PANDUMBIC

I've been following this discussion on FB (Escambia Citizens Watch), with Escambia County Commissioner Doug Underhill (Dist. 2).  He continues to advocate for opening the beaches and reopening restaurants with spacing between tables.  Now he's taken it a step further and sent an email to every registered voter who provided an email address.  

Escambia County Commissioner sends mass email calling for loosening coronavirus measures

Jim Little, Pensacola News Journal   Published 5:58 p.m. CT March 31, 2020 | Updated 6:19 p.m. CT March 31, 2020

Registered voters in Escambia County received an email from Escambia County Commissioner Doug Underhill on Monday calling for loosening social distancing measures as federal public health experts warn the worst of the coronavirus crisis is in the weeks ahead.

Underhill said he sent the email to all voters in the county who provided their emails when they registered, all members of the Florida Legislature and all Florida county commissioners to share what he said were facts about COVID-19.

In the email, Underhill said he believes the facts "support caution, but not fear and frenzy."

(To provide our community with important public safety information, our newsroom is making stories related to the coronavirus free to read. To support important local journalism like this, please consider becoming a digital subscriber.)

Underhill said he wants to reopen the county's beaches, which are currently closed through April 2, and called on the governor to allow restaurants to return to on-site dining at 50% capacity.

Underhill told the News Journal that he has received positive praise for the email from "other Republican and conservative leaders throughout the state" but did not specify who.

"It's time for us to start getting a different kind of dialogue, not fear and anger dialogue, but the data-driven dialogue," he said.

In his email, Underhill said that based on the state's testing, the contraction rate for COVID-19 is lower than first feared, and while some models showed higher contraction rates, health experts, including those on President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force, have said that with social distancing measures in place, the rates of the virus spread would slow.

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Even with social distancing, the virus remains contagious. Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Atlanta public radio station WABE on Monday that the virus is probably three times as infectious as the flu.

Redfield also said the percentage of people who get the coronavirus and show no symptoms but still transmit the virus may be at 25%, and it appears people with symptoms become contagious as many as 48 hours before they start experiencing symptoms.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said that even with social distancing measures in place, the United States could still see 100,000 deaths from the virus.

"It would not have been a good idea to pull back at a time when you really needed to be pressing your foot on the pedal as opposed to on the brakes," Fauci said on CNN.

Also in his email, Underhill said that at the time, there had only been one hospitalization from Escambia County's 30 confirmed cases, which he said didn't show a large impact on the health care system. His email did not include the number of hospitalized cases in neighboring Santa Rosa County, whose residents often use Escambia County hospitals.

Since his email, Escambia County has now 94 confirmed cases with two hospitalizations, and Santa Rosa County has 44 cases with seven hospitalizations and two deaths, according to numbers released by the Florida Department of Health on Tuesday evening.

Health experts don't expect the number of cases to peak in most of the country until mid-April.

Federal officials have said that a projection from the University of Washington Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation influenced the decision to extend social distancing guidelines until April 30. That model doesn't show coronavirus cases peaking until May 3 and projects a shortage of 297 intensive care unit beds in Florida on that day.

Ali Mokdad, a professor at the University of Washington, told the Miami Herald that the model assumes Florida will implement a stay-at-home order by next Monday, an action that Gov. Ron DeSantis has resisted.

Underhill also claimed as fact that the state's environment is "not as conducive to COVID-19," despite the largest outbreak of the virus occurring in the warmest part of the state with more than 3,600 case in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, as of Tuesday morning.

Health experts such as Fauci have said publicly that it is too early to know if hot climates affect the virus. The World Health Organization in its published lists of "myth busting" about the coronavirus states the virus has been reported in countries with hot weather, and hot weather does not prevent the spread of the virus.

Underhill rejected the idea that his email contradicted health experts, saying much of what has been put out to the public is driven by computer models.

"Modeling and simulation has been grossly misused ever since the Al Gore era," Underhill said. "And we've seen that there's a lot of things that can be proven by modeling and simulation (that) end up not happening in real world."

The email was sent through Underhill's campaign account, despite him not being an active candidate.

"I used that email address because our county government continues to resist modern communication methods, such as social media, and mass emailing," Underhill said.

He defended sending the email and said the public has a right to know what's in his mind on public policy decisions.

"The citizens have a right to know what's in the mind of the five men (on the County Commission) who makes decisions that affect their ability to feed their children," Underhill said.

Jim Little can be reached at jwlittle@pnj.com and 850-208-9827.

https://www.pnj.com/story/news/2020/03/31/covid-19-florida-county-commissioner-wants-loosen-social-distancing/5096113002/?fbclid=IwAR1luX2g4xGrVE1cQ1INslX9agNHLRU5p91fdLyFKcGobDkgrAQfJWjxaR8

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Fortunately, Underhill's insane stupidity has almost assuredly been shut down by DeSantis' Wednesday "Safer at Home" order -- not officially, but effectively.  Here's the latest PNJ story:

Escambia County Commission appears unlikely to reopen public beaches amid coronavirus outbreak

Conservatives are the worst of us. It's a case where a group of people's stupidity and willful ignorance is actual a danger to the species. The real problem? Their stupidity is profitable. Catering to it is a money-making industry, which is why the idiocy only gets worse. Everybody's grabbing at dollars by keeping people-who-want-to-be-stupid stupid. And we'll never have an intelligent society as long as that continues to be the case.

My son sent this one he came across somewhere.  It's pretty spot on.  But maybe someone can explain the tiger/dentist thing for this dinosaur.  Does it have to do with that "Tiger King" thing?  I don't do streaming.    __RLL


*A RECAP OF THE LAST THREE WEEKS*


AMERICA: Oh my god! Coronavirus! What should we do?


CALIFORNIA: Shut down your state.


AMERICA: Wait... what? Why?


CALIFORNIA: Because 40 million people live here and we did it early, and it’s working.


OHIO: Whoa... whoa... let’s not be hasty now. The president said that this whole coronavirus thing is a democratic hoax.


CALIFORNIA: He also said that windmills cause cancer. Shut down your state.


TEXAS: But the president said that we only have 15 cases and soon it'll be zero.


CALIFORNIA: The president can’t count to fifteen. Nor even spell it. Shut down your state.


NEW JERSEY: Us too?


CALIFORNIA: Yes, you guys too. Just like when Christie shut down the bridge, but it’s your whole state.


FLORIDA: But what about all these kids here on spring break?? They spend a lot of money here!


CALIFORNIA: Those kids invented the Tide pod challenge. Shut down your state.


LOUISIANA: But wait let’s have Mardi Gras first. It entertains people.


CALIFORNIA: It also kills them. Shut it down.


GEORGIA: Ok well how about we keep the state open for all of our mega churches? Maybe we can all pray really hard until the coronavirus just goes away!


CALIFORNIA: Which is working like a charm for mass shootings. Jesus told us to tell you to shut down your state.


OKLAHOMA: What about the tigers?


CALIFORNIA: What about a dentist. Shut it down.


WYOMING: Hold up, maybe we should go county by county like the president said.


CALIFORNIA: Stop acting like there are counties in Wyoming. There are no counties in Wyoming. Wyoming is a county. Shut it down.


PENNSYLVANIA: But big coal.


CALIFORNIA: But big death. Shut it.


WEST VIRGINIA: But we were the last state to get coronavirus!


CALIFORNIA: And don’t make us explain to you why that was. Shut it down.


NORTH CAROLINA: But the republican national convention is coming here!


CALIFORNIA: SHUT... ok fine do what you want.

RealLindaL wrote:My son sent this one he came across somewhere.  It's pretty spot on.  But maybe someone can explain the tiger/dentist thing for this dinosaur.  Does it have to do with that "Tiger King" thing?  I don't do streaming.    __RLL


*A RECAP OF THE LAST THREE WEEKS*


AMERICA: Oh my god! Coronavirus! What should we do?


CALIFORNIA: Shut down your state.


AMERICA: Wait... what? Why?


CALIFORNIA: Because 40 million people live here and we did it early, and it’s working.


OHIO: Whoa... whoa... let’s not be hasty now. The president said that this whole coronavirus thing is a democratic hoax.


CALIFORNIA: He also said that windmills cause cancer. Shut down your state.


TEXAS: But the president said that we only have 15 cases and soon it'll be zero.


CALIFORNIA: The president can’t count to fifteen. Nor even spell it. Shut down your state.


NEW JERSEY: Us too?


CALIFORNIA: Yes, you guys too. Just like when Christie shut down the bridge, but it’s your whole state.


