Wuhan Virus Watch: Trump Invites NY Gov. Cuomo To White House
Maryland buys test kits in S. Korea. Georgia and Tennessee begin to roll back shelter-at-home rules. Study shows LA County coronavirus more prevalent than officially reported.
Today’s Wuhan Coronavirus update will start with a brief review of failed press narratives concerning President Donald Trump’s handling of the national emergency.
- Early on, the media dismissed Trump’s statement about rapid vaccine development. Vaccines are now in the testing phase.
- When Trump indicated treatment with hydroxychoropquine might be an option, the press published fish tank cleaner stories. The drug has been acclaimed as a life-saver.
- Journalists pushed hard on the models that indicated 2 million would die from COVID-19. The Infection Fatality Rates are turning out to be substantially lower than initially feared.
- The media continually asserts Trump did not act fast enough, despite shutting the country down in January despite press dismissals of the hazards and assertions by his Task Force (also assembled in January amid Impeachment) that Trump has followed their guidance.
After all of these tedious narrative failures, the media has now focused on blaming Trump that there isn’t enough testing. Today’s briefing demonstrated the ramped-up testing capacity, which will be useful in getting states to Phase One of the economic reopening plan. The media is citing Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and his procurement of 500,000 Korean-made test kits as proof of Trump’s failure.
Therefore, Trump spent some time on Monday’s briefing to show slides and push-back on the assertions and complaints.
“Some of the governors like, as an example, the governor from Maryland, didn’t really understand the list, he didn’t understand too much about what was going on,” Trump said, referring to a list of some 5,000 laboratories nationwide the administration has said is prepared to accept addition coronavirus tests. “So now I think he’ll be able to do that. It’s pretty simple. They have tremendous capacity. We hope to be able to help him out.”
Trump went on to criticize Hogan’s purchase of tests from South Korea. The president said that Hogan “could have saved a lot of money” if he had asked Washington instead. He later said “a little knowledge” would have been helpful for the governor.
“He really didn’t know about the federal laboratories,” Trump said. “If he did know about it, he would have been happy.”
President Trump said he and VP Pence provided all 50 governors with a list of labs to find additional testing capacity.
He noted: “The governor from Maryland didn’t really understand the list. He didn’t really understand too much about what was going on…” pic.twitter.com/spQUMPRHl3— FOX Baltimore (@FOXBaltimore) April 21, 2020
Trump invites Cuomo to White House for meeting on coronavirus response
New York has been hard hit by the virus, especially the New York City area. Governor Andrew Cuomo stated that the federal response to the crisis has been a “phenomenal accomplishment.”
Cuomo will be visiting Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to meet with President Trump in the Oval Office.
The president announced the meeting at his daily coronavirus task force briefing on Monday.
“I think the governor’s going to come in to see us tomorrow,” Trump said.
Cuomo’s office confirmed to Fox News that the meeting would take place but did not offer any details as to what would be discussed.
…Trump praised Cuomo’s efforts saying, “They’re really getting it together in New York.”
“A lot of good things are happening in New York,” Trump added.
The state’s daily death toll dropped below 500 for the first time since the start of the month on Monday but the total number of deaths still surpasses any other state in the country and makes up 44.5 percent of the U.S.’ casualties.
Georgia, Tennessee announce plans to phase out coronavirus stay-at-home orders
Meanwhile, other Governors are going ahead and implementing their states’ reopen plans.
The governors of Georgia and Tennessee on Monday afternoon announced new plans to bring their states’ economies closer to full force amid signs the coronavirus outbreak is slowing.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said certain businesses, including gyms and hair salons, can reopen beginning this Friday. Meanwhile, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee confirmed his state’s stay-at-home order, previously extended to April 30, will end that day.
“These businesses will open according to specific guidance that we will provide in accordance with state and national experts in both medicine and business,” Lee said in a statement. “Social distancing works, and as we open up our economy it will be more important than ever that we keep social distancing as lives and livelihoods depend on it.”
Hundreds of thousands in L.A. County may have been infected with coronavirus
California may have gotten a head start on herd immunity.
Hundreds of thousands of Los Angeles County residents may have been infected with the coronavirus by early April, far outpacing the number of officially confirmed cases, according to a report released Monday.
The initial results from the first large-scale study tracking the spread of the coronavirus in the county found that 4.1% of adults have antibodies to the virus in their blood, an indication of past exposure.
That translates to roughly 221,000 to 442,000 adults who have recovered from an infection, once margin of error is taken into account, according to the researchers conducting the study. The county had reported fewer than 8,000 cases at that time.
The findings suggest the fatality rate may be much lower than previously thought.
Defiant Residents Grab Shovels, Dirt Bikes After Cali Authorities Dump Tons Of Sand In Skateparks
It looks like California’s herd is already getting restless.
California authorities tried to stop skateboarders by dumping literally tons of sand into at least two area skateparks in an effort to enforce so-called “social distancing.” However, the effort was for naught, it seems.
Young residents in California responded to the government’s extreme social distancing enforcement action by grabbing a few shovels, buckets, and booms and turning at least one sand-filled skatepark into a park for both skating and dirt biking.
“Took advantage of all the sand the city dumped into the San Clemente skatepark then helped some local skaters dig it all out so they could do some social shredding,” Buttery Films’ Instagram account posted at San Clement Skatepark on Sunday.
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Andy, since you declined to jump in the hudson, here are a few things that should be done.
A: leave Fredo at home.
B: Stop applying draconian downstate measures to upstate. We don’t get packed into unsanitary subway cars to go places.
Did they mention that Maryland’s governor Hogan’s Korean wife negotiated the deal with South Korea?
interesting….
If true it’s a mildly interesting trivium, but I don’t see why anyone should have a problem with it.
“The state’s daily death toll dropped below 500 for the first time since the start of the month…”
As in they ran out of miscellaneous deaths which they would claim were Wuhan Chinese Flu to run up the tally for Federal aid.
Almost half of all the US death toll and not a whole lot of it tallied north of Albany (or even much outside the NY City metro area). For example in far Northern NY as of Sunday there were exactly zero (0) confirmed cases of Wuhan Chinese Corona Virus in St. Lawrence County. There were four quarantined in that county and apparently all four were quarantined due to their travel, not for testing positive.
Just for the record: see: https://www.stlawco.org/ for current (April 20, 2020 Covid 19 data)
I can’t wait until Trump begins a tweet storm aimed at CA Governor Gruesome. It’s not enough that he is worried about the 50% of attendees at Trump’s CA rallies being Democrats. Now he has to worry about the surfers, bikers, skate boarders, runners, people who need hair cuts,…. generally everybody, coming after him. OPEN CA NOW!!!!!!
91% of deaths in March had 1 or more underlying health issues PLUS The chinese Death Kooties. But all of those 91% of deaths were blamed on the Chinese Death Kooties.
So as a New Yorker, I’m told that if I travel outside the state I’m supposed to quarantine for 14 days. So the rules don’t apply to Governors?
New York City is building its own strategic reserve of medical equipment like gowns, test kits and ventilators because “we can’t depend on the federal government, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/21/new-york-city-builds-coronavirus-strategic-medical-reserve-we-cant-depend-on-the-federal-government-mayor-says.html
A day late and a dollar short
which of his buddies is going to profit from that, and will they actually deliver the goods. (NY put a fee on cell/mobile phones to pay for E911, got caught not using it for that purpose, so they just added a second tax/fee)
The question is why so many people ever thought they could. That’s not what the federal government is for.
Seems to be Governor Fredo has been boxed into a corner:
1. Don’t meet with Trump? He looks like a cowardly, ungrateful a**hole.
2. Meet with Trump? Fredo will get hammered by his good-time prog
pals for even appearing in the same room as “Orange Hitler.”
It’d take a heart of stone not to laugh….