It’s April, and the Coronavirus didn’t magically go away as promised. And it turns out it isn’t like the flu, and no matter how well we prepare, probably 100,000 people will die. In fact, we just hit 1,000,000 confirmed cases worldwide, and experts suggest that the death rate for COVID-19 in the U.S. for April might be 2,000 people per day. In case anybody missed the point of staying home, it’s not just to save our own butts. We’re giving our healthcare workers a chance to fight this. They’re our first line of defense and if they crumble, we all go down.

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending April 5…

Shootings This Week:

1. There were 9 mass shootings in the U.S. this week (defined as killing and/or injuring 4 or more people). Shooters kill 8 people and injure 31 more. Who has time to go around shooting people when we’re on lockdown???

Russia:

1. It turns out that errors on FISA warrants weren’t unique to the Russia investigation. Inspector General Michael Horowitz examined surveillance requests from 2015 to 2019 and found errors on all of them.

Legal Fallout:

1. The DOJ opens an inquiry into stock trades made by Senators who were briefed on the coronavirus and then made trades, specifically Senator Richard Burr. Burr says he welcomes the investigation. The probe might also include Senator Kelly Loeffler.
2. Despite Mitch McConnell defending the Trump administration’s slow response to the coronavirus pandemic by saying that they were so tied up by impeachment that they couldn’t do anything else, the Senate Homeland Security Committee is continuing with their probe into Hunter Biden.
3. Trump fires Michael Atkinson, the Intelligence Community Inspector General who alerted Congress of the whistleblower account of Trump’s actions with regard to Ukraine last year. While his job technically ends in 30 days, he is placed on administrative leave immediately. The whistleblower complaint led to Trump’s impeachment in the House.

Healthcare:

1. An appeals court rules that Texas can implement a temporary ban on abortion in almost all cases, overturning a federal judge’s previous ruling.
2. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology issue a statement saying that abortions should not be required to be delayed because of the pandemic.

Coronavirus:

1. Dr. Deborah Birx, a top official on the coronavirus task force, says they haven’t received about half of the data from the coronavirus tests conducted so far.
2. Dr. Birx predicts that even if we do everything right, the U.S. could see 100,000 to 200,000 deaths from COVID-19 by August, with around 2,000 deaths per day in April. The latest modeling suggests around 85,000 deaths by August.
3. Trump says coronavirus cases could peak around Easter, and defends his extension of the social distancing guidelines, saying it could save millions.
4. The White House says that 100,000 to 240,000 Americans could die from COVID-19, but the experts they cite don’t know where those numbers came from. Dr. Anthony Fauci says there are too many variables at play to make solid predictions.
5. Dr. Fauci says that the coronavirus task force strongly advocated that Trump extend the social distancing measures for one more month. He says their data indicates that the spread of the virus isn’t slowing down yet.

• • Trump relents and announces an extension of the social distancing measures to the end of April. He had wanted to open things up for Easter Sunday.

6. Even though we have Trump on video saying that he didn’t think governors needed the equipment they were requesting, he says he never said that. He also denies saying that if governors “don’t treat you right, I don’t call” at a press briefing, though that’s on video, too.
7. After Trump tells Vice President Pence not to work with that “woman governor” of Michigan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer (she has a name) and Pence have a call to discuss working with FEMA and the White House to get the personal protective equipment the state needs.
8. The CDC is reviewing whether we should all be wearing masks when we go out in public after originally saying they weren’t helpful in preventing the wearer from catching the disease. It is helpful in preventing the wearer from spreading the disease, though.

• • While the CDC mulls it over, Mayors and counties start recommending people wear masks or face coverings while out in public—not necessarily medical-grade, just enough to prevent droplet spread.
  • By the end of the week, the federal government issues a recommendation that people wear masks in public.

9. The Mayor of New Orleans says she would’ve canceled Mardi Gras in February if the federal government had raised any red flags about the coronavirus. Louisiana has one of the highest death rates per capita in the nation.
10. Trump has said nobody could’ve predicted a pandemic like this, while at the same time maintaining that he always knew it was a pandemic.
11. States that refused Medicaid expansion under the ACA are likely to have the biggest problems opening stores and bringing back workers. Putting a group of uninsured workers back in public before the virus is contained puts them at risk which puts more pressure on medical staff.

