Trump catching Covid causing even more suffering for the American people, now desperate for a bump, he is killing negotiations to get his name on checks. ‘Too Close To The Election’ For Coronavirus Relief But Not A Supreme Court Justice? Trump reverses course on coronavirus relief talks, dangles new $1,200 stimulus checks By Allan Smith and Dartunorro Clark President Donald Trump urged Congress Tuesday night to approve piecemeal coronavirus relief measures he would sign, including a new round of $1,200 stimulus checks for Americans. That turn came after just hours after he effectively killed discussions on a broader stimulus package until "after I win" the election. Both moves by the president, who was released Monday from the hospital where he was being treated for Covid-19, were made on Twitter. "If I am sent a Stand Alone Bill for Stimulus Checks ($1,200), they will go out to our great people IMMEDIATELY. I am ready to sign right now. Are you listening Nancy?" Trump tweeted Tuesday night. He said in another tweet that he would approve funding for specific struggling industries, such as airlines and small businesses, which is short of what House Democrats proposed. "The House & Senate should IMMEDIATELY Approve 25 Billion Dollars for Airline Payroll Support, & 135 Billion Dollars for Paycheck Protection Program for Small Business. Both of these will be fully paid for with unused funds from the Cares Act. Have this money. I will sign now!" Trump said. Asked about the president’s proposal on Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed it outright. “All the president wants is his name on a check,” she said. “And that doesn’t — we’re here to honor our heroes, crush the virus, put money in the pockets of the American people beyond a check with his name on it.” A senior administration official familiar with the president's thinking said Tuesday that a "large-scale stimulus package is on the sidelines," as Trump made clear earlier, saying the president felt it best not to string people along. But the White House appears to be planning to push a series of smaller, individual packages on mutually agreed-upon items. Hours earlier, Trump threw cold water on the stimulus talks in a series of tweets. "Nancy Pelosi is asking for $2.4 Trillion Dollars to bailout poorly run, high crime, Democrat States, money that is in no way related to COVID-19," Trump said earlier of the aid package passed by House Democrats last week, which was actually for $2.2 trillion, "We made a very generous offer of $1.6 Trillion Dollars and, as usual, she is not negotiating in good faith. I am rejecting their request, and looking to the future of our Country." "I have instructed my representatives to stop negotiating until after the election when, immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stimulus Bill that focuses on hardworking Americans and Small Business," he continued. "I have asked Mitch McConnell not to delay, but to instead focus full time on approving my outstanding nominee to the United States Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett." Trump then praised the state of the economy, pointing to the stock market, unemployment and recent job gains. In the minutes after his tweet, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged by more than 400 points. On Fox News on Wednesday, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Trump recently spoke with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin about the possibility of stand alone relief bills, such as one for the airline industry. But, he said, "the stimulus negotiations are off." Speaking with CNBC, top White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said the administration ended negotiations because it's "too close to the election" and there is "not enough time to get stuff done at this stage in the game." Download the NBC News app for breaking news and politics Initial coronavirus aid expired at the end of July. Current negotiations had centered on a package that would have provided another round of direct payments to Americans, enhanced unemployment benefits and money for schools, testing, small businesses and the airlines, which have begun substantial layoffs.
Any new stimulus bill should provide relief for Chuck-E-Cheese so that FortuneTeller and derektrader don’t have to find new venues for their birthday parties.
