How’s everyone doing?

I feel a bit dizzy, not sure if it’s the Covid 19 or from politicians changing direction 180 degrees over the weekend.

Cuomo on Friday:
New York on PAUSE after Cuomo issues mandatory coronavirus shutdown

Cuomo on Monday:

BAD NEWS FOLKS: Cuomo is putting Bill Mulrow, a senior advisor at the Wall Street private equity vulture Blackstone Group, in charge of the coronavirus economic recovery.

More on Cuomo, Mulrow, and Blackstone here: https://t.co/FE7AQpWKyR https://t.co/femfPPJiZf

— Rob Galbraith (@RobGalbraithLS) March 23, 2020

How’s everyone doing?

I feel a bit dizzy, not sure if from Covid 19 or politicians doing 180’s.

Cuomo on Friday: Shut it all down!
Cuomo on Sunday: Cuomo warns socializing ‘has to stop and it has to stop now’

Liberals swoon: “Cuomo is so presidential!”

Cuomo on Monday: But the economy!
Gov. Andrew Cuomo: We Have To Start Thinking About How We Restart The Economy

BAD NEWS FOLKS: Cuomo is putting Bill Mulrow, a senior advisor at the Wall Street private equity vulture Blackstone Group, in charge of the coronavirus economic recovery.

More on Cuomo, Mulrow, and Blackstone here: https://t.co/FE7AQpWKyR https://t.co/femfPPJiZf

— Rob Galbraith (@RobGalbraithLS) March 23, 2020

Cuba’s Coronavirus Response Is Putting Other Countries to Shame

Cuba is caricatured by the Right as a totalitarian hellhole. But its response to the coronavirus pandemic — from sending doctors to other countries to pioneering anti-viral treatments to converting factories into mask-making machines — is putting other countries, even rich countries, to shame.

Why Did Joe Biden Disappear Right as the Coronavirus Pandemic Exploded?

Joe Biden just abdicated national leadership by disappearing for a week in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. According to mainstream media, it’s no big deal.

As the Coronavirus Spreads, Democrats Roll out Postal Voting Plans

Congressional Democrats are pushing for nationwide access to vote-by-mail and early voting in response to the spread of the coronavirus. And while lawmakers have introduced legislation to address the havoc the pandemic has had and will have on voting, they say that they’re running into the same partisan wall that has blocked related efforts in the past.

“I see no evidence that Majority Leader McConnell has weakened his opposition,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) on Monday, highlighting the Kentucky Republican’s past and continuing role as an ardent opponent of federal election legislation efforts. “To be really blunt, that’s partly because voter suppression efforts in a number of states around the country include things like changing the hours, changing the location of polling precincts—and vote-by-mail is a way to work around that or to weaken that as a voter suppression tool.”

Coons’s remarks came on a phone call with reporters, where he joined Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to discuss a bill they are cosponsoring that would expand early voting and no-excuse absentee vote-by-mail to all states in time for the November elections.

Even against the coronavirus backdrop, the Democratic senators say McConnell is acting in keeping with his history of blocking election security legislation meant to address concerns after Russia’s 2016 interference operations, and his only reluctant agreement to boost some election security funding after a months-long campaign that saw him called “Moscow Mitch.”A spokesperson for McConnell did not respond to a request for comment.

While election-related funding has been incorporated into the Senate’s coronavirus relief package that is still under debate, Klobuchar said that “we want to see a lot more,” than the just “over $100 million” currently contemplated. The Brennan Center has estimated that a robust election-protection plan related to the coronavirus could cost as much as $2 billion to cover ballot printing and procurement, postage, security, staffing, poll workers, and voter-education campaigns. A proposal unveiled by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Monday called for “billions” in grant funding for states for election administration issues and a national requirements of 15 days of early voting, no-excuse absentee voting, and that registered voters receive ballots in the mail in an emergency.

We Should Be Very Wary About the Growing Military Response to the Coronavirus Crisis

On March 18, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio went on CNN and pleaded for President Trump to mobilize the U.S. military in response to coronavirus. “I want their medical teams, which are first-rate, I want their logistical support, I want their ability to get stuff from factories all over the country where they’re needed most,” de Blasio told Anderson Cooper. “The only force in America that can do it effectively and quickly is the United States military.”

The next day, March 19, was the 17th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a catastrophic act of aggression that would go on to kill more than 1 million Iraqi people, according to one estimate. Since 2003, that date has often been marked by anti-war protests, street blockades and demonstrations at military installations, but these actions have declined in frequency and scale as the years have passed, and on Thursday—in quarantine—that anniversary went largely unremarked.

But it needs to be remembered. As political leaders on both sides of the aisle fail to create an emergency response that can provide immediate, material relief for the millions of people desperately in need, we are seeing increasing calls to turn to the U.S. military and National Guard to fill in that gap. The desperation driving this trend is understandable, but we must not uncritically turn to military institutions as providers of “medical teams” and “logistical support” without looking at how the U.S. military itself is a purveyor of unconscionable violence, from its 2003 invasion of Iraq to its worsening of the present-day global pandemic, or how it could be used to crack down on people within the United States.

This is especially urgent as politicians move rapidly to pursue a military response. On Sunday night, President Trump gave orders to activate the National Guard in New York, California and Washington into federalized status, which means they will be paid for by the federal government but under the control of states. And Military Times reports that all 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Washington, DC “have each mobilized components of their Army and Air National Guard to assist in their state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.” While the National Guard is a domestic force, it can be mobilized in times of war and national emergency, and it falls under the purview of the Department of Defense. Meanwhile, according to Newsweek, “the U.S. military is preparing forces to assume a larger role in the coronavirus response, including the controversial mission of quelling ‘civil disturbances’ and enforcing the law.”

There are already signs that governments around the world are using the crisis to expand the security state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is using the crisis to side-step legislative oversight, and an upcoming trial for corruption, to enact sweeping “security” measures. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is also using the crisis to seize dramatic powers that allow him to criminalize the press under the name of protecting security. We should be wary of similar maneuvers in the United States.

In western MA our burgeoning caseload is being driven by second-homers fleeing New York for the Berkshires… 😖 pic.twitter.com/AmQk6XFcM6

— Charli Carpenter (@charlicarpenter) March 23, 2020

Even many on Wall Street are against an early scale down.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-finance-202/2020/03/24/the-finance-202-wall-street-to-trump-don-t-restart-economy-before-stopping-coronavirus-spread/5e790faf602ff10d49ad2665/?utm_source=reddit.com

President Trump is considering whether to bring the economy out of its government-induced coma in the next week or two, insisting the pain of the restrictions should not outweigh that from the coronavirus itself.

But investors, portfolio managers and economists with a front-row seat to the ongoing carnage on Wall Street and beyond aren’t so sure that scaling back social distancing is the right move. Many say the economy — and still-sliding stock market along with it — won’t begin to recover until the United States definitively turns the tide against the disease.

“You may get a [market] bounce on the headline,” Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial Inc., tells me. “Or the market could down even more if the community of investors and traders believe this is the opposite of what is needed. Above all else it will be the empirical data that suggests the virus is receding.”

Adam Sarhan, CEO of investment firm 50 Park Investments, says the market will only stop plumbing new lows once new infections level off. “What the world, and the market, needs to see is that number stop going up,” he says.

