The plan, obviously, is to reopen businesses as soon as possible so that the economy will be roaring by November, and Trump will get credit and be re-elected. Another facet of this plan is to blame the pandemic on China, and then tie Joe Biden to China, and Trump will be re-elected. Easy peasy.

Anita Kumar reports for Politico,

President Donald Trump and his aides aren’t just weighing coronavirus infection rates as they push for a quick economic restart. They think it’s good politics, too.

Trump aides and allies say they are growing confident that an earlier restart amid the coronavirus pandemic could help the president in his reelection campaign, according to six people close to the White House or Trump campaign.

They point to emerging signs around the country. Trump-supported activists are protesting strict stay-at-home orders. Conservative groups’ internal polling in red-leaning and swing states show a significant uptick in Americans who favor reopening the country. A growing chorus of Republican lawmakers across the nation are on board.

“If you don’t see something start to happen … you’re going to see a conservative revolt by our base,” said Adam Brandon, president of FreedomWorks, a conservative group which recently polled on reopening the economy. “The worst strategy for him is to keep things shut until August. Trump is basically going to win or lose his election right now, in the next month.”

Okay. What could go wrong?

If the consequences weren’t so high, this might be amusing. It’s a bit like watching someone deliberately step on a rake to see what happens. But of course they’re playing fast and loose with people’s lives, so it isn’t funny.

The right-wing media has been playing along, promoting the idea that the isolation measures are a gross overreaction and that the covid-19 pandemic is no more dangerous than past flu vaccines. And, always, the pandemic framework is framed as an “us versus them” issue — Donald Trump versus everybody else.

And as Trump’s incompetence and negligence has hamstrung the U.S. from sensibly returning to economic activity, the message has become let’s just do it, anyway. Trump briefly flirted with the conceit of being a “war leader” against an “unseen enemy,” but now he’s moved on to washing his hands of the whole mess. Being a national leader during a crisis is hard. Let’s just pretend the pandemic isn’t happening, or if it is happening, it’s not that big a deal.

Paul Waldman wrote,

It’s something he’s very experienced at. You have a big, splashy event in front of the cameras announcing that you’ve built the most luxurious hotel or golf course or casino the world has ever seen, and then if it goes bankrupt, you skedaddle out of town, leaving other people holding the bag. So now Trump is preparing to put that experience to work with the coronavirus pandemic and the economic crash it created.

A few days ago Trump was putting on a big “I’m in charge” act; now he’s telling the governors they’re on their own. Yesterday he was lashing out at governors because they were screwing up getting people tested. Apparently the next plan is to force the reopening of the country so that things can go back to the way they were, and if a few geezers in nursing homes don’t make it, blame Democrats.

So now social distancing is quickly becoming unpatriotic in some circles. For example: Rep. Jim Jordan, a guy we all came to know and not love during the impeachment hearings, is calling on the House Judiciary Committee to investigate governors who instituted strict social distancing orders.

Jim Jordan says the House should get back to work and conduct hearings on stay at home orders pic.twitter.com/ukABCU0C65

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) April 19, 2020

Now we’re seeing Trump supporters dutifully turning out to protest isolation measures.

The events — some, like in Michigan, featuring thousands of attendees — are organized largely by conservative groups calling state-based measures too draconian. Some of the groups have posted links and images on Facebook that downplay the seriousness of the virus. And other leaders have advocated against following CDC guidelines, like a ban on big gatherings and wearing face masks (because wearing them would be “counterproductive.”) Some of the protests have taken on the feel of 2016 Trump campaign rallies, with participants wearing Make America Great Again hats and waving flags emblazoned with the president’s face. …

… The displays are tapping into Trump’s main message on the coronavirus pandemic: governors are to blame for the crisis, not him. As the president ratchets up his reelection efforts, his argument is an effort to simultaneously put the brunt of responsibility for the coronavirus catastrophe on the shoulders of his political opponents while also maintaining that he holds “total authority” over the pandemic and the states facing it.

These people have been assured that the danger of the virus has been overblown; they have no clue what kind of risks they are taking. Will Bunch:

The everyday folks who were out there in Lansing or Columbus this week were largely there to serve the interests of the (mostly) rich and powerful people who used their influence to shoo them out there. Their agendas weren’t always the same. Most notably, President Trump — who promoted the rallies and even the right to carry weapons in an even-stunning-by-Trump-standards series of tweets — desperately wants to shift blame away from his multiple failures on the coronavirus and instead onto public-health-minded governors. Right-wing special interests, like the billionaire family of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, are terrified that the 22 million unemployed will demand a social welfare state. Fox News is eager to make folks forget its dangerous ignore-the-virus punditry.

But the endgame and the shared interests are very much the same. Distraction, and a diversion of anger in the Heartland — an anger with legitimate and understandable roots — away from them, and hopefully onto the political enemies who threaten their power. If it all sounds painfully familiar, it should. This is the Tea Party Redux, except this time with the added thrill of a seeming death wish among the participants. Maybe we should call this one the Ventilator Party, or maybe the Branch COVID-ians.

Nobody who has any real understanding of either epidemiology or the economy thinks that restarting now is a good idea. Paul Krugman:

The thing is, as far as I can tell epidemiologists are united in the belief that it’s far too soon to be considering any relaxation of social distancing. The lockdowns across America do seem to have flattened the curve, allowing us to — just — avoid completely overwhelming the health care system. New cases may have peaked. But you don’t want to let up until you’re in a position to do so without giving the pandemic a second wave. And we’re nowhere close to that point.

So where is this coming from? I’ve seen some people portray it as a conflict between epidemiologists and economists, but that’s all wrong. Serious economists know what they don’t know — they recognize and respect experts from other disciplines. A survey of economists found almost unanimous support for “tolerating a very large contraction in economic activity until the spread of infections has dropped significantly.”

