informing them.

“After encouraging the states to take care of themselves, the

Trump has found a reason to love the pandemic.

The US has expelled more than 6,300 undocumented migrants on its Mexico border using emergency powers to curb coronavirus spread, officials say.

…

The measure, initially in place for 30 days, was necessary to limit the spread of the disease in crowded places such as border patrol stations or ports of entry, said CDC Director Dr Robert R Redfield. The US has the world’s highest number of confirmed infections – more than 460,000 – and nearly 16,500 deaths.

A social-distancing move, in other words.

In recent years, most of the people trying to enter the US have come from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, usually claiming to be fleeing poverty

Words fail me.

Pure evil.

[T]he White House seizes goods from public officials and hospitals across the country while doling them out as favors to political allies and favorites, often to great fanfare to boost the popularity of those allies. The Denver Post today editorialized about one of the most egregious examples. Last week, as we reported, a shipment of 500 ventilators to the state of Colorado was intercepted and rerouted by the federal government. Gov. Jared Polis (D) sent a letter pleading for the return of the equipment. Then yesterday President Trump went on Twitter to announce that he was awarding 100 ventilators to Colorado at the behest of Republican Senator Cory Gardner, one of the most

From a New Yorker interview with Fran Lebowitz:

Has this crisis shown us anything about Donald Trump that we didn’t know before?

No. Every single thing that could be wrong with a human being is wrong with him. But the single most dangerous thing about Donald Trump is how unbelievably stupid he is. It’s not the most dangerous thing in someone who has no responsibilities, but in a President it’s the most dangerous thing.

His absolute belief in himself, that is something that is not going to ever change. And he doesn’t care. When people say he’s not showing enough empathy—he doesn’t know what it means. Whenever he uses the word “love,” which he does occasionally, I think of

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba at Miscellany Room 4:

Screechy Monkey wrote:

Actually, following some links from that Pharyngula comments section, the asterisk is supposed to indicate that trans* covers both transsexual and transgender people.

And transfemine, transmasculine, transfemme, transcetera. Like the LGBT… alphabet soup itself, the T keeps splintering into ever more narcissistic subsets. Geek humor: it’s almost like a “recursive” acronym/initialism. Example: GNU, which stands for “GNU is not UNIX.” Ha. Funny, right? No, I’ve never understood the purported humor, either.

Sastra wrote:

I was also unaware of how trans ideology had morphed into the idea that science had done away with the two sexes by introducing a science-based gender identity — and that failure

It turns out it helps to know what you’re doing.

With coronavirus deaths in the U.S. rapidly approaching 15,000, we are now learning that the federal government’s national stockpile of medical supplies is almost depleted. Meanwhile, the failure to ramp up testing to the needed degree remains a “signature failure,” as the New York Times puts it.

One person who is well positioned to shed light on what all this means is Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington state. His state was an initial epicenter, but there are signs the curve is flattening, which means Inslee both has extensive experience of how federal failures hampered the response and is already contemplating what comes next.

Signs the … Read the rest

News from Brooklyn:

A group of non-binary political candidates sued the Brooklyn Democratic Party and the city’s Board of Elections because their ballot petitions only allowed for male or female gender designations, demanding the party drop gender parity rules originally intended to bring more women into the political sphere.

So the thinking is that indulging the frivolous bullshit of calling oneself “non-binary” is actually more important than bringing more women into politics. That takes some staggering level of self-involvement.

News flash: “non-binary” doesn’t matter. It’s not 1950. Just don’t wear the ruffled skirts and lipstick, and get on with your life. Nobody cares whether you’re “binary” or not.

One plaintiff said he was disappointed by the lack of

Meanwhile the ordinary kind of oppression and intimidation continues as if pandemics were not a thing. Tasneem Khalil reports:

Earlier today (April 9) three men from the DGFI (Bangladeshi military intelligence agency) visited my mother Nazneen Khalil at her home in Sylhet. They questioned her about her private life before asking her to talk to me regarding my work as a journalist which in their view “tarnishes the image of the country”. In response, my mother told them that she is not responsible in any way for what I — her adult son — write and how that is interpreted by government agencies. She also pointed out to them that their visit amounts to harassment of a senior citizen.

About that game-changing drug combo…

Trump has been a cheerleader for the drug hydroxychloroquine, pointing in a tweet and in person to a French study as evidence that one particular drug combination might be “one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.”

And ranting and raving about it every chance he gets, in defiance of the advice of all the people who know something about it, as if he were a toddler saying there is too SO a monster in the garden.

But now the medical society that published that French research has issued a statement saying the study “does not meet the Society’s expected standard.”

Dr. Kevin Tracey, president and CEO of the Feinstein