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Soon, President Trump will decide whether he will reopen the country on May 1or earlier. This is a decision that has literal life-or-death consequences, and its already becoming clear Trump plans on doing what is his habit: hyping the drama of the decision like he is previewing next weeks episode of his reality show (even if its unclear what he even has the authority to reopen).

There is no real choice here. As eager as Trump is for a quick economic rebound, public health officials have been clear that easing social distancing measures too soon would result in a spike of more deaths.

Youve got to be realistic and youve got to understand that you dont make the timeline, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN last week. The virus makes the timeline.

But Trump cant resist a spectacle. Last Friday, in his daily press conference, Trump teased the decision about whether to begin to reopen the economy May 1. (Never mind that May 1a Fridayis a completely arbitrary date.)Im going to have to make a decision, and I only hope to God that its the right decision, he said. But I would say without question its the biggest decision Ive ever had to make.

Trump promised an opening our country council, which will include the greatest minds, great business leaders, and great doctors advising him. Its unclear who from the business community is willing to serve on it outside of his Cabinet officials and advisers.

Weve seen all this before. An early example of Trumps Apprentice-style approach to the presidency was when Trump was weighing his options on the Paris climate agreement. The decision-making process turned into a high-stakes contest between members of his Cabinet who publicly made their cases on whether the United States should leave or stay. Several, like his then-EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, took to Trumps favorite channel, Fox News, to audition their arguments for the commander-in-chief. After weeks of reports that Trump was waffling, he held a Rose Garden press conference in which he announced the US would exit in three years time. The eventual winner of the contest was Pruitt, who joined him at the podium for the announcement.

He has also turned the once staid State of the Union into a theatrical event. As David Graham wrote of Trumps most recent address in the Atlantic: In an emotional peak, he praised an Army wife whose husband was deployed to Afghanistanthen announced, to her surprise and that of those watching in the chamber and at home, that her husband had actually returned home, making the family reunion a national TV event. At other times, as the New York Times observed, he has courted and narrowed the pool of Supreme Court nominees in a process that so mirrored The Bachelor, several folks quipped, that Mr. Trump would ask his nominee, Will you accept this robe?).

Trump is obsessed with ratings above else, but now hes gambling directly with peoples lives.

Instead of giving the country a measure of calm and direction, Trump has set off a familiar situation with this artificial May 1 deadline. There have already been rounds of will-he-or-wont-he headlines about Trumps decision, recounting who is for and against reopening the economy and internal divisions over the matter.

Recently, Trump has set up a dramatic showdown with (mostly) Democratic governors, including those on the East and West Coasts who have established multi-state coalitions to coordinate their COVID-19 responses and determine when and how to restart their economies. Trump has claimed he holds the authority to override their decisions, tweeting Monday: For the purpose of creating conflict and confusion, some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President of the United States & the Federal Government. Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect.

On Tuesday, he backed down, telling reporters, Im not going to put any pressure on any governor to open.

The polarization and hype play to Trumps base. At a time when his only priority should be rescuing the nation, its clear he is focused largely on rescuing his ratings.

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Donald Trump Is Treating His Decision to Reopen the Country Like Reality TV - Mother Jones

Good morning,

In the midst of an unprecedented global health crisis, Donald Trump has decided to cut US funding to the World Health Organization after accusing the international body of severely mismanaging and covering up the threat posed by the coronavirus. Leading health experts described the presidents move as damnable, appalling and a crime against humanity.

For context, the WHO declared a public health emergency on 30 January after which the president continued to hold mass rallies and compare Covid-19 to the common flu. On Tuesday, Trump complained the WHO had defended the actions of the Chinese government, even praising its so-called transparency. On 24 January, Trump tweeted his thanks to the Chinese for their work on the virus, praising their efforts and transparency.

Trump targeted the WHO, Julian Borger writes from Washington, because he needed someone else to blame for his administrations own complacent and dysfunctional response to the crisis:

How well Trumps scapegoating of the WHO will play in the US election is impossible to predict, but on the world stage it will undoubtedly be seen as yet another step in an accelerating US abdication of global leadership.