No, this push to reopen is coming not from economists but from cranks and cronies. That is, it’s coming on one side from people who may describe themselves as economists but whom the professionals consider cranks — people like Navarro or Stephen Moore, who Trump tried unsuccessfully to appoint to the Federal Reserve Board. And on the other, it’s coming from business types with close ties to Trump who suffer from billionaire’s disease — the tendency to assume that just because you’re rich you’re also smarter than anyone else, even in areas like epidemiology (or, dare I say it, macroeconomics) that require a great deal of technical expertise.

I could go on about the non-meritocracy we’re living in that allows cranks and idiots to be in charge, but I’ll save that for another time.

We’ve already seen that some nations that have been doing much better than us experienced a “second wave” of virus as they relaxed restrictions. We may have peaked in some places, but we’re possibly weeks away from peaking in other places, especially as the Trumpie protesters take their newly virus-loaded selves back to their neighborhoods.

This is not going to end well.

Anti-social distancing protesters in Michigan.

Something about this short video featuring Florida Governor Ron DeSantis completely sums up the current status of our coronavirus response. See if you can spot it:

Yes. Now on to our scheduled topic:

Some people are still arguing that covid-19 is no worse than seasonal flu. An argument I’ve seen lately is that 61,000 Americans died of flu during the 2017-2018 flu season, while (so far) only 30,000-something Americans have died from covid-19. And we don’t have to close businesses and such during the flu season.

Let’s break this down. Flu seasons vary; they last anywhere from five to seven months, usually from October to March or April. The first case of covid-19 in the U.S. was diagnosed on January 20, and the numbers are still going up. So we’ve just about ended the third month of covid-19 data.

But let’s look at some more data. In the 2017-2018 season, according to the CDC:

• An estimated 45 million Americans got the flu. Yes, 45 bleeping million.
• 21 million Americans got medical help for flu.
• 810,000 were hospitalized.
• 61,000 died.

That’s a very high number of deaths for flu, btw. Most flu seasons in the U.S., the number of deaths falls somewhere between 12,000 and 40,000.

Now, let’s look at covid-19. We have no idea how many people may actually have the virus, since there isn’t nearly enough testing. But as of the most recent data,

• Diagnosed coronavirus cases in the U.S.: 728,293
• Deaths: 38,244

I repeat — during the several months of the infamously bad 2017 flu season, there were approximately 45 million infected and 61,000 deaths.

During our three months of covid-19 in the U.S., we’ve had 728,293 diagnosed cases and 38,244 deaths. And the numbers are still going up. They went up by a few hundred just this morning while I was writing this post.

As math imparied as I am, even I know this ain’t equivalent.

Also, thanks to the flu vaccine that I faithfully get every fall, you have a choice to not get the flu. Although once in a while the people who make the annual flu vaccine miscalculate and don’t get that year’s dose exactly right, usually you can get your flu shot and then go your merry way, neither catching it nor spreading it. Vaccines make quarantines and stay-at-home orders unnecessary, except for anti-vaxxers. Were it not for the flu vaccine, the annual flu would be a much bigger problem than it is. Note that rates of vaccination in the U.S. had dropped significantly for the 2017-2018 season, which may be one reason that year was unusually bad.

I understand most seasonal flus evolve from common flu virsuses already in circulation. The last new virus we dealt with was the h1n1 or “swine” flu that emerged unexpectedly in 2009. Trump fans like to claim that President Obama botched that pandemic, but according to data from the CDC, “From April 12, 2009 to April 10, 2010, CDC estimated there were 60.8 million cases (range: 43.3-89.3 million), 274,304 hospitalizations (range: 195,086-402,719), and 12,469 deaths (range: 8868-18,306) in the United States due to the (H1N1)pdm09 virus.” That suggests the government handled that one pretty well in comparison to our current situation, seems to me. It also tells us the swine flu wasn’t nearly as dangerous as covid-19.

I got that flu myself, btw, before the vaccine was ready; it was a nasty flu. I didn’t need to be hospitalized, though. I understand the “swine” flu is still in circulation, but in populations with enough herd immunity it doesn’t pose a threat.

There have been other stupid comparisons of other-things-that-kill you and covid-19. The famous “Doctor Phil” McGraw didn’t exactly glorify himself with this one:

McGraw, who has a doctorate in clinical psychology, compared COVID-19 deaths to those from car crashes, cigarettes, and swimming pool accidents while arguing against the lockdowns that have impacted the nation’s economy in wake of the pandemic. While attempting to make a point that the country isn’t shutdown for those other deaths, McGraw incorrectly stated that 360,000 people die a year from swimming pool accidents. According to the CDC, “an average of 3,536” people die from “unintentional drownings (non-boating related) annually in the United States.” Which, I’m sure you gathered, is much less that 360,000. …

… The talk show host continued, “I get that, but look, the fact of the matter is we have people dying, 45,000 people a year die from automobile accidents, 480,000 from cigarettes, 360,000 a year from swimming pools, but we don’t shut the country down for that but yet we’re doing it for this? And the fallout is going to last for years because people’s lives are being destroyed.”

I’m not going to look up the other stats, but I’m not sure how locking people up would reduce cigarette deaths, assuming people could still get their hands on cigarettes. But while there are many things one can do to reduce your exposure to various health risks — like not smoking — it’s unfortunately the case that you can’t fix stupid.

To repeat:

A Convention of Stupid

Viral photo by Joshua A. Bickel, Columbus Dispatch, of Ohio anti-restriction protesters.

Four or so days ago Trump was claiming absolute authority to order the nation’s economy to start up again. I assume someone was able to explain to him that, in fact, he had no authority to open anything that had been closed by by the states, so he then made a show of authorizing the governors to make decisions for their own states. Which they would have done, anyway.

But then Trump realized that people who like him are protesting restrictions in some states and calling for state economies to re-start NOW. The photo above shows protesters in Ohio — taken this week, mind you. So today the moron encouraged the protests by tweeting LIBERATE MINNESOTA! LIBERATE MICHIGAN! LIBERATE VIRGINIA! Yeah, that’s helpful. I notice he didn’t call to LIBERATE OHIO!, possibly because the governor there is a Republican.

