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1. The New York Times has an essential read on how America’s testing capacity shortage (not to mention our tracking and tracing shortages…) means that reopening will be accompanied by far less infrastructure to mitigate the damage the virus will cause going forward than the scientific and medical consensus says is necessary.
Here’s Dr. Fauci on Saturday, clear as a church bell:
The U.S. should at least double coronavirus testing in the coming weeks before easing into reopening the economy, the government's top infectious disease expert said.…
"We probably should get up to twice that as we get into the next several weeks, and I think we will," he said during the National Academy of Sciences annual meeting. (Politico)
And reopening will happen even as the World Health Organization says there is no evidence that those who have had the virus are immune from getting it again.
In a scientific brief dated Friday, the United Nations agency said the idea that one-time infection can lead to immunity remains unproven and is thus unreliable as a foundation for the next phase of the world's response to the pandemic.
Reopening is happening, as inexorable and necessary as it perilous.
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2. As the nation braces for Texas to announce its plans and Tennesseans to begin dining in restaurants (both Monday), reopenings continue apace in Georgia.
It remains unclear how that is going, but it is apparent that many people are returning to activities outside the home, many infused with a sense of liberty. Anecdotally, from what I have heard from readers and seen, it seems that
* Reopening is occurring without significant overt public tensions or incidents.
* Reopened businesses are taking some of the required precautions, but no one knows how rigorous those essential efforts are now – or will be as time goes on.
* There is plenty of mask wearing and proper social distancing going on in the streets, at the parks and hiking trails, and inside businesses such as barber shops – but you can’t walk too far without seeing lots and lots of exceptions.
* If reopenings like this are to work, a lot of individual and organizational behavior is going to tell the tale, not pronouncements or enforcement by the government.
So the ambiguity of the results of the Georgia Experiment continues.
Here are a few things that we do know are happening in the Peach State:
Saturday evening, the state Department of Public Health said confirmed cases of COVID-19 increased by 725 from Friday to 23,216. Deaths also rose by eight during that period to 907 by Saturday evening.
While Georgia is ramping up its testing capacity, until recent days, only very sick and vulnerable patients, such as people who live and work in long-term care facilities, and first responders and health workers were being tested. Testing availability has been broadened to those with symptoms, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expanded, however it’s unclear how many mildly symptomatic people aren’t seeking tests. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
Many governors face decisions in the coming days about whether or not to extend stay-at-home and business closure orders. As some predicted, it is clear that pressure in most cases will be in the direction of reopening, as few want to risk falling behind other states in shifting the balance more towards economic activity.
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3. According to my reporting, this is where things seem to be going:
The momentum for more and more reopenings will grow, in states Red and Blue. With almost no place in the country coming close to rivaling the New York City area’s outbreak, implicit in the moves towards a return to life as it was pre-COVID-19 will be the notion that the threat from the virus is not that bad, or, at least, quite manageable.
Even as society reaps the clear benefits of a phased, uneven return to civic, religious, and economic life, more people will in fact be killed by the virus.
Barring a huge resurgence of community spread, hospitals will not be overwhelmed, but the personnel assigned to ER and COVID-19 work will in many cases get infected and/or look for other jobs, a quiet, gradual crisis that the United States will not properly or sufficiently address, with grave human implications.
Some additional resources will be spent trying protect the residents of nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and prisons, along with African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans, as well as those who are at risk because of underlying health conditions, in the face of a still-too-quiet crisis that the United States will not properly or sufficiently address, with grave human implications.
Society will head in this direction without ever having the difficult, adult conversation about how many souls we are willing to let perish in return for allowing all the rest of us go back to doing what we were doing.
The more people see others not wearing masks, not washing their hands sufficiently, touching their faces, and breaking other rules, the more “contagious” such socially dangerous and selfish behaviors will become.
The policies and practice of daily life will continue to diverge between large, urban areas and less densely populated parts of the country. Mayors and the governors of their states will often be at odds.
Airlines, hotels, cruise ships, schools, bars, nightclubs, and sit-down restaurants will have a very hard time getting consumers to be comfortable and making ends meet with the increased costs and decreased revenues that will come from making all the necessary changes.
Movie theaters are done and dusted (which they were before, but now it will happen faster). The resurrgence of drive-in movies will continue.
Retail, most services, Starbucks, convenience stores, garden stores, carryout restaurants, houses of worship, and pro sports will largely find ways back to profitability and normalcy.
