Coronavirus Cases – The Wrongologist

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 21, 2020

Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 20, 2020: Come because you love Trump. Leave with the Trump virus. Wrongo isn’t a futurist, but as this is written on Saturday, there’s reason to be concerned that there may be an increase in COVID-19 infections in Tulsa:

“Six of President Trump’s staffers, who were part of the campaign’s advance team for the president’s Saturday rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, have been quarantined after testing positive for the novel coronavirus…”

Wrongo has a bad feeling about the aftermath:

People are coming from several states, some with rapidly-rising hospitalizations
It’s indoors, with no way to effectively distance
There will be cheering, singing, and chanting
Some attendees will have spent hours, possibly days interacting with each other outside the venue, and will spend an hour or two in line just to get in
These aren’t people who have a belief in masking and distancing

Speaking of bad feelings, the Guardian reports that armed militia members and bikers are gathering outside Trump’s venue. The National Guard has been activated in Tulsa. What could go wrong?

On to cartoons. Bolton’s book inspires the rest of Trump’s team:

Trump says Bolton’s book is all lies, and they are state secrets:

They knew it and did nothing:

GOP complains about demonstrators:

LGBTQ ruling angers the elephant:

Chart shows COVID in the US, based on which presidential candidate won in 2016. Notice anything?

The cure:

Monday Wake Up Call, Memorial Day – May 25, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Reflection of sunrise at Vietnam Veterans Memorial – 2012 photo by Angela B. Pan

(There will be no column on Tuesday, 5/26. We will resume on Wednesday.)

Most years, today is about honoring those who have died in America’s wars. But this year, we should also be honoring all of those who have died from COVID-19. In the 80+ days since the first American death from the virus, around 100,000 people have died from it.

Let that sink in. The 2020 virus toll is now greater than America’s combined combat deaths in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet, many people think that concern about the virus is simply a political move designed to keep Trump from being reelected.

Let’s take a look back at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. It is dedicated to deceased US service members whose remains were never identified. On March 4, 1921 Congress approved the first burial of an unidentified American serviceman from World War I in the plaza of the new Memorial Amphitheater.

Then on November 11, 1921, another unknown WWI soldier was brought back from France and interred in the tomb. President Warren G. Harding officiated at the interment ceremonies. During his remarks at the ceremony, Harding said this:

“Our part is to atone for the losses of the heroic dead by making a better Republic for the living”.

Harding was president from 1921 to 1923, when he died, apparently of a heart attack. Despite his being in office only two years, Harding managed to appoint four justices to the Supreme Court.

We see Harding as a failed president, but if all presidents made “making a better Republic for the living” their highest objective, America would likely be a much better place today.

The AP reports that, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, more than 1,000 veterans have been killed by the Coronavirus, but that number does not include hundreds more who have died in state-run veterans homes. Most people know someone who died.

Despite that, Coronavirus deaths are being politicized. Trump says the numbers are exaggerated. Many Republicans say that masks and social distancing aren’t necessary. Some still compare the rate of deaths from the yearly flu to COVID-19 and say “what’s the big deal?”

On this Memorial Day, we seem to be hopelessly divided. Polls show that just 53% of Democrats have a great deal of confidence that medical scientists are acting in the public interest. But among Republicans, just 31% express the same “great deal” of confidence in them, a 22 percentage point difference.

Perhaps looking at a little more history would help. America was founded on principles of mutual help, compromise, and provision for the common defense in a hostile world. Ben Franklin said at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, that “We must all hang together, or surely we will all hang, separately.” What he meant was that unity was essential to achieving victory in the Revolutionary War.

Our Constitution codifies the golden rule into civic responsibility for finding solutions to shared problems. The expectation is that will be accomplished through reasoned debate as a part of the legislative process.

But our infatuation with neoliberal economics has brought us unregulated greed. That has led to failures of the commons. Management of health care by MBAs means we can’t provide our own medicines, or our own PPE. We can’t even maintain enough ICU beds on standby for peak needs.

The pandemic has shown us that we’re poorly equipped to handle both a humanitarian disaster and an economic crisis at the same time. What’s far worse is that those existential threats didn’t unite us.

If these twin threats weren’t enough, what possible threat will it take to unite us?