FLORIDA: But what about all these kids here on spring break?? They spend a lot of money here!


CALIFORNIA: Those kids invented the Tide pod challenge. Shut down your state.


LOUISIANA: But wait let’s have Mardi Gras first. It entertains people.


CALIFORNIA: It also kills them. Shut it down.


GEORGIA: Ok well how about we keep the state open for all of our mega churches? Maybe we can all pray really hard until the coronavirus just goes away!


CALIFORNIA: Which is working like a charm for mass shootings. Jesus told us to tell you to shut down your state.


OKLAHOMA: What about the tigers?


CALIFORNIA: What about a dentist. Shut it down.


WYOMING: Hold up, maybe we should go county by county like the president said.


CALIFORNIA: Stop acting like there are counties in Wyoming. There are no counties in Wyoming. Wyoming is a county. Shut it down.


PENNSYLVANIA: But big coal.


CALIFORNIA: But big death. Shut it.


WEST VIRGINIA: But we were the last state to get coronavirus!


CALIFORNIA: And don’t make us explain to you why that was. Shut it down.


NORTH CAROLINA: But the republican national convention is coming here!


CALIFORNIA: SHUT... ok fine do what you want.

This story seems to have something to do with Oklahoma, tigers and dentist.



https://www.wemakespokanevalleysmile.com/tiger-kings-john-finlay-has-a-new-smile

Telstar wrote:
This story seems to have something to do with Oklahoma, tigers and dentist.


https://www.wemakespokanevalleysmile.com/tiger-kings-john-finlay-has-a-new-smile

That explains it! Thanks!

RealLindaL wrote:

Telstar wrote:
This story seems to have something to do with Oklahoma, tigers and dentist.


https://www.wemakespokanevalleysmile.com/tiger-kings-john-finlay-has-a-new-smile

That explains it! Thanks!

You're welcome.

The President Is Trapped

Trump is utterly unsuited to deal with this crisis, either intellectually or temperamentally.

MARCH 25, 2020
Peter Wehner
Contributing writer at The Atlantic and senior fellow at EPPC

For his entire adult life, and for his entire presidency, Donald Trump has created his own alternate reality, complete with his own alternate set of facts. He has shown himself to be erratic, impulsive, narcissistic, vindictive, cruel, mendacious, and devoid of empathy. None of that is new.

But we’re now entering the most dangerous phase of the Trump presidency. The pain and hardship that the United States is only beginning to experience stem from a crisis that the president is utterly unsuited to deal with, either intellectually or temperamentally. When things were going relatively well, the nation could more easily absorb the costs of Trump’s psychological and moral distortions and disfigurements. But those days are behind us. The coronavirus pandemic has created the conditions that can catalyze a destructive set of responses from an individual with Trump’s characterological defects and disordered personality.

Peter Wehner: The Trump presidency is over

We are now in the early phase of a medical and economic tempest unmatched in most of our lifetimes. There’s too much information we don’t have. We don’t know the full severity of the pandemic, or whether a state like New York is a harbinger or an outlier. But we have enough information to know this virus is rapidly transmissible and lethal.

MORE BY PETER WEHNER
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NIH Director: ‘We’re on an Exponential Curve’
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The Trump Presidency Is Over
PETER WEHNER
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PETER WEHNER

The qualities we most need in a president during this crisis are calmness, wisdom, and reassurance; a command of the facts and the ability to communicate them well; and the capacity to think about the medium and long term while carefully weighing competing options and conflicting needs. We need a leader who can persuade the public to act in ways that are difficult but necessary, who can focus like a laser beam on a problem for a sustained period of time, and who will listen to—and, when necessary, defer to—experts who know far more than he does. We need a president who can draw the nation together rather than drive it apart, who excels at the intricate work of governing, and who works well with elected officials at every level. We need a chief executive whose judgment is not just sound, but exceptional.

There are some 325 million people in America, and it’s hard to think of more than a handful who are more lacking in these qualities than Donald Trump.

But we need to consider something else, which is that the coronavirus pandemic may lead to a rapid and even more worrisome psychological and emotional deterioration in the commander in chief. This is not a certainty, but it’s a possibility we need to be prepared for.

Read: The four possible timelines for life returning to normal

Here’s how this might play out; to some extent, it already has.