As the relentless process of dealing with all these challenges moves more and more to state and local governments, the White House will return to dealing with other problems and projects (including the reelection effort), and the national media (with a few notable exceptions) will fail to sufficiently cover the story in a way that effectively holds powerful interests accountable to the public interest.
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4. Speaking of accountability, let me state something that perhaps seems obvious.
As flawed, destructive, and tragic-comic as the daily White House briefings were well before the disinfectant/light outrages, they were still able to accomplish at least some of the purpose such sessions are supposed to serve.
Until and unless the briefings start up again, the government will not be held as accountable for its actions as it has been until now.
President Trump might have acted like he didn’t give a rip about the point of view reflected in the media’s better accountability questions, but it was manifest that others in the government did.
Administration officials’ reactions and adjustments to the exposure of points of weakness were not total or consistent, but they happened.
My suggestion: reinstall the briefings, minus the president. Move them off the White House grounds. Let the vice president lead them, but minimize how much he speaks, including foregoing divisive or inappropriate political remarks. No need to spend time lavishing praise on Donald Trump. Have a consistent group of the top medical, health, economic, and disaster relief officials there, with participation as appropriate of other members of the effort.
Media organizations should stop sending White House reporters to ask the questions, but, in their stead, as I have suggested before, deploy journalists who are experts on science, medical care, and public health crises.
That would alter the tone and substance of an important daily moment for the nation, at which information is imparted; at which the odds of medically inaccurate statements being uttered are reduced significantly; at which a sense of calm, optimism, and unity can be projected; and at which accountability (however imperfectly, as always is the case, even in the best of times) is a major purpose.
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5. This Washington Post effort on the rising policy and political splits between Capitol Hill Republicans and the White House is essential reading, as is this New York Times story about deep concern in Republican circles about the prospect of losing control of both the White House and the Senate.
It is time to introduce new readers to one of Haley Barbour’s most important dicta:
In politics, good gets better and bad gets worse.
For the foreseeable future – and in this case “foreseeable future” could mean straight through Election Day – a poisonous dynamic will exist in most news stories and elite conversations about the electoral prospects of Republican candidates, from the president on down.
As long as the pandemic is not controlled; as long as the economy teeters between deep recession and something worse; as long as national and battleground state polls show Joe Biden in the lead; as long as the media will excitedly publish the background quotes of the most panicky down-ballot candidates and party strategists; as long as a vast discrepancy exists between the kind of press coverage Nancy Pelosi gets and the kind the president and Mitch McConnel get; as long as Trump doesn’t develop a convincing political comeback narrative to capture the imagination of the political press corps and skittish GOP candidates; as long as Team Trump fails to find a way to disqualify Biden as an acceptable choice in the minds of sufficient numbers of voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin – as long as all that continues, for Donald Trump and his adopted party, bad will get worse in terms of politics.
For Joe Biden politically, good will keep getting better. No matter how little enthusiasm he inspires; no matter how lacking his economic message; no matter how much more press coverage Tara Reade and Hunter Biden eventually get; no matter how many digital ads Brad Parscale unfurls; no matter what opposition research Team Trump had planned to hold for fall release it puts out now; no matter how badly the Democrats are outraised by Trump and the Republican National Committee; no matter if Trump starts holding campaign events before Biden does; no matter if the incumbent has a brick-and-mortar convention and the challenger does not– no matter all that, for as far as the eye can see, the dynamics of the presidential election are set in granite.
For Joe Biden, good will get better.
For Donald Trump, bad will get worse.
Trump’s political advisers know this, but they will be reluctant to say it to each other, let alone the president.
As I said, this could be the prevailing dynamic of the race all the way through November. It could also turn on a quarter by early summer, or sooner, of course.
And as of today, I do not see Biden as the favorite in any states that Trump won four years ago, except for Pennsylvania and Michigan. Wisconsin remains a jump ball, and Biden will still, in the end, face major challenges to take away Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, or Arizona. So Biden’s status as the favorite remains slight, barring a major, major change in the contest.
But on the current trajectory, Trump faces a three-front war (against the virus, against the recession, and against Biden) that he will be hard pressed to show much meaningful progress on, qualitatively or quantitatively.
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6. Are beaches from Florida to California large, significant areas of concern about community spread as they reopen during warming weather?
Or just a TV-picture-friendly, symbolically resonant, relatively minor part of the whole equation?
I have no idea.
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Please redouble your generous efforts to send me your links, ideas, and field reports.
Please recommend Wide World of News to those you know.
A big week awaits.
Stay in touch and stay well.
Mark