Aaron Rupar writes at Vox that Fox News has been promoting these protests. Of course. Also,

Fox News’s coverage might give you the idea that these protesters represent the views of a significant chunk of people in their states. But polling indicates that’s not the case. For instance, a YouGov/Economist poll released Wednesday found that 61 percent of Americans think Trump should institute a nationwide stay-at-home order, compared to just 22 percent who are opposed. Along the same lines, polling from the Pew Research Central released on Thursday showed that 66 percent of people are concerned their state governments will relax social distancing restrictions too soon, compared to just 32 percent who are worried they won’t move quickly enough.

As Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) noted in response to the so-called “Operation Gridlock” in her state, the sad irony is that such demonstrations could end up extending the need for stay-at-home orders by spreading the virus among protesters. But asked on Thursday if he thinks protesters in Michigan should listen to local officials like Whitmer, Trump said that such people listen to him instead.

By now there’s been enough death in enough states that most Americans realize this coronavirus is a bigger deal than seasonal flu. By now I suspect most Americans are at least acquainted with someone who possibly has the virus but can’t get tested. Trump can brag the car he’s selling is beautiful and runs like a dream, but people are seeing for themselves the bumpers are falling off and the tailpipe is rusty.

But there are always a few who don’t catch on. Some elected officials, not just Fox News bobbleheads, are encouraging the protests.

The tension has prompted Republican lawmakers and supporters of the president to publicly call for Americans to defy their local orders, claiming they infringe on constitutional rights. On Monday, Richard Grenell, acting director of the Office of National Intelligence and the U.S. ambassador to Germany, posted a photo of the Bill of Rights on Instagram with a title “Signed Permission Slip to Leave Your House.” Below the post, in the caption, Grenell wrote, “Love this!”

There’s nothing considered unconstitutional about the state restrictions, as I wrote earlier this week. There are, however, a lot of morons who have awarded themselves degrees in epidemiology, not to mention constitutional law, who are very certain that we don’t really need to be doing all this restricting. And these morons are listened to. There is no surer way to be hailed as an “expert” than to tell people what they want to hear.

Regarding the tests, it’s clear Trump has gone from bragging there are plenty of tests and that they are beautiful tests, the best tests, to just washing his hands, figuratively speaking, of the whole subject of tests. He doesn’t even want to hear about the tests. The tests are the governors’ problems. Here’s Trump three days ago:

Trump blows up and threatens to leave his own press conference when he was asked about people not being able to get tested. pic.twitter.com/wo0yWK9xBX

— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) April 14, 2020

In normal times, something complicated that is needed nationally would in fact be the federal government’s responsibility. But getting all those tests is hard. So Trump doesn’t want to be bothered. But they won’t leave him alone about the damn tests. No wonder he’s angry about the tests.

Some of Trump’s other comments inspired an Epic Snark for the Ages from Andrew Cuomo today. You really want to watch this.

But the administration can’t escape the tests. Trump finally sort of convened his business executive task force, although it seems to have been little more than a conference call, to advise him on re-opening the economy. And guess what the business executives wanted to talk about?

The Wall Street Journal reports that in Trump’s first task force meeting of business and political leaders, executives told the president that the administration must dramatically increase the availability of coronavirus testing “before the public would be confident enough to return to work, eat at restaurants or shop in retail establishments,” according to sources familiar with the call.

And today Senate Democrats tore into Mike Pence about tests.

Some day researchers will probably try to determine how many unnecessary deaths happened because of the black hole in the White House. For now, the remarkable thing is the degree to which U.S. institutions are self-organizing to make up for, well, Trump.

In Chaotic search for coronavirus treatments undermines efforts, experts say, Carolyn Y. Johnson of the Washington Post writes that the state of medical research into covid-19 is an uncoordinated mess.

Development of effective treatments for covid-19, the disease the virus causes, would be one of the most significant milestones in returning the United States to normalcy. But the massive effort is disorganized and scattershot, harming its prospects for success, according to multiple researchers and health experts. Researchers working around-the-clock describe a lack of a centralized national strategy, overlapping efforts, an array of small-scale trials that will not lead to definitive answers and no standards for how to prioritize efforts, what data to collect or how to share it to get to answers faster.

“It’s a cacophony — it’s not an orchestra. There’s no conductor,” said Derek Angus, chair of the department of critical care medicine at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, who is leading a covid-19 trial that will test multiple therapies. “My heart aches over the complete chaos in the response.”

I don’t have extensive knowledge of how research was conducted in past health emergencies. I’m not sure we’ve had a past health emergency that compares to what we’re facing now. Our current pandemic most closely resembles the great “Spanish flu” pandemic of 1918, but in those days medical science had no clue what to do about virus infections. That pandemic only ended after enough humans on the planet had been exposed and had either died or developed immunity. 675,000 Americans died in that pandemic, it says here.

However, it’s obvious the world is crying out for leadership. In administrations past, probably our CDC would have coordinated with WHO and some other large institutions to set priorities and establish standards, but with Mr. Temper “I take no responsibility” Tantrum in the way, that can’t happen on a national or global level. Or else the world will have to get along without us. As the article says, “the lack of coordination puts the world at risk of ending up with a raft of inconclusive and conflicting studies and little idea of what interventions work for the next wave of illness.”

All manner of trials and “studies” are being intiated in the U.S., but they’re being conducted so randomly and so often outside of established protocols that most are unlikely to produce usable information. For example, most institutions giving their patients remdesivir or hydroxychloroquine aren’t using a control group, so they can’t say whether outcomes are any different from those of patients not receiving the drugs.

Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s largest biomedical research agency, acknowledged researchers’ frustrations but said in an interview Wednesday he has been working behind the scenes to launch an unprecedented public-private partnership to address the problems. He said the framework involves top pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, domestic and international government agencies including the European Medicines Agency, and academic research centers. …

… Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), said in an email Tuesday that the partnership led by Collins is the “functional equivalent of a National Strategy.”