What may finish off America as a global power is our failure to learn from our mistakes. We live in a time of black or white answers, of friends versus enemies. We’ve forgotten how very useful understanding what is happening in the grey areas can be.

The virus isn’t going away with words or photo ops. And propping up the Dow Jones isn’t going save us either.

American Exceptionalism is over. We’re finding out that in most of the ways that count (healthcare, employment security, and unity) we’re performing at a mediocre standard.

Do we still have what it takes to correct our slide?

Time to wake up America. On this Memorial Day, we need to remember our dead, but we also need to remember what it takes to live and work together for a common cause.

Tax Revenue Has Never Been More Important

The Daily Escape:

Harris & Ewing “Less taxes, more jobs”, US Chamber of Commerce campaign in 1939. Photo via Shorpy. Maybe the sign should have said “lower taxes”. It was the first of 25,000 such signs put up all over the nation as part of a drive for a reduction in corporate taxes. And it worked. An alliance between the Chamber, Henry Morgenthau, Treasury Secretary, and Sen. Pat Harrison, (D-MS) conservative chair of the Senate Finance Committee, prevailed over the New Dealers. He blocked further tax hikes, and helped to create new corporate tax loopholes. Roosevelt went along, expecting that business would support him. The following year, the Chamber simply demanded more tax breaks, while backing Wendell Willkie. It’s all so familiar. Trickle down is an old idea, and everything old is new again!

Here’s an interesting chart from End Coronavirus.org showing the progress of states toward beating the current COVID-19 pandemic. The numbers are through May 5. Those in green are winning the fight, those in yellow are nearly there, and the red ones still need more action:

There are four states in the green: Alaska, Hawaii, Montana and Vermont. Ten are nearly there, including Maine, Louisiana, New York and South Dakota. The remaining 37 still need work, some more than others. And many of the “needs more work” states are exiting their lockdowns this week.

So it goes in America. States and cities are going broke, primarily because of the sharp drop in tax revenues since the shutdown. They all face increased costs, from unemployment claims to spending on additional hospital capacity, and overspending on new purchases of PPE because of federal government inaction.

New York City says it will need $7.4 billion in federal aid, while NY state faces a $13 billion shortfall; Alaska’s budget gap might top $1 billion; Colorado’s at $3 billion. California? Its shortfall may be $54 billion. Red ink will be true for nearly every state, county, city, town and village in the country. States can’t deficit spend. They and their local governments must balance their budgets somehow, with some combination of federal aid, budget cuts, or tax increases.

In addition, the WSJ reports that some manufacturers that furloughed employees during lockdowns say their plants definitely won’t reopen. Manufacturing output last year finally surpassed the 2007 previous peak, but factory employment has not returned to levels reached before the great financial crisis. It appears that in 2020, it will again fall below 2007 levels. And the more that job losses turn from temporary to permanent, the bigger the hit to unemployment insurance, to consumer spending, and to every company that relies on it—including manufacturers.

Wrongo spoke by phone with the mayor of his little town this morning. We are still not sure how we will balance the town’s 2020-2021 budget. In most years, the budget has been approved by the voters in May, but that will not happen this spring. The consequence is that, regardless of how the budget gets balanced, the town’s recovery will likely take several years.

So, states and cities think they have little choice but to reopen. They need the tax revenue, while they face even higher costs if they start an aggressive test and trace program. And they can’t expect the federal government to fund that new testing and tracing.

So most states are moving toward opening, regardless of whether they are red, or blue.

But, states may not all be EQUALLY reckless in what they choose to open, some are planning a phased reopen, followed by a re-evaluation before moving forward to the next step. Some are opening up just about as fast as they closed businesses six – eight weeks ago.

We are living in a federal system with a broken central government. The federal government has handled the pandemic badly, and shows no interest in trying to do better now. Even a robust federalism will fail if there is no federal financial help for the states.

It is a hell of thing to be shown clearly and in no uncertain terms that your federal government doesn’t give a shit if your citizens live or die.

Or if your state suffers a debilitating blow to its finances and future.

Wrongo can’t be sure, but this is probably how black people have felt forever. Now it applies to the rest of us.

