NEW YORK, March 11 (Reuters) - Health officials scheduled to testify at a congressional hearing on the fast-moving coronavirus outbreak on Wednesday are being called to an “emergency meeting” at the White House later today, Rep. Carolyn Maloney said, noting that the hearing would have to end early.
The witnesses, who include National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, will have to leave early, so the meeting will end at 11:45 ET, she said.
Maloney said that she did not have additional details about the meeting, except that it is urgent. (Reporting by Michael Erman, Editing by Franklin Paul)
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IN A WORLD BURNING UP WITH FEVER, THE DUMBEST MAN ALIVE IS IN COMMAND OF THE EFFORT TO STOP IT.
THE DAILY SHOW BRINGS YOU… PANDUMBIC.
If only it was a parody…
https://youtu.be/VcEnG7qxnLY
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When somebody shows you who they are, believe them.
This is the GOP: monsters and trolls “joking” about murdering a legal icon they see as a political rival.
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I don’t even begin to comprehend this. The University of Dayton does the responsible thing and shuts down its campus due to an epidemic… and people riot over it?
Police in riot gear clear crowd of more than 1,000 on UD campus
Coronavirus: 1,000 Cases Now In U.S. And ‘It’s Going To Get Worse,’ Fauci Says
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CNN
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This pertains to the ‘what you can’t see’ part of this influenza outbreak. And it does mention the Italian doctor who saw dramatic changes in Italy, hospitals etc that @Windthin Italian doctor posting posted about above.
There’s an old brain teaser that goes like this: You have a pond of a certain size, and upon that pond, a single lilypad. This particular species of lily pad reproduces once a day, so that on day two, you have two lily pads. On day three, you have four, and so on.
Now the teaser. “If it takes the lily pads 48 days to cover the pond completely, how long will it take for the pond to be covered halfway?”
The answer is 47 days. Moreover, at day 40, you’ll barely know the lily pads are there.
…
But go back to those lily pads: When something dangerous is growing exponentially, everything looks fine until it doesn’t. In the early days of the Wuhan epidemic, when no one was taking precautions, the number of cases appears to have doubled every four to five days.
The crisis in northern Italy is what happens when a fast doubling rate meets a “threshold effect,” where the character of an event can massively change once its size hits a certain threshold.
In this case, the threshold is things such as ICU beds. If the epidemic is small enough, doctors can provide respiratory support to the significant fraction of patients who develop complications, and relatively few will die. But once the number of critical patients exceeds the number of ventilators and ICU beds and other critical-care facilities, mortality rates spike.
Daniele Macchini, a doctor in Bergamo, Italy, recently posted a heart-stopping account to Facebook of what he and his colleagues have endured: the hospital emptying out, the wards eerily silent as they waited for the patients they couldn’t quite believe would come … and then, the “tsunami.”
“One after the other the departments that had been emptied fill up at an impressive pace. … The boards with the names of the patients, of different colors depending on the operating unit, are now all red and instead of surgery you see the diagnosis, which is always the damned same: bilateral interstitial pneumonia.”
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Walmart officially is treating workers better than the GOP Senate.
This move guarantees that the coronavirus epidemic will spread faster as Americans are forced to choose between their health and their jobs.
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Trump Is Seething Over Having to Work With Pelosi on a Coronavirus Response
Among other things, the president fears that the House Speaker would use a private meeting to try and embarrass him.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-seething-over-having-pelosi-181336075.html
All of official Washington has come to an agreement that swift, bold action is needed to counteract the dramatic economic impact of the coronavirus’ spread. But negotiations around such a package have been complicated by the fact that President Donald Trump can’t stand the idea of negotiating one-on-one with his chief counterpart, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Indeed, he suspects that she would use the moment to try to humiliate him.
Two senior Trump administration officials described a president who, out of an intense bitterness toward the House Speaker, has shuddered at the prospect of being in the same room with her during the ongoing public-health crisis and economic reverberations.
Instead, Trump has deputized some of his more prominent lieutenants to handle the delicate negotiations. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, in particular, has emerged as one of the administration’s top envoys to Capitol Hill, as Team Trump and lawmakers attempt to cobble together some form of economic stimulus in the wake of a now-declared global pandemic.
“At this time, the president does not see it as productive to [personally] negotiate directly with Nancy Pelosi,” said one of the senior administration officials. “For now, it’s best for her to deal directly with Sec. Mnuchin and others in the administration.” The official recalled how Trump bristled at Pelosi for, in the president’s estimation, “immediately” leaving recent private meetings the two had to leak its contents and try to, in the source’s characterization, “make the president look bad and score political points.”
“When you’re in the middle of a public health crisis, you don’t need that kind of theater,” this official added.