“Think of it as a trade: What’s the risk of reopening early?” Sarhan said. “The risk is the number of cases continues to skyrocket, and longer term, you’re just digging a much deeper hole.”

US on way to 63k cases. You want to re-open the economy around acceptable trade-offs? That involves mandatory compulsory universal testing. We don’t even have enough tests for those that want one. What about a second or third wave & having to shut economy again? pic.twitter.com/kfh98V6AJp

— Joseph Brusuelas (@joebrusuelas) March 24, 2020

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who-usa/u-s-has-potential-of-becoming-coronavirus-epicenter-says-who-idUSKBN21B1FT?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews&utm_source=reddit.com

The World Health Organization said on Tuesday it was seeing a “very large acceleration” in coronavirus infections in the United States which had the potential of becoming the new epicenter.

Over the past 24 hours, 85 percent of new cases were from Europe and the United States, WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told reporters. Of those, 40 percent were from the United States.

Asked whether the United States could become the new epicentre, Harris said: “We are now seeing a very large acceleration in cases in the U.S. So it does have that potential.

“…They (the United States) have a very large outbreak and an outbreak that is increasing in intensity,” Harris added.

https://truthout.org/video/covid-19-will-spread-like-wildfire-in-migrant-jails-if-detainees-arent-released/

Alarm is growing about the safety of more than 37,000 people held in immigrant detention centers and private jails that contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, where it is nearly impossible for them to avoid close contact to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Nearly half of those detained by ICE are accused of no crime other than civil immigration violations. Immigrants at three jails in New Jersey are now on hunger strikes over unsanitary conditions that put them at high risk during the pandemic.

 We hear from a detained person on hunger strike and speak with John Sandweg, former acting director of ICE during the Obama administration, who is calling for ICE to release thousands from detention, and Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, or CHIRLA, which just led a national effort to stop immigration enforcement actions.

https://newrepublic.com/article/157039/americas-diseased-politics-coronavirus-legislation

With the usual exceptions—Senator Bernie Sanders in a series of live-streamed online addresses, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on social media, representatives Maxine Waters and Rashida Tlaib in actual proposed legislation—every Democratic voice raised during a maddeningly unproductive week seemed to caution against trying too hard, while attaching a PowerPoint slide to the cautionary message for good measure. Senator Kamala Harris, whose dud presidential campaign has lately become a slightly more plausible vice-presidential one, took the opportunity to reheat her LIFT Act, which would direct preposterously insufficient payments to a narrow subset of Americans who were neither too rich nor, not a little nauseatingly, too poor. (Harris later deleted those tweets.) When the frontrunner for the party’s presidential nomination finally weighed in on the ongoing negotiations over the scale and targeted reach of a bailout at week’s end, it was to ask that the nation’s reigning plutocrats be mindful in processing the bailouts they were about to receive. “I am calling on every CEO in America to publicly commit now to not buying back their company’s stock over the course of the next year,” Joe Biden’s team tweeted on Friday morning. “As workers face the physical and economic consequences of the coronavirus, our corporate leaders cannot cede responsibility for their employees.” On Sunday afternoon, after a cheerful Weekend At Bernie’s-style emoji cameo on a popular DJ’s Instagram feed the day before, Biden reappeared on Twitter to ask that Social Security payments be bumped up by $200 a month.

All the while, the Republicans did what Republicans do—sought to direct whopping no-strings-attached funds to powerful interests while effectively removing all non-wealthy people from the equation, pausing at regular intervals to laud the integrity and handsomeness that their forgetful and vinegary president had brought to duffing every single aspect of the governmental response to the virus. The Democrats, in response, did what they generally do. They made clear that they were disappointed in the Republicans; they advocated for something vague and qualified and means-tested that might benefit some people in a clever double-banked fashion; they made sure that it would not arrive too soon, or too generously. It would allow newly precarious workers and small business owners to apply for low-interest loans, where applicable. They maneuvered and then aimed to let the game come to them. “Biden aides and allies … are projecting an aura of calm,” Politico reported, “saying Trump’s false claims and reinvented history about the virus will haunt him on their own as the economy craters.”

But the response to a president and a party that is openly saying that hundreds of thousands of deaths is a reasonable price to pay for Getting The Economy Going simply cannot be getting together with stakeholders from all sides and trying to find a way to get that number a little lower. Nor is it the Pelosi-approved method of waiting for voters to punish the offending parties at the ballot box after months of unimaginable and preventable suffering.

At this moment, erring on the side of saying or doing too little instead of too much would be not just infuriating in the typical Democratic ways but devastating and damning in essential ones; the crystalized threat presented by this crisis and this moment requires a clear and commensurate response in both words and deeds. Strategically laying low or working the angles—such as gaming the outcomes within the denser stretches of mundane appropriations bills—doesn’t work terribly well in comparatively normal circumstances. But the Democrats’ usual tactics are terrifyingly insufficient when they’re deployed in response to business interests and reactionary politicians opting into a holocaust in the best interests of a market. It is ghoulish in the most contemporary of ways that this sort of thing is even up for debate, but it’s most important to see the effort to counter it as what it is: not a political campaign but an existential one, and so not the sort of thing that you get to do twice.

Our government and the rich people it exists for have more than enough money to buoy the economy for a year and buy everyone time to quarantine until a vaccine is ready. The Fed is printing trillions of dollars (that’s $1,000,000,000,000s) a week. The rich would rather us die.

— Aren R. LeBrun (@proustmalone) March 24, 2020

2. Amazon has one of the worst policies for workers who contract COVID-19. Requires a positive test or a formal quarantine order to get paid.

But contractors have it even worse. They have to apply for a "grant" from the Amazon Relief Fund.https://t.co/YAYeLo5Jak

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) March 24, 2020

BREAKING: I've just issued a Stay Home-Work Safe Order for Harris County residents effective midnight tonight. Folks should stay home except for essential needs. This moment in history will define our future. History will say we prioritized human life. pic.twitter.com/Wnn22uZXNq

— Harris County Judge (@HarrisCoJudge) March 24, 2020

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/489096-biden-under-pressure-to-step-up-coronavirus-response

Former Vice President Joe Biden is under pressure to find new ways to command the spotlight amid criticism that he’s cut too low of a profile as the coronavirus crisis has worsened.

Some Democrats want to see Biden, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, as the public face for the party in offering a countermessage to President Trump.

Trump has seen an uptick in his approval rating over the past two weeks, even as the daily White House briefings have had a circus-like atmosphere and the president’s claims have been picked apart.

Biden, meanwhile, had not spoken on camera for nearly a week when he broadcast a live video from his home in Delaware on Monday to criticize Trump’s “planning and preparation” for the virus.

Several former Obama administration officials told The Hill that’s not enough.

“You’re constantly hearing about [Andrew] Cuomo, and I know he’s the governor of New York, but Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee,” one former official said. “He needs to show his leadership.”

“Here’s a guy who has deep relationships on the Hill, who understands how we govern, and he’s largely been on the sidelines,” the former official said. “I know a lot of us expect more from him in this moment.”

Three tweets from Nathan Robinson

makes the point that Biden nomination isn’t the sure thing it looked like a few weeks ago

and the curve of the pandemic is still going up with 600% increase in last week

I did something different to get these tweet links

Before I always went to the top of the tweet and clicked on the “less than” symbol pointing down that was in the upper right corner of the tweet

I just noticed on the lower right corner a box without a top, i.e., three lines with a bottom and ones going up on each side. Clicked on that and it gave an address that I copied and pasted in here

Privately, I feared after Super Tuesday that Bernie was pretty much doomed. MI/FL confirmed that for me. "Unless something colossally unexpected happens, like the entire economy collapsing overnight and requiring a giant New Deal style intervention, he's done."