Monday Wake Up Call – Get Back to Work Edition, May 11, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Pileated Woodpecker chicks – photo by JH Cleary

Americans are starting to peek out of their nests again. Governors have decided, and 30 of them are re-opening their states. Those states are not exclusively Republican; there are a few Democratic states too. The logic behind reopening is that of risk assessment and risk management. Somewhere between prudence and overreaction lies today’s American toxic politics.

We judge risk versus gain for everything, including for other causes of death. We try to model healthy behaviors. Most of us wear seatbelts, most watch our diets, and have stopped smoking years ago.

We also have to judge the risks associated with whether to end, or continue the lockdown. That means deciding which steps to take that will minimize both the spread of the virus, along with minimizing the crushing economic hardship being experienced by many Americans.

Ignore that the government isn’t currently taking care of healthcare and housing if you are unemployed.

The lockdown could go on for much longer if the federal government was willing to underwrite living costs for those who are out of work, until such time as it was safe to go back to work. But they have no intention of doing that.

So, from the Trump perspective, the choice is clear: Businesses need to open and their workers need to go back to work, despite the risks. Their argument is that living with COVID-19 isn’t as risky as it seems. Twenty-two states have had fewer than 100 deaths. So far, only 15 of 50 states have had total deaths for the crisis that are higher than NYC’s current rate of 500 a day.

The original goal of lockdowns was to keep the health care system from being overwhelmed, and in the largest cities, that risk seems to be behind us. Whether that will be true in rural America where few hospitals operate, remains to be seen. Derek Thompson said in the Atlantic:

“This crisis represents an existential threat to America’s small businesses. Almost half of all job losses in April occurred in leisure and hospitality, where small businesses are overrepresented in companies like restaurants and stores. The decimation of small business would have long-lasting implications. It would destroy jobs that would be unlikely to return quickly, while creating a crisis of long-term unemployment.”

And all of those restaurants, cafés, theaters, community centers, and specialty shops that are part of the local fabric of our towns and villages could be wiped off Main Street. Losing many of them would be an economic tragedy. More from Thompson: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“The virus is real, the hospitalizations are real, the deaths are real, the need for masks and social distancing is real, the threat to millions of restaurants and shops is real, and the incomparable levels of unemployment are real, too. The White House plan to reverse this cavalcade of horrors is to “reopen” the economy. But 20 million Americans just lost their jobs in the past few weeks, not because the government shut down the economy, but because a pandemic scared millions of Americans into staying at home. There is plenty to be wisely afraid of, but Washington thinking that a pandemic economy is like a garage door that it can reopen by pressing a button might be the scariest thing of all.”

No one knows what will happen between now and Election Day. It’s not just a matter of businesses opening up. For people to go back to work, schools must be open, day care must be open, public transportation must be safe, and customers must show up.

Are you up for all of that?

In the Great Depression, we learned that unemployment at today’s scale required massive government intervention to address: Jobs programs, infrastructure investment, and a robust social safety net.

It required an FDR to galvanize the country. Needless to say, neither Trump nor the Republican Party have the desire to provide that leadership. They will be every bit as uncaring and incompetent at rebuilding our economy as they have been at stopping the pandemic.

Time to wake up America! The economy has been opened, and you need to protect yourself whether you’re back to work, or trying to find a new gig. And you know that Trump isn’t going to help you protect yourself and your family, and he’s certainly not going to help you find a new job.

To help you wake up, listen to Guns ‘n Roses cover Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die” which played during Trump’s visit to an N95 mask manufacturing plant in Phoenix:

Remember all of this in November.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Can We Get Our Act Together?

The Daily Escape:

Hummingbird with bee balm – 2014 photo by JH Cleary. Hummingbirds arrived on the fields of Wrong yesterday.

When was the last time that America got its act together when it needed to? It’s been a very long time, probably not since WWII, or possibly, during our effort to immunize everyone, once there was a polio vaccine. That’s between 65 and 75 years ago.

We didn’t get our act together during the Vietnam era. We’re reminded of that with yesterday’s 50-year anniversary of the Kent State shooting in 1970, when four unarmed college students were killed by soldiers of the Ohio National Guard. It was a small, but significant tragedy that became a part of a greater national tragedy, the Vietnam War.

