I want to be clear and tentative here. In a situation of mass outbreak and spotty testing capacity you have to be very cautious interpreting numbers. But there seem to be some possible signs that the outbreak in Italy is beginning to crest. And to be clear, by ‘crest’ here I mean a possible stabilization of the number of new cases reported each day. More than 3,200 new infections in the country have been reported every day for the last four days. So each day the situation is getting much worse. It is simply that the acceleration may be slowing down.
Here’s the trend chart.
This is the most action the White House press briefing room has seen in at least a year, if not longer.
President Trump and his coronavirus task force are holding another press briefing this morning; a near-daily event this week that may soon become standard as the U.S. continues to ward off COVID-19 spread.
From a TPM Reader in Kuwait …
As an American living in Kuwait, I’ve been impressed since the beginning of this crisis by how Kuwait is handling it – and they started taking measures weeks ago – but the contrast with the US (and UK) is stark. (I have two sons in the UK, and I wish they could get back here because they’d be much safer. Every British person I know here has stories of friends and relatives who have symptoms, and in some cases know they’ve been exposed, but can’t get treated or tested. And they’re being contacted by the schools threatening punishment if they don’t send their children to school.)
A Reminder: As long as the country remains on a COVID-19 crisis footing everything we publish tied to the epidemic will be outside the Prime paywall.
Barring a personal tragedy, Joe Biden will be the nominee. My preference, given the difficulty of holding primaries during the pandemic and the need to focus on defeating Donald Trump in November, is for Sanders to concede – and I voted for him in 2016 and would have done so again. If Sanders continues to campaign, it should only be around his issues. No attacks on Biden for stands he took 10, 20, or even 30 years ago. I can think of no worse (possible) fate for the country than Trump’s re-election. Here are some final thoughts about the primaries and what comes next:
As we begin to grapple with the economic fallout from COVID-19, don’t forget the severe strain this could place on state and local governments, in ways both direct and indirect. Another TPM reader report:
Long-time reader/subscriber, first time writing in. I work in the leadership of a local government unit that has a pretty significant number of COVID-19 cases, but isn’t one of the biggest national hotspots. We have been progressively locking the area down since last week, with changes the last few days that basically shut the doors on all public life.
The show will go on for least three of the four states originally scheduled to hold primary elections tonight, with the Ohio Supreme Court on Tuesday morning ruling in favor of closing polls amid the coronavirus outbreak.
JoinFrom the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
Phoebe Putney Health System’s flagship hospital in Albany, a city anchoring southwest Georgia, has exploded with possible COVID-19 patients in the last five days. The hospital now houses 65 patients who’ve either been diagnosed with the disease or are waiting for tests to confirm the diagnosis. That’s just the inpatients; 115 more with less severe symptoms are at home, waiting for test results. The hospital released the numbers along with a plea to speed up testing.
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As we’ve moved into the shocking events of March one of my central experiences has been what I would call time dilation. My experience of the passage of time has changed radically. Some of this is the mundane fact that many of the markers of my daily life are falling away or shifting — getting the kids out the door in the morning, getting up and going to work, hitting the gym in the afternoon, various small trips around my neighborhood. Far more though it is what I suspect many of you have experienced: an escalating series of events none of us have any lived experience with and which most of us, I think, could scarcely imagine would ever happen. What’s unthinkable Thursday is quaint by Sunday. Such rapid shifts in our perceptions of the world and reality we’re living in are profoundly disorienting. I suspect more disorienting than many of us yet understand simply because there’s no respite from the rush of events.