• • The Trump administration refuses to reopen the open enrollment period for the ACA, which would get more people insured during the pandemic.
  • Several states that run their own healthcare marketplaces have reopened enrollment for their residents.

12. A few weeks ago, Trump said Google was helping with a website to help coordinate and direct coronavirus testing. It turns out that Oscar Health, co-founded by Jared Kushner’s brother, was working on it instead.

• • The website ended up getting scrapped.
  • Fewer than 1% of Americans have been tested so far.
  • In response to governors’ complaints about testing kits not being available, Trump says he hasn’t heard about it being a problem.

13. Scientists in Germany got out way ahead of the curve, starting to develop coronavirus tests last December. They had a test by mid-January and used it liberally. While they have around 71,000 cases, their death rate is very low and they have empty hospital beds. They estimate they can do 1/2 million tests per week.
14. Mount Sinai Hospital in New York starts testing an experimental treatment for coronavirus patients using the blood plasma of people who have antibodies against the virus. A consortium of 40 of our top medical organizations are looking into this.
15. Johnson & Johnson joins with the federal government to pledge a $1 billion investment to find a potential vaccine for the coronavirus.
16. The New York Post reports that New York has issued a statewide order not to resuscitate COVID-19 patients without a pulse, and for EMTs to not bring flatlined patients to hospitals. Medical workers deny this order exists, and the next day the New York Post says the orders are rescinded. Hmmm… At any rate, many healthcare workers are not performing manual chest compressions on patients because of the risk of infection, but they are employing other life-saving measures.
17. U.S. intelligence says that China concealed the extent of the outbreak and is underreporting infections and deaths. China has reported around 82,000 cases and 3,300 deaths. Even with China’s strict, authoritarian lockdown of the source of the infection, experts doubt it could’ve been that well contained.

• • China has adjusted the way they count cases and deaths a few times, adjusting the numbers accordingly.
  • Frankly, with the lack of extensive testing and awareness, the numbers being reported by most countries are probably inaccurate.

18. Workers at Instacart, Whole Foods, and Amazon go on strike over concerns that the companies haven’t implemented sufficient safety measures to prevent coronavirus spread. They also want more pay, for what is now hazardous work.
19. Nurses protest over a lack of personal protective equipment.
20. Mike Pence freezes pandemic aid while the coronavirus task force reviews all USAID deliveries to countries requesting PPE. They also request that any equipment USAID is sending to other countries be redirected to the U.S. This change came from confusion over orders that were supposed to be coming to the U.S. that instead headed to China. There is still not any one point of contact to coordinate this.
21. The government increases Dr. Fauci’s security after he receives threats to his personal safety. Americans are out of their minds.
22. Mitch McConnell accidentally acknowledges that Trump wasn’t paying attention to the coronavirus in January when he excuses it by saying Trump was distracted by impeachment. Remember that Trump himself played no role in the impeachment process other than to criticize it. Senators urged Trump at the time for an increased mobilization against the virus.

• • McConnell himself didn’t speak about the virus until February 23, even though all Senators were briefed on it in January.

23. The U.S. Coast Guard tells cruise ships with passengers who are infected with the coronavirus to stay away from U.S. ports. They say the ships have to care for their own patients or find other countries to help.

• • Cruise ships are still floating around in limbo, unable to dock anywhere because they have infected passengers and crew. At one point, there were 29 cruise ships hovering off Florida ports waiting for approval to dock. Some have only crew on board.

  • The Port of Miami no longer accepts MEDEVAC patients because they’re reaching hospital capacity.
  • Florida Governor Ron DeSantis allows Floridians aboard Holland America cruise ships to disembark.

