If Trump "Opens Up the Economy" on May 1, It Will Close Again by May 15 Due to Reignited COVID-19 Infectious Spread
April 9, 2020
Navy Coronavirus testing (US Pacific Fleet)
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH
The case for not allowing Trump to try and compel people back to work in May is in plain sight.
BuzzFlash has posted several articles this week about essential workers who are daily in their jobs being infected by the Coronavirus, with a not insignificant number dying. This includes, but not limited to supermarket workers, truck drivers, police, warehouse workers, farm workers, meat factory workers, postal workers, delivery men and women, Lyft and Uber drivers, first responders, airlines flight attendants and pilots, and, of course, medical personnel. Virtually every category of worker still participating in the “essential” economy has experienced Covid-19 infections and deaths.
Given that this is the case, how could “the economy be opened” even if the curve “flattens,” given that while individuals are sheltered-in-place in a little over 40 states, the virus is still spreading, with many deaths among people currently still working. Furthermore, the Trump and Fox News death cult followers in the Red states either live in states without shelter-in-place laws or openly flout gubernatorial executive orders. Remember that of the multiple things Trump has done or not done that obstruct reining in COVID-19 has been to refuse a national lock-down order.
The Trump cult followers in the Red states are going to be soon experiencing an explosion in Coronavirus cases that will spread with people who travel to Blue states and exacerbate the infection process. Trump keeps bragging about his ludicrous claim to have slowed the virus by prohibiting flights from China (which the NYT disproved by showing how infected Chinese residents flew to Europe and infected people who then flew to the US and helped begin the first wave of infections, and Chinese visitors were also allowed in later).
As of the writing of this commentary, 426,000 Americans have been confirmed (through tests) infected and 14,500 have died from the Coronavirus. On Nicolle Wallace’s April 8th MSNBC program, medical expert Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel suggested that the slow testing build up might mean that actually 10 times the current tested infection confirmations could actually be the number of infected Americans, or approximately 4,260,000 who are carrying COVID-19 or have passed through as asymptomatic and have never been tested. (And, BuzzFlash has posted articles and said in commentaries that COVID-19 deaths are probably significantly undercounted.) Emanuel also believes that there needs to be an 18-month flexible plan to move toward an active economy.
Remember that Trump has no plan, that television networks have given “The Daily Trump Show” faux “briefings” regular coverage and actually have promoted them even though they are re-election variety shows as I pointed out in a commentary this week, that he is sociopathically using this catastrophe to achieve authoritarian, corruption, pollution and other pernicious goals, as the attention of Americans is diverted to staying alive, and that he is now leading a lethal delusional Jim Jones cult following over the clif. This includes his unrelenting advice to push unproven drugs, particularly Hydroxychloroquine, as huckster quack cures, diverting much-needed research attention from real potential COVID-19 treatments and ultimately a vaccine.
BuzzFlash has written multiple commentaries on the need for massive increased testing before people can even remotely feel secure venturing out of their homes to work and socialize. The testing has indeed finally increased somewhat with 2.2 million COVID-19 tests performed as of this commentary. However, epidemiologically, this is a drop in the bucket.
BuzzFlash still reads and receives anecdotal evidence that tests are still limited or unavailable in many areas, particularly when state governments have not independently secured a sufficient number. (In short, there is evidence that states are pretty much on their own in obtaining large quantities of test kits. How the so-called “White House Coronavirus Task Force” is distributing test kits remains a mystery, as does how the national stockpile became depleted when states report that the Trump admin has not distributed much of anything to them.) In some “hotspots,” only patients hospitalized with Coronavirus symptoms are tested due to shortages.
As evidence of the continued federal failure on testing, an April 8 NPR article is entitled, “Federal Support Ends For Coronavirus Testing Sites As Pandemic Peak Nears.” Consistent with Trump’s viewpoint of minimal federal support, if any, in fighting the Coronavirus, Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services says that the testing sites will be transferred to the states, many of which do not have the staffing and tests required.
Furthermore, I have repeatedly heard of people, anecdotally, still being denied tests unless they have three of four Coronavirus symptoms (Los Angeles is the only exception I have come across, which announced it will now test a limited number of people without symptoms). For instance, a radio interviewer told me on Monday of a friend who that morning had gone to a major teaching hospital in Chicago, where she was told that they could not test her because of a shortage of tests. A woman called into The Thom Hartmann program on Wednesday and talked about both of the long back log of test results and a shortage of tests. She claimed that the state has asked the Trump administration for the Abbott rapid testing device (touted ad nauseam on “The Daily Trump Show)” but was turned down,
As BuzzFlash has noted many a time, without massive testing, and vitally-needed contact tracing, that will detect asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic carriers and persons who are afraid to be tested because they don’t have insurance for care, the homeless, etc., any return to non-essential work is doomed to collapse within 2-3 weeks, as a surge of new Coronavirus cases will hit hospitals. However, the Trump administration appears to be undercutting rather than facilitating such a massive testing and contact tracing capability.
On Monday, in an email the Center for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR) warned that the rate of increased testing might be slowing down:
The growth of COVID-19 cases in the United States has slowed considerably over the past week. The average daily percentage increase in confirmed cases fell from 33.6 percent, for March 13–26, to 16.8 percent for March - April 2.
However, this could very well be due to a leveling off of the increase in testing for the disease, which occurred over the same period. The average percentage increase in tests per day fell from 31.3 percent to just 13.7 percent, in comparing the same two periods (March 13–26 with March 27–April 2).
“We need to ‘flatten the curve’ of the virus, not the testing for it,” said Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
“The sad thing is that this data shows how little we really know about the level and spread of the novel Coronavirus in the United States,” he said.
“Many public health and epidemiological experts agree that we need mass testing in the United States to get better information on how COVID-19 is spreading and where. It’s much more difficult to stop the spread of a disease when you don’t have good information on these basic facts.”
Is this Trump trying to reduce the numbers again? As previously noted, from a public health standpoint, as many epidemiologists have confirmed, we are still “working in the dark” about long-term COVID-19 testing because we have almost no idea of how many infected people are circulating (including asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic infecters) in the population at a given time. An effective public health plan would include large scale, focused broad population testing and extensive contact tracing. This would involve a federal, state and local series of task forces to develop effective public health implementation plans to respond to COVID-19 that would be professional and not a variety show dysfunctional “White House Coronavirus Task Force.”
Furthermore, a second set of testing is needed in a public health plan for controlling the Coronavirus: serological testing for antibodies. These are being used in South Korea, for instance. They allow to test for individuals who have had COVID-19 and recovered, and might therefore assist in identifying people who could return to working outside home due to at least temporary immunity. They also identify people whose blood, with antibody immunity to the Coronavirus, could be converted to plasma that could be intravenously given to persons hospitalized with COVID-19, and perhaps might help reverse the virus by building up immunity.
However, as with all things Coronavirus, the Trump administration has been behind the curve in implementing and providing states with serological antibody testing. Yet, no COVID-19 public health plan is complete without this component.
Indeed, an enterprising physician in Orange County obtained and is using serological tests he obtained from South Korea, but other American medical providers receive no assistance with the tests from the federal government.
For these reasons, given Trump’s view that he is on “stand-by,” the states have been largely left to themselves in implementing infection testing, let alone serological testing.
And because of that daunting reality, any effort to “open up the economy” in the near future is doomed to disastrous failure.
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