Breaking News This Morning

Trump and first lady Melania Trump test positive for COVID-19

The medical community is already responding, naturally.

Have a nice day, everyone.

Additional links:

Aides thought Trump seemed unwell Wednesday, but he kept exposing people Thursday

Top Trump aide Hope Hicks tests positive for coronavirus

RNC chair tests positive for coronavirus

Looks like maybe all around this political party. The President, Melania, Hope Hicks, the head of the RNC and now this guy?

Just Three Days After Meeting With Amy Coney Barrett Without Mask, GOP Senator Mike Lee Also Tests Positive for Covid-19

Meanwhile:

Joe Biden tests negative for coronavirus

So Tired

So tired of his recklessness and fecklessness and ignorance and sincere stupidity and just being honestly dangerous for our nation.

Among all his other insanity, he said Friday in a taped interview with Chris Wallace on Fox.

'I'll be right eventually': Donald Trump defends his handling of COVID-19 and the presidency

To which I would ask, when, Mr. President? When are you going to be right, correct, especially on this pandemic? Because you certainly weren't right when you called it a hoax. You weren't correct when you said it was a "Democratic hoax." You weren't right when you said it would "go away in the Spring" and on so many other statements and declarations you've made. You certainly aren't correct now about Dr. Fauci or the CDC and so many other issues and situations.

Thanks, Republicans.

President Trump or Dr Fauci

Who do you trust on medicine, on medical issues, on a pandemic?

Thanks, Republicans!!

Attacking the Medical Community in the Middle of the Most Killing Pandemic in a Century

This is where we are now, ladies and gentlemen. This is to where we have devolved, how low we now are.

This Republican Party President Donald "The John" Trump is deriding the doctor and medical professional that is Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Trump spreads anti-Fauci messages 

Trump retweets call to fire Fauci 

amid coronavirus criticism

Then, after attacking Dr. Fauci, that's not enough, he goes after the entire CDC.

Trump promotes tweet that accuses the CDC and doctors of ‘lying’ about COVID-19

Not only does he do that, attack a specialist in pandemics and virtually the entire medical community but he supports, instead, nonsense spread by another talk show host.

Trump retweets game show host Chuck Woolery’s baseless claim that ‘everyone is lying’ about coronavirus

I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, citizens of America:

What kind of a sick, twisted person gathers and then spreads information to go against a medical specialist, medical specialists, in the middle of the most killing national and international pandemic in more than a century?

And the answer, of course, is only this Republican Party President, Donald J Trump.

But then, this is the same man that takes us out of  the premier health organization, the WHO, during, again, the biggest, most killing, national and international pandemic in the past more than 100 years.

The following no way make all this okay but it explains a lot.

The GOP’s Murderous Anti-Intellectualism

Sociopaths Are All That's Left 

of the Republican Party

Thanks, Mr. President.

Thanks, Republians

This Coronavirus Pandemic and the Tough State Of and For Kansas

There's a pretty comprehensive article in today's New York Times, covering the overall situations across the nation with this pandemic, no surprise.

Testing Remains Scarce as Governors Weigh Reopening States

In both red and blue states, governors, health departments and hospitals are finding innovative ways to cope, but still lack what experts say they need to track and contain outbreaks.

Interestingly, tellingly and helpfully if probably also unfortunately, they have an entire section of it dedicated to the State of Kansas.

Credit...John Hanna/Associated Press

“We are nowhere near where we need to be with testing supplies,” Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas said.

Herewith the segment of the article, with some occasional commentary. Also, occasional bolding of type within the article for emphasis.

Kansas: ‘There Will Be Death.’

After getting 2,000 tests kits to southwest Kansas and assessing the scale of the outbreak there, Ms. Kelly decided it was not necessary to close the meatpacking plants.

But she said the tortuous path to freeing up even minimal supplies for testing remains the biggest reason she was reluctant to lift the stay-at-home order she imposed on March 28.

“We are nowhere near where we need to be with testing supplies,” she said on Thursday. “I’m looking down a lot of rabbit holes trying to figure out how we are going to get those test kits here. It’s imperative if we are going to be able to lift that stay-at-home order.”

Kansas has one of the lowest Covid-19 testing rates in the nation. Dr. Lee A. Norman, the state’s top health official, estimated that Kansas needed tens of thousands more testing kits.

The state is so short of plastic test swabs that he has appealed to dentists to manufacture them in their offices by modifying 3-D printers used to make dental models.

Since March 20, Kansas has sent the Federal Emergency Management Agency nine requests for medical supplies, including for 235,000 testing swabs, 60,000 kits to transport samples and 178,200 kits to analyze them. As of Wednesday, the agency had sent “nothing,” said Jonathan York, the state’s coordinating officer. Federal officials told him that other states were in more desperate shape.

In mid-April, the federal government delivered 273,000 surgical masks, the kind needed to protect medical workers who administer tests. But Dr. Norman said the masks, which had been privately donated, “were so substandard they wouldn’t even make a good coffee filter.”

Late Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has helped the state obtain some supplies, told officials it intended to ship at least 25,000 of the 80,000 test kits it had requested.

State officials have had no luck trying to buy supplies themselves. Dr. Norman said Kansas had standing requests with private suppliers for $43 million in equipment, a “staggering” sum equivalent to nearly a third of his department’s annual public health budget.

“But the pipelines have pretty much dried up,” he said.