Female reporters. The women of the White House press corps really seem to get under the presidents skin, as evidenced by his testy exchange with CBSs Paula Reid. Poppy Noor asks whether Trump has met his match in the briefing room.

Presidential cheques. Trumps own name will appear on the $1,200 cheques being sent to cash-strapped Americans amid the crisis so theyll know who to blame when the cheques arrive several days later than expected.

California is transitioning to the optimistic phase of its coronavirus response, Governor Gavin Newsom suggested on Tuesday, but dont expect those stay-at-home orders to be lifted anytime soon. A Stanford epidemiologist has pooh-poohed any speculation of statewide herd immunity, while San Francisco has cancelled its 50th anniversary Pride event, which had been due to take place at the end of June. Several experts say physical distancing may be needed intermittently until at least 2022.

Elsewhere in the US:

They wanted $50bn, they got $25bn. The US government agreed a bailout for the beleaguered airline industry on Tuesday as part of its $2.2tn coronavirus aid package, as travel reaches an almost total standstill during lockdowns in almost 100 countries and on every continent besides Antarctica. The International Air Transport Association predicts airlines will lose 25% of their revenue this year, a total of approximately $314bn.

Medical staff and emergency responders account for an estimated 11% of known US coronavirus cases. Now, the Guardian and Kaiser Health News have launched an effort to document all the lives lost on the healthcare frontline during the crisis. These are some of the first tragic cases.

Barack Obama endorses Biden. The former president cast his former VP as the elder statesman with the experience and instincts to unify party and country in a time of crisis, in his first though undoubtedly not his last major public intervention in the 2020 presidential race.

Jacinda Ardern is taking a pay cut. The New Zealand prime minister has said she and her ministers will slash their own salaries by 20% for the next six months, in solidarity with other workers affected by the coronavirus.

Its the longest animal ever seen: a 150-foot siphonophore a deep sea predator that looks like a single piece of string floating in the ocean off Western Australia and spotted by scientists who have discovered as many as 30 new marine species lurking in the regions deep, underwater canyons.

Virtual visitors: a remote-controlled guide to the Faroes

The Faroe Islands, a ruggedly beautiful north Atlantic archipelago, has enjoyed a tourism boom in recent years. But 2020 put paid to that, so now the islands are inviting people to visit remotely, writes Tim Ecott, by giving local volunteer guides a camera and letting people from all over the world take an online tour with them.

The outrage of our electronic waste mountain

The worlds biggest companies may deny it, but it is widely believed our electronic devices are deliberately built with a limited lifespan: so-called planned obsolescence. The result is a growing mountain of e-waste. John Harris talks to the activists trying to repair all that dead tech.

Republican vote suppression backfires in Wisconsin

Republicans risked lives by refusing to delay Wisconsins elections last week, a move that backfired spectacularly when a conservative justice on the states supreme court lost his seat to a liberal challenger by 163,000 votes. Its an early litmus test of Trumps political strength in a crucial swing state, as Sam Levine reports.

Brand strategist Amelia Hall says theres a new youth movement that fetishizes the wholesome purity of the outdoors. So why is cottagecore taking off now? Because were all stuck at home, of course.

Today, the simple act of being outdoors poses a very real, very mortal threat. So while mindlessly scrolling through Twitter, and encountering collages of young women lying in grass, cradling bunnies, wearing outfits out of Picnic at Hanging Rock I felt as though Id found something as illicit as a schedule 2 drug.

In this time of self-isolation, perhaps we humans can take inspiration from the platypus, which spends its days eating crustaceans and resting in its burrow, content with a life of solitude. To that end, the World Wide Fund for Nature has compiled a list of some of the worlds most antisocial creatures.

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First Thing: Who stops funding WHO in a pandemic? Donald Trump, that's who - The Guardian

President Donald Trump is clashing with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo over the coronavirus response again.

During Cuomos press briefing on the latest COVID-19 updates in the Empire State, Trump attacked the governor in a series of tweets Friday.

Governor Cuomo should spend more time doing and less time complaining.' Get out there and get the job done. Stop talking!" Trump wrote on Twitter. "We built you thousands of hospital beds that you didnt need or use, gave large numbers of Ventilators that you should have had, and helped you with... testing that you should be doing. We have given New York far more money, help and equipment than any other state, by far, & these great men & women who did the job never hear you say thanks. Your numbers are not good. Less talk and more action!

