With thousands of Americans dying each day from an epidemic that Donald Trump could have prevented if he had only acted just a little sooner, the White House has now moved on to the most important part of any Trump operation: finding scapegoats. All through January, February, and the first half of March, Donald Trump was continually…
A weekend New York Times report lays out key dates, meetings and documents to prove a devastating case. Donald Trump was indeed warned, repeatedly, of the true dangers of the likely pandemic. Even in January, Trump was warned that without action, a half a million Americans could die in the pandemic. The Times’ evidence appears…
No wonder Donald Trump is all over the place with his coronavirus response. (Everywhere but competence, that is—and that’s just beyond him.) His polling is looking baaaad. But he’s going in the opposite direction from what the poll indicates the public wants. Trump is trying to evade responsibility by putting the responsibility on the states, but…
On March 2, the United States reached 100 confirmed cases of COVID-19. Three weeks later, the country had 34,000 cases, over 400 deaths, and was rocketing toward a massive, uncontrolled epidemic that has, so far, taken the lives of over 16,000 Americans. But three weeks after New Zealand hit 100 cases of COVID-19, there are…
If California was a country, it would be the fifth largest economy in the world. It is the global hub for both entertainment and technology, while also providing a majority of the nation’s people food (as opposed to corn for cattle)—a third of all vegetables, and two-thirds of all fruits and nuts. Oh, and the wine…
[[waves from a responsible social distance]] Congrats on almost making through another week of … this. You know who also deserves congratulations? Tennessee state Sen. Katrina Robinson, an intensive care nurse who donned her scrubs and traveled to New York City to help treat coronavirus patients. Her home state finally implemented its own stay-at-home order at the…
For months, every time Donald Trump was confronted over his downplaying of COVID-19, his lack of a national policy, his failure to plan for the impact of the disease or to develop any consistent response, Trump had one constant reply: look at the 2009 H1N1 epidemic. In appearance after appearance, Trump declared that then-president Barack Obama had…
The latest Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll highlights how disruptive the COVID-19 crisis has been to people’s daily lives, and how unhappy the populace is becoming with Donald Trump’s response to it. Writing at Axios, Drew Altman, president and CEO of KFF, highlights the disconnect the American public is experiencing: 60% say that the federal government should…
In certain circles, Dr. Scott Gottlieb is famous for keeping a flock of seven chickens in his backyard–and for once retweeting a (fake) cover of the (real) magazine Backyard Poultry bearing his likeness. Under nearly any other circumstances, I would have begged to see said chickens the moment I started talking to the former U.S….
In Wisconsin, statewide elections proceeded after the conservative state Supreme Court blocked an emergency two-month postponement of in-person voting by Gov. Tony Evers. Risking infection, voters were forced to line up “literally around the block” at the few still-open polling places despite social distancing rules—which will likely lead to elevated COVID-19 infections two weeks from…
Almost from the beginning, Donald Trump has been pushing the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 despite the lack of a single random trial indicating that the drug had any net positive effect. The result of Trump’s relentless medicine show hectoring has been that doctors have issued so many off-label prescriptions that there is…