Let’s start with what we know. Someone with Trump’s psychological makeup, when faced with facts and events that are unpleasant, that he perceives as a threat to his self-image and public standing, simply denies them. We saw that repeatedly during the early part of the pandemic, when the president was giving false reassurance and spreading false information one day after another.

After a few days in which he was willing to acknowledge the scope and scale of this crisis—he declared himself a “wartime president”—he has now regressed to type, once again becoming a fountain of misinformation. At a press conference yesterday, he declared that he “would love to have the country opened up, and just raring to go, by Easter,” which is less than three weeks away, a goal that top epidemiologists and health professionals believe would be catastrophic.

“I think it’s possible. Why not?” he said with a shrug during a town hall hosted by Fox News later in the day. (Why Easter? He explained, “I just thought it was a beautiful time, a beautiful timeline.”) He said this as New York City’s case count is doubling every three days and the U.S. case count is now setting the pace for the world.

As one person who consults with the Trump White House on the coronavirus response put it to me, “He has chosen to imagine the worst is behind us when the worst is clearly ahead of us.”

David Frum: The worst outcome

After listening to the president’s nearly-two-hour briefing on Monday—in which, among other things, Trump declared, “If it were up to the doctors, they may say … ‘Let’s shut down the entire world.’ … This could create a much bigger problem than the problem that you start off with”—a former White House adviser who has worked on past pandemics told me, “This fool will bring the death of thousands needlessly. We have mobilized as a country to shut things down for a time, despite the difficulty. We can work our way back to a semblance of normality if we hold out and let the health system make it through the worst of it.” He added, “But now our own president is undoing all that work and preaching recklessness. Rather than lead us in taking on a difficult challenge, he is dragging us toward failure and suffering. Beyond belief.”

Yes and no. The thing to understand about Donald Trump is that putting others before self is not something he can do, even temporarily. His attempts to convey facts that don’t serve his perceived self-interest or to express empathy are forced, scripted, and always short-lived, since such reactions are alien to him.

This president does not have the capacity to listen to, synthesize, and internalize information that does not immediately serve his greatest needs: praise, fealty, adoration. “He finds it intolerable when those things are missing,” a clinical psychologist told me. “Praise, applause, and accolades seem to calm him and boost his confidence. There’s no room for that now, and so he’s growing irritable and needing to create some way to get some positive attention.”

Adam Serwer: Trump is inciting a coronavirus culture war to save himself

She added that the pandemic and its economic fallout “overwhelm Trump’s capacity to understand, are outside of his ability to internalize and process, and [are] beyond his frustration tolerance. He is neither curious nor interested; facts are tossed aside when inconvenient or [when they] contradict his parallel reality, and people are disposable unless they serve him in some way.”

It’s useful here to recall that Trump’s success as a politician has been built on his ability to impose his will and narrative on others, to use his experience on a reality-television show and his skill as a con man to shape public impressions in his favor, even—or perhaps, especially—if those impressions are at odds with reality. He convinced a good chunk of the country that he is a wildly successful businessman and knows more about campaign finance, the Islamic State, the courts, the visa system, trade, taxes, the debt, renewable energy, infrastructure, borders, and drones than anyone else.

Read: How the pandemic will end

But in this instance, Trump isn’t facing a political problem he can easily spin his way out of. He’s facing a lethal virus. It doesn’t give a damn what Donald Trump thinks of it or tweets about it. Spin and lies about COVID-19, including that it will soon magically disappear, as Trump claimed it would, don’t work. In fact, they have the opposite effect. Misinformation will cause the virus to increase its deadly spread.

So as the crisis deepens—as the body count increases, hospitals are overwhelmed, and the economy contracts, perhaps dramatically—it’s reasonable to assume that the president will reach for the tools he has used throughout his life: duplicity and denial. He will not allow facts that are at odds with his narrative to pierce his magnetic field of deception.

But what happens to Trump psychologically and emotionally when things don’t turn around in the time period he wants? What happens if the tricks that have allowed him to walk away from scandal after scandal don’t work quite so well, if the doors of escape are bolted shut, and if it dawns on even some of his supporters—people who will watch family members, friends, and neighbors contract the disease, some number of whom will die—that no matter what Trump says, he can’t alter this epidemiological reality?

All of this would likely enrage him, and feed his paranoia.