Kansas is still dealing with the hangover of seven years of draconian budget cuts under former Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican. Ms. Kelly said the state health department “had been pretty much decimated” by the time she became governor in 2018, with the laboratory that now processes many Covid-19 tests resembling “something out of the past...”

Thanks, Governor Brownback! Thanks, Republicans!

...The state plans to rely heavily on volunteers to create a corps of 400 workers to monitor the contacts of people who test positive.

Although the state is far from meeting the broad guidelines for testing capacity the White House has recommended for reopening, Ms. Kelly is under growing pressure to allow her stay-at-home order to expire as scheduled on May 3. The Republican-controlled state legislature has moved to curb her emergency powers, and protesters gathered on Thursday on the statehouse grounds.

“What is an acceptable level of risk?” Dr. Norman asked. “We cannot get it down to zero, so how can we guarantee that people won’t get sick?”

So there you have it, campers. Not a good or pretty situation over there next door in Kansas regarding this pandemic. At least Governor Kelly had the good sense to shut the state down early and pretty completely with her stay at home order. Now if she and they could just get some tests from Washington.

You know, the tests this Republican Party President Trump says are so plentiful.

Meanwhile, this from Trump's own lead on the pandemic.

Dr. Fauci says the US needs to double coronavirus testing before the economy reopens

Heavens help Kansas.

Help us all.

This Completely, Totally, Utterly, Thoroughly Bizarre President and His Administration

Yet more bizarreness today from this Republican Party Presidential Administration.

First this:

Trump says keeping US Covid-19 deaths to 100,000 would be a ‘very good job’

He actually said if only 100,000 Americans die from and because of this coronavirus pandemic, he will have done "a very good job."

This after first dismissing it entirely, of course, as a "Democratic (party) hoax" then saying it was under control, etc., etc.

Insane.

Next up, also breaking earlier today, is this from a spokesperson in his administration:

Dr. Birx predicts up to 200,000 U.S. coronavirus deaths 'if we do things almost perfectly'

From the article:

The White House coronavirus response coordinator said Monday that she is "very worried about every city in the United States" and projects 100,000 to 200,000 American deaths as a best case scenario.

In an interview on "TODAY," Dr. Deborah Birx painted a grim message about the expected fatalities, echoing that they could hit more than 2 million without any measures, as coronavirus cases continue to climb throughout the country.

"I think everyone understands now that you can go from five to 50 to 500 to 5,000 cases very quickly," Birx said.

"I think in some of the metro areas we were late in getting people to follow the 15-day guidelines," she added.

Birx said the projections by Dr. Anthony Fauci that U.S. deaths could range from 1.6 million to 2.2 million is a worst case scenario if the country did "nothing" to contain the outbreak, but said even "if we do things almost perfectly," she still predicts up to 200,000 U.S. deaths.

Mixed signals, anyone?

Then he did this, over the weekend.

'Insulting' Frontline Health Workers, Trump—Without Evidence—Accuses Hospital Staff in New York of Stealing Protective Gear

Everyone else is praising the health care workers hard work, diligence, sacrifice, sacrifices and efforts. This President?  Heck! Accuse them of stealing medical equipment!

And then he squeezes in time for this, this morning, of all things, big man and big thinker he is.

Trump's Fifty-Four Minute Call To Fox And Friends: Attacks Pelosi As 'Sick Puppy'

Not done there, this news also broke this morning:

Mark Meadows resigning from Congress to become Trump’s chief of staff

There's a great deal of crazy about this, of course, but I'll just point out here that this is Mr. Trump's fourth---fourth--Chief of Staff since taking office.

As if we haven't got enough on our hands and enough bad news already, there is also this breaking today.

Coronavirus job losses could total 47 million, unemployment rate may hit 32 percent, Fed estimates

And to put this in historic perspective?

"The projected unemployment rate would top the Great Depression peak of 24.9 percent."

If the deaths across the planet from this pandemic didn't already concern you, this might.

How much more bizarre and erratic and completely unpredictable and unreliable can this President and all his people, his administration, get? Meanwhile, we need a leader in the White House, not insanity and irresponsibility and someone needy for attention and who wants to blame others and literally call others names like a 3 year old.

Thanks, Republicans! That's quite a guy you've foisted on us all, on the nation there.

It very much reminds me of a scene from the movie "Animal House" with Kevin Bacon.

Gods help us.

Heavens help us.

Notes on a Pandemic

I miss normalcy.

I already hate the term "social distancing."

As soon as I learned art galleries were closing, I immediately wanted to go.

I can't get enough Dr. Anthony Fauci.

I don't know what this is a picture of.

I never thought I'd live during a pandemic.

Or an epidemic, for that matter.

This is unlike anything I've ever experienced in my 60+ years of living.

It seems clear we don't have a good, appropriate leader in the White House with this situation.

 I refuse to isolate myself. Worst that can happen, I die. I'm comfortable with that.

As with most any problem, we need to pull together as people, as nations, all across the world.

To end on a positive note, at least, thank goodness it's Spring

Links:

Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., NIAID Director | NIH: National Institute 

Trump Says He Could Demote Fed Chair Powell, Risking More Market Turmoil

8th KS COVID-19 case reported in Franklin County. Officials declare state of disaster

Facts about novel coronavirus and how to prevent COVID-19

Fauci: Possibly a 'few months' until life gets 'back to normal'

Trump's go-to political strategy isn't working for pandemic response

Trump Wants to Slash CDC Funding—Just As Coronavirus Spreads


Returning Americans face long screening lines at airports