March 23. Trump’s Future Coronavirus Views

March 23.  Trump’s Future Coronavirus Views

I don’t have exact quotes, so forgive me.  Today, Trump dealt with our future, but I was going to put together his previous ideas as well.

Trump said today that at the end of the 15 days, March 30, he would evaluate keeping the shutdown rules.  But the federal government did not confine residents in stay-at-home orders as states and cities have, now totaling 100 million Americans, or a third.  So what does this mean?  Clearly, Trump wants his economy and instant rebound stock market back.   Speakers on the right (Fox News) have pushed to just keep the economy going, knocking off people like me.  

There is a certain contradiction here.  The bailout is now $1.8 trillion, meant to last months.  But if we all restart in another week, what’s it all about, Alfie?

Recently, Trump pointed out that if you go from 60,000 ventilators to 110,000 that will be needed, you are going to have a lot of inventory left over that you will never need again.  Why would he say that, if he really intended to have people produce that many.  The good ones cost $50,000 each.  That extra 50,000 ventilators would cost $2.5 billion.  Still a small cost compared to the $500 billion slush fund that he wants to use at his discretion, without disclosure!  Each ventilator will save many lives, even in just the next few months.

Even if the Coronavirus takes a summer break, it will be a year and a half before a vaccine is available.  That means the fall of 2021.  So when the virus comes back this fall, we still don’t have it for the entire season.   

Trump implied that another deadly virus would not occur for centuries.  First of all, this is still here for another year and a half.  Second, it may well mutate, and one of the mutations may not be covered by the developed vaccine, like the flus keep doing.  Third, bad viruses occur once or twice a decade.  This applies not only to ventilators, but all expansive medical equipment:  masks, goggles, gowns, tests, oxygen tanks, ICUs, hospital beds, and other shortages that will still appear.

A real danger is that Trump’s fantasy wishful thinking is that a magical mushroom, I mean drug, or drug combination, will appear, which immediately cures the virus without more deaths than the virus itself, and will save the economy and his re-election.  The other danger is that in removing all scientific regulations, he will also rush to an untested vaccine overnight, as is his style.  It’s initial failure, will remove all public trust, and when a tested vaccine appears, it will not be universally used.  Trump cited a single patient who was helped, still better than the questionable study of 20 that he has been citing, despite deadly potential side effects.  Remember when candidate Trump cited an unidentified case of some one child who showed symptoms of autism after he got a vaccine.  That really caused an uproar.

Trump’s dreams of the future are, of course, all about him winning, defeating a pandemic single handedly, and of course, being reelected with ultimate powers.  The stock market and jobs will instantly rebound, even stronger than before.

If Trump overrides state shutdowns, and the Coronavirus resurges, we will all suffer.  We will already have a good two week start to confine the virus, which we are all suffering for.  Let’s not throw that all away, just to get Trump reelected.

If Trump wanted to do anything to lose the confidence of Americans in his dedication to ending this pandemic, especially with the fewest deaths, casualties, and least suffering, he has done it in saying that the economy is more important to him.

We have reached another milestone, that of more than 100 casualties in a single day.  Beyond the century number, we have now surpassed the number of Americans who die each day from guns in America, and have been doing so for years.

Trump began his press conference by saying that people should not harass Asian Americans.  I wonder who could have encouraged that?

The stars and a planet were very bright tonight from the clear air.

I went down to Main Beach in Laguna today, and it and the downtown were almost deserted.  Main Beach and its park, as well as all Laguna Beach parks are now closed, partly to keep people from elsewhere from coming into the city.  This is how cities isolated themselves from plagues in times of old, except that they had walls.  I have photos on my Flickr account.

The world total number of cases is now 381,293, and deaths are 16,572.

The US now has 610 deaths.

Seventeen states have now adopted a Safer at Home strategy.  Here is an ABC map of them.

Here is the table of the US, leading states, and other domains cases to date and percent increase.

So yesterday’s hope that southern states were growing slowly has vanished.  The large jumps may be that Sunday’s results were slow because of the weekend, in some ways.  The Surgeon General warned us to expect large jumps this week, and they have appeared.

New York cases are still about half of the nation’s cases.  Governor Cuomo says that he needs 30,000 ventilators, and has asked the President to invoke the Defense Procurement Act to get them.