24. Speaker Nancy Pelosi forms a new select committee to oversee the government’s handling of the pandemic and the relief packages. Trump slams this as a partisan probe, but it’s their job.
25. G20 leaders commit to a coordinated and robust response to the pandemic and to strengthening the WHO. Their joint statement is pretty mild in comparison to their response to the 2008 crisis and 2014 Ebola outbreak, showing what a difference it makes that the U.S. isn’t taking a leadership position anymore.
26. During one of the White House’s daily coronavirus press briefings, Pence announces that Jared Kushner will oversee the distribution of medical supplies to the states, including those from the national stockpile. Kushner says that the supplies aren’t supposed to be state stockpiles, they’re supposed to be “our stockpiles” (meaning the federal government, I guess?). In reality, the mission of the stockpile is to “supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies.”
27. After Kushner’s statement, someone updates the Strategic National Stockpile webpage so that it no longer states that it is, indeed, intended for state, local, and tribal needs.

Text as of March 30: “Strategic National Stockpile is the nation’s largest supply of life-saving pharmaceuticals and medical supplies for use in a public health emergency severe enough to cause local supplies to run out. When state, local, tribal, and territorial responders request federal assistance to support their response efforts, the stockpile ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most during an emergency. Organized for scalable response to a variety of public health threats, this repository contains enough supplies to respond to multiple large-scale emergencies simultaneously.”

Text today: “The Strategic National Stockpile’s role is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies. Many states have products stockpiled, as well. The supplies, medicines, and devices for life-saving care contained in the stockpile can be used as a short-term stopgap buffer when the immediate supply of adequate amounts of these materials may not be immediately available.”

28. At a time when statements from POTUS need to be clear, fact-based, and straightforward, his chaotic briefings confuse people over whether this pandemic is serious, whether we’re doing enough to slow it down, and how long it will last.
29. Trump says there’s never been a crisis response as strong as his, but he also says he’s just playing backup to governors. Then he says governors are acting too slowly.

• • He says medical personnel and officials complain too much.
  • He says we’re winning the war against the virus as the number of both cases and deaths continue to rise.
  • He once compared the coronavirus to the flu, but now he says it’s nothing like the flu.
  • When asked, he takes no responsibility for the initial failures in testing.

30. New York unites all hospitals under one statewide hospital system to plan and coordinate staff, medical supplies, ER and ICU beds, and the sharing of all these resources.
31. Never one to give up, Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA) says that it’s overkill to close schools for the rest of the year. He also promotes hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 though it is still unproven.
32. The FDA does approve hydroxychloroquine as an emergency COVID-19 treatment despite the lack of promising studies.
33. Dr. Fauci expresses frustration that not all states are abiding by federal guidance on social distancing and stay-at-home orders.

• • Fun Fact: In a speech at Georgetown University in 2017, Dr. Fauci warned that there would be a surprise outbreak during Trump’s time in office and that we needed to do more to prepare.

34. New York hospitals are getting slammed with coronavirus patients, and the state is expecting 85,000 healthcare volunteers.
35. An engineer deliberately derails a train while trying to crash into the USNS Mercy hospital ship, docked in the Port of Los Angeles to help with any overflow. The engineer thinks the ship is suspicious and that officials are lying about its reason for being there.
36. In September 2017, Trump dismantled the PREDICT initiative, an early warning program that trained scientists in other countries, including China, to detect pandemics.
37. Trump brags about how great the ratings are for the coronavirus briefings. Like this is reality TV.

Shortages:

1. While Trump assures us that there are 10,000 ventilators in reserve, ready to be distributed, the remaining stockpile are unmaintained and unusable. The government let the maintenance contract lapse last summer and it didn’t resume until January.
2. We learn that Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar requested $2 billion to replenish the stockpile as early as February 5. The White House cut that back to $500 million, but Congress provided $16 billion.
3. The Pentagon has 2,000 ventilators waiting to be sent out, but they still haven’t been told where to send them.
4. The USNS Comfort hospital ship arrives in New York harbor to help with hospital overflow. The ship has 1,000 beds, operating rooms, a lab, and a pharmacy. 
New York City is also building a field hospital in Central Park to create additional hospital beds.
5. Canadian firm Prescientx starts selling machines that can disinfect up to 500 N95 medical masks per hour using ultraviolet light, which will help alleviate the mask shortage.
6. Governors across the county plead for medical equipment from the Strategic National Stockpile. Florida receives 100% of its request. Oklahoma and Kentucky receive a large share of their requests. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maine receive much smaller shares of their request.

• • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo compares the process they’re going through right now to being on eBay. Just when you think you’ve secured an order, someone sweeps in and outbids you. And sometimes that someone is the federal government.
  • By the end of the week, Connecticut’s governor says that the stockpile is empty.
  • Trump claims he inherited an empty stockpile from the Obama administration. According to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the stockpile warehouses stored around $7 billion worth of supplies like vaccines, ventilators, PPE, and other medicines and equipment. However, Congress didn’t allocate any funds for Obama’s administration to replace everything used to fight the H1N1 pandemic in 2009 and 2010. I’m sure we all remember how the House that came into office in 2011 handled requests from Obama.
  • It turns out that not only is the U.S. government bidding against states for medical equipment, it’s also competing against other countries and causing tensions between us and our allies.

7. Massachusetts designates the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center as a field hospital for homeless adults who test positive but don’t need full hospital care.
8. New York City morgues are almost full, and the state requests 85 refrigerated trucks to help with the load.
9. The Trump administration asks 3M to stop supplying N95 respirators to Canada. Tip: A human-defined border between countries can’t stop the spread of the virus.
10. Trump blames medical facilities for the shortage in PPE and medical equipment, accusing them of hoarding them.
11. The Pentagon is trying to secure 100,000 body bags in preparation for the coming wave of deaths.
12. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker creates a backchannel to China in order to facilitate a shipment of 1.7 million masks. Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Patriots President Jonathan Kraft partner with Massachusetts to deliver 1.4 million of those masks to Massachusetts and another 300,000 to New York. They fly the PPE from China on the Patriots’ private plane.
13. China and Oregon both donate ventilators to New York.
14. Medical supply brokers say that millions of N95 masks have been available throughout the pandemic, but the high prices resulting from the bidding wars have overwhelmed buyers. Millions are being bought by buyers from other countries.
15. At least 30 New York City hospitals are at or near capacity in their ICUs. Seven of those hospitals are near total capacity.

Exposures:

1. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu self-quarantines after being exposed to the coronavirus.
2. You can’t even make this story up. More than 150 Navy personnel aboard the USS Teddy Roosevelt contract coronavirus infections. After bringing it up through the chain of command to no avail, the ship’s commander, Captain Brett Crozier, writes a letter to dozens of people at the Pentagon pleading for assistance.

• • So no surprise, the letter gets leaked to the press.
  • So far, they’ve been told they can dock at Guam but must stay on board the boat.
  • Some of the sickest sailors have been removed from the ship.
  • Crozier says the conditions on board are ripe for the spread of the virus and requests that 90% of the crew be removed and isolated. He says there’s no reason to put these sailors’ lives at risk when it’s not wartime.
  • Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly removes Crozier from his post, saying that he didn’t use the proper security protocols to send his letter. He also calls Crozier an incredible man but says he got overwhelmed by the situation.
  • Crozier’s crew is pissed, and they cheer him as he walks off the ship.
  • Modly receives an enormous backlash for the firing.
  • In a speech to the ship’s crew, Modly calls Crozier naive and stupid.
  • Navy officials say Crozier will be reassigned and not fired.
  • And then Crozier tests positive for the coronavirus and is symptomatic.

3. The Governor of New Mexico requests federal assistance after cases of coronavirus spike in the Navajo Nation.
4. Representative Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) is diagnosed with “presumed” coronavirus infection based on her reported symptoms.
5. COVID-19 takes the lives of jazz musician Ellis Marsalis, singers and songwriters Adam Schlesinger and Joe Diffie, and Hilda Churchill, who’s not famous but should be. She lived through both World Wars and the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. We’ve also lost doctors, nurses, first responders, diplomates, elected officials. There’s no position that guarantees you won’t get sick.