Did the White House even know this was happening? I’m guessing not, or Trump would have taken credit for it already.

Meanwhile, some states are figuring out work-arounds to make up for the lack of a functioning federal government.  For example, we now have three partnership groups of states that plan to work together on re-opening their economies. One is made up of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Delaware. Another is California, Oregon, and Washington. Now we have a third partnership group, made up of Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana and Kentucky. This is what states have to do to make up for a complete lack of leadership from Trump.

Also today, Illinois announced that its Department of Public Health labs are producing enough tests so that everyone in the state with symptoms can be tested.  Before this, people with mild symptoms were just told to stay home and try not to infect anyone else. But now people with symptoms can even be tested without a doctor’s order.

Yet the screwups continue. See A ‘War’ For Medical Supplies: States Say FEMA Wins By Poaching Orders at NPR.

Stuff to Read:

An Open Letter to the New New Left From the Old New Left by “Former leaders of the Students for a Democratic Society” in The Nation. A bunch of people signed this. Good stuff.

Greg Sargent, Pathetic displays like these are all Trump has left

Dana Milbank, Captain Trump Hits the Rocks

Eugene Robinson, Trump refuses to lead a country in crisis

U.S. President Donald Trump announces an agreement with Mexico on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) at the White House in Washington, U.S., August 27, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque – RC1D94FA7CB0

I love this. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has arranged secret charter flights to bring medical supplies from China to Illinois. The flights are secret to keep the federal government from confiscating the supplies.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker is planning to obtain millions of masks and gloves from China and bring those supplies back to Illinois on charter jets — but he’s keeping the details secret out of fear the Trump administration might seize the cargo for the federal stockpile, sources said Tuesday.

Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza announced Tuesday that the state has spent more than $174 million on purchases related to COVID-19, including supplies such as ventilators, masks, gloves, gowns, protective eyewear and hand sanitizer.

But one of the items on the list of expenditures was unusual: two invoices, each for $888,275, to FedEx Trade Networks Transport for “aircraft charter flight to Shanghai, China for COVID-19 response. … Prepayment required.”

Gov. Pritzker has been holding daily briefings on the pandemic.

Illinois should be grateful Pritzker defeated the former governor, Republican Bruce Rauner, in the 2018 elections. Rauner is a wealthy private equity guy elected in 2014 whose primary activity in office was vetoing budgets and blocking tax increases, throwing the state government into an economic shambles. I have no doubt he would have been worthless during the pandemic. Pritzker defeated Rauner by 54 percent to 39 percent of the vote.

But I didn’t expect much from Pritzker. He’s a very wealthy businessman whose family owns the Hyatt hotel chain. He defeated a couple of Democrats with much more progressive records in the gubernatorial primary, mostly by spending millions of his own dollars to run really effective television ads. Rauner’s ads against Pritzker featured an FBI wiretap from 2008 in which Pritzker and then-Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich discussed campaign contributions. Blagojevich then dangled a possible appointment as Illinois state treasurer in front of Pritzker, to which Pritzker responded “Yeah, that’s the one I would want.” One could get the impression, although it wasn’t specifically spelled out, that Blagojevich was offering the appointment in exchange for a big contribution. Pritzker was never charged with wrongdoing. But, as I said, I wasn’t expecting much.

However, I’ve been pleasantly surprised. The policies he’s supported and enacted so far — regarding taxes, education spending, reproductive rights, gun control, marijuana, criminal justice, undocumented immigrants, etc. — have impressed me considerably. I doubt the progressives he defeated for the nomination could have done any better. And the moral is, you can’t always predict how someone will do a job.

Regarding Covid-19, Pritzker caught some flack for not postponing the Illinois primaries on March 17, but most legal opinion said postponing a primary was not within his power. The libertarian Illinois Policy Institute faults him for not having a firm plan to open Illinois’s economy, which made me think of this meme —

As you know, I’m not exactly fond of libertarians. Being criticized by them is a badge of honor in my book. Pritzger has also earned the wrath and scorn of Trump and has snarked right back, calling Trump “nearly irrelevant” in the struggle with the pandemic.

Pritzger’s stay at home order bagan on March 20, two days after the order for California and a day before New York’s. He’s extended guarantees of worker’s compensation and expanded child care assistance for essential employees. He’s worked with local labs to develop testing capability. Perhaps eventually someone will identify things he could have done better, but compared to the loser governor here in Missouri, Mike Parsons, Pritzger has been brilliant. See Gov. Mike Parson’s Pathetic Non-Response to Crisis Exposes Cultural Divide. Missouri didn’t have a statewide stay-at-home order until April 6, and even then Parsons gave local government much wiggle room to decide precisely what “stay at home” means. Fortunately most counties and metropolitan areas in the state had acted a lot sooner.

I wanted to say something about J.B. Pritzger because he’s gotten much less recognition than Cuomo of New York and Newsom of California. And I also want to re-emphasize that you can’t always predict how well, or how badly, someone will do in elected office.

Little appreciated historical fact: In 1860 leaders of the abolitionist movement opposed the nomination of Abraham Lincoln for president, because Lincoln wasn’t pure enough for them on the slavery issue. He had signaled he was willing to tolerate slavery in the South, although he did call for barring slavery from the western territories. In short, he opposed expanding slavery but did not call for ending it. Lincoln was scorned for being a supporter of “slave power.”

However, the record shows us that abolitionists didn’t spin their wheels over the morality of voting for the lesser of two (or in this case, four) evils, and they voted for Lincoln anyway. Lincoln may not have been a pure abolitionist, but he was far better on the slavery issue than either of the two Democratic nominees or the candidate of the fringe Constitutional Union party. And Lincoln became the Great Emancipator because all manner of things happened that the abolitionists didn’t anticipate.

