Early in the Week
State Department told Americans not to go on cruise ships, despite Trump’s disagreement with that policy: “The decision came after President Trump resisted requests from administration officials to publicly urge older travelers to avoid cruise ships and plane travel, saying he thought it would harm those industries…”
On Tuesday the health officials in the administration seemed to pivot to telling people that there will be more infections and people need to change behaviors. Trump: ““Just stay calm — it will go away,” he said, but there is no scientific assessment to back that up.” He also floated the idea of a payroll tax holiday through the election to Republican Senators, who were cool to the idea. It would cost $700 billion.
According to reporting by Coppins, Trump’s spin machine is gearing up to blunt the political blowback from COVID-19: “The administration’s response to the outbreak has drawn some comparisons to that of the autocratic regimes in China and Iran, where information about the virus was tightly controlled to the detriment of the local populations. But what Trump has actually shown is that he doesn’t need to silence the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or censor the press to undermine politically inconvenient information about a public-health crisis—he can simply use his presidential bullhorn to drown it out…. Trump supporters have been warned incessantly not to trust mainstream journalistic coverage of the issue. When the market tanked earlier this week, the president blamed it on “fake news.” When White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham appeared on Fox & Friends, she condemned the media for using the virus “as a tool to politicize things and to scare people. Meanwhile, Trump’s right-wing media allies are working to minimize the perceived dangers of the coronavirus. “Put it in perspective,” Sean Hannity told his Fox News audience this week. “Twenty-six people were shot in Chicago alone over the weekend. I doubt you heard about it.””
Despite that, a member of Trump’s taskforce, Anthony Fauci, is contradicting Trump’s talking points with blunt talk: “I mean, people always say, well, the flu does this, the flu does that,” Fauci said. “The flu has a mortality of 0.1 percent. This has a mortality rate of 10 times that. That’s the reason I want to emphasize we have to stay ahead of the game in preventing this.”
Mid-Week
Trump addressed the nation from the Oval Office Wednesday night. He tried to be upbeat, saying that our economy and preventive measures will protects us, and that the virus is affecting foreign nations worse than here: “The virus will not have a chance against us,” Trump said. “No nation is more prepared or more resilient than the United States.”
Reviews of the speech were generally bad. Frum: He offered no guidance or policy on how to prevent the spread of the disease inside the United States. Should your town cancel its St. Patrick’s Day parade? What about theaters and sporting events? Schools and colleges? Nothing…. There was one something in the speech: a ban on travel from Europe, but not the United Kingdom. It’s a classic Trump formulation. It seeks to protect America by erecting a wall against the world, without thinking very hard how or whether the wall can work. The disease is already here. “
Then Frum explains the psychology of the situation: “He has no care or concern for others; he cannot absorb the trouble and suffering of others as real. He monotones his way through words of love and compassion, but those words plainly have no content or meaning for him. The only thing that is real is his squalid vanity. This virus threatens to pierce that vanity, so he denied it as long as he could. What he refuses to acknowledge cannot be real, can it? And even now that he has acknowledged, he still cannot act, because he does not know what to do. His only goal now is to shove blame onto others. Americans have to face that in the grip of this epidemic, the Oval Office is for all practical purposes as empty as the glazed eyes of the man who spoke from that office tonight.”
Turns out at least four key details Trump said were not accurate: “Trump’s speech contained at least two errors and a significant omission. He said the travel ban would apply to cargo; it did not. He said health insurance companies would waive patients’ co-payments for coronavirus testing and treatment; industry officials later clarified that they would waive payments for testing only. And he did not fully explain the details of his travel restrictions, leaving out the fact that U.S. citizens would be exempt.”
In the Washington Post: “Trump — who believed that by giving the speech he would appear in command and that his remarks would reassure financial markets and the country — was in “an unusually foul mood” and sounded at times “apoplectic” on Thursday as he watched stocks tumble and digested widespread criticism of his speech, according to a former senior administration official briefed on his private conversations.”
End of Week
The CDC released a report of worst case estimates if no mitigation happens: “As many as 200,000 to 1.7 million people could die.”
Hospitals are already becoming overwhelmed. One major concern is estimates suggest hospitals may need over 740,000 ventilators when they only have 160,000 on hand currently: “The biggest, most dreadful thing we might face is rationing or triaging who gets ventilators,” said Gabe Kelen, the director of the Office of Critical Event Preparedness at Johns Hopkins University. “I really hope we never have to make these kinds of life-and-death decisions.”
The House passed an emergency aid bill on Friday, and Trump gave a Rose Garden press conference where he declared a national emergency, saying we are in “a new phase.”
During the Friday press conference, Trump was asked if he took responsibility for the lack of testing so far. He said “I don’t take responsibility at all.” This prompted Jack Goldsmith to write in a Twitter thread: “This episode, more than any other to date in the Trump presidency, reveals the vital importance of leadership in our democracy, and the woeful absence of it now.”
Here is a good summary of how Trump, with Kushner working behind the scenes, oversold the Google testing plan: “The president’s effort to sell the website as a significant response to an urgent public health crisis came amid a national outcry over the administration’s repeated failures to deliver on promises to quickly expand access to testing for the virus. The disconnect between Mr. Trump’s exuberant comments and the project’s more modest expectations was the latest example of the president exaggerating, overselling or making wholly inaccurate statements about his administration’s response to the virus, even as facts on the ground contradicted his rosy assessments of progress.”
Here is the Washington Post’s story on the Administration’s response: “The problem is no one is sure who is in charge,” a senior administration official said. “Unless someone comes to you and says, ‘I was with the president five minutes ago,’ and you know they’re telling the truth, getting irreversible direction is a little difficult.”
In Other News
A federal court rules that Congress can have un-redacted grand jury information from the Mueller investigation: “Courts must take care not to second-guess the manner in which the House plans to proceed with its impeachment investigation or interfere with the House’s sole power of impeachment.”
There was a rocket attack on American bases in Iraq, leaving several military wounded.
Personal Log: By midweek it was clear that this was going to be the last normal week, and by Friday even that level or normalcy was gone. In the morning, thick homework packets were rushed into students’ hands. Charter schools announced closings throughout the day. We stood in the office around one computer to watch Trump’s afternoon press conference. It was hard to stay focused on finishing out the week’s work items. Friday evening the superintendent sent out a robocall that announced all of Newark Public Schools would be closed for two weeks, until March 30. By Saturday afternoon the mayor announced the first confirmed COVID-19 case in Newark. And the governor of West Virginia, where there are no confirmed cases, closed all schools indefinitely. Throughout the weekend, people were taking to social media to either scold or scare people from going out to bars and restaurants. There is a sense that authorities will soon direct us to stay in our houses.
—
Trump’s Job Approval: 42.3%
COVID-19 Cases / Deaths: 1,629 / 41