We didn’t get our act together after 9/11 when we attacked Afghanistan and Iraq. Like Vietnam, we’ve been losing to people who wear sandals and fight with antique weapons, for 50+ years.

These aren’t the only examples. New Orleans was whacked by Hurricane Katrina, but a week later, survivors were still sitting on roof tops surrounded by floating corpses. Even now, 15 years later, there is still evidence of damaged buildings in the city’s 9^th Ward.

We haven’t gotten our act together to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. We’re currently seeing 1,750+ deaths per day. While the death toll is dropping in NYC and NJ, it’s rising pretty much everywhere else. Here’s a chart showing the growth in cases, not deaths:

The dotted lines are a 7-day moving average, which allows us to see the trends more clearly. Politicians outside of the NY metropolitan area who are busy relaxing restrictions look like they’re simply giving up and pretending it’s over, when it isn’t. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) is dropping requirements that residents wear masks. It is now a “strong suggestion”. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) wants residents to wear masks starting May 11, but will not enforce it.

Getting our act together has never been a feature of America’s Coronavirus fight. A depressing story in the New Yorker, “Seattle’s Leaders Let Scientists Take the Lead. New York’s Did Not”, sheds light on Seattle’s response vs. New York City’s. Although the initial coronavirus outbreaks emerged in both cities at roughly the same time, by the second week of April, Washington State had about one recorded fatality per 14,000 residents. New York’s death rate was nearly six times higher.

The article describes how Seattle’s political leadership followed a tried and tested CDC playbook for epidemics, called the CDC’s Field Epidemiology Manual, which places public health and scientists at the core of the response. New York’s mayor DiBlasio cut NYC’s public heath bureaucrats out of the loop. In early March, both NYC’s mayor and NY’s governor Cuomo were giving speeches de-emphasizing the risks of the pandemic, as the city was announcing its first cases.

This partially explains why Washington State has less than 2% of coronavirus cases in the US, while NY has 27%.

We’re all familiar with the confusion of message and policy sown by Trump as the primary national spokesperson for the pandemic, a person notoriously hostile to science. His team includes Mike Pence, Dr. Fauci from the NIH, Dr. Deborah Brix from the State Department, and Jared Kushner, from the family. With contributions from Mike Pompeo and Steve Mnuchin.

The New Yorker quotes Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security, at Johns Hopkins:

“When there are so many different figures, it can cause real confusion about whom to listen to, or who’s in charge of what….And, if the response becomes political, it’s a disaster, because people won’t know if you are making recommendations based on science or politics…so there’s the risk they’ll start to tune out.”

From the NYT:

“As President Trump presses for states to reopen their economies, his administration is privately projecting a steady rise in the number of coronavirus cases and deaths over the next several weeks. The daily death toll will reach about 3,000 on June 1…nearly double from the current level of about 1,750.”

Math tells us that this will amount to about 81,000 more deaths by then, making the total somewhere around 150,000, assuming that the death rate remains on its current trend.

Should we expect that America will continue to flub it’s response to the pandemic? If so, Aaron Sorkin and Jeff Daniels will have to re-do the famous opening scene from “The Newsroom” where Daniels says “America is not the greatest country in the world anymore”:

Since we haven’t gotten our act together for so long, a failure to control the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic will be depressingly similar to the tragedies of the past.

Failures of leadership, coupled with warring political factions who refuse to work together for a common good.

More on What’s Next

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Mauna Kea, HI – 2020 photo by laramarie27

Here’s the COVID-19 tracking report as of April 12:

The rate of increase in infections and deaths appear to have plateaued, while deaths as a percentage of cases continues to rise. Testing hovers around 140,000 per day, still growing slower than the rate of new infections.

The next chart seems to indicate that opening the lockdown would be a mistake. The impression is that the rest of the country isn’t doing as badly as New York. Here is a comparison of cases in New York to cases in the rest of the US:

On the 12^th, infections in the rest of the US started to grow faster than new infections in NY. The rate of new deaths in the rest of the US has also become a larger share of total US deaths. So far, there is little evidence to conclude that the administration should reverse the lockdown strategies of the states.

Today we continue with yesterday’s question, “what’s next?”