As the health-care and economic crises worsen, Trump’s hallmarks will be even more fully on display. The president will create new scapegoats. He’ll blame governors for whatever bad news befalls their states. He’ll berate reporters who ask questions that portray him in a less-than-favorable light. He’ll demand even more cultlike coverage from outlets such as Fox News. Because he doesn’t tolerate relationships that are characterized by disagreement or absence of obeisance, before long we’ll see key people removed or silenced when they try to counter a Trump-centered narrative. He’ll try to find shiny objects to divert our attention from his failures.

All of these things are from a playbook the president has used a thousand times. Perhaps they’ll succeed again. But there’s something distinct about this moment, compared with every other moment in the Trump presidency, that could prove to be utterly disorienting and unsettling for the president. Hush-money payments won’t make COVID-19 go away. He cannot distract people from the global pandemic. He can’t wait it out until the next news cycle, because the next news cycle will also be about the pandemic. He can’t easily create another narrative, because he is often sharing the stage with scientists who will not lie on his behalf.

The president will try to blame someone else—but in this case the “someone else” is a virus, not a Mexican immigrant or a reporter with a disability, not a Muslim or a Clinton, not a dead war hero or a family of a fallen soldier, not a special counsel or an NFL player who kneels for the national anthem. He will try to use this crisis to pit one party against the other—but the virus will kill both Republicans and Democrats. He will try to create an alternate story to distract people from an inconvenient truth—but in this case, the public is too afraid, the story is too big, and the carnage will be too great to be distracted from it.

America will make it to the other side of this crisis, as it has after every other crisis. But the struggle will be a good deal harder, and the human cost a good deal higher, because we elected as president a man who is so damaged and so broken in so many ways.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/presidents-character-unequal-task/608743/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR3V8ulU16BwkgQJHxnmiR4i1Rsqxkbgzk_GxvVq03mge9K2TEeCS2_KBb4

*************

"They're selling something and what they are selling, is YOUR LIFE."

A possible bright spot in treatment: The NYT reports a shift in treating COVID patients...instead of sedating and intubating, the doctors are proning the patients, some with the help of maternity matresses, not sedating, and providing oxygen. Apparently the outcomes are improved.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/nyregion/new-york-coronavirus.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage&ncid=newsltushpmgnews

Note: NYT is providing unlimited access to articles about coronavirus.

AP Exclusive: Docs show top WH officials buried CDC report

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — The decision to shelve detailed advice from the nation’s top disease control experts for reopening communities during the coronavirus pandemic came from the highest levels of the White House, according to internal government emails obtained by The Associated Press.

The files also show that after the AP reported Thursday that the guidance document had been buried, the Trump administration ordered key parts of it to be fast-tracked for approval.

The trove of emails show the nation’s top public health experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spending weeks working on guidance to help the country deal with a public health emergency, only to see their work quashed by political appointees with little explanation.

The document, titled “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework,” was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen. It included detailed “decision trees,” or flow charts aimed at helping local leaders navigate the difficult decision of whether to reopen or remain closed.

White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said Friday that the documents had not been approved by CDC Director Robert Redfield. The new emails, however, show that Redfield cleared the guidance.

This new CDC guidance — a mix of advice already released along with newer information — had been approved and promoted by the highest levels of its leadership, including Redfield. Despite this, the administration shelved it on April 30.

As early as April 10, Redfield, who is also a member of the White House coronavirus task force, shared via email the guidance and decision trees with President Donald Trump’s inner circle, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner, top adviser Kellyanne Conway and Joseph Grogan, assistant to the president for domestic policy. Also included were Dr. Deborah Birx, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other task force members.

Three days later, CDC’s upper management sent the more than 60-page report with attached flow charts to the White House Office of Management and Budget, a step usually taken only when agencies are seeking final White House approval for documents they have already cleared.

The 17-page version later released by the AP and other news outlets was only part of the actual document submitted by the CDC, and targeted specific facilities like bars and restaurants. The AP obtained a copy Friday of the full document. That version is a more universal series of phased guidelines, “Steps for All Americans in Every Community,” geared to advise communities as a whole on testing, contact tracing and other fundamental infection control measures.

Redfield weighed in publicly for the first time Saturday, issuing a statement that apparently contradicts his internal emails, and supports the White House assertion that he had not formally approved the guidance.