And then, um…

— Nathan J Robinson (@NathanJRobinson) March 24, 2020

The reason we still think Joe is the inevitable nominee is that we assume the facts of the world are the same now as when the "inevitability" became true. But they aren't. He WOULD have been, had the facts not changed. All predictions ASSUMED something like this would not happen.

— Nathan J Robinson (@NathanJRobinson) March 24, 2020

Of COURSE you couldn't convince people that radicalism was the more "safe" choice back when they just wanted to beat Trump in November. The arguments for Biden made some sense. But they just stopped making any sense at all.

— Nathan J Robinson (@NathanJRobinson) March 24, 2020

tweets from Nathan Robinson — copied, put in WORD and pasted here

Nathan J Robinson @NathanJRobinson 3/23/20 about midnight
We have just entered a whole new reality. The Democratic primary has so far been litigated on false assumptions, namely that “just beating Trump” could save us and we could put off bold policy. Actually: colossal government action of unprecedented scope has become indispensable.

Do any of you remember how, during the Great Recession, we elected Obama and he was incredibly disappointing and not nearly bold enough for the historical moment? How, during a new Great Depression, are we going to justify running his much-more-conservative and ineffectual VP?

Up until now, Joe Biden’s policy of leaving free healthcare, paid family leave, etc. for later down the road might have seemed “safe.” Now it seems the exact opposite. The positions have been inverted overnight. Action not taken now is mass murder.

We cannot treat the primary as being over because all of the premises on which the issues were hashed out have collapsed. The facts changed. The Biden approach of trying to do nothing but preserve normalcy seemed sensible to people two months ago. It is now insanely irresponsible

Do any of you remember how, during the Great Recession, we elected Obama and he was incredibly disappointing and not nearly bold enough for the historical moment? How, during a new Great Depression, are we going to justify running his much-more-conservative and ineffectual VP?

Watch the Joe Biden livestream from this morning and then tell me with a straight face that he is the guy you want leading the party and trust to take unprecedented bold action during a national emergency.

Tell me you trust the guy you saw this morning to take command and beat Trump. You know it’s not true.

The NYT editorial board understands that a crisis on this scale requires FDR-level government action and yet for some reason has not yet remembered that there is only one person in the country who could plausibly be this generation’s FDR

https://twitter.com/NathanJRobinson/status/1242305009414541312/photo/1

if you think joe biden is capable of New Deal level leadership you did not watch this morning’s livestream

Democrats: there is still time to reconsider, now that circumstances have changed so drastically and shown how insufficient the usual half-measures and compromises will be. I know it seems like it’s all over, but there is time. We do not have to make this terrible mistake.

head of John Hopkins

this is the head of a twitter feed noting that curve still going up and need to practice social distance and other DIY actions. Can to to his twitter account and get the rest of the tweets

Anyone advising the end of social distancing now, needs to fully understand what the country will look like if we do that. COVID would spread widely, rapidly, terribly, could kill potentially millions in the yr ahead with huge social and economic impact across the country. 15/x

— Tom Inglesby (@T_Inglesby) March 23, 2020

Right wing material to run against dems

There’ll be thousands of videos like this from Trump and his media organs between now and November. Sigh. https://t.co/QkCmGJNV3f

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) March 24, 2020

another article about the history of pandemic activity and the need for supplies

DONALD TRUMP SAYS AMERICA’S VENTILATOR SHORTAGE WAS “UNFORESEEN.” NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH.

yea, know about the screw ups, seen over and over and it continues, but for me, this again contains the warnings over the years

PUBLIC HEALTH is not the goal of our profit driven health care system and NOT the goal of politics. Medicare for all!!!

Almost 15 years ago, for example, the Department of Health and Human Services published a 400-page Pandemic Influenza Plan that was nothing if not explicit. Analyzing models based on flu pandemics in 1957 and 1968, which suggested there could be more than 900,000 hospitalizations under a similar scenario, HHS determined that “demand for inpatient and intensive-care unit (ICU) beds and assisted ventilation services could increase by more than 25%.” If that happened, they predicted, “mechanical ventilation” would be needed in as many as 64,875 instances. A more severe pandemic like the flu of 1918-19 could result in ventilator shortages which, in turn, could lead to difficult questions about rationing. How many ventilators might be needed to stave that off? A staggering 742,500.

A July 2006 Congressional Budget Office report warned that the United States had only about 100,000 ventilators, with three-quarters of them in use on any given day. That number may have remained stable for the last 14 years, according to Vice President Mike Pence, who referenced the “more than 100,000 ventilators that are in healthcare facilities and hospitals around America today” in a briefing on Saturday. (The New York Times puts the number of hospital ventilators at about 160,000.) Meanwhile, according to the 2006 CBO report, HHS had calculated that “a severe influenza pandemic like the one in 1918 would require 750,000 ventilators to treat victims.”

lets see, 750,000 – 150,000 = 600,000 short which is several times the number on hand

https://www.businessinsider.com/medicare-for-all-support-americans-robust-sanders-coronavirus-pandemic-2020-3?utm_source=reddit.com

About half of Americans support Medicare for All amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new Insider poll conducted on SurveyMonkey Audience.

Around 48% of respondents favor the transition towards a single-payer system where every American receives health insurance from the government, the poll found. By contrast, 29% said they disagreed with the policy and 17% expressed no inclination to either support or oppose Medicare for All. Around 7% responded: “I don’t know.”

The results suggest the coronavirus pandemic — which has fueled calls to reform the nation’s costly healthcare system — hasn’t weakened support for Medicare for All. Under the plan Sen. Bernie Sanders has championed, the private insurance sector would be eliminated and replaced by a government-run healthcare system.

Neera Tanden has "Progressive" in her Twitter bio.

Progressives, we need a new word.

— Xzamilloh🌹 (@Xzamilloh) March 24, 2020

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/24/coronaviruss-threat-democracy-itself/?utm_source=reddit.com

The leaders who have been the clearest about what needs to be done in this crisis — the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Sens.// Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) among others — have all called for mandating a guaranteed system for voting at home. In the Senate, the Natural Disaster and Emergency Ballot Act of 2020 — introduced by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and co-sponsored by 24 other senators — offers a good start, although it doesn’t call for providing all voters with a ballot, only offering one to those who apply. And on Monday, House Democrats announced that their latest coronavirus relief bill includes billions to shore up states’ election systems and mandates 15 days of early voting and no-excuse absentee vote-by-mail — “including mailing a ballot to all registered voters in an emergency.”

Will Congress act now to address this clear and present danger to our elections and our democracy? Thus far, the administration and Senate Republicans — in keeping with past GOP campaigns of voter suppression — have refused to put election reform in the emergency legislation under consideration. But even Republicans have every good reason to mandate vote-at-home legislation: Elderly voters, who tend to vote more conservatively, will be the least likely to show up to vote in person.

In reality, a vote-at-home system, like many of the reforms mandated by the crisis — guaranteed health care, paid sick leave, expanded public health capacity, more universal and generous unemployment insurance, massive investment to rebuild the country and put people to work — should be permanent, not targeted or temporary. The crisis has already shown that this is imperative if our elections — the foundation of the Republic — are to survive the pandemic. Now is the time to force this long overdue reform into law.