When parts of the US, and eventually all of it come out from physical and economic quarantine, we will attempt to return to “normal”. Normal will bring with it a level of economic devastation, bankruptcy, and household impoverishment that will almost certainly be beyond what politicians can now imagine.

To bridge across to a sustained level of economic activity, the Federal government and the Federal Reserve will have to add substantial stimulus beyond the $2 trillion so far, possibly an additional $5+ trillion, in new stimulus.

Most of those new funds will have to go to individuals and small businesses in the form of outright grants. Otherwise, small and medium size firms will not be able to reopen their doors after a prolonged shutdown.

Grants to individuals will be most important. Renters and homeowners will have no means to become current on back rent and mortgage payments. Without these funds, the impact within the financial sector will exceed that of the Great Recession, as rents and mortgages would go unpaid for months. Foreclosures and evictions would skyrocket.

Local and state governments that rely on tax revenue from sales taxes, income taxes, real estate and property taxes will be deeply affected as well.

Bipartisan talk in DC of a new effort to create $2 trillion in infrastructure funding makes sense as a source of jobs and needed economic revival. It will also jump start the downstream suppliers of steel, cement and heavy equipment.

The Federal government may have to take equity stakes in large companies like it did in the 2008 auto bailout. In a fashion, this will make the US look a lot more “socialist” than it did in 2019.

There will also be psychological fallout that will be difficult to anticipate. Axios thinks the Coronavirus may be a defining experience for Generation Z, shaping its outlook for decades to come, disrupting its entry to adulthood and altering its earning potential, trust in institutions and views on family and sex.

Pew Research says that nearly half of workers ages 16-24 held service jobs in bars, restaurants and hotels — many of which have now been shut down or greatly scaled back. And young workers with less experience are the first to be let go.

Nearly 25% of US workers, 38.1 million out of 157.5 million, are employed in industries most likely to feel an immediate impact from the COVID-19 lockdown. Among the most vulnerable are workers in retail trade (10% of all workers) and food services and drinking places (6%). In total, these two industries employ nearly 26 million Americans. More from Pew:

“Workers in these industries have lower-than-average earnings. Across all industries, the average weekly earnings in January 2020 were $975. By contrast, workers in food services and drinking places earned only $394 per week on average. Workers in the other high-risk industries had earnings ranging from around $500 to $600 per week.”

Hence the need for a financial bridge by the federal government.

Part of the new normal must be adequate inventory of medical supplies to deal with any future replay of the Coronavirus or another pandemic. The NYT reports that China today makes about 80% of the world’s antibiotics, along with the building blocks for a long list of drugs. That supply can be shut off at any time, for any reason. It is now painfully obvious that health care must be a primary national security concern, something our politicians were blind to just a few months ago.

Will these, and other necessary things change?

So far, we have a redux of 2008. The Fed and Treasury have decided to bailout speculative capital and big corporations, let small businesses fail, and let the working poor employed by small business to become even more impoverished.

Will there be a Marshall Plan for us?

Monday Wake Up Call – What’s Next Edition

The Daily Escape:

Chamisa plants near Abiquiu, NM – photo by zuzofthewolves

(Publishing of daily COVID-19 data is on hold while Wrongo tries to understand inconsistencies in the data)

Trump isn’t wrong to begin thinking about what comes next. At some point, we will again poke our heads out of our burrows, and feel the warmth of sunlight. We’ll attempt to resume the life we had before the virus struck. There are two risks in this: First, will we be back in the swing of things too soon? And second, what should we demand be different, given what the nation has experienced?

In Trump’s view the answer is simple. He wants most people back to work in time to have a robust economy come Election Day. He’s targeted May 1^st as the start date for his governor buddies to begin revitalizing the economy.

Once again, the Trump administration is showing itself to be utterly incapable of dealing with this crisis.

He’s moving the country to re-open, despite warnings from public health officials and from most state governors. Here’s a germane comment on Wrongo’s Saturday’s column by long-time blog reader Terry McKenna:

“We really know so little. To begin with, we don’t know how the virus spreads. We are learning but that’s all. In the beginning, we guessed wrong that it was not spread by healthy (asymptomatic) persons. Doctors disagree over the size of the droplets that carry the virus. So we are almost like we were before we had the germ theory where all we can do it isolate.