In hard times, people either rise to meet challenges or they are crushed by them. (Or, in the case of Donald Trump, do nothing but whine incessantly.) These are times showing us who has the leadership chops, and who doesn’t.

Trump has been talking about a new task force to design a plan to “re-open” America. Fox News announced — yesterday, I believe, that this would be the task force:

And the Internet ran over with snark and derision. But it turns out that the members of the task force — which Trump had said he would announce today, or maybe this week, or sometime — haven’t been chosen yet. The White House is also still struggling to define precisely what the task force will be called and what exactly it will do.

The details of the committee have already changed several times in recent days, one official told CNN. Who will participate and what they will look to do remains fluid even though Trump said he will formally announce the council Tuesday.

“It’s a mess right now,” someone in close contact with the White House said.

And then there’s this:

Trump did not offer much clarity during Monday’s briefing.

“We’re actually calling it a number of committees with the most prominent people in the country, the most successful people in the various fields, and we’ll be announcing them tomorrow,” Trump said.

“We’ll have a transportation committee. We’re going to have a manufacturing committee,” the President added. “We’ll also have religious leaders committee. We have a great group of religious leaders. Committees with religious leaders.”

“I will call them committees,” he added, “ultimately we’re going to make decisions.”

Yes, just what we need to bring clarity to a chaotic situation — a whole mess of committees. I don’t expect any of these committees to be formed, but talking about them gave Trump, well, something to talk about, so that he can sound like someone in charge.

It’s clear that Trump understands very little about anything, except maybe the basics of grift and fraud. He was born with a ton of money and has gone through life throwing it around and pretending to be in charge. His one great accomplishment is that he made himself into a marketable brand. When the ventures carried out with his money and in his name were successful, he took credit. When they failed, he blamed others. And that’s basically how he’s pretending to run the country.

Greg Sargent:

President Trump’s wild gyrations and reversals on coronavirus become a lot more intelligible when you realize he is motivated at bottom by a simple, unchanging imperative: Trump wants to be perceived as taking charge of the situation, without being held accountable for the horrible consequences of the bad decisions he has made along the way.

If you are the head of a private business with no board of directors to answer to, you can get away with that, I guess. As Sargent points out, though, while Trump claims to “call the shots” he expects the states to fend for themselves without his involvement, which seems contradictory. “As former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara put it, Trump is basically arguing that ‘my authority is total but my responsibility is zero.'” Nice work if you can get it. Sargent continues,

The truth is, there’s little about the pandemic restrictions that are new; they are just new to most of us, because they haven’t been used for a long time. During the 1918-1920 flu pandemic, for example, many U.S. cities closed schools, churches, theaters and other entertainment venues, and banned public gatherings in general. Just exactly what is happening now.

Enforced quarantine orders were common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A lot of those old-time epidemics were deadly — typhoid, diptheria, cholera. Cholera was especially feared; two pandemics in the early 19th century killed approximately 150,000 Americans, a big chunk of the population at the time. We don’t remember this stuff because vaccines and better public sanitation made the need for quarantines rare, until now. If you are old enough to remember the 1950s, you might remember local closings, especially of theaters and swimming pools, during polio outbreaks. But that’s about it.

The issue of how these restrictions square with constitutional rights has been debated and written about since the 19th century also. Very generally, the authority of the federal government to restrict commerce and gatherings during an epidemic is is said to be found in the commerce clause — Article I, Section 8, making this a power of Congress. But note that our current federal government hasn’t officially closed anything; it has only made recommendations.

It has been left to states, counties, and cities to enact restrictions officially. These levels of government have broader authorities to use police powers to protect the public during emergencies. “The public health authority of the states derive from the police powers granted by their constitutions and reserved to them by the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” it says here. Again, there is a ton of legal precedence and case law going way back to support states and cities using police powers during a public health emergency. It’s not new.

These powers do have some limits, it says here:

Under the 5th and 14th Amendment’s rights of Due Process and Equal Protection, public health regulations used to impose such conditions can’t be “arbitrary, oppressive and unreasonable.”

There are precedents where courts have ruled that states or local governments didn’t meet a burden of proof to justify a quarantine. For example, in 1900 courts ruled against the city of San Francisco when it tried to inoculate and then quarantine Chinese residents against the bubonic plague when the courts had doubts that plague conditions existed.

But when plague conditions clearly do exist, state and local governments can close businesses and break up your block party until those conditions no longer exist. This is not unconstitutional.

Next comes the end of the restrictions, and that also has constitutional considerations. Trump has been making noises about re-opening the economy. The glitch in his plans is that he isn’t the one who closed the economy. It was governors and mayors who closed the economy. And nobody who has any understanding of the constitution thinks Trump can override governors and mayors to open it again. But Trump disagrees.

….It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons. With that being said, the Administration and I are working closely with the Governors, and this will continue. A decision by me, in conjunction with the Governors and input from others, will be made shortly!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 13, 2020

To this tweet, Elura Nanos at Law & Crime responded,

A more meaningless serving of word salad has hardly existed. Here we have a word salad with too much mayo which has been left out overnight from a Fourth of July picnic. This is a Fifth of July salad. It’s not even palatable.

Whatever Trump thinks “opening up the states” actually means, the legal reality is that any such authority does not rest in his itty-bitty hands. Not even a jar opener can help him here. …

… If we’re talking in broad strokes, one arena that always falls clearly within the ambit of state authority are matters of public health and safety. That’s why local cops patrol your local streets and why you report crimes to local law enforcement. It’s why it’s the state board of health inspects restaurants. What’s considered “safe” varies from state to state, and the laws reflect local differences. Individuals can bring challenges to those laws if they appear to violate the guarantees of the United States Constitution – and those challenges are decided by courts. What does not happen is the president stepping in to nullify state safety laws with which he disagrees. In matters of health and safety, the president cannot pull rank – because he simply does not outrank state officials on those matters.

