A (fleeting) outbreak of honesty at the White House!


Every now and again, when pushed to the wall by events, a senior White House official makes an honest statement – and doesn’t get fired for it by Trump. This happened yesterday, when Chief of Staff Mark Meadows stated on CNN that “We’re not going to control the pandemic.” This is 100% true, if you take “We” to mean the current administration, which is why we need a different administration to step in as soon as possible. The WaPo article continues

He compared the virus to the flu and said the administration is making efforts to contain it, even as the Trump campaign faces criticism for holding large campaign rallies while coronavirus cases are on the rise.

Of course, this is nonsense. The administration isn’t making serious efforts to contain the virus, but is making serious efforts to undermine the measures that are needed if we are going to contain it, including mask wearing and widespread testing (and of course, the latest coronavirus relief bill looks destined to go nowhere, despite – or really because of – the tens of billions of dollars it provides for testing and contact tracing).

Trump repeatedly draws a false dichotomy, saying that the only way to contain the virus is to shut the economy down and he refuses to do that. But even some red states put the lie to that canard. In an editorial today, WaPo said:

Remember that huge spike in Arizona? Sustained mitigation worked: Public events were limited; bars, gyms, movie theaters and water parks were closed temporarily; restaurant dine-in capacity was reduced; and people voluntarily stayed home and wore masks where not mandated. Tough sacrifices, to be sure, for a tough situation. New cases fell by 75 percent in about a month. 

It's really tragic that so many more people will die in the coming months, when many of them could have been saved if we had an administration that actually wants to fight the virus, rather than waving the white flag. In fact, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington (whose numbers were touted by none other than Prof. D. Trump last April Fool’s Day) says there will be 375,000 deaths by the end of the year. Given that there have been 230,000 deaths as of yesterday, this means there will be 145,000 more deaths this year.

And given that there are just two months remaining in the year, this means there will be 72,000 deaths in both November and December. Compare that to the approximately 24,000 number I’m projecting this month, it means monthly deaths will close to triple this month and next. Furthermore, this means daily deaths will average more than 2,000 for the rest of the year. We averaged 1,994 deaths a day in April, the worst month so far.

Remember all the refrigerator trucks? I hope they’re still available. They should start heading now from New York to the Dakotas, Montana, Utah, etc. And they should step on the gas!

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com

 

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