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Category: Politics

Before pandemic, a cascade of warnings went unheeded

Before pandemic, a cascade of warnings went unheeded

The New York Times reports: The outbreak of the respiratory virus began in China and was quickly spread around the world by air travelers, who ran high fevers. In the United States, it was first detected in Chicago, and 47 days later, the World Health Organization declared a pandemic. By then it was too late: 110 million Americans were expected to become ill, leading to 7.7 million hospitalized and 586,000 dead. That scenario, code-named “Crimson Contagion” and imagining an influenza…

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Senate Intelligence Chair dumped up to $1.6 million of stock after reassuring public about coronavirus preparedness

Senate Intelligence Chair dumped up to $1.6 million of stock after reassuring public about coronavirus preparedness

By Robert Faturechi and Derek Willis, ProPublica, March 19, 2020 Soon after he offered public assurances that the government was ready to battle the coronavirus, the powerful chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, sold off a significant percentage of his stocks, unloading between $582,029 and $1.56 million of his holdings on Feb. 13 in 29 separate transactions. As the head of the intelligence committee, Burr, a North Carolina Republican, has access to the government’s most highly classified information…

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China emerges as the global leader in pandemic response

China emerges as the global leader in pandemic response

Kurt M. Campbell and Rush Doshi write: With hundreds of millions of people now isolating themselves around the world, the novel coronavirus pandemic has become a truly global event. And while its geopolitical implications should be considered secondary to matters of health and safety, those implications may, in the long term, prove just as consequential—especially when it comes to the United States’ global position. Global orders have a tendency to change gradually at first and then all at once. In…

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Social distancing is here to stay for much more than a few weeks

Social distancing is here to stay for much more than a few weeks

Gideon Lichfield writes: To stop coronavirus we will need to radically change almost everything we do: how we work, exercise, socialize, shop, manage our health, educate our kids, take care of family members. We all want things to go back to normal quickly. But what most of us have probably not yet realized—yet will soon—is that things won’t go back to normal after a few weeks, or even a few months. Some things never will. It’s now widely agreed (even…

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How South Korea trounced the U.S. in the race to test people for coronavirus

How South Korea trounced the U.S. in the race to test people for coronavirus

Reuters reports: In late January, South Korean health officials summoned representatives from more than 20 medical companies from their lunar New Year celebrations to a conference room tucked inside Seoul’s busy train station. One of the country’s top infectious disease officials delivered an urgent message: South Korea needed an effective test immediately to detect the novel coronavirus, then running rampant in China. He promised the companies swift regulatory approval. Though there were only four known cases in South Korea at…

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Investor Bill Ackman urges President Trump and corporate America to shut down the country for 30 days

Investor Bill Ackman urges President Trump and corporate America to shut down the country for 30 days

  CNBC reports: Investor Bill Ackman urged President Donald Trump and corporate America in an impassioned plea on CNBC to shut down the country for 30 days to contain the fast-spreading coronavirus, calling it the only option to rescue the economy. “What’s scaring the American people and corporate America now is the gradual rollout,” Ackman told Scott Wapner on “Halftime Report” on Wednesday. “We need to shut it down now. … This is the only answer.” “America will end as…

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The era of small government is over

The era of small government is over

Jamelle Bouie writes: The outbreak threatens entire industries with destruction. Most restaurants, for example, can probably survive a week or two of social distancing. Some can survive a month. But if self-quarantine lasts for months, then hundreds of thousands of businesses, including suppliers and distributors, will fail. Millions of Americans will be out of work. It’s even worse for travel and tourism. The so-called accommodations sector of the economy, which includes hotels and other forms of lodging, accounts for more…

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COVID-19 social distancing guidelines are impossible inside overpopulated U.S. prisons

COVID-19 social distancing guidelines are impossible inside overpopulated U.S. prisons

Morgan Simon writes: At a time when across the country, states are limiting gatherings of over 250 people and those who can are choosing to self-quarantine, there’s one place where millions of people are involuntarily gathered in close proximity — our nation’s prisons and immigrant detention centers. An epidemiologist at Brown University has recommended that the United States could release close to 44,000 detained immigrants who are being held for civil, not criminal, infractions. This would not only prevent the…

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Fox News takes an abrupt U-turn after weeks of downplaying the coronavirus pandemic