A reporter asked Cuomo about Trumps tweets, and the governor responded in real time.

First of all, if hes sitting home watching TV, maybe he should get up and go to work, right? Cuomo said. Second, lets keep emotions and politics out of it, and personal ego if we can."

Because this is about the people, and its about our job.

Cuomo has frequently clashed with Trump, asking for more federal help including ventilators and personal protective equipment to fight the coronavirus pandemic. Trump has recently tried to claim he would decide when states reopen for business, issuing a three-point plan for governors to use but admitted it would be to states to decide when to lift stay-at-home orders.

Trump has encouraged states to reopen by May 1, but Cuomo who has extended New Yorks stay-at-home order to May 15 said the presidents plan requires more federal aid.

Is there any funding so I can do these things you want me to do? Cuomo said Friday. That is passing the buck without passing the bucks.

Why dont you show as much consideration to states as you did to your big businesses and to your airlines? Cuomo added.

The governor also pointed out that, while other states may have lower numbers of coronavirus and could reopen sooner than others, New York is still seeing more than 600 new deaths daily from COVID-19. Trumps home state has seen more than 220,000 confirmed cases more than any country outside the U.S. and nearly 13,000 deaths.

Trump and Cuomo have repeatedly clashed on a number of issues beyond the coronavirus pandemic. Trump, a Republican, has previously claimed New Yorkers are leaving the state like never before" and refused to allow New Yorkers to enroll in Global Entry and other trusted traveler programs. Cuomo, a Democrat, has accused Trump of inciting hate and doing nothing but tweet when it comes to gun control, and also irked the president when he signed a law preventing presidential pardons for state crimes, including his associates like former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Trump further used Twitter Friday to show support for protesters in states demanding stay-at-home orders be lifted and non-essential businesses reopened.

LIBERATE MINNESOTA! Trump tweeted. LIBERATE MICHIGAN! LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!

MORE ON CORONAVIRUS

Cuomo rejects Trump claim of total authority: We dont have a king

Coronavirus timeline: How Gov. Cuomo has responded to pandemic since January

Trump attacks Cuomo, claims NY governor created death panels instead of buying ventilators

Cuomo to Trump: The president will have no fight with me

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Gov. Cuomo responds to Trump tweets: Maybe he should get up and go to work - syracuse.com

With unemployment claims ballooning to 22 million people, the coronavirus lockdown took an uncomfortable turn for state governors on Wednesday. Workers and small business owners clogged the streets of Lansing, Michigan, near the capitol, blaring car and truck horns, and waved signs calling on Governor Gretchen Whitmer to allow businesses to open up. Smaller protests took place in Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, North Carolina and Utah.

The angry outburst came just as the nation teeters on what the computer models say is the "peak" of the COVID-19 outbreak. According to most calculations, the death toll, after rising with terrifying steepness for several weeks, should be flattening out and soon starting to drop. "The worst is over," said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo earlier this week.

Reality, though, seems to have other ideas. New Jersey, supposedly on the downward slope, reported 362 deaths on Thursday, the biggest single-day increase. Governor Phil Murphy said the death toll, at 3518, surpasses the number of state residents who died in World War I.

Despite the lack of clarity, reopening is on everybody's mind. President Donald Trump announced Thursday, "We are in the next front of our war, which we are calling, 'Opening Up America Again.'" Governors on both coasts are hammering out plans to lift restrictions on businesses. Governor Gavin Newsom of California said any plans to open the state would be "guided by science and data."

One thing is clear: regardless of whether the lockdown ends next week or next year, the virus will be waiting on the other side. A lockdown only delays the virus' progress through the population. It's designed to keep the burden off emergency rooms and intensive care units and buy time. The relevant question in considering how and when to lift the lockdown is not how to prevent deaths, but rather how to prevent too many deaths all at once.