Trump can make all the noises he wants about “opening” the economy. If the governors of enough states say no — especially California and New York — the economy will mostly be closed.

From Bloomberg News:

Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas in Austin, said on Twitter that “the president has no formal legal authority to categorically override local or state shelter-in-place orders or to reopen schools and small businesses.”

“No statute delegates to him such power; no constitutional provision invests him with such authority,” Vladeck said.

Representative Justin Amash, a former Republican who is now an independent and voted for Trump’s impeachment, said in a tweet that the president is “flat-out wrong.”

“Put down the authoritarianism and read the Constitution,” he said.

A spokesman for Washington Governor Jay Inslee, Mike Faulk, said that “respectfully, the president’s claims are false. The states have the authority when it comes to stay-home orders.”

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Trump could probably decide when schools and businesses should re-open but noted that the president has effectively delegated those decisions to governors.

“You want to shift the responsibilities in the relationship?” Cuomo said in a news conference on Monday. “Fine, I’m open to that. Explain to me what they do, what I do. Open what, open it when, open it how?”

Also:

Later Monday, six states in the U.S. Northeast, including New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, said they would jointly develop a plan to reopen schools and businesses after the outbreak subsides, while California, Washington and Oregon said they would join together on their own framework.

Here’s more about the northeast effort:

Gov. Cuomo joined the governors of the Northeast Corridor: namely, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Delaware on Monday to announce a regional effort to reopen the economy in a “coordinated way” amid the coronavirus crisis. …

… Each state will name a public health official, an economic development official and the chief of staff for each governor to a working group that will share information, resources and “intelligence” about an economic path forward.

Since the U.S. has — in effect — no national leadership, it’s going to be up to states to coordinate a safe return to “normal.” What will probably happen is that as soon as Trump announces a re-opening, a bunch of red states will end restrictions and promptly suffer a resurgence of the pandemic — which is beginning to happen in China right now.

At Washington Monthly, Martin Longman points out that people rebelling against the pandemic restrictions as gubmint tramplin’ on thur rahts tend to support dear leader Donald Trump, which suggests submission to authority. So which is it? Are we rebels, or are we sycophants?

In Donald Trump And His Fake Rebels, Longman points to the famous Bundy family, who had an Easter gathering on the ranch in defiance of stay-at-home orders. “Our goal is to get enough people together and secure our rights,” one Bundy said.

Longman:

It seems like there are a lot of people, all of a sudden, who want to do the “Live Free or Die” thing. But most of them appear to be doing it as part of an effort to reopen the economy or to defend Trump’s initial assurances that COVID-19 is no worse than the seasonal flu. Some are even getting retweeted by the president. …

…The right seems particularly apoplectic about restrictions put in place by Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, perhaps because they want to dirty her up in case she joins Biden’s ticket.

On Twitter, there’s no shortage of incredibly “brave” people who are suddenly born rebels fancying themselves as defenders of liberty. When Hunter S. Thompson wrote his book about the Hells Angels back in the mid-1960s, he said, “The Angels don’t like to be called losers, but they have learned to live with it. ‘Yeah, I guess I am,’ said one. ‘But you’re looking at one loser who’s going to make a hell of a scene on the way out.’”

Right now, that’s a better description of the president and his supporters than the Angels.

You can be opposed to authority and devoted to freedom, or you can be an idiot.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer, October 7, 1918. Philadelphia canceled indoor sports but not outdoor sports, resulting in the deaths of a lot of outdoor-sport athletes. https://phillysoccerpage.net/2020/03/19/philadelphia-soccer-and-the-1918-spanish-flu-epidemic/

The pandemic has hit the U.S. Postal Service hard. It is expected to run out of money in September. Republicans rejoice; they’ve been wanting to privatize the USPS for a long time, and if it fails they’ll be in position to do exactly that.

David Atkins:

Donald Trump loves to talk about what a “great American company” FedEx is, and conservatives would love to eliminate the postal service and give all of its operations to private shipping companies and private equity. Of course, long gone would be the days of sending a letter from coast to coast in a few days for a fraction of a dollar, but since when was that sort of thing a concern for Republicans? It’s just like with libraries. If the Postal Service didn’t already exist and you proposed it, it would be considered a ridiculous and wasteful socialist fantasy. In the modern era, Republicans would make sure it never came into being. Mainstream Democrats would means-test it so that everyone would have to fill out tax statements in triplicate to make sure that no one making over a certain amount got a free mailbox.

Ain’t it the truth? And thank you, Benjamin Franklin, founder of the USPS and first postmaster general.

Since the 1970s the USPS has functioned as a “self-funded, independently operating public sector entity,” it says here. So it’s providing a vital service without taking money out of the budget, except under extraordinary circumstances. But Republicans can’t stand it if money is changing hands somewhere and one of their own isn’t getting a slice of it. They want a completely privatized, for-profit system. They want to turn the mail into something like our overpriced and inefficient health care system. Be afraid.

Matt Yglesias provides more complete background on the issue of the postal service versus Republicans in The debate over a post office bailout, explained at Vox. In recent years Republicans in Congress have enacted several provisions to hamstring the USPS and drive it into the red, so they can kill it. But I want to skip ahead to the other reasons powerful forces are moving toward destroying the postal service.

Donald Trump wants to destroy the postal service because Amazon has been using it to deliver packages. And he hates Amazon because he hates Jeff Bezos because Bezos owns the Washington Post. Seriously. Back to Matt Yglesias:

Trump has made no secret of his desire to use the power of the government to punish Amazon financially unless the Post changes its coverage of him. Facebook seems to have paid attention to this message and deliberately altered its editorial practices in order to try to ensure more favorable regulatory treatment from the Trump administration. The Post, which is run by professional journalists with ethics, has refused to do the same. Adding to the tension between the parties is the fact there’s currently litigation underway exploring allegations that Trump’s highly irregular cancellation of a major military contract with Amazon was motivated by partisan payback.

In the context of that feud, Trump has pushed the Postal Service to start raising the prices it charges Amazon.

