ROME — Italian experts are warning a second wave of coronavirus infections will most certainly accompany Italy’s gradual reopening from Europe’s first lockdown.
They are calling for intensified efforts to identify possible new victims, monitor their symptoms and trace their contacts
Continue reading “Italian Experts Warn Of Second Wave Of Coronavirus As Lockdown Eases”
Trump out here moving the goalposts on coronavirus deaths like an auctioneer pic.twitter.com/nb6Eo92MYJ
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) May 4, 2020
President Donald Trump exploded at the Lincoln Project via Twitter early Tuesday morning after the anti-Trump conservative political action committee put out an ad that criticized his response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Continue reading “POTUS Has A Meltdown Over Anti-Trump GOP PAC Ad Blasting His Handling Of Outbreak”
TPM Reader KM tells us in the subject line of her email that she writes from Detroit …
My own experience of the pandemic is of something that was very distant and abstract up till the moment I was in the thick of it. So my turning point is more like a breaking point: the experience that split my life into a Before and a Now.
TPM Reader WC (not his real initials) is an emergency room doctor on the West Coast. His turning point is different from many of our who haven’t been on the front lines of the epidemic.
Like many of you listeners, I too saw the closure of schools and the cancellation of the NCAA championship/NBA season as big turning points. The other turning point for me was the day I walked into our ER at a large trauma center and it was totally empty, which is unheard of.
One of the most depressing and least surprising developments in the last 36 hours is that the White House is apparently relying on a “cubic model” of the COVID19 epidemic prepared by White House economist Kevin Hassett to craft its crisis response. I have not seen any statisticians or epidemiologists who know precisely what “cubic” refers to the in this context – though there are some promising speculations based on simply plugging in one of the default trend lines (third degree polynomial) in Microsoft Excel. The more relevant point is that, according to The Washington Post, the model predicts the number of people dying of COVID19 in the US will fall to close to zero by May 15th – a scenario that seems all but impossible.
Here I can’t help but note a basic point. Hassett is not a health care economist, let alone someone at the crossroads of behavioral economics and epidemiologists. Indeed, his record as an economist is rather notorious.
On Monday, White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci dismissed the idea that COVID-19 originated from a lab in Wuhan, China, a theory President Donald Trump and his GOP allies have floated in recent days.
Continue reading “Fauci Rejects Right-Wing Theory Alleging That COVID-19 Came From Chinese Lab”
As you may have sensed from my writing over the last two months I’m if anything a COVID19 pessimist. I have generally thought things would be worse than the consensus opinion anticipated. Unfortunately, I’ve generally been right. But let me strike a different note about this CDC model or forecast that has gotten all the news today. The numbers are stunning. And from a purely non-expert viewpoint they don’t seem credible. I put this forward purely on the basis of being very immersed in the current statistics and having at least some sense of how trends work.
Let me try to explain.
Continue reading “Trying to Make Sense of that Leaked CDC Model”
Gov. Mike DeWine (R) came to state health director Amy Acton’s defense Monday after she’d become the target of protests and antisemitic attacks.
Continue reading “DeWine Comes To State Health Director’s Defense Amid Attacks”
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Treasury Department says it will need to borrow a record $2.99 trillion during the current April-June quarter to cover the cost of various rescue efforts dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.
Treasury said Monday that the $2.99 trillion it plans to borrow this quarter will far surpass the $530 billion quarterly borrowing it did in the July-September 2008 quarter as it dealt with the 2008 financial crisis.
