Cockwomble (A Noun)

Reading Jeffrey St. Clair's weekly "Roaming Charges" column is both infuriating and depressing but also extremely informative, even a little comforting in its dark sarcasm.

From the March 20, 2020 edition:

+ We're about to see what happens to a nation whose economy has been kept afloat by the service sector ... shuts down the service sector. The restaurant industry has been almost completely shuttered, it's 10.6 million workers laid off or fired.

+ Sen. Ron Johnson (who Wisconsin elected over Russ Feingold): "Getting coronavirus is not a death sentence except for maybe no more than 3.4 percent of our population. We don't shut down our economy because tens of thousands of people die on the highways." (By the way, 3.4 percent of the US population is: 10.8 million people.) ... After attending a secret briefing on COVID-19, Johnson sold off $25 million in stock equity. Then he voted against the coronavirus relief package.

+ Weeks ago, while Trump was telling the public that the virus posed a very low risk to Americans ... Republican politicians, like Sen. Richard Burr, were busy telling their biggest donors the truth: that the virus was highly contagious and that it might kill hundreds of thousands and upend the global economy. How much stock trading did these guys with the inside knowledge about COVID-19 do before the Great Collapse? ...

+ While ... Americans [were told] the virus was "contained" ... Burr, lauded as one of the last reasonable Republicans in the Senate, dumped $1.6 million of stock in resorts, hotels and hospitality companies. ...

+ The nation's leading climate denier, Senator Jim Inhofe sold up to $500,000 of his stock on the Monday after his Friday (January 24) secret briefing on COVID-19.

+ Kelly Loeffler [a Georgia senator], dumped millions in stock after attending the same closed-door session. Loeffler is married to Jeffrey Sprecher, the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, and the chairman and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, which is NYSE's parent company.

+ Of course, foreseeing this ripe opportunity for plunder, Congress voted to give itself immunity from insider trading laws during the Obama administration.

+ The Trump administration is furiously blaming China for the COVID crisis ... China identified COVID-19 on January 7 and shared its genetic sequence with the World Health Organization on January 12. So that leaves a big, lethal gap between when the US knew the virus posed a pandemic threat and when the Trump administration finally took action (except for cronies selling stock). Trump on February 28: "It will disappear like a miracle."

+ The first coronavirus case in the US and South Korea was detected on the same day. By late January, Seoul had medical companies starting to work on a diagnostic test—one was approved a week later. Since then, South Korea has tested 290,000 people and the coronavirus outbreak is largely under control. The US has only tested 60,000 and cases are exploding. When confronted about this staggering disparity, the Surgeon General of the United States, Jerome Adams, said it was because South Korea is "an authoritarian nation". South Korea has been more democratic than the US since at least 1987.

+ Why Trump won't say a word about South Korea. ... Since its outbreak began on January 20 ... it has conducted 3,600 tests per million people compared to 5 tests per million in the US.

+ In 18 days, the US has gone from 70 confirmed cases to 9,236.

+ Arizona officials estimate they have 70,000 undetected cases of COVID-19. As of Monday, they'd only performed 143 tests.

+ [NYC Mayor] Bill DeBlasio [is] bragging that NYC is capable of offering 5,000 tests a day. Great news. So how long will it take to test all of NYC's 8.5 million residents? ... 4.6 years.

+ The US, a far richer country, with more time to prepare, is currently on an Italy-like (which has now surpassed China in fatalities) trend for COVID-19 cases and deaths. The deaths ... in Italy aren't all from the virus, more and more are from the structural collapse of the health care infrastructure: "Now, people wait an hour on the phone to report heart attacks, because all the lines are busy." Note: Italy has more hospital beds than the US.

+ Trump's about-face this week was reportedly spurred by a British study suggesting that the US could experience 2.2 million fatalities if the coronavirus epidemic goes unabated.

+ Trump promised that 500 million respirators were on the way. But the grant application notes that it make take 18 months to deliver them.

