Get.These.Two.Clowns.Out.of.There.Now!

I’m now going to put up multiple posts on the Covid-19 pandemic each day, rather than one big one as I’ve been doing up until now. One post that I’ll do every day is a “Numbers” post, about the numbers – cases, deaths, etc. - that I’ve been tracking in the last few days. There will still be a primary post, and this is the first of those. I’ll always put it up last, so that it gets picked up by the email feed at night.

You should check out the Numbers post, since it includes a disturbing trend - as if we needed more of those! - that I identified today.

“I don’t take responsibility at all.”

                - Donald J. Trump, March 20, 2020

“At no point have (we) discussed a nationwide lockdown.”

                - Mike Pence, March 23, 2020

I couldn’t have said it any better than these two gentlemen did: The senior of the two people running the entire Covid-19 response in the US says he can’t be held responsible for anything that goes on. He never said a truer thing. This has been his attitude throughout his presidency.  Nothing bad has happened that he doesn’t blame on others, and there’s very little good that happens that he doesn’t take credit for. He’s certainly not taking any blame for the monumental screwup in Covid-19 testing, which will cost thousands or hundreds of thousands of lives in the US. If he removes the social distancing order in time for Easter and people flock to churches and other public gatherings – and this all results in a big jump in infections – he will without a doubt not take responsibility for that, either.

Meanwhile, the person actually charged with overseeing the entire response states emphatically that the group he leads has never even considered what the majority of experts consider to be the only way to stop the virus cold. Of course, there are many experts who disagree with the idea that there needs to be a nationwide lockdown. Who’s right? Well, that’s all a moot point for Mike Pence. He’s said that he’s already made up his mind, and he’s not even going to consider any evidence to the contrary.

There’s really not much more that needs to be said. I was going to run through a litany of statements, actions and – most importantly – lack of action that have led to our being very likely to blow by Italy this week and China next week in total infections, with no end in sight in the near term. And to our healthcare system which will soon be overwhelmed with cases starting next week or the following week in New York City, but definitely coming to a hospital near you in the next month or two. But it almost seems frivolous to do that, when presented with these two statements.

Maybe the damage will be limited. From the general tone of people in Trump’s own administration, it sounds like it’s unlikely they’ll let him unwind the social distancing that’s in place now – and of course, more and more states are implementing it on their own (although the ones that don’t do it will of course ultimately cancel out any progress made by the ones that do, unless the latter build walls with their neighbors and forbid all interstate travel). Maybe someone will get through to him that he is planting false hopes with his touting of unapproved drugs to treat Covid-19 (which resulted in the death of an Arizona man a day or two ago), and also with his repeated statements that a vaccine will be available very soon, when in fact it’s 1-2 years away.

And maybe someone will make him realize that he needs to start working with the rest of the world on the response, and fast. Instead, he pulled most American diplomats out of China recently, supposedly due to the risk of infection, when in fact they’re much more likely to be infected in the US – where cases went up by 11,000 yesterday – than in China, where the virus isn’t spreading at all. Yet at the same time he’s promising to get lots of everything that the hospitals need right away, while not explaining how he’s going to do this with no diplomats in China, when China makes a lot of what we need – including the parts needed to build ventilators. And how he’s going to get European countries to send us medical devices that they need for their own citizens, when there’s no European leader - other than Vladimir Putin and a couple of his authoritarian buddies, of course - who will even be inclined to pick up the phone when he calls (helpful hint to Trump: block your caller ID)?

And maybe the stock market will set record highs tomorrow, and maybe every child in the world will receive a pony for Easter.

Folks, these two fine gentlemen need to be removed from all responsibility for anything to do with the Covid-19 response NOW (or tomorrow morning at the latest). They’ve made it very clear that they haven’t learned anything about how to respond so far, and they’re firmly committed to closing their ears to hearing anything else that might upset their preconceived notions (and I love the idea that, if we relax social distancing, people will rush back to work and the economy will be great again. Who’s going to do that, when they have no idea whether or not the person in the next cubicle is in the later stages of an asymptomatic coronavirus infection? At least they’ll get a paycheck, and their survivors will be able to give them a nice funeral. If I were a business owner – with more than myself as an employee – I would require that every employee get a negative Covid-19 test before returning, and have a new one every week thereafter, until the virus is finally under control nationwide. But there’s one problem with that idea: See “Testing, Criminal Lack Thereof”).

If the two men want to stay in their current positions, that’s fine – hell, I’ll even let them keep their nice offices. Maybe they can find something useful to do with their time, like finish the wall with Mexico (and build one with Canada while they’re at it), since it will soon be needed to keep Americans in. But some responsible adult needs to be brought in to lead the entire Covid-19 response, and needs to be given the powers needed to make that happen. It has to be someone from outside, since there’s nobody left in Trump’s team that would be remotely up to the task (this includes Dr. Fauci, who of course has great intentions, but no clue on how to make them come to fruition. He probably knew all along the huge consequences of the delay in testing, yet just tried to work silently from the inside to make things as un-bad as they could be; that sure worked out well). The person we bring in needs to be someone who will pound on a desk and scream until the person behind it sees the truth – and fire them if they don’t.

Of course, this is very late to be making such a change. If Trump and Pence would have admitted they made mistakes early on and also showed they were sincere about listening to the experts and moving forward vigorously based on the best advice possible – and that they really believed that the virus was more than simply a hoax perpetrated by Trump’s enemies to deny him the election – I would say they should continue to be in charge of the effort. But they place obstacles in its way every day and are literally doing far more harm than good.

And here’s something you may find surprising: I’m almost positive what I’m advocating will come to pass in a few weeks. Why? The same word I’ve been using all along: exponential. By next Wednesday (using the growth rate for the last seven days – 757%), I expect 416,000 total confirmed cases (vs. 81,000 in China, which is probably very close to the final total). This means that, using a 3% estimate of case mortality rate, there will be 12,477 expected deaths over the course of the pandemic. This is based on my assumption that next Wednesday there’s a total lockdown (with emergency exceptions, of course) across the country which is 100% successful, resulting in 0 new infections after April 15.

By Wednesday, April 8, I expect 4 million infections (using the same 757% growth rate, which was the rate for the last seven days. The 7-day rate has varied between 545% and 839% since March 9, the first day I had enough data to compute it); this will work out to 120,496 deaths. And by April 15, we’ll probably be close to a million deaths over the course of the epidemic.

I’m not the only person saying these things; the epidemiologists seem to agree that there will be more than a million deaths. I’ve heard the CDC itself is saying there could be between 200,000 and 1.7 million.

But what if we totally locked down today? We would get the expected deaths number shown in my Numbers post today: 1,648.  So I guess it’s all just a question of how many deaths we think are appropriate. Maybe you think it’s worth a few hundred thousand deaths, as long as we make sure Trump gets re-elected. That doesn’t happen to be the way I think, but hey – it’s a free country.

6:55 PM CT: The NY Times has a chilling story about Trump refusing to even use the military - the much-admired Defense Logistics Agency - to allocate ventilators where they're most needed, and then re-allocate them when things change. This alone might make a big difference, but since each governor has to consider his or her own state's needs first, it's almost by definition something that has to be done by the Feds. But Trump is suddenly very concerned about government usurping the role of private industry. And I totally agree with him: When NYC is probably going to start triaging next week and other cities will follow on their heels, your number one concern should be not to interfere with the workings of private industry. Makes perfect sense to me...

This statement will be inscribed on his tombstone.