As much as I am not a fan of Biden and other corporate Dems, it’s stuff like this that will make me vote Dem in November. This would NOT be happening under any Dem administration.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-benefit-cuts-food_n_5e79f8e5c5b63c3b64973fd5

Congress is working on an unprecedented plan to send more than $1,000 to practically everyone in America to blunt the economic devastation of the coronavirus pandemic.

But the prospect of massive economic disruption won’t stop the Trump administration’s long-planned cuts to social programs such as nutrition assistance ― cuts that have been a core part of the president’s domestic policy agenda and that would make life harder for the poorest Americans.

During the first three years of Donald Trump’s presidency, Congress refused to go along with cutting benefits that help people with low incomes afford food, housing and medical care. Undaunted, the Trump administration has been busily issuing regulations that cut benefits without congressional buy-in, through a number of government agencies.

Now, even as the coronavirus toll rises and the economy crashes, and Congress lines up an array of cash payments to American households, those regulations are still coming.

The Social Security Administration is “still going full-steam ahead” on new rules limiting disability benefits, according to a source in the agency. One set of proposed changes to the claims process could affect hundreds of thousands of applicants each year if finalized. The agency previously said to expect the new rule in June; spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment.

Embarrassment is OK here among friends

TOPIC Green New Deal

As I have noted many times, I have printed off several thousand pages over the years for my historian friend who is working on a book about the coup here in America. The printing has gone on for over 8 years, maybe heading for 10 years when he first mentioned his plan which back then was so far out and how in the world would Americans entertain the idea of a coup?

Here is my embarrassment

For my historian friend, reformat off the web The Green New Deal

Incredible! Maybe even a plan for the entire world!!

Embarrassed that had not looked at it before.

A comprehensive plan which is Bernie’s signature.

https://berniesanders.com/issues/green-new-deal/

***
As an aside, a new PhD dissertation on Gaia was recently posted on the web. It is still in French which means that I can’t read it. Bruno Latour was on the committee and the author is working with some of Bruno’s groups. I have had some correspondence with the author and just now I sent him the link to The Green New Deal and noted that Gaia seems to be more out in the open.

***
The philosopher who led me to Bruno Latour says that his ideas are at least 10 years in the future to catch on. Is it silly of me to keep trying? Or, maybe, a pandemic, and the irruption of Gaia will shorten the time frame.

***
I wrote to 3 people asking if they can fit Bernie into Latour cosmopolitics as a way to understand what is going on with this movement. I told each of them that I am unable to pull off that description. I hope that one of them will be able to do it. I will let you know if it happens

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-city-principal-dezann-romain-among-nycs-125-deaths-brooklyn/

A New York City principal has died because of complications of the coronavirus, officials said. Dezann Romain, 36, is the first known public school staff member to die of the virus.

Romain worked at Brooklyn Democracy Academy, a transfer high school for overage or under-credited students. A union representing New York City’s school supervisors and administrators announced her death.

“It is with profound sadness and overwhelming grief that we announce the passing of our sister, CSA member Dezann Romain, Principal of Brooklyn Democracy Academy, due to complications from Coronavirus,” the Council of Schools Supervisors and Administrators said in a statement obtained by Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news website that covers education.

This is a question we must continue to ask every day from this point forward. We constantly prepare for war, we need to also prepare for life, because shit happens. https://t.co/YM7I7jFHdW

— James Thompson (@JamesThompsonKS) March 24, 2020

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/public-health-expert-coronavirus-restrictions_n_5e79f2dfc5b6f5b7c54b0b26

A top public health expert on Monday cautioned U.S. officials against prematurely lifting restrictions imposed to curb the spread of the coronavirus, saying that doing so could result in millions of deaths.

The warning from Tom Inglesby, the director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, came as President Donald Trump said during a press conference that he was considering easing social distancing guidelines after March 30.

“We’re not going to let the cure be worse than the problem,” Trump said, noting how badly virus-induced measures have impacted businesses and workers.

But Inglesby, in a series of tweets, laid out just how bad the problem could get.

“Anyone advising the end of social distancing now, needs to fully understand what the country will look like if we do that,” Inglesby wrote. “COVID would spread widely, rapidly, terribly, could kill potentially millions in the yr ahead with huge social and economic impact across the country.”

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1242165026124955666.html

a great, simple primer on MMT, meant for the (very) lay person, like me.

Trying this format to let those of you who are not on Twitter read some Stephanie Kelton.

My latest on Bloomberg View regarding the new bailout:”Without the powerful disinfectant of sunlight provided by robust oversight, there is an intolerable risk that the disease of corruption will spread like the coronavirus itself.” https://t.co/Rfn5aWf6RF— Neil Barofsky (@neilbarofsky) March 23, 2020

Barofsky was the general admin for TARP in 2008 financial crisis.

This is what Bernie (and to a lesser extent) and Warren have been preaching. Bernie’s campaign put out this specific clip from the Inners interview last night.

We cannot just give corporations money to do anything they want. We have to ensure that money is going to protect working people. pic.twitter.com/hi8Os4ccvj— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) March 24, 2020

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/03/24/coronavirus-latest-news/#link-RBJRAPXGJJAMXO47WWUKVRLDLQ

Italy may have 10 times as many coronavirus cases as have been publicly recorded, a top Italian official working on the response to the outbreak told La Repubblica this week.

“A ratio of one certified case out of every 10 is credible,” Angelo Borrelli, who leads the Civil Protection agency, told the newspaper.

Italy has about 64,000 confirmed cases, and more than 6,000 deaths in the country have been attributed to the virus, including more than 2,000 deaths in just four days over the past week.

But many people experiencing symptoms have probably not been tested for the virus, as Italian hospitals have been overwhelmed with the most serious cases. Experts have warned that the dramatic rise in cases in Italy, where health-care workers are facing dire equipment shortages, could be a preview of what is to come elsewhere.

Biden on @theview says he hasn't spoken to Bernie Sanders recently and it's up to him to decide whether to drop out. "I hear what some of his supporters are saying and i'm prepared to and I have moved on some of it. So I hope we can bring it all together. That's my expectation."

— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) March 24, 2020

Also, the Mnuchin fund is going to be leveraged against the Fed balance sheet 10:1, so this is more like a $6 trillion bill, with most of it going to big business. It's a coup. America is not going to be recognizable after this.

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) March 24, 2020

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/24/troubling-and-astronomical-coronavirus-cases-increase-urgency-for-hospital-beds-new-york-gov-cuomo-says.html

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said a “troubling and astronomical” number of coronavirus cases have increased the urgency across the state for more hospital beds as the number of infections doubles every three days.

“We’re not slowing it and it is accelerating on its own,” Cuomo said at a press conference Tuesday. He said the state is now projecting it will need more hospital beds a lot sooner than previously thought. The state now estimates it will need 140,000 hospital beds, up from previous projections of 110,000. “That apex could be, they project, 14 to 21 days away.” The state previously said it would need 110,000 beds for COVID-19 patients by early to mid-May.

Cases across the state now stand at 25,665 as of Tuesday — ten times the number of cases as California — Cuomo said. Some 3,234 people have been hospitalized so far, he said.