Your demented hero Pelosi is making it to where people that really need it will not get it. She is a drug addicted alcoholic. You are probably a damn drunk also.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2029812 Ouch, NEJM officially says fuck Trump. Dying in a Leadership Vacuum The Editors Covid-19 has created a crisis throughout the world. This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy. The magnitude of this failure is astonishing. According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering,1 the United States leads the world in Covid-19 cases and in deaths due to the disease, far exceeding the numbers in much larger countries, such as China. The death rate in this country is more than double that of Canada, exceeds that of Japan, a country with a vulnerable and elderly population, by a factor of almost 50, and even dwarfs the rates in lower-middle-income countries, such as Vietnam, by a factor of almost 2000. Covid-19 is an overwhelming challenge, and many factors contribute to its severity. But the one we can control is how we behave. And in the United States we have consistently behaved poorly. We know that we could have done better. China, faced with the first outbreak, chose strict quarantine and isolation after an initial delay. These measures were severe but effective, essentially eliminating transmission at the point where the outbreak began and reducing the death rate to a reported 3 per million, as compared with more than 500 per million in the United States. Countries that had far more exchange with China, such as Singapore and South Korea, began intensive testing early, along with aggressive contact tracing and appropriate isolation, and have had relatively small outbreaks. And New Zealand has used these same measures, together with its geographic advantages, to come close to eliminating the disease, something that has allowed that country to limit the time of closure and to largely reopen society to a prepandemic level. In general, not only have many democracies done better than the United States, but they have also outperformed us by orders of magnitude. Why has the United States handled this pandemic so badly? We have failed at almost every step. We had ample warning, but when the disease first arrived, we were incapable of testing effectively and couldn’t provide even the most basic personal protective equipment to health care workers and the general public. And we continue to be way behind the curve in testing. While the absolute numbers of tests have increased substantially, the more useful metric is the number of tests performed per infected person, a rate that puts us far down the international list, below such places as Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia, countries that cannot boast the biomedical infrastructure or the manufacturing capacity that we have.2 Moreover, a lack of emphasis on developing capacity has meant that U.S. test results are often long delayed, rendering the results useless for disease control. Although we tend to focus on technology, most of the interventions that have large effects are not complicated. The United States instituted quarantine and isolation measures late and inconsistently, often without any effort to enforce them, after the disease had spread substantially in many communities. Our rules on social distancing have in many places been lackadaisical at best, with loosening of restrictions long before adequate disease control had been achieved. And in much of the country, people simply don’t wear masks, largely because our leaders have stated outright that masks are political tools rather than effective infection control measures. The government has appropriately invested heavily in vaccine development, but its rhetoric has politicized the development process and led to growing public distrust. The United States came into this crisis with enormous advantages. Along with tremendous manufacturing capacity, we have a biomedical research system that is the envy of the world. We have enormous expertise in public health, health policy, and basic biology and have consistently been able to turn that expertise into new therapies and preventive measures. And much of that national expertise resides in government institutions. Yet our leaders have largely chosen to ignore and even denigrate experts. The response of our nation’s leaders has been consistently inadequate. The federal government has largely abandoned disease control to the states. Governors have varied in their responses, not so much by party as by competence. But whatever their competence, governors do not have the tools that Washington controls. Instead of using those tools, the federal government has undermined them. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was the world’s leading disease response organization, has been eviscerated and has suffered dramatic testing and policy failures. The National Institutes of Health have played a key role in vaccine development but have been excluded from much crucial government decision making. And the Food and Drug Administration has been shamefully politicized,3 appearing to respond to pressure from the administration rather than scientific evidence. Our current leaders have undercut trust in science and in government,4 causing damage that will certainly outlast them. Instead of relying on expertise, the administration has turned to uninformed “opinion leaders” and charlatans who obscure the truth and facilitate the promulgation of outright lies. Let’s be clear about the cost of not taking even simple measures. An outbreak that has disproportionately affected communities of color has exacerbated the tensions associated with inequality. Many of our children are missing school at critical times in their social and intellectual development. The hard work of health care professionals, who have put their lives on the line, has not been used wisely. Our current leadership takes pride in the economy, but while most of the world has opened up to some extent, the United States still suffers from disease rates that have prevented many businesses from reopening, with a resultant loss of hundreds of billions of dollars and millions of jobs. And more than 200,000 Americans have died. Some deaths from Covid-19 were unavoidable. But, although it is impossible to project the precise number of additional American lives lost because of weak and inappropriate government policies, it is at least in the tens of thousands in a pandemic that has already killed more Americans than any conflict since World War II. Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences. Our leaders have largely claimed immunity for their actions. But this election gives us the power to render judgment. Reasonable people will certainly disagree about the many political positions taken by candidates. But truth is neither liberal nor conservative. When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.
"...While the absolute numbers of tests have increased substantially, the more useful metric is the number of tests performed per infected person, a rate that puts us far down the international list, below such places as Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe, ..." Is it me, or is there something wrong with that underlined bit above? Number of tests performed per infected person? Huh?
Redfield urged to leave CDC in blaze of glory—or forever be Trump’s toady "This will go down as a colossal failure of the public health system of this country." https://arstechnica.com/science/202...in-blaze-of-glory-or-forever-be-trumps-toady/