https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/19/coronavirus-update-us/
By Derek Hawkins and Felicia Sonmez @ WashPost:
With coronavirus cases rising across the country and the U.S. death toll topping 137,000, President Trump on Sunday dismissed concerns about the spike in infections, telling Fox News that “many of those cases shouldn’t even be cases.”
“Many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day,” the president told Fox News host Chris Wallace in an interview. “They have the sniffles and we put it down as a test.”
While young people make up an increasing share of new cases, the virus has affected people in all age groups. A surge of infections is driving deaths back up again after months of decline, and hospitals in hard-hit states such as Florida, Texas and Arizona are facing an influx of patients that health officials say could soon overwhelm medical systems. Nationwide, hospitalizations were on track to exceed their previous peak of roughly 60,000, reached in the pandemic’s early months.
Here are some other significant developments.
• The Trump administration is trying to block billions of dollars for states to conduct testing and contact tracing in an upcoming coronavirus relief bill, people involved in the talks said Saturday. The administration is also trying to block billions that GOP senators want to allocate for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the people said.
• A growing number of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the pandemic. Currently, 38 percent approve of his handling, and 60 percent disapprove, according to a new Post-ABC News poll.
• A study from South Korea could bolster those who argue that reopening classrooms in much of the United States is too risky, suggesting that while children under 10 are less likely to spread the coronavirus, those between ages 10 and 19 will spread it similarly to adults.
• Georgia’s presentation of its coronavirus data is again under scrutiny, with a viral tweet pointing out how the color-coding of a government map has evolved. At the beginning of the month, for instance, a county needed at least 5,959 coronavirus cases to be colored red in the state’s map of the outbreak. Now, a county needs at least 9,597 — with the result that no other county has newly joined the four that have been colored red since July 1, even as the state’s cases have jumped by more than 37 percent in that period.
• Health authorities are seeking to conduct testing faster while conserving resources. The Food and Drug Administration on Saturday reissued an emergency use authorization to Quest Diagnostics for a coronavirus test to be used in pool testing, which involves combining samples from several people and testing them all at once.Trump’s remarks came after another week of grim data highlighting the uncontrolled spread of the virus. Infections rose in states from every region of the country, with more than a dozen states on Saturday reaching record highs in their seven-day averages for new daily cases.
Georgia, Missouri, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Kentucky reported new single-day case records on Saturday, while states from Vermont to North Dakota to Oregon showed significant increases in their weekly averages, according to tracking by The Washington Post.
More than 20 states are reporting seven-day averages in coronavirus-related deaths that are higher than at the end of June, underscoring the turnaround since May and June, when deaths declined nationally — which Trump had touted as a sign of progress.
Rep. Donna Shalala (D-Fla.), whose district encompasses parts of Miami with widespread infections, pushed back on the notion that the new cases were limited to young, healthy people and weren’t a cause for concern.
“It’s the working poor, it’s seniors, it’s now young people, and it’s totally out of control,” Shalala, a former health and human services secretary, said on ABC News’s “This Week.” “We need to close down again … That’s our worst nightmare, and we’re going to have to do that.”
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You can read the rest of this article about the Trump kakistocracy in action at the link.
It’s a dark and disturbing tale of unrelenting stupidity, evil, corruption, and cowardice on the part of those who refuse to stand up to a would be emperor who has never had any clothes.
PWS
07-19-20