“New York is the canary in the coal mine. New York is going first. We have the highest and fastest rate of infection,” he said, adding that what’s happening in New York will spread to California, Washington and other states from there.

Cuomo said the state has purchased about 7,000 ventilators, but it needs at least 30,000 more.

Some outlines of changes agreed to in Senate bill. There appears now to be oversight to the $500 billion corporate loan program.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/mnuchin-schumer-optimistic-coronavirus-stimulus-package-say-deal-close-n1167401

Negotiations have resulted in the inclusion of unemployment insurance and a huge increase to funds for hospitals in the latest version of the stimulus bill, according to two Democratic aides and one Republican aide.

The unemployment insurance benefits in the bill would give recipients 100 percent of their salary. The bill would also include at least $100 billion in assistance for hospitals in the form of loans, grants and other mechanisms.

Negotiators also removed the phase-in of direct payments from the original version, which means that lower income people would also receive $1,200, according to two Republican sources. The original bill would have given lower income people less money.

According to Senate Majority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., the measure would provide $350 billion for small businesses and $240 billion in relief for health care, including $75 billion that would be allocated to hospitals directly; $11 billion for the development of vaccines, treatments and other preparedness needs; and $4.5 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., also fueled hopes that a deal was imminent Tuesday morning, saying in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that there is “real optimism that we could get something done in the next few hours.”

Pelosi said that a number of the Democrats’ requests have been added to the bill, such as provisions that would require both a congressional panel and an inspector general to provide oversight over a $500 billion loan program to corporations.

"Right now we need get the organizing right, the immediate relief of health issues + economic hardship right, and a Green Stimulus to recover. Then green investments could truly become common sense"

Thrilled for Penn to feature our book in this momenthttps://t.co/zfealDNGlS

— Daniel Aldana Cohen (@aldatweets) March 24, 2020

This is rather telling.

Effectively, it's the same thing. The market is soaring because Team Trump indicated they intend to open things back up — at the expense of countless dead. https://t.co/FccjWDD7QR

— Peter Daou (@peterdaou) March 24, 2020

Bus drivers across the U.S. are striking to protect their health and that of their riders.https://t.co/LjNO7PWIuz

— Eric Blanc (@_ericblanc) March 24, 2020

The next President is going to have to be a work horse, not a show horse. Joe Biden wants to glad-hand and go to nice dinners. Bernie Sanders wants to get in the trenches and fight day and night for the working people of this country.

— Bad John Brown (@BadJohnBrown) March 24, 2020

"The nat'l shortage of N95 respirator masks can be traced back to 2009 after the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, when Obama admin was advised to replenish a nat'l stockpile but did not"

Obama was a Republican President#VoteForBernie #VoteByMail #CancelBiden https://t.co/sRBzUdWSx8

— Stephanie 🌹 Voltolin (@SAVoltolin) March 24, 2020

#PhysicalDistancingSocialSolidarity

— Kate Nowakowski, MD (@knowakowskiMD) March 24, 2020

The Democratic Party moved heaven and earth to secure the nomination of a senile, dying man in the midst of the biggest crisis in American history. All to keep their donors happy. If you don't recognize the Democrats as the arch-enemies of humanity, you might be Matthew Yglesias.

— jokerfied_cushbomb (@cushbomb) March 23, 2020

I'm old enough to remember when a weed run was more dangerous than getting groceries. pic.twitter.com/v3xI4cuDFk

— Dread Pirate Huggy (@deathbymonkies) March 24, 2020

Take it from us, the union that has championed the power of a #GeneralStrike for over a century – a general strike WILL work.

When they say 'go back to work, die if you have to' all we have to do is put our hands in our pockets all in unison. Get organized. DMs to ask us how. pic.twitter.com/hWMqor3AKd

— Richmond IWW (@RichmondIWW) March 24, 2020

#DieForTheDow

This is where unlimited corporate money in politics has gotten us. Politicians claiming that people ought to sacrifice their lives on the altar of "the economy".

Getting money out of politics isn't some abstract issue, it is life and death.

— Kimberly Graham For US Senate (IA) (@KimberlyforIowa) March 24, 2020

What a sociopathic ghoul. Lucky it’s the state and locals that control this. So bad news for all the red states tat will follow Trump’s lead

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-says-he-wants-country-open-back-april-12-easter-n1167721

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he wants to have the country getting back to business by the Easter holiday, April 12, even as the coronavirus pandemic continues to worsen.

“I would love to have the country opened up and raring to go by Easter,” Trump said during a Fox News interview.

Public health experts and local and state leaders have cautioned against easing restrictions too early, saying it could put an enormous strain on hospitals and lead to even more deaths and economic damage. But Trump said Tuesday that he believed the human toll would be greater should Americans continue to stay at home.

See who’d be eligible for coronavirus checks under Senate GOP plan
“This cure is worse than the problem,” Trump said, adding that “in my opinion, more people are going to die if we allow this to continue.”

A White House official said the president does not view Easter as a date that he begins opening things up, but a date by which the economy is speeding again. That means the loosening of restrictions would, under this scenario, start much sooner. The official says the focus now remains on how to get there, in phases, to address the challenges demographically and geographically.

Trump said people can continue to practice good hygiene and social distancing even while going back to work to try to control the virus’s spread.

Trump on Tuesday expressed frustration with the economic consequences of having millions of Americans staying home and compared the coronavirus to the flu, despite public experts cautioning against the comparison.

“We lose thousands, and thousands of people a year to the flu, we don’t turn the country off every year,” he said.

🤔😮😢🙄😏

Joe Biden has officially become your presidential parody candidate 😂

Biden: "We have to take care of the cure that will make the problem worse no matter what"

pic.twitter.com/ERtCvoIQZv

— Edgy (@EdDonnahoe) March 24, 2020

View this post on Instagram

The last two weeks I’ve stayed inside. When I returned from my trip around Central Europe I isolated myself (in a borrowed apartment away from my mother and sister) since the number of cases of COVID-19 (in Germany for instance) were similar to Italy in the beginning. Around ten days ago I started feeling some symptoms, exactly the same time as my father – who traveled with me from Brussels. I was feeling tired, had shivers, a sore throat and coughed. My dad experienced the same symptoms, but much more intense and with a fever. In Sweden you can not test yourself for COVID-19 unless you’re in need of emergent medical treatment. Everyone feeling ill are told to stay at home and isolate themselves. I have therefore not been tested for COVID-19, but it’s extremely likely that I’ve had it, given the combined symptoms and circumstances. Now I’ve basically recovered, but – AND THIS IS THE BOTTOM LINE: I almost didn’t feel ill. My last cold was much worse than this! Had it not been for someone else having the virus simultainously I might not even have suspected anything. Then I would just have thought I was feeling unusually tired with a bit of a cough. And this it what makes it so much more dangerous. Many (especially young people) might not notice any symptoms at all, or very mild symptoms. Then they don’t know they have the virus and can pass it on to people in risk groups. We who don’t belong to a risk group have an enormous responsibility, our actions can be the difference between life and death for many others. Please keep that in mind, follow the advice from experts and your local authorities and #StayAtHome to slow the spread of the virus. And remember to always take care of each other and help those in need. #COVID #flattenthecurve

A post shared by Greta Thunberg (@gretathunberg) on Mar 24, 2020 at 8:22am PDT

It makes a big difference when she is personally affected.

What a difference a week makes apparently.