New York Magazine’s Josh Barro has dug into the substance of the parcel pricing controversy and finds that Trump’s contention that the Postal Service could improve its financial situation by doubling what it charges Amazon is false. The key issue is that because of USPS’ universal service obligations, it can’t drastically reduce its real estate footprint or the number of trucks it sends driving around the country. The reason it gives Amazon good rates is that the facilities it’s using would otherwise be half-empty. Raising prices without making any other operational changes could lead to Amazon looking elsewhere for delivery services, which would leave the post office in even more desperate financial circumstances.

So it is that Trump’s desire to stick it to Jeff Bezos aligns with the Republican goal of privatizing the postal service so that some collection of old white people somewhere can make a fortune off it, after raising prices, busting the postal workers union, and closing a lot of post offices in rural areas that can’t be run profitably.

And then comes the push to establish universal vote-by-mail, which Republicans also oppose on the theory that making voting easier helps Democrats. Although in the case of vote by mail, that’s not necessarily true. I’ll come back to that. David Atkins writes that destroying the post office to end vote by mail in the midst of a pandemic is an act of pure evil worthy of a James Bond villain.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not real, especially given the current administration. Even if it’s not intentional, the combined effect of both acts of bad faith would certainly be convenient for deeply unpopular conservatives whose only chance of holding onto ill-gotten power is to thwart democracy itself.

I don’t know why Atkins might assume it’s not intentional. But let’s go on.

One part of this controversy that doesn’t seem to occur to Trump or congressional Republicans is that rural America is dependent on the postal service far more than urban America. Only the USPS maintains delivery service of mail and packages to every part of the U.S. Michael Hiltzik writes in the Los Angeles Times,

Critics of the USPS say that there’s enough capacity from UPS, FedEx and other parcel firms to make USPS delivery unnecessary. But that’s plainly untrue. Because of the Postal Service’s mandate to provide universal delivery across the United States, no matter where, the commercial firms often rely on the Postal Service to deliver their packages to the last mile, especially when the last mile is in some remote, trackless waste.

Yet there’s a more fundamental flaw in the argument, voiced by the task force, that the USPS is on an “unsustainable financial path.” That might be so if it were a private company, but it’s not. It’s a government service, and among the virtues of a government service is that it shouldn’t have to turn a profit — the service it provides to all citizens no matter where they live can’t be done profitably. But why should it?

In other words, one of the first acts of a privatized, for-profit postal service would be to close low-volume rural post offices that can’t be run profitably. This would end not just mail delivery to a lot of Americans but also jeopardize a lot of rural package delivery, or else run up the prices for FedEx and UPS. Most likely rural folks would have to drive an hour or two to a private delivery hub to pick up mail and packages. Or maybe some mom-and-pop local enterprises would offer package pick-up and delivery services for a fee.

And it seems to me this change would have some nasty implications for the U.S. economy, especially in the low population density states that already tend to be poor. Oh, and vote Republican.

Returning to the vote-by-mail issue — by elminating all mail delivery everywhere I suppose Republicans could kill vote by mail. Could they do that? Would states be able to resort to UPS or FedEx for ballot delivery? I’m not sure. Republicans probably are practically salivating over the thought of urban Democrats jammed into long lines for a diminished number of polling places. But if mail delivery is privatized, it’s mostly rural, mostly Republican-voting areas that would be most hurt.

It’s also the case that the pandemic is moving into rural areas in Republican states pretty fast right now. By November the blue states probably will be well past bending the curve and will have returned to a loose approximation of normal, although of course we can’t let our guard up until most of us are vaccinated, and that won’t be this year. And it’s possible red states, especially those that were slow about stay-at-home orders, are going to be slammed by the pandemic a lot harder and a lot longer. It’s possible that by November red state voters will be more nervous about mingling at a polling place than blue state voters. It’s possible Republicans are setting up conditions that would discourage their own voters from voting. I don’t know that any of that will happen, but it’s possible.

David Atkins writes that Democrats need to go on offensive to save the USPS.

Any future assistance on legislation to Trump and McConnell over the coming year should be predicated on both saving the Postal Service and ensuring access to mail-in voting across the country. An election in which one side is lulled into complacency about a pandemic and has lots of polling places available, while the other is rightfully concerned for the public good and being crushed by long lines and crowded locations, is no true election at all. It’s a mockery of democracy and cannot be allowed to stand.

However, as I’ve said, it’s possible that by November the situation will have changed, and Republican voters will no longer feel complacent about crowding into polling places, while Democratic-leaning urban and suburban voters will be more willing to show up to vote. Wouldn’t that be interesting?

A couple of Republican congressmen, Ken Buck of Colorado and Andy Biggs of Arizona, who is also chair of the House Freedom Caucus, write for the Washington Examiner that it’s a damn shame about all those deaths but — jeebus, people, the economy! After pointing out that not as many people have died as the administration’s artificially inflated estimates (that they falsely attribute to Dr. Fauci) said, the congressmen declare we must all go back to work.

It is tragic that thousands of people in the country have died or may yet succumb to the novel coronavirus, COVID-19. But we also must remember that millions of people have had their lives and livelihoods permanently altered because of the government response to this virus. While our government may make promises and help make things better once the hysteria subsides, there is nothing our leaders will be able to do to make everything completely right again….

… Birx also recently indicated that we should not open up the country yet because there might be a second time around for the virus. Has she considered the economic destruction she is content with wreaking on the nation? One wonders if she has thought about the emotional toll — the suicides, the increase in domestic and child abuse, drug and alcohol dependence, and a host of additional societal pathologies. Has she considered the loss of life-savings, businesses, and capital?

The headline of this, um, opinion — Is Dr. Fauci Helping or Hurting?– was already a rallying cry others on the right.

Biggs and Buck, both members of the conservative Freedom Caucus and staunch allies of President Trump, join others on the right in criticizing public health officials on the administration’s coronavirus task force. On Tuesday, Tucker Carlson, a conservative commentator on Fox News, said that Fauci “shouldn’t be making economic decisions.”

