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Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford

FDNY Emergency Medical Technicians secure a patient who was identified to have COVID-19 in an ambulance while wearing protective gear in New York City in this file photo from March 24, 2020.

Stefan Jeremiah/Reuters

We who only bet occasionally on a horse race are fascinated by true gamblers: those who frequent not only casinos and stock markets, but also the pages of history. We normal folk tend to think of two types of gambler. There is Fyodor Dostoevskys compulsive gambler, who cannot resist the lure of the roulette wheel who ruins himself by betting and betting.

Then there is the gambler as master speculator: Charles Dickenss Merdle, Anthony Trollopes Augustus Melmotte both loosely based on Nathan Rothschild or our own ages George Soros. This kind of gambler calculates the odds of each bet carefully.

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Yet there is a third kind of gambler, who lies between these extremes. He wins some; he loses some. He does not gamble to become a billionaire. He gambles for the sheer love of gambling. The risk-lover bets every day on the basis of his intuition his gut. To him, the bet is an act of will, intended as much to dominate the counterparty as to make money. The bravado is the point.

Donald Trump, as you will have guessed, is a type three gambler. He did not blow the money he inherited from his father; nor did he turn it into a mega-fortune. He has made many a disastrous business bet, as his creditors have learnt the hard way. Yet Mr. Trump has gambled his way from real estate to reality television to real power. And now he is making the biggest bet of his entire life.

He is betting that the number of Americans who die of COVID-19 will be about 40,000 in other words, approximately the number who die of influenza each winter.

Obviously, Mr. Trumps chances of re-election now hinge on how severely the pandemic hits America.

The United States is now in a pandemic-induced recession. The stock market, despite last weeks remarkable rally, is still more than 20 per cent below its February high, effacing most of the gains investors have made since Mr. Trumps election. The combination of public panic, rational social distancing and state-level orders to rest in place has thrown the U.S. economy off a cliff. Initial jobless claims soared last week to nearly 3.3 million, the biggest jump by a factor of almost five since records began.

The Presidents bet is not as crazy as you might think. It is, as I said last week, unlikely that the United States as a whole will have as disastrous an encounter with COVID-19 as Italy. Americans are less crowded together, use less public transport and kiss one another less than Italians.

It is also possible that the virus will claim many more victims in the big Democratic-voting states of the American coasts New York and California than in the smaller Republican-voting states of the heartland. Thus far, only 19 per cent of COVID-19 deaths are in counties Mr. Trump won in 2016.

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Those writing the obituaries of this presidency have written them many times before and been wrong. They must have read with incredulity the results of last weeks Gallup poll, which showed that a majority of voters, and in particular a majority (60 per cent) of registered independents, approve of Mr. Trumps handling of the pandemic.

The problem is that, this time Mr. Trump is gambling with peoples lives on the basis not of calculated risk but of complete uncertainty. We simply do not know enough about the virus to have any conviction about how many Americans it will kill. COVID-19 could kill 40,000 Americans. But if the virus spreads as far as H1N1 swine flu did in 2009, so that 20 per cent of us get it, and we have the (very low) German case fatality rate of 0.6 per cent, we could have 400,000 dead.

All we can say with any certainty is that most of east Asia and most of Europe have taken much more drastic steps to contain COVID-19 than America has yet taken. And the President wants to see even those restrictions lifted in a mere two weeks time.

Such is Mr. Trumps gamble with American lives. The one thing to be said in his defense is that, like his British counterpart U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson who very nearly gambled on a strategy of herd immunity and has now tested positive he has skin in the game. The President too will be at risk if this gamble goes wrong.

Niall Ferguson/The Sunday Times, London.

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Excerpt from:
Donald Trump, the risk-taker, is gambling with lives - The Globe and Mail

YES AND NO. The thing to understand about Donald Trump is that putting others before self is not something he can do, even temporarily. His attempts to convey facts that dont serve his perceived self-interest or to express empathy are forced, scripted, and always short-lived, since such reactions are alien to him.

This president does not have the capacity to listen to, synthesize, and internalize information that does not immediately serve his greatest needs: praise, fealty, adoration. He finds it intolerable when those things are missing, a clinical psychologist told me. Praise, applause, and accolades seem to calm him and boost his confidence. Theres no room for that now, and so hes growing irritable and needing to create some way to get some positive attention.

Adam Serwer: Trump is inciting a coronavirus culture war to save himself

She added that the pandemic and its economic fallout overwhelm Trumps capacity to understand, are outside of his ability to internalize and process, and [are] beyond his frustration tolerance. He is neither curious nor interested; facts are tossed aside when inconvenient or [when they] contradict his parallel reality, and people are disposable unless they serve him in some way.

