Attention to the Unseen

Anne Applebaum writes: Quotations from the president’s astonishing April 23 press conference have appeared on every continent, via countless television channels, radio stations, magazines, and websites, in hundreds of thousands of variations and dozens of languages—often accompanied by warnings, in case someone was fooled, not to drink disinfectant or bleach. In years past, many of these outlets presumably published articles critical of this or that aspect of U.S. foreign policy, blaming one U.S. president or another. But the kind of…

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Frances Z. Brown write: How should a decorated public health professional serving in the White House react when the president of the United States stands next to her and openly muses about the medical potential of injecting disinfectant? This is the moral dilemma facing Deborah Birx, Anthony Fauci, Robert Redfield and other physicians and scientists coordinating the government’s pandemic response. When President Trump offers sorcery over evidence-based medicine — as when he said, in February, that warm weather would make…

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CNBC reports: The top U.S. spy agency said for the first time on Thursday that the nation’s collective intelligence community does not believe that the coronavirus was manmade or genetically modified. “The Intelligence Community also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified,” the Office of Director of National Intelligence said in a rare statement. “The IC will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began…

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Priscilla Chan and Sam Hawgood write: The health care community has a responsibility to anticipate worst-case scenarios and develop response plans for epidemics that may be years or decades away. It should model how outbreaks might cause shortages in medical supplies and devise protocols to compensate for them. It should plan for what would happen if those protocols fail and shortfalls in staff or equipment make it difficult to provide care to each and every patient. Crises like Covid-19 are…

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The Washington Post reports: Senior U.S. officials are beginning to explore proposals for punishing or demanding financial compensation from China for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, according to four senior administration officials with knowledge of internal planning. The move could splinter already strained relations between the two superpowers at a perilous moment for the global economy. Senior officials across multiple government agencies are expected to meet Thursday to begin mapping out a strategy for seeking retaliatory measures against China,…

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The New York Times reports: Senior Trump administration officials have pushed American spy agencies to hunt for evidence to support an unsubstantiated theory that a government laboratory in Wuhan, China, was the origin of the coronavirus outbreak, according to current and former American officials. The effort comes as President Trump escalates a public campaign to blame China for the pandemic. Some intelligence analysts are concerned that the pressure from administration officials will distort assessments about the virus and that they…

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The Hill reports: A sweeping survey of more than 22,000 voters in all 50 states found that most say their governor is doing a better job than President Trump in handling the coronavirus outbreak. The poll, conducted by researchers at Harvard, Northeastern University and Rutgers, found voters are more likely to have high levels of trust in their state and local governments than in the White House or Congress. Overall, 44 percent approve of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak,…

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