He said in the statement that the CDC guidance was in draft form and had not been vetted fully. “This is an iterative effort to ensure effective, clear guidance is presented to the American people. I had not seen a version of the guidance incorporating interagency and task force input and therefore was not yet comfortable releasing a final work product.”

But on April 24, Redfield again emailed the guidance documents to Birx and Grogan, according to a copy viewed by The AP. Redfield asked Birx and Grogan for their review so that the CDC could post the guidance publicly. Attached to Redfield’s email were the guidance documents and the corresponding decision trees — including one for meat packing plants.

“We plan to post these to CDC’s website once approved. Peace, God bless r3,” the director wrote. (Redfield’s initials are R.R.R.)

Redfield’s emails contradict the White House assertion Thursday that it had not yet approved the guidelines because the CDC’s own leadership had not yet given them the green light.

Two days after his email to Birx and Grogan, on April 26, the CDC still had not received any word from the administration, according to the internal communications. Robert McGowan, the CDC chief of staff who was shepherding the guidance through the OMB, sent an email seeking an update. “We need them as soon as possible so that we can get them posted,” he wrote to Nancy Beck, an OMB staffer.

Beck said she was awaiting review by the White House Principals Committee, a group of top White House officials. “They need to be approved before they can move forward. WH principals are in touch with the task force so the task force should be aware of the status,” Beck wrote to McGowan.

The next day, April 27, Satya Thallam of the OMB sent the CDC a similar response: “The re-opening guidance and decision tree documents went to a West Wing principals committee on Sunday. We have not received word on specific timing for their considerations.

“However, I am passing along their message: they have given strict and explicit direction that these documents are not yet cleared and cannot go out as of right now — this includes related press statements or other communications that may preview content or timing of guidances.”

According to the documents, CDC continued inquiring for days about the guidance that officials had hoped to post by Friday, May 1, the day Trump had targeted for reopening some businesses, according to a source who was granted anonymity because they were not permitted to speak to the press.

On April 30 the CDC’s documents were killed for good.

The agency had not heard any specific critiques from either the White House Principals Committee or the coronavirus task force in days, so officials asked for an update.

“The guidance should be more cross-cutting and say when they should reopen and how to keep people safe. Fundamentally, the Task Force cleared this for further development, but not for release,” wrote Quinn Hirsch, a staffer in the White House’s office of regulatory affairs (OIRA), in an email to the CDC’s parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services.

CDC staff working on the guidance decided to try again.

The administration had already released its Opening Up America Again Plan, and the clock was ticking. Staff at CDC thought if they could get their reopening advice out there, it would help communities do so with detailed expert help.

But hours later on April 30, CDC’s Chief of Staff McGowan told CDC staff that neither the guidance documents nor the decision trees “would ever see the light of day,” according to three officials who declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.

The next day, May 1, the emails showed, a staffer at CDC was told “we would not even be allowed to post the decision trees. We had the team (exhausted as they are) stand down.”

The CDC’s guidance was shelved. Until May 7.

That morning The Associated Press reported that the Trump administration had buried the guidance, even as many states had started allowing businesses to reopen.

After the story ran, the White House called the CDC and ordered them to refile all of the decision trees, except one that targeted churches. An email obtained by the AP confirmed the agency resent the documents late Thursday, hours after news broke.

“Attached per the request from earlier today are the decision trees previously submitted to both OIRA and the WH Task Force, minus the communities of faith tree,” read the email. “Please let us know if/when/how we are able to proceed from here.”

https://apnews.com/9c4d5284ba4769d3b98aa05232201f88?fbclid=IwAR07pnEd3FgieC5t6fbk0XLXwc4Ztdz2RuFm_YGZCHuE5UyvdNzPl105oec

Meanwhile, small businesses are still waiting for PPP loans, while Trump is giving loans to CHURCHES!

The headline says Catholic churches, but there are plenty of Protestant churches and synagogues applying, and in many cases, receiving the loans that were meant to bridge the gap for small businesses...who PAY TAXES.

More than 12,000 Catholic churches in the U.S. applied for PPP loans – and 9,000 got them

BY CHRISTINA CAPATIDES

MAY 8, 2020 / 12:17 PM / CBS NEWS

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/catholic-churches-paycheck-protection-program-12000-applied-9000-got/

*********

Not only is Trump misappropriating these funds, he's allocating them to states he apparently thinks he can win, not according to need.