ITS USEFUL HERE to recall that Trumps success as a politician has been built on his ability to impose his will and narrative on others, to use his experience on a reality-television show and his skill as a con man to shape public impressions in his favor, evenor perhaps, especiallyif those impressions are at odds with reality. He convinced a good chunk of the country that he is a wildly successful businessman and knows more about campaign finance, the Islamic State, the courts, the visa system, trade, taxes, the debt, renewable energy, infrastructure, borders, and drones than anyone else.

Read: How the pandemic will end

But in this instance, Trump isnt facing a political problem he can easily spin his way out of. Hes facing a lethal virus. It doesnt give a damn what Donald Trump thinks of it or tweets about it. Spin and lies about COVID-19, including that it will soon magically disappear, as Trump claimed it would, dont work. In fact, they have the opposite effect. Misinformation will cause the virus to increase its deadly spread.

So as the crisis deepensas the body count increases, hospitals are overwhelmed, and the economy contracts, perhaps dramaticallyits reasonable to assume that the president will reach for the tools he has used throughout his life: duplicity and denial. He will not allow facts that are at odds with his narrative to pierce his magnetic field of deception.

But what happens to Trump psychologically and emotionally when things dont turn around in the time period he wants? What happens if the tricks that have allowed him to walk away from scandal after scandal dont work quite so well, if the doors of escape are bolted shut, and if it dawns on even some of his supporterspeople who will watch family members, friends, and neighbors contract the disease, some number of whom will diethat no matter what Trump says, he cant alter this epidemiological reality?

Read the rest here:
The President Is Trapped - The Atlantic

P

resident Donald Trump on Friday signed into law a federal relief bill that provides emergency liquidity, tax relief and additional support for small businesses, among other measures that could benefit the gaming industry amid the coronavirus impact. The $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act funds will be allocated to states then apportioned to individual industries based on economic figures like the number of workers and taxable revenue generated.

Essentially every commercial gaming establishment in the United States is closed, with no definitive timeline for a return. The American Gaming Association (AGA) estimates 650,000 direct gaming employees have had work stoppages and $43.5 billion in economic activity could be lost if the shutdown were to last two months.

Bill Miller, AGAs president and CEO explained in a statement that the CARES Act provides tax relief to help gaming companies keep workers on the payroll; opens access to critical capital through loans for all industry segments; provides direct economic support for millions of American workers and their families; and offers vital stabilization funding for tribal governments.

With the House vote and President Trump's signature, gaming employees, their families, and communities will see needed relief. Read @BillMillerAGA's latest update: https://t.co/LRQfFuPZ9w pic.twitter.com/UdnnlUI4Pi

— American Gaming Association (@AmericanGaming) March 27, 2020

We commend Congress and the administration for acting swiftly to provide needed relief. The gaming industry united to achieve a major first step that will help sustain us during the required shutdown and ensure Americas employees can return to their jobs as soon as its safe," Miller said. But our fight is not over. As the nations response to the pandemic evolves, we know gaming businesses, workers, and their families will continue to need support. We will keep fighting to help every aspect of the gaming industry as Congress and the administration consider additional economic relief measures.

Past federal responses to natural disasters and financial crises, such as Hurricane Katrina and the 2008-09 global crisis, excluded gaming companies from assistance available to the rest of the business community.

This financial aid would include the expanding legal sports betting market in the US. On Thursday, Washington became the 21st state to pass sports betting legislation in the past two years. Legal bookmakers were operating in 16 states, with more jurisdictions preparing to launch, before casinos around the nation began closing. While in-person sports betting has ceased, several online bookmakers in the U.S. remain open. Indiana, New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania are among the states with active online sports betting, albeit with much smaller wagering menus.

Today, President @realDonaldTrump signed into the law the #CARESAct which will help small businesses stay open, help workers keep their jobs, and provide relief for distressed industries as our Country faces the threat of the Coronavirus together. pic.twitter.com/oXtg6RqS4o

— Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) March 27, 2020

The pandemic has stopped all major American and international sports, leaving bookmakers scrambling to find betting offerings for customers. Table tennis and hockey from Belarus were among the highlighted events at sportsbooks this week. On Thursday, Nevada Gaming Control authorized its sportsbooks to take bets on an eSports tournament.

The new betting markets, however, are doing little to mitigate the loss of the NBA, the NHL and Major League Baseball. Multiple sportsbook operators told ESPN last week that they sometimes go hours without taking a single bet.