Several private studies have laid out frameworks for a plan, and the governors are no doubt fashioning their own. There is a consensus that life will not go back to normal until scientists figure out how to defang the viruswith a vaccine, or treatments that keep the acutely ill from dying on ventilators, or both. New treatments will take months to roll out and a vaccine is at least a year away. How, then, do we negotiate the coming months?

Most plans present a post-lockdown scenario in which life wouldn't exactly be normal but would still be an improvement on lockdown. People would wear masks when they go outside, some businesses would reopen with social-distancing precautions, large gatherings would be forbidden and bars would stay closed. Baseball season might reopen, but teams would play to empty stadiums. Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, an author of a report published by the American Enterprise Institute, told Vox that it would look like a "gradual reintroduction of activity."

As social interactions increased, of course, the virus would begin to make a comeback. Epidemiolgist Marc Lipsitch of Harvard and his colleagues recently performed a computer analysis of how SARS-CoV-2 was likely to behave after lockdown is lifted, which the journal Science published on Tuesday. The authors found that loosened restrictions would almost certainly produce a rebound later in the year. A false sense of security during the summer months in northern states such as New York and Michigan, where the virus might be less active during the summer heat, could lead to a spike in cases in the autumn or winter that's even more severe than the one we're only now recovering from.

To avoid another catastrophe, doctors would use contract tracing to jump on small outbreaks before they turn into big ones. Contact tracing would require PCR tests to detect the presence of the virus in patients' blood, and serological tests to measure the presence of antibodies, an indication of whether or not a patient has immunity. The monitoring would have to be done at the local level, which means tests would have to be cheap, plentiful and quick. Paul Romer, a Nobel laureate and professor at New York University, calls for administering tests to every person in the country every two weeksmore than 20 million tests per day.

Testing on that scale is not going to happen anytime soon. Tests are only now being rolled out and it will be "at least weeks before there are results for more than a handful of places," said Lipsitch at a press conference.

Without testing and tracing, the only tool available to keep the outbreak in check is social distancing. Lipsitch's team explored scenarios for controlling the rebound with social-distancing measures alone. No one wants a permanent lockdown, so they also ran their computer models on a strategy of intermittent lockdowns. Public health officials would monitor the prevalence of the virus in the population at large and, as the number of infected people reached a certain threshold, social distancing rules would once again go into effect. A lockdown in March and April might give way to a few months of relative freedom, but then it would be time for a second lockdown, and eventually a third and a fourth and so on.

Without a vaccine or effective treatments, a strategy of on-again, off-again lockdowns would have to continue through 2022 before enough people carried antibodies to the virus to protect the most vulnerable, known as herd immunity.

It sounds awfuland it might not even work. Without adequate testing, public health officials would have to use indirect metrics, such as hospitalizations, to assess at what point a new lockdown is needed. This would hamper their ability to recognize a spike quickly enough to avoid another catastrophic increase in COVID-19 cases. Would politicians listen and act in time to close down businesses? Would the public accept and abide by these recurring rounds of restrictions?

The recent of experience of Singapore doesn't bode well. In the early days of the pandemic, Singapore, which arguably has the best health care system in the world, managed to avoid severe social distancing through a program of comprehensive testing and rigorous contact tracing. Still, it lost control of the outbreak. Last week, it had to resort to closing businesses and reducing social contact. If Singapore can't keep its economy open with a robust system of testing and monitoring, can the U.S.?

The lack of alternatives to social distancing makes charting a realistic course from lockdown to normalcy exceedingly difficult. Until scientists can come up with some other interventiona vaccine, a treatment, a drastic expansion of ICU capacityit looks like social distancing is going to be a way of life for a while.

Originally posted here:
Donald Trump Says America Will Open Up But Scientists Predict We'll Be Back in Lockdown Again. Here's Why - Newsweek

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US President Donald Trump has said he is going to halt funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) because it has "failed in its basic duty" in its response to the coronavirus outbreak.

He accused the UN agency of mismanaging and covering up the spread of the virus after it emerged in China, and said it must be held accountable.

In response, the UN's chief said it was "not the time" to cut funds to the WHO.

Mr Trump has been under fire for his own handling of the pandemic.

He has sought to deflect persistent criticism that he acted too slowly to stop the virus's spread by pointing to his decision in late January to place restrictions on travel from China.