Last week Klobuchar was telling MSNBC viewers that there was nothing more important than voting in the primaries the next day.

Tonight she announced her husband has Coronavirus and there’s nothing more important than people’s health

— Greg C (Bernie 2020) (@greg06897) March 24, 2020

This is what Bernie is fighting for behind the scenes.

Share of workers at major corporations without paid sick leave:

Sonic: 94%
Applebee's: 89%
Pizza Hut: 88%
Burger King: 86%
Subway: 86%
Domino's: 85%
Dunkin' Donuts: 85%
Wendy's: 84%
McDonald's: 78%
Chick-fil-A: 78%
Taco Bell: 77%

We must make paid sick leave a right for all.

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 24, 2020

Will Stacy Abrams take the lead in keeping on top of GA’s current administration when it comes to this initiative?

Georgia expanding access to mail-in ballots after delaying primary

Georgia Secretary of State Brian Raffensperger (R) announced Tuesday that the state will mail absentee ballot request forms to all of Georgia’s nearly 7 million voters in an effort to encourage people to cast their ballots remotely amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Earlier this month, Georgia postponed its primary from March 24 to May 19 over fears coronavirus would spread among voters gathering in long lines outside of polling places.

Georgia voters have been able to cast ballots through the mail in the past, but the secretary of state said that 95 percent of people voted in-person for the 2016 and 2018 elections.

By mailing absentee ballot request forms, the secretary of state hopes to cut down on the number of people who show up to vote in person in the 2020 primary.

“Times of turbulence and upheaval like the one we Georgians face require decisive action if the liberties we hold so dear are to be preserved,” Raffensperger said in a statement. “I am acting today because the people of Georgia, from the earliest settlers to heroes like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Congressman John Lewis, have fought too long and too hard for their right to vote to have it curtailed. Georgia has faced challenges before and overcome them, and we can do so again through the grit and ingenuity that has made America a shining example for democracies around the world.”

Voters who return the absentee ballot request form will receive a ballot in the mail that must be returned by May 19 for it to be counted.

Georgia is one of several states to postpone their primaries due to the coronavirus outbreak. The pandemic has sparked new demands that voters have greater access to mail-in ballots.

Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will be on the Democratic primary ballot in Georgia. Polls show Biden with a massive lead, and a victory there would push him closer to the 1,991 delegates needed to clinch the nomination.

On the Republican side, Sen. Kelly Loeffler will face off against Rep. Doug Collins (R) in the state’s jungle primary for the Senate seat. If no candidate reaches 50 percent support in the primary, it will trigger a runoff election for sometime in January.

Left to die: israel dumps a Palestinian man returning home, struggling to breath with Covid-19, outside a remote checkpoint near Beit Sira https://t.co/7f8LNg0oPg

— Sarah Wilkinson (@swilkinsonbc) March 24, 2020

https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/489259-nearly-80-airlines-cut-capacity-100-percent-over-coronavirus

A majority of airlines worldwide have cut capacity by 100 percent as a result of the coronavirus shutting down travel and grounding most flights.

Of the 153 carriers, 78 have announced capacity cuts of 100 percent. Additionally, almost 85 percent of airlines globally have made capacity cuts of 60 percent or more, according to data derived from carrier announcements.

Ryanair, the largest carrier in Europe by scheduled and chartered passengers, has cut 100 percent of its capacity, while the second-largest, Lufthansa, has cut 98 percent through April 19, according to data compiled by aviation blogger Jason Rabinowitz and aviation journalists Jon Ostrower, Danny Lee and Seth Miller.

North American airlines that have cut capacity by 100 percent include Air Transat, Compass Airlines, Pacific Coastal Airlines, Sunwing and Trans State Airlines.

Major U.S. carriers have made slightly fewer cuts, with Delta Air Lines cutting 70 percent and grounding 600 planes, a 100 percent increase from mid-March. United Airlines, meanwhile, has cut 65 percent of its capacity, including 42 percent domestically and 95 percent internationally.

American Airlines has cut 50 percent of its capacity, including 40 percent domestically and 75 percent internationally. JetBlue has made 55 percent cuts and has said “substantial” cuts are on the table for June and July as well.

The only carriers among the top 10 North American airlines that have made cut capacity less than 50 percent are Southwest, at 25 percent; Alaska Airlines, at 15 percent; Spirit, with 20 percent cuts set to increase to 25 percent in May; and Aeromexico, with 45 percent cuts beginning March 17 and ending April 30.

At Moment UN Chief Urged 'Global Ceasefire' To Stop COVID-19, Pentagon Held War Games Aimed At Iran https://t.co/vg3Ov3SFpN

— FreeZerohedge (@freezerohedge) March 24, 2020

The Market is pleased with yesterday’s offer of human sacrifice https://t.co/srlI7whQQ8

— Joe Biden’s dexedrine dealer ✍️🕖 (@halaljew) March 24, 2020

As behind the scenes Obama is pushing Biden down our throats!

https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/489268-michelle-obama-tells-ellen-degeneres-the-family-is-happy-to-be-together

Former First Lady Michelle Obama told comedian and daytime talk show host Ellen DeGeneres on Tuesday she’s happy to have her family together and safe, joining Americans across the country who are staying home amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Michelle Obama said both of her daughters are home, partaking in online classes as schools have shut down. She said her husband, former President Barack Obama, is also at home with the family.

“My condolences that the kids are home, because you were expressing how happy you were that they were gone,” DeGeneres joked during the phone call, according to the video she shared on Instagram.

Just a few facts about the Obama’s humble abode.😏🙄

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenhowley/2019/09/01/inside-the-obamas-new-marthas-vineyard-estate/#343add1c2286

https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960×0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fkathleenhowley%2Ffiles%2F2019%2F09%2Fback-porch-e1567364456956.jpg

https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960×0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fkathleenhowley%2Ffiles%2F2019%2F09%2Fporch-with-fireplace-e1567364745313.jpg

https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960×0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fkathleenhowley%2Ffiles%2F2019%2F09%2Fview-from-second-story-porch-e1567364929645.jpg

https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960×0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fkathleenhowley%2Ffiles%2F2019%2F09%2FKITCHEN-e1567364551198.jpg

US may become centre of coronavirus pandemic, WHO says https://t.co/EA5JPwpgAa

— The Guardian (@guardian) March 24, 2020

Someday this book on US #COVID19 will be written.
Likely more chapters to come.
This is so damn hard to watch as it continues to unfold. pic.twitter.com/I3zAuRm5IO

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) March 23, 2020

Who could have guessed that Donald Trump's ideal opposition is a Democratic Party obsessed with means-testing and corporate diversity in the middle of a pandemic? https://t.co/Rdcul4D2YF

— Walker Bragman (@WalkerBragman) March 24, 2020

So much stuff, have not made comments on things in the past I would have.

So, I am just going to mention this and provide some links. Doubt that it is worth the effort that I spent on them

I went to FOX News Pandemic and found this article

US was more prepared for pandemic than any other country, Johns Hopkins study found

It is a Global Health Security Index.

Run by a think tank

The United States was ranked the best-prepared country in the world to handle a pandemic in late 2019 by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (JHCHS) — an assessment seemingly at odds with claims by Democrats that the Trump administration left the country vulnerable to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.