With people around the world encouraged to stay at home, other forms of online gambling have seen upticks, including poker. PokerStars, a leading international online cardroom, held its largest online tournament ever last week, with an $18.6 million prize pool that attracted a record 93,016 entries.

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US President Donald Trump signs relief bill that could benefit the gaming industry - Yogonet International

On March 18th, researchers in France circulated a study about the promising experimental use of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug, in combination with azithromycin, an antibiotic, as a treatment for the disease caused by the coronavirus. The study was neither randomized nor peer-reviewed, and other scientists soon criticized its methodology. But Tucker Carlson, on Fox News, highlighted the work. The next day, President Trump promoted hydroxychloroquines very, very encouraging early results. He added, mentioning another unproven therapy, I think it could be, based on what I see, it could be a game changer.

At a White House press briefing on March 20th, a reporter asked Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, whether hydroxychloroquine could be effective in treating covid-19. The answer is no, Fauci said, before yielding the microphone to Trump, who countered, May work, may not. I feel good about it. Thats all it is, just a feeling, you know, smart guy. A few days later, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, said, Using untested drugs without the right evidence could raise false hope and even do more harm than good.

Trumps quackery was at once eccentric and terrifyinga reminder, if one was needed, of his scorn for rigorous science, even amid the worst pandemic to strike the country in a century. Yet his conduct typified his leadership as the crisis has intensified: his dependency on Fox News for ideas and message amplification, his unshakable belief in his own genius, and his understandable concern that his relection may be in danger if he does not soon discover a way to vanquish COVID-19 and reverse its devastation of the economy.

New York City now faces a troubling and astronomical increase in cases, according to Governor Andrew Cuomo, and the emergency is overwhelming hospitals, straining drug and equipment supplies, and threatening to cause a shortage of ventilators. The grim course of events in the city is a canary in the coal mine for the rest of the country, Cuomo said, and leaders elsewhere must take decisive action lest they, too, become inundated. Trump, though, spent much of last week promoting a contrarian gambit that has been percolating in the right-wing media. He said that, to revitalize the economy, he would like to lift travel restrictions and reopen workplaces across the country within weeks, perhaps by Easter, which is on April 12th, because, as he put it repeatedly, we cant let the cure be worse than the problem.

Public-health experts immediately warned against such a reversal of social-distancing rules. The virus will surge, many will fall ill, and there will be more deaths, William Schaffner, a specialist in preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University, told the Times. When a reporter asked the President whether any of the doctors on your team had advised him that a hasty reopening was the right path to pursue, he replied, If it were up to the doctors, they may say, Lets keep it shut down... lets keep it shut for a couple of years. Public-health specialists have said no such thing; they have spoken of a conditions-based approach (You dont make the timeline, the virus makes the timeline, Fauci has said), while advising that, to save the most lives, local leaders must wait to lift restrictions in their areas until the data show that the virus has stopped spreading. Trump said that any loosening of rules he might seek around the countryhe mentioned Nebraska and Idaho as possible siteswould be based on hard facts and data, but he also said that he chose Easter as a target date because he just thought it was a beautiful time.

It is true, as Trump also argued, that enormous job losses and an all but certain recession caused by the pandemic will harm many vulnerable Americans, and claim lives, as ill people without health insurance, for example, forgo care or struggle to get it at stressed clinics and hospitals. Yet, at least in the short term, over-all mortality rates fall during recessions; the reasons for this arent fully clear, but social scientists think they may include the public-health benefits of a decrease in pollution, as a result of the slowing economy. In any event, the case the President made for hurrying an economic revival against the advice of scientists was morally odious; it suggested that large numbers of otherwise avoidable deaths might have to be accepted as the price of job creation.

Public-health officials spoke frankly to the press about the catastrophic prospects of the Presidents Easter folly. (President Trump will have blood on his hands, Keith Martin, the director of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health, told the Times.) Trump responded on Twitter by lashing out at the LameStream Media for reporting such forecasts, calling the press the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our Country closed as long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimental to my election success. Last Wednesday, after Mitt Romney, the only Republican who voted to convict the President, on a charge of abuse of power, during the Senate impeachment trial, announced that he had tested negative for COVID-19, Trump tweeted mockingly, Im so happy I can barely speak. At the White House briefings, surrounded by the sorts of civil servants and experts he habitually disdains, Trump has adapted awkwardly to the role of solemn unifier. When he leaves the podium to tweet nonsense at his perceived enemies, he at least provides his opponents among the countrys homebound, screen-addled, and anxious citizenry with a galvanizing dose of his immutable obnoxiousnessa splash of the old new normal.