Fox News takes an abrupt U-turn after weeks of downplaying the coronavirus pandemic

The Guardian reports: Fox News, the rightwing channel that is a favorite of Donald Trump and conservatives across the US, spent the first weeks of the Covid-19 outbreak downplaying the threat of the virus. Hosts often claimed that those warning of the danger were “panic pushers”, or engaged in “mass hysteria”. Some on Fox News even claimed it was all an effort to try to bring down the president. But in recent days Fox News has performed an abrupt U-turn,…

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White House takes new line after report warns coronavirus death toll in the U.S. could exceed 2 million

White House takes new line after report warns coronavirus death toll in the U.S. could exceed 2 million

The New York Times reports: Sweeping new federal recommendations announced on Monday for Americans to sharply limit their activities appeared to draw on a dire scientific report warning that, without action by the government and individuals to slow the spread of coronavirus and suppress new cases, 2.2 million people in the United States could die. To curb the epidemic, there would need to be drastic restrictions on work, school and social gatherings for periods of time until a vaccine was…

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How long social distancing for coronavirus will have to last depends on these factors

How long social distancing for coronavirus will have to last depends on these factors

The Washington Post reports: How long are we going to have to keep this up? The closed schools, working from home, six feet of personal space and zombie-apocalypse empty streets? It’s the question now preoccupying America as millions of parents silently scream it into the void amid the coronavirus pandemic. But it is an especially hard one for science to answer. The best and most honest reply, according to epidemiologists and virologists, is simple: “It depends.” It’s not going to…

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The inhumane conditions inside America’s jails and prisons now pose a threat to everyone

The inhumane conditions inside America’s jails and prisons now pose a threat to everyone

Amanda Klonsky writes: If you think a cruise ship is a dangerous place to be during a pandemic, consider America’s jails and prisons. The new coronavirus spreads at its quickest in closed environments. And places like nursing homes in affected areas have begun to take precautions at the behest of families and experts. As this new disease spreads, it has become equally important for all of us to ask what steps are being taken to protect the health of people…

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Trump pretends he anticipated the coronavirus pandemic, but his own words prove him wrong

Trump pretends he anticipated the coronavirus pandemic, but his own words prove him wrong

The New York Times reports: For weeks, President Trump has minimized the coronavirus, mocked concern about it and treated the risk cavalierly. On Tuesday he took to the White House podium and made a remarkable pronouncement: He knew it was a pandemic all along. “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic,” Mr. Trump told reporters. Here is what Mr. Trump actually said from the beginning of the pandemic. Jan. 22, asked on CNBC whether…

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Before Trump took office, the incoming administration was warned about the danger of a pandemic

Before Trump took office, the incoming administration was warned about the danger of a pandemic

Politico reports: Seven days before Donald Trump took office, his aides faced a major test: the rapid, global spread of a dangerous virus in cities like London and Seoul, one serious enough that some countries were imposing travel bans. In a sober briefing, Trump’s incoming team learned that the disease was an emerging pandemic — a strain of novel influenza known as H9N2 — and that health systems were crashing in Asia, overwhelmed by the demand. “Health officials warn that…

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Experts agree that Trump’s coronavirus response was poor, but the U.S. was ill-prepared in the first place

Experts agree that Trump’s coronavirus response was poor, but the U.S. was ill-prepared in the first place

President Donald Trump with members of the president’s Coronavirus Task Force at the White House, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020. AP Photo/Evan Vucci By Simon F. Haeder, Pennsylvania State University As the coronavirus pandemic exerts a tighter grip on the nation, critics of the Trump administration have repeatedly highlighted the administration’s changes to the nation’s pandemic response team in 2018 as a major contributor to the current crisis. This combines with a hiring freeze at the Centers for Disease Control and…

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Trump finds his MAGA movement fracturing over coronavirus

Trump finds his MAGA movement fracturing over coronavirus

Politico reports: Just two weeks after President Donald Trump rallied conservatives to focus on the threat of socialism, his followers are splitting over the coronavirus pandemic. On one side are those like Bill Mitchell, who dismiss it as nothing worse than the flu, and the drive to eradicate it as “climate change 2.0” — as in, a media-lefty mass hysteria. On the other side are pro-Trump fixtures like Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller, who have been sounding alarms on the…

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