The Global Health Security Index was was “developed with guidance from an international panel of experts from 13 countries, with research by the Economist Intelligence Unit,” The Washington Post reported last year. “More than 100 researchers spent a year collecting and validating publicly available data.”

Cuba and China score way below the USA.

Their report is over 300 pages long.

Nobody scored well but the USA was #1

It looks like an effort to lobby for spending on military and security and health

It is allied with the “Center for Health Security” at Johns Hopkins. They look OK and the director has a long tweet today and has been tweeting scientific stuff that is in line with other credible sources.

Johns Hopkins is awash in military cash

So Fox news using this report says things were OK and Trump doing a great job.

The military is even a greater mess than the other problems facing the country

It will be interesting to see how these smart folks can update their report in the light of reality

It is funded by Gates Foundation and a couple of other foundations. Expect that health car money supports this effort.

A good source that keeps tabs on the corona virus statistics.

Disregard the date at the website as the chart is updated regularly.

https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/03/the-latest-coronavirus-cases/

Cheap prices and nowhere to go!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-23/-1-gasoline-is-here-and-it-s-a-terrible-sign-for-the-economy

London, Kentucky, became the first U.S. city to see pump prices fall below $1 a gallon as coronavirus-related lockdowns halt transit across the country — and it won’t be the last.

Several others are poised to join the club in the coming days as the pandemic crushes fuel demand and sends the economy to the brink of a recession. While cheap fuel usually spurs gas-guzzling Americans to hit the highways, the latest downturn in prices portends dark times ahead.

“You almost can’t even give it away,” said Paul Bingham, head transportation economist at IHS Markit Ltd. “The price elasticity has totally changed. It’s full-on demand destruction.”

Nationwide, pump prices are headed for depths not seen since the Great Recession. Retail gasoline is expected to average $1.99 a gallon in the next two days and fall as low as $1.49 by mid-April, the lowest level in 16 years, according to Patrick DeHaan, head of petroleum analysis at Gasbuddy.

That is another glass ceiling that might get broken.😏🤔

The upside of Joe Biden’s dementia is that other people with dementia won’t be stigmatized about running for President.— Nate’s Liver – Commentary (@SilERabbit) March 24, 2020

Probably with a little help from some corporate democrats.

https://t.co/pgkNI3WYdl

— Francisco (@Syrian231) March 24, 2020

thank you @versobooks for the quarantine read and congrats to @meaganmday & @micahuetricht! pic.twitter.com/0xrAi0X5I9

— Rob (@robrousseau) March 24, 2020

SMH This is what a Religious oriented company does during a crisis!😮🙄😟👎

NEW: Hobby Lobby is cutting pay by 10% for more than 3,000 warehouse & HQ employees, saying cuts are to compensate for lost profits at stores forced to temporarily close in areas hit by coronavirus pandemic.

Staff are being told not to talk to media. https://t.co/4GffWdUp7f

— Towanda the Avenger (@kendallybrown) March 24, 2020

wow the number goes up at the prospect of YOU risking your health and safety by going back to WORK to do LABOR interesting how that works i thought billionaires were the job creators https://t.co/wxACyoSLiD

— jordan (@JordanUhl) March 24, 2020

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8847dg/a-total-joke-the-uss-busiest-airport-is-skipping-coronavirus-screenings?utm_source=reddit.com

But despite promises of strict measures designed to identify and contain cases of COVID-19 at airports around the country, the world’s busiest airport, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International, is failing to adequately screen for the virus, with passengers from high-risk areas saying they faced little to no scrutiny upon landing.

VICE spoke to more than a dozen passengers who have traveled through the Atlanta airport in the past two weeks from countries around the world with coronavirus outbreaks. They all described a screening process that failed to check passengers for symptoms, relied on self-disclosure and outdated guidelines, and left passengers fearing that the measures meant to protect them were doing little to stop the spread of the deadly pandemic.

Security procedures appear to have become even more relaxed as the virus outbreak worsened over the past week. Multiple passengers who flew to the United States within the past five days said they weren’t even given the CDC’s self-identification forms or checked for fever, a departure from the already-relaxed screening of earlier travelers. This new development came just days after the State Department raised its global travel advisory to Level 4: Do Not Travel, advising U.S. citizens to avoid all international travel—and, on Tuesday, the number of confirmed cases in the United States neared 50,000.

rising has a bit on how we should all volunteer with red cross and big tech is being so wonderful to donate software to coordinate everything. apparently ina fairly safe way?

but isn’t this a perfect opportunity to pay some people who want to work?

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/24/let-be-moment-dr-abdul-el-sayed-says-coronavirus-makes-undeniable-case-medicare-all

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the former health commissioner of Detroit, argued Tuesday that the coronavirus pandemic has laid bare systemic flaws in the United States’ for-profit healthcare system that can only be remedied by transitioning to Medicare for All.

“It does point to a bigger structural failure in our healthcare system,” El-Sayed, a former Michigan gubernatorial candidate, said of the COVID-19 outbreak in an interview on HillTV. “Our healthcare system right now is a matter of figuring out how to make money off of different kinds of patients.”

“Whether it’s the payers—the insurance companies—or it’s the providers—the hospitals—or it’s the pharma companies who make drugs, or it’s even the medical tech companies who make the devices that we use in healthcare, all of them are focused on a bottom line,” said El-Sayed.

“Obviously that kind of system is not geared to handle the kind of mass influx of patients that are going to come with COVID-19,” El-Sayed added. “So we have the wrong healthcare system for this.”

Update: Mitch McConnell and the White House have REFUSED to include an OSHA standard to protect healthcare workers in 3rd #COVID19 package.

Let that sink in. The GOP is refusing to #protectnurses, doctors, and other frontline workers.

Angry? Call McConnell NOW. 202-224-2541

— Amirah Sequeira (@miraseq) March 24, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/world/coronavirus-news-live-updates.html

Terrence McNally, the four-time Tony Award-winning playwright whose outpouring of work for the theater dramatized and domesticated gay life across five decades, died on Tuesday at Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Sarasota, Fla. He was 81.

The cause was complications from the coronavirus, a spokesman, Matt Polk, said. He said Mr. McNally had chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, and had overcome lung cancer.

Mr. McNally’s Tony Awards attest to his versatility. Two were for books for musicals, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” (1993) and “Ragtime” (1998), and two were for plays, and vastly different ones: “Love! Valor! Compassion!” (1995), about gay men who share a vacation house, and “Master Class” (1996), in which the opera diva Maria Callas reflects on her career.

And those prize winners were only a small part of his oeuvre. With 36 plays to his credit, as well as the books for 10 musicals, the librettos for four operas and a handful of screenplays for film and television, Mr. McNally was a remarkably prolific and consistent dramatist.

JOE 🛑 BIDEN 🛑 CAN'T 🛑 BE 🛑 THE 🛑 NOMINEE. https://t.co/1xvbivn5aM

— Pat the Berner🌹🦺 (@PatTheBerner) March 24, 2020

dnc is cruel and treasonous

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/us/politics/biden-sanders-next-democratic-debate.html?searchResultPosition=1

Senator Bernie Sanders plans to participate in the Democratic presidential debate in April if one is held, his campaign said on Tuesday, the strongest indication yet that he plans to continue competing against Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the 2020 primary for the foreseeable future.

The Democratic National Committee has said previously that there would be a debate in April, but one has not been scheduled. The committee has not announced a media partner or a site host — critical elements that are typically agreed upon at least a month in advance. The coronavirus crisis has already upended most facets of the Democratic primary, and there is no guarantee that the debate will take place.