Where the Small-Business Relief Loans Have Gone

By Karl Russell and Stacy Cowley May 7, 2020

"A centerpiece of the federal government’s economic relief plan is to provide billions in forgivable loans to small businesses struggling during the coronavirus pandemic.

But analyses of government data show that the lending program, which is overseen by the Small Business Administration, allowed many of the earliest funds to go to parts of the country that were not as hard hit by the coronavirus, as well as to a small number of companies seeking millions in assistance.

Midwestern businesses got an outsize share during the first lending round.

The country’s largest banks are often heavy lenders to small businesses, but during the first of the program’s two rounds, community banks and regional institutions did most of the lending, according to an analysis by a group of University of Chicago and M.I.T. economists.

That contributed to a disproportionately large share of loans going to areas that were not as hard-hit by the virus.

Businesses in Iowa, Nebraska and North Dakota were among the biggest beneficiaries of the early aid when accounting for the number of people working for small businesses in each state, a Times analysis shows. All three states are below the national median for cases of the virus per capita, and none imposed statewide lockdowns as the outbreak began to spread nationwide.

One reason for the uneven distribution is because big banks were slow to lend when the program first began, in part because of bureaucratic delays, and they imposed rules that blocked many people seeking help. The 20 largest banks accounted for 41 percent of small-business lending throughout the country before the pandemic, but issued only 20 percent of the first-round loans, the Chicago and M.I.T. economists found.

Since then, big banks made vastly more loans. Businesses in harder-hit states like California and New York have claimed a larger share of the money so far in the second round, which started in late April after Congress approved a fresh round of funds when money quickly ran out during the initial wave.

Many small loans were recently issued, but loans worth more than $1 million made up a large share of the early money handed out..."

(see link for distribution maps)

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/07/business/small-business-loans-coronavirus.html

Trump administration cuts funding for coronavirus researcher, jeopardizing possible COVID-19 cure

"Peter Daszak is a scientist whose work is helping in the search for a COVID-19 cure. So why did the president just cancel Daszak's funding? It's the kind of politics which might seem ill-advised in a health crisis. President Trump is blaming China's government for the pandemic. The outbreak was first detected in the city of Wuhan. The administration has said, at times, the virus is man-made or that, if it's natural, it must have leaked out of a Chinese government lab. Both the White House and the Chinese Communist Party have been less than honest. And so, in China, and the U.S., the work of scientists like Peter Daszak is being undercut by pandemic politics.

Why it matters that the NIH canceled a coronavirus research grant
More 60 Minutes coronavirus coverage
Peter Daszak is a British-born American Ph.D. who's spent a career discovering dangerous viruses in wildlife, especially bats.

In 2003, in Malaysia, he warned 60 Minutes a pandemic was coming.

Peter Daszak in 2003 interview: What worries me the most is that we are going to miss the next emerging disease, that we're suddenly going to find a SARS virus that moves from one part of the planet to another, wiping out people as it moves along..."

(60 minutes video & interview)

But his funding from the NIH, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, was killed, two weeks ago, by a political disinformation campaign targeting China's Wuhan Institute.

On April 14, Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz claimed China's Wuhan Institute had, quote, "birthed a monster." Gaetz is a vigorous defender of the president. He's been under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for allegedly threatening a witness against Mr. Trump and he led a protest to delay impeachment testimony..."


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-administration-coronavirus-vaccine-researcher-covid-19-cure-60-minutes/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-05-11/more-than-a-billion-people-escaped-poverty-in-the-last-20-years-the-coronavirus-could-erase-those-gains%3f_amp=true

PkrBum wrote:
 

My god, this is the funniest, most accurate, weird-creepy-hilarious thing mankind has ever created.  Or, at least, this week.

Pieces. Of. SHIT.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-feared-testing-too-many-people-for-virus-would-spook-stock-markets-says-report

President Trump was wary of making preparations for the coronavirus pandemic because he was concerned doing so would sent the stock market into a panic, the Financial Times reports. In a quote attributed to an unnamed Trump confidant who is said to speak to the president frequently, it’s claimed: “Jared [Kushner] had been arguing that testing too many people, or ordering too many ventilators, would spook the markets and so we just shouldn’t do it... That advice worked far more powerfully on [Trump] than what the scientists were saying. He thinks they always exaggerate.” Elsewhere in the FT investigation into Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, an unnamed administration official is reported to have told the paper that trying to advise the president is like “bringing fruits to the volcano... You’re trying to appease a great force that’s impervious to reason.”