+ In Evansville, Indiana, the hospital mask shortage is so severe they've asked local sewing groups to start making them and have included a downloadable pattern in PDF format.

+ Trump tried to bribe a German drug company to make its coronavirus vaccine available only for US citizens.

+ Trump said COVID-19 crisis could last until "August, maybe July." He didn't specify the year.

+ The Spanish Flu originated in Haskell County, Kansas. It became known as the Spanish Flu because Spain, which was not involved directly in World War I and its papers were not censored by the government, reported relatively freely on the spread of the flu. ... Here's John Barry's ground breaking essay tracking the origins of the "Spanish Flu" to Haskell County in rural Kansas.

+ Trader Joe's is refusing to allow its employees to wear gloves.

+ Mar-a-Lago, it's not just the bedbugs any more: "The entourage of President Jair Bolsonaro who went to the United States just over a week ago [and met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago] has 13 people infected with coronavirus." ... How COVID-19 Got to Brazil: 22 people on Bolsonaro's plane back from the US have now tested positive for COVID-19.

+ Trump is nominating Carlos Trujillo, who covertly spearheaded OAS official's baseless smearing of Bolivia's October elections, paving way for the coup, to be Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere.

+ At a time when there's a pandemic virus on the loose killing people with pre-existing lung disorders, the Coal Mining industry ... is demanding that they be allowed to suspend payments for black lung disease!

+ Trump's Interior Department downplayed the threat of Coronavirus for employees and on Indian reservations for weeks, saying they were "at very low risk." ...

+ [T]he oil companies are targeting Canyonlands and Arches National Parks in southern Utah.

+ Trump ... tapped Anna Seidman, a 20-year veteran attorney of the trophy hunting group, Safari Club International, to serve as assistant director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's international affairs program.

+ When Keith Richards is concerned about health risks, you know shit's getting serious.

Digby's Hullaballoo, March 21, 2020:

On her show last night, Rachel Maddow basically urged her colleagues not to live-broadcast Trump's latest rallies, aka his press conferences on coronavirus. You know why — the lies, the personal attacks, the racism, the dangerous misinformation and the delusional happy talk. If the networks don't broadcast Trump live, they can then edit out Trump's nonsense and provide the public with actual information. This will save lives.

Far more sensible than quarantining Trump's dangerous posturing would be to remove him and his entire administration from office immediately. Every day he's in office, more people are at risk of dying due to his incompetence and disorganization.

And then there is this, from nearly three years ago.

Independent UK, April 10, 2017:

Donald Trump's Administration Is Not Prepared For The Next Global Pandemic

The Trump administration has failed to fill crucial public health positions across the government, leaving the nation ill-prepared to face one of its greatest potential threats: a pandemic outbreak of a deadly infectious disease, according to experts in health and national security. ...

[A]fter 11 weeks in office, the Trump administration has filled few of the senior positions critical to responding to an outbreak. There is no permanent director at the CDC or at the US Agency for International Development. At the Department of Health and Human Services, no one has been named to fill sub-Cabinet posts for health, global affairs, or preparedness and response. It's also unclear whether the National Security Council will assume the same leadership on the issue as it did under President Barack Obama, according to public health experts. ...

In addition to leaving key posts vacant, the Trump administration has displayed little interest in the issue, health and security experts say. The White House has made few public statements about the importance of preparing for outbreaks ... Trump also has proposed sharp cuts to government agencies working to stop deadly outbreaks at their source. ...

A global health crisis "will go from being on no one's to-do list to being the only thing on their list," said Bill Steiger, who headed the HHS office of global health affairs during the George W. Bush administration. ...

Americans are at greater risk than ever from new infectious diseases, drug-resistant infections and potential bio-terrorism organisms, despite advances in medicine and technology, experts say. Not only has the total number of outbreaks increased in the past three decades, but the scale, impact and methods of transmission also have expanded because of climate change, urbanisation and globalisation.