Closures:

1. Surgeon General Jerome Adams asks governors who’ve held out on issuing stay-at-home orders to put them into place for at least a week. He says the coming week will be our hardest.
2. Florida and Georgia finally issue stay at home orders, effective Friday. Georgia Government Brian Kemp says he just heard that people who are asymptomatic can spread the virus. He calls it a revelation and a game-changer. Where the fuck has he been for the past month? Florida’s order allows religious gatherings.
3. Mississippi’s governor issues a stay at home order, also going into effect on Friday.
4. Missouri finally puts a stay at home order in place, but it doesn’t go into effect until next week.
5. Several counties in Pennsylvania were already under stay at home orders, and the governor expands it to the full state.
6. Nevada issues a stay at home order and closes all non-essential businesses until the end of the month.
7. Texas Governor Greg Abbott overrides city and county rules that would’ve prevented mass gatherings for religious services.
8. Hobby Lobby re-opens stores in defiance of shutdown rules in several states. In some states, it prompts police action.
9. The DNC delays its national presidential nominating convention from July to August.
10. The Department of Defense isolates some of its senior military leaders and mission-critical personnel as a precautionary measure. They also warn of escalated military activity against Iran.
11. The State Department urges all Americans traveling abroad to come home immediately because we don’t know how much longer flights will be available to bring them home.

Numbers:

1. The world now has over 1,000,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases.
2. Here are the numbers by the end of the week:

• • 312,237 people in the U.S. are infected so far (that we know of), with 8,501 deaths, up from 124,665 infections and 2,191 deaths as of last week.
  • 1,133,758 people worldwide have been infected, with 62,784 deaths, up from 691,867 infections and 32,988 deaths as of last week.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

1. Trump sends 500 U.S. troops to the southern border to help stop people from crossing the border and potentially bringing in the coronavirus.
2. The FBI warns of an uptick in violence and hate crimes against Asian Americans in the midst of the pandemic. Perhaps a little late, as attacks on Asian Americans surge to 100 per day.
3. Farmworkers are designated as essential workers. They are largely undocumented immigrants.

Climate:

1. The EPA releases new fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks, watering down one of our most aggressive efforts to fight climate change. This reverses the changes made under Obama, and states are already planning legal challenges.

• • The new rule mandates a 1.5% increase in fuel efficiency annually and sets a goal of an average of 40 MPG by 2026. The old rule mandated a 5% annual increase in efficiency and an average of 54 MPG by 2025.
  • Scientists expect that an extra 900 million more tons of CO2 will be released if the rule is allowed to go into effect.

Budget/Economy:

1. Despite the shortage of medical supplies, White House trade advisor Peter Navarro says we have to buy those supplies from American producers. He’s not ready to let up on the trade war in order for us to get the equipment we need. Chinese manufacturers make 120 million masks a day, while the U.S. government asks volunteers at home to sew masks.
2. The Treasury reverses its previous stance and says that if you receive social security benefits, you don’t have to file a tax return to qualify for the $1,200 relief check.
3. The number of filings for unemployment benefits jumped to 6.65 million last week, a much sharper increase than during the Great Recession.
4. The unemployment rate rose from 3.5% to 4.4% during March.
5. The U.S. job market lost 701,000 jobs. The losses are largely in hospitality, entertainment, and manufacturing, none of which can be done remotely.
6. The stock market continues to be volatile this week, but still improves a bit over last week.
7. The Paycheck Protection Program, which offers almost $350 billion in loans to eligible businesses to retain staff and payroll, goes into effect. The loans will be 100% forgiven if businesses use the money according to the guidelines.

Elections:

1. While Democrats push for countrywide vote-by-mail elections as a way to make sure everybody can vote safely, Trump says that if everyone were allowed to vote, a Republican would never win an election. Whoops! That guy’s always saying the quiet part out loud.

• • And Georgia’s House Speaker confirms it, saying that higher voter participation would “be extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives in Georgia.”

2. Several states postpone their Democratic primary elections until May or June.
3. The Wisconsin Republican Party asks the Supreme Court to block extended voting for absentee ballots in Wisconsin’s presidential primary next week. Some voters have still not received their ballots. A district court refused to allow the primary to be delayed but did extend absentee voting.

Miscellaneous:

1. Representative Mark Meadows (R-NC) officially resigns from Congress to become Trump’s new chief of staff.

Polls:

1. Trump’s rally-around-the-president bump in approval seems to have peaked. 47% of Americans approve of his handling of the pandemic while 52% disapprove.