These assholes are thinking of politics and politics only. They don't give a flying fuck who they kill or what long-term damage they do to the country.

No wonder the idiot manipulated rabble are scrambling to try to pretend "Obamagate" is a thing. They're desperate to create a distraction. They're still fighting three-years-ago battles because they want to distract people from how badly their ineptitude is losing this one.


The G.O.P. is the M.O.B. Trump saw this as an opportunity to try to corner the market on hydroxychloroquine, buying up millions of tabs before it was even actually declared helpful (which it turns out it isn't) so he could become a drug dealer. He also sent states scrambling and competing with each other to buy masks and protection gear, claiming that's the "states' responsibility" (it isn't)... and then the fed fucking confiscated it and are reportedly selling it to other states that are more friendly to Trump. A co-worker's mom is in health care and witnessed some of that firsthand.

I've known the Republicans are basically the Mafia for a while now. I have Republican operatives in my family. I've got a rich cousin who got armed robbery erased off his son's record by giving a payoff to Trent Lott, who did it. I have other family who are deep in with the Pickerings, who live in huge estates they wouldn't have gotten from their government salaries. My cousins also are tight with Haley Barbour and watched him divert Katrina money to his brother Jeppie's real-estate projects that had nothing to do with the storm damage. They're all crooked as a dog's hind leg, but I thought they'd have some limits when America's under direct threat. It turns out that not even THAT can lure them away from criminal enterprise.

I repeat, pieces. of. SHIT. And that includes anybody who's still supporting and making excuses for them at this point. I know everybody's tribal and stupid but there should be a goddamn breaking point.

zsomething wrote:I repeat, pieces. of.  SHIT.   And that includes anybody who's still supporting and making excuses for them at this point.   I know everybody's tribal and stupid but there should be a goddamn breaking point.

Agree 100% and then some, but, as usual, instead of seeing the light, the  Trump lovers are only doubling down with more vitriol and depraved conspiracy theories to back up their idiotic, hopelessly corrupt president.

And on the local scene, where the results of Trump's insane encouragement of too-early re-opening is playing out:   Last night I made the mistake of attempting to pick up a curbside dinner order from a Pensacola Beach restaurant that's still offering that mode in addition to seated dining at reduced occupancy.   This is after the beachfront itself re-opened just two weekends ago.  It took me over a half hour to go the mile and half to the restaurant because of backed up, creeping traffic on the main road - thousands of beachgoers heading for home or restaurants or who knows where.  It was as bad or worse than a Spring Break.  I saw LOTS of out-of-state plates including from GA, LA, TX, MS, and AL - who knows how many carrying virus in from hot spots, whereas to date we've only had two cases on Pensacola Beach, and one death.  
Thank you very much, Gov. DeSantis.  

Also, many independent owners/leaseholders are renting out their beach houses and condos even though there's still an order forbidding vacation rentals.  The big rental companies are complying for fear of losing their licenses, but the little guys are having a field day, and the scuttlebutt is that they're telling the renters to say, if questioned, that they're family member of the owners and are staying there free.
What a wonderful, LYING, RULES DON'T APPLY TO ME society we have, all being fomented right from the top.

Meanwhile, our county applied to the State of Florida this past Friday for permission to open up all vacation rentals, but with restrictions against renting to those from hot spot states.  RIGHT.  Like anyone will comply with that!!!!  But I predict DeSantis' government will OK it, just in time for Memorial Day weekend -- which will find hubby and me sheltered firmly in place, not even daring to venture out on the sand of the very island where we live.
 
I've always said I wouldn't wish COVID-19 on anyone, but the less virtuous part of me almost wishes we'd have a huge new resurgence of cases just to show how very WRONG and DANGEROUS the direction we've been going surely is. (And if Trump contracted a case, that wouldn't bother me one iota either.)

A less than 1% mortality rate... with the vast majority of those being elderly or infirm.

Congratulations... you've all become Pavlov dogs.

Over counting where it's politically beneficial:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mprnews.org/amp/story/2020/04/07/covid19-death-certificate-change-stirs-controversy

Under counting where it's politically convenient:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.dailycaller.com/2020/05/15/new-york-coronavirus-reporting-nursing-home-deaths-undercounting