It’s all about restart. Trump is forming a Council to plan the restart. We don’t have a mass antibody test yet, and experts say we will need 750,000 a day. With 170 million in the workforce, even a million a day would take a half of a year. They are actually considering only 150,000 a day, so that would take a thousand days. Only a small percent of the population has actually had the virus.
At Trump’s news conference he restated that more people will die by being confined, than from going back to work. First of all, assuming everybody would get sick, 15% or 20% would end up in the hospital for oxygen, and there are no such facilities. We are already at capacities of everything in health care with a half million Americans detected with the virus. That’s about one out of every 640 Americans. We don’t yet know how many really have had the virus.
Trump was asked if any Democrats were going to be on his council. He said he hadn’t thought about that. What? Trump is not even talking to the controlling Democrat in the country, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the Democratic House. Trump also daily puts down Sen. Charles Schumer, minority leader of the Senate. Surely they, or their economist and public health experts should be on the committee. Trump’s committee members are not going to be the best independent economists and public health experts. They are going to be from the small group of pseudos that he trusts and not only have sworn loyalty to him, but their views are formed to please his narcissism and his wishes.
Remember, more than half of the voters voted Democratic, and half of the population, represented by the House, are Democrats. It’s going to be hard to push them around. Trump’s leverage is that with Stonewall Mitch’s blockage, he can cut off financial aid to force people back to work. Los Angeles has already extended the stay-at-home to mid-May.
I can see them trying a high tech approach, since they have been tracking the Coronavirus cases county by county. Also Apple and Google can trace contacts by people’s iOS or Android phones. This kind of 1984 oversight would appeal to Jared Kushner, who does this with election influence.
The President said that this is the hardest decision that he has to make. That is the poorest substitute for a Blue Ribbon Committee of experts with a well funded department of studies and monitoring to cover such a large operation. Like a Manhattan project. But that is not the way Trump has made decisions during his lifetime of being the sole leader of his solely owned Trump Organization. Since we fund a professional government of two million highly trained workers, and are paying out over two trillion dollars to maintain our society during this quarantining, we deserve so much better.
An example of using Trump’s brain, is that he got into a fight with a reporter who pointed out that many healthcare workers are saying on TV that there is a shortage of PPE, Personal Protection Equipment. Trump said that that is Fake News, and that there is No shortage of Anything. He says that the networks are choosing just the few people who would state such things. So facts will be overruled by Trump’s council, too.
Public health officials say that the needed capabilities are:
- Diagnostic Testing for the Virus
- Antibody Tests to determine immunity
- Contact tracing.
We will have none of these. Preexisting testing is not needed, he said. There is even a shortage of external thermometers to detect workers or shoppers or diners with temperatures.
Trump’s council will have Business Leaders and Doctors, meaning that the decision is also made by a stacked deck. No single doctors can make up for a whole modeling and testing agency. Even just the use of a few separated university and business modelers is no substitute for a dedicated agency.
This is a multi year challenge. Even with a vaccine, producing enough to vaccinate everybody, and producing herd immunity, will take time. Even with the highly catchable measles vaccine, one non-scientific and discredited study, and a false debate statement by Trump himself, has led educated people to avoid vaccines.
Hong Kong is already starting to experience a second wave, as people are relaxing on sensible preventions. Since Trump has not even advised states to follow these, and certainly not required them, and won’t even discourage people from going to Churches for Easter, this could be another disaster, and require even a doubled total confinement time. Remember, Trump has spent five years trying to dismantle Obama Care, with no replacement. He has not provided for medical care for undocumented people. He has not encouraged states to adopt Medicaid. He spends time casting blame on all opponents, and never accepts responsibility for anything. Staff who speak truth to the public are fired or exiled.