Also “test” is a simplistic word. Which test? We need a test that tells a clinician that someone had the virus in his system, and a test with a fast result is essential. But a negative test means little, especially in a healthy (asymptomatic) person, because in the absence of a vaccine, that person could be infected next week or next month. So we need a test of antibodies – but even still, we don’t know how long immunity lasts.

And then we have the notion that the president can order the country back to work. Even if a business reopens, who will come? And yes, I know someone will, but imagine the NY Mets having their opening day May 15. Will anyone show up? And if they do, will we see a spike in sickness a few weeks later?

We need time for the science to do its work. We may get lucky, viruses do became less virulent over time (sometimes to re-emerge with vigor).”

A partial re-opening of those portions of the economy that are now shuttered is a risk both to the workers, and to the returning customers. Terry is right to ask if we’ll see a spike in sickness a few weeks later, and if we do, what will be Trump’s plan then?

Broadening out our view, many are starting to think about what needs to be different post-pandemic. As we emerge from this crisis, we have a rare opportunity to focus on change: Do we want a Star Trek, or Blade Runner future? A utopian, or a dystopian one?

As Viet Thanh Nguyen said in the NYT:

“Our real enemy is not the virus but our response to the virus — a response that has been degraded and deformed by the structural inequalities of our society.”

We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rebuild for tomorrow. Or will we just prop up the economic and political process that has given us today’s problems? As an example, if we don’t want sick and contagious people trying to go to work, America must have paid sick leave.

During the lead up to passing the CARES Act, Democrats in Congress recognized this, but at the behest of business lobbies, the Act exempted 80% of all workers, including all those working at firms with over 500 employees AND those working at firms with under 50 employees!

Here’s an illuminating chart:

And in America, add $600 for four months for 20% of our workers. This is post-Reagan America. Assistance to the poor and working class is given grudgingly, and with strings attached. The rich and corporations are showered in subsidies since they are too virtuous and important to let fail. MAGA really means “Make Americans Grovel Again”.

What has to die after Covid-19 is the myth that America is the best country on earth. We’re not as healthy as we thought we were. The symptoms — racial and economic inequality, callousness and selfishness, have been covered up by our unquestioned acceptance of American Exceptionalism.

We’ve lost our right to that view, despite the many, many small acts of heroism every day by health workers and all the “essential” hourly workers who face becoming infected every day.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 12, 2020

It was supposed to be all over by Easter. But this weekend, the time that we were supposed to get back to work, brings us 2000 COVID-19 deaths on a single day, and a mass grave on NYC’s Hart Island. One thing we’ve learned is that Trump isn’t a clairvoyant:

When you leave late, you get there late:

It takes a team:

Wearing a red hat doesn’t make America great. What DOES make our country great is the dedication and drive to serve that’s demonstrated by so many of us. The American spirit doesn’t require fondling the flag, or bloviating in front of the media. Our first responders and our service workers make us proud to be Americans.

Vote by mail should be the answer:

In Washington State when you vote by mail, you retain a paper copy. The state can call the voter and ask them what their vote was, if necessary. You get a few weeks to decide on the issues and which candidate you prefer.

It’s not socialism if it helps you. If your check was passed by Republicans, it’s a STIMULUS:

Real life has become a scary movie:

Trump Not Gaining in Polls

The Daily Escape:

Grinnell Glacier Trail, Glacier NP, MT– September 2018 photo by shinyoutdoors

Here’s today’s update from the Covid Tracking Project:

We’ve added new data showing the daily change, increase or (decrease) for cases, deaths and tests.
There’s no good news today. Today registered the highest number of new infections.
The daily rate of deaths rose by 3,629, the highest so far. The percentage of deaths to total cases continues to rise.
Daily testing increased 280,569, the highest so far. That’s some good news, but the worst news is that the ratio of new infections to new tests is 22.1%.

We’re now down to the most likely two candidates for president, barring some last minute event. The new Quinnipiac Poll has some interesting head-to-head comparisons.

“When asked who would do a better job handling a crisis, voters say 51 – 42% that Biden would do a better job than Trump. Biden tops Trump by a similar margin on health care, as voters say 53 – 40% that he would do a better job than Trump at handling the issue.

However, voters say 49 – 44% that the president would do a better job than Biden handling the economy.”