Still, the fact that the Sanders campaign is signaling, for now, that he would be on a debate stage in April is a strikingly public sign of the Vermont senator’s determination to wield political influence and challenge Mr. Biden for primacy despite the former vice president’s nearly insurmountable delegate lead.

“Senator Sanders is still running for president,” said Mike Casca, a top campaign official. “If there is a debate in April, he plans to be there.”

wow the number goes up at the prospect of YOU risking your health and safety by going back to WORK to do LABOR interesting how that works i thought billionaires were the job creators https://t.co/wxACyoSLiD

— jordan (@JordanUhl) March 24, 2020

This person "supports" Bernie but replies to pro-bernie accounts with Khive talking points.

Block this Judas. https://t.co/s1gxYUGSEN

— Biden's Hairy Leg 🦵🌹 (@BernieWon2016) March 24, 2020

Turns out they don’t really need the money. Again the American people are the suckers.

Repeat: They don’t need the money! https://t.co/DPbJnwYyJx

— Jimmy Dore (@jimmy_dore) March 24, 2020

Coronavirus is Trump’s Iraq War. The country is uniting behind the president in a time of crisis, even though the president is the one worsening (or in Bush’s case, creating) the crisis.

And Democrats are trotting out a centrist nominee against the incumbent.

It echoes 2004. https://t.co/YBMa4HXXBu

— Emma Vigeland (@EmmaVigeland) March 24, 2020

New thread

https://theprogressivewing.com/3-24-hell-no-dnc-bernies-not-going-to-drop-out-evening-ot/

Come have a beverage! Drinks on the House!

moved to new thread

scary, scary, scary
Guy who was head of ACA, medicare and Medicaid for Obama, in the middle of this says that many expect 2 million dead.

I copied each into a WORD document which I will paste here. If it comes out all in one bunch with no white space, click on the bottom where it says Read More and it will format correctly. I didn’t have time to put in whitespace.

Andy Slavitt @ @ASlavitt Former Medicare, Medicaid, ACA head for Obama. Founded @usofcare
& @townhallvntrs to make health care work. http://stayhomesavelives.us. Insta: @andyslavitt

March 24 COVID Update: Based on calls with the WH, the Senate, testing companies, hospitals in Seattle, and people who have launched new capabilities. Also much talk about avoiding too early an end to #StayHome without tanking the economy.1
Let me start with the testing situation. Why does S Korea have so many available tests & we don’t? What’s the hold up? That was the first half of my day. 2/
The vast majority of tests come from big commercial labs. 5000/day is a big lab. There are also smaller labs, state labs & hospital labs who make tests mostly for their employees. The CDC is now saying only front-line health care workers & first responders shod gets tests. 3
The commercial labs have increased from about 8000 to 50000/day. And if you add the non-commercial, maybe that’s 60,000? Progress, but if we want to test anyone with symptoms & test them before & after, that’s way short for a virus doubling every 3 days. 4/

How many more could they make? The biggest can get close to 50,000/day on their own so maybe the number goes up to 75,000 or 100,000. Still not enough. To answer why I had to go deep. 5/
People throw all kinds of numbers around. Number of kits, number of tests, produced, administered. Makes it easy to spin what you want. The truth is CDC could have gotten started earlier & done better but here we are. 6/
There’s a shortage of swabs and reagents for test kits. But apparently the labs say they are getting more of those in. What’s constraining them are the giant “Liquid Handling Robots.” (I suspected we were all in a horror film & the presence of robots confirms it.) 7/
T he biggest maker of these robots is a company called Roche. Their monster robot is called the 6800. It can process the most tests. Other companies ThermoFisher, Abbott, Helogic. Robot makers. So I asked why can’t we make more robots? How many are there? 8/
So Roche makes these robots (6800 produces 50/hour and the granddaddy robot 8800 produces 120/hour). There are 700 of the monster & 130 of the granddaddy. But before you start doing all kinds of math, only 110 are in the US. I think but don’t know that most are the smaller. 9/
Interrupted by a call from an scientist Will disclose who if he allows me to. But give me 15 mins. 10/
I’m back and I feel dumber than ever. The person I was talking to was the exact opposite of dumb (that’s a clue). 11/
So we won’t have all the tests we want unless we create some different tests. http://Cepheid.com was just given emergency approval. Test can be given in pharmacies & doctor offices. Will try to find out tomorrow how much volume they can do. /12
Congress I’m it’s bill is deciding how to pay for those tests. My suggestion to both sides is to pay for it the same as we paid for the Zika test. $52 at a minimum. And then deploy the DAMN Defense Production Act already. We will have more tests that way which is the goal. /13
he controversy was Republican Senators didn’t want to pay a rate that had the word Medicare in it. Speaking of Congress. Lots of time between drafts but at the minute the Republican draft just came over to Democrats. But they’re close. /14
Small business payroll loans if there are no layoffs. More support for individuals in checks and unemployment. They need to work in the night to get things done. /15
Senators on at least some committees have been briefed that the COVID-19 death toll is expected to be between 1.7 million and 2.2 million. The biggest reason I will cover now. /16
As we know Trump has said they are taking steps to “open up” the country. If people did, the reason will be because of the number one risk factor: age? No. Pre-existing illness? No. Number one risk factor right now is no access to an ICU bed or ventilator. /17
That brings me to my conv with a very large hospital system in Wash state. They have now been at this for 2 months. Here’s what they had to say. I’m just going to list the chronology. 1- They got ready 2- They tried to push ppl to outpatient 3- They built surge capacity /19
4- they turned on telemedicine 5- they were told by CDC to start testing the population 6- then the shit hit the fan /20
7- no more tests 8- N-95, swabs, 4 million masks short 9- need 100s of millions 21/
Amazing that staff shows up every day. Lots of fear. Mental health support. They talk to White House, Congress, and CDC daily, but see no hope. They fear the president saying he wants to end social distancing. It’s the only thing keeping them going. 22/
So the question is what does Trump need to do? What do governors need to do? Buy the health care workers time. Buy the scientists time. Get better surveillance on the population. Fund the states & low income ppl in the meantime 23/
The scientist I was speaking to and several others, along with homeland security risk managers and I, are meeting (virtually) to talk about how to prevent the Easter Massacre. Here’s a preview…24/
By Easter Sunday, when Trump thinks he will be able to open the economy, we will be in the midst of the worst of it. With the numbers we see and the images on TV, doubtful. What we need to be able to tell the president is what conditions should be before we change anything.25/
f we open up again, look at Hong Kong. They were fine, opened, and created a problem. It’s not an economic tradeoff. No economy can withstand what scientists believe will come as our hospitals get overrun.26/
ight now the smartest people I talk to want us to push R0 to zero, and be able to contract trace, install thermal indicators, reliable anti-body testing, and out fever tents in the right place. Armchair experts and economic hacks feel different.27/
Many people gave me cool things to put in the thread tonight. But this is too long. And the situation is serious. I appreciate people pulling together but if we don’t socially isolate, we will regret it forever. One more thing…29/
Increasingly more of us know people effected by the virus. I’m thinking of all of you and all of them. A good friend, 52, younger than me, in good health, is in the hospital. Bad pneumonia like symptoms, declining oxygen levels. Whoever infected him will never know they did./end