Fears of that happening have animated the president as he has charted out a response to the growing coronavirus threat. During one recent meeting, the president mentioned that he didn’t want to “waste my time” right now “with Nancy” and Democratic leaders given how “horrible” Pelosi has been lately, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting. At the same meeting, the president made sure to specifically reference Pelosi tearing up a physical copy of his “beautiful” State of the Union speech, as a reason for him believing discussions with her would be fruitless.
Accordingly, while Mnuchin and Pelosi have spoken several times this week—including at an in-person meeting in the Speaker’s office on Tuesday—the president and the Speaker have not spoken at all in recent days, according to her office. The president has also not spoken to Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), according to his office.
At a moment when federal officials are attempting to swiftly address an growing biomedical crisis, the inability of the legislative and executive branches to communicate at the highest levels would seem suboptimal. Whether that lingering animus between Pelosi and Trump will ultimately doom a legislative response to coronavirus seems unlikely, however.
House Democrats are planning to unveil a package on Wednesday that targets their specific coronavirus relief priorities: expanding paid sick leave and unemployment insurance, beefing up federal labor protections for health care workers, and broadening access to food stamps and free school lunches.
The refrain from Democrats on both sides of the Capitol has been that the most effective way to mitigate the economic effects of the virus is to implement measures that help to slow its spread—like sick leave, which would make it easier for people to stay home.
Trump has reportedly been willing to consider backing Democratic-endorsed measures. But his own approach—at least publicly—looks quite different. The administration has floated targeted relief to industries economically harmed by the virus’ spread, such as the hotel, airline and cruise ship businesses. And it has embraced the idea of a lengthy, if not permanent, payroll tax cut to get more money directly to employers and employees.
Congressional Republicans have sounded squeamish about the price tag for a stimulus measure like the one Trump may be envisioning, and on Wednesday several said that they would be open to quickly passing a House Democratic-drawn bill. After Trump visited them for lunch on Tuesday, Senate Republicans sounded uncertain as to when the White House would roll out a specific set of proposals. But they were certain the president wanted swift action.
“The president sort of pitched a number of ideas that his team has looked at and recommended them for consideration,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO). “What was clear was that he certainly urges action and thinks action should be taken soon. I think he would prefer sooner rather than later.”
In that vacuum, Pelosi is making her play. By moving quickly—with a vote possibly as soon as this week—Democrats have an opportunity to set the legislative framework for the debate on how to respond to coronavirus, possibly boxing in the White House and Senate Republicans.
Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) said Democrats should work with Republicans on areas of common concern, but “if the Senate is unwilling to engage in a serious way on that, then my hope would be that we would move forward on what we think is right and then press them to adopt what the House does.”
But most on the Hill, in either party, recognize that whatever agreement does take shape is going to have to go through Pelosi and Trump—no matter how abysmal their relationship may be.
“We need a two-way agreement between the House and the President,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), a top-ranking House Democrat. “And if we reach that agreement, I’m confident that we’ll be able to move a bill through the Senate… We did that on criminal justice reform, we did that on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement… We’ll have to do it in this particular instance as well.”
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It did not take much time either.
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Trump is apparently giving a speech tonight about the coronavirus… written by Stephen Miller, with Jared Kushner deciding how we should handle it all.
We’re doomed.
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Sobering thread on what we could face if we don’t quickly ramp up our public health mitigation approach:
https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedNews/status/1237886018348412928
The Coronavirus May Linger On Plastic And Stainless Steel For Days, A Preliminary Study Found
A preliminary study sheds more light on the virus’s ability to linger in the environment.
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Trump Is Withholding Coronavirus Testing Kits From Governors
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Jared in charge…arrrggghh
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Trump gave his speech.
It’s full of gaslighting and some interesting actions.
https://twitter.com/windthin/status/1237907260283764736
https://twitter.com/windthin/status/1237907628002611206
https://twitter.com/windthin/status/1237908531841568774
Rita and Tom Hanks are in quarantine in Australia with the #coronavirus.
I wish them full recovery.
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Washington Post reports
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The fact that Trump here does not understand that goods don’t move themselves, they require people, is as mind-boggling as the fact that he is trying to assure us the trade will be okay when it’s the deadly pandemic we’re worried about.
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Oh gods.
https://twitter.com/DavidLauter/status/1237919338365149184
https://twitter.com/OdoyleCharlotte/status/1237942522812542976
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Watch CNN Don Lemon speaks with Dr. Sanjay Gupta on how many tests were done by the CDC yesterday - 8 in total!!!
Today - 0 tests done by CDC
A grand total of 8 tests conducted by other public health agencies across the country.
video 
https://twitter.com/KagroX/status/1237930627699224578?s=20
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