He has accused the WHO of having "criticised" that decision and of being biased towards China more generally.

"I am directing my administration to halt funding while a review is conducted to assess the World Health Organization's role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus," Mr Trump told a news conference at the White House on Tuesday.

The US is the global health body's largest single funder and gave it more than $400m in 2019.

A decision on whether the US resumes funding will be made after the review, which Mr Trump said would last 60 to 90 days.

The WHO is yet to directly respond but UN Secretary General Antnio Guterres said the international community should be uniting "in solidarity to stop this virus".

"It is my belief that the World Health Organization must be supported, as it is absolutely critical to the world's efforts to win the war against Covid-19," he said.

Germany's foreign minister tweeted that strengthening the "under-funded" WHO was one of the best investments that could be made at this time.

The WHO launched an appeal in March for $675m to help fight the coronavirus pandemic and is reported to be planning a fresh appeal for at least $1bn.

Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder and philanthropist, said on Twitter: "Halting funding for the World Health Organization during a world health crisis is as dangerous as it sounds."

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the second-largest funder of the WHO.

"With the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have deep concerns whether America's generosity has been put to the best use possible," the US president said.

The US has by far the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths worldwide- with more than 600,000 cases and 26,000 deaths.

Mr Trump accused the WHO of having failed to adequately assess the outbreak when it first emerged in the city of Wuhan.

"Had the WHO done its job to get medical experts into China to objectively assess the situation on the ground and to call out China's lack of transparency, the outbreak could have been contained at its source with very little death," he told reporters.

"This would have saved thousands of lives and avoided worldwide economic damage. Instead, the WHO willingly took China's assurances to face value... and defended the actions of the Chinese government."

Chinese officials initially covered up the outbreak of the virus in Wuhan, and punished whistleblowers who tried to raise the alarm. Beijing later imposed draconian restrictions, including quarantine zones on an unprecedented scale, drawing effusive praise from the WHO and its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

WHO experts were only allowed to visit China and investigate the outbreak on 10 February, by which time the country had more than 40,000 cases.

White House reporters pointed out, however, that Mr Trump himself praised China's response to the outbreak and downplayed the danger of the virus at home long after the WHO had declared a "public health emergency of international concern".

Democrats accused him of trying to shift blame away from himself in an election year, but many Republicans in Congress praised his decision to cut funding.

It is not the first time the WHO's response to the outbreak has come under scrutiny.

On 14 January, the organisation tweeted that preliminary Chinese investigations had found "no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission" of the new virus.

Mr Trump and others have used the tweet to attack the WHO for simply believing China, despite evidence to the contrary. But about a week after that tweet, on 22 January, the agency released a public statement saying that human-to-human transmission did appear to be taking place in Wuhan.

At the end of January, on the same day it declared a public health emergency, the WHO said that travel restrictions were not needed to stop the spread of Covid-19 - advice that was eventually ignored by most countries, including by the Trump administration the next day.

In March, the UN agency was also accused of being unduly influenced by China after a senior official refused to discuss Taiwan's response to the outbreak.

Meanwhile, some health experts also say that the WHO's guidance on face masks has led to public confusion.

Other frequently-made criticisms of the WHO more generally are that it is constrained by politics and a sprawling bureaucracy. It came under particular fire for its response to the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa and how long it took to declare a public health emergency, leading the organisation to announce reforms in response.

At one level, this move is about the coronavirus. Administration officials have been sharply accusing the WHO of missteps in the handling of the pandemic, saying it was biased towards China.

They say the WHO was too ready to support China's deceptive early claims about the virus and then didn't push hard enough against Beijing's attempts to cover up its misinformation. In particular President Trump has latched onto the WHO's criticism of his travel restrictions against China.

But at another level, the move to defund the WHO is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to curtail China's growing global influence.

The argument is that Chinese leadership in international organisations undermines the rules-based, accountable international system needed to prevent and fight a pandemic.

But, the Wall Street Journal reports that the decision also stems from an ongoing discussion on whether to link US aid dollars to the number of Americans working in the groups that receive them.

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Coronavirus: US to halt funding to WHO, says Trump - BBC News