And the pandemic scares people:

“More than 8 out of 10 registered voters, 85%, say they are either very (50%) or somewhat (35%) concerned they or someone they know will be infected with the coronavirus, a spike of 31 percentage points from early March….Three-quarters of voters say they are either very concerned (39%) or somewhat concerned (36%) that they or someone in their family will need to be hospitalized because of the coronavirus.”

Quinnipiac also says the head-to-head matchup favors Biden:

“In a head to head matchup between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, Biden beats Trump 49 – 41%. Republicans go to Trump 91 – 7%, while Democrats go to Biden 91 – 4% and independents favor Biden 44 – 35%.”

As always, it will come down to messaging and turnout, and after Wisconsin, expect a sustained effort by the GOP to hamper Democrats’ attempts to cast ballots in November.

And in the current CNN poll:

“A majority, 52%, say they disapprove of the way Trump is handling the coronavirus outbreak, and 45% approve. Both figures have risen since early March, when 41% approved, 48% disapproved and 11% weren’t sure how they felt about the President’s handling of the viral outbreak. Still, just 43% say the President is doing everything he could to fight the outbreak, while 55% say he could be doing more — including 17% among those who approve of his handling of it so far and 18% of Republicans.”

CNN says Trump’s overall approval hasn’t changed much since he started holding daily briefings:

“The President’s overall approval rating stands at 44% approve to 51% disapprove, little changed from a 43% approve to 53% disapprove reading in each of the previous three CNN polls.”

It isn’t clear why people would think Trump will do a better job on the economy than Democrats, but jobs and stock market values fell off so quickly and so steeply that it may take a few more weeks to see if voters actually blame Trump for what is certain to be a terrible economy.

Overall, Trump isn’t moving the political dial in his direction in either of these polls.

When the outbreak started, voters saw his performance as a positive. But once he began his daily briefings, acting like they were campaign rallies, or political theater, and offering unvetted solutions, his numbers returned to the basement.

Biden isn’t a lock. He is a weak candidate, and he’s far from mentally or physically robust. There’s 207 days left before the election. Anything can happen.

Supreme Court Voting Remotely, Denies Wisconsin Voters the Right to Vote Remotely

The Daily Escape:

Super moon, Crested Butte, CO – 2020 photo by itsaberglund

First, here are the latest national pandemic numbers from The COVID Tracking Project: (as of 4/7):

The good news is that the daily rate of increase in new infections is now in single digits (see green above).
Deaths have again spiked, and the percentage of deaths to total cases is rising steadily.
Daily testing has stalled (again) at about 150,000/day. Growth in testing is again lagging growth in new infections.

Next: The Wisconsin primary debacle: Wisconsin held its presidential primary on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination. Unifying the Party will be much easier than in 2016. The stakes are different, the mood is different, and Bernie seems to like Biden more than he liked Hillary.

But that was far from the most surprising thing about the Wisconsin primary. The big Wisconsin news was that the US Supreme Court decided a case called “Republican National Committee v. Democratic National Committee” along political lines. The symbolism is glaring.

The issue before the Court was whether to stay a lower court’s decision that would have extended absentee balloting for a week due to the Coronavirus. And the most notable race wasn’t the Democrat’s primary. It was a conservative Republican’s battle to keep his seat on Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court. From the WaPo: (brackets by Wrongo)

“The scant, 10-page opinion issued Monday night highlighted the [US Supreme] court’s ideological and partisan divide. The justices’ inability to speak with one voice on matters as serious as the coronavirus pandemic and voting rights raised concerns about the legal battles bound to proliferate before the fall elections.”

The great irony in the SCOTUS decision is that the justices didn’t meet together. They are practicing social distancing, because of the Coronavirus, conducting their business via teleconferences. They have also suspended all public Court proceedings for the current term, because, you know, public safety.

But the Supreme Court’s Republican majority felt it was proper to insist that Wisconsin’s normal rules about elections be followed, and hold the primary as if there was no pandemic, no public health threat.

The best comment on the ideological divide in America today came from Tom Sullivan’s column, where he quotes a 2018 observation about conservatism by Frank Wilhoit: (emphasis in the original)

“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect….So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.”

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Tag: Coronavirus Cases

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