Coronavirus News (96)

Why is the State of Kerala in India Successful in Containing COVID-19 Pandemic -- Visionary public health leadership...

Posted by Madhav Bhatta on Thursday, May 14, 2020

Has Trump Decided We Will Follow Sweden and Just Not Told Us? The president brings instability and confusion to a crisis. ............. Having a pandemic is really bad.

Having a pandemic and a civil war together is really, really bad.

......... Trump’s pronouncements are simultaneously convoluted, contradictory and dishonest ........ a pandemic that will likely kill only 1 percent of you, if you do get infected. ........ He just hasn’t told the country or his coronavirus task force or maybe even himself. .......... Trump has basically decided to dispatch Americans into this battle against this coronavirus without the equivalent of maps, armor, helmets, guns or any coordinated strategy to minimize their casualty count. He’s also dispatching them without national leadership, so it’s every platoon, or state, for itself, maximizing the chances of virus spread between people who want to go shopping and those who still want to shelter in place. ................ He’s also dispatching them without a national plan to protect the most vulnerable, particularly the elderly ....... he’s dispatching them without a plan of retreat if way too many vulnerable people are infected and harmed as we take to the malls of Omaha and beyond. ....... Other than all that, Trump is just like F.D.R. ...........

I fear that when these shortcomings become apparent, it could trigger a low-grade civil war.

............ A new Mason-Dixon line could emerge between states led by governors who want to equip their people with the maximum protective gear and safety guidelines and those governors who are keen to reopen their states for business as usual — gear and guidelines be damned. ........

more than two-thirds of Americans worry that their respective states are reopening too quickly

.......... a better president would never have allowed us to get to this edge of pandemic civil strife. ............. A real president would be framing the issues for the nation and then arguing for and guiding us on the least painful course. He’d start by explaining that we are up against a challenge no one in our generation has ever faced — the challenge of a pandemic in which Mother Nature is silently, invisibly, exponentially and mercilessly spreading a coronavirus among us. ............ Too closed, she’ll kill your jobs. Too open, she’ll kill your vulnerable. ......... If you listened to Trump last week you heard a president who was all over the place. One day he talked as though he wanted to follow Sweden in getting a lot of people back to work, even if many more would get infected. Another day, he boasted that we’re testing just like China — only more so. Another day he disputed the need for testing at all. ..........

Trump talks like China, envies Sweden, prepares for neither and insists that his strategy is superior to both.

.......... Our coronavirus infections will be exacerbated by Trump’s incompetence, while our hyper-political partisanship will be fed by his malevolence. After all, his whole political strategy is to divide us into red and blue, Republicans and Democrats, open-now advocates and go-slow advocates. That’s the only politics he practices. ......... Covid-19 is sapping our economic and physical health, while Trump is undermining our institutions and national unity.

We desperately need a vaccine — and a 2020 election outcome — that can give us herd immunity to this virus and this president.

4000 children may die in Nepal in next six months due to lockdown, UNICEF warns
Republicans and Democrats barrel toward collision on voting by mail Voters want the option to vote absentee more easily. But Republicans in Congress oppose a mandate, and a fight looms over funding to facilitate it.