And, of course Fauci isn’t making economic decisions. He’s making scientific recommendations, which he is well qualified to make.

Along similar lines, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has announced plans to allow businesses to reopen with an executive order that would lift the coronavirus lockdown.

Abbott said Texas, which would be the world’s 11th largest economy it were an independent country, could find a balance between personal safety and economic security.

“We will focus on protecting lives while restoring livelihoods,” Abbott said on Friday at a news conference.

“We can and we must do this. We can do both, expand and restore the livelihoods that Texans want to have by helping them return to work. One thing about Texans, they enjoy working and they want to get back into the workforce. We have to come up with strategies on how we can do this safely.”

Abbott said details of the executive order would be available next week and it is expected to provide businesses with a list of guidelines on how to safely reopen.

See also How many missed? Texas is second-worst in the nation for COVID-19 testing in the Houston Chronicle.

The economy may very well be screwed for years to come. But the economy can’t be re-started at a time when shopping can prove fatal, and businesses are being forced to close because the employees are dropping dead. It won’t work, righties. We’d all like it to be otherwise. But reality is what it is. As hard as you might try to override reality with ideology — and many of us get away with doing that most of the time — sometimes reality will push down all your beliefs and demand to be recognized.

Right now is one of those times.

I read in Vox that one of the strongest predictors of social distancing behavior is attitudes toward climate change. In other words, if you think climate change is a big hoax being perpetrated by pointy-headed liberal academic science types because they’ve figured out a way to monetize it, somehow, then you’re likely not going to voluntarily engage in social distancing until you’re hooked up to a ventilator. Of course, these are the same people who think Donald Trump is accomplishing great things.

I would personally be just fine with letting all the yahoos who think social distancing is for pansies to do as they please, as long as we can wall these people off from the rest of us. But righties don’t like that, either. See ‘Take a step back.’ Beshear’s plan to quarantine Easter churchgoers draws fire from GOP.

Of course, there is no one on the planet more averse to reality than Donald Trump. If you read nothing else today (after this blog post) do read He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus in the New York Times. It provides a lot more detail than I’ve seen before as to what’s been going on in the administration while it has bungled the pandemic response.

Trump has been antsy to ease pandemic restrictions and open the economy. He’s making a lot of noise about putting together a pandemic economic council that will advise him about when Americans can go back to work. I mentioned this yesterday; some people are talking up George Laffer to be a member if not the chair, which of course would be a disaster.

After America pretty much hooted at his plan to end restrictions by Easter — this weekend, folks — Trump has been cagey about setting dates. However, the Washington Post reported that “Behind closed doors, President Trump — concerned with the sagging economy — has sought a strategy for resuming business activity by May 1, according to people familiar with the discussions.”

Since Trump didn’t actually close anything, however, he can’t very well open anything. It’s really up to governors, most of whom aren’t listening to Trump. I am not sure he understands that.

Some fellow writing on Medium predicts that next month we’ll be hit with the ultimate gaslighting campaign, trying to persuade us that the pandemic is over and we can be normal again. Maybe; I’d like to think that if the virus is still spreading on May 1, as it probably will be, good sense will prevail. But this is America we’re talking about, so I’m probably being foolish.

Because so few of us have been tested, we can’t be sure how broadly and how quickly the virus is spreading. Even so, the U.S. currently is leading the world in number of confirmed cases. In fact, approximately one third of all the world’s confirmed cases are in the U.S. right now. Americans are 4.25 percent of the world’s population. Although the curve may be flattening in some places, overall, it isn’t.

It’s also the case that no part of the U.S. is safe from this virus. A month ago many assumed it would stay in the cities, but it didn’t. The peak of the pandemic may yet be months away in some states, but by the end of summer it’s possible that most Americans — urban and rural, blue states and red states — will at least be aquainted with someone known to have caught covid 19. And the red, rural states in general have fewer doctors and hospital beds per capita than more liberal blue states.

So there’s a world of hurt ahead of us, both medically and economically, and Donald Trump cannot bluster it away. Sometimes reality can’t be avoided. But damn; Trump is trying. As I wrote yesterday, the Trump Administration is defunding testing now. And he said yesterday that a widespread testing program to assess whether workers can safely return to their workplaces is “never going to happen” in the United States.

All the health experts say that without more widespread testing we will risk a resurgence of the pandemic. But Trump still doesn’t want those numbers to go up. He doesn’t care about the people; just the numbers.

Speaking of numbers — last week the White House released a projection that100,000 to 240,000 people would die nationwide from the coronavirus. Health experts were mystified as to where those numbers came from. Pretty much every epidemiologist on the planet said those numbers were meaningless.

But, you know, the White House didn’t care. It just wanted numbers. Then Trump famously said that if only 100,000 people died he will have done a “very good job.”  And then MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, bless him, stated the obvious —

The most cynical interpretation of all this, one I can’t quite bring myself to accept, is they rolled out the model showing 100k deaths after they knew it would be less than that so they could anchor everyone to that # and take a vicotry lap when “only” tens of thousands died. https://t.co/hYiUCHhO5g

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) April 8, 2020

— which of course is exactly what’s going on. But Hayes got ripped for speaking the truth.

Anyway, today Trump was jubilent because only 18,000 Americans officially have died from the coronavirus so far.

After a word on the upcoming the Easter holiday, global oil production and the border wall with Mexico, Trump nearly celebrated the potentially massive death toll.

“Tremendous progress is being made,” he said.

Compared to the White House’s previous projection that at least 100,000 people could die from the disease, “I think we will be substantially under that number,” Trump said.

“Hard to believe that if you had 60,000 — you can never be happy — but that’s a lot fewer than we were originally told and thinking.”

Chris Hayes was exactly right. And in many places the death toll is still climbing pretty fast. An emotionally normal person would not be celebrating.