The journal Science asked Fauci why he doesnt step in when the President makes false statements in the briefings. I cant jump in front of the microphone and push him down, he said. Americas public-health system is fragmented and market-driven, conditions that only compound the challenge of quashing COVID-19. In the Trump era, however, decentralization has a benefit: the President is not solely in charge, and in the months ahead governors and mayors will continue to shape the odds of life or death for great numbers of Americans. Last week, Trump reviewed the possibilities for quarantine in New York City, his ravaged home town. He rambled about the stock exchange (Its incredible what they can do), before going on to pledge, If we open up, and when we open up... were giving the governors a lot of leeway to decide how this should be done. We can only hope so.

The rest is here:
The Meaning of Donald Trumps Coronavirus Quackery - The New Yorker

Political fact-checkers have flourished under Donald Trump, a president who according to one count uttered more than 16,000 misleading or false claims during his first three years in the White House.

The coronavirus outbreak has seen Trump add to that total. Here are some of his most misleading and most often repeated claims about Covid-19, his administrations response to the outbreak and what might lie ahead.

Trump has repeatedly expressed his surprise at the scale of the coronavirus as it spread around the world and raced across the US.

I would view it as something that just surprised the whole world, he said in a press conference earlier this month. Nobody knew there would be a pandemic or epidemic of this proportion.

In a separate briefing, Trump said: I just think this is something that you can never really think is going to happen.

There is evidence, however, that not only was the Trump administration warned about the potential of a pandemic and its dangers to Americans, it was given a plan on how to deal with it, which it promptly shelved.

During the Obama administration, the national security council drew up a 69-page playbook on fighting pandemics, Politico has reported. The document, crafted in the wake of the 2016 Ebola outbreak, contained advice on tracking the spread of a new virus, how to ensure testing was conducted effectively and the need to stockpile emergency resources.

The incoming Trump administration was briefed on the playbook but it was was thrown on to a shelf, according to an anonymous official quoted by Politico.

This wasnt the administrations only insight into the threat posed by a pandemic. In October, an internal federal government report warned how underprepared and underfunded the US would be in terms of tackling a virus without a cure.

Trumps reaction to coronavirus has spanned disbelief, a severe understating of the problem and an optimism that appears unmoored from reality.

In February, Trump said the virus could maybe go away. Well see what happens. Nobody really knows. He predicted it is going to disappear. One day its like a miracle it will disappear.

This position has been repeatedly contradicted by public health experts who predicted the sharp increase in Covid-19 infections, blunted only by social distancing measures and the shut down of large gatherings.

Even in China, which instituted the most severe crackdown on the movement of people, it has taken several months for cases to start tapering off.

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

Without basis, Trump has claimed the US has done an excellent job in testing people for the coronavirus. As early as January, the president said the situation was totally under control. Just six weeks later the US had emerged as the new global center of the pandemic.

In reality, healthcare providers faced a severe shortage of testing kits as coronavirus hit the US, with the situation exacerbated by faults in the testing system and restrictions on who could actually take a test. A big disparity opened up whereby rich or famous people were able to get tests while others struggled to do so.

Mike Pence, the vice-president, has admitted we dont have enough tests today to meet what we anticipate will be the demand. Dr Fauci told a congressional hearing the US system was not really geared to what we need right now regarding the test kits. He added: That is a failing. Lets admit it.

As is the case with many of Trumps statements, his claim he has always taken the pandemic seriously deviates wildly from his previous comments. Perhaps most infamously, Trump said I dont take responsibility at all when asked about the faltering US response.

The president has repeatedly downplayed the threat posed by Covid-19, criticising concern over the crisis as a hoax, fretting that letting infected Americans off a cruise ship would increase the number of confirmed cases and claiming that only a couple of Americans had it as cases began to soar across the country.

He has compounded this by suggesting social distancing restrictions be lifted around Easter a timeline wildly out of kilter with public health experts who warn this would cause hospitals to overflow with sick and dying patients.

In a White House meeting with pharmaceutical company bosses and public health officials, Trump suggested a vaccine for Covid-19 will be available over the next few months.

He was contradicted by Alex Azar, the health and human services secretary, who pointed out: You wont have a vaccine. Youll have a vaccine to go into testing.

Dr Fauci and others at the meeting confirmed that clinical trials standard for any new vaccine would have to take place first. A vaccine is more likely to be a year or 18 months away.

Despite being told this, Trump told a rally in North Carolina on 2 March that there will be a vaccine relatively soon.

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Five of Donald Trump's most misleading coronavirus claims - The Guardian