Today I’ve frequently found myself overrun by the flow of new information, new data on the unfolding pandemic. It’s not clear to me whether that is more a reaction to an accelerating of new information or some cognitive fatigue or degeneration due to everything that has happened over the last three weeks. But my reading today drives home for me just how much we and really the whole world are still flying largely blind as we navigate one of if not the greatest global crisis of our lifetimes.
A few times over recent days I have encouraged people to reach out to elderly relatives or just friends or older people you don’t even know. FaceTime, Zoom, any of the other ubiquitous applications all work just fine. Loneliness and isolation are intrinsic risks of old age under the best of circumstances. Here we have an urgent clinical need for people over 65 or 70 to isolate themselves to a stringent degree. Stay in the house. Don’t have any visitors. Maybe even have the delivery people leave things at the door and come out later to bring it in.
I wrestled with whether or not to publish this note from TPM Reader CJ for reasons that will likely be obvious. I decided to because I think the note shows beliefs, feelings, lived experiences rumbling under the surface of our society. They are good to hear even if we disagree with them or are offended or even angered by them.
I live in Sicily where we’ve watched this become a pandemic. It’s been more than one week now that we’ve been asked to stay at home, going outside only for groceries or medicine. Pretty much everything else is closed up and very few people are on the streets now.
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: